Is “all-out war” coming between Israel and Hezbollah? If so, why?

This morning, Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes on southern Lebanon after warning people living in or near buildings used by Hezbollah to evacuate. An Israeli military spokesman said “we will do whatever is needed” to return evacuated residents of northern Israel to their homes safely.

This after a Friday airstrike on a Beirut suburb took out “an entire class of senior leaders of the militant group’s most elite fighting force,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Among them was senior leader Ibrahim Aqil, wanted by the US for his role in the 1983 bombings of the US Embassy and a Marine Corp barracks that killed three hundred people.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said yesterday that the leaders “were meeting to launch the same horrific, horrendous attack that we had on October 7,” this time in northern Israel. In response to the airstrike, Hezbollah fired a barrage of missiles at Israel yesterday.

The Wall Street Journal calls Israel’s escalating attacks “an implied ultimatum: make a deal to pull back from Israel’s northern border, or go to war.” So far, Hezbollah seems to be choosing the latter: one of their officials called yesterday’s missile strikes “just the beginning.” As the Washington Post reports, “Both sides appeared to be spiraling closer toward all-out war.”

But why?

Why Hezbollah is in conflict with Israel

Militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad primarily reside in so-called “occupied territories” (Gaza and the West Bank) that Israel’s enemies claim were stolen by the Jewish state in the 1948 and 1967 wars. Their jihadist acts are part of their purported purpose to reclaim the land for its “rightful” Palestinian owners.

However, as international relations professor Christopher Phillips notes in his new book, Battleground: Ten Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East, Lebanon has never been occupied by the Jews across its history. To the contrary, he states that Israeli and Western leaders have increasingly disengaged from the nation’s politics over recent years. As the Associated Press reports, the Biden administration is taking an even more hands-off approach to the current conflict “for fear of making matters worse.”

Hezbollah, the terrorist group that dominates Lebanon, is in perpetual conflict with Israel primarily because the militants are a proxy of Iran, which sees the Jewish state as its principal competitor for regional superiority. This is why Iran warned after last week’s attacks on Hezbollah’s communication devices that Israel would face “a crushing response from the axis of resistance,” referring to its proxies in the region.

Iranian leaders claim that the Mahdi (a Muslim messianic figure) will return to dominate the world for Islam only after Muslims destroy Israel. And so we see the power of ideology on stark display once again.

“From everlasting to everlasting you are God”

Ideas do not change physical reality. As J. V. Langmead Casserley noted, a man who jumps from a tenth-story window doesn’t break the law of gravity—he illustrates it. A driver who sincerely takes a wrong turn is still wrong.

However, ideas do alter relational reality. Marriage is just a concept for us until we are married. God’s sovereignty is just theology until we trust it personally.

Therein lies my point today.

Moses said of the Lord, “From everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Psalm 90:2). This is a present-tense fact.

We tend to associate the reality of God with times when we experience his reality personally, but faith declares to sight that God is always what he has ever been. Conversely, reason declares to faith that if God is truly God (by definition, the greatest entity that can be conceived), he cannot change or he would be less than God (cf. Malachi 3:6). Thus he must always be what we sometimes know him to be.

However, knowing God intellectually is only a means to the end of knowing him personally. This is why Moses concluded his psalm, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us” (v. 17).

“The supernatural is made natural”

When we seek to know our Father more intimately through Bible study, prayer, worship, solitude, and other spiritual disciplines, his Spirit makes us more like his Son (Romans 8:29). Then, according to Oswald Chambers,

God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian is that the supernatural is made natural in him by the grace of God, and the experience of this works out in the practical details of life, not in times of communion with God (his emphasis).

Such a transforming relationship with the living Lord Jesus is indeed “by the grace of God.”

When a Michigan man recently experienced a medical episode while driving, a sheriff’s deputy leapt from her moving squad car into his truck. Deputy Nicole Miron was able to stop the vehicle; the man received medical attention and is recovering. The video of the incident has since gone viral.

As commendable as her heroism was, what if she had done this knowing that she would have to give her life for his?

This is your Savior’s love for you (Romans 5:8). He would go to the cross again, just for you.

What will you do today to experience his love more intimately than ever before?

Monday news to know:

• At least 4 killed and multiple injured in shooting at popular entertainment area in Birmingham, Alabama, police say
• Trinity Bible Church lead pastor removed following “inappropriate relationship” with a woman
• Anti-Israel agitators rock University of North Carolina, vandalize building and remove American flag
• Spending deal averts a possible federal shutdown and funds the government into December
• On this day in 1949: President Truman announces Soviets have exploded a nuclear device

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion.” —Brennan Manning