The unique spiritual tie binding America and Israel

The United States’s existence is predicated on the existence of God, the divine Creator who has endowed us with inalienable rights. While other nations may acknowledge the Creator, and some may even have official churches to worship Him, only one nation other than America is inextricably connected to Him from the very beginning. That nation is Israel.

This fact is important. It is the underlying connection that links the two countries. That connection is more powerful than any political power, more binding than any treaty, and stronger than any military force.

These facts do not preclude conflicts of interest between the US and Israel. There are some. Our predominant religions are different, even though both are rooted in the Old Testament. Partisan political interests bring about disagreements, sometimes serious ones. Internal to each nation are social divisions that affect the stability of both.

Despite all this, the social and cultural values of both the US and Israel are strikingly compatible. Yes, the nations of the Anglosphere (the US and the British commonwealth countries) are fairly tightly knit but, in the United States, Biblical values are still more strongly influential compared to the more secularized Western Europe. Indeed, as noted, both America and Israel are founded specifically in recognition of divine intervention in human affairs. That means more than may at first be apparent.

Image of flags at Ben Gurion Airport by the U.S. Embassy Jerusalem. CC BY 2.0.

An important factor binding the two nations together is that Americans view both as having divinely ordained callings. For the US, it was once called Manifest Destiny, which was mainly geographic. More lately, we have felt that we bear the burden of illuminating the world with our constitutional values; namely, the idea that governments are ordained to serve the people rather than vice versa. Regarding Israel, our Holy Scripture portrays Israel as the world’s final bastion of spiritual redemption, where the final battle between good and evil will take place. Perhaps that’s already happening.

To be sure, Jews do not feel the same way about this as do American Christians. Israeli Jews are in varying degrees secularized, more so than Evangelical Christians. Orthodox Jews seem far less inclined to proselytize, to persuade gentiles to adopt their religion, compared to the religious zeal of Christian missionaries. Jews seem to me to be far less interested in End Times prophecy than are Evangelical Christians and even far less interested in the concept of life after death, which to Christians is paramount.

Despite these differences, both nations find themselves on the same side against the barbarism of radical Islam. Not only that, both place a high value on fighting their wars in accord with the civilized values associated with the Geneva Conventions. Granted, all civilized nations respect those principles, but we have encountered enemies who do not. Imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany were two examples—and, now, Hamas.

Religious Jews prophesy a worldly savior, a political Messiah, rather than the spiritual redeemer whom Christians worship in Jesus. Yet, when Jesus returns, He may well be accepted as the Jewish Messiah if one so interprets the Old Testament prophet Zechariah 12:10:

And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.

And Isaiah 53:5:

But He was wounded for our transgressions,

He was bruised for our iniquities;

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,

And by His stripes we are healed.

These scriptures have other interpretations, but a key point to bear in mind is the mental undercurrent that, in the minds of both Jews and Christians, these passages are the word of God. As much as we may respect the writings of Hindus and Buddhists and of other world religious traditions, Biblical truth is special to us. Our nations are founded upon it.

When the chips are down, when the barbarians come crashing through the gate, our tendency is to turn back to these words. They give us a strength that our enemies do not begin to understand.