We do not say that Israel is wholly right in its tactics or generally, nor that [Fitzgerald] is obligated to support her, only that his opposition to her ought to be more honest and careful in its sources, and that he not be so quick to suggest those who might support her are derelict in their faith on that account.

The Aquila Report has released its most read articles of 2023. Number 19 on the list is “Are Evangelicals Selling Their Souls for Israel?” by Jim Fitzgerald, a missionary and Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) minister who believes that evangelical support for Israel is mistaken. Fitzgerald is rightly aghast at the killing of civilians that has attended the war, and denounces the October 7th massacres. But these virtues are outweighed by some glaring faults in his article.
He uncritically accepts Hamas’ figures about the number of civilian deaths. Scripture is clear that murder and lying often accompany each other (Ps. 52:2; Prov. 6:16-19; Matt. 26:59; Jn. 8:44), so that people who do the former are suspectable of the latter. It is easy to lie and hard to kill, and if someone has a sufficiently seared conscience to do the latter, he is apt to have no qualms about the former. Scripture is clear as well that we are to have nothing to do with the wicked—and Hamas is in the foremost ranks of that category—and that listening to or associating with them has a corrosive effect and leads to righteousness and truth being overthrown (Prov. 1:10-16; 4:14-17; Prov. 29:12; 1 Cor. 15:33; comp. Ps. 1:1; Prov. 25:5). We should close our ears to all Hamas’ claims, therefore, for their wickedness has forfeited their right to be heard.
But Fitzgerald thinks Hamas’ claims verified by the statements of a single named person, a cardiologist named Dr. Sabra:
How can anyone be so heartless as to say the number dead is not accurate? I think the number is understated.
The attentive reader will note that is opinion, not testimony, and consists only of emotional rhetoric without any evidence in support; further, that it involves an ad hominem attack against anyone who dares think that murderous terrorists might exaggerate civilian casualties for propaganda purposes. Fitzgerald believes the point is buttressed by a nameless “many humanitarian workers” “making the same claim,” and by Israel’s own testimony of the amount of ordinance it has dropped on Gaza, some 30,000 tons as of his article in late November.
That last argument from sheer volume is weak: no amount of ordinance will kill anyone if they leave the target area. Israel issued a blanket warning to evacuate North Gaza before opening its main campaign, and it warns civilians near targets to evacuate before a strike by call, text message, or “roof knocking.” Actually, on technical grounds this arguably proves the opposite of what Fitzgerald thinks. Rather than demonstrating Israel’s “wholesale slaughter of civilians,” as he asserts, it demonstrates its firepower is being used in a way that has resulted in vastly fewer casualties than would be expected given the amount of ordinance dropped.
Without getting too much into the minutiae of what munitions Israel has used or the finer points of the many factors that affect the extent of damage done by explosive blasts and fragmentation, we can nonetheless get a rough idea of how much devastation can be wrought by that amount of bombing. To use the example of a single common munition, the pressures from a Mk. 82 500 pound bomb are enough to collapse reinforced concrete structures about 52 feet from the point of impact, and to collapse other buildings at twice that distance.[1] Those represent blast areas of about a fifth of an acre and three fourths of an acre, respectively, and the area within which fragments may kill or wound is far larger: there is an estimated 10% risk of incapacitating wounding as far as 820 feet from the point of impact, an area of some 48.5 acres.[2] Israel had dropped the equivalent of 120,000 such bombs as of Fitzgerald’s writing, enough to ravage pretty much the entirety of Gaza’s approximately 90,240 acres of territory, which has a density of about 25 people per acre.
When Fitzgerald then says that “a genocide is taking place right before our evangelical eyes,” we might reply that the claim is incredible. If that is what they are attempting, the Israelis are the most inept murderers in the history of the world. Israel has the most advanced weapons, planes, targeting and surveillance systems, munitions, etc., and has dropped about enough ordinance to flatten Gaza and kill its entire populace—and yet she has not done that. There is no way of knowing how many people Israel has killed, exactly, since nigh well everyone insists on taking Hamas’ figures at face value, and since most reporting makes no effort to distinguish civilians and Hamas fighters. But the large point remains that Israel has used enough firepower to actually kill much of the entire Gazan populace, had she desired to do so in a fit of genocidal rage. Instead she has focused those efforts on Hamas positions and accompanied them with repeated efforts to warn noncombatants to avoid being caught in them.
The point is not to argue that this Israeli effort is the best approach to fighting Hamas or responding to the larger political situation. The point is that it is false to say that Israel is engaged in genocide when it is deliberately acting to not kill civilians by general and particular warnings, and when it is trying to limit its attacks to its armed opponents. There is a moral difference between intentionally murdering civilians and accidentally killing civilians while fighting an honorless enemy that does not wear uniforms and readily hides among them. And that difference is the difference between a crime and a tragedy, between an inexcusable and intentional act on the one hand and an unintended consequence of a morally-permissible action on the other.
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Jesus came into this dark and fallen world as the new creation and to bring about a re-creation of all those for whom He died. He is “the Destroyer of the darkness.” In His death on the cross, Jesus comes under the power of darkness as the substitute of those who once lived in darkness. He put Himself under the wrath of God for the sins of His people in order to give them to light of the knowledge of the glory of God in Him. He is the light of the world who shines in the darkness (John 8:12). By His death and resurrection, Jesus destroys the darkness and disseminates the light of God’s grace and truth.  

Anyone who has read the book of Genesis and the gospel of John will immediately notice the similarity of the opening words of each book. Genesis opens with those astonishing first words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” while John opens in this way: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” As a boy, I remember seeing that parallel but not understanding what it meant. I only came to understand it when the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, at the creation of the universe, shone into the darkness of my heart to give me the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). Significantly, that is the point of the parallel. In redemptive history, we are meant to understand that the coming of the Son into this world was the breaking in of the light of God’s grace and truth to bring about the re-creation of a world that lay in darkness. B.B. Warfield captured this in a profound way, when he wrote,
“The obvious resemblance between the prologue to John’s Gospel and the proem of Genesis is not a matter of mere phraseology and external form. As the one, in the brief compass of a few verses, paints the whole history of the creation of a universe with a vividness which makes the quickened imagination a witness of the process, so the other in still briefer compass traces the whole history of the re-creation of a dead world into newness of life. In both, we are first pointed back into the depths of eternity, when only God was. In both we are bidden to look upon the chaotic darkness of lawless matter or of lawless souls, over which the brooding Spirit was yet to move. In both, as the tremendous pageants are unrolled before our eyes, we are made to see the Living God; and to see him as the Light and the Life of the world, the Destroyer of all darkness, the Author of all good. Here too, however, the Old Testament revelation is the preparation for the better to come. In it we see God as the God of power and of wisdom, the Author and Orderer of all; in this we see him as the God of goodness and mercy, the Restorer and Redeemer of the lost. Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”1
In Christ, the triune God becomes “the Destroyer of all darkness.”
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So some of the squeamish (and often woke) believers of today who say we should never call out pagans, or pagan rulers, or pagan nations, for their many wrongs, immorality and evil, because they are not Christian, are greatly mistaken. Yes we should uphold God’s standards to one and all. A good cop or judge will not allow a person’s religious status to determine whether or not he or she gets justice. Neither should we.

Sometimes believers (often of the left), will say some rather unhelpful things – especially when it comes to the Christian in society, the culture wars, and so on. For example, how often do you hear some Christians basically making excuses for the behaviour and actions of non-Christians by saying something like this?-‘Well, he is not saved, so what do you expect?’”-‘He is just doing what pagans do.’-‘He does not have the Holy Spirit so we cannot expect him to do any good.’
I hear this quite often unfortunately. It is as if the non-believer can just get off Scot-free from the consequences of his actions. Now, there is SOME truth in all this. Theologically speaking, the law of God was given, among other things, to show us our sinfulness and show us how we cannot save ourselves.
So yes, in terms of salvation, the pagan is hopeless in trying to please God or get right with him. We are all guilty under the law, and we can only cast ourselves upon the grace and mercy of God. But here I am speaking about something different.
We can be too willing to excuse the sins of pagans. They might cheat on their taxes or cheat on their partner. Or worse, abuse their children or kill their spouse. But the truth is, God still holds them all accountable for their actions. And we should too.
Consider how this plays out in the real world. Suppose Joe Pagan is caught running red lights – over and over again. The cops pull him over, and issue him a ticket or two. If the driver was a pagan and the cops Christian, would it make any difference if the law-breaking driver simply said, ‘Well, what do you expect? I am not a Christian you know?’ Would the Christian cops say, ‘Oh right, sorry – off you go’?
Um, no. Of course they would proceed with writing tickets, or even arresting the repeat offender. And it would be the same in a court of law. If a bank robber told the judge, ‘Hey, I am not a Christian and do not have the Holy Spirit, so what do you expect?,’ would the judge nod his head in agreement and let him walk out of the court?
Um, no. again. We expect everyone to obey the laws of the land – whether they are Christian or not, whether they have the Spirit or not. And this for various reasons. We know that everyone is made in God’s image, and we know that we are all morally responsible for our actions. And one day God will judge every single one of us.
The big difference is whether the sinner turns to Christ for the forgiveness of sins, or rejects what Christ had done on their behalf. But we are all still responsible for what we do. Certainly in this life any worthwhile cop or judge will not let criminals and lawbreakers off the hook, based on whether or not they are born-again Christians.
Case in Point: Lucy Letby
Most of us read recently about neonatal nurse Lucy Letby in the UK who was found guilty of killing 7 newborns. And now there are reports saying there might be many other just-born babies that she harmed or tried to kill. Says one report:
Police believe Lucy Letby, the nurse convicted of murdering seven babies, may have harmed dozens more infants at two hospitals in the north-west of England, the Guardian has been told. A source with knowledge of the police investigation said detectives had identified about 30 babies who suffered “suspicious” incidents at the Countess of Chester hospital where she worked. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/20/lucy-letby-dozens-more-babies-police-believe-chester-liverpool
She is truly evil, and human courts of law held her accountable for what she did, just as will the heavenly court.
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