Evangelical Christians who voted for US President Donald Trump are pressuring him to allow Israel to gain full control over the West Bank based on the covenant God made with the Jews, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
The Times reported that prominent evangelical allies of Trump are campaigning by making appearances in Israel, petitioning the White House, and building support in Congress.
“I literally feel God is giving Israel a blank check,” said Pastor Mario Bramnick, the president of the Latino Coalition for Israel. He visited Jerusalem on Tuesday with other key conservative Evangelicals to publicly advocate for Israel's seizure of Judea and Samaria.
The group of Christian Zionists believes that Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank would foster other biblical promises, such as an apocalypse that brings about the second coming of Jesus Christ, the Times reported.
“We Christians are calling on our beloved President Trump and his team to aggressively remove all barriers to Israel’s sovereignty over all the land, including Judea and Samaria,” said Terri Copeland Pearsons, a pastor and president of Texas Bible College, last Thursday at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs.
Preaching the 'biblical truth' about Israel
At the convention, organizers pushed a resolution that condemns “all efforts” to pressure Israel to relinquish West Bank territory. It was sponsored by the American Christian Leaders for Israel, which is self-described as a network of thousands of Christian leaders who preach the “biblical truth” and are steadfast supporters of Israel. Organizers of the event said that they would promptly show the resolution to Trump.
Addditionally, days before American Christian Leaders for Israel announced the resolution, Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY) sent a letter to the US president with five other members of her congressional "Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus”. It called on his administration to “recognize Israel’s right” to declare sovereignty over the territory, saying that doing so would be integral to defending “the Judeo-Christian heritage on which our nation was founded.”