On July 7, 2024, my phone rang early in the morning. My older brother Misha’s voice was shaking: “Andriy is critically or even deadly wounded by Russians—yesterday late evening—on his birthday.”
A Russian drone had hit my younger brother, a military medical doctor who had spent two and a half years saving wounded soldiers at the front, on his 33rd birthday—the same age as Christ when he went to the cross.
The next two weeks were filled with waiting. We received hospital updates, held on to a hope that kept rising and falling, and prayed even when it felt like no one was listening. On day 5, I wrote in my journal, “Lord, you are silent. Why?” On day 12: “Does prayer actually change anything, or is it simply our inability to accept what we cannot control?”
On day 15, his heart stopped.
During those days of waiting, I kept thinking of the story of Isaiah prophesying to King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20. It resonated with what I was seeing not just in the ways many Christian communities have reacted to Ukraine’s suffering but also in the ways fellow believers have responded to my own grief.
In this story, God had just miraculously saved Hezekiah, healing his deadly illness and delivering Israel from the hands of the Assyrians. Then the Babylonian envoys arrived with gifts, presenting themselves as peaceful allies. Hezekiah sought friendship with Babylon and showed the ambassadors every treasure in his kingdom: silver, gold, spices, oils, and the armory. Nothing was hidden from them (v. 13).
Isaiah came to Hezekiah with a clear message: “The days are coming when all that is in your house, and what your fathers have accumulated until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left. … And they shall take away some of your sons who will descend from you, whom you will beget; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” (vv. 17–18, NKJV throughout).
Hezekiah selfishly responded, “‘The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good!’ For he said, ‘Will there not be peace and truth at least in my days?’” (v. 19). He called the prophecy good because its consequences would come after his lifetime. He would have peace; he did not care that others would suffer later.
On the eighth day of Andriy’s struggle, I wrote, “War destroys not only with bullets. It destroys dreams, plans, and the future. What is the future when the present is so uncertain?”
As Ukraine marks four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, and as pressure grows for a “peace deal” that would reward Russian aggression and leave millions of Ukrainians under occupation, I see a dangerous pattern in some parts of the Western church: a willingness to accept peace that merely moves violence out of sight rather than confronting its roots. It is Hezekiah’s error: prioritizing personal comfort over lasting justice and becoming fatigued by others’ suffering rather than standing in solidarity with them.
We have buried six members of my close and extended family. Five more are serving at the front. I am writing not as a distant observer. My family and I live with the direct consequences of other people’s choices about our future.
Hezekiah’s mistake was not that he wanted peace. Peace is good. His mistake was wanting peace only for himself and seeking it by showing his treasures to those who would later harm his children. He gave up long-term faithfulness for the comfort he had right then. But we, as the community of hope, are not called to take the easy, short-term path.
Throughout Scripture, God’s people repeatedly face a choice: Will we act as court prophets, who bless power for access and safety, or as true prophets, who speak God’s Word even to those in power? Jeremiah condemned the court prophets of his day who cried, “Peace, peace!” when there was no peace (Jer. 6:14). They offered spiritual approval in exchange for royal favor, supporting unjust projects rather than confronting them.
True prophets do the opposite. They speak unwelcome truth, stand with the vulnerable even when it costs them, and refuse to let quick deals obscure what matters to God.
Hezekiah acted like a court prophet, hoping for security through alliance. But Babylon, far from being a friend, became Israel’s conqueror a century later. The very power Hezekiah trusted enslaved his children.
Isaiah showed a different way. He did not change his message to please the king, even though theologians mostly see Hezekiah as a good ruler. To be prophetic here was not just to predict the future but to clarify what God valued in the present. Isaiah spoke the hard truth that the king’s choices would cost the next generation. This is what it means to be prophetic—not to judge from afar but to witness faithfully, challenge power, and live out hope, even when it is risky.
On the 13th day, as I watched Andriy slip away, I wrote, “What is hope? Is it faith in the impossible, or simply an inability to accept reality? When does hope become cruelty to oneself?”
These questions are not just ideas for my family. We bring them to every funeral, every prayer meeting or lecture in a bomb shelter, and every talk with widows and orphans in our churches and at our seminary’s refugee hubs for displaced Ukrainians. Many of us in comfortable churches also need to learn to sit with these questions if we want to be faithful right now.
What does a prophetic church look like in real life? I have seen glimpses. It looks like the seminary faculty member who moved to the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia to train pastors caring for traumatized people instead of leaving for safety. It looks like partner churches in Kherson that have stood under Russia’s massive shelling for four years, still showing up, asking questions, and refusing to move on to the next crisis. It looks like Christian leaders in Kharkiv who do not let politics decide whether they stand with people who are suffering.
The prophetic church does not offer easy answers to those who are suffering. Instead, it offers support, stands against inhumane treatment, and walks with people through grief even when it sounds like doubting or blaming God.
On the 11th day of waiting, I wrote, “Lord, is it a sin that my thoughts are not in church today but with Andriy in Odesa in the military hospital? Do you understand our pain? Probably you do. You lost your son.”
What would it look like for evangelical communities in North America and Europe to hold space for grieving for Ukrainian Christians after four years of war? Not to fix, not to explain, not to rush toward comfortable reconciliation with those still killing us or those who refuse to condemn not just the war but its cause—simply to stay present in the long silence between crucifixion and resurrection.
Hezekiah refused to hold that space. He heard the warning and quickly thought about how to make himself comfortable. Peace in my days. Thank you, Isaiah! The next generation would have to take care of themselves.
The prophetic church refuses short-term and unjust peace deals that sacrifice future generations for its present comfort. It asks not “How can we have comfortable peace in our days?” but “What legacy of faith and justice are we building for our children?” We must measure our choices and presence by their impact on those who come after us, not just on ourselves.
On the day we buried Andriy, traffic on Rivne’s main street came to a standstill. Hundreds of people lined the long road to the Alley of Heroes, a section of the city cemetery reserved for Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war. Strangers got out of their cars and knelt as the procession passed. At the Alley of Heroes, I stood among the graves of other fallen defenders. Each grave was someone’s broken heart, someone’s unfinished story, someone’s future lost because of past decisions, such as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
I do not know how this war will end. I do not know what Western or Russian evangelical churches will choose in the coming months and years or how many will grow tired and turn away, looking for peace in their own time while Ukrainian children live with the results of that silence. But I do know what Hezekiah’s story asks of us in Ukraine.
Will we show our treasures to those who promise unjust temporary comfort and the protection of Christian values if it means we stay silent? Will we call devastating prophecies good just because the harm falls on someone else’s children? Will we measure faithfulness by how well we protect our seats at the tables of power, or will we measure it by whether we stand with the suffering and vulnerable even when it costs us? Will we be like the king Hezekiah or the prophet Isaiah?
The answer we give as the church will shape Ukraine’s future and our own. History’s slow judgment means today’s compromises echo for generations—our generations. Let us have the courage to reject any unjust peace that depends on the suffering or exile of our children. True faithfulness insists on justice—without which there is no grace and mercy—that endures beyond the present.
Taras Dyatlik serves as the engagement director with Scholar Leaders and a theological education consultant with Mesa Global, and he is also the chairman of the International Evangelical Theological Alliance for Eastern Europe. He blogs here.
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