As for whether I would counsel my family to flee in such circumstances as you report you experience, I state unequivocally: yes! For my own land was settled by people fleeing persecution and hardship in Ireland, Britain, France, and elsewhere. The travails of the French Huguenots excelled your own, and yet they fled when they could and played an important role in settling that part of my land that is the present South Carolina. And if God wills, we may yet have to flee (temporarily or permanently) from this land in time.

Jack Nassar was displeased by my latest rejoinder, assailing it with many words. I typed copious notes to rejoin fully, but space will not permit it, so I shall mention only a few points. He says:

In Christ, suffering is not automatically judgment. Paul did not interpret his imprisonments as wrath but as participation in Christ’s sufferings (Phil. 3:10). The early church did not see persecution as punishment but as privilege (Acts 5:41). The persecuted church in Palestine does not see itself as cursed but as called—called to faithfulness amid trial, called to bear witness in the land where Christ Himself suffered.

This was in response to my suggestion that he consider whether the suffering he describes might be judgment. Clearly he rejects that possibility, as can be seen in what follows. It is noteworthy also that Acts 5:41 (ESV) says the apostles were “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name,” whereas the following chapters of Acts describe the church fleeing when persecution turned violent with Stephen’s martyrdom (8:1). Phil. 3:10 comes at the end of an impassioned argument in which Paul gladly “suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish” (v. 8), speaking especially of his cultural heritage (vv. 5-6). Compare that to Nassar’s values in what follows:

Mr. Hervey counsels us to “flee,” as if exile were simple, as if abandoning one’s heritage were merely practical advice. Would he give the same counsel to his own family and congregation if they were besieged?

And:

What Mr. Hervey does not grasp is our profound connection to this land not as nationalism but as vocation. We do not simply pack and leave. We have lived in these cities, towns, and villages for centuries. Our ancestors are buried here; they have become part of this soil. Our land is not just geography but heritage, culture, family, history, and faith. We see our existence here in Palestine as part of God’s calling: to remain, to witness in the very land where Christ lived, preached, died, and rose again.[1]

Tell me, does the call of God contradict God’s commands? Is it not rather the case that God calls through his commands and his gospel? Well might I say with Paul that “this is the third time I am coming to you. Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses” (2 Cor. 13:1). For in my previous articles I repeated the counsel of Christ concerning persecution (e.g., “when they persecute you in one town, flee to the next,” Matt. 10:23). Dare you say, Mr. Nassar, that your calling is direct from God and circumvents Christ’s commands?[2]

Have you forgotten that Abraham was commended because he obeyed when “the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’” (Gen. 12:1)? As it is written:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise (Heb. 11:8-9)

That this referred foremost to the eternal city to come is proven in the next verse, where it says “he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God,” as also later, when it says that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (13:14). Especially does it say of Abraham and his sons in faith that “these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:13, emphasis mine).

You cannot abide to be an exile on earth, however, and despise the notion, even accusing me of “blindness” for suggesting flight.[3] As for this love of the land, have you never read these words of Christ? “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14:33). If you value the land over Christ, you rebel and commit idolatry, and you do contrary to Abraham, who left kin and land to obey God. You disobey Christ, who says to flee persecution, and who said that “if you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn. 14:15). And when you ask “does geography determine theological understanding?” well might we rejoin that in your case it clearly does, for you cannot get over the land. Like the Jews, you cannot lift your eyes to heaven and realize the promise of land refers to possessing the New Earth after Christ returns, and that here we are sojourners and exiles (1 Pet. 2:11).

As for your other claims, when you ask, “were the hurricanes in America God’s judgment against Americans?” I rejoin: almost certainly. We deserved far worse and are better for what we received, and I welcome more such judgment on this land, till it be cleansed of its worldliness, greed, selfishness, and many other sins. But when you speak of “the genocide of Native Americans,” I denounce your slander. Far from being destroyed, there are millions of people of American Indian descent today, and my own church supports missionaries among them. Nor is it just that our forefathers’ defensive wars be labelled a war crime.

But I cannot wonder that you misrepresent such things. For loving land so much, it has driven you to misunderstand us, and to mishandle scripture. You say:

The Ethiopian eunuch [Hervey] mentions believed on a desert road, yes—but he also returned to his homeland to bear witness there (Acts 8:39). Philip did not tell him to flee Ethiopia but to carry the Gospel back to it.

This is irrelevant: the Ethiopian was not persecuted, but you are; and Christ said for the persecuted to flee. Or again you say:

Scripture also commands us to “test everything” (1 Thess. 5:21) and to “weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15). To dismiss our cries as propaganda without testing them—without even visiting us—is to neglect both commands.

Our ambassador Huckabee accepted an invitation to visit Taybeh after an alleged Israeli arson attack. And contrary to yours and the local churches’ confident assertions that it was terrorism, he came away uncertain. May I not accept my own nation’s ambassador’s testimony in a case that you yourself mention? For it shows that your cries are sometimes far from being reliable testimony, and therefore justly suspected of being propaganda. Thus do I test your claims, sir, and I find them wanting.

As for weeping with those who weep, it is conditional, and it presupposes a certain knowledge that they weep understandably. I am not certain that is the case here. It seems to me that you disobey scripture when it contradicts what you want, and then appeal to it – but twisted somewhat – when it can be used to support your case or to pressure people to support you. I am not of a mind to weep with those who disobey Christ by substituting their idea of calling for his command and rhetorically assail those that expose them for it.

Thus also when you say that you “are asking to be recognized as part of the Body of Christ.” Prove it by obeying Christ’s commands, show plainly that you disavow all false religion and superstition (Romish or Eastern), and bear fruit in keeping with repentance. For you speak much of your virtue and faith, and say that you are “living stones of His church.” But “it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends” (2 Cor. 10:18). And how shall he commend you when you disobey him by refusing to flee, keep idols in your hearts, and speak with questionable honesty? Indeed, when your pride is such that you say “even the Holy Family, given divine instruction to flee, eventually came home” and then ask: “how much more do we . . . belong in the land of His incarnation?” Are you greater than Christ, and do you have a greater right to dwell there than he did during his earthly ministry? By such speech you contradict him who said “a servant is not greater than his master” (Jn. 13:20).

As for honesty, you say that in your previous articles you “spoke of [y]our sins” and “[y]our need for repentance.” Where? When I search for such terms I find them not, except when you asked if our sermons “name the sin of forces [sic] separation.” I see no admission of any wrong on your part or that of your people. And when you say:

The Reformed tradition is not Western or Eastern—it is biblical. It is the tradition that declared “Here I stand” in the face of power, that insisted on the priesthood of all believers, that proclaimed justification by faith alone. That same tradition calls me to stand here, in Ramallah, in Bethlehem, in Gaza, and bear witness to the Gospel among those who need it most.

You sow confusion, for you either imply that you are Reformed (“that same tradition calls me to stand here”) or that the Reformed tradition is found in worldly boldness that stands firm “in the face of power.” Either way, the gospel of justification by faith was not that one which you declared before. You spoke rather of “Israeli occupation,” “military checkpoints, an ugly wall, land seizures, home demolitions, and the daily humiliation of military control,” and such like which one hears from political agitators.

If you say that you are Reformed in the ecclesiastical sense, then I ask: of what church? For there is little Reformed presence there, and every time you have appealed to the Reformed tradition you have done so inaccurately.[4] As for whether one is “Reformed” merely for standing firm in the face of worldly power, that loose definition will not do. Many others have done so – rightly or wrongly, and with varying degrees of success – both before the Reformation’s dawn and since. And many of the Reformed have fled their lands under threat of persecution, temporarily or permanently.

As for whether I would counsel my family to flee in such circumstances as you report you experience, I state unequivocally: yes! For my own land was settled by people fleeing persecution and hardship in Ireland, Britain, France, and elsewhere. The travails of the French Huguenots excelled your own, and yet they fled when they could and played an important role in settling that part of my land that is the present South Carolina. And if God wills, we may yet have to flee (temporarily or permanently) from this land in time. For it is his land, not ours, and it is not our final home but a temporary haven until Christ returns and establishes a permanent home for his people.

When you then say that “to offer such counsel from the safety of South Carolina betrays a pastoral blindness that theology should heal, not reinforce,” I say: woe to you, Nassar! For I spoke God’s word to you, and you belittle it as “blindness.” I dust my feet off against you, sir, for you are as stiff-necked as the Jews of Christ’s day. For in that passage wherein he counsels flight from persecution, he also says “if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet” (Matt. 10:14). Twice I told you his word, and yet you prattled on, accounting yourself wronged that I had the audacity not to grovel before you as so many effete Westerners but rather tested your claims. In that I did you no wrong, but fulfilled my duty to Christ. Therefore, FINIS.

Tom Hervey is a member of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Laurens County, SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, and helped modernize Volume I of James Hervey’s classic dialogue on evangelical faith, Theron and Aspasio, available now at Monergism.

[1] Comp. “we do not simply pack and leave” and “our ancestors are buried here” to Christ’s statements in Lk. 9:59-62: “To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Yet another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’  Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’” (comp. also vv. 57-58).

[2] It is noteworthy as well that, for all Nassar’s attempts to portray remaining in the land as an act of witness, that attempt has regrettably accomplished little if anything: the professing Christian population has declined immensely over the last several decades throughout the Arab world (inc. Gaza and the disputed territory known variously as Judea and Samaria or the West Bank), and continues to do so (alas). It might be asked whether that fact, coupled with the persecution and hardship that have accompanied and in many cases caused it, commend attempting to witness in that way at this time. Sometimes we are called to not witness further when it meets resistance, a principle demonstrated in scripture (e.g., Acts 13:51; 18:6).

[3] In his section “when exile becomes ‘simple counsel,’” when he says that “to offer such counsel from the safety of South Carolina betrays a pastoral blindness that theology should heal, not reinforce.”

[4] For example, stating that “Calvin’s Institutes denounced the ‘shameful cowardice’ of those who ignore persecution,” which does not appear in any edition of the Institutes of which I am aware, and appeared rather in his commentary on Titus 3:10-15 (and meant something quite different than you suggested). You also quoted Kuyper’s famous quote about “every square inch,” apparently oblivious that he fawned over colonization of Palestine when he visited, and that he had a low opinion of the local Arabs, saying “an improved future must be realized by shoving the Bedouin back to the East, and through the entry of an international mixture of colonists, who would form the foundation for an entirely fresh repopulation of Palestine” (p. 26 here). And when you spoke of being “the kind of conscience Calvin summoned the Church to be,” you seemed to mistake him with the progressive Baptist Martin Luther King, Jr., who said “The church must be reminded once again that [it] is . . . the conscience of the state.”