Dispensational Error on Israel’s Pilgrimage Road
A special ceremony took place in Jerusalem on Tuesday, September 16, 2025. For some, this marked the long-awaited opening of the “Pilgrimage Road,” (or “Pilgrim’s Road”). Now an archaeological site, it is a six-hundred-meter stepped walkway that once took worshipers from the Pool of Siloam to the foot of the Temple Mount.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended the ceremony as well as U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who delivered a dedicatory speech as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu listened from the audience.
During his speech the ambassador cited a verse of Scripture from the New Testament that caught my attention and sparked my interest to review his speech and comment on several of his statements made that day. Quotes from the ambassador’s speech are taken from the transcript and will be in italics. Quotes from Scripture (NKJV) will be in bold and italics.
Mike Huckabee is an accomplished public servant. Most notably, he served as the governor of Arkansas and ran for president in 2008. He also hosted his own talk show, “Huckabee,” where he always offered thoughtful and well-spoken conservative commentary on current issues. But the reason I am responding to his recent Jerusalem speech is that he is also an ordained Southern Baptist minister. He has pastored two Baptist churches and as such, he should bear theological accountability for his assertions concerning Israel and Jerusalem that he made that day.
Being a strong proponent of ‘end-times’ dispensational theology, he spoke about the Biblical story that connects the people of Israel to Abraham and to the land and especially to Jerusalem. He made mention of how the Romans tried to end their story by destroying Jerusalem two millennia ago. He said, “and 2000 years ago, the world, through the Romans, decided we’ll get rid of the Jews. And they destroyed this place. And they scattered the Jewish people across the planet.”
I found that Ambassador Huckabee’s statement concerning the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.70 seemed to imply anti-Semitism as the cause. Did the Romans destroy Jerusalem to “get rid of the Jews?” My understanding of what instigated the Romans laying siege to Jerusalem was not their racial hatred of the Jews, but it was their final response to a four-year uprising of Jewish zealots against the Roman occupation.
Excessive taxation and incidents of Roman disrespect for Jewish Temple worship did contribute to their resentment of Roman rule. But it was the major rebellion in the province of Judea by Jewish zealots that brought about the siege of Jerusalem and its destruction. This siege was carried out by Emperor Vespasian’s son, Titus, who commanded the Roman forces.
Before the destruction, Titus offered terms of peace to the Jews, but they rejected them. After this he made another appeal for peace through the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, but Josephus was mocked and mistreated.
It should be noted that even during the time of Jesus, with Israel under Roman occupation, the Jewish people were allowed to carry on their religious activities, their pilgrimages to Jerusalem, their festivals and their temple worship without interference. Although there was the presence of anti-Semitism within the Roman empire, and some incidents of disrespect toward the Jews, there was also a tolerance practiced toward the Jewish nation. That being said, the destruction of Jerusalem did not come about because of anti-Semitism or a plan to “get rid of the Jews” as Ambassador Huckabee implied in his speech.
As he continued to follow his theme that the Biblical story connects the people of Israel to Abraham, to the land and to Jerusalem, he said that the Romans did not successfully end the Jewish “story” because Israel is back in the land and back in Jerusalem.
“But that wasn’t the end of the story. Tonight, we’re sitting here because the story is not just alive. It’s more alive than perhaps it has been in 4000 years that God chose His people, His place, His purpose, and it is an extraordinary thing to behold.”
A politician can make such a statement. A dispensationalist can also make such a statement, one that completely overlooks the most important part of the Jewish “story.” The part that John the apostle put in writing in the early years of the first century; “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
Jesus of Nazareth began His earthly ministry 2000 years ago and the Jewish story has never been “more alive” and more “extraordinary” than the story of Him. Former evangelical pastor Mike Huckabee failed to mention this part of the story or that on a similar day in Jerusalem, around the year A.D.33, some three thousand Jews repented at the preaching of Peter and put their trust in Jesus Christ (Acts 2: 38-41). God’s purpose for His people is not found in the reopening of that ancient road leading to the Temple Mount in earthly Jerusalem, but in opening the new and living way to the God of Israel Himself, in the heavenly Jerusalem, through the death and resurrection of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Through their repentance and faith in Him, and the forgiveness of their sins through His cross, multitudes of Jewish people have become Christians over these past 2000 years and that continues to this day. These believing Jews have never been “more alive.” With an additional “extraordinary” truth; that the Gentiles have been joining them in this new and living way ever since the Jewish disciples of Jesus began preaching His gospel. It was first preached in Jerusalem, and to all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8). Jesus Christ is the true “Pilgrim’s Road” that leads both Jews and Gentiles to forgiveness and fellowship with the God of Israel; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Now I will address the portion of his speech that brought about the writing of this article. During the middle of his address in Jerusalem, Mike Huckabee cited a verse from the N.T. Scriptures and to my great surprise, it was a verse which can only apply to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The ambassador applied the verse to this work of excavation taking place in Jerusalem to open the Pilgrim’s Road. He said, “There is a verse in the New Testament in Luke (Luke 19:40), and it says this, ‘If the crowds keep quiet, the stones will cry out.’ If the crowds don’t acknowledge it, the stones will cry out. Tonight, the stones are crying out. The crowds may say it, but the stones absolutely and 100 percent validate that the Jewish people not only belong here now, but they have belonged here for 4000 years…”
As he spoke to the praise of the Jewish story and Jewish history, he passed over the Lord Jesus Christ, even to the point of taking the praise of Scripture due Him and applying it to the secular state of Israel. What can account for this? Political correctness? Yes, but let’s not overlook the preoccupation that dispensationalists have with the current Jewish state of Israel. The obsession is so consuming that an ordained Christian pastor can take a verse of Scripture that is meant to bring glory to Jesus Christ and to Him alone and instead use that verse of Scripture to glorify the Jewish state of Israel, which except for a ‘remnant’ of true believing Jews, continues to reject Him in sinful unbelief.
Let’s be clear about this matter. If the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God were to walk that newly excavated Pilgrim’s Road in Jerusalem, those stones would indeed cry out!
Jesus alone is worthy of our admiration and our praise, for He has made the Jewish and Gentile believers to be one people, who are His true chosen people, ‘Israel.’ This is the extraordinary ‘spiritual’ international story of Israel. But it is only the ‘earthly’ Jewish national story that former pastor Huckabee speaks of with admiration.
Ambassador Huckabee ends his speech with the claim that earthly Jerusalem is the eternal home of God’s chosen people. I would recommend to Mike Huckabee that he revisit Jacob’s well by way of John chapter 4, sit down beside Jesus and listen to what He says to the woman of Samaria.
Let’s remind our readers, that the greatest need of the Jewish people today is not the possession of the land or of Jerusalem itself, but it is the possession of true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ their Messiah. The true eternal inheritance of “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16) is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is “the true Vine” (John 15:10). He is their true Savior and their eternal home.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16).
Michael Galus serves as pastor of Sonrise Christian Fellowship Church in Quarryville. To learn more, visit: sonrisechristianfellowship.org.
