We have been following Pastor John Hagee at Jewish Current Issues for more than 10 years.
In 2006, he established the “Nights to Honor Israel” that have raised millions of dollars for Israel, and commenced the annual Washington, D.C. Summit of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) that brings thousands of Christians every year to Washington to study issues relating to Israel and then spend a day lobbying Congress on those issues. Back in 2006, he described what he had decided to do:
And I said we will do a Night to Honor Israel in every major city in America . . . and they all of them stayed, and that’s how I knew God was in the house. And I said we’re going to go to once a year to Washington and take as many of our leaders as we can. We’re not going to stand out on the grass and sing “Amazing Grace,” because Congress could care less about “Amazing Grace.”
They only care when you go in their offices, look them in the eye and say “I’m a Christian and I support Israel” and you give them a list of talking points for every one of them, and every senator and every congressmen hears the same message from Americans from Maine to California on one day. . . .
He has held hundreds of "Nights to Honor Israel" since then, and CUFI has held its Washington summit every year. The next one is July 23-24. CUFI now has more than 4 million members, dwarfing the membership of AIPAC.
Today, more than a decade he established CUFI, Pastor Hagee stood in Jerusalem and gave a benediction for the ages. Here is the transcript (the video is here):
“Our most gracious Heavenly Father, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God who calls the stars by name, and measures space with the span of his hand, the God who is the King of the Universe, we gather here today to thank you for the joy of living and seeing this glorious and historic day.
“We thank you for the State of Israel, the lone torch of freedom in the Middle East, who lives and prospers because of your everlasting love for the Jewish people.
“It was you, O Lord, who gathered the exiles from the nations and brought them home again. It was you who made statehood possible. It was you that gave a miraculous victory in 1967 when Jerusalem was re-opened to worshippers of all faith.
“Jerusalem is the city of God. Jerusalem is the heartbeat of Israel. Jerusalem is where Abraham placed his son on the altar on the Temple Mount and became the father of many nations.
“Jerusalem is where Jeremiah and Isaiah penned principles of righteousness that became the moral foundations of Western Civilization. Jerusalem is where Messiah will come and establish a kingdom that will never end.
“We thank you, O Lord, for President Donald Trump's courage in acknowledging to the world a truth established 3000 years ago that Jerusalem is and always shall be the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
“And because of that courage of our president, we gather here today to consecrate the ground upon which the United States Embassy will stand reminding the dictators of the world that America and Israel are forever united. We thank you for our Ambassador David Friedman, and pray your anointing upon him as he opens the doors of the US Embassy to receive the nations of the world.
“Let the word go forth from Jerusalem today that Israel lives!
“Shout it from the housetops that Israel lives!
“Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message—Israel lives!
“Let it be heard in the halls of the United Nations—Israel lives!
“Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran—Israel lives!
“Let it be known to all men, that Israel lives because, ‘He that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.’
“As King David prayed 3000 years ago, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all its inhabitants.
“Let the name of the Lord be glorified today for the defender of Israel today, tomorrow and forever is here! Can we all shout hallelujah! Amen!”
-- Rick Richman, author of The Race Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler.