ANTI-SEMITISM AND ISLAM

Recent polls have reported that, because of anti-Semitic violence, 25% of the Jews of the UK are thinking of leaving. In France, the percentage is 75%.

The horrid reality of anti-Semitism is even growing in the USA at an alarming rate. Attorney Jay Sekulow reported:

·       It’s being called a “new anti-Semitism.” Radical professors are punishing Jewish students for making pro-Israel statements. Christian students who support Israel are being intimidated. Radical Hamas supporters are issuing fake eviction notices to Jewish students. And it’s happening on college campuses all across America. The threats of violence, intimidation, and discrimination against Jewish students and anyone who supports Israel...

His observations are supported by FBI 2012 Hate Crime Statistics:

·       Approximately two-thirds of religious hate crimes are anti-Jewish. The FBI reported that of the 1,340 religious hate crimes, 62 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias. The number two targeted group victimized on a religious bias were Muslims, as only 12 percent were victims of an anti-Islamic bias.

After the Holocaust, my Jewish people vowed, “Never again!” However, many of the most influential Jews remain silent in the face of growing anti-Semitism. One NYC Jewish history organization, while never ceasing to look back at the Holocaust, refuses to introduce any programming about the present threats to the Jewish people. They are not oblivious to this present threat. You cannot enter into their building without passing through security and a metal detector. However, they seem to be in denial regarding the coming Holocaust.

On several occasions, I have asked the staff why their programming remains silent on this critical issue. They blandly responded that this simply isn’t their focus. Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to be the focus of the media, universities, or the U.S. government. All remain silent, smiling at the coming Holocaust.

The Prophets of Israel saw it coming. Jeremiah cried:

·       Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? (Jeremiah 8:21-22)

But there was little Jeremiah could do. The problem was a stage four cancer, and his countrymen were loath to examine it, let alone to correct it:

·       Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. Oh, that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them; for they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people. "They make ready their tongue like a bow, to shoot lies; it is not by truth that they triumph in the land. They go from one sin to another; they do not acknowledge me," declares the LORD. "Beware of your friends; do not trust your brothers. For every brother is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer. Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning. You live in the midst of deception; in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me," declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 9:1-6)

I do not wish to blame the victim. However, this is just what the Prophets of Israel did at the bequest of their Master. Even Moses warned his people:

·       He [God] shielded [Israel] him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. The LORD alone led him; no foreign god was with him. He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him with the fruit of the fields. He nourished him with honey from the rock, and with oil from the flinty crag, with curds and milk from herd and flock and with fattened lambs and goats, with choice rams of Bashan and the finest kernels of wheat. You drank the foaming blood of the grape… He abandoned the God who made him and rejected the Rock his Savior. They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. They sacrificed to demons, which are not God-- gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear. You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth. The LORD saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters. "I will hide my face from them," he said, "and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful.” (Deuteronomy 32:10-20)

Instead of returning and placing their trust in the God who had fathered and shepherded them for millennium, Israel has placed its trust in themselves, the very thing that Moses had warned them against:

·       You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 8:17-20) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q4XL4oRIRE

Throughout their history, my people Israel have suffered these promised woes. Even the Orthodox Jews have turned away in their heart. Instead of acknowledging God, they are filled with a sense of racial superiority.

In Why the Jews Rejected Jesus, Orthodox Jewish writer David Klinghoffer concludes that Jewish rejection of Jesus is founded in “the mystic uniqueness of the Jewish essence or nature. There was something distinct about the Jewish soul…The Jewish soul feels the worlds, in a remarkably visceral way, as unredeemed.”

He bases this opinion upon Judah Loeb’s famous interpretation of the Talmudic tractate, Avodah Zarah, which stated that God had offered the Torah to all the other nations first, “to see if they possessed a predisposition to the Torah, and did not find it in them,” in contrast to the holy disposition God found in the Jews (pgs. 215-217).

This understanding, of course, is not at all reflective of the Hebrew Bible but instead, of much of the Talmud and is an affront to God.

I cry for my foolish people. Jeremiah’s lament has become mine. What to do? Continue in prayer to point them back to their sins and the promised hope of repentance before their rejected Messiah.

What is my consolation? It is found only in our Savior Jesus. Through Paul, He promised:

·       I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.  And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins." As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. (Romans 11:25-29)

To Him be the glory!

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ANTI-SEMITISM, ISLAM, AND NATIONAL SOCIALIST PROPAGANDA:

Muslims are not only yelling “kill the Jews” as the Nazis had done, but they are also reviving Nazi propaganda. One Muslim woman posted this YouTube video on my Facebook. It amazes me that anyone could take this video seriously, but tragically many do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQwuaXo5T-4

It also saddens me that instead of exposing and resisting the horror of Jewish-hatred at the core of Islam, the Western media has been bullied into silence, as they had under Hitler. Here is my response to the Muslim woman:

“What God thinks of the Jews is far more important than what others think. Yes, you are correct. They have rebelled against their God, but this hasn’t prevented Him from loving them, nor will it change the glorious future that He has so often promised them:

• Isaiah 49:13-15: “Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.” But Zion said, "The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me." "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”

• Ezekiel 36:24-31: "For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine. Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices.”

• Isaiah 44:21-22: "Remember these things, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I have made you, you are my servant; O Israel, I will not forget you. I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you."

• Jeremiah 33:6-8: "I will bring health and healing to it; I will heal my people and will let them enjoy abundant peace and security. I will bring Judah and Israel back from captivity and will rebuild them as they were before. I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me and will forgive all their sins of rebellion against me.”

• Hosea 3:5:  “Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days.”

• Zech. 12:10: "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication.”

• Deut. 32:43:  Rejoice, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants; he will take vengeance on his enemies and make atonement for his land and people.

• Hosea 14:4-5: "I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily. Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots;

• Amos 9:14-15: “I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the Lord your God.

• Micah 4:1-2: In the last days the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and peoples will stream to it. Many nations will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

• Micah 7:18-20: You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot  and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. You will be true to Jacob, and show mercy to Abraham, as you pledged on oath to our fathers in days long ago.

• Zeph. 3:15-20: “The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you…At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes," says the Lord.”

   

The very fact that God came as a Jew reaffirms the fact that of His love for His chosen people. This is also the message of the New Testament:

• Romans 11:26-29:  And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.  “As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable.

I am therefore concerned for you and also for your Muslim brethren, who hate the Jewish people. You mustn’t blind yourself to God’s purpose regarding those who continue in their hatred to Israel:

• Isaiah 41:11: "All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish.”

• Isaiah 51:21-23 This is what your Sovereign Lord says, your God, who defends his people: "See, I have taken out of your hand the cup that made you stagger; from that cup, the goblet of my wrath, you will never drink again. I will put it into the hands of your tormentors, who said to you, 'Fall prostrate that we may walk over you.' And you made your back like the ground, like a street to be walked over."

• Joel 3:19-21: “But Egypt will be desolate, Edom a desert waste, because of violence done to the people of Judah, in whose land they shed innocent blood. Judah will be inhabited forever and Jerusalem through all generations. Their bloodguilt, which I have not pardoned, I will pardon."

You can either continue in hatred or confess it to Allah, the One who wrote the Bible, according to your Koran. I pray that you will repent and seek peace which is pleasing to our God. He promises that if you seek, you will find:

• "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)”

Wisdom would beckon us to get on the right side of God and His plans. Hating His chosen but errant people is certainly not God’s way.