While President Trump’s speech garnered most of the attention at the UN General Assembly, a gathering on Tuesday with Arab and Muslim leaders could turn out to be the most consequential part of this week’s events. Trump even said as much, referring to the negotiation as “my most important meeting,” and a chance “to end something that should have probably never started.”

That something that shouldn’t have started is Israel’s war with Hamas, and the President’s assessment appears to have a better chance of being accurate now than at any point in the conflict’s nearly two years of violence and death.

While most ceasefire negotiations to this point have relied on both Israel and Hamas finding a middle ground that was considered mutually beneficial to both parties, Trump’s current proposal appears to essentially leave Hamas out of the equation. Instead, on Tuesday, he met with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

Notably absent from that list were Hamas, Iran, and Israel, though Trump is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday. Israel is, however, generally aware of what Trump proposed. And, as one Israeli official described, they understand that “There will be bitter pills we’ll have to swallow.”

Specific details of the President’s twenty-one-point plan are, as of this writing, largely unknown. Yet, as Axios reports, some of the general principles are:

• The release of all remaining hostages.
• A permanent ceasefire.
• Gradual Israeli withdrawal from all of the Gaza Strip.
• A post-war plan that includes a governing mechanism in Gaza without Hamas.
• A security force that would include Palestinians but also soldiers from Arab and Muslim countries.
• Funding from Arab and Muslim countries for the new administration in Gaza and for reconstruction of the enclave.
• Some involvement of the Palestinian Authority

In return for their support, Axios writes that Arab leaders will reportedly require that:

• Israel will not annex parts of the West Bank or Gaza.
• Israel will not occupy parts of Gaza.
• Israel will not build settlements in Gaza.
• Israel will stop undermining the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
• Humanitarian aid to Gaza will immediately increase.

(These lists are quoted directly from Axios’s article.)

Essentially, Muslim nations want Israel out of Gaza and appear more willing than at any point in the last two years to take on the necessary levels of responsibility to ensure Israel can do so safely. But while all of that sounds good, a number of questions remain that could determine the feasibility of Trump’s proposal. And chief among them is whether Gaza would remain part of Israel or become an independent Palestinian nation.

Will Israel accept a two-state solution?

Calls for Israel to accept a two-state solution have been around for decades, but both their frequency and intensity have increased in recent weeks. At the General Assembly, France, the UK, and several other Western powers joined the chorus.

President Trump has, to this point, staunchly opposed the idea, arguing that such a move would be a “reward for Hamas.” The majority of Israelis are similarly against the proposal. However, it’s difficult to see other Muslim nations—and particularly those in the Middle East—accepting so much risk and responsibility unless they were doing so on behalf of an independent Palestine.

Moreover, Trump was unyielding in his belief that Hamas cannot be rewarded for what happened on October 7, but it’s less clear if he would feel the same about a situation where Hamas was no longer in charge. And while accepting a two-state solution would indeed be a “bitter pill,” there are also sound arguments that it could advance the security and prosperity of Israel.

As Faisal J. Abbas describes:

A Palestinian state would give Israel a partner responsible for its own territory, its own governance, and its own security. This means that any terrorist activity originating from Palestinian soil becomes the responsibility of the new government, which will be held accountable under international law.

But while that sounds reasonable, it rests on the assumption that a fledgling Palestine would be capable of enforcing that level of accountability rather than falling back under the control of Hamas or another terrorist influence. And that’s where the nations with whom Trump met on Tuesday—many of whom were part of the first major foreign trip of his current term—would need to step in.

Why Israel needs help

The truth is that Israel will never be able to do what is necessary to restore peace in Gaza without incurring the anger and wrath—at least publicly—of the Muslim world. Muslims everywhere are bound by the concept of Ummah, which holds that all Muslims are part of a collective community. This principle is largely where they get the idea that an attack on Muslims in one area is an attack on Islam as a whole.

As such, when Israel’s attacks on Hamas lead to the death of civilians, the Islamic world is required to condemn them. Yet, if a Muslim nation were charged with putting an end to Hamas and freeing the remaining hostages, that would not violate the principle in the same way as when Israel or a Western nation attempts to do so.

However, Israel’s problem is that they’ve seen little in the Palestinian Authority—the group that runs the West Bank and would be the most likely candidates to lead in a post-war Gaza—to make them believe they would be up to the challenge. Outside help will be needed, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the other nations with whom Trump met appear willing to give it.

While there are a number of details that still need to be worked out, if Israel is willing to receive that help—and to do so on terms those nations would find acceptable—it’s possible that this war could end before the second anniversary of the attacks that started it back on October 7, 2023.

And there is an important lesson in that reality that we would all do well to remember today.

Choosing God’s will over your own

One of the most difficult aspects of living out our faith well is laying down our rights when doing so is required to advance God’s kingdom. Israel has every right to defend its borders and continue the war in Gaza until each hostage is returned and Hamas is no longer a threat. But the reality is that continuing to pursue that right will make it more difficult to achieve their desired ends.

In the same way, there are times when pursuing our right to defend our reputation, our honor, or to seek retribution for a wrong done to us will make it much more difficult to maintain our witness and fulfill the role God has called us to play in advancing his kingdom. Jesus spoke to this reality in the Sermon on the Mount when he called us to turn the other cheek, give up your cloak, and go the extra mile (Matthew 5:43–48).

At no point in that teaching does Jesus claim that we do not have the right to pursue retribution. He just calls us to give up that right in order to prioritize our witness instead.

I think he knew that would be hard for us, though, which is perhaps why he followed up that lesson by teaching on the need to love our enemies and the call to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:43–48).

You see, Jesus isn’t asking us to do anything more than what he’s already done for us. On the cross, he had every right to command angels to come and rescue him. He chose not to, though, because pursuing God’s purposes was more important.

I don’t know how the situation in Gaza will end or whether Israel will be willing to make the necessary concessions to receive help from its neighbors in bringing about that end. I have more hope that they will than I’ve had for quite some time, but, at least for now, it’s difficult to do more than hope.

However, I do know that there will be times when Christ calls us to concede our rights in order to prioritize his purpose, and making the right choice in those moments will be far easier to do if we’ve already decided that God’s will is more important than our own.

Will you make that choice today?

Quote of the day:

“The weakness of the Church lies not in the lack of Christian arguments but in the lack of Christian lives.” —William Barclay

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Denison Forum

“When you finally start moving up into the air, I recommend that you don’t hold onto anything. I definitely don’t recommend looking down. . . . Just keep calm, take a deep breath, slowly release it, and keep your face looking upward.” This is how one person advised her fellow Christians to experience the rapture when it came two days ago.

Except it didn’t.

Or if it did, you and I (and everyone else, so far as I can tell) were left behind. This despite the fact that so many expected the rapture to come on September 23 that the New York Times, Newsweek, and numerous other outlets covered the story.

The date appears to have originated with a person named Joshua Mhlakela in South Africa. He said in a YouTube video that he is not a pastor, though news reports widely described him as such. In his video, he reported that Jesus came to him in a dream in 2018 and told him, “On the 23^rd and the 24^th of September 2025, I will come to take my church.”

His prediction aligned with this year’s observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Evangelical TikTok users picked up Mhlakela’s assertion, some pointing to signs in Revelation 12 and various astrological alignments involving the constellations Virgo and Leo to claim that his prophecy was being fulfilled.

On social media, some said they had given away their belongings and quit their jobs. Others satirically celebrated the coming lower rents or asked believers to hand over their money or keys to their homes.

The latter response points to my point today.

“An hour you do not expect”

The “rapture” is a belief held by some that Jesus will take believers out of the world prior to a period of “great tribulation” on Earth. The word does not appear in the Bible, which is not definitive (the word Trinity is not in Scripture, either), but the idea is based on passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 and 1 Corinthians 15:51–52. Some interpret Jesus’ invitation to John, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this” (Revelation 4:1), to refer to this event.

This is a complex subject, one I have discussed in detail in books and articles over the years. (You can go here and here for examples.) My purpose today is not to explore eschatology (the doctrine of last things) but to focus on the cultural implications of the current story.

Jesus clearly said about his return, “Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). In fact, those who claim to be able to predict the date must be wrong by definition, for our Lord added, “the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (v. 44). “You do not expect” could be translated from the Greek, “all of you without exceptions are not expecting it when it occurs.”

Nonetheless, some across history have been undeterred in claiming to know more than Jesus said he knew about the timing of his return. Such predictions have been more frequent since 1948, the year Israel became a nation again, since many interpretive schemes consider this event to be pivotal to end times sequencing.

However, one predated it by more than a century: the “Great Disappointment” occurred when a Baptist preacher named William Miller predicted that Christ would return on October 22, 1844. Tens of thousands of his followers (known as Millerites) sold their possessions in preparation; when nothing happened, widespread disillusionment followed.

The better-known these failed predictions, the more ridicule they generated for the predictors—and the larger Christian community.

Billy Graham’s greatest fear

Such ridicule is unfortunately understandable. When so-called financial experts make stock market predictions that turn out to be inaccurate, we question their competence for their next prediction. When meteorologists get the weather wrong, we look askance at meteorology itself.

This tendency is especially unsurprising with regard to evangelical Christianity. Already widely considered outdated, irrelevant, and even dangerous, our truth claims are dismissed as esoteric and speculative, especially when they have to do with “unscientific” issues such as the end times.

All this to say, if there is any subject Christians should be especially careful to avoid in our post-Christian culture, it is end times speculation. Not only because Jesus promised we would be wrong, but because our wrong predictions will add fodder for those already predisposed to reject our Lord.

Billy Graham once described to the interviewer David Frost his greatest fear: “That I’ll do something or say something that will bring some disrepute to the gospel of Christ before I go.” He added, “I want the Lord to remove me before I say something or do something that would embarrass God.”

If we want to impact our culture for Christ, we must make Dr. Graham’s greatest fear ours as well.

Visiting Armageddon

Ironically, a way to live that draws people to Christ is to focus on the end times, but not in the way we’ve been discussing.

I was privileged to lead more than thirty study tours to Israel over the years. Each time, we made our way to the heights of Megiddo, an ancient fortress overlooking the vast valley below. In Hebrew, this area is known as Har Megiddo (the “mount of Megiddo”). Transliterated into English, it becomes “Armageddon.”

The site is mentioned just once in Scripture: at the end of history, the enemies of the Lord are described as assembling “at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16). Each time I led a tour here, we discussed this verse and the various end-times scenarios that center around it.

Then I told the group, “The only fact about the future about which I am absolutely certain is this: We are one day closer to eternity than ever before.”

Jesus could return today. Or you could step through death into his presence today (John 14:3). What it takes to be ready is also what it takes to live in ways that most glorify our Lord and attract others to him.

If you knew that day were tomorrow, what would you change today?

Quote for the day:

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” —Theophrastus (372–287 BC)

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Denison Forum

I watched President Donald Trump’s hour-long speech at the United Nations yesterday. Since the UN was founded eighty years ago, every US president has addressed the General Assembly.

However, there is a scenario by which the event could have made history for cataclysmic reasons.

The Secret Service announced before the president’s address that the agency had disrupted a sprawling telecommunications network in the New York tri-state area. Investigators say this network could have disrupted telecom systems and threatened the UN meetings this week.

The servers were so powerful that they could have disabled cell phone towers and blocked emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch. If an attack had been staged on the president and the UN gathering, a network outage could have prevented security forces from responding.

There was a time when we would perhaps not have thought to connect the president’s UN speech and the Secret Service’s discovery. But after Charlie Kirk’s murder and two assassination attempts on the president, the second of which resulted in a conviction yesterday, this is not that time.

The good news is that the bad news of our day is fertile ground for the best news of all.

A perceptive explanation of our times

Cultural commentator Geoff Shullenberger notes that there was a time when the lone assassin dominated political violence. For example, the years between 1963 and the early 1980s witnessed the murders of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the attempted assassinations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

Then came a shift toward mass shootings. Shullenberger theorizes that this aligned with “the shifting landscape of power” from sovereign individuals to groups and movements, focusing on schools and other public venues. In addition, the fragmentation of media could have motivated shooters to commit even more spectacular crimes so as to gain the attention they craved.

However, political assassins are now back, recently attacking leaders from both political parties, but mass shootings have not lessened. Within an hour of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, for example, a shooter in Colorado injured two classmates before taking his own life.

As Shullenberger notes, the fact that both kinds of killings are now making headlines is a “particularly grim indication” of our times.

Three open doors for the gospel

However, three factors contributing to these “grim” times are each an open door to the good news of God’s grace. The gospel offers:

One: Hope that counters despair.

According to New York Times journalist Jia Lynn Yang, “The most dangerous element in our society may well be hopelessness.” Her research shows the many ways individual hopelessness spurs violent actions. However, “the God of hope” is able to “fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). When we know that the all-powerful God of the universe is our Father and loves each of us as if there were only one of us, we find hope even in the hardest places and days.

Two: Community that bridges ideology.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reports that relationships across ideological divides are proven to counter isolation and the political polarization it produces. Early Christians could have told us so. Gathered across fifteen different languages and cultures (Acts 2:8–11), they found unity in Christ and met the needs of others so sacrificially that “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (v. 47).

Three: Courage that redeems persecution.

Theologian Bradley G. Green writes in First Things that the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse convinced generations of “progressives” that they must repress the speech and acts of those with whom they disagree. As Dr. Green notes, such “repressive tolerance” forms the backdrop for the silencing and canceling of conservative thought on university campuses and violence against conservative leaders. But as I noted yesterday, Jesus empowers his followers to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). By “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), we become the change we wish to see.

Misquoting St. Francis

A fourth factor is foundational to the other three and especially opens the door to the gospel.

The Lord described Israel to Ezekiel this way: “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see, but see not, who have ears to hear, but hear not, for they are a rebellious house” (Ezekiel 12:2). When we rebel against God’s word and will, we lose the ability to discern God’s word and will, which heightens our need for God’s word and will.

If we break our compass, we can no longer find our way and need the compass even more. If we throw away our flashlight, we sit in the darkness and can no longer find it.

This is why our lost culture so desperately needs Christians to boldly declare the essential truths of the gospel. To be blunt: Gone is the day when most non-Christians will attend church services, and gone is the day in many denominations when, if they did, they would actually hear the gospel presented.

I have often heard St. Francis of Assisi quoted: “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” However, Francis never said these words. And he was famous for preaching the gospel in words; according to his first biographer, he sometimes preached “in up to five villages a day.”

What saved people owe lost people

Every lost person needs the salvation only Jesus can provide. As the apostles said of our Savior, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

However, a lost person cannot be saved without understanding that they are lost, but if they repent of their sins and confess them to Jesus, he will forgive them and give them eternal life as the child of God. These facts cannot be intuited from nature or “spiritual” activities. They must be understood, accepted, and acted upon.

Our lives are critical to our message, of course. We cannot expect people to believe that Jesus will change them if he does not obviously change us. But our lives are not enough. Pastor and missions leader David Platt is right:

“Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.”

How will you discharge your debt with the lost people you know today?

Quote for the day:

“Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live.” —Leonard Ravenhill

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Denison Forum