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Why The Holocaust? A Biblical View of a Horror in History |
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Bialystok When I saw the name “Bialystok”, I cried. I didn’t expect
to, but perhaps it was the cumulative effect of the previous two hours of horrors
I had experienced at the Holocaust Museum
in Washington, D.C. My mother and
her immediate family, the Hirshbeins, moved to the States from Bialystok, Poland
before the war. Those who escaped survived; the rest of the family perished as
the Nazis eradicated the Jewish community of Bialystok. |
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This was not the first Holocaust in Jewish history, and, sadly, it won’t be the last.
Zechariah, among others in the Scriptures, predicts a future--and if it
can be imagined--an even more horrible period for my Jewish people (Zech.12-14). About 1/3 of all the Jewish people were murdered during the Nazi regime;
Zechariah prophesies that during this next Holocaust, 2/3 of the Jewish people
will be lost! (Zech. 13:8). Why, O God, why? Why Holocausts?
The Scriptures
are clear regarding the reason for anti-Semitism in general and Holocausts in
particular: Spiritual Warfare.
Satan’s
Goal:
Replace God The Scriptures
inform us that there is an enemy of God, Satan (Hebrew for “adversary”).
Though it may seem more futile than a ‘one-legged man trying to kick down a
steel door’, Satan is working to defeat and dethrone God (see Isaiah
14:12-14).
Satan’s Plan: Prove
God
to be
a liar
God cannot lie
(Titus 1:2). The Devil’s plan is
to prove that God is a liar by attempting to nullify God’s promises involving
the Jewish people and the Jewish Messiah. God
has promised the Jewish people would always survive as a people (see Jeremiah
31:35-37), and that they would be the conduit of the Messiah, the world’s savior.
Satan’s Activity: Therefore, Satan
is trying to remove the Jews as a people using two strategies.
1.
Stop the Jews from living! The first, and
the most obvious strategy, is recorded
in Psalm 83:1-5, Your foes rear their
heads.... They plot against those You cherish. “Come,” they say, “let us
destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel will be remembered no more.” Simply put,
‘destroy the Jews and prove God is a liar’; for if God can’t keep His
people that He promised to keep, then no one can trust any of His promises. Additionally, if Satan can destroy Israel as a people he proves himself
to be greater than God. Anti-Semitism
is anti-God. This accounts for the Pharaohs, Hamans, Herods and Hitlers throughout the
centuries. That they are tools of
Satan in no way excuses their culpability. We are all responsible for our actions regardless of
who or what influences us
in those actions.
2.
Stop
Jews
from living as Jews! The second, and a
much more subtle, though potentially, no less effective strategy is to make
Jewish identity odious, or at least irrelevant to the Jewish people and to
others. In this way Jewish people
will not want to remain Jewish, and Israel would cease to be an identifiable
nation before God. In the book of
Esther, we read of Mordecai’s bad advice, followed by Esther, “Don’t reveal you’re a Jew” (Esther 2:10). Only when she abandoned that bad advice and revealed her
Jewish identity was catastrophe averted. This same bad
advice has been relived by many of our people in every generation.
It was seen in the Hellenism in Judah of the early second century BCE,
where some Jews, in order to fit into the Gentile world, actually had themselves
surgically uncircumcised! Even
today, being Jewish is so poorly understood that many make no attempt to
maintain their heritage. The shame of it
all is that there are some Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) who make no effort
to maintain
their Jewish identity. In some
cases they didn’t value their Jewishness before they came to faith in Yeshua. For others it’s because they are told (and foolishly believe) that as
followers of Yeshua they are no longer Jews.
In any case, by
not identifying as Jews they play right into Satan’s plan: stop the Jewish
people from existing as an identifiable
people. In so doing, we not only make our faith repulsive to the general Jewish
community, we work against the very testimony of God’s faithfulness to the
identifiable existence of the Jewish people (Jeremiah 31:36)! Though an apostle
to the Gentiles, Paul knew what was at stake: the
very faithfulness of God. Would the Good News of Yeshua that he proclaimed
to Gentiles mean that God had rejected his
people? (see Romans 11:1).
Paul's
answer, “By no means. For I
am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of
Benjamin. God will not reject his people He foreknew” (Romans 11: 1-2).
Every Jewish
believer that states “I am an Israelite”
or “I am a Jew” (Acts 22:3), (as opposed to “I was a Jew”
or “I am a former Jew”), confirms with Paul that God is keeping His people. God is faithful, and Yeshua is the hope of Israel, not
Israel’s
destroyer! Therefore, as
Jewish believers for the sake of the faithfulness of God, and in light of the
raging spiritual warfare, we have a responsibility
to maintain our Jewish identity. Along
with this responsibility, we also have a liberty as to how we express our
Jewishness (just as the larger Jewish community enjoys its liberty in the
various expressions of Jewish identity). However, our lives must in some way
declare “Am Yisrael Chai b’Yeshua
Hamashiach - the People of Israel live in Yeshua the Messiah!” Especially,
in light of who Yeshua is in this spiritual warfare.
Satan’s Destroyer:
The Jewish Messiah God promised that
the Redeemer of mankind, the Destroyer of Satan, would be the Messiah of Israel
(Gen. 3:15).
1.
Stop Messiah from coming! Satan would need
to stop this Redeemer from coming and fulfilling His mission. We see how this dovetails with his previous ploy, since the
Redeemer was promised to come through the Jewish people (Genesis 12: 3; 22: 18;
49: 10; Isa.11: 10; 49: 5-7; etc.). Messiah was born
and died for our sins, and was raised from the dead! Hallelujah! On this point we know Satan has failed. But if Satan failed, then why today after Messiah’s resurrection is
there still anti-Semitism? For
the present time “the devil prowls like
a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5: 8).
When Messiah returns to earth to restore the Davidic kingdom, He will
then have Satan bound for a 1000 years (Revelation 20:1-3). Afterwards, Satan
will be “thrown in the Lake of Fire” forever (Revelation 20:10)! The linchpin to
all of this future activity and victory of God is the survival of the Jewish
people. The return of the Lord is
dependent upon the repentance of Israel. This
is why Yeshua said to our people,
You will not see me again
until you say, “Baruch Haba
B’Shem Adonai --Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord”
(Matthew 23:39). Just as David
could not rule over all of Israel and remove the adversaries until the people
accepted him as king (2 Samuel 5:
1-5), Yeshua will not return to reign on the Davidic throne and remove the
adversary, Satan, until the Jewish people acknowledge Him as King. Peter reiterates
this point when he proclaims to the Jewish people:
“Repent and turn to God, that your sins might be wiped away, in order
that the times of refreshing might come from the Lord, and that He might send
the Messiah, who has been appointed for you- even Yeshua. He must remain in Heaven until the time comes for God to restore
everything, as He promised…” (Acts 3:19-21). The return of Yeshua who will “restore everything” (“the
times of refreshing”, as well as the destruction of Satan), depends on the
Jewish people “repenting and returning to God.” The return of Yeshua to reign on earth depends on the repentance of
Israel. 2. Stop Messiah from coming again!
I’m asking that you encourage believing congregations to “Remember
the Holocaust” at their services, to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem”
(Psalm 122:6), and do all they can to bring the Good News of Messiah to the
Jewish people around the world. May
Israel soon say, “Baruch Haba B’Shem
Adonai—Blessed is He who comes in
the Name of the Lord!”
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