As the conflict with Iran grinds on and President Trump comes under increasing pressure to do a deal that will inevitably stop short of properly dealing with Israel’s terrorist neighbours, it occurs to me that we have been this way before.
Just prior to the October 7, 2023, massacre I wrote an article (entitled Armageddon Alert) marking the imminent 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War which, appropriately, coincided with the launch of the movie Golda – about the legendary Israeli Prime Minister at the time. A movie which, presumably in view of subsequent events, seems to have completely disappeared from the radar.
I was a new Christian in 1973, little realising that the fresh conflict raging in the Middle East could well have blown up into World War III or even Armageddon itself.
An unprovoked attack against the Jewish state took them by complete surprise on their holiest day of the year when they were resting, fasting and praying. It was the Day of Atonement (known as Yom Kippur) when Jews seek forgiveness for their sins and put things right with those they have wronged.
But Egypt, from the south, and Syria, from the north, launched a massive co-ordinated onslaught which should have crushed the young nation then just 25 years old.
According to the late Lance Lambert, a significant prophetic voice who was in Israel at the time hostilities broke out, “there were more tanks on the Syrian front than in the 1941 German offensive against Russia.”1
Egypt attacked with 3 000 tanks, 2 000 heavy guns, 1 000 aircraft and 600 000 men. On the Syrian side, Israel could muster only 70 tanks and looked like being flattened. But just as it seemed her soldiers would be overrun, the invading forces inexplicably stopped their advance, allowing Israel time to regather.
Nevertheless, without divine intervention, Israel was doomed. Many began calling on God for help, and it was Christians with an understanding of God’s purposes for Israel who played a hugely significant role by interceding on their behalf.
This was especially the case at the Bible College of Wales in Swansea where Samuel Howells, son of legendary intercessor Rees Howells, led intense times of prayer. He felt such a strong burden that he asked God what it meant, to which the Lord replied: “My enemy is seeking to precipitate Armageddon.”
As it happened, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sent a large warship armed with ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads across the Mediterranean to Alexandria in Egypt in an apparent bid to solve the problem unilaterally.
President Richard Nixon responded by calling a worldwide US military alert, putting 2.3 million men on standby. The warship duly weighed anchor and sailed back to the Black Sea, bringing Israel – and the world – back from the brink.
Nixon’s intervention was much more than a useful diversion from his Watergate troubles, when he authorised illegal activities in pursuit of being re-elected.
For when Golda Meir called Nixon for help, he remembered what his mother had told him – and disaster was averted.
Years later Nixon recalled: “When she was talking (on the phone), I could hear my mother reading stories from the Old Testament to me when I was a boy…I could hear her tell me: ‘One day Richard, you will be in a situation where the Jewish people will need your help. When that day comes, do everything in your power to help them.’ It confirmed all my instincts, and I knew I had to act. I suddenly realised why I had become President of the United States. It was the moment I had to do what I had to do.”2
Unfortunately, however, his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was less helpful, preventing total defeat of Israel’s Arab enemies by ordering the IDF to retreat, just when both Cairo and Damascus were within their grasp. The Jewish state had little option but to capitulate to the ultimatum, because America would intervene if they didn’t. It thus robbed Israel of complete victory. And I pray that we won’t see a repeat of this scenario in the current conflict.
According to Lambert, soldiers who knew their Bibles – especially ‘Jewish Christians’ – were in great demand as there was much talk of Armageddon with many aware that the Jewish prophets had spoken about these things.
As we continue to experience many horrors today, it’s a great opportunity for Christians and Messianic Jews to allay the fears of many who are so confused and afraid.
However, we are not fighting against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12).
Israel survived in 1973 because God intervened and, through Jesus (Yeshua), offers ultimate atonement for his people through the sacrificial death on the cross of his beloved Son.
A highly significant point made in Lambert’s 1975 book Battle for Israel when discussing the biblical prophecies of Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38 & 39) was that Iran was the only nation mentioned among those who would attack Israel from the north “which has not set itself against Israel”.
This is a reminder that Israel and Iran were once friends. The Iranian revolution was shortly to follow and changed all that, with the Ayatollahs now determined to destroy the Jewish state. So the confederacy of nations set to attack Israel in the last days is now complete. It’s time to pray and seek the Lord.
As Lambert put it, “The peace of the whole world is increasingly dependent upon the peace of Jerusalem.”
1Battle for Israel, Kingsway, 19752The Miracle that is Israel, Phil Davies, Cornerstone Publishing
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