An Evangelical leader who says he devoted his life to protecting Jews after his father nearly strangled him to death for defending his Jewish mother is calling on media personality Tucker Carlson to debate him on the topic of Zionism. 

Mike Evans, the 78-year-old founder of the Friends of Zion Heritage Center in Jerusalem, told The Christian Post that the former Fox News host "must be held accountable" for his comments about Zionists and Israel, the Jewish people's homeland. 

"Carlson recently said he hates Christian Zionists more than anyone on Earth, calling us infected with a brain disease," Evans said, referencing Carlson's remarks during an interview last week with Nick Fuentes, a far-right political commentator and provocateur known for spreading antisemitic rhetoric and lauding Hitler and Stalin. 

After the interview aired, Carlson claimed that his comment about despising Christian Zionists was said in anger, and he then accused Israel of intentionally bombing churches and killing Christians in Gaza. 

As Christian supporters of Israel have previously noted in response to Carlson's claims, the Israeli Defense Forces has asserted that it doesn't deliberately target churches or religious sites, and has reinforced measures to protect sensitive locations after a stray munition hit the Catholic Holy Family Church in Gaza earlier this year.

Evans told CP that he has written a letter to Carlson requesting that they debate the topic of Christian Zionism. According to the Friends of Zion founder, Carlson has yet to respond to the request. 

"I believe this is such a conversation for our time," Evans said, declaring that antizionism has become "the new antisemitism."

The author and journalist said certain online influencers like Carlson and Candace Owens — a podcast host who has also garnered criticism for her comments on Israel and the Jewish people — appear to have embraced replacement theology.  

Replacement theology, also known as supersessionism, is the belief that Christians have replaced or superseded the Jews as God's chosen people, and that the New Covenant in Jesus Christ renders the Old Covenant obsolete. 

The Evangelical leader said that replacement theology "fueled and fed the Holocaust," the state-sponsored persecution that resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

Christians who embrace replacement theology, according to Evans, don't believe that Israel has any biblical significance, a point that he maintains is untrue. 

"And, of course, we do. We believe that Zionism is the Jewish people's right to their homeland based on the Bible," Evans stated. 

'The beginning of my understanding'

Born in 1947, Evans was raised by a Jewish mother and a Christian father. He witnessed firsthand the all-consuming hatred of antisemitism. 

He recalled how vandals spray-painted his family's home with the words "Jew Witch," and neighbors would often throw tomatoes and eggs at Evans' mother when she walked home from the grocery store on Friday nights. 

As a child, Evans was beaten up several times and called a "kike," a word he didn't understand until his mother explained to him that it was an ethnic slur against Jewish people. 

The Evangelical leader also recalled a time when he was 4 years old and watching cartoons, and evangelist Billy Graham appeared on television; his mother quickly turned it off. Then Evans' mother told her son not to watch something like that again, telling him that "Christians kill Jews" and that "Christians hate Jews." 

"Then she told me, 'I named you after your great-grandfather, Rabbi Michal Katznelson, who was burned to death in his synagogue with 2,000 Jews, by Christians," Evans recalled. 

"This was the beginning of my understanding of this world," he added. 

Remembering his father, Evans said that he was a professing Christian who attended church every Sunday, but he was consumed by antisemitism. 

One day, when a pastor came to visit, he asked Evans' father if he was serving as a good witness for the faith. Evans' father replied, "Oh, yes, pastor, I am. I'm being a good witness. But you know, these Jews, they're real stubborn. And it's real hard to be a good witness to these Jews. They're real stubborn, stubborn people."

Evans remembers sitting on the stairs and crying on the days when his father would come home drunk and force Evans' mother to sit in a chair as he slapped her in the face and called her a "Jewish wh—." 

"And he would accuse her of having an affair with a Jewish man. He would say, 'You've had an affair for two years with a Jewish man, and he's not my son upstairs,'" Evans recalled. "'He's a bastard.'" 

"I would sit on the stairs and cry in shame because I felt it was all my fault that [my father] hates me," Evans said. "He never called me 'son,' he never said 'I love you.'" 

'I didn't see any purpose for my life'

When Evans was 11, and his father once again forced his mother to sit in a chair as he hit her, Evans screamed at him to stop. In response, his father ran up the stairs, picked up his son by the throat, and strangled him to the point of unconsciousness.

"I woke up in the fetal position, and I had vomited all over myself," he remembered. "You could see every finger from [my father's] hand on my neck because he squeezed so tightly." 

As he came to, Evans screamed at God and demanded to know why he had been born, feeling angry that he was even alive. 

"I didn't see any purpose for my life," he said. "'[My father] hates me, and my mother is suffering because of me. I should have never been born.' When I said it, I was in the dark, and it was very quiet, then all of a sudden, the brightest light came in the room." 

At first, Evans thought it was his father coming to abuse him again, and he covered his face with his hands to protect himself. Then he noticed that it was quiet, and Evans knew that his father was never quiet. 

"So I decided to peek through my fingers and see why it was so quiet. And when I peeked through my fingers, I saw two hands come towards me, and there were nail scars in them, but they weren't in the palms, they were way high up in the wrist," the Evans recalled. 

At the time, Evans didn't believe in Jesus, and his father was the only Christ-follower that he knew. 

"And then, I looked up towards the eyes, and the eyes were spectacular," the Christian leader said. "Every color in the rainbow was in the eyes, and they were like magnets. I could see angels and eternity through the eyes. I just couldn't stop looking at those smiling eyes."

Evans said when the vision of Jesus spoke, he acknowledged him as His son and said that He loved him. Then, the vision disappeared.

While Evans said that he hasn't had another spiritual encounter like that since he was 11, the experience changed him as a person. 

One change that Evans noticed after the encounter was that all of his fears vanished. He reported that he was no longer afraid of talking to people and looking them in the eye, and while the dark once scared him, he stopped fearing it after having a vision of Christ. 

"My greatest shame was being unable to defend one Jew against a Jew hater. But that night, something astonishing happened. All of my pain was turned into power, purpose and passion," the Christian leader stated. "I said to God, 'Why was I born?'"

"And He answered me," Evans said. "The answer was to defend the Jewish people." 

'Bridge of love'

Evans dedicated his life to building what he described as a "bridge of love" between Christians and Jews. In 2015, Evans founded the Friends of Zion Museum, which celebrates the Christian Zionists who played a role in the founding of the state of Israel. 

He also established the Jerusalem Prayer Team in 2002 "to build Friends of Zion to guard, defend and protect the Jewish people and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem," according to the group's website.

The organization's goal is to enlist 100 million people worldwide to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and it also raises funds to provide shelter and other forms of aid to Jewish people in Israel. 

In 2022, Evans was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work combating antisemitism.

Now, at the age of 78, the Christian Zionist remains committed to the calling he received as an 11-year-old boy.

"The worst day of my life became the greatest day of my life," he said.

News Source : https://www.christianpost.com/news/evangelical-leader-challenges-tucker-carlson-to-debate-on-zionism.html