A renewed call for Gentile Christian commitment to Israel.
by Charles Gardner.
DONCASTER, January 2, 2025 – I’ve been challenged of late by the example of Ruth, particularly with respect to Christian support for Israel in these times of great trial. Though a Gentile, she was totally committed to the Jewish people for whom, it seems, she was even prepared to die.
She thus became an ancestor of the Jewish Messiah. And in identifying with Naomi, her mother-in-law – “Where you die, I will die” (Ruth 1:17) – she was surely speaking prophetically of Yeshua’s death on the cross, outside Jerusalem.
Jesus came to his own – he died for them – and he has called his disciples to take up their cross and follow him there (to Golgotha). In other words, be prepared to die the death he endured, both for his own as well as for Gentiles.
True, Jesus was rejected by many of his own, but many others gladly received him and paved the way for our salvation. Even today, Jewish believers continue to be persecuted by ‘their own’ including religious leaders still blind to the gospel truth.
But Ruth refused to budge from her commitment to Naomi, declaring: “Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
Is that the Gentile Christian response to the current perilous plight of the Jewish people? On the whole, I think not. But it should be.
Suzie Georges, in a Christian Friends of Israel prayer letter from Jerusalem, writes: “Ruth made the ultimate vow to Naomi, and I believe God is calling the global church to make this same vow, as Ruth did by faith.”
Reporting on a ‘prayer walk’ through Israel partly spent near the Gaza kibbutzim which had suffered so terribly on October 7th, 2023, she said it had required great courage from the participants under the present circumstances, with tourism having virtually ground to a halt in view of the dangers involved. An 81-year-old female ‘tourist’ had sought the Lord in prayer about it and been released to come to Israel for the purpose.
Suzie reckons that our times are calling for a more costly love from God’s elect. But, she adds, there is One who has paid the price in advance in order that we might share his love for his people.
Who among us would have rushed to the aid of the Israeli football fans being run over by cars and beaten unconscious in November’s Amsterdam pogrom?
Who among us came to stand with Jews when pro-Palestinian marchers were calling for their demise on the streets of London? If not us Christians, then who? It took the likes of Dietrich Bonhoffer and Corrie ten Boom to arouse the church to her calling “to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile” (Romans 1:16).
For the Jews are loved by God with an “everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3); his covenant promises to them will never be broken.
Legendary preacher Leonard Ravenhill once said: “The world out there is not waiting for a new definition of Christianity; it’s waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity.”
With Israel threatened with another Holocaust, the church has a fresh opportunity to demonstrate her true allegiance to her Jewish roots.
One way to help is to stop referring to Israel as Palestine, as many otherwise excellent Christian organisations keep doing, giving the inevitable general impression that it must be right. But it only serves to fan the flames of antisemitism by appearing to justify Arab claims to the land – which is wrong both legally and biblically. In truth, Palestine closely resembles the re-naming of Israel after the Philistines, their old enemy, as a parting insult by the conquering Romans. The Philistines have since become extinct, but the name has stuck, though no such state ever existed.
Yes, the Christian world needs revival, but it will not come without defying the antisemitic spirit of the day by blessing the Jewish people who first brought us the gospel (Genesis 12:3, Numbers 24:9).
Nations and people groups will stand or fall over their treatment of Israel. “For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you (Israel) will perish; it will be utterly ruined.” (Isaiah 60:12)