I’m wondering when TikTok is going to become a university.  After all, with classes lasting sixty seconds each, you could become an expert on just about anything.  The growing campus of social media platforms has taught everything from political science, and gender studies, to critical race theory–and now, in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, a lot of badly revised history.  

To borrow a phrase from the gospel of Matthew, it’s enough “to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”

Indeed, some Christians are now in danger of falling prey to repackaged forms of antisemitism.  

What is the New Testament attitude toward Israel?  Highly educated kids at some of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world, kids who grew up in church, can’t tell you.   It looks like Bible illiteracy is alive and well.  Scriptural answers have apparently been drowned out in a chorus of genocidal chants–“From the river to the sea, etc., etc.”  

If Israel is wrong, it is thought, then hatred against it is justified.  And that might be true, if it were any other nation.  But the Bible records the Jews as having made the worst mistake in history, by rejecting and killing the Savior of the world.  No country has ever done a worse thing.  However, consider Paul’s view and assessment of Israel:

9:1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

This attitude was coming from a man who had often experienced brutal forms of rejection at the hands of his countrymen.  

Paul was the apostle to the gentiles, yet, God’s priority was clear to him:  “the gospel…is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Rom. 1:16).

And later, when the Jewish nation had fallen upon hard times, the apostle expected to lead the churches into honoring and aiding it:

“At present…I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings” (Rom. 15:25-27).

Social media sycophants today would find these enlightened perspectives objectionable.  Likewise, Paul would have walked away from today’s anti-Israel mob, deeply troubled by so-called Christians caught up in agreement with it. 

It’s time to drop out of TikTok University, and the rest of the media constellation, and side with the truth.