When They Come for You, They Won’t Ask if You’re a Christian Zionist or Not |
On the eve of Easter 2026, a person dressed in black placed an explosive device at the entrance of the Israel Centre in Nijkerk, Netherlands. The building is operated by Christians for Israel, a nonprofit that promotes biblical understanding of God’s purposes for the Jewish people. The damage was limited. No one was inside. The message was not.
The attack fits a pattern that has spread across Western Europe since the US-Israeli war against Iran began in late February. Synagogues bombed in Rotterdam and Liège. A Jewish school targeted in Amsterdam. Ambulances run by Jewish volunteers set on fire in London. A car torched in Antwerp. The attacks have been claimed by a little-known Islamist group with possible links to Iran.
Nijkerk was different. This time the target was not Jewish. It was Christian.
While an explosive device was detonated at the door of a Christian organization for its association with Israel, Christians in other parts of the world argue fiercely about whether such an association is theologically legitimate at all.
Within Christianity there are two major positions on this matter. Dispensationalism holds that God’s promises to Israel remain in effect and that the Jewish people continue to occupy a central place in the divine plan. Replacement theology, or supersessionism, teaches that the Church inherited those promises and that Israel no longer has a special role. The differences between eschatological positions among believers are mostly about the chronology of certain expected events, but beyond that, the doctrinal pillars of Christianity are the same. A secondary topic like Israel’s position in this discussion should not generate a division so severe that it leads to serious accusations against the other side. Constructive and elevated dialogue is fine. But this discussion has spiraled completely out of control between two sides that basically believe the same thing about eternity.
What I do know is this: while that discussion takes place in seminaries, conferences, and social media threads, a man in black places a bomb at the door of a Christian center on the holiest weekend of the Christian calendar. He just sees a Christian organization supporting Israel.
My own chain of logic
During my teenage years I did not know what to believe. I decided to be an atheist. Then I read the Gospels and came to believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Then I read Paul in the New Testament. Then I read the history of Israel in the Old Testament. And then the connection between Christianity and the Jewish people became evident. I did not have to dig for it when using the literal method of interpreting the New and Old Testament.
Jesus was Jewish. The apostles were Jewish. Paul was Jewish. Jesus explicitly endorsed the divine inspiration of the Pentateuch. Which means he endorsed the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants, a covenant that predates Christianity by millennia, including the promise that whoever blesses Israel will be blessed and whoever curses Israel will be cursed. Has God ever failed to keep a promise? If the answer is no, the promise stands. It does not depend on a border. It does not depend on a political party. It does not depend on whether the Jewish people accept the one we, as Christians, recognize as the Messiah. Paul masterfully explained it in Romans 11.
Three thousand years later, the Jewish people are still here. They have survived every force that tried to erase them. The Canaanite peoples. Babylon. Rome. The Third Reich. That alone should give any honest reader of Scripture pause.
Some argue that supporting Israel displaces Christ from the center of the faith. That Jesus Christ is the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament, that he died on a cross, that he rose on the third day, and that he will come a second time to judge the world. That is what all Christians believe. Which of those beliefs changes by supporting Israel? None. Christ did not come to abolish the promises, he came to fulfill them. He said it himself: I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. For those of us Christians who support Israel, Christ remains exactly where he has always been: at the center. The dilemma is false.
Israel’s problem is existential. The slogan “from the river to the sea” is not a call for coexistence. It is a program of annihilation. And it does not end at Israel’s borders. After the Jews in Israel, they will come for the Jews in the rest of the world. It is not as if Israel surrenders and its enemies will agree to live peacefully alongside it.
Our support for Israel is not conditioned on the appreciation it receives. What could it be conditioned on? If God had wanted to discard Israel from the beginning, he would have let the walls of water of the Red Sea fall on the Hebrews. But no. They fell on Pharaoh.
The question that cannot be answered
I had never heard the terms “Christian Zionist” or “Christian anti-Zionist” until I began writing for The Times of Israel in late 2024. The labels came to me from outside. But the logic was always there. The definition of Zionism is simple: support for the right of the Jewish people to have a state. The word has been loaded with connotations it does not carry.
There is a question I would ask any Christian who is against Israel: what is it, exactly, that you want to happen?
Do you want Israel to exist or not? If not, how do you envision its disappearance? If you do want it to exist, what does being against Israel actually mean in practice? Iran says Israel has no right to exist. Do you agree with that? Do you truly understand what Iran wants to do? Will you celebrate the day Iran destroys Israel completely? Because that is what supporting Iran implies. I would ask any Christian who supports Iran: how do you align your position in favor of Iran without being antisemitic? How do you differentiate yourself from the mentality of the Iranian regime in that regard?
I am sure the answers would be as diverse as they are contradictory. The Christian who is against Israel should examine the motivation behind his position.
And when the prophet Zechariah writes, “On that day I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves” (Zechariah 12:3), who is he referring to? Who are “the peoples” and who does Jerusalem represent? As a Christian, you should have read this passage at some point. Or perhaps you were unaware of it.
The numbers that settle the argument
Theology aside, there is an empirical test. According to the Open Doors World Watch List 2026, 388 million Christians face high levels of persecution worldwide. One in seven Christians on the planet.
In North Korea, the #1 country on the list for 29 of the last 30 years, an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Christians are held in forced labor camps. Possessing a Bible can mean execution or life in prison. In 2023, a two-year-old child was sentenced to life in prison because his parents owned one.
In China, the regime has demolished hundreds of churches, removed crosses, banned anyone under 18 from attending religious services, and forced churches to display portraits of Xi Jinping alongside crucifixes. Between October 2025 and January 2026, nationally coordinated mass arrests were carried out against at least three major churches.
In Nigeria, of the 4,849 Christians killed for their faith worldwide in 2025, 3,490 were in that single country. That is 72% of the global total. Catholics and Protestants alike. One Christian killed every two hours in sub-Saharan Africa. Nineteen thousand churches destroyed. Massacres.
Iran ranks 10th on the same list. In 2025, 254 Christians were arrested for their faith, nearly double the previous year. Courts sentenced Christians to a combined total of more than 280 years in prison. Worship in the Persian language is essentially outlawed. Conversion from Islam to Christianity is treated as apostasy. Possessing a Bible has been used as criminal evidence. After the June 2025 war with Israel, the regime detained at least 50 Christians in a single month, branding them as Mossad collaborators. A pregnant woman received a 16-year sentence for attending a house church.
These are not abstract numbers. They have names. In 1990, Pastor Hossein Soodmand was arrested for having converted to Christianity at the age of 13. Tortured. Held in solitary confinement for one month. They gave him an ultimatum: deny your faith or we kill you. He refused. They hanged him. In 2019, nearly three decades later, they bulldozed his grave. They would not leave him in peace even in death. Christians in Iran face the death penalty under broad national security laws, and the true number of those killed for their faith may never be known.
The contrast could not be sharper. Just three days ago, Rami Al Dabbas, a Jordanian who left Islam, went through a period of atheism, and then converted to Christianity, published his testimony freely in The Times of Israel. Two converts. The same decision. One was hanged. The other writes on a Jewish platform. The Christian who is against Israel and in favor of Iran should ask himself whether an article like Al Dabbas’s could be published in an Iranian media outlet. And many Jews, it is worth saying, do sincerely appreciate the support that a portion of Christians offers to Israel.
Israel is not on the World Watch List. It does not appear in the top 50. Approximately 180,000 Christians live in Israel, and that number has more than doubled since the 1970s. Christians have freedom of worship, the right to build churches, and legal protection of their holy sites under the 1967 Protection of Holy Places Law.
Unlike the countries on that list, what Israel reports are isolated incidents of harassment by some ultra-Orthodox extremists, a minority within the 14% of the population that is ultra-Orthodox. These incidents should not be minimized or justified, since any of those ultra-Orthodox Jews would expect to be treated with respect in any other country because of their faith. Despite that, historically, it has been safe for Christians to travel to Israel and walk the holy sites of Christianity with local guides without any problems. That cannot be said of Iran, Yemen, or Syria.
And there is something else that needs to be said. The war in Gaza was provoked by a terrorist act in which more than 1,200 civilians, including children, were murdered in cold blood on October 7. Not as collateral damage. As the objective. If you skip making a judgment about what happened that day and go straight to condemning Israel’s response, your problem is not the war in Gaza. Your problem is that you did not like Jews before, and Gaza is the excuse, even if it means supporting a terrorist group that is not particularly friendly to Christians either.
Those who only condemn Israel for the suffering of Christians use two different measuring sticks. If the concern is genuine, let us look at the full picture in the Middle East alone. Yemen ranks 3rd on the World Watch List. Converting to Christianity is punishable by death. In 2026 alone, more than 50 Christians have been arrested and disappeared. Syria ranks 6th. In June 2025, an attacker entered a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus during Sunday worship with 350 people inside, opened fire and detonated an explosive vest. At least 30 dead. The largest attack against Syria’s Christian community since 1860. Iran ranks 10th. Israel does not appear. Where does the Christian church suffer most in the Middle East? The ranking exists. It is public. Anyone can read it. And Israel is not on it.
And to the European Christian who debates these things from the comfort of his continent: can you not see what is happening in your own countries with Islamic extremism? And to the Christian in the United States or Latin America: can you not inform yourself about this problem? The information is available. The question is whether you want to see it.
The man in black who placed the explosive in Nijkerk did not consult the statement of faith of Christians for Israel before choosing his target. He saw the word “Israel” on the building. That was enough.
The Iranian regime does not ask its Christian prisoners whether they support the Jewish state. It asks whether they are willing to renounce Christ and return to Islam. That is the only question that matters to a theocratic apparatus built on submission.
This is the reality the Christian who is against Israel refuses to confront. The threat is not theological. It is existential. And it does not discriminate between those who support Israel and those who do not. It comes for anyone who will not submit. It comes for the Jew first. Then for the Christian who stood beside the Jew. Then for the Christian who did not.
When they come for you, they will not ask about your eschatology. They will not ask about your interpretation of Romans 11. They will not ask if you are a Zionist.
They will ask if you are willing to stop being a Christian in order to live.