The Magnitude of the Story
Globally, pressure to turn against the Jewish people is intensifying. Most Christians have never been taught why their response is a matter of faithfulness to Jesus.
This is not the post I planned to publish this week.
On Monday I sat down, intending to draft an adaptation of my Sunday message, Everything in Messiah, based on Ephesians 1. The heart of that message surrounded Paul’s concern that the non-Jewish believers in Ephesus did not understand the magnitude of the story they had been invited into. Paul commended their faith, but prayed for their eyes to be opened because he sensed they needed a deeper understanding of the Messiah they already loved.
That’s the message I shared Sunday, and its the blog post I intended to publish this week.
Then I checked my email and the point of my sermon landed hard, right in my inbox, in the words of a stranger I have never met.
When I published The Forgotten Gospel, I wrote it in English for ordinary American evangelicals. At best, I hoped it might find its way into a few churches and communities already interested in its themes. More realistically, I expected its readership to remain fairly small and regional.
I did not anticipate an international response or repeated requests for translation into other languages.
French. Arabic. Portuguese.
These emails never come as inquiries from people who would simply prefer to read the book in another language.
Each translation request has come from a believer or Christian leader confronting antisemitism and replacement theology in places where the pressure is far greater than most American evangelicals understand.
A reader in the United Kingdom with close ties to France told me about the dark environment in which Jewish communities across the Channel are now living. In 2025, France recorded 1,320 antisemitic acts. President Macron has publicly warned of an evolving “antisemitic hydra” emerging from Islamist, far-right, far-left, anti-Zionist, and digital sources. Other ministry leaders in France have also told me how deeply antisemitism runs there. Decades of social change and mass immigration have created an increasingly volatile environment in which Christian supersessionism now mixes with newer political, ideological, and Islamist expressions of the same ancient contempt.[1] This British reader believed the message of The Forgotten Gospel is urgently needed in France.
Next came two requests from Brazil. One reader explained how valuable a Portuguese translation could be throughout the global Lusophone community, especially in places where many believers face violence and limited access to theological resources. Centuries of Christian supersessionist influence—much of it carried into Portuguese-speaking cultures through Catholic teaching and tradition—have created a formidable theological wall. Official declarations by the Catholic Church may change institutional language, he observed, but cannot instantly undo beliefs and doctrines held across generations.
Most recently, I heard from an American pastor and missionary serving in Cairo. He, too, urged me to consider translation—this time into Arabic. Disciples of Jesus in Egypt are eager to learn and grow, he told me, but the roots of supersessionism and antisemitism run incredibly deep. Teaching against them sounds like an uphill battle. He has searched for Arabic resources he can safely recommend to his community, but some of the materials that already exist are too academic or carry serious risks. Placing them into the wrong hands could expose readers to government scrutiny.
These messages have come to me from different regions, languages, and church traditions, but the warning is the same.
The pressure to turn against the Jewish people is intensifying around the world, and many Christians have never been taught why their response to it is a matter of faithfulness to Jesus.
I am encouraged that some American Christians are beginning to ask important questions and take these things seriously. A few pastors from churches here in the US have also written to me about my book, and I’m delighted to hear how they are engaging these topics within their communities. Yet across much of American Christianity, rising antisemitism is still treated as a distant concern—something tragic, perhaps, but mostly unrelated to one’s everyday walk with God.
Christian leaders around the world are telling me otherwise.
The pressure is already bearing down on these communities. Globally, believers are theologically unprepared and under-resourced to withstand it, and these leaders are asking whether something written for English-speakers could somehow be translated into the languages of disciples facing much more immediate tests of faith.
The Pressure is Here
I have long feared the American church is no better prepared to face those same tests here at home.
Perhaps it’s comforting to tell ourselves that these challenges are confined to Europe, the Middle East, or another far away place.
They aren’t.
The same pressure is already building here inside our civic institutions, political movements, and even our churches. Recent protests and political campaigns here in the Midwest reveal a cultural shift: the collapse of moral consensus and the rise of a distinctly anti-biblical value system. (I wrote more about that here.)
Believers are deceived if we imagine ourselves insulated from what Christian leaders are confronting abroad. Standing against antisemitism does not require Christians to shun their Muslim neighbors. Holding to biblical values does not mandate allegiance to MAGA, Christian nationalism, or any political leader or party. Supporting Israel and the Jewish people does not require defending every decision made by the modern State of Israel or turning a blind eye to Palestinian suffering.
I have tried to make these distinctions clear at every turn and in every conversation. There are major concerns and difficult questions, and Christian leaders have a great deal of work to do in meeting people honestly and compassionately within them.
But we must not allow the complexity of these questions to obscure a much more basic observation: American Christians—and evangelicals in particular—are deeply deceived about the danger before us.
The Theology Beneath the Deception
Antisemitism, anti-Judaism, and anti-Zionism have found room to grow among people who confess faith in Jesus because supersessionism—the belief that Christianity supersedes Judaism—has already trained generations of Christians to regard anything Jewish with suspicion. (I wrote about that here.)
Once that theological foundation has been laid, the world’s growing hostility toward Jews can be rationalized as a sad reality, but ultimately something that’s unrelated to Christian faith. In many Christian minds, the question of Israel has been settled:
Traditional supersessionism says Israel has been replaced.
Progressive covenantalism says Israel has been absorbed.
Dispensationalism, in many of its popular expressions, says Israel has been temporarily aside (even if God does preserve a role for her later) [2].
These systems differ significantly, but all contribute to the same practical result: they do nothing to combat the rising tide of hostility and suspicion against anything Jewish and nothing to teach non-Jewish believers the staggering weight of the role God expects them to play in the Jewish story they have been invited into.
Antisemitism becomes a cultural issue rather than a discipleship issue. Anti-Zionism becomes a foreign-policy debate rather than a matter of fidelity to the Most High God. Anti-Judaism becomes someone else’s danger rather than a sobering test facing the people who have been grafted into God’s enduring promises.
That is the deception leaving Christians vulnerable.
Will We Recognize It?
Christians who can recognize antisemitism only when it erupts in physical violence or spewing slurs—but not when it comes clothed in Christian theology, humanitarian rhetoric, or religious devotion—are unprepared to navigate what is already unfolding around the world.
Christians who treat Zionism or anti-Zionism as political questions—without seriously studying what God has said about the land, people, and city he has called his own—are unprepared to reckon with the redemptive consequences of how this generation responds to these issues in our day.
Christians who recognize anti-Judaism only in the public defacement of a synagogue—but not in the church’s habit of diminishing the Jewish Scriptures and foundational wisdom we find in them—are unprepared to find their way through the tangles and historical scars this deception has left behind.
Faith in Jesus requires fidelity to the Jewish Messiah—the Son of David and Lion of Judah—and obedience to his teaching. It requires love and humble regard for the people to whom God entrusted the covenants, promises, worship, Scriptures, and the Messiah himself—and a refusal to become arrogant toward those things. And it requires the moral courage to test everything, hold fast to what is true, and recognize distortions of God’s word wherever they appear—whether from the politics, Islamist movements, secular institutions, cultural traditions, social pressure, or within the church itself.
The Kind of People We Must Become
The repeated requests for translations from global Christian leaders signal that this is not the time for American Christians to congratulate ourselves because we do not personally hate Jews, but to humbly ask whether our theology, loyalties, and understanding of Scripture are strong enough to withstand the pressure when identification with the Jewish story and its Messiah becomes socially costly.
If we ask that question honestly, I believe it will produce a particular kind of people.
People who study, now—who immerse themselves in the Scriptures and meditate on the Torah day and night, becoming so deeply rooted in the truth—and in why it is true—that they recognize a lie even when it comes robed in religious language.
People who pray, now—who offer bold, urgent prayers for the strengthening of believers already standing in places far more difficult and dangerous than our own circumstances.
People who give, now—who support those serving where the darkness is thicker, enabling them to teach, disciple, translate, and put trustworthy resources into the hands of believers in their own languages.
People who remain alert, now—who learn to recognize the ancient hatred of the serpent and stand against its modern and most sophisticated disguises.
A Strong Delusion
Paul warned the believers in Thessalonica not to be deceived. Even in his own day, he wrote, the secret power of “lawlessness”—Torahlessness, separation from God’s Torah—was already at work. Yet he foresaw a day when that rebellion against God’s wisdom and righteous standard would be fully revealed, empowered by the Adversary through counterfeit signs and “every sort of evil that deceives.”
Those who refused to love the truth—the truth revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures and embodied by the Messiah who came to uphold them—would be given over to a strong delusion.
They would believe the lie.
Delusions work gradually, tightening their grip and dimming the light until people call evil good and good evil. They blur the boundaries God has established, distorting his definitions of righteousness and justice. Eventually, they persuade people that their rebellion against God is an act of faithfulness to him.
In our day, that delusion is at work in many horrific and sinister ways.
Increasingly, I see it seeping into the American church, teaching Christians that its ok to disregard the people, land, and promises of God’s covenant while claiming fidelity to the one who cut it. It persuades believers that indifference is righteousness and the things at the center of God’s redemptive plan do not matter all that much in the end.
For American Christians, the conditions for this delusion are not somewhere on the distant horizon. They are in our culture, appearing on our ballots, and being delivered through Amazon in “Christ-centered” books.
An Ancient Prayer Answered
I could have published my message on Ephesians 1 today. Instead, I am telling you this story because I believe it’s the heart of Paul’s concern reaching into our own day.
Non-Jewish believers must come to understand the magnitude of what God is doing for them and for all the world through the Jewish people and her Messiah.
If the delusion were not real, pastors and ministry leaders I have never met would not be writing to me from across the world, asking whether an indy book—written by an unknown homeschool mom in rural Wisconsin—could somehow be translated into Arabic, Portuguese, or French.
But I don’t write this to condemn the church or discourage believers. That’s both the wrong posture and the wrong lesson. Even in the face of these warnings, I remain hopeful.
These leaders somehow found The Forgotten Gospel, and now they are reaching out from difficult places, burdened for believers under deepening pressures. That is a modern-day answer to Paul’s prayer: believers whose eyes are being opened to the magnitude of this story—and who are laboring alongside him 2,000 years later to open the eyes of others.
Today, I felt compelled to share that good news with you.
“I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe...”
I echo Paul in every word of his prayer today.
May God open our eyes.
May he give us the courage to strengthen those already standing on front lines of darkness.
May our faith become a blessing to them.
And when the pressure reaches our own doors, may we be found faithful too.
Notes
See Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West.
See Brianna Tittel, The Forgotten Gospel: Reimagining Leviticus and the Story of Jesus, Appendix: On Covenant, Continuity, and the Story of Leviticus
Minneapolis and the Collapse of Moral Consensus
The catastrophe in Minneapolis has been narrated, predictably, as a failure of politics by the media and as a failure of love by Christian leadership. But it is something far more unsettling.
“If we are going to figure out how to make it through the storm and the fog to safe harbor, we have to understand how we got here. Ideas . . . have consequences.”
The catastrophe in Minneapolis has been narrated, predictably, as a failure of politics by the media and as a failure of love by Christian leadership. It is neither.
It is something far more unsettling: a moral collapse.
A man is dead after an encounter that, under the strain and disorder of a few seconds, escalated into a fatal use of force that should never have occurred. Others have been injured and killed amidst similar circumstances. A major American city was thrown into turmoil while its leaders, both local and federal, appeared either unable or unwilling to restore order. Justice has been perverted for years, leading up to this recent flare. As always, innocent people are left to count the cost.
A civilization that cannot enforce the law without cruelty, or protest injustice without destroying itself, is not suffering from a policy problem. It is suffering from the loss of the moral framework that once made both law and liberty possible. This did not happen overnight. It is the fruit of a long civilizational unraveling.
More than two centuries ago, John Adams warned that the American Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious people” and was “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This was not his personal opinion. Adams stated a political fact: free societies do not survive on rules alone. They depend on citizens self-governed by restraint, duty, and a shared understanding of right and wrong.
Alexis de Tocqueville agreed. In his famous work Democracy in America, he observed that democratic societies naturally drift toward equality, but not necessarily toward virtue. Democracy, he warned, favors majority rule and risks eroding the virtues that make self-rule possible. America, he believed, could not survive the loss of its religious inheritance—not because the state requires Christian religion, but because self-government requires a shared moral horizon.
For a long time, Western civilization lived in the Judeo-Christian worldview of its origins. It no longer does.
Over the last century, the West has steadily replaced duty with desire and tradition with self-expression. The sexual revolution that rose in the 1960’s did not merely change private behavior; it dealt a final blow to the idea that there is a given moral order to which human beings must conform. Family, gender, authority, and even human nature itself became matters of preference rather than binding features of civilization.
The result is not liberation, but moral bankruptcy. We have constructed a society that still demands rights but no longer knows where rights come from—or why anyone should accept them. We insist on dignity and equity, while rejecting any shared account of what makes human life dignified or equitable. We invoke justice while denying any stable definition of what is just. This is the world in which our institutions are now asked to function.
Minneapolis has forced longstanding questions into the open at devasting cost. How should law enforcement exercise authority? How ought citizens protest injustice? What limits should be placed on force, resistance, speech, guns, or assembly? What obligations do leaders owe the governed—and the governed one another? What is the responsibility of the media and of the those who consume it?
In a healthy society, these questions remain difficult but not paralyzing because they are argued within a shared moral language. Ours no longer has one.
Our laws and policies have not failed because they are inadequate, or because they are enforced by despicable people. They have failed because the people subject to those laws no longer share the moral assumptions those laws presuppose.
This is why politics cannot repair what is breaking. A society that has lost the virtues of moral formation and forfeited its moral authority will not be rescued by stronger men or progressive reforms. We are living through the consequences of a civilizational choice. Many want the fruits of a Christian moral order without the faith that produces them. Others want the authority of that order without the moral restraints that once gave it legitimacy. That experiment is ending exactly as history suggests it would: a strange and dangerous paradox.
We are richer, more comfortable, and freer than any people in history, yet we possess no shared understanding of what that freedom is intended for. We have succeeded not in creating a culture where everyone wins, but an anti-culture in which stability is impossible.
This has left much of the country trapped between two increasingly untenable options: following political leaders openly hostile to the basic Christian virtues and religious liberty that has long governed the West; or to follow a strongman of no particular religious commitment who will impose order—just or not—by force of sheer will.
Christians must come to understand that if a moral consensus is to be rebuilt, it will not begin in Washington. It must begin in households—where families are formed in the moral inheritance of our civilization and where daily life is ordered toward something higher than personal comfort and consumption. But it will also require the church and its leaders to recover the courage to teach moral substance, not merely moral sentiment—to move beyond vague appeals to “love” and recover the roots that gave those words meaning.
Jesus did not leave love undefined. He rooted it in a Torah-centric a way of life and a concrete vision of obedience. This is not a plea for nostalgia or some cultish withdrawal from modern life. But the future cannot be survived on moral fumes.
For years, Western Christianity has reduced moral formation to “Be kind.” “Love people.” It has too rarely explained what those commands require in practice. In a moment of cultural fracture, that vagueness has left the church unable to lead in the public square. Preaching “love God and love others” without moral specificity is no longer sufficient to form people capable of a faithful and virtuous life in the age now before us. If the church is to serve our culture in this time of upheaval, it will have to repent of its contribution to this vacuum and recover that clarity—without cruelty and without fear.
The American experiment has always depended on more than laws. Our Declaration of Independence grounds human rights not in government, but in a Creator. Severed from that moral vision, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” will not remain rights for long.
Minneapolis is not an anomaly. It is a preview.
As the moral consensus continues to dissolve, it will become harder to distinguish truth from lies, authority from domination, and to safeguard the image of God in any coherent way. We are not merely watching a system fail. We are watching a culture reap what it has spent generations sowing. I believe the church must now reckon honestly with its own contribution to the blood in our streets.
When I was fifteen, a stranger kindly gifted me a copy of Frédéric Bastiat’s The Law. I still have it. As a teenager, I underlined his closing words, written more than 175 years ago, still painfully relevant today:
“And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society...may they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.”
Bastiat understood that liberty must be stewarded by a people capable of acknowledging God. Minneapolis is another grim test result in a long civilizational diagnosis of a people no longer capable of doing so.
May God grant comfort to the families who have lost loved ones in this tragedy, and mercy to all who were caught up in it.
Simeon’s Blessing | The Consolation of Israel
I had a beautiful Advent reflection on Simeon’s blessing ready to share today. Then I woke up and saw the headlines. Blood crying out from the sand on Bondi Beach. I could not post my original devotion on the consolation of Israel while Israel lay slain among the nations.
This reflection is part 3 of “A Messianic Advent,” a series exploring the first songs of the Messiah’s coming through the songs and words of those who waited — and still wait — for Israel’s redemption. I write it in the shadow of fresh violence, when Jewish lives were taken, reminding us that the consolation Simeon longed for is not a distant idea, but a hope still fiercely needed.
Luke 2:25–32
“Now, Sovereign Lord, You may let Your servant depart in peace,
for my eyes have seen Your salvation,
which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to Your people Israel.”
The Consolation of Israel
I had a beautiful Advent reflection on Simeon’s blessing ready to share today. Then I woke up and saw the headlines.
Men and women gathered to celebrate Hanukkah. Eleven of them lay dead. Dozens more wounded. Blood crying out from the sand on Bondi Beach.
I could not post my original devotion on the consolation of Israel while Israel lay slain among the nations.
The Great Temptation of Advent
One of the great temptations of the Christian season of Advent is to reduce it to something personal and private: my longing, my peace, my comfort, my joy.
Its easy to tell the story of Jesus’ birth as though it exists primarily to soothe individual pain, offering encouragement for hard times, reassurance of forgiveness, or a quiet refuge from the “Christmas hustle” we’ve brought upon ourselves. Advent becomes inward, detached from history, severed from the suffering of real people, and insulated from blood and grief.
Simeon’s words do not allow that.
Yes, Simeon experienced deep personal joy. Yes, he was ready to die in peace. But his blessing was never merely private. He rejoiced because what he held in his arms was “prepared in the presence of all peoples.” The birth of the Messiah was a public, world-altering event—unfolding in history, aimed first at the healing of a people and land who had endured centuries of oppression, humiliation, and violence at the hands of jealous empires.
Simeon had waited for the consolation of Israel—not as an abstraction, but as the long-promised act of God to draw near again, lift his people’s shame, and end their exile.
Those who died today—celebrating Hanukkah, a celebration of rededication, God’s faithfulness, and light in the darkness—were living in exile, in dispersion. Australia may have been their home, but it is not the land of safety and abundance God promised to their ancestors. And today, with tragic clarity, we saw why: they were not safe. They were targeted. They were attacked because they are the rightful inheritors of the holy promise.
This is what antisemitism is: hostility toward the Jewish people, the land of Israel, and the covenant that marks them. Hatred not merely of individuals or of a religion, but of a divenly chosen people bound to the eternal promises of the Creator God.
A Light for the Nations and the Glory of Israel
Yet Simeon did not believe hatred in the shadow of death would be the perpetual fate of Israel.
The tiny child placed into his aging arms would be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for Your people Israel.” The two hopes were not in competition. They were inseparable. The revelation to the nations would rise from Israel’s consolation—consolation we are still, with unceasing sorrow and deep anguish, waiting to see in its fullness.
Simeon carried a stubborn hope that refused to die, even when the promise seemed buried beneath centuries of bloodshed and delay. He was not waiting for comfort in general. He was waiting for the Comforter himself—for God to return to his dwelling place among his people.
In his day, he knew the time for Messiah was near. So when the child was placed in his arms, Simeon could speak shalom—right there in the Temple courts. Courts ruled by Rome. Courts marked by corruption. Courts standing at the crossroads of occupation and longing, while many Jews still lived scattered among the nations.
Simeon was ready because he had been watching.
As the prophet once wrote:
“Walking in the way of Your laws, we wait for You;
Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.”
(Isaiah 26:8–9)
Simeon’s life embodied that waiting: righteous, devout, eyes fixed on the promises of God. And years later, the grown rabbi he once held as a baby would echo the same truth to his own disciples:
“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds watching when he comes.”
(Luke 12:37)
Advent Reflection | Eyes that See
As we watch with horror and lament, joining Rachel as she weeps for her children, we who trust in the Lord must ask ourselves:
Are we prepared to be watchers like Simeon too?
Are we waiting for the consolation of the people through whom the light of salvation has come to us?
Or has our Advent grown disconnected from the world and people God is still redeeming?
Jesus was not born into a sanitized story. He was born into violence, occupation, and a blood-soaked history.
He was born to redeem the people who died on Bondi Beach today.
And—unbearably—for the people who killed them.
He was born to end this exile.
For Simeon, peace was not the absence of conflict. It was the presence of the one who will one day bring it. He did not see an escape from the world’s brutality; he saw the beginning of its healing. Yeshua—salvation—was not an evasion of violence, but the beginning of God’s decision to confront it and bring it to it’s ultimate end.
This is the mystery of the Messianic Advent: the consolation of one hated, wounded people becomes the hope of all creation.
The righteous, devout watchers—people like Simeon—will see it. Not because of anything they have done, but because of what God has done.
“My eyes have seen Your salvation.”
Oh Lord, that ours would see it too.
May those who have lost loved ones in this horrific attack find some measure of comfort and peace. May the memory of those whose lives were taken be for a blessing.
Tonight as we light the candles, we will do so mourning with those who mourn, binding up the brokenhearted in with our prayers. But we remain firm that the light of our testimony will shine brighter and brighter as the gospel kingdom continues to unfold—through sorrow, through waiting, and toward the light of the final redemption in these dark and evil days.
This reflection is part of “A Messianic Advent,” a five-part series tracing the songs and voices surrounding the Messiah’s birth. Up next: Anna’s Witness | The Redemption of Jerusalem. How it is so, desperately, needed.
When Captives are Set Free
When captives are set free, we rejoice—but the silence that followed October 7 reveals how deeply the church needs repentance, courage, and faith.
Two years ago, in the final hours of the biblical holiday Sukkot—the Festival of Tabernacles—the nation of Israel was brutally attacked. More than 1,200 people were murdered, and 251 civilians were taken hostage.
One week ago, in the first hours of Sukkot this year, I gathered with a few others to pray for the peace of Jerusalem—and especially for the fate of those still held captive.
Today, in the final hours of Sukkot, all of the living hostages were released.
That is a miracle.
Praise be to the God who has not forgotten—and will never forget—his people.
“The whole company that had returned from exile built temporary shelters and lived in them. From the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great.”
— Nehemiah 8:17–18
The Wounds That Remain
Two years of war have marred the land and the people who call it home. Though the gunfire may grow quiet, the wider war unleashed globally on October 7, 2023, remains unresolved.
Hamas’s attack left families shattered. Iran has attempted to annihilate Israel multiple times directly and through its proxies on every side. The entire civilian population has lived in-and-out of bomb shelters or displaced from their homes altogether, while the young soldiers of the IDF have faced unimaginable danger to bring the captives home.
While Hamas hid behind their own children—in schools, hospitals, and UN facilities—the IDF stood in front of them to defend their nation and innocent life. 891 Israeli soldiers have been killed. The grief is deep. And yet, in the midst of so much death, God has answered prayer.
When the war subsides, I pray that all who call Israel home—Israeli and Arab—can find some measure of rest. But the trauma will remain for a long time, and the ache of what was lost will not easily fade.
The Silence That Spoke Louder
It is the silence that will be most difficult for me to forget—the near-total absence of moral clarity from much of the Western world, and from mainstream Christianity, including Christian media and the voices of prominent leaders, both national and local. I wish it were not the case, but that silence only amplified the volume of death chants and calls for Israel’s annihilation, nourishing fertile soil for antisemitism’s resurgence across the world.
It grieves me to say that in the past two years, I have never been more ashamed to be connected with Christianity. At the same time, I have never been more committed to live faithfully within it.
I have prayed often for God’s forgiveness, that he would soften the church and draw us to corporate repentance. No one is beyond his mercy, but I fear many hearts have hardened against his word.
The Cost of Silence
In the past two years, Christianity has shown that it prefers private reflection to collective repentance, indifference to conviction, and solitary prayer to shared intercession. We are told to speak less, avoid controversy, and “focus on Jesus.” Yet to be the peacemakers our Lord blessed means stepping into places that are anything but peaceful.
I fear that much of Christian leadership has remained silent not out of a desire to lead well, but out of refusal to lead when it matters most. In the face of evil, many have stood speechless—some from ignorance, some from unbelief, and some from fear.
It has come at a devastating cost.
It has left Jewish believers feeling abandoned by the Body of Messiah that claims to be grafted into their story.
It has emboldened the wicked, convincing them that a weak-kneed Church will not contend for truth when truth is costly.
It has confused a watching world—people who do not know Jesus—who now see a faith unwilling to name evil unless it is fashionable or politically convenient.
And perhaps most tragically, it has profaned our witness to the God of Abraham—the God we worship—who hears the blood of Abel crying out from the ground.
On the matter of Israel, Christian leadership confused silence for virtue and neutrality for wisdom in the very place where God has spoken most clearly. The Prophets would weep. Like the complacent of Amos’s day, we were not “grieved over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:6).
But taking a political or theological stance that has no place for Israel does not grant us license to avoid naming evil for what it is—especially when that evil wounds the very people through whom our faith first came, including many Jewish followers of Jesus.
Yet the silence of many has made the courage of a few all the more radiant. I am deeply encouraged by the pastors, leaders, and ordinary believers who have chosen to speak and act with both righteousness and compassion. They have endured opposition and public shame, yet have stood firm in calling the nations to bless Israel, pray for her peace, and intercede for her enemies and all innocents in the crossfire.
Faithful in the Face of Evil
As believers, we are not called to outrage, activism, or to turn our pulpits into political platforms. But we are called to condemn evil, to cling to what is good, and to take up the cause of the vulnerable as if it were our own.
Every generation faces the spirit of Amalek. In ours, it looks like Hamas. It looks like the attack on the Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur. It looks like the emboldened darkness that now calls good evil and evil good. Yet even as we name evil for what it is, we must guard our hearts from becoming what we condemn.
You can grieve loss on every side.
You can pray for the peace of Jerusalem without condoning every political or military action.
You can mourn innocent lives and still believe God’s covenant stands.
And while we wait for his justice, our call remains the same: to love what God loves, to stand where he stands, and to hope in what he has promised.
The Deliverer Who Will Come
Today, I rejoice in the release of the captives and the glimpse of relative stability, prayerfully, returning to the land. I also grieve the tragic witness the church has offered in these days.
But the story of captivity is not over.
Jesus echoed the prophets, who foresaw a final day when Israel would again be surrounded by the nations. Just as God raised up deliverers in Egypt, we hold a blessed hope that he will send his Messiah once more—not as the suffering servant, but as the king who brings justice and peace.
When that day comes, it won’t be a peace deal brokered by pompous and fallen diplomats. It will be Jesus Messiah who sets free the captives and brings the Lord’s favor, forever.
Until then, we rejoice greatly in the God who never forgets what he swore.
Psalm 126
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
All scripture quotations are ESV.
What Does It Mean to Stand With Israel?
As bombs flew over Iran toward Israeli soil, the world watched, unsurprised, as the Iron Dome lit up the sky.
As bombs flew over Iran toward Israeli soil, the world watched, unsurprised, as the Iron Dome lit up the sky. The scales of the Middle East shifted again, deepening the political and humanitarian nightmare. Christians look on with questions:
How should believers respond to the events in the Middle East?
Should we pay attention, and why?
Are biblical prophecies unfolding?
Is Jesus coming back soon?
Do we take a side—and if so, which one?
Among Christians who “stand with Israel,” many do so from sincere compassion. They recognize Hamas’s attacks as evil and stand with the Jewish people because of their pain. Others are motivated by politics—Israel is our ally, so we defend her. Still others stand because Israel factors into “end-time” events, wanting to be on the Lion of Judah’s side when the Day of the Lord comes.
Covenant Connection
This relationship is central to Scripture yet often overlooked—or denied—in Christian teaching. If we stand with Israel only for politics, compassion, or eschatology, we risk missing the heart of the Father.
To stand with Israel as Gentile followers of Jesus means embracing a covenantal connection with the Jewish people.
As believers, if we only stand with Israel because we are politically motivated to do so, or because we don't want innocent people to get hurt, or because we have a static, eschatological-only use for the land of Israel and the Jewish people, then unfortunately, I believe we are standing for the wrong thing. Our sentiments may be well-intended, but alone they are alienating us from the Jewish people and from the heart of the Father Himself.
“Covenant” may sound vague or religious, but the Bible is clear: God is knitting believers from the nations together with His chosen people, Israel. For as much as we quote the book of Ephesians, it often seems as though we have missed it's central point:
“…remember that you [non-Jews] were once separated from Messiah, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Messiah Jesus you [non-Jews] who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Messiah. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both [Jew and non-Jew] one…that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace…you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Messiah…This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Messiah Jesus through the good news.
Ephesians 2:12-16, 3:4-6 (paraphrase)
God, in his great wisdom, is unveiling a new man made up of every tribe, nation, and language, that originates in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, and grows from the root of the Jewish people.
It's easy to translate this to "Jews accept Jesus, get saved, convert to Christianity, and join the body of Christ." But that is a backwards understanding of the text.
Instead, it is Gentile believers who join themselves to Israel’s God through her Messiah. God has a plan to redeem the nation of Israel and the Jewish people and reveal himself to them by his timing and design. God has always invited non-Jews to play an intricate part in that plan while retaining their unique ethnic identities.
God Has Not Forsaken Israel
Israel is precious to God—the apple of his eye, his firstborn, the people on whom he set his love. Nothing has changed since the days God spoke those words through Moses and the prophets. It didn't change at the cross or the resurrection, and it remains unchanged today.
But many Christians have not been taught this. We’ve been taught that the Bible’s story centers on us and our sin, with Jesus offering forgiveness and heaven. Yet on Israel and her Messiah, the Bible presents a far bigger story—one many of us are unprepared to receive.
Paul warns Gentile believers not to become arrogant:
“Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in…what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? … Do not consider yourself superior to the other branches. You do not support the root, but the root supports you” (Romans 11, paraphrase).
This is not a “free pass” for Israel. Paul trusts God’s plan to bring them to redemption and warns Gentiles to honor the root that supports them.
The prophets echo the same call. Amos rebuked those who “do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph” while living in comfort (Amos 6). The Psalms call us to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122). Like Ruth cleaving to Naomi, or Jonathan binding himself to David, those who fear God seek the good of his people, even in their darkest hour.
A Covenant Stance
To stand with Israel as believers means committing ourselves to God’s purposes for his chosen people regardless of their nation’s current condition. We can adopt shoulder-to-shoulder stance of covenantal loyalty—honoring Israel’s suffering now and proclaiming her vindication to come. This is not blind support for every government policy or military action. Compassion and covenant are not enemies; we can still be moved for the innocent and believe in God’s covenant.
In great faith, we can step forward into the role of preparing the bride saying, "I'm going to join myself to you. I'm going to stand in truth and love for you when you are crumbling and burden by your mistakes. I'm going to cry out for you when you are too weak to whisper and intercede when you are too rebellious and arrogant to see the One who holds your victory. And I'm going to do this because your Messiah took compassion on a dog like me. I'm going to honor you as the greatest of all the brothers because your brother honored me. And he has not forgotten you."
Isaiah foresaw the day when Egypt, Assyria, and Israel would together be “a blessing on the earth” (Is. 19:24). The nations will stream to Jerusalem to learn God’s ways (Is. 2:2-3). We are invited to participate in that future now—by aligning our hearts with his covenant plan.
Our Choice
We can ignore this message and stay comfortable—scrolling past headlines, singing our worship songs, and congratulating ourselves for theologically explaining away the blessing that belongs to our brother.
Or we can humble ourselves. We can remove our Christian-centric lenses, thank God for the message that brought us this far, and take the next step—asking him to give us ears to hear what he is saying through his Word, seeking its wisdom to make sense of the world’s stage today.
We can join ourselves to his people: stand with them in truth and love when they are weak, pray for them when they cannot pray for themselves, intercede when they are rebellious, and to love in the face of hate. We can honor them because their God had compassion on us.
To stand with Israel this way will be a steep learning curve—a rollercoaster of faith. But our Lord promises: “The one who endures to the end will be saved.”
“Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellion of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us…You will give truth to Jacob and unchanging love to Abraham, which You swore to our forefathers from the days of old” (Micah 7:18-20).
May we have ears to hear the Spirit, humility to seek the truth, and endurance to stand in courageous love.