This war isn't about Gaza. It's about God.

We’re living through a spiritual armageddon — and most people don’t see it.

artwork by Future of Jewish

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This is a guest essay by Mary F. Holley, a retired physician and author.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Writer’s note: This essay is excerpted in part from my book, “Esau’s Kiss: The Repentant Evangelist.” I think it is important to change our perception of Jews. I don’t want to present them as foreign and distant “they” and “them.” In this essay, when I speak of “we” I speak of us Christians; when I speak to “you” I speak to Jews.

The level of demonic hatred and polarization in our society has reached a fevered pitch that is drawing out of every person what exactly they love and hate, and precisely how much. A spiritual force of evil, falsehood, and hatred has fallen over our society of such magnitude and intensity that it defies human origin. A similar force fell over Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Now it has returned at a global level.

The focus of that demonic power is the same as it was 80-to-90 years ago, the Jews, as a people and as individuals. The past two years since the Hamas pogrom of October 7, 2023 have seen a worldwide explosion of hatred directed at you Jews and those who support and admire you. It is not a natural power, but a supernatural one.

The reasons for their hatred are not reasonable but rather irrational and impervious to evidence and argument. The force and magnitude of it is proof positive that you Jews are God’s Chosen People, the fulcrum upon which the balance of human morality is being measured.

Military conflict is a component of this spiritual Armageddon, but it is not the primary battleground. The military portion of the attack on Israel is coming from Iran, its proxies, and its Russian and Chinese allies. It is taking place in geopolitics in real-time, involving powerful armies and sophisticated weapons, exposing alliances between superpowers and terrorists, advanced civilizations and barbarians. We are seeing just how savage an advanced civilization can be.

But the real battle is a spiritual one that takes place within each one of us. It is Armageddon between tribal animal cruelty and slaughter and moral civilization and life, between opportunistic lies and honest legitimacy, between racial bigotry and genuine egalitarianism, between parochial religious supremacy and compassion for the least of these.

In other words, are we humans really just smart animals, or are we godly intelligent persons? What voices do we choose to believe, and why? What actions are we willing to take, and when? How cruel, how savage, how hateful do we want to be?

How are we doing in spiritual higher math? Can we cut through moral ambiguity and see the wrongness in the good guy and the rightness in the bad guy? Or is everything still white hats and black hats, angels and demons, our side and the other side? Do we mentally and emotionally live in caves, like Neanderthals? Or do we rise up to the heavens, capable of loving an enemy, a “bad guy,” and doing good to those who despise us?

How twisted and corrupt are our governments and institutions? Has our media been bought off by Islamist forces? Are our United Nations and international courts in bed with Jew-hating Islamofascists? Are our leading universities pawns of wealthy Middle Eastern kingdoms? Is Islamic influence shaping the curriculum and discipline standards of our public schools? Who is shaping the minds of our children, training them in enlightened hatred and virtue-signaling bigotry?

Are our religions actually tribal warriors who cannot countenance the salvation of anyone but us? Do we see other religious groups as competitors, or as children of God who speak a different language? Did not one Creator make us all? Can we identify a true religion that unites a believer with the God who created all of us? Can we distinguish that from a cult that manufactures hatred and division? Do we believe our religion is superior to all others? Or can we see the gifts and beauties of the Holy Spirit in people who worship God differently?

Our answers to these questions are demonstrated for all to see in our reaction to God’s Chosen People, the Jews. A tiny minority of humanity has been set aside to be different from all others, a people who lives apart. Parental favoritism is a prevailing theme in the book of Genesis, one that God makes no apology for. He stated clearly that we would be judged based on our reaction to that Chosen People: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).

As God’s Chosen People, you Jews were stripped of your land and ancient heritage and sent to wander the world, dodging swords and bullets, while keeping the faith of your forefathers. The word for exile, galah, also means to reveal. To exile Israel is to reveal her to the rest of the world.

Now you are coming home. “‘I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,’ says the LORD your God” (Amos 9:15). Our reaction to God’s planting of Israel in your own land reveals our attitude not just towards Israel, but towards your God.

Islam’s violent response to that planting was its reaction to the disproof of its assumption of religious superiority and it was swift and brutal. Vicious pogroms were launched against Jews immediately after the 1917 Balfour Declaration¹ and the 1921 League of Nations charter that followed.

If you regained control of Israel, Torah was true and Islam was proven to be a lie. Thousands of Jews who had lived in the Land of Israel (eventually renamed “Palestine” by foreign invaders) for 3,000 years were slaughtered without mercy over many years because of the religious insult of Jewish sovereignty on land Arabs had colonized on behalf of Islam, importing Arab language, religion, and culture into a historically Jewish land. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not really about land, colonialism, or resistance; it is religious hatred disguised as a political cause.

With each act of God in re-establishing the State of Israel, defending and expanding your borders, restoring Jerusalem to Israeli control, asserting her right to exist, and the Muslim religious ego exploded. The years 1921, 1937, 1947, 1967, 1973 — Islam’s battle against the God of Israel has seen riots of violence against Jews, tanks and armies, missiles and drones, suicide bombers, slaughters of families, rape of women and decapitation of infants. Islam has proven the content of its character in its reaction to the works of God.

A post from X illustrates the intensity of Islamic hatred for a nation that dares refute its religious superiority by taking back its ancestral land and archeological treasures that prove Israel’s ownership. Cheryl, an Israeli woman, engaged a Muslim woman in conversation:

She attacked one of my historical posts aggressively. Venomously in fact. So I just asked her what her opinion was on the topic. She attacked first, replied with more anger, but as the conversation continued she seemed to calm down and became normal. She gave me her thoughts and I replied with mine. It remained respectful for almost 3 hours of back and forth. I offered my solution that I felt would possibly allow peace between our two people.

And that’s where the conversation suddenly changed. And so did my entire approach to X. Her solution was simple, and she wrote it with such ease and clarity and confidence. She wrote that for her, the only solution was for every Israeli man, woman and child to die. But not just die… to be slaughtered slowly and painfully and for her people to build their cities on top of our rotting corpses including any of us that may still be alive. She had no doubt. She didn’t flinch. She wanted us dead and wiped out, and our entire history erased from memory to be replaced by Islam.

I remember pausing, and not knowing how to even reply. And all I could get out was “Are you saying that you’re not interested in peace or a state of your own, but simply to complete massacre all of us”. And in an instant she replied “Yes, that’s exactly what I want. The land is not important. We don’t care about the stupid land. All the land belongs to Islam and we will take it and your lives, including your children.”

And at that point, something snapped in my mind. Because unlike her and so many millions of haters like her calling for my death and that of my children a thousand times a day, I’ve actually lived that experience. I know what it’s like to lose my entire family. I know what it’s like to watch those you love be slaughtered in front of you exactly as she was describing.²

The nerve that was struck in that Muslim woman is the vulnerable and super-sensitive nerve of “What if Islam is a fraud?” The very existence of Israel insulted the validity of their religion and offended Muslim notions of superiority. The bottomless pit of “maybe we were wrong” beckoned for the Muslims, and yet another genocide threatened Judaism, an existential crisis for both sides. Israel was vindicated by God, repeatedly, over the past 80 years.

Christianity was also stunned at the restoration of Israel in her biblical land. Unable to comprehend the salvation of a people who did not accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we were left speechless for 15 years. The Catholic Church acknowledged in 1965 that Jews were beloved of God and published Nostra Aetate, “In Our Times.” It was a papal document that announced, in front of God and everybody, that you Jews did not have to convert to Christianity to be saved.

Nobody knew how God would manage to pull that off, the details were murky and the language vague, but Catholics were told to stand down. And they did. I can attest as a child of the 1960s that everything I was taught as a student growing up in Catholic schools was affirming and tolerant of Judaism. No other religion was handled with such grace.

On the Protestant side, there was no such central authority, but many denominations eventually made similar statements in the interest of ecumenical fellowship. Again, the details were obscure, but we were assured that God could handle His problem children, and we were not to interfere with His parenting of a rebellious teenage sibling. We did not know how to bridge the gap between you and “Jesus Christ is Lord” any more than they could reconcile your restoration with “There is no God but Allah.” But we knew a miracle when we saw it.

The largest subgroup of Protestants, however, are the evangelicals, still on the warpath, determined to save as many of you poor ignorant fools as possible, by any method necessary, including deceit and manipulation. Rather than question our theological assumptions, we double down on our Four Square Gospel. It is impossible for us to stomach the possibility that perhaps you know our Jesus better than we do, follow him more authentically than we do, and study his Scripture and chant the prayers that our Church has completely forgotten.

We fully expect you to break out in choruses of “Amazing Grace,” weep and mourn that you pierced your Savior, and come solemnly to our altar to eat your brother’s body and drink his blood. While we evangelicals badger you to convert to our semi-pagan religion, we offer you untold assistance in Israel as that is the landing pad for Jesus’ return, and your attendance there is mandatory to our eschatology. In that, our differing interests could align, and our generous assistance is genuinely appreciated by your wary rabbis. Up to a point.

That point has sharpened in recent years with a “Jews for Jesus” movement that includes a group by that very name, headquartered in California, with branches worldwide, but especially in Israel. There is still a strong current of evangelism directed specifically at Jews with the stated intent of wiping you off the face of the earth and replacing you with Bible-toting Christians who happened to have been born Jewish, a sort of spiritual holocaust. We might tolerate your innocent cultural gestures and customs but insist on a red-blooded acceptance of the “Gospel according to the fundamentalists” that brooks no dissent.

Our battle against the God who restored Israel is more subtle than that of the Muslims. We don’t threaten you with a dagger to the throat like the Muslims, but we categorically refuse to accept the idea that God might have enough love in His heart to bail you out of hell while still in a state of rebellion against our revelation from God.

Jesus didn’t die for the sins of the world, but only for the sins of our private and exclusive club. Your YHVH (the four-letter Hebrew name for God) could not possibly include the eternally preexisting Redeemer who presented himself to us Gentiles in the form of Jesus. We divide your God into three and then insist you only have one-third of Him.

“You are about to pass through the territory of your relatives the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful ... I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on. I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own” (Deuteronomy 2:4-5). Jews for Jesus was founded by Jews who have loitered in Seir and converted to Christianity; they are your worst enemies.

They considered themselves “completed Jews,” and thus imply that you are incomplete. Generally, they were once passive and perfunctory Jews, suffering from religious dysphoria, have taken their hormone regimen and bought a new wardrobe, and have now transitioned to be enthusiastic and devoted messianic Jewish Christians.

They find themselves in an evangelical Christian church that looks, sounds, smells and tastes Jewish, and find themselves doing Jewish things like observing Sabbath and Jewish holidays, things they had not done as superficial or non-observant Jews. They are regarded by Gentile members of the messianic synagogue as rockstars and are given leadership roles they were never offered in a Jewish synagogue.

These messianic Jews have a vested interest in affirming their own religious trans identity by degrading your cis dedication to Torah and the faith of your ancestors as stubborn and irascible. If you are right, then they are wrong, an existential threat to them both personally and spiritually. Evangelical religion is terrified that you might be saved without confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, just like Islam is horrified that that you might be saved without admitting “Mohammed is his prophet.”

Messianic Jews charge you with inflexible legalism when you defend your Torah and your Jewish identity. Respect for the religious “other” is impossible to them. Unwilling or unable to find their own place in the broad space of Judaism, they jumped ship and now, like the apostates of Medieval times, they degrade the value and validity of a vessel that has weathered four thousand years of stormy seas.

They and their evangelical friends find it unacceptable that the Church as a whole has abandoned its job of converting you into them, abolishing Judaism as we know it, and making you just as self-righteous and arrogant as they are. They mock your Talmud even though the objectionable laws regarding Gentiles have been superseded by more modern ones for centuries. Torah is alive in your hands, not paralyzed in the 7th century.

Far more charitable than the Muslim who wants to cut your head off, Messianic missionaries dangle before your youth a promise of eternal life as if it were a spiritual bribe, a timeshare in heaven, not realizing that you already own the entire condominium. Your covenant includes complete forgiveness upon proper repentance on any day of any week without any animal sacrifice. They refuse to see the abundance of evidence of the Holy Spirit alive and active in your lives and faith since that contradicts their assumptions about who gets the Holy Spirit of God, when and how.

Jews who proclaim Jesus to be Lord and Savior are subscribing to the Gentile covenant and cannot at the same time participate in the Jewish covenant. Being Jewish by birth and retaining elements of Jewish culture does not change that. Once dedicated heart and soul to Jesus, believing him to be God incarnate, any residual Jewish practice is, by definition, devoted to Jesus.

The born-Jewish Christian’s primary commitment is now Christian, not Jewish. The very fact that he deems it necessary to convert you means he does not consider your love for God and trust in His salvation encompassed by or subsumed in his faith in Jesus. In other words, he considered Jesus a separate God. Such a believer is no longer a Jew, regardless of genealogy.

You are always one generation away from annihilation. In the U.S. you lose up to 75 percent of your young adults to interfaith marriage, usually to Christians. That does not have to be a loss. Our children may or may not convert to Judaism, but even if they do not, they and we are capable of assisting your Jewish children in keeping a Jewish home and raising Jewish grandchildren. Rabbi Kook, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, wrote in the 1920s:

“Our strong commitment to assure the continuity of Judaism, with its ideas and patterns of behavior, together with its corporate self on its own land, stems from the widespread recognition by our people that we still have a long distance to travel in order to complete what we began. We began to say something of immense importance among ourselves and to the world, but we have not yet completed it.”

“We are in the midst of our discourse, and we do not wish — and are unable — to stop. Under no circumstances will we abandon our distinctive way of life, nor our universal aspiration … just as we will not abandon our hope to return and be rebuilt, and exist as a nation in our historic homeland, as in ancient days. We cannot abandon these.”

On the other hand, we Gentiles are famous for exploiting and expropriating your culture, your identity markers and traditions, calling ourselves “messianic Jews” even though only a small fraction of messianic Jews are born Jews. The vast majority are Gentile evangelical Christians.

We do this with the explicit goal of temping, drawing, even deceiving authentic Jews, a bait and switch operation that would put Madison Avenue to shame. We are spiritual transvestites wearing a kippa and a tallis with a fish on it, using Hebrew and Yiddish words inappropriately, and we imitate your holiday observances. We pretend these superficial features will camouflage our obvious evangelical Christian message, like a six-foot-tall drag queen in the red-light district.

Even when we are not trying to entice you, we insult you with our crossdressing, our expropriation of your identity to serve our religion. We think we can replace you in your own space, Judaism, by being “better” Jews than you are, replacement theology on steroids. We modify your Passover seder and make it an Easter feast, even though the seder did not exist in Jesus’ time; it is a rabbinic Jewish rite that belongs to you alone.

Often our Judeophilia³ and charitable outreach to Jews is in the interest of establishing a connection through which to manipulate you emotionally with our love and caring. While many of our interfaith outreach programs publicly deny that they are baiting you into Christianity, their fundraising materials directed at Christian donors tell a different story.

They promise to subtly inject their “our way is the only way” Gospel message into interfaith humanitarian and antisemitism programs, “undercover” operations in the IDF, needy Holocaust survivors’ support, and immigrant settlement organizations in Israel. “Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD deceitfully” (Jeremiah 48:10 - New King James Version). They produce secular appearing archeologic and historical infomercials on Israeli television that end in a Gospel presentation. “Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau” (Genesis 32:11 - English Standard Version).

The Armageddon presented to you by the “hand of Esau” is not confined to the hostility and violence of Esau’s four hundred armed bishops at the Spanish Inquisition. “The hand of my brother,” our familiar friendship, is even more dangerous than the hostile hand of Esau. We put up a front of honor and respect, pretend to a genuine interfaith dialogue, and destroy what little trust and respect still exists between our peoples. Manipulation and deceit have replaced medieval torture.

I am a professional evangelist. I know my business. I know that my job is to bring lost sinners to your God. I do it by genuinely loving people. I have never been a drag queen, drug addict, or prostitute, but I can connect to our common humanity, identify needs and longings in other people, and show them a better way to meet that need or longing than the dysfunctional method they are currently using. I treat people with sexually transmitted diseases and counsel prison inmates with compassion and respect.

Evangelism like this works. It honors them as human beings, dignifies and explains the horrific situation they find themselves in, exposes the rational response they had to an irrational situation of abuse and degradation, and encourages them to honor and respect themselves as the hero that they are. They survived. Many of their compatriots did not.

That same approach to evangelism is what convinced me that Jews and other wise and holy people do not need Christianity. You already have the God we know as Jesus, and you don’t need our church. You have a powerful and beautiful relationship with God just as you are. What you and other people need is for me to be a solid and faithful Christian, faithful to my tradition and respectful of their tradition.

I bring an experience of the cross that is unique and powerful. I need your experience of Sinai revelation, their experience of Hindu poetry, of Islamic wisdom, of Sufi mysticism, of Buddhist meditation, to be a better Christian and a complete human being. Our engagement with your religious traditions is not to convert you, but to make ourselves better Christians for knowing how to build a Sukkah or light a Sabbath candle.

Your daily morning prayer service, over three thousand years old, is a world of meditation on the holiness of God. Our Uncreated Creator is larger than any of us know, larger than all of us together can possibly know, and we have all of eternity to explore each other’s hearts and minds to learn. God created us with an insatiable desire to learn, to master, to study, to explain, to understand, and with that drive He gives us infinite subject material, Himself.

By your return to the Land of Israel, you have demonstrated the truth of Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. You have proven that the Word of God given to you at Sinai is true and your stewardship of it for 4,000 years is valid. Our reaction to you is our reaction to your God. And that is why God could say 4,000 years ago, and demonstrate today: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).

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1. A public statement issued by the British government in 1917, during World War I, expressing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in then-British Mandatory Palestine (historically the Land of Israel)

2. @CherylWroteIt on X

3. Defense, love, or admiration of Jews and Judaism