Seeing Israel through the Eyes of Faith

In that single sentence, the entire arc of human history snaps into focus. God vowed that a Redeemer would come, through a woman, through a people, through a nation. That promised Redeemer is Jesus (Yeshua), the Messiah, who would overthrow the enemy, defeat sin and restore life. That people and nation is Israel. And from that moment forward, the enemy would stop at nothing to prevent that rescue mission.

Today, images from a small strip of land in the Middle East saturate global headlines, ignite university campuses and divide parliaments. The October 7 terror attack on Israel, the war that followed, and the global surge in antisemitism have forced a reckoning. For Christians watching from afar, the noise raises urgent questions. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? And perhaps most pressing: What does any of this have to do with me and my faith?

Those questions fall into three camps. Some Christians respond with a deepened sense of solidarity, renewed prayer, engagement and action. Others distance themselves, insisting a God of love couldn’t possibly be associated with such violence. Then there are the undecided, who feel compassion and curiosity but haven’t made a personal connection.

If you’re reading this letter, chances are you already stand in that first camp. You don’t need convincing that Israel matters. But even settled conviction benefits from revisiting its foundation. Feelings shift with headlines and news cycles. Biblical truth doesn’t. So consider what follows less an argument meant to win you over and more an invitation to retrace the reasons, to root what you already believe more deeply in Scripture than in sentiment alone.

The Clash of the Ages

World leaders often call the Israeli–Palestinian conflict the defining question of our generation, a dispute over land, sovereignty and statehood, with peace implied to depend on Israel’s willingness to concede.

But this argument ignores the core truth: this conflict isn’t unique to our time or even our generation. It didn’t begin in 1948 when the British Mandate ended or with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. This is the latest chapter in a struggle spanning millennia, a battle older than any headline or peace summit. This isn’t the question of our generation; it’s the clash of the ages.

From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture reveals an ongoing war between God and the forces of darkness. What plays out on earth, over land, borders and identity, is merely the surface of a much deeper, spiritual war rooted in truth rather than territory.

Scripture doesn’t leave this battle to inference. Zechariah prophesied that in the last days, Jerusalem would become “a very heavy stone for all peoples,” and that all who try to move it “will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it” (Zech. 12:3). Long before news networks or the United Nations existed, God had already named the players and foretold the outcome. The nations rage. He simply laughs (Ps. 2:1–4). He has already written the ending.

In this cosmic battle between Creator and deceiver, the God of Israel reveals His faithfulness to the world, while the enemy works to obscure that truth, distort God’s character and erase His name. Israel stands at the epicenter of that conflict, not by accident, but by design.

Chosen to Carry the Promise

Calling Israel central doesn’t mean God loves Israel more than the people of any other nation, or holds her up as better, holier or more deserving. It means God chose Israel as the nation through which to unfold His redemptive plan, the vessel for the promised Seed who would bring the opportunity of salvation to every nation on earth.

Genesis 3:15 set the stage for God’s promised Redeemer, but it took time for the cast to take shape. God could have chosen any family to carry His redemptive plan, yet He waited, finally settling in Genesis 12 on an unlikely candidate: an aging man named Abram (Abraham) and his barren wife Sarai (Sarah).

To this couple, He made an extraordinary promise, one that would change the course of history: “I will make you a great nation...I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2–3).

This is the foundation of Israel’s significance: not politics, not military power, but promise. God chose Abraham’s posterity as the vessel through which His blessings would reach every nation on earth. The promise wasn’t based on Abraham’s merit but entirely on God’s will, strength and ability to keep His word.

Many today judge Israel by what they see in the natural. Yet if we only accept what makes sense to us, we limit God to working through perfect people, which excludes all of us. Four times in Genesis 12:2–3, God says, “I will,” declaring He is ultimately the One who acts, fulfills and sustains. Not Abraham. Not Israel. God. Centuries later, a pagan prophet named Balaam, hired to curse Israel, found the words wouldn’t come: “God is not a man, that He should lie...Has He said, and will He not do?” (Num. 23:19). Even a man paid to curse couldn’t unravel a covenant that never depended on Israel’s merit to begin with.

The promise God made in Genesis 12 continues in chapters 15, 18, 21 and 22. Eventually, that pledge begins to take shape with the birth of Isaac. It then passes to Jacob, who becomes Israel, and through his descendants, the line of the Messiah is established.

This is no small detail. Matthew 1:1 begins with these words: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” Jesus was born a Jew, raised a Jew and died with a sign above His head reading “King of the Jews” (Matt. 27:37). Revelation 5:5 calls Him “the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” telling us He didn't discard His Jewish identity with the resurrection and ascension, and still identifies strongly with His earthly family upon His return to reign forever.

God’s plan was generational. He chose a people to bring salvation, not because they were worthy, but because He is faithful.

Grafted into the Promise

If Israel’s story were only history, we could admire it from a distance and move on. But Scripture insists our faith is bound up with Israel’s calling in the present tense too.

Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well plainly, “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). Salvation didn’t arrive to the world through Rome, Athens or any other center of ancient power. It arrived through Israel. Every Gentile believer who has ever prayed in Jesus’ name is praying in the name of a Jewish Messiah, standing on a foundation the Jewish people laid at God’s command.

Paul pictures this in Romans 11, describing Israel as a cultivated olive tree rooted in the patriarchs, and Gentile believers as branches from a wild olive tree grafted in among the natural ones: “Do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you” (Rom. 11:18). Gentile believers were never meant to replace Israel in God’s plan. We were grafted into it, drawing our spiritual nourishment from a root that predates us by millennia.

Throughout Church history, we haven’t always heeded that warning. Replacement theology, the belief that the Church has permanently superseded Israel, fueled centuries of contempt, from the Crusades to the death camps of Europe. Each time the Church forgot it was a branch and not the root, the natural branches paid the price. Yet Paul closes his argument with a promise, not a threat: “blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:25–26).

Our Debt to Israel

It’s no mystery why antisemitism is surging again today, as it has countless times before. The Jewish people have been in the enemy’s crosshairs throughout history, his hatred toward God’s human channel of blessing manifesting as an inexplicable abhorrence, disguised as accusations from controlling the banks and world media to colonialism and apartheid.

The bulls-eye on Israel’s back was painted the moment God made His promise in Genesis 3:15 to crush the serpent through the Seed of a woman and chose Abraham as the carrier of that Seed. From that point on, Satan has sought to destroy the people of that promise. 

Consider the alternative. Had God set His covenant on some other family, in some other corner of the earth, that family would now carry the target. Their name would fill the headlines. Their land would be dragged before the UN. Every border dispute involving them would somehow become the world’s most urgent moral crisis. But God chose Abraham and his descendants, and Satan’s fury followed the choice, not the chosen people’s failings. He isn’t after the Jewish people because of anything they’ve done. He’s after them because of the promise they carry.

The pattern is unmistakable. Pharaoh ordered the murder of Hebrew baby boys. Haman plotted genocide in Persia. Herod slaughtered infants in Bethlehem. Hitler unleashed the Holocaust. And today, the hatred continues, just as demonic, just as focused.

Our spiritual inheritance, the covenants, the promises, the Scriptures, even the Messiah, came through Israel. All of it is from God, delivered through human vessels, the Jewish people. Paul puts it plainly in Romans 9:4–5: “Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen” (NIV).

The Word of God. The revelation of God’s heart and character. The promises. The foundation of our faith. Most importantly, because of Israel, we have Jesus, who didn’t appear out of a vacuum but came through a lineage, a people and prophecy fulfilled. Without Israel, there would be no cross, no resurrection, no hope; and one day, this same Jewish Messiah will return to Jerusalem to deal the enemy a final blow and reign forever, with the strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea serving as the stage for His everlasting triumph.

The conflict over Israel was never really about land, borders or a two-state solution. Those are surface-level distractions dressed up as the main event. The true battle is spiritual: the enemy of God warring against the unfolding of the God of Israel’s redemptive plan, exactly as He has since the garden.

As believers, we’re not called to judge Israel with natural eyes, but to see her through the lens of promise: chosen not for her own sake, but so that through her, redemption would reach the whole earth. So we stand with her. We pray for her. We remember that we are grafted branches, not the root. And we keep our eyes fixed on the same horizon the prophets saw: a Redeemer coming from Zion, a Kingdom without end and a King who was, is and is to come.

The war over Israel began in a garden. It will end at His return. Until then, we watch, we pray and we take our place, however small, in the great unfolding plan of redemption.