Unless you live on a remote desert island with no communication with the outside world, one of the most controversial topics of 2025 has been Israel and all that revolves around it. The war in Gaza, the disputed territories, the Northern border with Lebanon, the attack on Iran, and, of course, the usual accusations of “genocide,” “starvation,” “occupation,” “colonization,” and “apartheid”โall tropes to demonize Israel and global Jews.
Looking forward to 2026, one wonders if the focus will remain on Israel. Truly, there is no reason why it will not, and, in fact, everything seems to indicate that Israel will be even more of a focal point in the coming year. The real question is: Will it be a focal point or a thorn in the flesh? This all depends on your worldview.
There are three major elements comprising Israel in 2026: The land, the people, and the Messiah.
The Land of Israel
“Occupiers! Colonizers! Apartheid!” We have heard it all for decades now, and it continues to infect the story, slowly but exponentially, changing the truth into a lie, and turning Israeli Jews into perpetrators, with a convergence never seen before.
Jews are accused of having stolen Palestinian land. The 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1920 San Remo Conference, and the 1947 UN vote for British Mandate Palestine (read “Israel”) seem to prove the opposite, and that is even before we crack open our Bible.
God gave Abraham and his descendants a promise of a future that includes a specific piece of land known back then as “the Land of Canaan” (Genesis 12:1-3). That promise was ratified into a covenant in Genesis 15:18-21, giving the Jewish peopleโand the Jewish people onlyโa piece of land that has been disputed since 1948 and well beyond. Disputed it is, occupied it is not. The Jews are the rightful owners, biblically by God’s decree and historically as well.
God took the time to explain to the children of Israel that what He had given them geographically had strict boundaries (even though they have been fluctuating greatly over the last 77 years). Deuteronomy 2:5 and 2:17-19 show us that God will not allow for subjective land grabs for the Jewish people. This is the opposite of the teaching of Islam, which always seeks a global Caliphate. Israel’s land boundaries are historical and biblical, while Islam’s land expansion is normative and expected. Incidentally, in many ways,ย modern Israel is identical to biblical Israel.
Additionally, God has decreed that He is the ultimate owner of the land (Psalm 24:1-2; Leviticus 25:23). The Jewish people are the rightful users of the land, but God remains the owner. Incidentally, that land, as described in Genesis 15, is much larger than the New Jersey-sized nation of today. It will be fulfilled during the Millennial Kingdom of the Messiah and be the size of Texas…twice!
No giving of land for peace, as in Gaza in 2005, will ever work. God’s boundaries are as sure as His character. This is explained in the Land Covenant that God made with the Jewish people as an amplification of the Abrahamic Covenant (Deuteronomy 29:1-29, 30:1-10).
The People of Israel
Who are the real Jews anyways? Listening to the world, the Jews of today are not the real Jews, which makes it easy to push the argument that they have stolen Palestinian land.
We are told that they are possibly descendants of a somewhat obscure people group that settled in Eastern Europe in the 6th Century AD and is now all gone: the Khazars.ย The story says that King Bulan of Khazaria converted to Judaism,ย and some (or all) of his kingdom followed after him, creating the group we know today as the Ashkenazi Jews. While King Bulan might have converted to Judaism, genetics and DNA have since proven that all Jews trace back to the original Judean Jews. Did Hitler murder 6,000.000 of the wrong people during the Holocaust? Of course, he did not!
To be Jewish, one has to be a physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through one of the twelve tribes (sons of Jacob). Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum explains it in his manuscript,ย “Jews, Gentiles, and Christians,”ย as he states: “Biblically speaking, the Jewish people are a nation. Today we are a scattered nation but we are, nevertheless, a nation. We are a nation because we are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The implication of this definition is that no matter what a Jew does, he can never become a non-Jew; no matter what the individual Jew may believe or disbelieve, he remains a Jew…. If a Jew chooses to believe that Yeshua is his Messiah, he, too, remains a Jew. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can change the fact that he is a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!”
The biblical basis for defining Jewishness is found in the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 12:1-3, then developed in two other passagesโGenesis 13:15-16 and 15:4-5โfurther confirmed through Isaac in Genesis 26:2-5, and reconfirmed through Jacob in Genesis 28:13-15. Fruchtenbaum explains,ย “From the Abrahamic Covenant a simple definition of Jewishness can be deduced. It lies in the repeated statement that a nation will come through the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and thus defines Israelis, this nationality is not confined to the State of Israel alone; it includes all the Jewish people no matter where they are. It is a nationality based on descent.”
It gets a bit more complicated once you introduce the word “Palestine” to the mix. Almost 1900 years ago, the Romans changed the name of Israel toย Syriaย Palestinaย to further humiliate the Jews who had been crushed during the Bar Kochba revolt (AD 132-136). The name stuck and became the common word to describe Israel.
Until the arrival of Yasir Arafat on the scene, the word “Palestine” was only used from a geographical perspective. There were Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs living together in the land of Palestine (Eretz Yisrael). Arafat changed the meaning and created a displaced people fighting for self-determination and the return to their “ancestral land” of Palestine. None of it is historically traceable or biblically provable, butโto paraphrase Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbelsโif you tell a lie often enough and long enough, it eventually replaces the truth.
The Messiah of Israel
The most important investigation one can make in 2026 is regarding the identity of the Messiah of Israel and His ministry of redemption for all humanity. Is it a myth or can it be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt? Using the Bible as the foundational textbook to discover the Messiah, your reading and studying will take you on a journey like no other. A multitude of prophecies about the Messiah can be found there. Many are already perfectly fulfilled, and many more are to be fulfilled at His Second Coming.
As we sift through the inerrant biblical account, which is replete with prophecies about the coming redeemer, we quickly are able to paint a picture. Just a handful of those hundreds of prophecies make Yeshua the only viable candidate:
โข From the Tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10)
โข A prophet like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-19)
โข A king from the line of David ( 1 Chronicles 17:10-14)
โข A Priest according to the order of Melchizedek (Psalm 110:1-7)
โข Born in Bethlehem Ephrata (Micah 5:2)
โข Born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14)
โข Die by crucifixion for the sins of Israel and the whole world (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)
Many will come in His name, and many will claim His office, but only Yeshua is worth the title, the ministry, and the obedience of Israel and the rest of the world.
So, 2026 might very well be the year when we need to spend time to properly understand and define the land and the people of Israel, in a world where everything gets turned upside-down or redefined by AI, political correctness, and deceitful multiculturalism.
It is my prayer that for many, it will also be the year to discover, embrace, and follow the Jewish Messiah and Savior of the world, Yeshua HaMashiach, before it is too late. The clock is ticking, the Rapture is truly imminent. 2026 could turn out to be a prophetic year like we have never seen before.
