Former Israeli army officer and Reformed pastor David Zadok will never forget the call from his wife. She rang him early in the morning of October 7, just an hour or two after his overnight flight from his home in Israel landed in Finland. His trip was meant to deepen relationships with churches in Scandinavia.
“David, have you heard?” she asked him. “There is a war.”
Bleary, he thought about Russia’s war with Ukraine, and Russia’s shared border with Finland.
“You mean here, in Finland?” he asked.
“No, no,” she said. “In Israel. In Gaza.”
As soon as he grasped what was going on, Zadok began searching for a way home. It wasn’t easy—most avenues into Israel had been closed. The flight from Berlin to Tel Aviv, normally around $400, set him back $1,200. And it wasn’t immediate—he had to wait a day. During his delay, he preached twice in Finland.
David Zadok / Courtesy of David Zadok
“I preached from Hosea 1,” he said. “I said that we have to realize the whole story of the Bible is about judgment and salvation, as found so clearly in this short chapter. It’s about death and life. All throughout history, nations have wanted to destroy Israel. It’s a spiritual battle.”
The battle with Hamas is spiritual too, he said. It’s not that Hamas would be satisfied with more land or more money. It’s that Hamas hates Yahweh and wants to destroy the people who have been associated with his name since the days of Abraham.
The idea of spiritual—and physical—warfare isn’t new to Zadok, who fled Iran as a teenager, came to trust in Jesus in America despite opposition from his family, and served for two decades in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
The Gospel Coalition asked him how he first heard about Jesus, how God is opening doors for his ministry—including the translation of the Old Testament into the last language you’d expect—and how he’s seen the goodness of God even in the war with Hamas.
You were born in Israel but grew up in Iran. How come?
My family probably descended from the Babylonian Jews—for generations, we lived in Iraq. But during World War II, Jews in Baghdad were murdered and homes and synagogues were burned, especially on Farhud Night. My family left the country, crossing the border into Iran. My dad spent the war helping Jews escape from Arab countries like Iraq and Syria into Israel. He was part of the organization that later became known as the IDF.
After the war, my parents settled in Israel, and I was born here. When I was 3, my mom took my brother, my sister, and myself to visit family in Iran. She decided to let me stay there with my uncle and aunt, who didn’t have any children and who had a difficult marriage. My mom thought maybe a child would save the marriage, which it did, although the marriage was never a happy one. I grew up in Iran with my aunt and uncle.
When I was 16, the Islamic Revolution started. You remember—when in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, there were hostages for more than a year? Well, we knew Israelis would be treated even worse than Americans. The Israeli consulate called and said I needed to be ready to leave.
So my uncle and aunt sent me to high school in San Diego, California.
Is that where you came to faith?
I was invited to a Bible study at San Diego State University by one of my friends. It was organized by Navigators. My English wasn’t so great, but I remember I heard the name of Jesus more than I’d ever heard it in my whole life.
A few guys shared Genesis 3 with me, and I felt comfortable with that story. My grandmother had told it to me. Then they shared about the prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the coming Messiah. And finally, they came to the New Testament and said Jesus is the Messiah. I was not eager to hear about that. I said, “If that’s true, how is it that I am 17 years old and I’ve never heard of it?”
They told me to read the Gospel of John. I had a Bible because a family who would invite international students over for the weekend gave me one when I visited them. I took it to be polite, thinking, I will throw this away later. But later I saw it had an Old Testament in it, and I couldn’t throw it away because to Jewish people the Scriptures are holy. We don’t throw them away. When they get old, we have a special place by the entrance of the cemetery where you can put them, and someone will bury them.
So I had a Bible, and I started looking at the Gospel of John. I read it for about six months. Each time, it was as if God was putting another piece of the puzzle in its place. Eventually, I was converted.
What did your family say?
I wrote to them, sharing the exciting news that I had found the Messiah. I wrote a long letter in Hebrew and another one in Farsi for my uncle and aunt who were still in Iran.
I never heard back from them.
I thought maybe the letters had gotten lost, so I wrote another set. This time they wrote back, but they responded to other things I had written in the letter. They didn’t say anything about my faith.
I didn’t know what was going on. Then, a few weeks later, my uncle came from Iran. We were having dinner with some people. When it came to dessert, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “David, you probably think you’ve done a good thing by becoming a Christian. Let me tell you how we all feel about it. It would have been less shameful for us if you would have become a drug addict or a criminal sitting in prison.”
He told me they were in the process of bringing me back to Israel. I was a shy person, and I’m sure I turned as red as possible. I just said, “OK.”
But by God’s grace, they let me stay and finish my studies.
Then what?
After I got my bachelor’s degree, I went to Israel to serve my mandatory military service. I ended up spending about nine years as a major in the IDF and also served as a chief engineering and system analyst in a top-secret project for the Ministry of Defense.
My uncle and aunt had escaped from Iran and come to live in Israel. I was living with them. But when I began to attend church, they threw me out of the house and said, “We don’t have a son. You’re dead to us.”
I rented an apartment near the church, and eventually my relationship with my family became better. It was never all the way healed though. About 14 years ago, my older brother passed away from a brain tumor. I took my mom to see him when he was in hospice. On our way back, she said, “David, you know why your brother is dying?”
I said, “No, I don’t.”
“It’s because you believe in Jesus, and God is taking revenge on our family because of you.”
That was like a knife in my heart.
I wanted to go to seminary, but I stayed in Israel to keep trying to present the gospel to my grandmother, uncle, and aunt and to take care of them. After they passed away, I moved back to California and studied at Westminster.
You were studying Reformed theology almost from the beginning of your walk with Christ.
Grace & Truth Church in Kanot, Israel / Courtesy of David Zadok
My whole Christian life, I’ve only been part of two churches. My church in California was New Life Presbyterian Church. My church in Israel is Grace & Truth, which was planted in 1976 by an Israeli Christian who learned the doctrines of grace while studying in England. I started going there because it was close to me and was recommended by a missionary I met in California.
When I was on my second date with my wife, I told her two things—the first was about TULIP, and she had no idea what I was talking about. The second thing was that I wanted to study at Westminster Seminary.
While I was at seminary, I translated the Heidelberg Catechism into Hebrew for the first time. Robert Godfrey wrote the foreword.
That wasn’t the only thing you’ve translated. Tell us about HaGefen Publishing.
Have you heard of Robert M’Cheyne? He came to Israel in 1839. When he returned, he gave a report to the Church of Scotland and helped to set up a Christian mission to the Jews. That eventually became CWI (Christian Witness to Israel), which started HaGefen Publishing in 1974.
There are only two or three Christian publishers in Hebrew. We are one of the larger ones, and we only do eight or nine books a year, printing about 350 copies of each book. But the need is huge. Of the 66 books of the Bible, only 14 or 15 have commentaries in Hebrew. We have published all of them. We published some Matthew Henry commentaries, Spurgeon’s Checkbook of Faith, some R. C. Sproul, some John MacArthur, and a few books by Paul Washer.
We are a nonprofit. We subsidize the books, and we give away about 25 percent of our stock to people who cannot afford them. So I have to fundraise before every project.
One huge project that we just finished—it took about 20 years—was translating the Old Testament word by word, verse by verse, into modern Hebrew for teenagers and children.
Wait—you’re translating the Old Testament into Hebrew?
If we go back to the time of King David, we are talking about 3,000 years ago. Since then, the language has developed and transformed. In addition, for almost 2,000 years the Hebrew language was not spoken. It was only “revived” by Eliezer Ben Yehuda in the late-19th century.
Who is reading your books? Are there a lot of Reformed Christians in Israel?
We are a country of a little more than 9 million. At the most, there are 30,000 believers. We publish for the broader Christian audience, as we want to reach out to all. For many years, Grace & Truth was the only Reformed church. In the last five or six years, that has grown to nine churches in a network called the Fellowship of Reformed Churches. One was started with the Dutch Reformed Church. Three are Russian-speaking—after the fall of the Soviet Union, a large influx of Jews immigrated to Israel.
One of our churches was in the north and was evacuated because of the war with Hamas. They still have not been able to return to their homes.
How else is the conflict affecting the churches—and you?
In the first three weeks of the war, there was a huge struggle inside me. I saw what Hamas did—the killing and raping of women, putting babies in the oven, opening the wombs of mothers who were pregnant. I just wanted our Air Force to flatten Gaza—to kill everyone.
It took me a few weeks to understand that I am a Christian and I’m commanded to love my enemies because of the deeper love of Christ for me. I remembered I was an enemy of God and God sent his Son for me.
It was a process, and I’m glad I went through it, because it really caused me to understand the deeper meaning of what it means to love your enemies. When you face your enemies in such a way, it calls for a far deeper understanding of the deep love of God.
We have helped Christian Arabs and Palestinians in Israel. We’ve given 20 families gift cards with a few hundred dollars on them. We are also buying life-saving equipment for our soldiers. We have given more than 3,000 grocery packs to different people, including Holocaust survivors.
Our church has about 170 people in it, and 35 were called to reserve duty, including my daughter. My son is in a pre-military course and joined the army last week, much earlier than he was supposed to, because of the war. My wife and I visited a Christian soldier in the hospital last week. God saved his life, but he was injured and has been in the hospital for weeks. We sent almost $10,000 to the parents to help with the costs.
In an Ethiopian family from one of the northern churches, the oldest son was killed in the war. A few months earlier, the mother had to have a kidney and liver transplant, and her husband stopped working to care for her. They have five children. So my wife and I are going to drive up there to visit and provide funding.
Five families from our church were evacuated from their homes on October 7. One hasn’t been able to return. The husband is in the reserves, and the wife is caring for their young children and is pregnant so she cannot work. We are providing them with support as well.
How do you keep going?
The thing that has really helped me, carried me, is seeing the big picture of judgment and salvation. I do know that God has a plan. When Joseph talks to his brothers after Jacob passed away, he said, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).
And I can see that already in some ways. I’m in touch with a lot of people that I never dreamed I’d be able to meet and share the gospel with. Because there is so much need around us and we are able to help in some small ways, we have been able to share the gospel with high-ranking army officers and with the directors of a hospital. We tell them who we are and why we are giving. Before the war, those conversations were unimaginable.
When I look at my life, I see a lot of worldwide events—the dispersion of the Jews from Iraq, the 1973 war, the Islamic Revolution, COVID, even this war with Hamas. I see how God used all of this in my life. Of course, all these things have not happened because of me. But nevertheless, it’s amazing to think that events we don’t always understand—I mean, global event with huge impact—are used by God to accomplish his individual will in people’s lives all over the world.
The story of the Bible is about judgment and death, but also about praise. In the garden of Eden, on the most catastrophic day for humanity, God gave the promise that the seed of the woman would overcome. From the Old Testament to Revelation, you see the same pattern—from sorrow, death, and judgment to rescue, renewal, and praise.
This is also the essence of the life of Christ—judgment and death, but then resurrection and Christ now sitting at the right hand of the Father. The last chapters of the book of Revelation are about a new heaven and a new earth—a new Jerusalem.
So there is always hope.
The Gospel Coalition