Israel is Turning to God! Will the Nations?

We are in the month of Elul, the last stretch of the Hebrew year before Rosh Hashanah, when God is crowned King over the whole earth. Elul is a season of cheshbon nefesh, an accounting of the soul, when the people of Israel turn their hearts back toward their Creator before the Days of Awe arrive.

There is an old Jewish parable about this month that I think is especially fitting for this time in history. The rest of the year, the King sits in His palace, and if you want an audience with Him, you go through the gates, the guards, the formal channels. But in Elul the King leaves the palace and walks out into the field, among His people, where anyone can approach Him. No appointment. No formality. Just a farmer in his field who looks up and finds the King walking toward him. The King is in the field this Elul, and Israel is running to meet Him.

Since October 7th, Israel has changed in ways no news broadcast has captured. Israelis who never picked up a prayer book are praying. Young men who never wore a fringe on their garment are wearing tzitzit now, usually hanging out proudly. Synagogues are full of young people. This is not a religious trend that someone conjured up. The nation is turning to God.

I have written before about why this should not surprise us. Moses lays it out in Deuteronomy thirty: Israel would be scattered, then gathered back to the land, and only after being gathered would God circumcise their hearts. Ezekiel declares the same thing. God would take His people from among the nations and bring them into their own land, and only then sprinkle clean water on them and cleanse them from their idols. He does not wait for them to clean up first. He gathers them home, and then He cleans them up. That is exactly the pattern playing out in the streets of this country right now.

During Elul, a special set of prayers called “Slichot” are recited. It is heart-blowing to watch the thousands of Israelis stream to the Western Wall in the hours before dawn to recite these ancient prayers of repentance, and together they cry out one of the oldest of refrains, Adon HaSlichot, chatanu lefanecha, racheim aleinu, Master of Forgiveness, we have sinned before You, have mercy on us.

A crowd that would have been unthinkable a few years ago now fills the Kotel plaza at midnight, pleading for mercy. These are not only the religious Israelis in black hats. These are soldiers and secular families and teenagers and grandparents, every stream of Israeli society standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the ancient stones.

I watched a video this week from my friend Jeremy Gimpel that put a face on all of this better than anything I have seen. He showed footage from a concert by Ben Tzur, one of the top musicians in the entire country, a guy with a tattoo on his neck who never used to cover his head. Since October 7th, he has started wearing tzitzit.

Eight thousand people packed his concert over two nights. This was not an orthodox crowd. This was ordinary, secular Israel, and when the music played, the crowd sang with an intensity that brought tears to my eyes. They proclaimed, “God is King, God was King, and God will be King forever and ever. Father is watching over me.” You cannot manufacture that kind of clarity and intention. That is the Spirit of God moving on a nation.

Ezekiel saw this same order in the valley of dry bones. First God builds the body, the sinews, the skin, the infrastructure. Then, only after the body is formed, He breathes His Spirit into it. We spent seventy five years watching God build the body of the state of Israel. Now, in real time, we are watching Him breathe into it.

With all this in mind, I believe it is important to remember Israel’s God-ordained mirror-esque quality.  Like a mirror, Israel is held up to the nations. What happens in her echoes outward to the rest of the world. Think about the Dark Ages, that long night of spiritual darkness that fell across Europe at almost the exact same time the Jewish people were sitting in the deepest, darkest years of exile, scattered and cut off from their land and their calling. The nations sat in darkness while Israel sat in exile.

If that pattern holds, then what we are watching now- this turning, this repentance, this hunger for God breaking out among secular Israelis in the wake of the worst massacre since the Holocaust, is the leading edge of something far bigger. I fully expect a major revival to break out among the nations.

But revival is not just a feeling. It is a realignment. It brings the Church back into step with the heart of God, and nothing sits closer to His heart than Israel and the Jewish people. When this outpouring arrives, I believe it will include thousands of believers standing with Israel out of covenantal lovingkindness rather than politics.

And practically, it will look like the nations blessing Israel generously, remembering that we were grafted into a Jewish root and owe a debt we can never fully repay. God told Abraham I will bless those that bless you, and that covenantal promise is causing a spiritual ramping up of redemption-heralding momentum.

The King is in the field, and Israel has already started running toward Him. Now there is a question mercifully extended to all nations. Will we walk out into the field too, or stay behind the palace walls waiting for a more convenient season and miss this hour of visitation?