TL;DR–I don’t support Israel for theological reasons. I support Israel for civilizational reasons. If you look at Israel’s conflict with Iran and its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis) and decide Israel is the bad guy, you need to take a long, hard look at the dark influences that have led you to this point in life.
Here’s a fundamental premise behind everything you’re about to read: Christians have a biblical and spiritual obligation to care about what happens to their brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter where they live on this planet. Okay, let’s go:
I’ve gotten a few questions from friends and relatives about Israel’s war with Iran–and whether the U.S. should involve itself. Coincidentally, around the same time I saw this headline and article on the Roys Report.
Hundreds of Christians Massacred in Killing Spree in Nigeria
Yes, another day, another slaughter of Christians by Muslim extremists in some corner of the world.
By the way, if you don’t follow organizations like Voice of the Martyrs or International Christian Concern you won’t ever hear about these massacres. They’re just not “news.” (Dog bites man.) And when these atrocities do make the news, often the the fact that the perpetrators are Islamists is buried or filtered altogether. (It is a twisted form of political correctness that keeps many legacy news agencies and “journalists” from reporting the jihadist origins of the carnage.
For example, in the Roys Report, you have to read down to the 22nd paragraph of the article to encounter the word “Muslim” or “Islam.” But to the editors’ credit, we do learn in paragraph five that the killers were shouting “Allahu Akbar” allowing the reader to reach the accurate conclusion. In Nigeria, as in countless other places around the planet, if Christians are being slaughtered, it’s Muslim extremists doing the slaughtering. (With a few Hindu incidents sprinkled in.)
Here is just a little sampler platter of events that have occurred over the last 12 months:
1. Massacre in Yelwata, Benue State, Nigeria – 13–14 June 2025
- Fulani jihadists attacked a displaced‑persons center run by a Catholic mission, killing between 100 and 200 Christians—estimates vary slightly—by shooting and burning victims.
2. Kasanga Massacre, DRC – 12 February 2025
- The Allied Democratic Forces (Islamist ADF-ISI) abducted approximately 70 Christian civilians in North Kivu, DR Congo. They were beheaded inside a Protestant church in Kasanga. Bodies were found on 14 February.
3. Essakane Church Massacre, Burkina Faso – 25 February 2024
- Jihadists from Islamic State–Sahel Province invaded a Catholic church during Mass and killed 15 congregants.
4. Istanbul Church Shooting, Turkey – 28 January 2024
- Two masked Islamic State gunmen opened fire at the Church of Santa Maria in Istanbul, killing one person and injuring another.
5. Tarmuwa Massacre, Nigeria – 3 September 2024
- Around 130 villagers—likely Christian farmers and worshippers—were killed by Boko Haram/IS-aligned militants in Mafa, Yobe State en.wikipedia.org+11en.wikipedia.org+11cruxnow.com+11.
Note that last item. You don’t hear the names IS, ISIS or ISIL much anymore, not because the groups don’t exist a but becuase they’ve been rebranded. And dozens of offshoots and imitators of the groups are still very much operating across the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Boko Haram and its splinter groups in Nigeria come immediatelly to mind.
If you follow Christian persecution news sources on social media you discover that hardly a week goes by without a horrific incident that goes unreported and therefore unlamented by the wider world.
Why is this relevant to the current debate about Israel and Iran? Well, as I told a friend who recently texted me for my thoughts about the Tucker Carlson – Ted Cruz debate about the issue:
“The Iranian people are amazing, and if they weren’t suffering under the heel of a death-cult they would be one of the most advanced and prosperous nations on the planet. Some of those long-suffering Persian people are Christians.”
That would be bad enough. But Iran has also been funding and arming brutal Islamic extremist groups all over the world. This is where the issue overlaps Israel.
For decades the Iranians have been funding and arming Hamas in Palestinian areas like Gaza; Hezbollah in Lebanon; and the Houthis in Yemen. Not to mention four different terrorist orgs in Iraq and a couple in Syria.
Not many are old enough to remember how the Carter administration failed to support the secular, modernist monarch in Iran in 1978-’79–the Shah–and allowed the radical Islamists led by the Ayatollah Khomeini–to take control.
What is clear, but what Mr. Carter and lot of human rights idealists/purists in the West didn’t seem to understand, is that in Muslim majority nations, there are only two choices:
- A secular dictatorship that does hard, oppressive things to keep the Islamic extremists under control. (See: Egypt and, until recently, Turkey)
- A theocratic dictatorship that does even harder, even more oppressive things to its people to enforce strict compliance with sharia law. (See Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, et. al.)
There is no third option. The idea that an Islamic majority nation will use democratic processes to create some sort of just and decent society is a fantasy. A delusion. A delusion George W. Bush and many other leaders seem to have entertained.
The oppression of the Iranian people, and all of the death, oppression and slaughter the Mullahs have sponsored over the last 40+ years is, in part, on Jimmy Carter and his naive, idealistic sensibilities. Of course, Shiite Iran is only one half of the Islamic equation in the world.
You can’t understand Middle East geopolitics without understanding the ancient regional conflict betwen the two main strains of Islam–Shiite and Sunni. The split in Islam goes all the way back to the seventh century. Imagine that the blood-soaked split between Protestants and Catholics happened immediately after the death of Christ and you’ll get the general idea.
Everything in the Middle East over the last couple of decades has been about the conflict between Sunni Islam (with Saudi Arabia at the head) and Shiite Islam (with Iran at the head). Initially, both sides were all about destroying Israel. Why?:
Because since 1948, Israel has been an island of Western modernity in a sea of medieval Islamic barbarism. THIS is why it has been intolerable to the Islamist, global caliphate mindset.
In other words. Israel is offensive to the Islamists not because it is Jewish but because it is Western.
And there are many Progressives in the U.S. who also despise Western Civilization. (Which, by the way, is “Christian Civilization.” And they despise it, whether they know it or not, precisely because it is Christian. Many Progressives are unaware of the “anti-Christ” spiritual roots of their Progressivism.)
No, Christians don’t have total liberty in Israel. But they have far, far more than believers do in Islamic nations. The same is true of Muslims. Arabic/Muslim people in Israel vote, have representatives in the Knesset, and enjoy a culture that is the envy of most of the developing world.
Now back to Iran . . .
Iran–with Russian and China–represents an axis of real-deal evil in this world at this moment. There is no regime in this world so evil or despiciable that Russia and China won’t support it and arm it. In fact, they’re attracted to it. And both are supporting Iran.
And Iran’s relentless quest to obtain nuclear weapons makes it the principal threat to stability and to Christian civilization in the world.
Israel is doing the dirty work that the U.S. and other Western nations simply don’t have the “huevos” to do. And it’s doing it from a survival motivation. Iran with nuclear weapons is an existential threat to Israel. But it is also an threat to the U.S. and the rest of the civilized world.
All of which is why the best and the brightest in Iran are quietly rooting for Israel and the West in this conflict. They long for the days in which Iran’s great minds could join the progress and blessings of the Western world. And the worst and the dumbest are rooting against Israel and the West.
If you’re rooting against Israel, you’re rooting against humanity, equality, progress, freedom, and civilization.
Summary:
From a kingdom (enemies of Christ) standpoint, the Iranian regime has to fall. So does the Putin regime in Russia and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China. They are all enemies of Christ and in accordance with Psalms 110:1, Hebrews 10:12-13 and 1 Corinthians 15:24-25; they must collapse because they oppress the people of God.
If that is the case, and it is, then the U.S. and Israel are right and good in removing the mullahs of Iran from power.
Again, the spiritual enemies of Christ don’t hate Israel becuse the nation is Jewish, but because it is Western. Just after 9/11 many people rightly recommended reading Samual Huntington’s book Clash of Civilizations. I did. And it explains why it makes sense to support Israel in it fight for survival against Iran.
There is a thing that can be called “Islamic Civilization.” It is rooted in something very dark and very much counter to human flourishing. (God is for human flourishing.) We here in America live in the flawed but highest expression of Christian Civilization (which promotes human flourishing.) This will seem harsh, but if you think Israel is the probem, you have imbibed too deeply of the spirit of anti-Christ.
UPDATE: Within a few hours of my posting this piece, we learned that the U.S. had surgically struck Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons. The world is safer because this happened. Ultimately, the best possible outcome is that the people of Iran rise up and liberate themselves from the theocratic Islamic death cult that has ruled them since the late ’70s.