Israel

Reflecting on Israel at its seventieth anniversary, I wonder why Reformed Christians, or Calvinists as they are sometimes called, are more reluctant and timid about their views on Israel. 

Providence reached out to colleagues and friends living within Israel to ask four pointed questions about what it is like to live in the land beneath the rockets.

Few would have estimated 70 years ago, let alone one thousand, that this week would arrive. On Monday, May 14, Israel celebrated the seventieth anniversary of becoming a nation. In light of this remarkable and unlikely reality, Christians are faced with the task of celebrating and interpreting this event against the backdrop of the last 70 years.

Israel’s founding was at once a victory for justice, a triumph for freedom, and a crushing blow to antisemitism. It was a story of David against Goliath. But 70 years later, things are different. Israel isn’t David anymore.

If war occurs between Israel and Lebanon, the embattled Christians of Lebanon will suffer in what would be yet another front of Iran’s quest for regional control.

“Seven Days at Entebbe” spiritually fails because it doesn’t fully acknowledge the necessity and justice of Entebbe, instead seeking moral equivalence amid banalities about peacemaking. “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” is more inspirational.

Surrounded by strategic threats and faced with an increasingly aggressive Iran, the security situation for both Israel and Christian communities in the Middle East has changed in an unpredictable and dangerous way.

Important to Israel’s improved global standing is the ongoing global growth of pro-Israel Evangelicals, numbering in the hundreds of millions, whose influence could affect foreign policy in dozens of nations in the Global South.

For now, the border between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights remains the most important border in the Middle East—a veritable dam holding back the tidal wave of Iranian ambition.