Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem
By: Deji Yesufu
That Israel is at war is no longer news. What is newsworthy is the reality of life in the land of Israel today. Children can no longer attend school, as schools have now transitioned to online learning. Israelites have turned bomb shelters into homes. Israel continues to have missiles fired at it from Iran, and rockets shot at it by Hezbollah terrorist elements in southern Lebanon. Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, and they are fishing out Hezbollah terrorists from their hideouts in southern Lebanon. Lebanon has spent the better part of fifty years waging war against Islamic elements in its country. Lebanon used to be the only Christian-majority nation in the Middle East, but that country was invaded by Islamic fundamentalists who have sought to make the country a Muslim-majority nation. Israel entered the Lebanese civil wars of the 1980s on the side of the Christian people in that country. Israel understands that as long as radical Islamic elements hold government in Lebanon, they will have no peace.
Israel shares its northern borders with Lebanon; its southern borders with Egypt; and its Eastern borders with Jordan and Syria. Toward the southwest of Israel is the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces continue to wage war against Hamas terrorists. The nation of Israel was born in conflict, and the people are determined not only to be preserved in that country, but they are also determined to deal a final, lasting blow to all their enemies. Israel is a nation of ten million people, yet all its young men are mandated to carry out a thirty-two-month military service to their country, while all other men, who have fought for Israel, remain on the reserve list. Many of them have today been called out of reserve to go and fight the enemy. In the midst of all these, life in Israel must continue; the children must go to school; businesses must continue; university life must thrive, and scientific findings must be made, etc. In this article, I will be making a passionate plea to Christians to pray for the peace of Jerusalem according to the biblical admonition we find in Psalm 122:6.
Where Does the Aggression Against Israel Come from?
The chief aggression against Israel comes from the Muslim scriptures, the Quran. Surah 5:51: “O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends: they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you take them for a friend, then surely, he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people”. Surah 98:6: “Verily, those who disbelieve from among the people of the scripture (Jews and Christians) and Al-Mushrikun will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are the worst of creatures.” Surah 9:29: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax (Jizyah) in acknowledgement of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” Sahih Muslim 4366 quotes Muhammed as saying: “I will expel the Jews and the Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslims”. Sahih Muslim 6985: “The last hour will not come unless the Muslims fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say (it), for it is the tree of the Jews.”
Note that Sahih Muslim is not the Quran; it is a hadith, and it is one of the trusted hadiths in the Muslim tradition, whose words carry as much authority as the Quran. Therefore, a committed Muslim, an orthodox Islamic scholar, is taught and indoctrinated from both the Quran and the hadiths to be antagonistic to Jews and Christians. Modernity has tempered these words a great deal, but this has not removed the inherent antisemitism that Muslims have towards the Jews. There is no peace in the Middle East today, not because the Jews do not wish to be at peace with their neighbours, but because anti-Jewish elements cannot be totally eradicated from the Middle East because of the things written against the Jews both in the Quran and the Hadiths. Israel has succeeded in making peace with many Muslim countries in the Middle East. The Abrahamic Accord, which America was championing before the October 7th, 2023, massacre of Jews, was meant to solidify these relationships with Muslim countries in the Middle East. October 7th brought an end to that endeavour, and some have suggested that Hamas carried out those attacks mainly to put an end to those talks of peace with Israel. At the moment, Israel has good working relations with governments in Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Bahrain. The real challenge Israel has is not with the governments in the Middle East, but with radical Islamic groups. The reason why the war with Iran is so very important to Israel is that Iran has a government that is the biggest sponsor of proxy groups that continue to threaten the peace of Israel. Now that the leadership of Iran is largely decimated, and a possible regime change is almost happening, Israel is very close to finding peace with all its Arab neighbours. And for those asking why Israel owns nuclear weapons, but would not allow Iran to own one: Iran cannot own nuclear weapons because if they do, their number one target would be Israel.
Besides Muslims in the Middle East, another aggression that Israel is suffering from is from the political left in the West. Europe and America used to be Christian nations. Today, those two leading continents are largely turning away from Christianity and adopting atheism, agnosticism, and liberal values. Liberals hold the position that the Bible is a myth and that nations cannot build their fundamental values on the truth of the scripture. They conveniently forget that the progress and prosperity that the West enjoys today were founded on the liberty of conscience that the Bible teaches. Europe entered into a new era of progressive thinking following the Protestant Reformation. It is what led to the Enlightenment period, the industrialisation period, and the modern times that we are in today. The political left believes that modernity is the product of jettisoning the Bible, and where the Bible is thrown away, the whole talk of Israel being God’s special people is considered trash. Therefore, the political left finds willing allies with Muslim to destroy Israel.
Where is Israel in the Economy of the Christian Gospel?
There are many articles on social media today that make the point that Jews are antagonistic to Christians. There is a recent one that is making the rounds that the Israeli government refused Christians to observe Palm Sunday yesterday. Such commentators forget quickly that Israel is at war and that the government is doing everything to reduce casualties. Even such explanations are not sufficient for these commentators. They then turn the argument around and say that some Christian groups are “Christian-Zionists”. They say that these people are trying to realise the second coming of Jesus by waging wars against the enemies of the Jews. I am not a Christian-Zionist, and the historical account shows me that Israel would rather be at peace with its neighbours than fight its enemies to bring the Messiah. If Israel has enemies in the Middle East at all, it is not because she went out of her way to find them; it is because, as long as you have the inherent antisemitism codified in both the Quran and the hadiths, Muslims would never be at peace with the Jews. In this section of the article, it is important that we examine the place that Israel occupies in God’s economy of redemption.
The land of Israel and the Jewish people are today a foremost reason that the Christian Bible is true. The Bible is regarded by Christians as redemptive history. It is not just the history of our world, but the history of God’s attempt to save his elect people. The God who created the heavens and the earth created human beings and placed them on this earth. Of all the people groups God created, he chose the descendants of Abraham, the Hebrew people, as his own special possession. The Bible is full of God’s special dealings with his people. How he rescued them from their enemies, how he punished them for their sins, and the fact that he would never take his love away from them. The high point of redemption history is God promising the Jews that a Messiah would come to save Israel from her enemies. It is in the person of who the Messiah is that Jews and Christians have differences. The Jews reject the idea that Jesus is the Messiah, while Christians accept this fact. But does the fact that the Jews reject Jesus as the Messiah make them any less the people of God? The biblical account says this: “I say then, hath God cast away his people? God forbid… God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew… Even so then at this time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace…” (Romans 11). This account is written by Apostle Paul, a leading New Testament scholar, and it was written while he enunciated the doctrines of salvation: justification, sanctification, and ultimately glorification within the Christian message. What is the relevance of this truth to the current conflict in the Middle East?
Jesus Christ is the God of the Jews. Our Lord appeared to Adam in Genesis 3 and clothed him and Eve after the fall. Our Lord appeared to Abraham in Genesis 12 and commanded him to leave his people and follow him to a land that he would show him. In Genesis 15, when Abraham was distraught that he had no child of his own, Jesus showed him the stars and said that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of heaven, and Abraham believed him. In Exodus 6:3, Jesus appeared to Moses and told him that he revealed himself to the Patriarch as the Almighty God, but to Moses, he was further revealing himself as Yahweh – the LORD. The story of the Bible is the story of God’s revelation to humanity. He revealed himself first to the Jews, and in the New Testament, he took up flesh and came to humanity in the person of his Son, Jesus. The economy of God’s dealings with Israel is simply this: God’s revelation to Israel at every point in redemption history is sufficient to save them. It means that while Jews may reject the revelation of God as it came in the person of Jesus, the revelation that God has given to them as it is found in other parts of the Old Testament is sufficient to save them. God’s electing of his own comes through the gospel message – a message that he has been preaching from the book of Genesis.
The real true joy today in the crisis that Israel is facing in the Middle East is that while many religious groups may be against Israel, and many ideologies are screaming for their annihilation, only Christians have stood with the Jews in these conflicts. And Jews never forget. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has promised that as soon as they have finished with the terrorists in the Middle East, they will shift focus to other parts of the world, including Nigeria, and help eradicate Islamic terrorists around the world. They are doing this because of a sense of their indebtedness to Christians who have stood with them in their time of need. Besides this, Christians’ support for Israel has made many Jews reconsider the Christian message and the very contentious question of whether or not Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Where this would lead to, none of us can tell for certain. What is sure is that the forces of good in our world today are steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition – men and women who believe in the Bible. Unfortunately, the forces of evil are those who hold to radical writings in the Quran and who believe that Christians and Jews must be destroyed.
Conclusion
This article is not a treatise against Muslims. Many Muslims have learnt to co-exist with Israel. In fact, in the land of Israel today, there are practising Muslims who live there. Some of them send their children to also serve in the Israeli Defence Force. These Muslims have discovered that Israel means well for all people in the world. In the same vein, there are Muslims all around the world who are not antagonistic to Christians and Jews. They hold the position that the verses I had hitherto quoted (Quran 5:51, 98:6, 9:29), which are found in their scriptures, apply to a historical context which should not be relevant for today. They understand that continual war with Muslims and Christians will not serve any progressive purpose for our world. These Muslims have adapted Western education, while at the same time keeping their beliefs in the Quran. We call them peaceful Muslims, when in actual sense they are just reasonable individuals. There is no reason anywhere in our world today for anyone to kill or destroy another people group simply on the basis of their ethnicity or religion. This is what genocide is all about, and Israel has rightly identified the attack on its people on October 7th, 2023, as genocide, and they have rightly employed the force of arms to destroy all those who hold the position that Israel has no right to exist in the Middle East. Israel has asked the United States of America, the most powerful military in the world, to support them in this campaign. President Donald Trump has agreed to do this. Christians do not need to join in this war against the enemies of the Jews. We can, however, pray that there would be peace in Jerusalem. Psalm 112:6 – “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee…” Today, Jerusalem is not at peace. Israel is waging a war that will bring peace to Jerusalem. When we pray that Israel will defeat all her enemies, we are praying for peace in Jerusalem. And there is a promise that comes with it: God will prosper all nations and people who wish well for the Jewish people.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at [email protected]
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