A few years ago, a woman from Switzerland sent us a request for prayer because her dog was lost. It was an unusual request, but I understood that people love their pets. I am sure we prayed the woman would find her dog. She had put up posters in her neighborhood. I also remember a letter from her later in which she rejoiced because her dog, who had been missing for 40 days, had come home.
Can you imagine if someone had walked past the poster and simply ripped it off the wall? Such a person would be considered immoral and hateful.
Compare that to a story I heard from Douglas Murray, the British political commentator and journalist.
A friend of his was visiting Dublin, Ireland, and found parts of a poster on the ground. It was a picture of his relative Kfir Bibas, the nine-month-old baby who was kidnapped on October 7 last year and held hostage in Gaza ever since. On January 19 he spent his first birthday in captivity in the tunnels of Gaza. Who would rip down a poster of such a baby? Only an evil person.
Posters of hostages are being torn down in Berlin, London, New York, Paris, Stockholm, Toronto and Zurich. What kind of depraved society do we live in?
It is fitting to read a Bible text. This sobering passage describes a terrible time:
“They said, ‘Come, let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.’ For they consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against You: The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab and the Hagrites; Gebal and Ammon and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre, Even Assyria joined with them: they helped the children of Lot. Selah” (Ps. 83:5-9).
This 3,000-year-old text was clearly relevant in tumultuous times then (why else would the Psalmist write these words?), but it is equally relevant today. Notice the names in the list of those who want to destroy His people:
The Ishmaelites (i.e. the Arabs);
The inhabitants of Philistia (those living in the region of Gaza: Hamas);
The inhabitants of Tyre (southern Lebanon, where Hizbullah is hidden);
The inhabitants of Assyria (Syria and northern Iraq).
It is clear, they hate Israel and want to destroy her. But why?
The answer is in the first four verses of the same Psalm 83:
“A song, a psalm of Asaph. O God, keep not silent; hold not Your peace and be not still, O God. For, lo, Your enemies make a tumult and they that hate You have lifted up the head. They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, and consulted against Your sheltered ones.”
It’s about the enemies of God. They hate God. And therefore they hate His people. The Bible is very clear.
Now I’ve said everything. We could end here and say we understand the Gaza-Israel conflict.
Someone may counter that this is a different millennium and a different generation, and people today are not the same as back then. At the very least, then, today’s history runs parallel with the biblical text.
Someone may ask: “Aren’t these nations filled with deeply religious people and don’t they pray to Allah five times a day? It’s the same God, after all.”
Those today hate the message and the God of the Bible just as those of old hated Him. If they pray to Allah and hate the God of the Bible, then Allah and God (the Father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), are not the same. This is a very important distinction.
Their god is intolerant of all infidels and yet demands their loyalty, otherwise they must be killed, expelled or forced to pay the jizya tax of unbelievers.
Most of us live in nations guaranteeing religious freedom, so we won’t condemn people who adhere to other faiths. What we can say, however, is that Muslims and Bible-believers do not pray to the same deity. We know the God of the Bible is a loving and compassionate Father, a just God.
The nations and groups that are firing rockets into Israel, or sent terrorists into Israel on October 7 of last year to slaughter, rape, behead, burn, mutilate and murder innocent men, women, elderly, children and babies, let us put it discreetly, resemble the peoples mentioned in Psalm 83. They celebrate the massacre by handing out sweets and joining in jubilant demonstrations around the world.
And there are another 111 hostages between the ages of one and 83 (Jews, Thais, Americans and Europeans from 40 nations) within the borders and tunnels of Gaza, a third of them or more dead.
Someone may ask, “Isn’t the Bible full of words of comfort to assure Israel, the Jewish people, that God is watching over them?”
Yes, but God never said we wouldn’t be attacked, He never said we would never be persecuted, that the enemies of the Jewish people would leave the Jews in peace.
And yet, the miracle is taking place. The Jews are coming home to the promised land, even during these turbulent months. God is fulfilling His ancient promises, which were expressed by almost every prophet in the Bible. This has been happening since Jews started returning en masse over a century ago.
Incidentally, it is important to note that there was always a Jewish presence in the land. Even during the Babylonian Captivity and the Dispersion, and despite numerous attacks, a remnant remained.
The rebirth of the Jewish state is not easy and without problems. Just 76 years after the founding of the modern State of Israel, there are still social, economic, defense and many other problems to solve. Consider, too, that the nation of Israel was not reborn in 1948 in a spiritual sense. In fact, many of the founders of the state didn’t have any religious inclination.
Nor did they arrive as angels, as righteous saints ready to be raptured in the clouds. The Prophet Ezekiel wrote:
“I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and I will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle pure water upon you, and you shall be cleansed; from all your contaminations, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:24-26).
So, the Jews come home out of all nations and then begins a cleansing.
Sometimes people say to me, “I could support Israel if they were all following God” or, “I can’t admire the lifestyle in parts of Tel Aviv” or, “If they weren’t so [fill in with any offense].”
Ezekiel says that God would gather His people from the nations and bring them back to their own land, and then He would begin a cleansing. The fact that God is now regathering Jews, regardless of their spiritual condition, back in His land, amidst a renewed and widespread devotion to God, shows us this cleansing has begun and He is doing exactly what He promised.
Sometimes, however, we even fall asleep, or our generals or politicians don’t pay attention, or forget, or ignore God’s Word and trust only in themselves. And then terrible events take place.
The consequences were evident last October 7. It began with the existing ceasefire being broken by the Hamas terror organization’s massacre, resulting in 1,200 deaths and 253 abductions of hostages.
Then followed Israel’s fight against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists in the Gaza Strip, against Hizbullah forces in the north, against the ongoing hateful terrorism from Houthis and other Islamic groups from around the world, and against Iran’s looming nuclear program with its stated desire to wipe “cancerous Israel” off the map.
There is nothing clean or pretty about any of these tragic events. This is no “lion-sitting-with-the-lamb” scenario. Not yet.
The government of Israel, along with the military and other national institutions, will have a great reckoning in the coming months. Lives lost needlessly, ill preparedness, awful strategic decisions, blind obstinacy, all these will come to light on a national scale. The courts will be deeply involved. It will be similar to the reckoning that followed the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.
Here I want to interject that I believe we are living in a time when we are to comfort Israel. I do not agree with those who are eager to berate Israel, even if such critics claim to have received their message from God. This is a time of reunification of the Jewish people from all corners of the world.
As for those who have made the Jews the object of their hatred of God, it is another story.
I began this essay with quotations from Psalm 83. There are some other verses about God’s adversaries:
“O my God, make them like the whirling chaff, as the stubble before the wind; like a fire burning the forest, and like a flame that sets mountains on fire. So pursue them with Your tempest and make them afraid with Your storm. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your Name, O LORD. Let them be shamed and terrified forever, then they will be disgraced and they will perish. That men may know that You, Whose Name alone is LORD, are the Most High over all the earth” (vv. 13-18 [14-19]).
We will be eyewitnesses of cataclysmic events in the coming months.
When we read these words, it makes us very uncomfortable. We’d rather go to work, send our children for an education, for career training, watch them get married, and fuss over the grandchildren. But life isn’t so simple. The older you get, the more you know how hard life and the real world are. So how do we keep going?
Christians and Jews are people of faith. We read God’s Word and have read the proverbial “last chapter.” We are assured of a glorious future of peace. Until we reach that point, we can encourage Bible-believers to be steadfast in faith and continue in prayer and support for Israel.