Every ancient culture had its gods, and every god had a job. The god of the sunrises and sets. The god of the river floods and recedes. The god of war fights and rests. They were defined by their function, and their function had boundaries.
And then a voice speaks from a burning bush on the back side of a desert, and Moses makes the mistake of asking it for a name. The answer he gets back is Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. I AM THAT I AM.
This God, unlike the gods of the past, is the ground of all existence itself. Everything that is, is because He is. You cannot name Him because naming Him would require a word bigger than any we have.
And then Jesus of Nazareth walks into the Gospel of John and picks that statement up and puts it in His own mouth. He does it not once but seven times, and each time He is making a claim so enormous that His first-century Jewish audience understood it immediately, even if modern readers who have been stripped of that context often miss it entirely.
“I am the bread of life.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am the door.” “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “I am the true vine.”
Every single one of those statements begins with ego eimi, which means I AM. Those are the same words the Greek Septuagint used to translate the unpronounceable name God gave Moses at the bush.
Jesus is not using a figure of speech. He is not reaching for a metaphor. He is invoking Exodus 3. He is saying that the uncategorizable, uncontainable, unnameable God that Moses met on the mountain is standing in front of you right now in human skin.
And in case there was any ambiguity left in the room, He removes it completely in John 8:58. The Pharisees are arguing with Him about Abraham, and Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
He does not say I was. He says I AM. He uses the present tense. And the Pharisees picked up stones to kill Him, not because they were confused but because they understood exactly what He was claiming. He was not claiming to be old. He was not claiming to be a prophet. He was claiming to be the voice from the bush.
The I AM statements only work if you understand Exodus. They only carry their world-breaking weight if you know the covenant history, the burning bush, and the divine name that was so holy it could not be spoken aloud.
Jesus did not appear out of nowhere with a startup religion and a set of inspirational quotes. He walked into a story that had been unfolding for two thousand years and said He was the one the story had been about the entire time.
When you cut the Jewish root, when you treat His heritage as incidental, you sever the I AM statements from their foundation.
Those statements are God fulfilling the promise He made at the bush by showing up in person to do what He said He would do.
“I will be what I will be.” And what He chose to be was one of us, a Jewish man from Nazareth who carried the unspeakable name in a body that could bleed.
That is the character of God, and it is the thing that makes the biblical narrative unlike any other religious text on earth. He is not a God who stays abstract and unapproachable, hidden safely. He is a God who came down. He is a God who showed up. He is a God who says I AM and then proves it by becoming someone you can touch.
And He is a God that died for all of our sins so that we may be saved.
Last week, in the southern Lebanese village of Debel, an IDF soldier took a sledgehammer to a crucifix outside a Christian family's home. Another soldier photographed it. Six more were present and did not intervene or report it. The image went viral on Sunday, April 19.
Here is what happened next.
Within hours, the IDF confirmed the photo was authentic and opened an investigation. Prime Minister Netanyahu called the act "unacceptable" and said he was "stunned and saddened." Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar called it "grave and disgraceful" and extended an apology to every Christian whose feelings were hurt. By Tuesday, the soldier who swung the hammer and the soldier who filmed him were both removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in military detention. The six bystanders face separate disciplinary proceedings. That same day, the IDF, in coordination with the Debel community, replaced the crucifix. Over 150 Jewish religious leaders signed a public letter of apology. The U.S. ambassador weighed in. Israeli parliamentarians weighed in. The story ran on every major outlet on earth.
A fair reader will note this wasn't the first such incident, and that smaller acts of vandalism by Israeli soldiers and settlers have not always triggered this level of response. That's a reasonable point. Hold onto it. It will become important in a moment.
Because for now, the facts stand: a statue was broken. No one was hurt. The state apologized, jailed the perpetrators, and paid to replace what one of its soldiers destroyed, inside 48 hours.
Now let me describe a different category of event. Let's start closest to home.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
When the PA took control of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity, in 1995, the city was 86% Christian in 1950 and still around 40% in 1998. Today it is under 10%. Under PA rule, Christians report systematic land confiscation via Palestinian courts, forged property deeds, extortion, exclusion from leadership, and sexual harassment of women and girls. In 2019, a Maronite church in Bethlehem was vandalized. In 2022, the PA arrested evangelical pastor Johnny Shahwan for "normalization with Israel." Also in 2022, the Christian-owned Bethlehem Hotel was shot at after a social media mob accused it of displaying a Star of David. No arrests. No apologies. No restored buildings.
In 2002, during the Second Intifada, dozens of armed Fatah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters stormed the Church of the Nativity itself, the traditional site of the birth of Jesus, and effectively held priests, nuns, and monks inside for 39 days. No Palestinian faction has ever apologized. No one was ever prosecuted by the PA. Several of the gunmen were later celebrated.
Then came Hamas. In October 2007, Rami Ayyad, a 32-year-old Palestinian Christian, manager of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, father of two with a pregnant wife, was kidnapped off the street in Hamas-ruled Gaza, stabbed repeatedly, shot, and dumped near his shop. His bookstore had been firebombed earlier that year by Islamist "vice" enforcers. He had received explicit death threats for selling Bibles. Hamas "condemned" the killing and promised an investigation. A decade later, Hamas acknowledged that Ayyad's killer was one of their own Qassam Brigades members, but only when they executed him for killing a Hamas commander, not for killing a Christian. The anti-Christian murder was never prosecuted at all.
Under Hamas, Gaza's Christian population collapsed from roughly 5,000 in 2006 to around 1,000 by October 2023, an 80% disappearance in a single generation. Bishop Alexios of Gaza publicly warned of forced conversions to Islam in 2016 and petitioned Ismail Haniyeh. He received no reply.
Overall, Christians in Palestinian-controlled territory went from roughly 11% of the population a century ago to 1% in 2017. That is not emigration. That is demographic erasure.
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Brief report from Israel:
1) the impact from rocket and missile fire generally has been far less serious than in prior conflicts. Those living near the Lebanese border, unfortunately, remain the most at risk. God willing, things will remain manageable through the duration of the war.
2) while exercising appropriate caution, life is continuing.
3) morale is exceedingly high — Israelis are extremely optimistic about the outcome of the conflicts with Iran and Hezbollah and looking forward to setting back these terrorists permanently or at least for many years.
4) the nation has confidence in the IDF and it ability to protect the Homefront .
5) the nation is enormously grateful to the United States military and, in particular, to President Trump for his leadership and courage.
6) those making claims about Israel suffering unprecedented blows or cowering in fear are lying. Those claims are completely false.
Even in Nazi Germany, there were Germans who risked everything to help Jews by hiding them, feeding them, or helping them to escape. We call them Righteous Among the Nations.
In Gaza, during the captivity of our hostages, not a single man or woman stepped forward to help them, to give them food, or provide medical care, to hide them from their captors, or ease their suffering.
Not one righteous soul among them
https://t.co/ddPUTaUM4K
Watch: the national security expert John Spencer who studied Hamas’s use of human shields and child sacrifice in Gaza reveals what no Western media outlet dares to show.
Muslims worldwide are outraged and want this video erased from the internet. So please share!
Lest you kvetch about higher gas prices while the US and Israel are saving the free world from a homicidal terrorist state with the capability to produce nuclear weapons, read this synopsis in the comments:
Watch 🎥
This should be shared EVERYWHERE.
This is what happened when 20 random westerners sat down to watch what Palestinian kids are taught in UNRWA schools.
Is Christian community in Israel declining? Rosenberg denounces Tucker Carlson’s claims as 'demonstrably provable lies' https://t.co/pqioqENAQb via @all_israel_news
It’s actually embarrassing that there are people that fall for the Tucker act.
*There are thousands of innocent people being killed by Putin, including a ton of Christians.*
Tucker: That’s not really our problem. In fact, I’m rooting for Russia.
*Assad is massacring tends of thousands of people, including many Christians*
Tucker: That’s not our problem. Why won’t neocons focus on domestic issues?
*Israeli operations targets thousands of Hezbollah operatives via a pager operations with equipment only given to Hezbollah protestors*
Tucker: How can anyone tolerate the loss of any innocent life? These people don’t care about human life. We must focus all of our time and energy on attacking one foreign country while ignoring all domestic issues and smearing all the people who disagree with me on FP.
So many people have totally missed what October 7 actually was. Sure it was the worst atrocity and loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust. Sure it was an attack by Islamists against the State of Israel. But in truth, it was more than that. Far more. It was the day the collective Islamist movement made its move on the entire western world. It wasn’t just an attack on Jews. It was an all out attack on Judeo-Christian values and way of life. It had been planned and prepared for years and years right under everyone’s noses, and on that day, it was executed to perfection.
The entire “Free Palestine” movement has far less to do with the land of Israel or Gaza, and far more to do with the entire western world. “From the river to the sea” isn’t just about Israel. It’s about all of the west. On that October day, protests erupted across the entire west. For the past 24 months, these protests have become a constant every single day across the west. And instead of being tackled and dealt with, they’ve been embraced, defended, appeased and coddled. Patriots of every single western nation have been sidelined and marginalized in their own countries in favor of immigrants and Muslims who have unabashedly seized the moment to take over.
Whether we all like it or not, or whether we want to acknowledge it or not, Islam has won this war against the west. It set off to infiltrate and embed itself into every fiber of your societies (and I say “your” because today Israel is the only country fighting against it), every institution, every government, every international body and court, every police force, every school, every university, every media broadcaster… everywhere. And it has executed its plan exactly as it intended, all while your governments have both willingly allowed it and blindly capitulated to it.
Every law and every enforcement of those laws are on their side, not yours. You have become subjugated in your own countries whether you asked for it or not. The minority now rule the majority. Exactly as it is in their own countries. They protest every day on your streets and they can do so with no consequence and no regard. If you try to stop it, it is you that is held accountable and arrested. They control you.
For over a year you’ve been told how it wasn’t terrorism, it was freedom fighting. You’ve been told that they were oppressed and you were the evil oppressor. You were told that they were simply the victims of your actions, your racism and your intolerance. They have openly stated that they will change your society to suit their beliefs and their agendas, and that your values are inferior and intolerant of theirs. You were told that they can can say and do as they please, they can curse you and they can hate you, they can rape your children and kill you, yet it is you that are Islamophobic and hateful.
Every accusation that has been made, and continues to be, thrown at Israel and her people is now thrown at you in your country. Just look around you. What’s different from what you see in many major cities in the US or UK or Canada that you don’t also see in France, Italy, Germany, Australia, the Nordics, Spain, Belgium, or the Netherlands? You even now have politicians in parliaments across many countries openly stating that those countries are now “Palestine”. They’re burning your flags. They’re destroying your universities and businesses and schools and places of worship.
Israel isn’t the reason. We’re simply the convenient easy excuse. They blame Zionism, when the real cause is simply Islam. They have planned this for a long time and decided that now was the time to do it.
Why?
Because they had the right kinds of governments leading most of these countries. Socialists and communists and Marxists and leftists all allied in submission to Islam. It’s being done openly in front of all of you. They’re not hiding it anymore. Your silence has given them strength to take more and more.
So now what?