As I awoke this morning, bleary-eyed, to an alarming end-time scenario, I once more found myself exclaiming with rising exasperation: “The world’s gone mad!”

The news that Spain has recognised a Palestinian state looked like a signal for re-igniting the Spanish Inquisition that brought such terror to Jews – including my own ancestors – in centuries past.

And with Ireland and Norway going the same way, the world is rapidly dividing between those who are for and against Israel. Or to put it another way, those who are for or against God. Between the sheep and the goats, you may say.

It is in the context of the nations gathered before him (for judgment) that Jesus, when he comes in his glory at the end of time as Chief Shepherd, will divide the sheep from the goats.

The sheep are those who followed him and showed him kindness; the goats are those who didn’t care. The passage is widely interpreted as referring to how we treat the Jewish people – “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” (Matthew 25:40). Whatever we did for them, we did for him – that is Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah.

If you’re in doubt about this judgment of the nations, the prophet Joel, speaking for the Lord of a time when Jewish fortunes have been restored, no doubt following the modern-day re-birth of Israel, writes:

“I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land.” (Joel 3:2)

Rewarding the terror of Hamas, Hezbollah and similar groups with a state effectively amounts to throwing Israel to the wolves, not caring about their fate. Even those nations like ours who keep pushing for a ‘two-state solution’ will be judged for dividing up the land God promised to his Jewish inheritance.

The land belongs to Israel, because God said so, and by international treaty (i.e. San Remo 1920) which agreed to territory far in excess of that which currently defines the state. For they have already given away much of their land, purportedly in exchange for peace, which never came.

Bassim Tawil, a Muslim Arab, asks: “How can any rational person talk about a ‘two-state solution’ when a majority of Palestinians believe there is nothing wrong with burning, beheading and raping Jews, or baking a Jewish baby to death in an oven?”

A recent survey, he added, confirmed that “the only solution most Palestinians are willing to accept is the one that leads to the murder of all Jews and the destruction of Israel.”

Now they are fighting for their very existence. More than that, their soldiers are fighting for the free world to be spared a takeover from oppressive, dictatorial Islamic rule. We should be helping them, not hindering them.

The judgment of God is at hand. We saw what happened to the Turkish politician who denounced Israel a while back. He dropped down dead. And we have seen what happened to the Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi after once again threatening to wipe Israel off the map. The ‘Butcher of Tehran’ allegedly responsible for a massacre of political opponents in the 1980s was killed in a helicopter crash.

Those who touch the apple of God’s eye will be severely dealt with, sooner or later. Think about the German cities reduced to rubble in the 1940s after murdering God’s chosen.

Now we see the spectre of Russia, Turkey and Iran forming an unholy alliance against Israel, as prophesied by Ezekiel 2,500 years ago (see chapters 38 & 39). Is their combined God-hatred about to be demonstrated in all its devastating wickedness?

As for Spain, they would do well to heed the words of their former Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar who, in a Times article in 2010, urged support for Israel on the basis that “if it goes down, we all go down.”

He argued that the Jewish state is at the cutting edge of the battle between militant Islam and the West and concluded: “Israel is a fundamental part of the West which is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not our fate is inextricably intertwined.”

Pray God’s wisdom for our politicians.

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.