I’m sure you already know this, and yet, just in case you don’t, Israel launched preemptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites on Thursday. As expected, Iran responded. It was reported in the news that we knew those strikes were coming, even as America was attempting to broker a peace deal with Iran. However, Iran appeared to be doing what Iran always does, which is to make every excuse for not securing peace. Meanwhile, Israeli and American intelligence agencies reported that Iran was only days away from having enough enriched uranium to build a minimum of fifteen nuclear weapons, only one of which would be needed to turn Israel to glass. Used against the United States, millions here would die.

Is any of this news reporting accurate? Is the media telling us what’s true? It’s hard to tell these days.

On one hand, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, has said they would pursue nuclear independence. He also said as recently as 2023 that “Death to America is not just a slogan. It is our policy.” And of course, Iran—the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world—has made it a priority to rid the world of the Jews. That’s not breaking news. That’s an open and longstanding fact. What’s more, Iran’s desire for Israel’s destruction, some have said, is the only truly unifying principle that keeps the nation together. A largely tribal nation, Iran would likely come entirely undone if not for its leaders’ radical Islamic ideology.

On the other hand, nearly everything the news reported about COVID turned out to be false. Masks and social distancing absolutely did not accomplish anything, except to decelerate development in generations of children. It turns out that ventilators made the sick worse. Ivermectin, the Nobel Prize-winning medication prescribed to humans for decades, was negatively labeled a “horse dewormer” and called dangerous, ultimately getting doctors who knew better and prescribed it into heaps of trouble. And yet, it turned out to be wholly sufficient for treating the illness. If a person added vitamin D to his regimen, he would be good to go. Conversely, most news outlets insisted that the vaccine would protect from infection. They streamed Biden’s thank-you to the vaccinated while warning the unvaccinated to expect “a winter of severe illness and death.” And yet, the opposite was true. In fact, the rates of unexpected deaths have seen a sharp increase only among the vaccinated.

I read an article this morning from CBS News saying that the FDA is insisting Pfizer and Moderna “expand the warning labels on their COVID-19 vaccines about the risk of a possible heart injury side effect linked to the mRNA shots, primarily in teen boys and young men.” It goes on to talk about unusual spikes in myocarditis. A peripheral article warned of the same, but then added strange cancers and other diseases to the list of concerns, conditions that were never as prominent until after the COVID vaccines and boosters were so widely administered. One particular example shared was that sudden athlete deaths were off the charts by comparison to pre-COVID statistics.

By the way, I should say I’m not surprised by the vaccine results. Dr. Mary Talley Bowden was recently on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and she mentioned that we now have five years of data stacks confirming the vaccine’s dangers. She essentially noted that anyone who received the vaccine is now, in a sense, permanently rewired—because what the news called a vaccine isn’t a vaccine. It’s an mRNA injection. It’s gene therapy. Gene therapy rewrites DNA. Vaccines, in theory, are designed to prompt and arm the body’s immune system. Gene therapy is designed to manipulate the body’s very DNA. It works at a genetic level.

Still, the public’s response to COVID proved how quickly fear and misinformation can bend entire societies—even churches—toward error. I say this as so many churches, even after the lockdowns, continued to forbid worshippers through the door unless they were masked, vaccinated, and sat two rows apart. This is an absolute violation of God’s Word, regardless of the government’s mandates! The same patterns are playing out again, just under different headlines.

However, I didn’t start writing this morning with COVID-19 on my mind. I was more concerned about the possibility of war. More precisely, I was thinking about how easily things come undone—or how easily human beings can steer into falsehood—when our handling of source material is faulty.

Concerning everything I’ve described so far? I suppose the only answer I can give is to say, “Read, read, and read some more.” As Christians, I encourage you to do this, remembering three things in particular.

First, understand that skimming content is rarely helpful. Dig in and digest, reading from various sources in order to get a topic’s fullest spectrum of perspectives. Second, pitch everything you read against the Word of God. In other words, let everything you take in pass through the filter of Scripture. God’s Word shapes our opinions, not the other way around. Third, make sure your doctrine is sound. Doctrine doesn’t just articulate what we believe about salvation. It provides necessary boundaries, becoming a primary tool for discerning everything we see and experience. If you claim the Bible, and yet your theology depends on the modern nation of Israel going to war with Iran as a fulfillment of end-times prophecy before Christ can return, then it’s likely the first two recommendations weren’t heeded. In other words, first, you aren’t all that familiar with the Bible’s actual contents; and second, your opinion has become your strongest filter. As a result, your doctrinal compass is misaligned, and you’re destined only to distort the source material—the Bible.

Now, I say this as someone who’s spent a lot of time wrestling with how theology and the public square intersect, particularly through the lens of Church and State, or the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. What we believe about God’s rule and our role in the world carries consequences, both for faithfulness and for clarity during incredibly confusing times.

Be aware that confusion has a way of hardening into error.

You may have already noticed from what I wrote earlier about Israel and end-times prophecy that one particular distortion in times like these is Christian Zionism. It’s a theological framework that merges biblical language with modern political expectations, often assigning messianic significance to the nation of Israel. This confusion leads many to misapply sacred titles and divine promises in ways that seem patriotic or spiritually inspiring, but ultimately are biblically reckless and incredibly dangerous.

For example, Israel’s current offensive has been dubbed “Operation Rising Lion.” An online friend posted on Saturday an image of a lion with an Israeli flag blended into its face. The tagline read, “The Lion of Judah has risen.” The image made me cringe. Yes, I support the nation of Israel’s right to protect itself from annihilation. Still, the nation of Israel is not the Lion of Judah. The phrase “Lion of Judah” belongs to Jesus Christ alone (Revelation 5:5). Furthermore, it was posted by someone who assumes the modern nation of Israel still carries an unbroken divine mandate, simply by virtue of its geography or ethnicity.

To believe and confess this is to upend the fuller testimony of Scripture. It replaces Christ-centered fulfillment with nationalistic nostalgia and, in doing so, distorts God’s promises and perpetuates grave theological error.

This kind of misreading reflects the same pattern I’ve addressed already. Whether it’s Iran’s deception or the media’s COVID narratives, when we abandon faithfulness to God’s Word, we can only lose our bearings in life’s fog. Reality becomes distorted, and we are just as vulnerable to being swept away by falsehood as anyone else.

Of course, whenever someone challenges the notion that modern Israel holds a unique divine status, the charge of antisemitism isn’t far behind. Even as someone who supports Israel’s right to defend itself, I’ve borne that charge. But the accusation misses the mark entirely. I’ve written before that it is by no means antisemitic to say (alongside Saint Paul, the inspired writer and chief apostolic interpreter of Christ and the Old Testament Scriptures) that Christians are the “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16). The Israel of God is not ethnic or a localized nation. Saint Peter clarifies it is “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession…” (1 Peter 2:9–10). And again, Saint Paul writes, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29); and “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children… it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring” (Romans 9:6–8).

Children of the promise—Christians—are regarded by God as Abraham’s true offspring. Like Abraham, they believe in the promise (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3; James 2:23). And what is the promise? The One who was promised—Christ (Galatians 3:16; Luke 1:54–55; Luke 1:31–33; Acts 2:29–31; Hebrews 8:6–13; Romans 15:8–9; 2 Corinthians 1:20; and countless other texts). All who look to Christ in faith will be saved (John 6:38–40) and brought into the new Jerusalem—eternal life (Revelation 21–22; Psalm 46:4–5; Isaiah 65:17–19; and others).

To say that only believers in Christ are saved and given eternal life is not antisemitic, but it is fundamental to Christian theology, and it does show Christian Zionism’s error. If it were antisemitic, then the apostles were antisemites for believing and declaring, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). What’s more, Christ Himself would be an antisemite for saying in absolutist terms, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6); and, “Whoever believes in [God’s Son] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:16–18).

It is right and godly to defend and protect anyone and everyone from persecution or attack. Long before the events of this past week, Iran and its proxies had launched over 500 ballistic missiles into Israel. Christians should support restraining Iran. To do so is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. But that doesn’t change the fact that Christian Zionism is a dangerously confused theology—a dreadfully miscalibrated doctrine—that must be avoided, if only because it corrupts the Gospel that can save everyone in both Israel and Iran.

I suppose in the end, my main point is to say that if Christians are not vigilant—biblically, and therefore doctrinally—we will find ourselves swept along by narratives that feel righteous but stand in contradiction to God’s revealed truth. Whether it’s the media rewriting science or Christians assigning eternal significance to things that do not deserve it, the temptation to trade discernment for ideological capture is only ever a step away.

This is why being in God’s Word is so important. I encourage you: make it a part of your everyday routine. And as I said, don’t skim. Even better, don’t search the Scriptures just to find proof texts that reinforce your existing political views or cultural assumptions. Instead, go there to be corrected, shaped, and grounded. Go there for truth. Go there to find Christ. He is enough, and His Word is sufficient. And the Church—His true Israel—must live and speak as though both of those things are actually true.