If you had told a Jewish grandfather sixty years ago — a man who buried siblings at Auschwitz and watched his synagogue burn — that in 2026 his grandchildren in London would be afraid to wear a kippah on the bus, and that Jewish students in American universities would be hiding their Star of David necklaces under their shirts, he would have wept. Not from surprise. From sorrow that we had so quickly forgotten.
And yet here we are.
The Strait of Hormuz is contested. Tehran is reeling from strikes that took out the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. Hezbollah has been bloodied but not eliminated. Lebanon is at war. Antisemitism in the United Kingdom is at a level the chief rabbi calls a crisis. American Jews are watching their progressive neighbors quietly turn against them. And one tiny country, smaller than New Jersey, sits at the center of every news cycle on earth.
None of this is a coincidence to anyone who has read their Bible.
The covenant that did not expire
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Genesis 12:3
That promise was made to Abram before there was a Jewish nation. It was made before there was a Mosaic law, before there was a temple, before there was a Christian church. It is a covenant the New Testament does not revoke. Paul, three thousand years downstream from Abraham, is still asking the same question:
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! Romans 11:1
The God of Israel keeps His word. Even when the people break theirs. Even when the nations turn. Even when the world's largest institutions vote to condemn her. The covenant stands.
Why this is hard for some Christians
I am aware that not every believer reads prophecy the way I do. There are dear brothers in Christ who hold to a "replacement" view — that the church has now inherited the promises and that ethnic Israel no longer plays a distinct role in God's plan. I disagree with them, but I love them. So I will say this carefully.
Romans 9 through 11 is among the most carefully argued passages in the entire New Testament. Paul agonizes for three full chapters over the question of whether God is finished with the Jewish people. His answer is not vague. It is emphatic. God is not finished with Israel. A partial hardening has come upon them, he says, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. And then — listen — all Israel will be saved.
I do not pretend to know all the mechanics of that. But I know this: a Bible-reading Christian who shrugs at antisemitism, or who privately suspects the Jewish people have it coming, has misread his New Testament badly.
Israel is not a perfect nation
Let us be plain. Israel is not a nation of saints. Her government does things I would not defend. Her policies are at times cruel, and her prime ministers are no holier than ours. The fact that God has a covenant with the Jewish people does not mean every Israeli political decision is automatically blessed. It does not mean Palestinian children are less precious in His sight. It does not mean we cannot pray for both peoples — the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael — to find peace under the Prince of Peace.
What it means is that this little nation, surrounded by enemies and reviled by the global press, is still on God's calendar. Her preservation is not an accident of geopolitics. The God who promised Abraham a seed has been keeping that promise through fire, through exile, through Babylon, through Rome, through pogrom, through gas chamber, and through the missiles of 2026. He will keep it through whatever is next.
What this asks of the believer
One — Pray
Psalm 122:6 commands us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. That command was not rescinded at the cross. Pray for Israeli soldiers and Palestinian children. Pray for Iranian believers worshiping Christ in secret, who are some of the most courageous saints on the planet. Pray for the gospel to run swiftly through every people group in that region.
Two — Refuse the world's narrative
The campus chants. The progressive talking points. The careful media framing that erases Jewish suffering and sanctifies Jewish death. None of it should find a home in your heart. The Christian is not a knee-jerk defender of every Israeli policy, but he is also not a knee-jerk repeater of slogans that, if you trace them back, want every Jew driven into the sea.
Three — Watch
The prophets told us that in the last days, the nations would gather against Jerusalem. Read Zechariah 12. Read Ezekiel 38. Read Revelation 16. Then read your news feed. Notice how the geography lines up. Notice who is allied with whom. Do not be alarmed. But do not be asleep.
The bigger story
Israel matters not because the Jewish people are better than anyone else. They will tell you, with the dry humor of a people who have suffered too much to pretend, that they are not. Israel matters because God said she did, and the credibility of every other promise in the Bible — including the one that you, a sinner, can be forgiven through the blood of a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth — is bound up in whether God keeps the covenant He made with one shepherd in Ur four millennia ago.
He keeps it. He always has. He always will. And one day, on a hill outside Jerusalem, the very same Jesus the world tried to bury will set His feet on the Mount of Olives, and every eye will see Him, and every knee will bow.
Until then, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And lift up your eyes.