The Gentiles Have Landed in Israel

Revelation 11:2

The final prophecies have not been fulfilled. But the stage is being set. The environment is being created.

The war in Iran fits Bible prophecy in several ways we have been discussing. But here’s another potential fulfillment that is less talked about, but no less important. The subject of ‘boots on the ground’ seems an important one these days. None of us want our young people put in harm’s way if it can be avoided. Of course, it can’t always be off the table. Freedom isn’t free, and sometimes there’s no other way than a ground invasion. We do a lot from the air, and our enemies are adjusting by fortifying underground and hiding behind civilians. Considering the troops that are just arriving, it seems likely that at least some special forces will be going in. But that’s not the fulfillment to which I am referring. I’m talking about boots already on the ground…not in Iran, but in Israel. Let me explain.

The scale of what has been deployed to the waters off the coast of Israel is off the chart. But there are also a lot of troops actually on Israeli soil at this moment, and that is historically unprecedented. In late February, as Operation Epic Fury was being prepared, the Air Force deployed 11 F22 Raptor stealth fighters to an air base in Israel's southern Negev Desert. Simultaneously up to 14 US Air Force tanker aircraft and aerial refueling platforms were stationed at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. These tankers extend the combat range of carrier based fighters from the USS Gerald R. Ford, enabling sustained deep strike operations into Iranian territory. There are mid east bases where they could land and refuel, but they are increasingly under Iranian missile and drone attack. And the naval buildup is equally staggering. The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group is positioned in the eastern Mediterranean off Israel's coast. The USS Abraham Lincoln operates in the Arabian Sea. The USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship carrying over 2,500 Marines and sailors from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, is transiting from the Indo-Pacific and expected to arrive in the region within hours. And the USS Boxer carrying the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit with approximately 2,500 additional Marines from Camp Pendleton departed San Diego on March 18th on an accelerated deployment schedule. Total US forces in the Middle East now exceed 50,000. Two full Marine Expeditionary Units, roughly 5,000 Marines, are on route to a theater that already contains multiple carrier strike groups, fighter squadrons, bomber rotations, etc. This is not a training exercise. This is wartime positioning, and a significant portion of it is physically located on the soil of Israel. This is a development that has no precedent in the modern history of the US Israel alliance.

Now, here's what most people don't understand about why this deployment is so significant. Because the United States has supported Israel militarily for decades. It has provided billions in annual military aid. It has supplied Iron Dome interceptors, F-35 fighter jets, precision guided munitions, and intelligence sharing. It has conducted joint exercises, maintained prepositioned equipment stockpiles, and provided diplomatic cover at the United Nations. But here's what it has almost never done. And this is the detail that separates this moment from every previous one. The United States has almost never placed offensive combat aircraft on Israeli soil during an active conflict. The F-22 is not a defensive platform. It is the most advanced air dominance fighter on Earth. Designed to penetrate enemy airspace, suppress air defenses, and establish air superiority over hostile territory. Deploying it to an Israeli air base during a war with Iran is not support. It is presence. American warfighting assets operated by American pilots launched from Israeli runways conducting strikes against a third nation. That is a qualitative leap from anything the alliance has produced before. And here's what makes this even more striking from a prophetic perspective. Israel has become the fallback, the one regional partner willing to host American strike assets on its own territory regardless of the consequences. The result is that Israel for the first time has become a forward operating base for American military power projection and the soldiers, pilots and marines operating from its soil are in biblical terms Gentiles…non-Jewish soldiers physically present on the land. There is a verse in the book of Revelation that describes in language that suddenly sounds very different when you hold it next to a satellite photo of our guys and equipment. Gentiles in the Holy Land. What it says is going to reframe how you see every image coming out of the mideast right now. And the reason most people have read past it without stopping is that it's sandwiched between two of the most dramatic passages in all of Revelation. It sits in the shadow of the two witnesses and the seventh trumpet. And because those passages are so dramatic, this verse gets overlooked. But what it describes may be more relevant to what you're watching on the news today than almost anything else in the book.

Revelation 11:2

But the court which is without the temple, leave out and measure it not. For it is given unto the Gentiles, and the holy city shall they tread underfoot forty and two months.

3 and 1/2 years, the exact duration of the worst half of the great tribulation. In the original temple, Gentiles were permitted in the outer court but forbidden from entering the inner courts on pain of death. The outer court and, by extension, the area around the temple, the entire holy city itself is given to non-Jewish nations. Not conquered, not invaded by surprise. Given. The language implies a transfer of control or presence that is permitted, authorized, or at least tolerated. The Gentiles are there because they have been allowed to be there. The holy city shall they tread underfoot. This Gentile presence is not a brief visit. It is a sustained multi-year reality. And right now, March 2026, non-Jewish military forces are physically present on the land of Israel in unprecedented numbers.

Let’s be clear that we are not in the tribulation. It is tied to specific events. The rebuilding of the temple. The ministry of the two witnesses. And the broader tribulation judgments described throughout the book. None of these events have occurred. The Antichrist has not confirmed a covenant. What we are watching is not the prophecy being fulfilled. It is a situation that resembles the kind of world the prophecy describes. The Gentile military presence on Israeli soil is real, unprecedented, and historically significant. But it is not the 42-month trampling that Revelation foretells. The difference between stage setting and fulfillment is the most important distinction in all of prophecy teaching.

Now, let me zoom out because Revelation is not the only passage that describes nations gathering around Israel. It is part of a much larger biblical pattern, a pattern that runs through the Old Testament, the New Testament, and into the apocalyptic visions of the end times. And the pattern is consistent. As the end of the age approaches, the world's attention and the world's military power converges on one tiny piece of land. And here's what one Old Testament prophet saw when God showed him the future of Jerusalem. Because what Zechariah describes sounds like a description of the situation forming right now. And the two images he uses are so precise that once you hear them, you won't be able to read a headline about Israel without thinking of them.

Zechariah 12:2-3

Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people. All that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces. Though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.

The city that draws nations toward it like gravity, that becomes the center of the world's attention, that forces every nation to take a position. But here's what makes Ezekiel's chapter 38 vision even more specific. Because he doesn't just describe nations gathering. He names them. A coalition of Gentile nations moving toward the Holy Land, including Iran, Russia and Turkey.

And right now, Persia is at war. Russia is aligned with Iran. Turkey is drifting from NATO. And the nations gathering around Israel include not just enemies, but allies. American forces deployed to Israeli soil in numbers never seen before, creating a concentration of Gentile military power in and around the Holy Land that is unprecedented in the modern era. The pattern is consistent. The nations are moving and Jerusalem is at the center.

Why Israel? Why does this tiny nation smaller than New Jersey with a population of fewer than 10 million, an economy smaller than a single American state, occupy the center of global prophecy? Why does the Bible describe the final conflicts of human history converging on a strip of land you could drive across in 2 hours? God chose Israel. Not because it was the largest. Not because it was the most impressive, but because he chose it. And here's the verse that should reframe how you think about every military deployment, every alliance shift, and every headline involving Israel. Because God himself explains why he chose this nation.

Deuteronomy 7:7-8

⁷ The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: ⁸ But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

God chose the small, the weak, the unlikely, not because of what Israel was, but because of who God is. A God who keeps oaths. A God who makes covenants and honors them across millennia. A God who told Abraham roughly 4,000 years ago that his descendants would inherit a specific land and then spent the next 40 centuries fulfilling that promise through every obstacle human history could produce.

In Genesis the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "Unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates, a land promised by God to Abraham's descendants forever." And that land, that specific strip of territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, has been the most fought over, most contested, most obsessively scrutinized piece of real estate in the history of the human race. Not because of oil, not because of location, because of the covenant attached to it. And here's the pattern that should stun you. Because every major empire in human history has intersected with this land and every one of them has been judged by how they treated it and the people God placed there. Egypt enslaved Israel and was devastated by 10 plagues. Babylon conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple and was overthrown by Persia within a generation. Persia released the Jews and funded the temple's rebuilding and was blessed as the instrument of God's deliverance. Greece desecrated the temple under Antiochus Epiphanes and was replaced by Rome. Rome destroyed the second temple in 70 AD and scattered the Jewish people for two millennia and collapsed within four centuries. The Ottoman Empire controlled the land for 400 years and dissolved after World War I. The British Empire received the mandate over Palestine and lost its global empire within a generation of trying to limit Jewish immigration during the Holocaust. And now the United States with its F22s on Israeli runways, its tankers at Ben Gurion. Its Marines steaming toward the region, the most powerful Gentile nation in modern history, physically present on the covenanted land during the most volatile period in the modern Middle East.

But here's what makes this moment different from every previous intersection. Every previous empire came to the land either as conqueror or as controller. The United States is there as a protector, an ally, a partner, an invited presence. And yet the physical reality is the same. Gentile military forces on the land God promised to Abraham's descendants in numbers never seen before. The nations come. They always come because the land draws them. And the land draws them because the God who holds the covenant holds the future. And the future according to Ezekiel, Zechariah, Daniel, and Revelation converges on this one city, this one land, this one people in the final chapter of human history. Jerusalem is the city God named as His own. It is the city where Christ was crucified and resurrected. It is the city where the antichrist will commit the abomination of desolation. It is the city where Christ will return. And it is the city where Gentile nations right now today in unprecedented numbers are physically present. That is not a coincidence. That is a convergence. And the convergence is accelerating.

The land the prophets wrote about. The land the nations are drawn to. The land where Revelation says Gentile presence will characterize the final period of human history. And the war that caused this deployment doesn't just involve any nation. It involves the exact nation the Bible names in its end times prophecies. For years they have been surrounded by their enemies. That was a huge fulfillment all its own. But never before has there been a Gentile presence that was welcomed…until now.

When Jesus spoke of wars and rumors of wars, He was talking about Israel. He said the end is not yet, but that when you see all these things coming to pass, look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.

One element is missing, and that is a great peace agreement. It could happen on either side of the rapture. The covenant is in the works, and many are signing. Eventually Iran will be part of it, and it will be confirmed by the Antichrist. Israel will be at peace. They will finally feel like they can relax. And then all hell will break loose. Believers won’t be here. That’s when the Gentiles really tread all over Jerusalem. The final battle will be won with just a word, and Christ will take the throne!

In the last days, people will ignore prophetic warnings, just as they did in Noah’s day. And just as they mocked Noah, people will mock us as followers of Christ. That, too, is a sign of the last days. But one day the mockery will cease, and the laughter will stop when Christ fulfills His very words. Jesus is coming back.