The story of monotheism did not begin with Abraham. Long before him, righteous individuals walked with God. Metushelah lived 969 years, remaining faithful to God while witnessing the corruption of humanity before the flood. Noah found grace in God’s eyes when all others turned to wickedness. Shem, the son of Noah, established academies of learning. Eber maintained the knowledge of the one true God in a world rapidly returning to idolatry. These men all believed in the Creator and maintained His worship in their generations.
Yet despite these predecessors, the Bible introduces Abraham in Genesis 12 as someone extraordinary—the man to whom God says:
What made Abraham uniquely worthy of becoming the progenitor of God’s chosen people? If belief in God already existed, why does Abraham—and not one of his predecessors—stand as the father of monotheism in history?
The answer lies not merely in what Abraham believed, but in what he did with that belief.
The Bible reveals little about Abraham before age 75, but the Sages fill the gap with a portrait of a spiritual rebel. They recount that Abraham’s father, Terah, ran an idol shop. One day, when Terah left Abraham in charge, a man came to buy an idol. Abraham asked his age. “Fifty,” the man replied. “You’re fifty years old,” Abraham said, “and you want to bow to something made yesterday?” Ashamed, the man left. Later, a woman brought an offering for the idols. After she departed, Abraham smashed all the idols except the largest and placed a stick in its hand. When Terah returned and saw the destruction, Abraham claimed the idols had fought over who should eat first, and the largest smashed the others. “They’re just statues!” Terah exclaimed. “Then why do you worship them?” Abraham shot back.
Furious, Terah brought Abraham before King Nimrod. The king declared they should worship fire, but Abraham countered that water extinguishes fire. When Nimrod suggested worshiping water, Abraham noted that clouds carry water. When Nimrod proposed worshiping clouds, Abraham pointed out that wind disperses clouds. When Nimrod suggested worshiping wind, Abraham responded that humans withstand wind. Enraged, Nimrod had Abraham cast into a furnace, declaring that if Abraham’s God were real, He would save him—which, according to tradition, is exactly what happened (Genesis Rabbah 38:13).
Rabbi Ouri Cherki explains: “The first ‘atheist,’ according to the Sages, was Abraham our forefather. Abraham broke the prevailing faith of humanity in those days. He took the most sacred values, questioned them rigorously, and shattered them. This was a total destruction of the entire world of values.”
The Ra’avad (Rabbi Abraham ben David) asks why Abraham is considered the first to declare God’s existence when Shem and Eber already knew this truth. His answer: Shem and Eber never shattered idols. This wasn’t because they lacked opportunity but because they lacked urgency. They recognized idolatry’s error but tolerated its existence, believing perhaps that idols maintained people’s connection to faith, however misguided. They were content to practice true faith privately while idolatry flourished around them.
Abraham refused this compromise. He understood that truth demands action. His decision to shatter the idols plunged humanity into a crisis of faith—a necessary upheaval on the path to an authentic relationship with God.
Dr. Os Guinness writes: “The idea of turning the world upside down came directly from the Bible, where the prime revolutionary, and therefore the subversive of the status quo, is said to be God himself. As the Hebrew Scriptures see it, God is the true revolutionary. God creates order, but humans create disorder. So if right is to prevail and humans are to flourish, the disordered order must itself be overturned and God’s order reasserted.”
This revolutionary nature of biblical faith stands in stark contrast to accommodationist religion. “You turn things upside down,” the prophet Isaiah charges his generation (Isaiah 29:16). God’s way of setting things right often looks like overturning what humans have established.
Abraham’s descendants maintained this revolutionary spirit. The Roman historian Tacitus complained that Jews “despise everything sacred, all the gods, and even in their innermost chamber [of the Temple], there is nothing”—referring to the Temple’s Holy of Holies which contained no physical idol, only the invisible presence of God. Tacitus was especially disturbed that “they call those profane who make representations of God in human shape out of perishable materials.” The Jews didn’t just worship differently—they actively condemned pagan worship as profane. To the Roman mind, this worship of an unseen deity and rejection of idols appeared as atheism—a radical, offensive rejection of accommodating idolatry in any form.
When we abandon Abraham’s legacy of idol smashing, we don’t just betray God’s purpose, we sign our own death warrant. Abraham didn’t worship privately while letting idolatry flourish publicly. He attacked it head-on. Today’s Jews and Christians who practice faith behind closed doors while surrendering the public square to modern idolatries are betraying Abraham’s revolutionary spirit. Look at our universities: for decades, believers sat quietly in classrooms while professors erected new idols of postmodernism, moral relativism, and anti-biblical ideology. We didn’t smash these idols when they were being built. Now we act shocked that those same campuses have erupted with violent antisemitism. This isn’t surprising—it’s the inevitable harvest of our failure to be Abraham’s true children. Private faith without public confrontation isn’t Abraham’s legacy—it’s Shem and Eber’s compromise.
Abraham teaches us that faith demands more than private conviction—it requires public confrontation with falsehood. God chose Abraham not because he was the first believer, but because he was the first believer who understood that faith without action changes nothing.
Where are Abraham’s spiritual descendants today? Who is carrying his hammer to break the idols of our age?
Enter Israel365. We’re not just another non-profit with feel-good programming. We’re a revolutionary movement with Abraham’s DNA, smashing the 2,000-year wall between Jews and Christians. Whether it’s woke progressivism infecting our universities, replacement theology corrupting churches, Islamic fundamentalism threatening Israel, or the new antisemitism creeping into right-wing circles—we take hammers to all of it, just like Abraham did.
The time has come to reclaim Abraham’s revolutionary spirit. Will you join us in smashing idols? Will you stand with us in defense of truth and God’s land? Support Israel365’s Annual Campaign and become part of a movement that, like Abraham, refuses to accommodate falsehood. The prophets wrote of a time when nations would stand with Israel as ancient promises find fulfillment. That time is now.
