Truth, Zion & the final fight

The great Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said, “Good players skate to where the puck is. Great players skate to where it will be.” This is not only insight for anticipating competition but also wisdom for understanding history and God’s unfolding plan for mankind.

So where is “the puck heading?”

The answer points toward a single brewing conflict over Jerusalem (i.e., Zion), the climax of history commonly known as the Battle of Armageddon. A world leader, inspired by demonic power and called the Antichrist, will arise. Like the Roman emperors of old, he will claim to be “God,” (2 Thess. 2:4) and will lead “all the nations” (Zech. 14:2) against Jerusalem to fight against the reign of the coming Davidic King, called the Christ, which means Anointed One, His throne name.

Let us be clear: this is the final fight!

The ultimate showdown between truth and deception, light and darkness, God and Satan, good and evil, Jesus Christ and the Antichrist!

Jerusalem: The Epicenter of the Final Conflict

Psalm chapter 2 foretells the rebellion of the nations against “the Lord and His Anointed (Messiah),” and yet God declares, “I have installed My King on Zion, My holy hill.” Romans 11:26–27, “The Deliverer will come out of Zion … this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.” Isaiah 62:1–2 adds that Zion will shine as a praise on the earth, a beacon to the nations.

Again, the focal point will be Jerusalem, where the nations will gather against the city, yet their real objective is to oppose the Messiah, the Davidic King.

Living Backward from the End

Seeing this end, where the puck will be, provides us with needed discernment and wisdom on how to live today and be proactive rather than reactive.

It is the kind of wisdom that comes from understanding the end first and then reasoning backward from it. This is no different, in principle, than what Aristotle described as teleology: understanding a thing by its ultimate purpose, or how mathematicians solve problems by working backward from the solution.

The question we need to ask is…

What are the micro-currents of “anti-Christ influences” that are at work in our generation to deceive a generation that will lead to the final battle that will culminate in judgment in Jerusalem?

Recognizing the Anti-Christ Micro-Currents

A good place to start in answering this is found in Revelation 12. This chapter provides extraordinary behind the scenes insight that reveals that Satan will unleash an intensified assault against public enemy number one, Israel, as well public enemy number two - anyone who follows the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world.

This tells you all you need to know to discern the relentless spiritual, strategic, and geopolitical warfare defining our age.

Therefore, does it surprise us that today the most persecuted group on the planet are Christians who follow the King of the Jews, who is the King of Kings, the Savior of the world? Does it surprise us that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are skyrocketing?

Now you can better understand why we’re witnessing an acceleration in attacking Zionism, that comes from the term Zion (צִיּוֹן, Tziyon), which originally refers to a hill in Jerusalem, Mount Zion, where King David established his city around 1000 BCE.

The Hijacking of Zionism

In fact, the very meaning of Zionism is being hijacked. It has increasingly become a slur that was originally based on an intentional, blatant lie first launched during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and its allies deliberately weaponized language.

They falsely branded Zionism - the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel - as racist and colonialist in order to delegitimize the Jewish state..

This campaign culminated in the notorious 1975 UN Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism, a resolution that was repealed in 1991. But the lie today thrives on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and X, seducing a whole generation and reminding us of the old adage, “A lie travels the world seven times before the truth ever gets its shoes on.”

The Assault on Truth Itself

In addition, we’re witnessing the micro-currents of “anti-Christ influences” seen in the suppression and distortion of truth, and by that I mean both fact-based truth and revelation-based truth. For example, fact-based truth is that two plus two equals four. Revelation-based truth is, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1)

Scripture warns that there will be a generation that “… refused to love the truth and so be saved, and therefore God sends them a strong delusion” (2 Thess. 2:10–11).

A Generation Given Over to Delusion

You need look no further than podcaster Candace Owens, who, in what can only be described as demonic, Gnostic trances, spreads deranged, alternate-reality conspiracies about Israel, the Jewish people, and the late great self-professed “Christian Zionist,” Charlie Kirk, and his grieving widow.

To many, Owens has become our generation’s poster child for what Satan represents: the accuser, the adversary, the one Jesus called “the father of all lies.” Yet she is followed by millions who become infected by her ideological viruses that intoxicate and destroy.

With regard to Charlie Kirk’s grieving widow with two small children, some even see Owens as a witch who has demonically targeted Erika Kirk, embodying the exact opposite of what Scripture commands: “Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world" (Jm. 1:27). Her actions are a flagrant fulfillment of Jesus’ warning of the last days that “iniquity will abound and the love of many will wax cold” (Matt. 24:2).

Israel’s Eighth Front - The Battle for Truth

Recently, the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, clarified that in addition to the seven physical enemy fronts they face, there is an “eight front” they are battling. You don’t feel the attacks as a bomb or in the shrieking noise of a missile or sirens. The eight front is the battle for truth.

In fact, I just returned from the first Judeo-Christian Zionist Congress held in Nashville, purposed to address just that - and had the honor of a lifetime to address some of the subversive dynamics churches are facing in the fight for truth.

One of the most dangerous lies, is that the Church replaces Israel, that the Church is the “new Israel.” It’s commonly known as Replacement Theology.

This ideology, without using bullets or missiles, promotes a theology, that erases and replaces ethnic Israel, from a unique identity and role, in a future restoration for divine purpose on planet earth.

The Irrevocable Covenant

This is not only an affront to the plain meaning of Scripture but to Jesus Himself, who guaranteed the New Covenant with His own blood on the Cross at Passover. The Covenant that God promised to Israel, and into which the world has been invited through Christ.

At a minimum, it is a fourfold promise:
(1) the guaranteed offer of forgiveness of sins (Heb. 8:10–12);
(2) the indwelling Spirit transforming us from the inside out (2 Cor. 3:3; Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 36:26–27);
(3) the preservation, restoration, and salvation of Israel (Jer. 31:31–37; Rom. 11:25–29; Mark 12:25);
(4) and the Second Coming of Jesus, when God’s glory will fill the earth (1 Cor. 11:23–26; Jer. 31:31–37).

Jesus and Israel: Inseparable

This all means that you cannot separate the person and work of Jesus from Israel: past, present, and future.

It is why the disciples rightly asked after the resurrection, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) Such an appropriate question, since the disciples had been following Jesus in the first place because He is the Son of David - the Messiah - who would sit on the throne of David in Jerusalem.

And earlier Jesus promised, “You who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28).

Israel Is Not the Church

Note: they did not ask, “Will You restore the kingdom to the church?”

Because Israel is not the church.

Throughout Acts, the term Israel appears 30 times, while ekklesia (“church”) appears 23 times (Acts 7:38, where Stephen uses ekklesia to refer to the congregation of Old Testament Israel) - and Israel never means the church. Israel means the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the church is not Israel.

For the disciples, it was never a question of if Jesus would restore the Kingdom to Israel - but when Jesus would restore the Kingdom to Israel.

History’s Inevitable Convergence

This gets us back to where “the puck” will be.

History is moving toward a decisive confrontation in Zion-Jerusalem, and therefore wisdom demands how we live now in light of that culmination; that the promised end, where the puck will be, must shape how we live today.

Why?

Because the final fight is not only about geography but about truth and authority. It is about who rules. And the long-term strategy of evil is to seduce billions, leading to a last gasp of human pride, arrogance, anti-God, and anti-Christ sentiment in opposition to Jesus Christ, before the King of Zion takes His throne.

Did God Really Say?

Remember, it was the serpent, the devil, who asked, “Did God really say?” This was a question intended to undermine trust in the truth of God’s Word. Failing to do so led to the fall of humanity.

Today, we face a similar crossroads. Evil seeks to undermine the truth of God’s Word.

Did God really say, “For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land”? (Ez. 36:24)

Did God really say, “I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it,” says the Lord? (Ez. 37:14)

Did God really say, “David My servant shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd”? (Ez. 37:24)

Did God really say, “God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew”? (Rom. 11:2)

Did God really say, “And so all Israel will be saved”? (Rom. 11:26)

Did God really say, “The Deliverer will come out of Zion”? (Rom. 11:26)

Winning the Eighth Front

In reality, the fight for truth has been around since the Garden of Eden.

The key to winning it is commitment to the Word of God! Therefore, now is the time to double down on the study of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, not only to be informed but transformed, because “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17).

Jesus said, “If you continue in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31–32)

Because, after all, Jesus said that when He returns to Jerusalem, “…in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate the people one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats” (Matt. 25:31–32).

The Kingdom of heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. If you have not yet followed Jesus Christ, let today be the day you begin (Romans 1:16-17).