A few weeks ago, when the Middle East tinderbox predictably once again exploded into open warfare between Israel and Hamas, people of all faiths around the world were horrified by the tribal and religious violence.

But not everybody was shocked by the thousands of rockets fired by Hamas militants into civilian population centers or by the disproportionate Israeli air strikes that devastated the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Millions of people in the United States rejoiced at the obscene display of violence, and it wasn’t anarchists or Satanists who welcomed the bloodshed.

White evangelicals who ostensibly are followers of Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace welcomed the violence.

Evangelical pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, basked in orgiastic glee at the violence in the Middle East. “The rapture of the church is imminent” he thundered “If you’re not ready, get ready, because we’re getting ready to leave this world.”

Evangelicals are unmoved and unconcerned by the cyclical explosions of violence in the Middle East, every time Israel and the Palestinians go to war they pray and hope that it will usher the Rapture of the Church.

Violence in the Holy Land is no reason to rejoice, and it doesn’t mean that Jesus Is going to rapture racist white evangelicals out of this world and meet them in the heavens.

Proof that the evangelical eschatology is misguided and unbiblical is that it leads them to rejoice every time war breaks out between Palestinians and Israelis.