As Christmas approaches, the world is on edge. Following the slaughter of more than 1,400 Israelis—including women and children—by savage Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, the state of Israel launched retaliatory strikes across the Gaza Strip to destroy the entrenchments of militants who butchered unsuspecting civilians and carried off more than 200 hostages, including Americans and Brits.

The conflict threatened to escalate, as the United States sent carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf and warned against intervention by Iran—who supplies arms to Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.

It should come as no surprise that the Middle East—specifically focused on the nation of Israel—is once again the world’s tipping point. Modern Israel was born in 1948, and in my lifetime, tensions between Arabs and Israelis have erupted into battle at least seven times, including the Six-Day War in 1967. The Bible is clear that in the days before the return of Christ, the end-time battle of Armageddon will happen on the plains of Megiddo in Israel, as the anti-Christ and his evil forces seek to destroy Jerusalem, literally the “City of Peace.”

International conflict has defined Israel’s history since the reign of King David and his son Solomon. The people of Israel endured captivity and exile from a succession of hostile world powers, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans.

The Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem in 63 B.C., so it was under the oppressive thumb of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus that a Jewish King, Jesus Christ, God’s Son, was born in the small village of Bethlehem to a poor Jewish couple from Nazareth. They came to take part in a worldwide census ordered by Augustus. God moved the entire world in order to get two small people to travel 70 miles to fulfill His Word given to the Prophet Micah 500 years prior:

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