Source: www.MNNonline.org
Date: June 17, 2025
Iran (MNN) — Israel and Iran’s open exchange of fire has entered its fifth day. Israel’s stated goal is to “remove the Iranian nuclear program.” Iran in turn has called the strikes “blatant aggression,” urging the United Nations to condemn the attacks.
In the midst of rising international clamor, Samuel* with Redemptive Stories offers a Kingdom of God perspective: remember the Church is still present in the instability.
Jerusalem, Israel. (Photo courtesy of Dariusz Kanclerz/Unsplash)
“[The] first thing we always should remember is that there are believers, our brothers and sisters, on both sides of this conflict,” he says.
This truth should anchor believers in love and shape their prayers — as it did for Samuel when he met an Iranian Christian this week in a neighboring country.
“Meanwhile, his town with his family back home was being bombed. It just put a face to what we often might, as people from the West, perceive as ‘the enemy,’ but this is really my brother,” Samuel says.
The conflict may disrupt summer ministry plans in both nations.
“I have friends currently in Israel that are not able to get out for activities that they had planned later in this year. The same is all over our region — [people] currently not able to travel smoothly. That’s just one of the simple, more logistical aspects,” says Samuel.
Believers are not specifically targeted — but that doesn’t mean they’re safer than any other person. In fact, some may be at greater risk.
Tehran, Iran (Photo courtesy of Khashayar Kouchpeydeh/Unsplash)
“Arabs, Christians, and Arab Christians that live in [Israel], often, along with other Arabs, tend to suffer more — mostly because of limited access to bomb shelters, particularly in the West Bank, compared to other spaces in Israel,” says Samuel.
Like most people in the world, he is concerned about other groups or nations entering the conflict and escalating it further. But he points to another reality.
“Ultimately, our goal here in all of this, as believers, is to seek a step of reconciliation,” he says. “It’s an opportunity for ministries to model that cross-boundary unity that can often transcend politics and ethnicity.”
The cost of following Christ only grows in times like these.
“It’s an opportunity for the church to be prepared to really be faithful under pressure in all of these spaces in Israel and Iran and maybe if it expands into other areas as well,” he says. “Pray that ministries would deepen roots in Scripture and prayer together and community, and [help] believers not only to endure trials, but [also] truly witness powerfully through them.
“Hope must not be framed in geopolitical outcomes, but in the unshakable reign of Christ.”
*Pseudonym
Header photo of Tehran, Iran is a representative stock photo courtesy of Hamid Mohammad Hossein Zadeh Hashemi via Unsplash.