Israel and the End-times 'Strong Delusion'

                 This is going to be a lengthy post, but I believe it’s an important one to read through. It’s going to touch on some controversial aspects of current debates. I think, however, that it’s important not to shy away from honestly exploring these sensitive issues.

2 Thessalonians 2 describes the events of the end times – which include Satanic signs, wonders and portents – as comprising what Paul calls a strong “delusion”: “9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness”.

                What is becoming clearer as we move through the timeline is that this “powerful delusion” manifests itself in a bifurcated response to Donald Trump, the probable Antichrist. This also often involves Trump’s treatment of the modern nation-state of Israel.

                Why do I use the term “bifurcated”? Merriam-Webster defines “bifurcated” as: “divided into two branches or parts”. The underpinning of our national (and global) political discourse is marked by bifurcation: the right (or “conservatives”) vs. the left (“liberals” or “leftists”). Politics is portrayed in the media as a war between these two sides, a war that manifests itself at times in the public’s kneejerk responses to cultural flashpoint events, and at other times in reasoned and intelligent debate on important issues. In regard to the Israel/Palestine conflicts, this bifurcation shows up as a divide between “supporters of Israel” and “supporters of Palestinians”. What the mainstream media and our politicians in Washington, D.C. usually don’t encourage us to do is to peer behind this veil, which might lead to us questioning the ultimate rationality or validity of the fact that seemingly all events of global importance are neatly slotted by the Powers that Be into one of two rigidly-defined binary slots (‘right’ or ‘left’). For instance, the right call themselves “conservatives,” but what is the modern day Republican Party in the USA really “conserving”? They surely aren’t conserving the environment, for example. And, on the other side, how “liberal” (i.e., promoting civil liberties) is a Democratic Party that mobilized to squelch stories on social media about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election?

                The fact is that this neat and tidy, ossified bifurcation between the right and the left sides of the political aisle developed hundreds of years ago, in political contexts that were quite different from what we deal with in a 21^st century world. The terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ initially referred to people who sat in different sections of the room during political meetings in the lead-up to the French Revolution, which occurred way back in 1789. The 18^th century was a time when Twitter and Facebook didn’t exist; when cell-phones, television, and automobiles didn’t exist; and when Washington wasn’t filled with K Street lobbyists acting on behalf of massive corporate power to influence votes in the legislature and decisions on the Supreme Court.

                Fast forward many years later to the fascist regimes that arose in Europe during the twentieth century. What is interesting is that both Mussolini and Hitler rose to power by incorporating ideas from both the traditional right and the traditional left. Mussolini, often portrayed as a buffoonish right-winger, was originally a socialist journalist. Hitler named the Nazi party the National Socialist party. The Italian and German fascists weren’t actual conservatives at all, in the Burkean sense – they were radical innovators who utilized the power of the nascent radio industry to inundate their followers with nationalistic propaganda, besetting the public mind with Orwellian catch-phrases and ad hominem attacks on their cultural enemies, all for the purpose of bringing in an alleged new golden era wherein all of these enemies would be eliminated. The goal of ushering in a new ‘golden age’ was explicitly contradicted by Edmund Burke’s original ‘conservative’ arguments against the French Revolution. These fascist movements were first and foremost driven by the lust for power, as is also seen with Trump and the MAGA crowd. In order to attain that power, both Hitler and Mussolini appealed to sentiments that would have been scattered amongst both the traditional right and the traditional left.

                Now, in the context of the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA right in recent years – a nationalistic movement in America that is being mirrored internationally in movements popping up like poisonous mushrooms in other countries, including the U.K., Italy, Germany and others – it is key to realize that the “powerful delusion” of 2 Thess. 2 is reflected in the public’s response from both “sides” of the aisle. In many of the posts on this blog, I have focused on the MAGA right. But let’s also look at how Hillary Clinton, a radical, secular liberal (or leftist), is responding to the MAGA movement. This is a quote from a recent interview on MSNBC: “"The idea that you could turn the clock back and try to recreate a world that never was, dominated by— you know, let's say it, White men, uh— of a certain persuasion, uh— certain religion, uh— certain point of view, certain ideology, is just doing such damage...".

                One way that Hitler and Mussolini gained power so rapidly is that they portrayed their mission as one devoted to stopping radical, atheistic communism, which had so recently captured power to the East (in the former Soviet Union, in 1917). Now, communism was indeed a real threat in both Italy and Germany. That was true, although Hitler and Mussolini falsely portrayed it as a larger threat than in fact it was. Still, those claims about the threat of communism weren’t completely made up out of thin air. In the case of Hillary Clinton, we are seeing the bifurcation of the strong delusion play out in real time: While the MAGA right is hypnotized by a false, desecrated version of ‘patriot Christianity,’ where hypocrites wave Bibles they haven’t understood or perhaps even read, the left’s at-times openly-avowed hatred of the Bible and Christianity is also ramping up as a counter-reaction to MAGA’s ignorance and hypocrisy. Hillary Clinton is thus doing Donald Trump's work for him: alienating people against him by associating him with a faith that, in actuality, he has nothing to do with. Realize that the left and liberals are also stricken by this powerful delusion, because they are in fact shadow-boxing with a fascist political movement that is only “Christian” in name only. In doing so, they think they are fighting against something called “Christianity,” when in fact they are doing no such thing. Hillary Clinton isn’t actually going to war with true Christianity or true Christians. She is doing what Hitler and Mussolini did – caricaturing her enemies by painting them with a broad brush, in order to portray the Christian movement as a whole as being insidious and anti-American.

                To get to my main focus of this post, I want to talk for a bit about how this bifurcated strong delusion is manifesting itself specifically with regard to Israel, the Palestinians and the Gaza war.

                The surprise terror attack that took place on October 7, 2023, wherein over a thousand Israelis were killed and hundreds of Israeli hostages were taken by Hamas militants, was an event that sparked off a counter-reaction by Israel that has led to what many are starting to describe as a genocide. By most official accounts, the number of Palestinians in the Gaza strip who have died as a result of Israel’s war machine raining bombs on Gaza’s cities and restricting access to food and other supplies numbers over 60,000 at this point, nearly two years into the war. Predictably, this has led to global protests, attended by hundreds of thousands of angry civilians from countries around the world, many of them declaring that Palestine must “be free, from the river to the sea,” while Palestinian flags wave from side to side on street corners and on major bridges and highways. Netanyahu and Israel’s expansionist right-wingers argue that this global wave of anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli sentiment has contributed to a wave of what they claim should be defined truly as a wave of what amounts to antisemitism – the hatred of the Jewish people themselves. Leftists, socialists, human rights advocates, and liberal politicians tend to respond that, no, they aren’t specifically targeting anyone based on their race, religion or ethnicity, but are instead focused on stopping the slaughter that is occurring daily in Gaza and on resuming work towards an eventual Palestinian state. However, what is also clear is that many on both the right and the left are also taking this criticism to new depths, as Jewish people worldwide are being portrayed in social media memes and in podcast diatribes as being nefarious, corrupt controllers of world events. This is reminiscent of how Nazis targeted the Jewish community in Europe for allegedly conspiring to ruin Gentile societies through banking conspiracies and political intrigue. The prejudice and ignorance behind such takes don’t prevent them from appealing to plenty of people from both the Democrat and Republican parties who are susceptible to such inflammatory, hate-based propaganda.

                Now, since this is a blog that focuses on the Bible and end times prophecy, we must ask at this point: How should these global developments connected to the Gaza war be interpreted through the lens of Biblical teachings and eschatological predictions?

                I believe we must begin by remembering Paul’s commentary in Romans, chapters 9 through 11, about the continued special importance – the chosen-ness – of the Jewish people themselves down through history. This chosen-ness is described in the Bible not as an endorsement of a supposed inherent ‘righteousness’ of the Jewish people, but rather as a manifestation of how God achieves his purposes throughout history by using a tiny group of people who serve as a vehicle or a vessel for influencing spiritual developments. This is how Paul puts it, beginning here in Romans 9: “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised.” It is clear that here, Paul is teaching that the Jewish people as a race or ethnicity have served in a special role as God’s vessel for carrying out His purposes down through history, in the midst of huge developments in technology/economics, and amidst the rise and fall of enormously powerful Gentile empires.

                However, we *also* know from Romans 9 that “it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.” This is why Christians – those who believe in Jesus as the true savior of the world and the Son of God and who follow Jesus’s commandments – are *also* what Paul calls “the people of Israel”. We know from later on in these sections of Paul’s teachings that the original conception of fleshly Israel – the people descended from Jewish ancestors - the people who ascribe to the religion known in contemporary parlance as “Judaism” (as multifaceted as that phenomenon may be) – also is still in effect as it relates to future eschatological developments. This is how Paul puts it in Romans 10: “my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. 2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. 3 Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” And in Romans 11, Paul puts it this way: “Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me”[a]? 4 And what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”[b] 5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.”

                Just as is the case with Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus or atheists, Jewish people are not “rejected,” but are presented with the same choice that all other people groups are presented with: the choice to accept or reject Jesus’s role of authority in their lives. There is a term for people descended from fleshly Israel who are also believers in and followers of Jesus Christ: messianic Jews. From the website of 'Jews for Judaism,' I find that: “In an Atlantic article, titled "Kosher Jesus: Messianic Jews in the Holy Land," Sarah Posner explains that "there are an estimated 175,000 to 250,000 Messianic Jews in the U.S. and 350,000 worldwide, according to various counts; they are a tiny minority in Israel -- just 10,000-20,000 people by some estimates -- but growing, according to both its proponents and critics.” This would align with Paul’s description of Jewish believers in Jesus as a remnant akin to the 7,000 who did not bow the knee to Baal in the times of ancient Israel. In Romans 11, Paul puts it this way: “23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in [as olive branches], for God is able to graft them in again.” Paul stresses that Gentile Christians should not be arrogant towards the Jewish people or derogatory of them in any way – after all, the criteria applied to them by God *also* applies to Gentiles. Jewish people are no different from us, and both Jews and Gentiles are placed on an even scale in God’s hands. How we respond to the gospel determines our ultimate fate - *not* our ethnicity, our traditions, or skin color, or our political leanings. And the gospel is promoted through peaceful, respectful, loving dialogue – not through vituperative attacks, finger-pointing or racism. Paul rounds out these vitally-important three chapters of Romans by stating: “28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they [i.e., those members of fleshly Israel who continue to reject Jesus’s ministry] are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.”

                So, how should these teachings from the epistle to the Romans inform our response to the glaring problems of mass death of civilians in Gaza, widespread antisemitic attacks worldwide, and fervent finger-pointing over whether there should be a two-state solution or not in modern day Israel/Palestine?

                First, realize that the modern day gathering of Jewish people in Israel/Palestine, which has taken place gradually over many decades since the 19^th century, is to a large extent a gathering in unbelief. As the above-mentioned article states, messianic Jews are currently a small minority within the state of Israel. Most other Israelis are either modern secularists, atheists, or adherents of some form of modern day rabbinic Judaism – e.g., Orthodox, Conservative or Reform. I am going to make this statement, though some readers of this blog may interpret it as politically/culturally inflammatory: Modern day rabbinic Judaism is to a large extent a false religion based to a significant degree on parsing the text of the Talmud. This is because rabbinic Judaism, in the vast majority of interpretations, views a supposed “oral law” as being equivalent to the written law (i.e., the 613 mitzvot found in the Torah, or the Pentateuch [the first five books of what Christians call the Old Testament, and what adherents of rabbinic Judaism call the Hebrew Bible]). As Christians, we still believe that the 613 commandments found in the Torah are, in many cases, guides for our moral conduct and our beliefs, but they have also been in some cases abrogated by and in other cases updated by progressive developments found in those teachings of Jesus which are recounted in the gospel narratives, or by teachings found in the New Testament epistles. Therefore, Christians are a people not bound by complete adherence to the entirety of the OT’s written laws – and, to an even greater degree, we utterly reject any claimed authority that teachings found in the Talmud are alleged to carry, according to adherents of rabbinic Judaism.

                The appalling atrocities that we see every day taking place in Gaza right now are probably the precursor events to the Antichrist ushering in his attempt at regional peace as a counter-reaction. Many Israelis living in modern day Israel/Palestine believe that, as is taught in their preferred eschatological framework, a new earthly messiah will come to secure political and military dominance for the Jewish people in the Holy Land. This will, they allege, bring a new golden age of peace, prosperity and plenty to people around the world, who will be convinced of Israel’s righteousness and their special place of chosen-ness among the world’s inhabitants. In contrast, as Christians we believe that these false beliefs constitute a local manifestation of the strong delusion which affects unbelievers and blasphemers worldwide. We know from the NT epistles that when the world’s inhabitants declare “peace and safety,” sudden destruction will come like labor pains on a woman, and they shall not escape. In other words, the future Tribulation is not one where the nation state of Israel will be rewarded for all of the historical crimes it has committed against the Palestinian people, who were ushered off their ancestral lands in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba (or ‘Catastrophe’) of 1948, when the state of Israel was officially founded. That is why Christians should not be promoters of a shallowly-defined ideology called “Christian Zionism” – the belief that Jews in Israel should be supported lock, stock and barrel by the full weight of the US military machine because they have a supposed Abrahamic constitutional right to possess the Holy Land. We know that this is a biased ideology that American politicians use for their own ulterior purposes, because the promise to Abraham as the father of descendants as numerous as the grains of sand in the sea is specifically referred to by Paul in Romans as a promise to those worldwide adherents of the true faith (Christianity) - not to perpetual descendants of fleshly Israel, most of whom are not adherents of the true faith. The Antichrist weaves his web of deception around the world by falsely proclaiming himself to be a defender of "Christian Zionism" and Israeli colonialism – a mere smokescreen that serves as a precursor to his ultimate betrayal of both Christians and Jews as his true nature unveils itself in persecution of religious believers. Donald Trump and his administration have been asserting a crackdown on alleged “antisemitic” speech, and I believe it’s likely that in the future this will lead to a fulfillment of the Olivet Discourse prophecy regarding persecution of Christians in the end times: Mark 13:9: “You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them.” It will be deemed to be hate-speech or “antisemitic” to preach the true gospel during the end times, and in all likelihood the deluded majority of fleshly Israel who fail to place their hope in Jesus will react against us with outrage, blame and repression. We can infer from the first chapter of John’s gospel that that will happen to us (the *Body* of Christ), because that’s also what happened to Jesus: “10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” In addition to being attacked in synagogues, I believe we will also be persecuted and attacked within the harlot "Christian" churches that define Mystery Babylon and her cultural influence worldwide.

                We will be dubbed ‘anti-semites’ merely because we boldly maintain our staple beliefs, derived from the New Testament. The Antichrist and his minions, in contrast, will continue their project of flattering the Jews and encouraging their errors and prejudices. This is because the Antichrist and his adherents have no true loyalty to the Christian project itself.

Nor, however, should we view the Jewish diaspora and Israelis as inherently the sole ‘bad guys’ of this picture, which is the way that leftist radicals on college campuses often tend to caricature this scenario. We shouldn’t be “anti-Zionists” either – it’s a nonsensical stance to take, because Israel currently exists as a modern nation state, and its rights to its own internal security should be respected and valued by the world community. Being ‘anti-Zionist’ at this point would amount to trying to erase historical developments that have already occurred, in the name of achieving future objectives that amount to an unrealistic fairy tale. These vocal campus activists, many of whom are young people who lack a fully developed understanding of historical events that have occurred through thousands of years of Jewish survival, often declare that the US government should stop sending any military assistance to the Israeli government – something that would likely lead only to further combustion in the region and to further attacks on Israel’s sovereignty. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians as holistic, rigidly defined communities based on religion, geographical boundaries or ethnicity should be caricatured as the bad guys or the good guys of these end times developments. They would more accurately be described as Satan’s pawns – the fallen angels love stirring up strife between these two people groups: inciting both of them to claim that only their own respective group deserves perennial rights to the Holy Land; promoting vicious and hateful propaganda from extremists on both sides; and also promoting the lie amongst the international community (e.g. the members of the United Nations) that some mythical two-state solution will be the answer to this massive geopolitical dilemma. Hamas supporters are also by and large supporters of a false religion (Islam) and to the extent that they approve of Hamas’s violence on October 7^th and the taking of Israeli hostages, they are also playing right into the devil’s hands by justifying violence against innocent civilians and spreading lies that cover these events in a constant fog of deception.

These are some baseline conclusions, then, that I think everyone should firmly establish in the background of our minds:

                No two-state solution will ever be successfully implemented, whereby the two warring adherents of these respective false religions would suddenly decide to live next to one another in peace and concord.

                The situation is spiraling into violence region-wide, and we know that this regional strife will play into the ultimate fact of global Armageddon, described in the book of Revelation. Armageddon will be the precursor to the Second Coming.

                Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis, again, as a whole, are the “good” or “bad” guys who will salvage this broken state of affairs by achieving their own biased and one-sided political aims.

                And the United States (the end times Mystery Babylon) will continue to play ‘divide and conquer’ games among Arabs and Jews in the Middle East so as to achieve its own geopolitical dominance in the region.

                I urge anyone reading this to refuse to accept biased or disrespectful propaganda on either side of this geopolitical chasm. No one should be proclaiming ultimate faith in either an Israeli flag with a six-pointed star, or a Palestinian flag with red, black, green and white stripes, because neither of these flags represents a geopolitical entity that will have any future stability or security as we move quickly towards these dramatic worldwide events.

                What we should all do as Christians is to heartily reject any hateful rhetoric that occurs, whether that takes the form of Islamophobia or antisemitism. What we should do is to pray for all involved, that war crimes would cease and that innocent civilians would be spared unnecessary slaughter or starvation. We should pray for the release of hostages. And we should pray that as these events continue to spiral out of control and as the Antichrist asserts his dominance over developments in this combustible region, unbelievers of whatever background would gain eyes to see and ears to hear, and come to the Gospel. As I stated in my last blog post, what our focus is on now is not political salvation or the achievement of radical worldly justice – our focus is on our eternal salvation and our eternal fate, which will be decided at the separation of the sheep from the goats. I’ll give Paul the last word here – this is from Romans 10: “11 As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”[e] 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”