STAN GOODENOUGH, The Jerusalem Newswire —
A few short decades ago, one out of every three Jews on this planet was murdered. While the Holocaust stands unique in many ways, and was definitely the darkest period in the last nearly 2000 years of Jewish history, those 20 centuries of the Christian era were themselves peppered with desperately dark days. Nor did they begin after Jesus’ earthly life. Going all the way back to the calling out of Abraham the Jews have experienced repeated attempts to wipe them out as a nation “that the name of Israel be remembered no more.”
Unlike the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsions of the Jews from country after country, the blood libels and the pogroms, however, the Holocaust happened very much “in our day.” That is to say, there are people still alive in 2011 who endured and somehow survived the Nazi genocide. Hitler’s effort to destroy the entire Jewish race took place “just the other day.”
Like many of my readers, I have frequently heard Christians exclaim with shock at the fact that six million Jews were slaughtered in the face of an almost totally indifferent Christian world. We have our handful of heroes – Corrie Ten Boom; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oskar Schindler. Some were believing Christians, some were not. But there was only a handful.
Where were the hundreds of millions of other church going people in Europe? Where were the tens of thousands of priests and ministers and pastors and preachers? They continued to lead their flocks at church services, in Bible studies and prayer meetings while 5000 Jewish communities around them and within their very midst were systematically erased from the map of the Continent – their inhabitants killed in every conceivable way almost literally in front of their eyes.
Churches celebrated Christmas and Easter and Pentecost and all the other holy days on their calendar while the people from whom sprang the Savior ostensibly worshipped and adored by these Christians were rounded up like so many cattle, gassed and burned.
Why did it happen this way? Why were they silent? Why did they not pour out of their churches – like the Egyptians poured out of their mosques in Cairo a few weeks agouti demand an end to injustice there – and demand that everything humanly possible be done to stop the genocide of the Jews?
Why? Because Europe’s Christians were steeped in antisemitism. For centuries the churches had taught their congregants that the Jews are Christ killers – damned and doomed by God Himself to wander the earth and be at the mercy of those around them.
The Jews DESERVED TO DIE. And even if they really didn’t, we are Christians; we KNOW the way; we HAVE eternal life; we ARE God’s chosen people now. OUR eternity is secure and it makes no difference whether the Jews around us live or die. So WHY get involved? Why do ANYTHING?
And I dare say that there were some who also believed, as many do today, that “what’s meant to happen is going to happen, so what’s the point in trying to prevent or change it?”
How wrong, how wickedly wrong and/or terribly deceived these myriads of Christians must have been.
First of all, innocent people were being murdered – often neighbors, the family doctor, even friends – and to not try do everything possible to stop or prevent that was immoral, cowardly and just plain wrong.
Secondly – these were not just random people who were being killed. They were, very deliberately and specifically, one people, members of one nation – the Jews.
Everything that Christians hold dear comes from or through the Jewish people: The Bible, which imparts the very knowledge of God, and its prophets, priests and kings. The Jewish Savior; the Jewish Apostles; the Jewish authors of the Gospels and the letters to the believers – the entire New Testament. It comes from the Jews and we owe to the Jews an immeasurable and unfathomable debt for it all.
Thirdly – Hell was the Command and Control Center directing Hitler’s efforts to destroy the Jews. As I have said before: From the moment God set Abraham apart and promised to bless all mankind through his offspring, Satan has been trying to destroy that offspring. Satan was behind Pharaoh, behind Amalek, behind Haman, behind Antiochus Epiphanes, behind Herod, behind Rome; and behind all the manifestations of antisemitism that have plagued the Jews since Jesus’ ascension.
Why does Satan want to destroy the Jews? Because he knows. Before Jesus was born he knew: if there is no Israel, there will be no first coming of the Messiah. And since Jesus’ accession he has known: if there is no Israel there will be no return of the Messiah.
He knows too (because he is a better student of the Word of God than many Christians) that God has a single, glorious, eternal destiny for Jews and Christians.
Brothers and sisters, we Christians have ONE future, ONE destiny with the Jewish people. Jesus Himself declared this to be so. If millions of Christians had understood and believed this in the 1930s and 1940s, a great many more Ten Boom families would have been ready to put their bodies between the Jews and the Nazis.
So what does this mean for us today? Simply this: Satan’s goal and aim has not changed. Satanic hatred of the Jews did not die in the bunker when Adolf Hitler shot himself. The spirit of Amalek did not fizzle out at the Nuremberg trials and with the dismantling of Nazi Germany. That hatred is very much alive – and is manifested in the hearts of millions of people who live in the lands surrounding Israel today.
It is God who, since the late 19th century, has been restoring His ancient people to their land, and His land to this people. It was out of the Holocaust itself that the very thing Satan had tried so furiously to prevent came to pass: The national homeland of the Jews was reborn, and the massive ingathering of the exiles from the four corners of the earth has been taking place ever since and is an ongoing miracle to which we bear witness even today.
As the biblical prophets foretold, Israel is back in her land. The territory under Jewish control has grown and will continue to grow in the future. Israel has a strong economy, incomparable human resources, a powerful defense force and even nuclear weapons. Three major wars have been waged to try and destroy her, but she has survived, and more.
Why are the Jews back here? Because God has a date with Israel. He is restoring the Jews to their land in order to restore them to Himself. Regarding this the Bible is abundantly clear. Israel’s physical rebirth is now an awesome fact of history that made the world sit up and pay attention. Her spiritual rebirth will do nothing less than take our breath away.
And once Israel as a nation is back in relationship with her God, then the Messiah – Israel’s Messiah and our Messiah – will come.
Satan is acutely aware of these things. He fought tooth and nail to prevent the Jews from returning to their land and to prevent the State of Israel from being born. And he is fighting tooth and nail to try and reverse this rebirth – by delegitimizing Israel, by turning the nations of the world against Israel, and by arming the Muslim nations around Israel in readiness to unleash war on the Jewish state.
His plan: bring massive, universal and unrelenting pressure on Israel to surrender her title deed to Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Establish an Arab state in those areas – an Arab state called Palestine. Use that state – as the Arabs are using the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon today – to launch attacks against the small and indefensible country called Israel that will remain. Try to wipe out Israel either by overrunning her or by making the ensuing situation in the Middle East so unstable that the rest of the world takes the decision – as they voted to establish a Jewish homeland in 1947 – to now disband that Jewish state and force the Jews to either become citizens in an Arab state of Palestine or emigrate.
This is the plan, and it is on course. The revolution now shaking the Arab world and Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear power status will all serve to contribute to its success. Israel is in terrible danger, and it is growing every day.
And all the while, as hatred swells and surges all around Israel, and the countries the Bible calls the “coastlands” swing one after the other in line behind the effort to take away Israel’s lands and create Palestine on them, Christians in the millions continue with their Christian lives – going to services, prayer meetings and Bible studies and celebrating their holy days.
As it did 70 years ago when devilish darkness was settling over Europe, and preparing to imperil the Jews; when the British Empire was closing the doors of Palestine to Jews wanting to escape the Nazi dragnet – “Christianity” today continues on its way, largely oblivious, or largely uncaring, or both.
Many who do recognize the immorality of what the nations are trying to do; who do see the gathering storm, the looming threat – they turn to prayer and tell themselves and others – it’s okay; it will be okay. This has to happen, but God is still on the throne and His will WILL be done.
To top it all, as undoubtedly many Christians conveniently thought back then, many think today: thankfully, WE are Christians; we KNOW the way; we HAVE eternal life; OUR eternity is secure and will be secure whether Israel survives or is no more. We”re going to be raptured. We’re outta here. So WHY get involved? Why do ANYTHING? And WHAT, in any case, CAN we do?
What do I believe? I believe God WANTS us to do SOMETHING. I believe God is looking for men and women to make themselves available to do whatever it is that He will show us to do – and that we should be willing to do whatever it is.
I believe it deeply pained God’s heart when so few of His children availed themselves to help the Jews of Europe. And I tremble at how God surely sees our apathy in the face of the terrible danger looming over Israel today.
Am I despairing for Israel? No, of course not. I hurt for this nation, over which I believe our God has been weeping for so very, very many years. I so very much long for the realization of God’s promise to end their warfare once and for all.
I mourn the fact that, just as Christians missed the opportunity to make a difference during World War Two, we are missing the opportunity to make a difference today.
Will God really allow the Enemy to succeed? By no means! He has pledged Himself to save Israel out of all her troubles.
But don’t we see? Don’t we understand how much He WANTS us to co-partner with Him in this? That it is His PURPOSE that the Church get in the gap for the people of Israel, spiritually and physically, and STAND there for her?