Phineas T. Barnum coined the word....bandwagon....as one wagon would carry the circus band as it came into town with much pomp. Well the word spread....and politicians began to utilize the concept in their campaigns....and then the phrase came into use....jump on the bandwagon. It was said of Robert Kennedy that after Eugene McCarthy showed LBJ's vulnerability...that RFK....in entering the race himself....jumped on the bandwagon.
So what is the difference between honestly researching or genuinely coming to enjoy something....and just jumping on the bandwagon because everyone else seems to be doing it....or because one is just easily led?A more important question....but one that relates to jumping on the bandwagon....would be how the evangelical looks at the nation/state of Israel. How does one come to their decision on this? Well...the one side....believing that the nation of Israel today....a parliamentary democratic republic....is God's chosen people....every bit as much as it had always been since God called Abraham....is more jumping on the bandwagon than anything else....always attracted by the shimmering lure in the water....even as storm clouds are about to cover the light of the sun....rather than moored to the dock....immovable....firmly embedded....in God's Word.
On the other side of chart would be the traditionalist....so steeped in the history of their own theological thought....that....well it's happened....Israel came into being only a few short years after the horrors of the Holocaust....and the desert bloomed as a rose....and they became mighty although they were small....but enemies increasingly surround them....trying to drive them into the sea....all of this obvious fulfillment of biblical prophecy....along with a world gone mad....and fulfillment after fulfillment of others warnings from God's Word...and they....the traditionalist....cannot see any of this because it is codified no where in their systematic theology.
So there is a broad middle. Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones are in there....because they saw Paul in there....in that God is not finished with Israel. It definitely was not a bandwagon....but God's Word very clearly led them there. God will extend His mercy upon what will be a remnant of the Jews....and call them to Him....just before Jesus returns....and therein is the miracle of 1948....and the reason for 1948.
To say that the nation of Israel today is at a precipice would be a gross understatement. They have never....not in the attacks on them in their first days....nor in 1967....nor even as they were surprised in 1973....been in danger as they are today. God had always supplied them with the support of the United States....but we ourselves are on the verge of collapse. On one side is the current president....and all those around him....thinking only of a November election....and on the other side is a man who might either defend them or stab them in the back....seemingly with the same chance that a ball on the Roulette table might land and on black or red..
As ominous as all of this is....God has given us clear and consistent warnings....to prepare ourselves for what is ahead....and also the command to blow the trumpet....or shout from the rooftops....that our Savior and our King is near....and to call as many as we can to the marriage supper of the Lamb....which in praise of God's faithfulness and mercy....will include many of the children of Israel.
