Short-Term War. Long-Term Consequences.

I don’t know when this war in Israel will end. I do know that its consequences aren’t going away any time soon. Like the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, this war is creating a new reality in the Middle East. As I prayerfully consider this moment and wonder where God is, I continue to get this sense: God the strategist is among us.

When I use the phrase “God the strategist,” I’m not picturing a God who is cooly standing in the background, manipulating global events, using violence and terror as His puppets. Instead, I’m picturing the God of the burning bush. He is the One who heard the pain-filled cry of the children of Israel, remembered His covenant with their fathers, and then came down to deliver them. The way He delivered them, though, was through a man named Moses. He strategically visited Moses in a way that he couldn’t ignore and commissioned him with an assignment that defined his life. That God is among us now, seeking men and women He can interrupt and commission.

This war is awakening us to a brutal reality. Antisemitism, often in the mask of anti-Zionism, is boldly asserting itself in our day. The Israel-Hamas war will not end it. If anything, Israel’s victory over Hamas will enflame it further as the nations object to the Jewish state defending itself and protecting its citizens. Thus, God is looking for people in whom He can plant an intercessory heart and cultivate an educated mind. He wants to find those who, like Moses, will co-labor with Him for Israel’s ultimate deliverance.

All signs point toward a growing global antisemitism. Though Hamas attacked Israel with terror on October 7th, Pro-Palestinian rallies around the world condemn Israel rather than Hamas. At Harvard, over 30 student groups issued a statement claiming Israel is “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” At my son’s high school, several classmates cursed at him last week for saying that he is praying for the Jewish people. Here in the United Kingdom, antisemitic incidents tripled the week after the war began.

Historical precedent reveals the trend of enduring antisemitism. Pogroms, inquisitions, expulsions, and even the Holocaust itself have not been enough to satisfy the appetite of hate. It seems the extreme antisemitism of one generation doesn’t warn the next generation of what it is capable. Somehow, the human mind finds yet another way to justify violence against the Jews and then blame them for it.

The witness of scripture shows us the source of this antisemitic flood. In Revelation 12, the dragon, “that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world,”––that dragon persecutes “the woman who gave birth to the male Child” (12:9, 13). It seems most likely the woman is Israel. From the womb of the Jewish people, Jesus, “the male Child,” was born. Furthermore, this woman wears a “garland of twelve stars” (12:1). In Joseph’s dream back in Genesis, the stars represent his brothers, the sons of Israel (37:9–11). This woman is the target of the dragon’s attack. The dragon is clearly Satan, and he floods the earth with deception to incite rage against the Jews. This spiritual reality is a part of the past, present, and future of the current evil age. However, God has an answer.

As the dragon spews his antisemitic venom, something begins to happen. Revelation 12:16 records, “But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.” While the dragon’s tide rises, the earth becomes a counter force against it. It opens its mouth to oppose what the dragon releases from his mouth. Could this be God’s strategy for standing with Israel? Those who are on the earth must open their mouth in intercession and advocacy in order to stop the flood of hate that threatens to sweep away the Jewish people.

There is a pressing need now for those who will lift their voice. At the same time, there is a pressing need for those who will prepare to lift their voice in the future. As this war continues, I receive more and more questions about theology, history, and politics regarding Israel. While I genuinely love that people are asking those questions, it also reveals the great need within the Western church for deeper education on these topics. To meaningfully engage, we can’t settle for quick answers to complex issues. We also can’t allow the complexity to deter us from seeking to understand. Israel now and in the future needs not only well-meaning supporters, but also informed and intentional intercessors.

In his book The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky addresses the tendency to settle for quick action in a moment of inspiration when a commitment to long-term investment will actually produce better results. He addresses this through his character, Aleksey (Alyosha) Karamazov:

[Alyosha] was in part a youth of our most recent times, that is to say honest by his very nature, demanding truth and justice, seeking and striving to believe in them and, having come to do so, demanding with all the power of his soul an immediate part in them, demanding a quick deed, with the unbending desire to sacrifice everything for that deed, even his life. Though it is unfortunately the case that these youths fail to comprehend that the sacrifice of one’s life is, in a large number of such instances, possibly the easiest option, and that to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of one’s youth-inflamed life on difficult, laborious study, on book-learning, even if only for the purpose of decupling within oneself the strength required in order to serve that same truth and that same deed which has become one’s dearest aspiration and which one has set oneself that task of accomplishing–such a sacrifice is quite often almost entirely beyond many of them. (39, 40)

Like Alyosha, our impatience and impulse want a “quick deed” to fulfil. It could be, though, that in the midst of this war God is awakening those who commit to “difficult, laborious study” and “book-learning.” It could be that God is strategically visiting those in whom He is initiating a process by which He is “decupling . . . strength” for the sake of a future, gravely necessary deed.

This war may be short-term in its duration. (Most of Israel’s wars are.) However, I anticipate its consequences will be long-term–not just in rising global antisemitism, but also in the preparation of those who will open their mouths to swallow up the flood of the dragon. God, the strategist, the One who commissioned Moses and equipped him for wonders in Egypt–that God is looking for others who will not scroll past the burning bush, but pause long enough to hear His voice calling to them from the midst of it.