A hill to die on?

It’s time for the Church to confront spiritual realities.

A friend recently sent me a picture taken of a small hill in the Lake District (picture below). Sitting proud at the top was a Palestinian flag. Had these people from 2,500 miles away successfully invaded Lakeland and claimed it as their own? What was going on here? Well, we all know the story, in fact, until recently, my neighbourhood in East London was similarly plagued! But at least we have a sizeable Muslim population, I suppose, not that this is an adequate excuse.

What we are witnessing is the outcome of an event that took place around 2,000 years ago and described in the Book of Exodus:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, but Moses alone is to approach the Lord; the others must not come near. And the people may not come up with him.” When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said. 

He got up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up twelve stone pillars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he sent young Israelite men, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he splashed against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.” Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” (Exodus 24:1-8)

This was a major event, more significant than people realise, even Christians. This was the moment when a people – represented by their leadership – cemented themselves to their creator. More context is given in Exodus 19:6, calling them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. A one-time event that was to have eternal consequences. This wasn’t individual salvation, this was corporate recruitment. God had commissioned a willing people to be his representatives on Earth, from this time onwards. Hold onto that thought.

The Jews

Now we stand at the other end of history looking backwards. What do we see? We see a fractured world, riven by conflict after conflict, we see the rise and fall of empires, we see the conquerors and the conquered, roles continually shifting as time progresses. The blood-soaked Earth cries out, “will this ever end?”, knowing that all that we see acted out are physical manifestations of man’s struggles against God and the perfect world he had created. 

And if a theme presents itself, it is the continued presence of one people, the only survivors of this eternal conflict, the only people who can claim a continued presence in this world since those early Bible times. The Jews. The inheritors of the promises made by Moses and his elders all of those centuries ago.

God does not mess about. If he is going to commission a people to be his representatives throughout history, he is also going to ensure their survival, at whatever costs. And what a cost it has been, what a responsibility it has been, to survive despite the most relentless campaign of persecution ever endured by any people ever. 

Ask any historian, whatever their worldview. Anti-Semitism simply cannot be explained by them because, to understand this hatred you are going to have to accept what to some people, even many Christians, is unthinkable – that the Jews have been given a divine mandate. They were chosen and are still chosen and this is not, for most of them, a badge of pride or self-congratulations, it is a burden that must be reluctantly endured by most Jews, who would gladly rather sink into welcome obscurity. 

The Church’s chequered history 

Anti-Semitism has been a constant throughout history, this is an incontestable fact. I could give you a thousand examples of this, but will furnish just one, the recent actions of The United Nations Human Rights Council. Between 2006 and 2023 it adopted not a single resolution against such human rights abusers as China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and has issued more condemnations on Israel than those for Iran, Syria and North Korea combined. It is also the only country in the world that has a standing agenda item keeping a watch on it. Why should Israel be singled out in this way? No prizes for guessing.

And here we come to the ‘hill to die on’. The Church and its influence has been responsible for more acts of Jew hatred than any other power on Earth. This is a legacy of tears and there is no sign, in terms of those who hold positions of leadership, that this is going to change any time soon. 

Unless…it really wakes up and confronts the spiritual realities and the affairs of God, rather than being dragged into politics and the affairs of men. Our current culture discourages individual thought, it would rather control us through acceptable ‘group think’. Unfortunately, many Christians have been unknowingly sucked into this ‘safe place’. Following Jesus is not meant to be ‘safe’. Do you not think that he is weeping at the fate of his people? Do you think that he is unconcerned by the ignorance of many of his followers to the spiritual realities that surround us? Did he die on his hill so that others may live blinkered lives? 

The hatred against the Jews is easily explained if you have ears to hear. If you are willing to accept the presence of an eternal enemy, a spiritual adversary, then you must accept that Satan’s war against God is going to be played out in the world in a certain way. He is going to target God’s representatives, isn’t he? Just process this thought and think again if the penny hasn’t yet dropped!

The people who plant Palestinian flags are nothing more than foot soldiers for the wrong side. The Gaza conflict, along with every other conflict centered on Israel since 1948, has been blown out of all proportions. Why would otherwise sensible people spend huge amount of time demonstrating against Israel when the world is plagued with conflicts that dwarf it in terms of injustice and scale of death and destruction? To date, Syria has killed over 600,000 of its own people since its civil war started, but you see no acknowledgement of this on the streets…or on hills in Cumbria. 

Steve Maltz is a writer, speaker and blogger. He has written over 30 books, runs the Saltshakers website and Foundations conferences and created the award-winning Saffron Planet web radio app.