Is Your Faith In Trouble?

 

“10 He does not delight in the strength of the horse;
He takes no pleasure in the legs of a man.
11 The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him,
In those who hope in His mercy.”

Psalm 147:10-11, NKJV.

I am old enough to remember Christians saying that the Iron Dome was not simply a brilliant piece of tech, but the hand of the sovereign God over Israel. I remember this being a common belief in the Baptist and Charismatic circles I grew up in. I have even seen memes in recent years likening the iron dome to the hand of God in the sky knocking away missiles. Yet now we see it failing, and failing badly.

This image above is tragic, because the leaders of these two countries have led each of their peoples to destruction. This image represents missile strikes hitting the small country of Israel, launched by Iran.

I want to ask those who up until recently called this iron dome the hand of God in the sky, are you self-reflective enough in your faith to admit that the supernatural claim of the iron dome was always a lie? Are you self-reflective enough to acknowledge that it was really just a piece of clever tech that took care of mostly poor-quality rockets, but was never really tested before last year? And that it is now being shown to have been just that all along?

It was numerous claims like this, that I saw Christians making about this tiny country, that caused me to change my mind about the supernatural state of modern Israel. They called many things miracles, that were obviously not that at all. The things they called miracles could often simply be explained by the fact that Israel was supported by the most powerful nations in the world, first Britain, then the Soviet Union, and then the United States. This caused me to re-evaluate the claims of many Christians on this issue.

Are you willing to do that? If that is your belief? Are you willing to examine your claims about this tiny nation being a supernatural evidence of God in this world?

I bring this up, because we might see the colony of Israel fail in our day, or at the very least, we might see it become a lot more precarious. We don’t want that to happen, as that would be a disaster, yet wars can bring disaster. While some Christians ludicrously claim that Netanyahu is trying to liberate Iran, what is really happening, is that two nations, who both believe they should have pre-eminence in the Middle East, are now in open war, and both are seeking to crush the other, and weaken their ability to project in the region. Maybe this will end in another stalemate, like last year? Maybe it will end in both destroying each other? Maybe one will achieve total victory? Maybe one will achieve victory at a great cost? None of us can predict how this will finally settle.

But we don’t need to either. Whatever comes of this war, we can already say that many supernatural claims about Israel are being shattered right now. And so the prophecy chasers are seeking to reframe the supernatural claims.

This is important because many Christians see the country called Israel as a linchpin of their faith, as the physical manifestation of the Bible today. But it is not. It is simply a human nation, built for human reasons, in an unstable area. Like any other nation it has strengths and weaknesses. Whether it stands or falls, Christianity is not based on that, is not exemplified by it, and this nation has no bearing on it. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and it exists wherever his gospel is being proclaimed.

This might become an important assertion for some people in coming days.

I don't celebrate this war. I think it is tragic that bad theology, bad policy, bad ideology and more has led to this point. But here we are. Pray that this war ends as quickly as possible, and there is as little destruction as possible. And pray for the innocent who are continually caught in the middle of these never ending wars.  

I would also like to share the perspective here of Dr Chadi Youssef, who commented on my post about this on social media. I have reproduced Dr Youssef’s comment here in full, with permission, as I think it speaks to this issue very well:

“Your piece Matthew is landing on something real that a lot of Christians won’t face until their theology is forced to collide with reality: we confused providence with endorsement, and we turned a defence system into a sacrament.

A hard truth for the Church: calling the Iron Dome “the hand of God” was not faith — it was category confusion. God can be merciful in restraint, yes. God can preserve life, yes. But Scripture never teaches us to identify a weapons system with divine favour, as if engineering equals election and interception equals righteousness. That logic is closer to idolatry than to biblical discernment, because it turns military capability into a spiritual badge. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses” isn’t a cute verse; it’s a warning (Psalm 20:7). If we trained ourselves to see technology as “proof God is on our side,” then the moment the system bleeds, our faith bleeds with it — because we tied our doctrine to a dome instead of to Christ.

And the deeper issue is this: the Bible’s moral architecture does not allow the modern shortcut so many prophecy-chasers took. In the prophets, election is not immunity; it is accountability. The more sacred the claim, the more severe the judgment when injustice is done under God’s name. That’s why Ezekiel speaks of God’s name being profaned among the nations (Ezek 36:20–23). That’s why Jeremiah mocks slogan-faith (“Temple of the Lord!”) when the vulnerable are being crushed (Jer 7:4–7). That’s why Amos says God judges His own people precisely because of covenant (Amos 3:2). So when Christians call state survival “miracle” while ignoring justice, bloodguilt, and the treatment of the stranger, they are not reading the Bible — they’re using Bible words to bless a political project.

This image you shared—covered with strike markers—is not “prophecy content.” It’s the fruit of leaders and systems dragging whole populations into escalation. It is tragedy, not spectacle. And it exposes another lie: the lie that history has no recoil. When two nations believe they must have pre-eminence in the corridor, they will keep tightening the corridor until ordinary people cannot breathe. That’s not mystical — it’s corridor physics. The Levant is one hinge-land: what ignites in one part locks movement everywhere. That’s why we keep seeing skies close, routes reroute, insurance spike, supply chains stall, and civilians pay first.

So yes — your fright: many supernatural claims are being shattered. But here’s the more important point: if your faith collapses because the modern state of Israel is vulnerable, then your faith was never anchored where the New Testament anchors it. Christianity is not “verified” by any nation-state’s military dominance. The Church is not commissioned to treat any flag as the Bible’s physical manifestation. The cornerstone is Christ, not a state, and not a defence system.

And this is where the Bible’s end-horizon corrects both sides. The prophetic vision is not “one tribe wins forever by power.” Isaiah 19 gives the opposite horizon: a healed corridor—Egypt, Assyria-space (the northern arc that includes Syria/Aram in the biblical imagination), and Israel reconciled under God’s blessing, with a highway running through former enemies (Isaiah 19:23–25). That’s the real “highway” logic: not conquest-talk, not sanctified violence, not propaganda—repentance, justice, humility, reconciliation under Messiah. Until that moral centre returns, every “miracle narrative” that baptises weapons will only train Christians to become blind, tribal, and easily manipulated.

I don’t celebrate war. I fear God. And I’m saying to the Church: repent of using God’s name as a political stamp; stop calling technology “miracle” when it suits you; stop making modern Israel the linchpin of your faith; and return to the actual biblical spine—justice, mercy, humility, and Christ as King over the corridor.”

As someone else noted as well, “This is literally a real-world lesson in real time on the danger of false prophecy.” This is precisely correct.

I sympathize with the Jewish people’s desire for a homeland. I have noted that many times in my writings over the years. What I do not stand with, though, is the attaching of this with apocalyptic ideologies of a pseudo-Christian end times view, that has been pushing the nations of the Middle East towards greater and greater confrontation. Many of these bad apocalyptic ideas see these confrontations as necessary for prophecy to be fulfilled, and some who hold these ideas have managed to have strong influence in high places. But what Christians should have been doing instead was treating the Middle East as a mission field, not a proving ground for apocalyptic speculations.

Many Christians have identified their faith with the constitution of the nation state of Israel in the 20^th century. As a pastor I expect that many of those people would be having their faith challenged by current events in the region. They were taught a prophetic timetable, that is supposed to unfold in a certain way, but as this timetable increasingly comes to be revealed as false, this will cause many to question what they have been taught. I hope these Christians are self-reflective enough to note that eschatology was never meant to be made central to their faith in the first.  

Our faith is centred in the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and we can see the evidence of his work through his Church in this world, and in many other ways. He is real and truly at work. We should be very hesitant though to use the hardest parts of the bible, end times passages, as linchpins in our faith. The church has long disagreed over how those passages will precisely be fulfilled. There is good reason for that.