Watching TV a little more than usual over the festive period shocked me rigid. One episode involved the coming together – through a horrific car crash – of two very popular, long-running soaps that neither my wife nor I generally follow.

I’m talking about Coronation Street and Emmerdale. As the various plots and characters emerged from the shadows of the multiple pile-up on a dark country road, I could hardly believe this brutal, diabolic material has become such a regular fix for much of the nation.

It was hard to see what was going on in the deathly darkness, but many of the characters seemed either lesbian or homosexual – in one case three men were involved in a love triangle with each other. Along with heated arguments amidst bitter family feuds, this was surely a depiction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The crash set off a series of fires, and the walking wounded were threatening and maligning one another as others appeared to be dying; one man had a gun with murderous intent! But there was one bright, yet tragic, moment focusing on the last words of a man trapped in a burning vehicle who was saying the Lord’s prayer!

Was that, perhaps, symbolic of Lot escaping God’s judgment as fire and brimstone rained down on the real Sodom set beside ancient Israel’s Dead Sea, and are these programmes possibly responsible in part for the growth of antisemitism in the UK?

Abraham, the father of the faithful both among Jews and Gentiles, turned his back on the gross immorality practised in those cities of long ago, and it is through his seed that the Judeo-Christian world inherited the beautiful, and unrivalled, way of living founded on the Ten Commandments which paved the way for Western civilization as we knew it – until recent times.

But shamefully, the West is increasingly identifying itself with secular atheist rebellion against God captured for screen in these mucky soap operas, influencing millions with the idea that the sort of liaisons portrayed, glamourising sordid behaviour, should now be accepted as perfectly normal. As for the LGBT storylines right across the medium, they are churned out so often that visitors from another planet might well deduce that heterosexuality no longer exists here.

So how does all this fan the flames of antisemitism? Well, rebellion against God’s laws will inevitably lead to persecution of the Jewish people who, through Moses, first brought them to the world’s attention. And Christians, who follow the Jewish Messiah, will also be targeted, as they are already finding out in Muslim-majority countries.

To put it bluntly, to be antisemitic is to be anti-God, and vice-versa. You could say that sums up today’s Middle East conflict. But God has great plans for his beloved chosen – plans that are wrapped up in their being back in the land he has especially assigned them. And in the final days leading up to Yeshua’s return to earth in power and great glory – not to New York, London, Paris or Johannesburg, but to Jerusalem the Golden – they will be welcomed back into his loving arms as the returning prodigal.

From there he will inaugurate a reign of peace after defeating the enemies who had so long hated and despised him as they engaged in all manner of evil. The defiant wokerati of this world will mock no more, and Jesus – who loved the sinner but hated the sin – will reign forever and ever!

The Book of Revelation graphically describes the ultimate doom of all who oppose God, encapsulated in the name Babylon, with our Saviour urging his people to come out from among them so as not to share in her sins which are “piled up to heaven”. (Rev 18:4f)

Trust Yeshua, for he will save you from the wrath to come.

Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.