Antisemitism around the world has risen to constitute an “existential threat” in the thirty-four days since Hamas slaughtered 1,300 Israeli civilians and wounded more than 3,300. Antisemitism in the US had already escalated last year to the highest recorded level. Now CNN reports that a “new wave of antisemitism threatens to rock an already unstable world.”

At the same time, we must not forget the Palestinian civilians who are suffering in Gaza: at this writing, the Hamas-controlled health ministry reports more than 10,569 Palestinians have been killed since the invasion, including 4,324 children. The New York Times reports this morning that tens of thousands are fleeing the northern Gaza Strip. And we must remember the more than 242 soldiers and civilians who are being held hostage.

I’ve been responding nearly every day since October 7 to this unfolding tragedy and consider it one of the hinge points of recent history. Today, I want to take a step back to ask a hard question: Why does God allow such innocent suffering?

Why does God allow suffering? Five logical steps

This is how I have reasoned my way through this dilemma over the years:

One: God created us to love our Lord and our neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39). However, love requires a choice. No one can force us to love someone.

Two: Thus, God gave us freedom of will. He knew that we would misuse this freedom before he gave it, but he considered our freedom to love him and each other worth the death of his Son (Revelation 13:8; John 3:16).

Three: When we misuse our free will, the consequences are not God’s fault but ours. When I was a seminary philosophy professor, my students sometimes complained that my tests were too difficult. However, those who studied diligently made an A on the tests and in my class. When students chose not to study, by contrast, the consequences were not my fault.

Four: If God prevents the consequences of misused freedom, we are not truly free. If I am on a diet but choose to order a pizza and the delivery person brings me celery sticks, my freedom was apparent but not real. If chess players can retract every move they make that turns out to be disadvantageous to them, the game cannot be played.

Five: If God intervenes occasionally to prevent such consequences, we will ask why he does not do so every time. If we insist that he must prevent all terrorism, we will next want him to prevent all murder. Then all crime. Then all deceit, then all adultery, then all lust, and so on.

So far, so good. I understand logically why God must allow horrific atrocities as the price of our free will without which we cannot fulfill our created purpose.

But there’s a very large but . . .

We’re back to our problem

The problem with my reasoning is that God does sometimes prevent the consequences of misused freedom. He allowed Herod to execute James (Acts 12:1–2), but he sent his angel to keep Herod from executing Peter (vv. 3–11). If Peter, why not James?

He allowed Egyptian pharaohs to enslave the Jews for four hundred years, but then he sent Moses to lead them through the Red Sea to freedom. If then, why not four centuries earlier?

So, we’re back to our problem. Since God is omnipotent, he could have prevented Hamas from slaughtering Jews. Since he is omniscient, he knew about their plot before it unfolded. Since he is omnibenevolent, he must want only their best, which would obviously preclude beheading babies, massacring families, and taking hundreds of people hostage. Since he sometimes intervenes to protect the innocent from the sins of the guilty, he could have done so on October 7.

And yet, he did not.

We can substitute any other group of innocent victims in today’s discussion. The Palestinians in Gaza being used by Hamas as human shields are an obvious example. The Uyghurs being brutally repressed by China are another. The 1,403 teens and children killed in gun violence so far this year in the US are yet another.

You undoubtedly have examples in your own life of times you have been victimized by the sins of others. I have my own as well.

“When darkness seems to hide his face”

Today’s conversation leaves us with two choices.

One: We can refuse to trust God because we do not understand why he sometimes protects innocent victims but sometimes does not. We can characterize him as arbitrary and thus unworthy of our faith and devotion.

Where would this leave us? We will miss the wisdom he grants to those who follow his omniscient guidance, the power he bestows to those who seek his omnipotent care, and the “abundant” life Jesus died to give us (John 10:10). By boycotting his providential provision, we grieve our Father but we also impoverish ourselves and everyone we influence.

Two: We can choose to trust in God though we do not understand the ways he sometimes responds to innocent suffering. We can place our Father in the same category as others we trust though they sometimes disappoint us (which is everyone we trust).

God assures us that one day we will understand what we do not understand today (1 Corinthians 13:12). In the meantime, the more painful our suffering and thus the less we understand why God allows it, the more we need to trust it to his compassionate care.

The British pastor and hymnwriter Edward Mote testified:

When darkness seems to hide his face,
I rest on his unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the vale.
On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.

Upon what “ground” are you standing today?

Denison Forum

Yesterday’s elections were bad news for preborn children in America. Kentucky reelected pro-choice Gov. Andy Beshear, indicating that abortion rights advocacy will be a positive issue for Democrats in next year’s national elections. Ohio voters adopted a ballot measure to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. And Virginia voters rebuffed Republican candidates in favor of those who support abortion rights.

Abortion rights have won in every election since Roe v. Wade was overturned and abortions have risen nationally, even though several states have restricted or outlawed the procedure. Yesterday’s results are significant politically because Donald Trump won Kentucky by a 25.9 percent margin in 2020 and Ohio by an 8 percent margin. While Joe Biden won Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race the next year.

Virginia’s elections are especially relevant to this issue since Gov. Youngkin has advocated an approach that many hoped would forge a cultural consensus on abortion.

Is a 15-week ban the solution?

Youngkin has been supporting a fifteen-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest, and protecting the life of the mother. US Catholic bishops have endorsed a similar Senate plan sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham (R.–SC) that would allow states to restrict abortion earlier in pregnancy but no later than fifteen weeks.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America also endorses a national ban on abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy and promises to oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace this standard at a minimum.

Here’s the political reasoning behind such proposals: according to Gallup, 69 percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in the first trimester (conception to twelve weeks), while support drops to 37 percent for the second trimester (thirteen to twenty-seven weeks) and 22 percent for the third (twenty-eight to forty weeks). Majorities oppose abortion being legal in the second (55 percent) and third (70 percent) trimester.

In other words, a majority of Americans would theoretically support an abortion ban at fifteen weeks. However, since only 13 percent oppose abortion in all circumstances, it would seem that a large majority also want exceptions for rape, incest, and to save the mother’s life.

The challenges we face

Some pro-life supporters believe that since life begins at conception, permitting abortion politically at any stage is wrong. Just as we would not debate whether to legalize the killing of a newborn baby versus one who is fifteen weeks old, we should not legalize the aborting of a preborn baby at any stage in its life.

However, since only 13 percent of Americans agree, forging a political strategy to eliminate all abortions will be challenging.

This is why many pro-life advocates view a fifteen-week ban as the way to reverse pro-abortion gains after Roe was overturned. They believe this to be a way for pro-life politicians to win the political power necessary to protect as many lives as possible. But yesterday’s results in Virginia call into question the political viability of this strategy as well.

Pro-life advocates clearly must not abandon our political efforts to protect preborn children. But yesterday’s results illustrate the challenges we face and remind us that, in a post-Roe world, supporting life also requires non-political strategies that are highly commended by Scripture.

Where ministry begins in a post-Christian culture

Research indicates that women who chose abortion did so for these reasons:

• Not financially prepared: 40 percent
• Not a good time: 36 percent
• Issues with partner: 31 percent
• Need to focus on other children: 29 percent
• Interferes with future plans: 20 percent
• Not emotionally or mentally prepared: 19 percent
• Health issue: 12 percent
• Not independent or mature enough: 7 percent
• Influence from family or friends: 5 percent
• Don’t want children: 3 percent

Only 12 percent considered the preborn child, citing “unable to provide a ‘good’ life.”

Those who choose abortion obviously prioritize their personal issues over the life of their preborn child. If we are to help women considering abortion choose life instead, clearly we need to help them with these practical issues. We can provide financial assistance, health care, and counseling and resources for managing their other relationships. We can support pro-life ministries that provide such services. We can encourage adoption for those who do not think they are prepared to have another child and we can consider adopting personally.

In these ways, we can meet mothers of preborn children at the point of their personal needs, following the example of our Lord as he healed bodies to heal souls. His first followers did the same as they ministered to a man born lame (Acts 3) and “the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits” (Acts 5:16).

In their pre-Christian culture, ministry began with personal compassion. In our post-Christian culture, the same is true today.

As a result, whenever we see this issue in the news, let’s pray for mothers considering abortion to choose life for their preborn child, then let’s look for practical ways to answer our prayers.

Would you join me in doing so right now?

Denison Forum

A month ago today, Hamas launched a barbaric attack on civilians in Israel. When the news broke, who would have guessed that such horrific atrocities would provoke rising animosity, not against the perpetrators but against the people they seek to eradicate? So why is antisemitism rising?

Cornell University canceled all classes recently after a student was arrested for allegedly threatening violent attacks against Jewish students at the college. There has been an increasing police presence on campus since the threats were made.

After Harvard alumnus and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman met with students and faculty last week, he described antisemitism on campus as “much worse” than he realized and said, “Jewish students are being bullied, physically intimidated, spat on, and in several widely-disseminated videos of one such incident, physically assaulted.” He called on Harvard’s president to take immediate steps to reduce antisemitism on campus.

The Anti-Defamation League has documented a nearly 400 percent rise in antisemitic incidents across the US since October 7. As part of this escalation, it reports fifty-four antisemitic incidents at American universities.

What explains this surge in antisemitism on our college campuses?

Two crucial factors

Protests against Israel at America’s universities are nothing new. For example, a movement to “boycott, divest from, and sanction” Israel has been popular on college campuses since it was launched in 2005. Opposition to Israel escalated after Hamas’s invasion on October 7 even before Israel began a military response. In the weeks since, such opposition has become deafening.

In response, I wrote a website white paper yesterday explaining in detail two factors involved in this complex issue.

First, I responded to the claim that Israel is an “occupying colonizer” who stole its land from its rightful Palestinian owners. I noted:

• The original owners of the land were Canaanites from whom Jews conquered the region under Joshua. Their descendants now live in Lebanon and bear no genealogical relationship to the Palestinians.
• Present-day Palestinians are descendants of the Arabs who first conquered the land in AD 640, not the Philistines for whom the region is named. These Arab Muslims took the land from the Jews and Christians who lived there prior to their conquest.
• Since the time of Joshua, there has always been a Jewish presence in the land; Jews repopulated it alongside Arab Palestinians in recent centuries.
• An autonomous nation called Palestine would have been created by the United Nations in 1947, but Arab leaders rejected it.

Thus, Israel did not steal the land from its rightful Palestinian owners. If anything, the Palestinians’ ancestors stole it from the Jews who were there prior to AD 640.

Second, I addressed the claim on college campuses that Israel is oppressing the Palestinian people with its military response to Hamas.

I noted that Hamas is using the Palestinian population as human shields, hiding its soldiers and weapons in tunnels beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques. Just one such tunnel requires enough construction supplies to build eighty-six homes, seven mosques, six schools, or nineteen medical clinics. In addition, Hamas continues to steal fuel, medical supplies, and provisions intended for the civilian population.

Israel must respond to Hamas’s atrocities in order for its citizens to be able to live in their own land. However, the cease-fire being demanded on college campuses would only enable Hamas to strengthen its position in Gaza. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “No other country on earth would agree to the terms of defensive engagement that much of the world wants to impose on Israel.”

“His dominion is an everlasting dominion”

As you can see, two simple but erroneous concepts—that Israel is an occupying colonizer and oppressor of the Palestinians—are inflaming opposition to Jews on college campuses and across America today. They illustrate the fact that ideas, whether right or wrong, change the world.

I have visited Cuba ten times over the years and grieve for the suffering of its people under the tragic ideology of Communism. I have visited Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem, many times over the years and grieve each time as it explains Hitler’s claim that the Jews were to blame for Germany’s decline and must be eradicated.

I also grieve for our nation as the intellectual cancer of moral relativism continues to metastasize across our culture. C. S. Lewis warned in his 1943 work, Abolition of Man, that abandoning objective values based on unchanging principles would lead to our decline and “abolition” as humans. We are watching his prophecy come to pass more and more each day.

This is why God’s admonition is so urgent: “These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace” (Zechariah 8:16). Said differently, we are to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

The best way you and I can do this is to know Christ and make him known. When Jesus returns, he will be “given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:14a). This is because “his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (v. 14b).

Accordingly, let’s make these words from the Book of Common Prayer our intercession today:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within reach of your saving embrace. So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you, for the honor of your Name.

Amen.

Denison Forum

A White House fence was vandalized Saturday night as pro-Palestinian protesters shook the gate to one entrance to the executive mansion. Some chanted obscenities about President Biden.

This was just one of many such events across the country over the weekend as protesters rallied to demand a ceasefire in the Israel–Hamas war. They were not alone in their sentiments: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting to allow more deliveries into Gaza of food, water, medicine, and other supplies, echoing a similar call by President Biden earlier in the week. The New York Times editorial board agreed, as have numerous US political leaders and Arab ministers in the region.

The Palestinian death toll has risen above nine thousand since the conflict began; more than 3,900 of the total, roughly 40 percent, were under the age of eighteen. A journalist, grieving the death of a fellow journalist and eleven members of his family, said, “We can’t bear this anymore. We are exhausted, we are here victims and martyrs awaiting our deaths, we are dying one after the other and no one cares about us or the large-scale catastrophe and the crime in Gaza.”

In the face of such tragic suffering, widespread calls for a ceasefire or at least a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting are understandable. But there’s more to the story.

Why the “true fight” has not yet begun

The Wall Street Journal editorial board warns that a “pause” in the conflict would only strengthen Hamas. In their view, “The way to help Palestinian civilians isn’t to slow the Israeli advance. The less control Hamas has over Gaza’s streets, the more civilians can escape the fighting and the more aid can be brought in securely.”

They note that “the ground invasion has already allowed humanitarian assistance to ramp up, with more than one hundred truckloads now arriving each day.” And they warn that “Hamas would use freedom of action to keep civilians as shields and pilfer more aid—limiting what Israel can let in.”

All this while, according to the Jerusalem Post, the “true fight” has not yet begun. It notes that most Hamas terrorists are in the southern part of Gaza, where Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers have not yet advanced. The IDF’s incursion into Gaza has not killed or arrested the vast majority of Hamas’s forces, which number approximately forty thousand and prepared for Israel’s invasion by creating a vast web of fortified tunnels. Nor has the IDF’s advance slowed, much less eliminated, rocket fire by Hamas on southern Israel and the Tel Aviv area.

“If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here”

Hamas officials and soldiers are known to hide in hospitals and among civilians. For example, an Israeli airstrike on Friday hit an ambulance that the IDF claims was being used by a Hamas terrorist cell.

Hamas has also spent years stockpiling enough fuel, food, and medicine in its tunnels to keep fighting for three or four months without resupply. Meanwhile, Palestinian civilians face massive shortages amid a growing humanitarian crisis.

All this to say, if Israel continues its offensive against Hamas, things are likely to get much, much worse for civilians in Gaza. However, as I noted a few days ago, if Israel does not defeat Hamas to such an extent that Jewish citizens feel they and their families are safe in their country again, many may immigrate to other countries, imperiling the future of the nation and fulfilling Hamas’s stated goal to “obliterate” Israel from the region.

This is why one Israeli commander stated, “If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here.”

So, Israel has to defeat Hamas without incurring civilian casualties to the degree that America stops supporting the war and jihadist groups in Lebanon and the West Bank join the conflict. But incurring such casualties is a central part of Hamas’s nefarious strategy to turn world opinion and Muslims in the region against Israel.

“Peace is not the mere absence of war”

My purpose today is twofold: First, to explain briefly why the conflict between Israel and Hamas is so complicated, defying simple resolution. Second, to use this crisis to illustrate our abiding need for the only true peace humans can experience in this fallen world.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). He also stated, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (v. 9). In Gaudium et Spes (Latin for “joy and hope”), the Second Vatican Council noted:

Peace is not the mere absence of war or the simple maintenance of a balance of power between forces, nor can it be imposed at the dictate of absolute power. It is called, rightly and properly, a work of justice. It is the product of order, the order implanted in human society by its divine founder, to be realized in practice as men hunger and thirst for ever more perfect justice.

As a result, “peace” is a “fruit of the Spirit” that proceeds from “love” (Galatians 5:22). Accordingly,

If peace is to be established it is absolutely necessary to have a firm determination to respect other persons and peoples and their dignity, and to be zealous in the practice of brotherhood. Peace is therefore the fruit also of love: love goes beyond what justice can achieve.

Thus, peace ultimately depends on knowing the One who promised, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). As a result:

Peace on earth, born of love for one’s neighbor, is the sign and the effect of the peace of Christ that flows from God the Father. In his own person the incarnate Son, the Prince of Peace, reconciled all men to God through his death on the cross.

Paul greeted his readers, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:2). Note the order: we must experience God’s grace to have true peace with him, others, and ourselves.

The old truism is true: No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.

What will you do to know God and make him known today?

Denison Forum

Halloween costumes began filling grocery store aisles in July and were sold out by the first week of October. The National Retail Federation estimated that Americans would spend a record $12.2 billion on yesterday’s festivities. Close to three-quarters of US adults planned to celebrate Halloween, with adults between the ages of thirty-five and forty-four leading the spending. If our experience last night was any indication, nearly half of those who knocked on doors in costumes were adults.

What is going on here?

A Wall Street Journal article explains one reason we enjoy being frightened on Halloween: “We are motivated to engage in activities that allow us to practice and prepare for dangerous activities in a safe way.” As Stephen King noted, “We make up imaginary horrors to help us deal with real ones.”

A welcome diversion for many

There are certainly “real” horrors in the news these days.

Antisemitic attacks in the US are up roughly 400 percent since October 7. Pogroms against the Jews in France are spreading across Europe and beyond, part of what the Wall Street Journal editorial board is calling “the global war on the Jews.”

Hamas is marshaling support in parts of the Muslim world, which is part of its strategy, as I noted yesterday, to force Israelis to abandon their country. The escalating war could cause shipping companies to decide Israel’s ports are too risky, in which case the country could soon find itself running out of food.

A cease-fire with Hamas would not only embolden the terrorists and those who support them, it would permanently displace tens of thousands of Israelis forced to flee their homes in southern Israel after the October 7 invasion. However, a long war could drain the economy as Israel continues to employ hundreds of thousands of reservists who are no longer doing their regular jobs.

In the midst of such news, yesterday’s holiday was undoubtedly a welcome diversion for many. However, I think another factor also explains the popularity of Halloween in these hard times.

“Every person deserves to be seen”

I’m old enough to remember when everyone on our street knew everyone on our street. Parents babysat for neighbors’ children; you could borrow anything you needed from someone next door. If a crisis came, the neighbors were quickly on your doorstep looking for ways to help.

That was then, this is now. How many of your neighbors can you even name?

In this context, knocking on our neighbors’ doors on Halloween is a small antidote to the isolation we feel, an antidote we need now more than ever.

According to Gallup, more than half of the world’s population is experiencing loneliness these days. The US Surgeon General recently issued an advisory on what he called “our epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks notes that the number of people who say they have no close personal friends has quadrupled.

In his new book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, he offers practical ways we can connect with each other in a time of fragmentation and hostility. His approach centers in what he calls a “humanist manifesto,” a decision to fight the “dehumanizers” of animosity and distrust by seeing others deeply and seeking to understand them and make them feel seen, heard, and understood.

Brooks is right: for our democracy to function, “we must be able to understand one another to some degree, to see one another’s viewpoints, to project respect across difference and disagreement.” All this, he claims, “requires humanistic wisdom.”

“Bleeding to be sure, but also bled for”

Brooks’ advice is biblical so far as it goes. We are taught to “have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (1 Peter 3:8). Scripture enjoins us to “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another” (Ephesians 4:32a).

But here’s the model that has been left out thus far: “as God in Christ forgave you” (v. 32b).

“Kindness” is a “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22) and thus can ultimately be shared only in the power of the Spirit. Before we can offer genuine compassion and community to others, we must come to terms with the fact of our estrangement from ourselves, each other, and God.

In Telling the Truth, Frederick Buechner observed, “The gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy.”

Once we admit this fact to God, others, and ourselves, we are ready to confess all that is wrong in our lives and receive the forgiving grace that transforms us into “a new creation” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). A person for whom this happens can then experience the rest of the story, according to Buechner: the gospel “is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy.”

“We become what we think about”

Today is All Saints’ Day, that day on the Christian calendar when we are invited to remember the great heroes of the faith who have gone before us. This is so we can emulate their example and thus be heroes to those who will come after us.

Let’s embrace the invitation of this day to be the change we need to see. Let’s counter the tragic news and loneliness epidemic of our time by focusing on the greatest saint and hero of all: “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). Let’s seek him in his worship and word with greater depth, intimacy, and passion. Let’s make it our life purpose to know Christ and make him known.

Since “we become what we think about,” as Earl Nightingale noted, we will become more like Christ each day. Our choice is binary and simple: “Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5).

On what or Whom will you set your mind today?

Denison Forum

Israeli forces made a major advance overnight toward Gaza City, marking their deepest push into Palestinian territory since they entered the strip last week. An Israeli soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 was freed overnight during ground operations as well. Meanwhile, in a rare news briefing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out a cease-fire in Israel’s conflict. He was answering calls for such action from the United Nations and Amnesty International among others.

Critics of Israel’s continuing military action against Hamas are responding to reports from the Gaza Health Ministry that the death toll among Palestinians has already passed eight thousand, mostly women and minors. Many doubt the veracity of this organization’s numbers since it is run by Hamas, but the pictures of devastation in Gaza tell a tragic story of their own.

We should all grieve the loss of life in this conflict. However, Israel’s military must contend with the fact that Hamas has hidden weapons under hospitals, schools, and mosques while disguising its fighters like civilians. Their strategy is intended to escalate Palestinian deaths and provoke an international backlash against Israel.

Hamas’s strategy appears to be working. So, should Israel seek a cease-fire with Hamas?

“The next round of war will be inevitable”

As I have followed reporting on this conflict from a wide variety of sources and viewpoints, I found a New York Times guest essay by Dennis B. Ross to be especially informative. Mr. Ross served in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, was the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and has served as a special advisor for the region as well. His article is headlined, “I Might Have Once Favored a Cease-Fire With Hamas, but Not Now.”

His central thesis: “It is clear to me that peace is not going to be possible now or in the future as long as Hamas remains intact and in control of Gaza. Hamas’s power and ability to threaten Israel—and subject Gazan civilians to ever more rounds of violence—must end.”

Ross notes that if Israel agrees to a cease-fire now, Hamas’s military infrastructure, leadership, and control of Gaza will remain intact. As it did after conflicts with Israel in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, the terrorist group will almost certainly rearm for the next conflict. It will be able to add to its system of tunnels running under the area as well.

As a result, he warns, “the next round of war will be inevitable, holding both Gazan citizens and much of the rest of the Middle East hostage to Hamas’s aims.”

What makes this conflict different from those in the past? While the atrocities of October 7 have understandably heightened Israel’s outrage and justify a much stronger military response than in previous conflicts, there is more to the story.

“If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here”

As I have been reporting throughout this conflict, the aim of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are backed by Iran, is to eradicate Israel and reclaim the area for Palestine. But these groups acting alone or in concert do not possess the military means to defeat Israel in a conventional war. Nor does Iran, even if it were to engage directly with the Israel Defense Forces.

But what they can do, as Ross notes, is to make Israel unlivable and thus drive Israelis to leave. This seems to be their clear goal now. Ross points to predictions by Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, that Israel will not survive another twenty-five years. And he quotes an Israeli commander who said after October 7, “If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here.”

I understand the commander’s sentiment in a way I would not if I had not led more than thirty study tours to Israel over nearly thirty years. Israel is a tiny country, approximately the size of New Jersey. Iran continues to arm Hamas and Hezbollah with ever more sophisticated technology now capable of launching missiles in such numbers that Israel’s Iron Dome defenses cannot protect all their civilians in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and across the country. And the October 7 invasion has shocked the Israelis, who believed their sophisticated military intelligence and powerful defense forces would protect them from such atrocities.

Israel’s previous wars were fought by their soldiers against the soldiers of their enemies. Never before have so many civilians been slaughtered or taken hostage. All this to say, in the new world created by the October 7 invasion, if a cease-fire is declared and Hamas survives, Israelis will know that they and their families will be in danger in ways unprecedented in the nation’s seventy-five-year history.

“Be strong and courageous”

This fact is crucial to the calculus because so many Israelis live in Israel by choice. Theirs is one of the best-educated, most skilled workforces in the world. Every Israeli I have met would be imminently employable in any nation in the Western world. They have chosen to live in the State of Israel for the purpose of securing a future for the Jewish people.

If the nation can no longer defend them, its very reason for existence is in question. And the willingness of its citizens to risk their lives and their families could come into question as well, perhaps leading to an exodus of Israelis out of the nation.

As a consequence, through a combination of more advanced weaponry and brutal terrorist attacks, Hamas and its allies have raised for the first time the specter of a world without the State of Israel as we now know it. This is why my friends in Israel have said since Hamas’s horrific October 7 invasion that these terrorists must be defeated. They understand firsthand what I have attempted to explain today: the future of the nation is now in the balance.

This fact leads me to conclude this Daily Article by asking you to join me in urgent, consistent intercession for Israel and her people.

• Pray that they will heed God’s instruction to the military general who first led them into their promised land: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed” (Joshua 1:9a).
• Pray for Israeli forces to defeat the terrorists who threaten the future of their nation.
• Pray for the protection of Palestinian and Israeli civilians in this conflict.
• And pray that all will turn to the one and only Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) so they can testify, “The Lᴏʀᴅ Gᴏᴅ is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2).

Will you join me in such intercession right now?

Denison Forum

Israel began its incursion into Gaza over the weekend and, as we wait for further details to emerge, that will be the focus of tomorrow’s Daily Article. Today, however, I’d like to discuss the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and some comments that are revealing of both the divide among those he is charged with leading and what we might expect from his time as speaker.

Johnson has represented Louisiana’s fourth congressional district since 2017. Prior to running for office, however, he was a lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom and defended the state’s anti-abortion laws and same-sex marriage ban. While he has never chaired a committee in the House, he has served in increasingly prominent roles as his terms in Washington have progressed.

Still, the fact remains that he has spent less time in the House of Representatives prior to becoming speaker than any other speaker in the last 140 years. That inexperience, however, might be part of why he was eventually selected.

As Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma put it, “Politics is like the fight business, the longer you’re in it, the more beat up you get.” It is likely that Johnson benefitted from his relative anonymity when compared with those who had sought the role before him.

That anonymity, however, has also resulted in a steady stream of deep dives and strong opinions on the new speaker across the days since he ascended to that role.

The stories have largely fallen along partisan lines, with one side seemingly convinced he’s going to save the government while the other is convinced he’ll usher in its final downfall. What’s most interesting, however, is that both sides are largely relying on the same evidence to draw those conclusions. It is a clear example of the divide that exists between political parties in our culture today and offers us the chance to discuss two aspects of Johnson’s career to date that might be particularly instructive to us as well.

A biblical worldview

When asked about his stance on controversial topics like same-sex marriage and abortion, Johnson replied, “Go pick up a Bible,” later adding that he “genuinely love[d] all people regardless of their lifestyle choices” and that “this is not about the people themselves.”

He concluded by saying that the best way to understand what he believes about a given subject is to “go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it—that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.”

Of course, for those who disagree with what the Bible teaches on many of these controversial topics, a biblical worldview is hardly a valid perspective from which to govern. And that should be expected.

Such opposition does not invalidate the truth of God’s word or the authority it should have in the lives of all Christians, but we should not be surprised when it also serves as a lightning rod for criticism and derision. That’s why a biblical worldview alone is not enough to transform our culture or the lives of those still lost within it.

Here too Johnson’s example can offer us some help.

More than a political prop

As Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick described, Johnson has not “acquired a single enemy in his time here.” And, as discussed previously, it’s not because he refused to take a strong stance on controversial issues. Even beyond his past arguments in favor of biblical marriage and the sanctity of life, his most contentious stance was in working to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Regardless of how you feel about those results—for more, see “How fair are the US elections?”—several of the previous candidates for speaker had lost in no small part due to their decisions in the aftermath of that election. And while the majority of Congress still disagrees with what Johnson attempted to accomplish, Rep. Don Bacon spoke for many when he said that he still believes Johnson “is a man of strong character” and “treats everyone with tremendous decency.”

Others have added that “he’s a really nice guy, and he’s good at getting along with people.”

As such, it seems at least that the biblical worldview to which Johnson claims to subscribe is more than the political prop it is often used as by others. After all, Scripture should inform not only the way we think, but also the way we act and the way we approach other people. When the kindness of Christ characterizes our interactions with others, it can earn us the latitude to disagree without being seen as disagreeable.

The highest reward for a faithful life

It is impossible to know, sitting here less than a week out from Mike Johnson being sworn in as the new Speaker of the House, if he will do a good job managing the often-difficult factions within his party and within the House as a whole. And the nature of politics is such that there will almost always be one side convinced that he has failed in that endeavor.

My prayer this morning, though, is that as he attempts to lead the House through those struggles, the same things regarding his commitment to Scripture and to being a kind person can be said of him when the next speaker takes his place.

That consistency will prove difficult, but it is how God will define if Johnson’s term is successful. And the same is true for each of us as well.

Warren Wiersbe once wrote that “the highest reward for a faithful life is not what you get for it but what you become by it.”

If our worldview is truly defined by a commitment to God’s word, then we should become more kind and caring as a result.

Will your life show that kind of commitment today?

Denison Forum

Rev. Bryan Dunagan became the senior pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church (HPPC) in Dallas, Texas, in 2014. A gifted speaker and leader, Bryan combined a scholar’s mind and a pastor’s heart in serving one of the great congregations in America. I pastored for many years in the same Dallas community and know HPPC well. I watched his ministry with gratitude for his faithfulness and personal friendship.

Then came the shocking announcement from his church yesterday morning: “In the early hours of today, our beloved Senior Pastor, Bryan Dunagan, passed away in his sleep due to natural causes.” He was forty-four years old and leaves behind his wife Ali and three children. I am joining friends in Dallas and beyond who are grieving deeply today.

What if the nihilists are right?

A massive manhunt for the gunman in the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, continues this morning after residents kept to their homes for a second night. Hurricane Otis killed at least twenty-seven people in Acapulco and devastated the region. And Israel’s military is preparing for a wider ground incursion into Gaza in their hunt for Hamas terrorists. The civilian death toll will inexorably rise as Hamas hides its soldiers and munitions among the population.

Every Israeli and Palestinian who dies will be grieved by someone; given the young age of most of the soldiers, they will be grieved by parents and grandparents left behind. Such grief is unspeakably unnatural—we are supposed to bury our parents, not our children.

In yesterday’s Daily Article, I reported on an Israeli mother who told reporters after her girls were kidnapped by Hamas, “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe God exists. If he does, why are my daughters in Gaza?” Her struggle is the cry of parents across history who grieve a suffering or deceased child.

As a cultural apologist, I wanted to respond to those who reject God’s existence or relevance, so I pointed out the failure of secular alternatives to heal our fallen hearts. However, while it’s important to remind our post-Christian culture that secularism isn’t working, this line of thinking isn’t sufficient for the crises we face.

What if this means that nothing can heal the brokenness of our world? What if the nihilists are right?

“This is what God’s really like”

We can respond to grieving Christians by reminding them that

• Believers step from death instantly into life with God in paradise, where they are home and well (Romans 14:8).
• God grieves with and for those who grieve, feeling their pain and sharing their suffering (John 11:35; Isaiah 43:1–3).
• They will see those they love again in eternity, never to be parted (Revelation 21:4).
• God redeems all he allows, in this life and in the next (cf. Romans 8:28; 1 Corinthians 13:12).

And yet . . .

For a pastor’s wife and three young children left behind, for their extended family, and for a congregation grieving the shocking death of their young pastor, theological facts are not sufficient. For parents brokenhearted over the kidnapping or murder of their children and grandchildren in atrocities perpetrated by terrorists, the grief of these days must be unspeakable.

For those who have lost and will lose loved ones in Israel’s war with Hamas, this must be a nightmare without end. For those who suffer from the disasters of our fallen world and the depravities of fallen humanity, words are not enough.

If our God is insufficient for these days, we have an insufficient God.

He promises to “supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). He assures us that he has “plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). Jesus tells us, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. . . . Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

What, then, do we do when God does not seem to supply our need? When we can find no future or hope? When we feel no peace and our hearts are deeply troubled?

“To sit with our grief and to pray with us”

When we feel life’s deepest pain, we can respond in two biblical ways.

First, ask our questions.

Our Father invites us: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lᴏʀᴅ” (Isaiah 1:18). The Hebrew is literally translated, “Let us argue it out.” Job’s soul-wrenching questions are recorded in Scripture so we can ask them as well. If God’s sinless Son could cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), so can we.

Second, seek God together.

We can allow our grief to drive us from God or to draw us to him. We can refuse to trust him unless we understand him, or we can understand how much we need to trust him. And we can claim the redeeming providence and compassionate presence of a Father who proved his love on the cross and offers himself to all who will “taste and see that the Lᴏʀᴅ is good” (Psalm 34:8).

After Highland Park Presbyterian Church announced the shocking death of their young pastor yesterday, they wrote: “When we don’t know what to do, we are taught to turn to God and pray.” So they held a vigil in their Sanctuary and invited all who could “to sit with our grief and to pray with us.” Today from 9–9:45 a.m. CST, the church is holding “a time of guided prayer in our Sanctuary . . . as we ask for God to give us wisdom as we grieve and to guide our church through our next steps.”

On a recent podcast with Dr. Mark Turman and myself, the Cuban pastor and my dear friend Carlos Alamino testified that, despite rising persecution and extreme deprivation, his people are seeing a spiritual awakening that is transforming their nation. He added, “The early church is still walking and running around the streets of my Cuba.”

How are they experiencing God so powerfully?

Carlos explained his ministry strategy: He introduces people to Jesus and Jesus to people. Then he trusts Jesus to do his transforming work in their lives.

Let’s trust our Savior to do the same in ours today.

Denison Forum

An intensive manhunt is underway at this hour for a gunman who opened fire at a bowling alley and a restaurant in Lewiston, Maine, last night. At least twenty-two people are dead and as many as fifty are injured in this mass shooting.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Otis became the strongest recorded hurricane to hit Mexico’s Pacific Coast when it made landfall yesterday, unleashing a “nightmare scenario” in Acapulco with massive flooding and devastation. Jakob Sauczak was staying at a beachfront hotel when Otis hit. “We laid down on the floor, and some between beds,” he said. “We prayed a lot.”

Prayer is not how some are responding to the tragedies of recent days, however.

“Imagine that there’s no heaven”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe God exists.” This is what Maayan Zin said after her daughters Dafna, age fifteen, and Ella, age eight, were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. She explained: “If he does, why are my daughters in Gaza? Why all this murder along the Gaza border? Why did they bring families there to fill kibbutzim, with innocent children now going through what they are?”

Innocent suffering is just one reason many may be doubting God’s existence and relevance today. Horrific atrocities committed in his name are another.

Violence is surging in the West Bank, fueled by weapons smuggled into the area by Iran and its allies. The leader of Hezbollah met yesterday in Beirut with senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) figures, each a proxy of Iran, which trained hundreds of Hamas and PIJ fighters in the weeks leading up to the October 7 atrocities. Militant-led violence in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen threatens to spark an even wider war in the region.

Religion is the common denominator here. As I have written, Iran is motivated by the belief that attacking Israel will hasten the return of the Mahdi (their version of a messiah). Hamas is similarly motivated and is also convinced that Allah intends them to return the land to its rightful Palestinian owners. Violence in the West Bank, especially if it involves the Temple Mount, could draw Hezbollah even further into the conflict to “protect” these holy sites for Islam.

A skeptic might easily agree with John Lennon’s famous anthem for secularism: “Imagine there’s no heaven . . . Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion, too.” In such a world, he claimed, “All the people [would be] livin’ life in peace . . . And the world will be as one.”

“A modern de facto alliance of tyrannies”

Such secularism is understandable in a world as broken as ours. Here’s the problem, however: we’re well along the road Lennon imagined more than fifty years ago.

Churches across Europe are being repurposed for nightclubs and hotels as worship attendance continues to decline. Historic church buildings in America are being turned into homes as well. Church membership in the US has fallen below 50 percent for the first time in American history, declining from 76 percent after World War II to 47 percent today.

How is this working for us?

“Polycrisis” is a term in use today to describe the constellation of issues we are facing. While fallen humanity has confronted death and despair from Abel’s time to ours, the acceleration and conflation of challenges we are facing magnifies and compounds individual problems.

All the while, a secularized worldview that denies objective truth and morality has no tools for truly understanding these issues. Here’s one shocking example: according to a recent survey, a majority of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old Americans believe the killing of Israeli civilians “can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians.” But perhaps we should not be surprised, given the shameful endorsement of Hamas’s terrorists on college campuses across our land.

The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker writes: “A modern de facto alliance of tyrannies—we might call it an axis of evil opportunism—advances across the globe.” He lists China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as members of this “axis” and notes:

They see a weakened and declining West, an America at odds with itself over its identity and its leadership in the world, a nation enfeebled by deepening self-doubt, widening division, widespread mistrust, timid leadership, institutional paralysis, and soaring debt. They see, as we have seen this last week, a culture—in the media, educational institutions, public discourse—that increasingly does their work for them, willfully propagating falsehoods that advance their cause, always eager to attribute evil to us and not to our enemies.

“Finish then, Thy new creation”

While those suffering from the atrocities and brokenness of our world understandably wonder why religion is relevant to their pain, it is clear that secularism is insufficient to save us from ourselves and each other. Paul taught that those who have not experienced salvation in Christ are “slaves of sin” and asked, “What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death” (Romans 6:20–21).

By contrast, he could say to his fellow believers, “Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (v. 22). The apostle famously concluded: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 23).

That our fallen culture might experience this “gift,” let us pray with Charles Wesley:

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us Thy humble dwelling;
All Thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation;
Enter every trembling heart.

Finish then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

Amen.

Denison Forum

The United States is preparing evacuation plans for up to six hundred thousand Americans in Israel in the event of a full-scale ground war in the region. In addition, there are as many as six hundred Americans still trapped in Gaza.

Meanwhile, we are seeing reports today that two dozen American military personnel were wounded last week in a series of drone attacks on American bases in Syria and Iraq. US officials have learned that Iranian-backed militia groups are planning to ramp up attacks against US forces in the Middle East as Iran seeks to capitalize on regional backlash to America’s support for Israel. There are “red lights flashing everywhere,” one official said. Another added, “We see a prospect for much more significant escalation against US forces and personnel in the near term.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the United Nations Security Council yesterday, “If Iran or its proxies attack US personnel anywhere, make no mistake. We will defend our people, we will defend our security—swiftly and decisively.” As our military heightens surveillance operations in the region, it is also sending an aircraft carrier, air defense systems, and additional F-16 fighter jets to defend American troops.

Where is this leading?

“The world is mustering for war”

Robert Clark is a British military veteran with postgraduate degrees in defense studies and Arabic. He served in operational tours in the Middle East and Afghanistan and is currently director of defense and security at the think tank Civitas. His sobering recent article for the Telegraph is titled “The US stands on the brink of global war with the Middle East and Asia.”

He writes: “The world is mustering for war. Conflict is already raging in Europe, with Russian and Ukrainian forces locked in offensive and counteroffensive. The aftermath of the Hamas terror attack upon Israel could now see the Middle East ignited.”

Clark points to drone and missile attacks on American forces by Iran’s proxies in Iraq and Syria. He adds that three cruise missiles launched by Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen were potentially targeting Israel before they were shot down by a US warship. If successful, such an attack could have led to Israeli retaliation against Iran, potentially triggering a direct war—and US involvement.

Meanwhile, Clark writes, “Washington is engaged in frantically regearing its own military to face the threat posed by an increasingly belligerent Chinese communist regime, intent on reunification with Taiwan by force if necessary.” (Read more in “Why does China want to invade Taiwan?“) Between the war in Europe and our increasing involvement in the Middle East, “Beijing may see this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

And Clark notes that Iran could “decide to further provoke the US in its attempts to assert regional dominance, attempting to drive the Americans to disengage and leave Israel to stand on its own.” In short, he warns, “Within months, the US could be directly involved in two devastating wars on two continents [while] bankrolling a third in Ukraine.”

The ultimate answer to all human conflict

One way I am praying for God to redeem the escalating crises of our day is by using them to expose our need for help beyond human capacity.

Our astounding technological advances in recent years have made our world not safer but more dangerous. Our growing secularism has directed our innate passion for transcendent causes into partisan tribalism. Our rejection of objective truth has rendered many Americans unable to recognize and condemn even gross immorality such as the atrocities committed by Hamas’s terrorists against innocent Israelis.

These facts remind us that the ultimate answer to all human conflict lies not in human agency but in divine transformation.

This is why we each need Jesus: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19a). And it is why believers need to share the gospel: “and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (v. 19b). With this result: “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God” (v. 20).

Our message is clear and simple: “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21).

This is why Paul said of his fellow Jews, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). And it is why apostolic Christians paid such a high price to reach the larger Roman world so that “the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe” (Acts 15:7) They were willing to give their lives so the world could say, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).

“The whole offer which Christianity makes”

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis described our need for personal intimacy with God: “There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.” He explained: “If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire; if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.”

He added: “They are not a sort of prize which God could, if he chose, just hand out to anyone.” Rather, “They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you; if you are not, you will remain dry.”

Then Lewis asked: “Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?”

And he noted, “The whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have his way, come to share in the life of Christ. . . . Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”

Will you “let God have his way” with your life?

Will you help those you know “share in the life of Christ” today?

Denison Forum

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the son of a founding Hamas leader. In response to the October 7 atrocities, he told a reporter: “I was born at the heart of Hamas leadership . . . and I know them very well. They don’t care for the Palestinian people. They do not regard the human life.”

He explained: “Hamas is not a national movement. Hamas is a religious movement with a goal to establish an Islamic state.” In his view, “Hamas does not serve the Palestinian people. Hamas serves Iran. . . . They are using Palestinian people as a human shield.”

Why, then, are so many “pro-Palestinian” advocates in the West supporting them? Why is such support likely to escalate as Israel escalates its response to Hamas’s atrocities?

A swastika alongside the Israeli flag

Yesterday, journalists were shown horrific footage from Hamas’s October 7 massacre, including scenes of murder, decapitation, and torture. Some of the two hundred in attendance burst into tears as they viewed the images. While Hamas released two more hostages yesterday, it is holding more than two hundred, one of them a seventeen-year-old girl in a wheelchair. Israel has found Hamas files with instructions for making a cyanide-based weapon.

Nonetheless, world opinion is inexorably turning against Israel and the Jewish people, blaming them for the atrocities committed against them.

A United Nations official likened Israel’s response to Nazi actions in the Holocaust. A doctor in the UK posted a picture of a swastika alongside the Israeli flag on her official Instagram page. Organizations funded by the European Union praised Hamas terrorists for acting with “courage and sacrifice.”

This while antisemitism continues to rise in Canada, Germany, across Europe, and in America, where Jews are rushing to buy guns to protect themselves. A rally supporting Israel planned for downtown Chicago had to be relocated after threats from a pro-Hamas group were reported.

A Wall Street Journal opinion writer noted that this pattern is tragically not unusual: “The worst demonization of the Jewish state has typically followed the worst atrocities against it.” He explains this pattern with an insight I found very valuable: “This behavior is an example of cognitive-dissonance reduction, the process by which people reconcile new information that contradicts their firmly held priors. The result is an ostensibly coherent system of thought.”

In other words, to continue supporting those who attack Israel, advocates must find ways to dehumanize and demonize the Jewish people and blame them for their sufferings. We can expect this to escalate as the war escalates.

The irony behind anti-Israel bigotry

What is the reasoning behind what one writer calls the “sickening” anti-Israel bias by so many in the West?

First, Israel is accused of being “colonizers” by those who claim that they stole their land from its rightful Palestinian owners. However, the Palestinians are descended from Arab Muslims who invaded the area in the seventh century, displacing many of the Jews and Christians who had been there for centuries. They were in turn displaced by the Crusaders, who were displaced by Egyptian Muslims, who were displaced by Ottoman Turks. And the Jews under Joshua conquered the land from the Canaanites, whose genealogical descendants now reside in Lebanon.

If the “colonizers” are supposed to return the land to its original owners, to whom should it be returned?

Second, Israel is seen by many critics through the prism of “critical theory.” In this view, they are the majority oppressors of the minority oppressed. However, Jews in Israel comprise less than half the population of Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, and the global Jewish population comprises 0.2 percent of the global population.

We should also note the ironic fact that many of Israel’s military enemies are the ideological enemies of their ideological supporters. Islamic jihadists subjugate women and persecute LGBTQ people, while Israel empowers women and welcomes people of all genders and sexual orientations.

Nonetheless, the ideological bigotry Israel is facing has enormous implications for the future of the Jewish people.

“Judgments that are true and make for peace”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, visited Israel after the October 7 invasion, where he met with families of hostages. He recalled his own family’s horrific experiences during the Holocaust and said, “If we don’t prevent the threat from Hamas from occurring, it’ll happen again, and again, and again.”

I am writing today to explain the rising hatred against Israel so we can use our personal and cultural influence to defend the Jewish people from their ideological enemies in our society. This is vital for the Palestinian people as well: as Mosab Hassan Yousef noted, Hamas uses them as “human shields” in its quest to eradicate the Jews. Support for Hamas only endangers their Palestinian victims in Gaza and elsewhere.

As we speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), let’s remember that this is a spiritual conflict with “the father of lies” (John 8:44). Then let’s ask God’s Spirit to empower us (Ephesians 5:18) to “speak the truth to one another” and thus “render in [our] gates judgments that are true and make for peace” (Zechariah 8:16).

Billy Graham was right: “Because truth is unpopular does not mean that it should not be proclaimed.” The more people reject it, the more they need it.

And let’s continue to pray for a spiritual awakening in the Middle East that would transform hatred into love and end millennia of conflict. Abraham Lincoln asked, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

How will you “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) and then help answer your prayer today?

Denison Forum

There was finally some good news in the war in Israel when Hamas released two US citizens it was holding hostage. However, the conflict is threatening to escalate as Israel engages terrorists in Gaza, clashes with Hezbollah in northern Israel, and responds to threats in Syria and the West Bank.

There have been multiple attacks on US forces as well; the US defense secretary announced over the weekend that American forces are increasing their presence in the area to “bolster regional deterrence efforts.”

As you follow the news, if you’re feeling anxious and even overwhelmed these days, you’re not alone.

Five threats that could fuse into one

Former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus is warning that there is a very real chance the Middle East conflict could escalate significantly. What’s more, the battle between Hamas and Israel is dividing world opinion, pitting nations against nations in ominous ways.

According to former US Defense Secretary Bob Gates, America is facing the most crises since World War II ended seventy-eight years ago. None can be solved; all could spiral into something much worse:

1. The war in the Middle East
2. China and Russia’s growing military and economic collaboration
3. A malicious Iran
4. The unhinged leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un
5. A massive spread of doctored or wholly fake videos to manipulate world news and opinion.

US officials are especially worried that all five threats could fuse into one. The State Department recently issued a rare “Worldwide Caution,” warning US travelers abroad of “increased tensions in various locations around the world” that raise “the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations, or violent actions against US citizens and interests.” This at a time when the US House is without a speaker, a government shutdown may be looming, and another toxic presidential campaign with rising domestic unrest is on the horizon.

“I will not refuse to do something I can do”

Helen Keller was stricken deaf and blind after contracting a high fever at nineteen months of age. Nonetheless, she went on to graduate from college cum laude and later became the first woman to be awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard University. She wrote numerous books, became a tireless advocate for those with disabilities, met with twelve US presidents, and was awarded the highest American honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She explained her life’s passion this way: “I am only one, but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.”

One practical way to respond to the rising anxiety and fear of our day is to adopt her motto. Like those who rebuilt the gates of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 3, we each have a kingdom assignment, a thing we can uniquely do to serve God and others. Using our influence to share God’s love and grace is not only vital to our personal well-being—it is absolutely crucial for our broken world and every lost person we know.

Pastor and author Paul Powell once invited readers to imagine a graph of human progress with regard to technology, economics, standard of living, and so on. Such a graph would be easy to draw and largely positive. Then he asked them to graph moral progress.

That would be a different story, as Hamas’s recent brutality makes clear.

“The heart of the problem”

Max Lucado observed:

For all our medical and scientific advancements, for all our breakthroughs in technology and medicine, do we not battle the same inclinations as did our Bronze Age ancestors? Women are still objectified: almost one in three women worldwide is a victim of physical and/or sexual violence. How is it that the twentieth century was the most murderous in history? Wars and genocides took more than two hundred million victims in one hundred years.

According to Jesus, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander” (Matthew 15:19 NIV). The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.

Here’s the good news: God can “give you a new heart” (Ezekiel 36:26). When we turn to him by faith, he promises to “put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (v. 27).

Imagine a world in which every person truly made Christ their Lord and thus experienced such godly transformation. Crime and war would end as we follow the leading of the Prince of Peace who calls us to mutual love (John 13:34–35). Lust and adultery would be replaced with love and fidelity (cf. Matthew 22:39). Lies would cease as we speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

We would still struggle with temptation, of course, but when Christ is our Lord and his Spirit empowers and controls us (Ephesians 5:18), there is no temptation we cannot defeat in his strength (1 Corinthians 10:13).

This is why Oswald Chambers’ assertion is so vital for our souls and our broken world: “There is only one relationship that matters, and that is your personal relationship to a personal Redeemer and Lord. Let everything else go, but maintain that at all costs, and God will fulfill his purpose through your life. One individual life may be of priceless value to God’s purposes, and yours may be that life.”

Will God “fulfill his purpose through your life” today?

Denison Forum

As the war in Israel continues and more of the surrounding Muslim-majority nations indicate they might escalate the situation further, one of the questions we have been asked most frequently at Denison Forum is if the fighting there is a sign of the end times.

It’s an understandable question and, from an eschatological perspective, “wars and rumors of wars” in Israel do feel different than the ongoing struggle in Ukraine or conflicts elsewhere in the world (Matthew 24:6).

But why is that the case? And why do so many Christians in particular seem to jump so quickly to the end times when conflicts in Israel arise?

While answers vary, one of the most prominent factors among evangelical Christians is the belief that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the apocalyptic conflicts that will ultimately result in Christ’s return.

Now, it must be said from the start that not all Christians agree with that assessment. As Dr. Jim Denison describes, there are seven primary approaches that people have taken to understanding the book of Revelation and, by extension, how the end times will play out. And people continue to argue about it because no approach is inarguably more biblical than the rest—though strong adherents to any one of them might disagree.

For our purposes today, however, one approach in particular stands out.

Today’s most popular end-times theology

Of the seven ways that Christians have historically viewed end-times theology, the most popular in evangelical circles today is premillennialism.

While a variety of perspectives are housed within that term, they share the basic belief that the world will never be made right until Christ returns. And a quick look at the news on any given day offers a helpful reminder of why that perspective makes sense to so many.

However, that wasn’t always the case.

In the wake of the Second Great Awakening, many Christians in the West believed that the church was on the path to ushering in the kingdom that Christ would one day return to rule. However, for many believers, the Civil War put cracks in that belief before the first World War ultimately shattered it.

In its wake, more and more Christians began to believe that Jesus was the only one who could fix this world, and the premillennial approach became more common as a result.

In typical Christian fashion, though, even when people agreed on the basics, the details proved divisive. And of the factions within that faction of belief, dispensationalism is the most important for understanding why Israel is so important to many Christians today.

God’s two plans?

Dispensationalism came to America through the writings and sermons of British pastor John Nelson Darby during the late 1800s, but it rose to prominence through the preaching of St. Louis pastor James Brookes and—to an extent—famed evangelist D. L. Moody. Then, in 1909, Cyrus Scofield published one of the first study Bibles and included notes throughout explaining how the various parts of Scripture fit within a dispensationalist model.

A host of Bible colleges, institutes, and seminaries—with Dallas Theological Seminary perhaps the most important—then trained generations of pastors to see Scripture through that lens as well. And while other forms of evangelicalism grew to prominence across the same period of time, some of the most influential leaders within the evangelical church have approached Scripture from the dispensationalist perspective.

I bring all of this up today because one of the most distinctive convictions within dispensationalism is the belief that, as Timothy Weber describes, “God had two completely different plans operating in history: one for an earthly people, Israel, and the other for a heavenly people, the church.”

And that plan would eventually culminate with a reestablished Israel at the center of the Lord’s work as he began to usher in his kingdom. Given that Darby began preaching about that eventuality nearly a century before the nation of Israel was rebirthed in 1949, it’s understandable that the latter event was seen by many to confirm the dispensationalist perspective on Israel’s role in the end times.

As Israel has continued to court evangelical support in the decades since, that relationship has only grown stronger, and a view that found its modern origins within the dispensationalist perspective has been adopted by many who hold to a different approach to the faith as well.

As a result, now when Israel goes to war, Christians pay attention and openly wonder if this conflict will kick off Scripture’s final conflict.

So how can we know?

Will you be ready?

Ultimately, the answer to that question is that we won’t know which conflict is the final conflict until Jesus comes back. We’ve been in the “last times” since Christ’s incarnation. For the better part of two millennia, there have been Christians who were convinced that his return was imminent.

I’m thirty-seven years old and, not to brag, but the latest conflict in Israel is about the fifth end of the world I’ve experienced so far. Yet, whether it’s the other wars in the Middle East, 9/11, Covid, or the host of other global conflicts and persecutions that meet many of the criteria described in Scripture, Christ still hasn’t returned.

But one day he will, and while we can continue to debate the degree to which present events should be seen as a sign of the end times, what Jesus was absolutely clear about is that the best way to live now is to be ready for his return.

So how can we do that?

Think back for a moment to your initial response when you thought about the question of if we are now living in the end times. Did it make you frightened? Excited? Skeptical? Did someone come to mind who doesn’t know Christ? If Christ did return today, would there be something you feel like you’d left unfinished?

Ultimately, Christ’s call is to live every day with the expectation that it might be your last, coupled with the reality that we often won’t know if it is until it’s too late to do much about it.

So what would such a life look like for you today? And is your answer to that question primarily the product of your own guesses and expectations or as a result of guidance from God?

Only the Lord knows when your last day will be, so he is the only one capable of helping you live well every day until that time comes.

Have you asked for his help yet today?

Denison Forum

“This war, which has entered a dangerous phase, will plunge the region into an unspeakable disaster.” This was the warning of Jordan’s King Abdullah II after an explosion Tuesday in the courtyard of Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital killed hundreds of people. It is made all the more ominous by his nation’s moderate political stance and longstanding peace agreement with Israel. After the blast, the king canceled a planned summit between President Joe Biden, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Hamas immediately blamed an Israeli airstrike for the tragedy. However, Israel, the US government, and independent security experts said yesterday that preliminary evidence shows the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were not responsible and points instead to a failed rocket launch from Gaza by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a local militant group.

Nonetheless, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Arabs and Muslims worldwide to protest against Israel and claimed the explosion will mark “a new turning point.” Early response across the Muslim world indicates that he may tragically be right:

• The Jordanian government announced three days of mourning after the hospital explosion, which it called the “Israeli massacre.”
• Hezbollah called for a “day of rage against the enemy” after the blast. Hundreds of demonstrators threw stones at the French and US embassies in Beirut, chanting “death to America” and “death to Israel.” The government closed schools yesterday.
• Iran, which has warned of “preemptive” attacks should Israel proceed with a ground offensive on the Gaza Strip, condemned Israel for the “heinous attack.”
• Syria stated that it holds Western countries, especially the US, “responsible for this massacre.”
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the explosion “the latest example of Israel’s attacks devoid of fundamental human values.”
• Saudi Arabia stated that it “condemns in the strongest possible terms the heinous crime committed by the Israeli occupation forces.”

Is Israel facing an “existential threat”?

Could the al-Ahli hospital bombing indeed be a “turning point” in this tragic conflict?

Palestinians are understandably shocked and grieved by the death and devastation so many are suffering from the explosion. As the atrocities of October 7 rallied Israelis against Hamas, could this rally Palestinians against Israel? Could we see another intifada (“uprising”) in the West Bank incited by Hamas and PIJ there?

Will this bring Hezbollah, with an estimated 130,000 rockets capable of striking all parts of Israel, more fully into the war? Iran’s foreign minister has warned that the group could destroy Tel Aviv “tower for tower” and identified Israel’s nuclear reactor as a potential target. According to the Jerusalem Post, there is a “growing concern” in Israel that “Hezbollah is waiting for the moment that most IDF ground forces are committed to Gaza to open a full front with the IDF in the north.”

Will Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas and has been warning of “new fronts” opening against Israel, mobilize its jihadist forces in Syria and Iraq? In other words, will we see the multi-front war against the Jewish state that a former Israeli security advisor called an “existential threat”?

“Israel was born in battle”

Israel has been here before.

In Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, retired Gen. David Petraeus and historian Andrew Roberts describe Israel’s 1948 War for Independence in fascinating detail. They note that the war began when the infant nation was invaded by “five armies comprising over twenty thousand well-equipped Arabs from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Transjordan (later Jordan), and Saudi Arabia.”

When the war was over, some six thousand Jews had died—1 percent of the entire population of the country—but they had gained 30 percent more territory than they had been allotted by the United Nations Partition Plan the Arabs had previously rejected. While “the whole country remained within Arab artillery range, and the state’s wasp-like waist was only nine miles to the sea at its narrowest,” the nation survived.

Petraeus and Roberts quote Chaim Herzog, the head of military intelligence for the IDF in their War for Independence and a future president of the nation: “Israel was born in battle.”

We can and must join them.

Seven biblical prayers

This is not just a military, cultural, and sociological conflict—it is a spiritual war. Those who committed unspeakable atrocities on October 7, and those who would join them to destroy the Jewish people and nation, are influenced by Satan, who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10).

So, let’s join this battle on our knees as we “wrestle against . . . the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Specifically, I encourage you to offer seven biblical prayers in these days, asking God to:

• Give leaders on all sides wisdom leading to peace through righteousness (Proverbs 3:5; James 1:5; 3:18).
• Protect noncombatants and provide for their needs (Psalm 121:7–8; Zechariah 7:10).
• Protect and strengthen Christians and churches throughout the region as they share their faith and serve with compassion (1 Peter 4:10).
• Give victory to Israel over those who would annihilate her (Deuteronomy 20:4; Isaiah 54:17) while giving the Palestinians a new future with justice and peace (Amos 5:24).
• “Comfort all who mourn,” both Jews and Palestinians (Isaiah 61:2–3)
• Help all in the region to “repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations” (Isaiah 61:4)
• Reveal his Son to Muslims and Jews in miraculous ways that lead them to faith in him as Lord (cf. Acts 9:1–19; 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9).

What if this crisis is a “new turning point,” not for escalating conflict but for spiritual awakening? What if it shows those on all sides that they need the hope found only in Christ?

What if, as a consequence of this horrific war, the One who was born in this ancient land is born again in millions of hearts?

Let us pray fervently that it may be so, to the glory of God.

Denison Forum

President Joe Biden arrived in Israel this morning to show support for Israel. His trip comes less than a day after a horrific blast at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, which was sheltering thousands of displaced people when it was bombed. More than five hundred people were killed.

Palestinian officials blamed Israeli airstrikes, but the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “categorically” denied any involvement in the attack, blaming a “failed rocket launch” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a rival militant group in Gaza. President Biden likewise assigned blame to “the other team,” not Israel. Independent analysts who reviewed footage of the explosion also supported the IDF’s denial.

Meanwhile, a different kind of conflict is continuing in American society. Many critics of Israel have claimed for many years that they “colonized” their land from its rightful Palestinian owners and that the state continues to “oppress” the Palestinians. This explains the support voiced on many university campuses and in cultural centers for Hamas after their October 7 atrocities.

So let’s ask: Who are the Palestinians? Did Israel steal their land? Is their plight in Gaza Israel’s fault? How should Christians view them today?

Is this colonialism?

“Palestine” derives from “Philistia,” the name given by Greek writers to the land occupied by the biblical Philistines. The Romans called the area “Syria Palestina.” It was ruled successively by Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks, and the Ottoman Empire.

After World War I, the area came under British control. In 1947, the United Nations approved a “Partition Plan” whereby the West Bank (so-named for its location on the west bank of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea) and the Gaza Strip would become the nation of Palestine. The remainder of the area would become the State of Israel.

Jewish authorities accepted the plan; Arab leaders rejected it, leading to Israel’s War for Independence in 1948 and the creation of their nation.

The people commonly called “Palestinians” today largely descend from Arabs who conquered the area in the seventh century during the first era of Muslim expansionism, as well as those who emigrated from Egypt, Algeria, Bosnia, and other Arab nations in the nineteenth century. The vast majority are Muslim, though there is a significant Christian minority. I have several Palestinian Christian friends in the West Bank.

This history gives the lie to the claim that Israelis are “colonizers.” They were present from the time of Joshua until the Roman Empire dispersed them, though many remained in the land afterward. There were eras when the land was dominated by Christians (AD 324–640; 1095–1291) as well as Muslims (AD 640–1095; 1291–1917).

If we wish to “return” the land to its rightful owners, to whom would we give it—Canaanites, Jews, Christians, or Arabs?

Is Israel an oppressor?

When Israel warned Gaza residents to flee from their homes for their own safety, Hamas told them to stay. Hamas would rather use Gaza residents as human shields and their potential deaths as propaganda fodder. Sen. Mitt Romney was right: “Do not forget the lives that you will see lost on TV. Israeli lives and Palestinian lives [lost] are all the result of Hamas.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board agreed. After describing Hamas’s strategy of hiding its soldiers and weapons behind civilians, it noted: “Blaming Israel for . . . civilian casualties amounts to denying the Jewish state its right to self-defense. It means that Hamas can launch attacks on Israel with the goal of slaughtering women and children, but Israel can’t attack Hamas in Gaza because civilians might be unintentional casualties. It means Hamas would retain a terrorist sanctuary from which it can attack Israel whenever it has the means and opportunity.”

In a recent New York Times article, David Brooks timelines opportunities for the Palestinians to create a two-state solution with Israel. He lists several major peace efforts: the Oslo process, the Cairo Agreement, Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol, and the Wye River Plantation meeting.

Late in the year 2000, for example, the Israeli cabinet accepted a plan that would have created a Palestinian state. However, Brooks writes, “Yasir Arafat [the Palestinian leader] did what he generally did. He never said no, but he never said yes.”

According to Forbes, Arafat died a billionaire. Mahmoud Abbas, his successor and the current leader of Fatah (which controls the West Bank), is worth an estimated $300 million. The leaders of Hamas, many of whom live in luxury in Qatar, are likewise estimated to be billionaires.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens cites a 2014 Wall Street Journal report that with the money Hamas could have spent to build a single tunnel to infiltrate into Israel, it could have purchased construction supplies “enough to build eighty-six homes, seven mosques, six schools, or nineteen medical clinics.” At the time, Israel had identified at least thirty-two such tunnels.

Stephens concludes: “The central cause of Gaza’s misery is Hamas. It alone bears the blame for the suffering it has inflicted on Israel and knowingly invited against Palestinians. The best way to end the misery is to remove the cause, not stay the hand of the remover.”

A thought experiment

Let’s close with a thought experiment: Why doesn’t Israel take Palestinian hostages?

Because Hamas would pay nothing to get them back since it has essentially taken the entire populace hostage and views the Palestinian people as a means to its jihadist ends.

Conversely, why does Hamas take Israeli hostages?

Because Israel, grounded in the biblical worldview, values every human life.

As should we.

God loves Palestinians just as much as he loves Jews (cf. Galatians 3:28). We are each made in his image (Genesis 1:27), someone for whom Jesus died (Romans 5:8).

Consequently, please join me in praying daily for protection for civilians on both sides of this conflict, Israeli and Palestinian. Pray for the “shalom” of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6), which is peace in the region based on justice and righteousness (cf. Isaiah 1:17). And pray that God would redeem this unfolding tragedy by leading many Jews and Muslims to Christ as their Messiah.

To that end, let’s make these words from the Book of Common Prayer our intercession today:

O God, you made us in your image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Denison Forum

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a twenty-three-year-old American-Israeli born in Berkeley, California, was at the Nova music festival last weekend when more than 260 attendees were massacred by Hamas terrorists. Hersh took cover in a bomb shelter, but a grenade blew off his arm from the elbow down. Since he could still walk, he was ordered by Hamas to leave the shelter. His phone soon pinged across the border in Gaza, where authorities say he is being held hostage.

His parents, who were born and raised in Chicago and moved to Israel fifteen years ago, have not heard from him since. His mother, Rachel Goldberg, said of him, “Hersh is my only son and he’s my first child. He’s what made me a mother. I feel like God could have given him to anyone and he gave me the perfect son for me.”

Now she is spending her days praying for his return, telling his story to media outlets, and appealing to US senators and Israeli politicians. “We need to know that we are doing every single thing that we can do,” she said.

She added: “I think when you’re in hell, if you stop, then you’re really stuck. So when you’re going through hell, keep walking—and that’s what I’m doing.”

“Not knowing where he was going”

From the beginning of their story, the Jews have needed such courage simply to exist as a people.

In Genesis 12, God called Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (v. 1). Hebrews 11 tells us that he then “went out, not knowing where he was going” (v. 8).

This is the epitome of courageous faith.

Moses did the same when he faced down Pharaoh, the most powerful man on earth, and led his people through the Red Sea and the desert wilderness. So did Joshua when he led them across the flooded Jordan River. So did the judges when they led their people into battle time and time again against their enemies. So did David against Goliath and the Philistines. So did Daniel when he trusted his God in the lions’ den. So did Jesus’ apostles when they left their homes and vocations to become his disciples, then preached the gospel in defiance of the religious authorities who arranged his murder (Acts 5:27–32).

In a brilliant 1973 article for Foreign Affairs, then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir wrote that her people “brought to fruition the labor of Jewish pioneers who, since the turn of the century, gave their lives to transform a barren and denuded land into fertile fields, flourishing settlements, and new patterns of society.” The land they rebuilt “had neither oil nor abundant natural resources. Its wastes offered no temptation except to Zionist pioneers animated by the twin ideals of a new Jewish society and a reconstructed land.”

Now that land is home to one of the most advanced economies and militaries in history. Their courageous faith is an invitation and example our nation urgently needs today.

“The most dangerous time the world has seen in decades”

Jamie Dimon is the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank; the New York Times calls him “as close as Wall Street has to a statesman.” He is in the news because of a statement he made accompanying his bank’s quarterly earnings last Friday: “This may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades.”

High inflation and rising interest rates are risks, to be sure. But Dimon told reporters that the conflict in Israel and Gaza is “the highest and most important thing for the Western world.” In his view, it could have “far-reaching impacts on energy and food markets, global trade, and geopolitical relationships.”

The Wall Street Journal offers evidence, reporting that the war is “affecting the global balance of power, stretching American and European resources while relieving pressure on Russia and providing new opportunities to China.” The article notes that both are positioning themselves to lead the global movement against the West’s “neocolonialism.” An escalation of the war could force many European nations into greater dependence on Russian oil and gas and carries the risk of renewed violence by Islamist militant groups across the Continent.

Walter Russell Mead is one of the most perceptive cultural commentators of our day. His Wall Street Journal response to Hamas’s atrocities, titled “A Middle East Wake-Up Call,” concludes with this paragraph:

Finally, there is the question of whether American and Western opinion will awaken to the new state of the world. In a horrible way, the descent of death-dealing paragliders into a peaceful music festival in Israel is an apt symbol of our times. The post-Cold War trance of the West, reaping peace dividends, celebrating flower power, and generally living as if utopia had already arrived, has left us mentally and morally disarmed. The revisionist powers that recognize no moral limits on their power as they seek to overturn the existing world system in an ocean of blood are descending onto our festival of folly like the hell-bound paragliders of Hamas. We cannot and should not respond with irrational panic and random outbursts of violence. We must soberly and deliberately address a mortal danger to everything we hold dear—and we must at long last wake up (my emphasis).

Forging a new future

If Dimon and Mead are right—and I believe they are—we are witnessing a hinge point in history. Our secularist path has indeed “left us mentally and morally disarmed” as the moral therapeutic deism that dominates our culture separates God from life, rejects moral absolutes, and celebrates self-centric self-reliance.

As a result, America can forge a new future only by turning to the source of Israel’s courage in the past.

Abraham and his heirs who built the biblical nation of Israel risked everything to follow God’s call. Now Jesus is calling you and me to do the same for the sake of our nation and her future.

Will we?

Denison Forum

Israel Ziv is a sixty-six-year-old decorated former paratrooper. On the morning of October 7, the retired Army general was taking a bike ride when news broke that a rocket barrage had been fired from Gaza and gunmen were pouring across the border. He raced to his home overlooking olive groves near Tel Aviv, put on his uniform, and grabbed his weapon, a nine-millimeter pistol.

He then drove to the battle zone around 10 a.m. with his close friend, Noam Tibon, a retired general whose son was trapped in the Nahal Oz kibbutz. He found disorganized groups of young Israeli soldiers, piled several of them into his Audi, and began attacking Hamas gunmen on the road. After a soldier in his car was wounded, he snatched his M16 and started firing out the window.

Gen. Tibon was eventually able to rescue his son while Gen. Israel Ziv raced to other hot spots. He spent nearly twenty-four hours around the kibbutzim and villages under attack, firing his own weapon, organizing evacuations of civilians, and coordinating with the military to dispatch backup units.

Why is Israel important to America?

At this juncture in the war, it’s worth asking why Israel is so important to America.

As Israel prepares for the next stage in this conflict, Americans remain solidly supportive of the Jewish state: 49 percent say the US is doing “about the right amount” to support Israel in the war, while 29 percent say the US is actually doing too little. Only 18 percent say the US is doing “too much” in the aftermath of the attacks.

However, the nation is tiny, ranking 149^th in the world in land size at approximately the size of New Jersey. It is not unusually significant to us economically, ranking only twenty-fifth among US trading partners. Of the sixteen million Jews in the world, less than half live in Israel.

But Israel Ziv, with his sacrificial and unselfish bravery on behalf of his people, answers our question in a way that is far more significant than it might first appear.

“Butchering people was the aim”

After a week, let’s ask ourselves what we have learned about Hamas and Israel in the context of their worldviews.

Regarding civilians:

• Hamas attacks noncombatants, intentionally targeting young children, elementary schools, and a youth center. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote: “Butchering people was the aim. It was what they set out to do.” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Hamas “vividly reminds me of ISIS: bloodthirsty, fanatical, and hateful.”
• Israel has sought to protect civilians in past conflicts with Hamas and is doing the same now, warning Palestinians in Gaza ahead of military advances there. Israel Defense Forces seek to follow the law of armed conflict against targeting noncombatants, while Hamas uses civilians (and often disguises its soldiers like them) to shield its forces and weapons.

Regarding the future of the other state:

• Hamas is pledged to the annihilation of the Jewish people, which is why they staged the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Andrew Sullivan compared them to the Nazis’ quest to exterminate the Jewish race: “The same ethno-fascism; the same blood-and-soil ideology . . . the same internalization of an entire group of humans as subhuman, to be treated like dangerous vermin; the same hideous sadism; the same eliminationist ideology; the same glee.”
• Jewish leaders accepted the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan that would have created an independent state of Palestine (with more land than the West Bank and Gaza Strip today), but the Arab nations rejected it. Every Jew I know in Israel (I have been traveling there for nearly thirty years) believes the Palestinians deserve to have their own homeland.

Regarding their leaders:

• After Hamas came to power in Gaza in 2007, there have been no more elections. More than 65 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, but the party’s leaders are wealthy, some estimated to be billionaires. They are currently living in Qatar in what the Telegraph calls “five-star luxury.”
• Israel’s democracy is often divisive and chaotic, as recent months have shown, but its leaders are ultimately responsible to those who elect them.

“The rock-solid foundation of Western culture”

Two caveats: Hamas is not the Palestinian people (a subject I intend to address later this week), and Israelis are fallen like the rest of us (also a subject I intend to address soon).

But the way Israel lives out its worldview raises a crucial question for us in our secularized culture: Is it a coincidence that the only true democracy in the Middle East, the nation in this conflict most committed to just war and to the law of armed conflict, was birthed from a biblical worldview that values all humans as made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27)?

In “The Nihilism of Antisemitism,” Thomas Balazs and Yonatan Hambourger write: “It is precisely because the Jews advanced a moral system that doesn’t tolerate murder, theft, rape, or mistreatment of the weak, and demands we care for other human beings, that other peoples have tried to wipe them out. The spree of killing and rape committed by Hamas is, among other things, a cry for freedom from a Jewish moral system that forbids such things.” They call Judaism “the rock-solid moral foundation of Western culture” and note that Hitler was reported to have said, “Conscience is a Jewish invention.”

As post-Christian America continues its unconscionable march away from biblical truth and morality into self-centric immoral relativism, what is our future?

Shakespeare’s observation comes to mind: “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”

Denison Forum

“Mom and Dad, they sacrificed their lives to save me,” sixteen-year-old Rotem Matias told CNN yesterday. When the Israeli-American teenager and his parents were attacked by Hamas terrorists last Saturday, his mother died trying to shield him. He was shot but survived and will keep the bullet removed surgically from his stomach “as a memory to never forget” his parents and the other victims.

Every Jew in Israel and around the world old enough to remember Hamas’s invasion will never forget it. After more than thirty trips to the Holy Land, I can tell you that this tiny country is interconnected in ways Americans cannot understand. Nearly everyone knows someone who was directly affected by the atrocities of October 7.

Now we are learning that Jews around the world could be victims of Hamas. The terror organization’s head is calling for a Global Day of Rage today in which Muslims across the globe would “fight against the Jews.” The former leader of Hamas is similarly urging Muslims around the world to protest today and is calling on Muslim nations in the Middle East to join the battle against Israel.

Hamas is also vowing to broadcast executions of its hostages on the internet if Israel strikes Gaza. The terrorists have already flooded social media with violent videos and graphic images of the kidnappings and murders it staged last weekend. We are now learning that a nine-month-old baby is among the hostages taken by Hamas.

What should Israel do next?

How should Israel respond to such horrific terrorism? Broadly speaking, they have four basic options.

One is to effect a prisoner swap, exchanging Palestinian prisoners for hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. This was done in 2011, when Israel exchanged a thousand such prisoners for a soldier named Gilad Shalit who had been held in Gaza for five years.

A second is to continue the aerial bombing campaign they began earlier this week, seeking to kill Hamas’s leaders and degrade the group’s ability to launch weapons against Israel. This has been Israel’s response numerous times in the past.

A third is to tighten the blockade that already exists around Gaza. For example, Israel’s energy minister announced earlier this week that no electricity or water would be supplied to the area until those abducted are returned home.

A fourth is to stage a ground offensive in which Israeli troops enter Gaza to find and destroy Hamas’s leaders, fighters, and weapons.

Is a ground offensive coming?

The first three approaches have not deterred Hamas in the past from the continued aggression against Israel to which its charter pledges the terrorist organization. Any or all of them would be perceived as a major victory for Hamas and could be used to help the group gain power in the West Bank. If this occurred, the threat posed to Israel from Gaza (some forty miles from Jerusalem) would be magnified exponentially from the West Bank (which includes East Jerusalem).

Israeli military leaders have not announced their decision at this writing, but this morning they directed the evacuation of northern Gaza within twenty-four hours, which could signal an impending ground offensive. They have also amassed more than three hundred thousand reservists close to Gaza. A military spokesman said, “There’s not a family that does not have somebody that’s been called up.”

If Israel chooses this fourth option, its soldiers will face “brutal urban warfare” in the coming days. We should also note that Hamas is in the West Bank and Lebanon, as well as in Gaza. As a Gaza-based political analyst noted, it would be difficult for Israel to truly uproot Hamas. “The US stayed in Afghanistan for twenty years, did it end the Taliban?” he asked.

And urban warfare in an area as densely populated as the Gaza Strip would undoubtedly lead to many civilian casualties among the Palestinian population. Would this damage the prospects for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors? Would it kindle a wider war, sparking uprisings in the West Bank and bringing Hezbollah into the conflict? Is this Iran’s larger strategy?

At the same time, how can Israel allow Hamas to continue to exist in anything like its present state and capacity? If they do, will the October 7 atrocities only continue? Can there ever be peace with a terrorist group pledged to their destruction? Does Israel have an obligation to its people to destroy this enemy that threatens its very future?

“The line separating good and evil”

My purpose today is twofold.

First, to help us understand the truly difficult choices Israel is being forced to face and thus to encourage us to pray fervently for her leaders and people in this unprecedented time in their nation’s history.

Second, to illustrate the biblical fact that “sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15). Death to the sinner and, all too often, to their innocent victims as well.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed in The Gulag Archipelago, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

This is why the gospel is so urgently needed. Only Jesus can change terrorists like Saul of Tarsus into missionaries like Paul the Apostle. Only he can forgive the deepest depravities of the human heart. Only he can bring lasting peace to the human condition.

We are told to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6). However, true peace is a “fruit” of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) and thus can come only from the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:7; cf. John 14:27; 16:33).

The old aphorism is still true: “Know God, know peace. No God, no peace.”

Will you join me in praying for the truest and deepest “peace of Jerusalem” today?

Denison Forum

J. J. Kimche is a doctoral student in Jewish history at Harvard University and author of an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal I hope you’ll read in its entirety. It begins: “Hamas’s attack on Israel was a small-scale Holocaust, a moment no Jew alive with the tiniest speck of communal feeling will ever forget. As a Jewish student, I was similarly chilled by the reactions at Harvard.”

He then describes the now-infamous response by more than thirty Harvard student groups to Hamas’s invasion of Israel, a statement that supported the terrorists while blaming their actions entirely on Israel. Kimche asks, “How can we share dormitories, classrooms, and ideas with students who would make excuses or even celebrate if we and our families were hacked to death by a Hamas terrorist tomorrow?”

He closes: “As a grandson of an Auschwitz survivor and a student of German-Jewish history, I was always incredulous that highly cultured Germans, the people of Goethe and Beethoven, could have displayed sympathy and even enthusiasm for the Nazi slaughter of the Jews. Now I believe it. I have seen it happen here.”

“Using their civilians to protect their missiles”

I understand that Palestinians and Israelis have a fundamental conflict over who should own the same land. I believe strongly that both Israelis and Palestinians have a right to live in peace and autonomy. I have dear and trusted friends of many years—both Jews and Arabs—who live in the Holy Land, some in Israel and others in Bethlehem and other areas of the West Bank. And I know beyond question that God loves Israelis and Palestinians equally (Galatians 3:28) and that he is grieving for the victims on both sides of this conflict.

However, I am writing today to voice my vehement opposition to a sentiment I am seeing after Hamas’s horrific invasion last Saturday: the claim that the two sides are morally equivalent to each other and that both commit similar atrocities against each other.

It is a tragic fact that some Israeli settlers have acted with indefensible violence against some Palestinians in the West Bank. And it is a fact that when Israel targets Hamas’s military installations in Gaza, since Hamas hides them behind human shields in schools, homes, and hospitals, Palestinian civilians are sometimes injured or killed.

But consider:

Hamas terrorists decapitated babies and slaughtered children when they raided Israel last Saturday morning. According to Israeli soldiers who discovered one massacre, “They have butchered women and children in worse ways than ISIS.” They kidnapped and killed elderly civilians as well, some of them Holocaust survivors, leaving what the New York Times calls a “trail of terror.”

By contrast, when Israel last had to go into Gaza to stop Hamas, it first warned residents by cellphone and leaflets. It also used small “warning rockets,” usually sent from drones, to identify buildings it was targeting so people had time to evacuate.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summarized the difference between the two this way: “We are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”

How Hamas dehumanizes the Jews

History records a long strategy of dehumanizing the Jews as the first step toward their genocidal eradication. The Egyptians of Moses’ day did this by enslaving them and treating them “ruthlessly” (Exodus 1:14). The Qur’an does this by describing them as “apes and swine” (5:60; 2:65; 7:166). Hitler did this by calling them a “race-tuberculosis of the peoples.”

Hamas does this when it claims that Jews control “the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.” They blame Jews for “the French Revolution, the Communist revolution, and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about.” And they claim that the Jews were behind World War I And World War II. In short, they state, “There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.”

The plague of antisemitism has grown in the US and especially on college campuses in recent years. As I noted yesterday, many are deluded by Critical Theory that sees the state of Israel as the majority persecutor and Palestinians as its minority victims who must then oppress their oppressor. In so doing, these antisemites take a significant step toward dehumanizing the people of Israel as oppressors worthy of oppression.

Such defamation threatens Jews not just in Israel but around the world. Violent antisemitism surged in the US during the last Israel–Hamas war in 2014. Now we’re seeing:

• A local kosher restaurant in London was vandalized on Monday; graffiti that read “Free Palestine” appeared on a bridge.
• Antisemitic incidents tripled in Britain after the invasion.
• Police in France have opened forty-four investigations into antisemitic hate speech and glorification of terrorism.
• A synagogue in Spain was defaced with graffiti that read “Free Palestine.”
• Security for synagogues and other Jewish institutions has been heightened across Europe.
• Anti-Israel rallies have been held this week across the US, some displaying swastikas.

As Israel heightens its military response in Gaza, we should expect such antagonism against Jews to escalate.

“The foundation for the whole American political experiment”

Our nation was founded on the declaration that “all men are created equal.” Ronald Reagan was right: “Faith in the dignity of the individual under God is the foundation for the whole American political experiment.” Dehumanizing others threatens this foundation and our very future.

What is the solution? Mr. Reagan also warned: “When men try to live in a world without God, it’s only too easy for them to forget the rights that God bestows.”

Please join me in rejecting the rising antisemitism of our secularized culture. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” with fervency (Psalm 122:6). Tell your Jewish friends and the leaders of your local synagogue that you are standing with and praying for them. Use your personal and social media influence to support the Jewish people in this hour of great crisis. Pray for God to redeem this tragedy in ways that bring peace to the Middle East and many to himself.

And pray for a moral and spiritual awakening in our land that restores the “foundation for the whole American political experiment” before it is too late.

Denison Forum