From the Editor Jan/Feb 2024

Jesse King, our managing editor, gives a glimpse into our Jan/Feb 2024 issue in this Israel My Glory Sneak Peek.

We have now witnessed the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Israel will never be the same after October 7, 2023, when operatives of the Arab terrorist organization Hamas entered the country and slaughtered more than 1,400; wounded more than 4,500; and kidnapped approximately 250 men, women, and children—all while raining down thousands of rockets into Israel from Gaza.

War is nothing new to Israel. In October 1973, 50 years prior, Syria and Egypt launched the bloody Yom Kippur War against the Jewish state. In June 1967, the Six-Day War secured Israel’s survival and possession of Jerusalem. And on May 14, 1948, when Israel declared its independence, its Arab neighbors greeted it with an immediate fight for survival.

For more than 3,000 years, the Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Nazis, and many others have sought to erase the Jewish people from the earth. None ever succeeded.

Providence, not coincidence, accounts for Israel’s survival. God promised, “I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them” (Amos 9:15). He will sustain His Chosen People and has promised the land of Israel will be their inheritance forever (Gen. 13:15).

The story of David, the shepherd-boy-turned-king, is a microcosm of Israel’s history. Like the Jewish people, David enjoyed a special, covenantal relationship with the Lord. He faced incessant persecution, fled for his life often, and defeated many powerful enemies by God’s strength.

David’s life involves a rags-to-riches narrative, a war epic, a musical, a tragedy of betrayal, and a divine love story. He saved Israel from a Philistine giant as a boy and slew many of the nation’s enemies in battle, all while maintaining his artistic side, writing and composing many of Scripture’s beautiful psalms.

David walked with the Lord obediently, though not without serious, disgraceful sin that sowed dysfunction in his family. But David loved God, and God loved David; and God promised to establish David’s kingdom forever (2 Sam. 7:16). Scripture calls him “a man after [God’s] own heart” (Acts 13:22), and this issue of Israel My Glory explores David’s fascinating life story.

God chose David, once the afterthought among Jesse’s sons, to shepherd Israel as king and to establish the ancestral line of Jesus the Messiah.

While Israelis endure the devastation of war with Hamas, believers mourn with them and look forward to the day when Jesus will reign on the throne of David in Jerusalem with perfect peace in the Millennial Kingdom (Mic. 4:1–3; Zech. 14:4).

In His service,
Jesse King
Managing Editor