Anti-Semitism did not end with the defeat of Nazi
Germany and the death of Hitler. In fulfillment of
biblical prophecies,
not only in Muslim countries but worldwide, it is again on the rise,
causing a heightened level of alert in Jewish communities. A brief
search of the internet reveals scores of examples. There is an alarming
increase in the widespread desecration of Jewish cemeteries. Violence
against Jews and Jewish property is rising. In Istanbul, Turkey, in the
middle of the fast of Ramadan (a time of “peace” for Arab tribes prior
to Islam) car bombs devastated two synagogues, killing or wounding
dozens. In Morocco, in May 2004, terrorists hit a Jewish community
center and hotel, leaving a trail of death. Other incidents are too
numerous to mention.
In polls across the EU, most Europeans continue to rate
Israel as “the greatest obstacle to peace” in the world, ahead of the
United States, which places second. The EU has repeatedly condemned
Israel for using force against Palestinian terrorists who attack her,
killing and maiming thousands of innocent women and children. Yet they
never condemn the terrorists and have been supporting the Palestinians
at the rate of five hundred thousand Euros a month, much of which has
been used to fund terrorism against Israel. Apparently, Israel is
expected to fight terrorism nonviolently. Like we are doing in
Afghanistan and Iraq?
The Jewish synagogue in Vienna, Austria, has suffered
attacks in the past. As others throughout Europe, it must be guarded by
heavily armed police twenty-four hours a day. Abraham Foxman, national
director of the Anti-Defamation League, recently wrote: “I am convinced
that we currently face as great a threat to the safety and security of
the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 1930s—if not a greater
one.” Violent acts against Jews have risen to an alarming level in
France, which has a Jewish population of about six hundred thousand,
surrounded by six million Muslims worshiping in fifteen hundred mosques.
As a result, record numbers of Jews are leaving France for Israel.
The rising tide of anti-Semitism in Germany brought
more than four thousand Christians from all over that country to stage a
protest demonstration in front of the Reichstag in Berlin in August
2002. A poll by Germany’s University of Bielefeld early in December 2004
revealed that 51 percent of Germans believe that Israel’s present-day
treatment of the Palestinians is similar to what the Nazis did to the
Jews during World War II. The survey also found that 68 percent of
Germans believe that Israel is waging a “war of extermination” against
the Palestinians. How could they get it exactly backwards?
Anti-Semitism, prophesied in the Bible, blinds to the truth.
Even in Israel, anti-Semitism is on the rise. According
to the Information Center for Victims of Anti-Semitism in Israel, there
have been some five hundred such incidents in Israel during the past
three years. “The Russian-language newspapers in Israel print a story on
an anti-Semitic incident every week, and at every police station in the
country at least one anti-Semitic case is registered,” says Zalman
Gilichinsky, director of the information center.
Harvard University’s president, Lawrence H. Summers,
recently condemned what he termed “growing anti-Semitism” at Harvard and
elsewhere. “Nearly 600 professors, students, staff members, and alumni
from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signed a
petition urging Harvard and M.I.T. to divest from Israel. Similar
efforts have been mounted at about 40 other universities.”
The Presbyterian Church USA (it had a “Palestinian”
president in 2002) is leading a campaign to pressure Caterpillar,
Motorola, ITT Industries, and United Technologies to cease sales of
military equipment and supplies to Israel under the threat of churches
divesting themselves of their stock. A similar campaign of divestiture
was successfully waged by American churches during the 1980s to pressure
South Africa to end apartheid.
The Reason for Anti-Semitism
According to the Bible, there are two reasons for this
universal hatred of Jews and Israel. First of all, the Jews, as God’s
chosen people, are under His judgment for their rebellion against Him
and the rejection of their Messiah. Secondly, anti-Semitism is inspired
of Satan—a being whose existence many “educated” people deny. The reason
is obvious. It was foretold that the Savior of the world, who would
rescue mankind from Satan’s control, would be a Jew. Satan’s only hope
to escape eternal doom, therefore, was to destroy those whom God chose
“to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the
face of the earth.” Had Satan been able to destroy the Jews before the
birth of the Messiah, he would have prevented his own defeat. For
promising a Messiah who never came, God would have proved Himself a
liar....
The Bible declares that the Messiah came and defeated
Satan by “tast[ing] death for every man” and bearing “our sins in his
own body on the tree.”
But that fact did not end the battle between God and
His arch-enemy for the hearts, minds, and eternal destiny of mankind.
That battle continues to rage—and Israel is at its center. The Bible
contains hundreds of prophecies that, although God would severely punish
Israel for her sins, He would preserve a remnant and bring the
scattered Jews back into their own land. This prophecy, too, is
undeniably in the process of being fulfilled in our day.
Satan could still escape his eternal doom if he could
wipe out Israel. That fact provides the only rational explanation for
Muslims’ irrational obsession with destroying that tiny nation. It also
stands as evidence that Satan is a reality, not a myth.
Establishment of the State of Israel
Nothing aroused Satan’s desperate fury and the wrath of
Islam as did the birth of the nation of Israel. It must be annihilated.
And to this end, the driving force is not a few “extremists” but Islam
itself. Islam promises Muslims victory against the Jews as well as
against the entire world. Instead, they taste only humiliation in every
attack they launch. Israel, on the other hand, in spite of being under
God’s judgment, enjoys His protection in many ways, as we have already
seen: “In that day will I make the governors of Judah like…a torch of
fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about.”
The wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 have borne
eloquent testimony to the truth of Scripture: “If it had not been the
Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say; If it had not been the
Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: Then they had
swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us…Blessed
be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth…. Our help
is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.”
The Arabs’ repeated defeat at the hands of Israel is
both embarrassing and maddening for them. The Imams blame this shame
upon the departure from true Islam by the masses of Muslims. They are
whipping up a worldwide revival of fundamentalist Islam as the way to
regain Allah’s blessing and thereby defeat Israel.
As long as Israel retains autonomy over one square yard
of land, it is an affront to Islam and declares to the world that Islam
is a false religion, Allah a false god, Muhammad a false prophet, and
the Qur’an a false revelation. This is the issue—and all the talk of
“peace,” without recognizing and changing this teaching of Islam, is
both a fool’s dream and a fraud.
It has well been said, if Arabs/Muslims put down their
weapons today, that would be the end of Arab-Israeli wars. If Israel put
down her weapons, that would be the end of Israel. These are simple
facts that no one can deny—and are worth thinking about very seriously.
Another Amazing Prophecy
Balaam is one of the most enigmatic figures in the
Bible. He was at one time in touch with God and made some genuine
prophecies as recorded in Scripture, yet he later turned away from God
and is in hell now. For example, he foretold the star in the East that
the wise men saw and followed to find Christ at His birth. One of
Balaam’s prophecies recorded in the Bible that has been and is still
being fulfilled in our day is most unusual. He declared that Israel
would “not be reckoned among the nations.”
This remarkable utterance does not stand alone. God has
stated it many times and in other ways. For example, “The Lord thy God
hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people
that are upon the face of the earth”; “I am the Lord your God, which
have separated you from other people...I the Lord am holy, and have
severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.” Except for the
holiness it was to manifest, this is precisely the situation in which
Israel finds herself today. Israel has been a member of the United
Nations for more than fifty years. Yet she is not allowed to take her
two-year turn as one of the ten rotating nations (joining the five
permanent ones) on the UN Security Council. Of the 191 current UN
members, 190, including the worst terrorist nations, are allowed to take
their turns on the Security Council—but not Israel.
Nor is Israel, as already noted, allowed to take a
rotating term on the fifty-three-member UN Commission on Human Rights
(UNHRC). All of the other one hundred ninety UN member nations are
allowed to do so. These have included Libya, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and other
egregious violators of human rights. Incredibly, Sudan, where more than
two million blacks in the south have been slaughtered by Muslims, has
been voted in for a third consecutive term. But Israel, the only
democracy in the Middle East, is excluded, as the Bible foretold.
This “watchdog” commission (UNHRC) has never found
anything questionable or to be criticized in the deplorable human rights
record of some of the worst violators such as Libya, Saudi Arabia, or
Syria. Yet Israel is continually condemned by the UNHRC—more than one
hundred times in the past two years. Far from denouncing suicide
bombers, it upholds “Palestinian rights” to take any kind of retaliatory
action against Israeli “aggression.”
Nor is Israel allowed to be a member of the
International Red Cross. The Red Crescent, representing Muslim
countries, among which are many terrorist nations, is part of this
international humanitarian organization. But Israel, which signed the
1949 Geneva Conventions (many of the members of the Red Crescent did
not), is barred from the International Red Cross.
As we have noted, whether the rest of the world likes
it or not, the Jews are God’s chosen people. That fact carries not only
blessings and privileges but also responsibilities—and penalties for
disobedience. Israel has experienced both God’s blessing and judgment in
the past. Both testify to the integrity of God and His Word. Israel
remains in His hands and under His protection today, even while she is
at the same time experiencing His discipline. God must fulfill His Word
concerning judgment—as well as the prophesied full restoration and
eternal blessing—for the remnant that survives Armageddon. Woe to those
who oppose God’s promises to Israel....
More Anti-Semitism Among Christians
Another idea gaining popularity among Christians today
is the false teaching that the church has replaced Israel. This Roman
Catholic doctrine, which is a form of anti-Semitism, is also promoted by
evangelicals. It declares that Israel has been cut off because of her
sins, and the prophecies concerning her restoration are no longer valid.
If that were so, then the “everlasting covenant” promised to Israel
eleven times in the Old Testament and the everlasting possession of the
land promised twice were not everlasting at all, and God has lied.
Again, Satan has won, and this world belongs to him.
There are scores of promises that God would in the end
restore Israel fully to her land. Yet Christian leaders deny these
promises by saying that Israel is finished: “…physical Jews…are in
slavery and will not be heirs of God’s promise because they are not the
children of promise [author’s emphasis].” Another author writes, “The
idea that corporate national Israel is still God’s chosen people is
prevalent in the minds of many today. But…the Word of God shows
that…Israel broke the Old Covenant and thereby forfeited any rights to
it.” This claim, if true, would clearly make God a liar. We will deal
with this more fully in Chapter Eleven, proving that it is false.
World Vision is the largest and one of the oldest
(founded in 1950) independent “evangelical” charitable organizations in
the world, with annual income exceeding $1.2 billion. It claims to use
its resources for “emergency relief, education, health care, economic
development and promotion of justice.” Of the millions of dollars it
allocates to the Middle East, nothing goes to Israelis—everything goes
to “Palestinians.” All of the wars Arabs have started from 1948 to the
present and all of the Muslim terrorism is blamed upon Israel. World
Vision calls security measures that Israel takes to protect its citizens
from Muslim attacks “collective punishment” against Palestinians.
Terrorists are the “victims,” not those they murder in cold blood.
The anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian bias exhibited by
Christian organizations is staggering not only in its wickedness but
also in the misinformation it persuades supporters to believe. Christian
Aid Mission promotes some of the worst anti-Israel propaganda: the
Holocaust killed 600,000, not 6 million; it is not the Arabs who are
terrorists, but the Jews; “Ashkenazi Zionists” are not Jews but Khazars,
who, “through acts of terrorism...have killed, driven out or displaced
over 2 million of the originial residents of Palestine.” The fact that
such claims are false will be fully documented herein.
Why did God choose Israel? He had to choose a people
through whom the Messiah would come into the world as a man to pay the
penalty for our sins. Abraham, like Noah, “found grace” in God’s eyes.
He is called “the Friend of God.” Abraham was promised a land as an
“everlasting possession” for his heirs. The present conflict in the
Middle East is a dispute over who those heirs are today. We will turn to
that issue next....
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