A New Look at the Old Testament

 

Here is a summary of another of David Pawson’s great sermons, “God Keeps His Promises.” Before that, a word of caution: 

As a Christian, you may not feel the Jews are relevant, or you may not like to study them, even when their journeys through life are ¾ of our Bible.  God has these stories for a reason.  They are not just for your children to build moral character; they could have a like effect on you, too.  But they tell the truth about their failings, and how God relates to their failings.  We are, after all, a sinning people, and no better source than the Bible to tell us the absolute truth about how God reacts to our wayfaring behavior.   

The worst mistake we could make is to assume God has changed in the New Testament, and is merciful, compared to His angry shedding of blood in the Old.  Keep one thing in mind:  Jesus, our New Testament model, is God.  God has the same personality in all three Persons of the Trinity.  He is the same in the Old and the New.  Pastors are giving us the happy side to keep us from showing discomfort and leaving, taking our tithes to another church.  They never talk about hell, but Jesus is the only source for the truth about hell, and talks greatly about it, and what we need to do to escape it.  Too many people assume the merciful God of the New T could not send them to hell, that the Gospel is “believe it, I’m saved.”  You need to read the sermons in Acts.   People who take the easy believism route given by pastors, their lives change little.  There are excessive warnings in the NEW testament about how many people will be shocked about God judging them to hell.  Only a small percentage will be saved, according to the CLEAR word of a New Testament book, Matthew 7:13-14.  We must develop a loving relationship with God in life, or we are sent to hell.  Per a New Testament book, John 15:5-6.  These are not hyperboles.  These are the cold facts.  Do you want to know how God demands that you examine whether you have the faith, demands that you strive for holiness, without which we will not see God, or how bad sin is to God?  You won’t hear it from pastors. Ignorance of the Bible is no excuse.  You must in fear seek the real God in Scripture.  Now Mr. Pawson, in this sermon, will relate how God reacted to the Jews, but first one more thing:  He made a covenant with them, it was not unconditional, it was bilateral, and was broken by sin—which meant curses would come to God’s people.  Despite the covenant, their behavior meant God agreed that the covenant for their deliverance was off.  God treats us the same way.  Keep that in focus. Now let’s do the very educational sermon.   

About 200 years ago, Frederick the Fifth, the king of Prussia, asked his philosopher friend, “Give me one proof of the existence of God.”  The answer he got: “Your majesty, the Jews.”  Considering how the Jews were scattered on the face of the earth at the time, and in danger of assimilation, that was an amazing answer—but the Jews still exist today, a proof of the existence of their God.  Given their history, historians expected they would have died out.  After all, they began with an old man of 90 who left a place that was, according to archaeologists, made of brick, had running water, central heating, and there were two story houses in abundance.  He left there and lived in a tent the rest of his life because he believed God.  God promised him a nation, countless descendants, including kings, and blessings for the whole world as his inheritance.  Yet his wife was barren, a shame in that society, and it looked like the family line would come to a dead end anyway.  The land God told him to go was less than fertile, and subject to famines too frequently. But he went. 

At times he had to travel to the breadbasket of the area, Egypt, to assuage hunger.  Yet as a result of his faith in God’s promises, he became great in the eyes of God, so much so that He even presented His name in Scripture as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”  In a miracle, his wife bore a child at age 90, and he ultimately became the father of millions.  Years later, God provided another blessing for this tribe—Joseph, one of his great-grandsons, was sold into slavery by the brothers who hated him.  He even spent time in prison on a false charge, yet he became prime minister of Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh. Egyptologists have found Joseph’s home and his burial plot.  It had been broken into, and the body moved.  Which makes sense, as Joseph was a Jew, and directed his brothers to move his bones back to Canaan, their future homeland, since he wanted to be in the land God promised.  Scripture, you see, is not telling fables—it’s telling history. 

However, genocide came to the Jews while they were in Egypt, the first of many.  Later pharaohs made the Jews slaves.  When the Pharaoh worried about their growing population, he commanded that boy babies should be slaughtered at birth.  Here’s a proof-fact:  A professor of London has found a cemetery in Goshen, Egypt, where all the skeletons are female.  The only one of its kind in the entire world.  Why?  Almost all the boy infants were killed; many were thrown to the crocodiles in the Nile.  But not Moses, God’s deliverer.

Just like our own slaves in the South, the Egyptian economy was so dependent on the Jews, that they would fight and never release them.  In addition, the Jews had no weapons to get free.  But God found a way, through Moses, to obtain their freedom without a single battle.  When, after a series of devastating plagues, the Jews were set free, God steered them away from the most accommodative route—fleeing up the eastern border of Egypt.  Canaan was so very close that way.  God knew, though, if they went that way, that Egypt had a line of fortifications on the eastern border of the Mediterranean, to guard against invaders—and to keep slaves from escaping.  There was no way that their three million Jews could sneak away.  So God sent them south!  But then they went between the deep Red Sea and the uninhabitable Saharan desert; He seemed to want them trapped.  Close on their trail were the chariots of the biggest army in their world.  Egypt was all set to recapture these slaves.  Yet despite the unreality of their placement, Moses didn’t blink an eye.  He knew God was good for it.  He knew the promises God made to the Jews, despite living in Egypt most of his life. His mother had given him faith when he was young.  So God again acted on his faith, opened up a path in the Red Sea, closed it at the right time—and it was the Egyptian army at the bottom of the sea, not the Jewish slaves. 

Then they were wandering in the desert for 40 years, without food and little access to water. It was a miracle that any of them survived.  Did you know that in 1973, when Egypt went into war with Israel, they had to travel by that desert in the Sinai peninsula to pull a surprise attack? Within three days on the desert they were dying of thirst, and some surrendered.  Israel took pity and released them.  So it was a miracle that many Jews survived.  God kept the apple of His eye, and His promises, alive; and He was present in a tall pillar of cloud or fire, leading their paths.  He did a miracle by never allowing their clothes to become unusable.  He provided for this huge refugee population at every step.  No one else could have done it, especially with corrupt enemies all around who saw them as a threat, even giants (descendants of the Nephilim, see another blog).   They were, indeed, attacked.  But God gave them the victory.  When they hit the Jordan river, 12 spies were sent to suss out the promised land on the other side, and 10 of them returned with a bad report; the walls of the cities were too high, and there were too many giants.  But two of the spies said, as it were, “we will go in on God’s shoulders, so we will be taller than they are.”  But the people lost faith.  Now think how God could be upset, after He had done many miracles right in front of them, to get them right to the edge of the land He promised.  So, in His disappointment, God turned them back, and made sure that their travel to the outskirts of Canaan took 40 years instead of the usual 1; it could have been a short straight distance, but He made sure all the unfaithful would die and their bones ended up in the wilderness, not in the promised land of Canaan.  The kids were spared, though, and grew up hardy, and ready to fight. God told them He would give them the victory.  When they finally arrived, their very first challenge across the Jordan was the large city of Jericho; it was huge and had high walls.  God took down the walls—another miracle--and they won that battle, the first one in Canaan. They had their land—for awhile.

Speaking of survival against odds, did you know that Israel is in an earthquake zone? It’s on the biggest crack in the earth’s surface, called the Great Rift Valley.  Agriculture was chancy, there, too:  they were totally dependent on a westerly wind—that is the only thing that brings rain. The vines depend on the dew that rolls off Mr. Hermon, coming off the snow and down the valley where it misted on the vines.  Locust swarms, the kind that makes the sky truly black, occasionally strip all green from the land, even eating bark.   Even buzzing through at 10 miles an hour, it took an hour-and-a-half for millions to leave and you could see the sun again. So Israel is a very precarious country to live in.  It’s also a dangerous crossroads.  They were a narrow corridor between the Mediterranean and the desert.  It links Africa to Europe, and Europe to Asia; everybody traveling from one continent to another, or sending an army against an enemy, had to travel through Israel, most likely through a singular gap in the mountains to get to the Sea.  That gap goes through a hill called Megiddo, or Har Megiddo—which is also a crux in the future.  It is known famously in Bible prophecy as Armageddon—the last battle before God’s Final Judgment.  Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors, and it has been invaded and occupied and attacked, almost without relief, for centuries.  When the Jews first took over the land, they had two superpowers nearby; each of them had generous supplies of water—the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates (Assyria). When any nation wanted the water of either, Israel was right in the middle. Collateral damage was the guaranteed result.  Plus, Solomon’s sons began a civil war, which usually wipes out a nation.  But they realized they had to stick together to preserve the Jewish line that God gave them.  They decided to have an armistice.  They lived, uneasily, side by side, and let live—though they had different objectives. One probable result of that is, Israel now has over 60 political parties, and no singular group or individual can rule alone, but must join a coalition with a party that has different goals. Which means few new laws get done, even when urgency calls for it. All of this seemed perfectly designed to have a short life as a nation.

When the Jews were conquered and exiled by the Assyrians and the Babylonians (about 600 BC), it should have been the end. But Medo-Persia later defeated the Babylonians, and were kind enough that for 200 years they allowed the Jews to set up a province in Israel if they wanted to return home. But only a few thousand returned to the land; their faith in God was dying out.  They were later occupied by Syria, Egypt, Greeks, and Romans.  Of these, the Greeks tried to assimilate them the most, which would obliterate Jewish identity and culture. Antiochus Epiphanes was the worst; among other things, he banned their language, forcing them to learn Greek.  As it turned out, that was a huge blessing to mankind; Jews later wrote the New Testament in Greek, a perfect language for communicating the Gospel. Every advanced nation could read it.  Many of the Jews were willing to be “Hellenized.” But not enough of them to obliterate their identity.  God wanted them to be different, to bear God’s testimony and His Word for the world to see. Keep in mind, there were many gods.  There was always the question, which god was real, and could protect his worshipping nation?  Ideally, if the Jews copied His character, and became prosperous through His blessing, they would be a showcase of their God, and other nations would want Him as their god too.

Then came the visit of God in the flesh, Jesus the Christ.  The Jews were given an opportunity to recognize Him as God, and be saved—but they killed Him instead.  They began rejecting God 100 years before, and had lost freedom in their land as a result.   Now, by rejecting His Son, curses would begin raining down.

When the Jews did too many insurrections, the Romans, in 70 AD, were tired of it, and wiped out Jerusalem, killing perhaps a million, and they destroyed the Temple.  But the Jews, despite the loss of their culture’s greatest icons, still did not give up their identity.  Persecution by Nero and others also drove them out. Their land was, in 135AD, renamed “Palestinia.”  (There are anti-Semitic preachers today that say Jesus was a palestinian.  False, since the name postdated Christ).  Some of the Jews, though, held onto 3 things that stood out in their identity:  circumcision, the Sabbath, and a kosher diet.  But they lost their language.

But they hung onto hope, even when the Crusades, ostensibly to win holy sites back from the Muslims, killed every Jew they saw on the way, especially through France and Germany, who wouldn’t protect them.  In Spain the Inquisition forced the Jews either to convert to Christianity or be tortured to death.  Spain finally kicked them out in 1492; they had to flee to remain Jewish and stay alive.  I’m sure it was “circumstance” that in that same year, Columbus discovered the New World, which later became a refuge for the Jews to flee to. They were even killed in England; in 1291, at York, when the remaining Jews were trapped gathered in a castle, they committed suicide rather than being run through by English soldiers. Later there were Russian pogroms, severe persecution in Poland (that’s why Hitler put most of his death camps there).  And we can “understand” why Hitler wanted to kill them all; the Jews had their brightest people running banks, the theater and the arts, while Hitler was asserting the Aryans were a superior race.

But they’re here today, after a series of miracles; and every year, at Passover, the few religious Jews celebrate how their nation began with a miracle. They could see Acts of God, but the faithful people played their part too. Since their new nation in 1948, they have defended many times against Muslim onslaught and hatred, funded by Russian money and weapons.  One of the many scenes of bravery was their capture of the Golan Heights in 1967 from the Syrians.  Russian artillery controlled the top of the mountainous Heights, and were in a militarily impregnable position, aiming down to fire at the Israelis, whose every move was open. Fish in a barrel. But they built a road up the side of the steep hills, foot by foot, under heavy gunfire--with the help of many soldiers who gave their lives to simply run the bulldozer up the tall hill another hundred yards before he would be shot.  They knew they would die, and still volunteered.  Then they could march up and overwhelm the enemy

The Jews will still be around at the end time, not only in their nation, but in rebuilding a temple (Mark 13:14).  There will be a huge revival; God will open their eyes to see Jesus in a new way; many of them will be saved.

But here’s another question, whose answer we don’t want to know:  why has God allowed them to be defeated and persecuted?  He hasn’t done a great job of protecting them.  This is a side of God that gets ignored by most modern pastors and observers.  It comes down to a hard fact: God loves people, but He also hates people.  He not only heals, but He kills.  He blesses, and He curses.  We should ask people, not just, “do you believe in God,” but “what kind of God do you believe in?”  His written Word—Old as well as New Testament, give His character and response to our actions and thoughts in great detail; and, frankly, in certain circumstances, He is harsh. But we have been brought up on a sentimental, not a Scriptural, understanding of Him.

The following remarks are God dealing with nations.  He deals with people differently.

Thinking back, His “marriage” to the Jews in Exodus was a bilateral covenant.  He said “I will” to many blessings He named—then He asked the Jews (at Sinai), “now it is for you to say, that you decide if you will keep all My commandments through your lives”?  They said “we will.” That response completed the covenant as bilateral, and could be broken; it was not unconditional. Well, Israel broke it; they became an adulteress, as it were, to God, worshipping other gods and defying His rules.  God had simply wanted a people who would demonstrate to the world how to love Him and be obedient to Him, and how, as a result, they could be blessed more than anybody. But the agreement also specified:  If they broke the covenant, and ignored a relationship with Him, and went the ways of other corrupt cultures, He would curse them more than any other people.  As you can see by their history, you know which way they went.  This is a new way of saying, “God has kept His promises,” because cursing them was also keeping His promises too.  He would do this even though He loved them. 

Deuteronomy 28 has many of those blessings in vv1-14; and the curses in vv15-68.  (A note for future sermonizers:  God spends 4 times as much listing curses as He does the blessings.  He knew that everyone assumes innocence, that they will be blessed; it takes a repeated knock on the head, lots more verses, to make them see the possibility of curses too).  When you read the curses (see more in Leviticus 26), it’s a description of the holocaust, actually.  If the Jews knew God, they would see that that was the ultimate of curses for their 3000 years of disobedience—capped by doing their part in killing their Messiah.

As reminders, Moses asked the people that for the next several days, and on occasion thereafter, go to two mountains named in advance with good acoustics.  From one mountain, the Levites would shout the blessings.  From the other, they would shout the curses.  The people should hear that God is both love and holy. Speaking of the holocaust again, that horrible disaster was the reason why they re-obtained their nation.  The blessing would not have come without the extreme persecution preceding it.  Because the compassion of the world after the holocaust turned the world’s hearts into granting permission.  Such are the ways of God.   

So the reason for their change of fortunes is not because God is capricious.  That’s Allah.  Our God has a plan for our good, always.  He can be trusted to stick to His word.  One of the main messages of the Prophet books of the Bible to the wayward kings of Israel and Judah was, “Go on like this, and you’ll qualify for the curses.” His response, as always, was based on their decisions to obey or disobey.

Their prophet Jeremiah told them of the potter and the clay.  A lump was started for a beautiful vase.  But the clay was inflexible and would not respond under the potter’s hands.  The potter was forced to make the clay into an unattractive pot for the kitchen.  Who decided its destiny?  The clay.  God then told Jeremiah, “If that nation will repent and turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.”  (Jeremiah 18-19) But there was another lesson.  When the clay could not be used for a better purpose, the potter smashed the crude pots into pieces, and threw them into Hinnom (a trash pit where fires burn continuously).  Hinnom is the word source later picked by Jesus for the word Gehenna, which is properly translated Hell.  Jesus told many stories of hell. No one in Scripture talked about it more than He.  Consider that when you see the next sentimental painting of Jesus; that’s not the whole picture of Our Lord and King whom we are to fear and love. 

God wants to see a nation worshipping Him, having people like Him, full of His mercy, eager to abide and enjoy relationship with Him.  When you sin or forget Him, you should feel the relationship’s loss, and are eager to ask His forgiveness, and truly repent, because you are desirous of knowing Him more.  By reading His Word, you also find out about His character, His glory, what it means to fear Him--and you want to put His character in your own lives too. You want to be more like Him.  But curses come upon you, and hell at the end, if you rebel against Him, think only of getting ahead in the world, or if you have no desire to know Him better.  Either way that your choice goes, you will still demonstrate that He is God, the Keeper of blessing and curse promises.   

Remember that (after initial salvation) relationship with Him is demanded to enter our promised land--heaven.  That is His abundant blessing. But few make it there (Matthew 7:13-14), because few love Him enough to even think about knowing Him or staying away from the things He hates. Look at history as proof. His blessings to people came in Genesis 1, but His curses came as early as Genesis 3.  That’s how fast mankind learned to sin and rebel. It pleased God to make Creation; He called it “good.”  Man was the height of God’s creation.  But men quickly divided up into two groups, godly and godless. Such a division even happened to Adam and Eve’s two sons, Cain and Abel. Murder was early in the human race.  A disgusted God wiped out mankind, except eight righteous, and He started over. How can He do that to a people He loves? It’s the curse side of God. “Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).  When we are initially saved, we have a new nature; but the old sinful nature doesn’t want to give up the throne of our lives.  Which nature we feed tells us if we see heaven at the end of our time.

Many readers of Genesis, especially, do not like God of the Old Testament.  They think that mass drowning of the Flood is the peak of barbarism, and it must be a fable, He couldn’t kill everyone through the whole world—that can’t be God.  So, you think that some of His Word is a myth? Or that there are really two gods, one capricious and eager to strike people dead, the other merciful and forgiving?  Or do you think God mellows out between Old and New?  Or that the Old Testament should be ejected from the Bible, that it teaches fairy tales and is only good for moralistic teaching for children? (many pastors believe that today).  There is a saying that you may doubt, but you should agree by objectively reading Scripture: “God loves righteousness more than people.”  If you feel its opposite is true, you don’t truly understand the two sides of God, or the Cross.  If God loved people more than righteousness, He never would have allowed His Son to experience the horrors of substitutionary death.  He would have just forgiven and forgotten, without the Cross.  But righteousness demanded a payment for sin; His blood was the price for our sinful lives.  (Ed:  I disagree with Pawson in his Anselm argument for atonement, see my other blog).  For proof, read Romans 1; its summary is, when men give God up, God gives man up.  Romans tells of the increase in unnatural sex, the breakup of families, the breakdown of law and order in society.  Curses are coming in our nation when we disobey His laws.  We should have learned that lesson by reading in Scripture about Israel. As an example, God loves us all to provide food to feed all the people in the world.  But wars, genocides, corrupt politics, and greedy, or obese people, or people unwilling to share their wealth prevent that from happening.  That’s not His fault—it’s ours.  This is the most effective argument against cynical atheists who want to blame God for everything.  They make these charges assuming we are all innocent, good people, so God must be guilty of hurting the innocents.  Your response could be, do you think you don’t deserve premature, violent death?  Well, we caused Jesus’ death on the Cross; a premature, violent death--that was the claim on us for our sin, until Jesus substituted for us.  God is holy. We deserve hell; we should thank God Who gives any mercy at all towards us.  Jesus was equally blunt when discussing the towers of Siloam, which fell and 18 died. In Luke 13:4-5, He speaks:

 ….those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? ⁵ I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

I am not speculating on this aspect of God.  He can be harsh.  We all need to repent of our sins, not just once at initial salvation.  The disasters are reminders of how unpredictable our time on earth is, and we should always be ready to meet Him.  Even the uneducated cannot doubt God’s active existence. Even though they know nothing of Jesus, He has given us Creation and our conscience.  So we know He exists and pretty much what’s right.  Though we know right from wrong, most still choose wrong too often.  All who have lived are accountable to Him for sin.  But Jesus’ blood can free a repentant sinner—if they want to form a continuing relationship with Him, obeying Him, wanting to learn more about Him from His Word, and cease the worldly continued practice of sin.

God is dealing with the nations, even today, on the same basis as He dealt with ancient Israel; did you know that there are interesting parallels between the two? One-third of the Jews died in the holocaust.  Likewise, according to Revelation 9:18, 1/3 of the people will die in that great persecution.  Today, few of the Jews have turned to God.  In Revelation, likewise, few in that future time will repent. In fact, when the worst plagues are upon those living at that future time, most people will curse God (Rev. 16:9). In another comparison, God’s curses rained upon the Jews in 1940s.  But in the same decade, they went from bad fortune to good fortune; they also obtained future safety in their own new nation.  Likewise, as Revelation predicts, God curses the earth with shaking and devastation, and many martyrs, that has never been seen—but this will be followed by the just reign of Jesus in His kingdom, and peace on the earth. 

As I have proved, He is the same God in Old and New Testaments—a God to fear and to love, defining “love” in proper Greek.  Our Christian Bible is ¾ Jewish, and ¼ New.  The Old Testament dominates for a reason; it should still be studied; we learn about the other side of God, active even today.  We also learn from the Jews’ history, how they were brave and heroic occasionally, they were close to Him, and so they were blessed; and also how they ignored God and took on the ways of the world’s corrupt culture. And were cursed. We learn that He is good, and He is righteous, and demands holiness. He never breaks a promise.  Israel, despite its stiff neck, can still be forgiven by God in the future.  They are God’s chosen people—because they will choose Him in the end times.  Many of them will be saved, many become righteous.  In parallel once again, the church, which is now weak, with a weak gospel and testimony, and often compared to lukewarm Laodicea, and is lazy about God.  With God’s help, many Gentiles will revive; many will be saved, and be courageous in their testimony in the last days.  Like Israel of old, our duty as God’s “church” (we’re not speaking of a building or denomination; it means “called out ones”) is to demonstrate what God is really like, that if we obey Him, He can forgive despite our past. Like the Jews.  All saved at any time are the visible body of Christ (I Corinthians 12) to the world.  Our acts, not just our words, should be patience and mercy, and compassion on those lesser than us. We should bless, we should heal by forgiving.  God help us to learn through history, and know Him, and demonstrate His character traits.

 

 

                                                    

 

  

 

 

 

 

Good Guys, Bad Guys Part 2

 On the subject of “who are the good guys, who are the bad guys,” I have another thought-provoking article for you.  We’ve all watched cowboys and Indians when we were kids.  Cowboys were always the good guys, protecting our women and children from the savages who would scalp them, or the bad guys who try to push them around, right?  Well, that clarity of justice was not always the way things were.  I have a true story about the year 1780 and thereabouts, and it happened in our original colonies, during the time of the American Revolution.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the famous words, “All men are created equal” and endowed with rights, it must be bluntly said that he only meant white men—he did not mean black men--or Indians.  Even as early as 1780, our colonies were already in the practice of making treaties with Indians, then breaking them, pushing them back, confiscating their land, even though it was necessary for their survival, and paying them nothing for it.  Some eastern Indian tribes had already been pushed nearly to the point of extinction—many starved, many were not able to move a distance to land that was not arable (most Indians were not raised as nomadic).  Americans fighting for freedom from taxes and authority felt no compunction about stealing Indian livelihood and freedom.  The Indians fought back, and reacted viciously.  It’s true that many Indians sided with the British during the Revolution, but why not?  The British treated them better than American colonists, as careful study will show. For instance, under a treaty with colonists, the British set up forts to try to prevent American settlers from crossing over the Appalachians and stealing more Indian land.  Americans, in a continuation of “Christian high character,” reneged on that treaty too, and continued westward anyhow. 

George Washington, would you believe, demanded that there be a final solution for one hard-fought section of soil (I hate to use that term; yes, George Washington was advocating genocide)—he wanted the total annihilation of the six Iroquois nations, who were raiding settlers persistently—but, keep in mind, they were trying to save their land.  The American soldiers began burning down Iroquois villages in 1779-1780.  Their march down the Susquehanna had the same goal of Sherman’s march to Atlanta. They burned all the grain, all the crops, every fruit tree.  Thousands of Indian women and children and the old died of starvation in this “scorched earth” policy.  Survivors fled to Canada.

A group of Indians who suffered the worst fate were the Lenape, who began in Pennsylvania.  Most Lenape were pushed out of their homeland during the early 1700s by expanding European colonies, and by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox.  They finally settled in the Ohio River basin.  What’s unique here is that many of them were sincerely converted to Christianity by Moravian missionaries before the Revolution (Ed. Note: Moravians were orthodox Protestants from what is now Czech Republic).  These Indians learned to be non-resistant—i.e., they wouldn’t fight back under aggression.  They laid down their tomahawks and bows and arrows, remaining neutral in the Revolution, and they truly meant to follow Jesus in loving their enemies.  Their village was named Gnadenhutten, which means “huts of grace” in the Moravian language.  But they were, in 1781, pushed out (by the British) to near Lake Erie near the Sandusky River—still in Ohio, but this time they named the village “Captive Town.” They lost their independence, and they were left without initial crops.  So they were going hungry—but they were ignored under Washington's draconian rules.  And it was past harvest time. In February 1782, more than 100 of them returned to their old Moravian villages to harvest the crops and collect stored food they had been forced to leave behind. The frontier war was still raging. In early March, the Lenape were surprised by a raiding party of 160 Pennsylvania militia led by Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson. The militia rounded up the Christian Lenape and accused them of taking part in raids into Pennsylvania. Although the Lenape denied the charges and explained their non-resistance from reading about Christ, the militia held a council and voted to kill them. Some militia were attacked by conscience, and walked out. They could see the Christianity in the Lenape.

After the Lenape were told of the militia's vote, they requested time to prepare for death and spent the night praying and singing hymns. 

Despite the fact that these soldiers had witnessed the Indians praying and singing hymns, they still were eager to see them die.  The next morning on March 8, the militia brought the Lenape to the "killing houses," one for men and the other for women and children. The militia tied the Indians, stunned them with mallet blows to the head, and killed them with fatal scalping cuts. In  all, the militia murdered and scalped 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children. No Indians resisted.  Two Indian boys, one of whom had been scalped, survived to tell of the massacre. The corpses were piled in the mission buildings and the American militia burned the village down. They also burned the other abandoned Moravian villages nearby. One of those soldiers who opposed the killing of the Moravian Lenape was Obadiah Holmes, Jr. He wrote,

"one Nathan Rollins & brother [who] had had a father & uncle killed (ed., not by Lenape) took the lead in murdering the Indians, ...& Nathan Rollins had tomahawked nineteen of the poor Moravians, & after it was over he sat down & cried, & said it was no satisfaction for the loss of his father & uncle after all".

After slaughtering everyone, the militia now turned to greed.  They looted the village before burning it down. The plunder, which needed 80 horses to carry, included everything which the people had held: furs for trade, pewter, tea sets, and clothing. A few years later, Moravian missionary John Heckewelder, who had just heard, collected the remains of the Lenape and buried them in a mound on the southern side of the village.

Some Americans were outraged when they heard about all this, but most of the settlers on the frontier supported the American militia’s murderous action.  No criminal charges were ever filed, and the war rolled on. 

Our treatment of the Indians, in general, was a standing reproach of our “Christian” governments for nearly a century, and a blood-red blot upon our annals of history.  The kind of story like the Lenape never gets told in history classes in elementary or secondary schools.  It is the kind of story that should be told, to warn and admonish us of our prejudices and our ability to dehumanize men—a product of our sinful nature, and we can’t blame wartime, the ever-popular excuse.  The men who persecute Christians have a special place in hell.    

The Kingdom of God

 What was John the Baptist’s first words?

Matthew 3:1-2: In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

What was the theme of Jesus’ first message? Was it man’s need for salvation? Was it God’s love for mankind? Was it the necessity to be born again? Was it that He would die as a ransom for us? No, we find the answer in Matthew 4:17:

From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand..”

Mark 1:14-15: Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

The kingdom is the only thing that Jesus labeled as the gospel, which means “good news.”

For further on the importance of the kingdom, note what Jesus says in Luke 4:43, again early in His ministry:

But He said to them, “I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent.”

So what was the reason He was sent? For salvation? Yes, as many other verses point out. But it was also to set up the kingdom of God. It’s time, is it not, that we pay attention to this idea. After all, Jesus only talked once about the new birth; He mentioned His ransom for us only one time; there are only five or six passages in which Jesus used the word “salvation;” yet the kingdom of God is mentioned in the gospels nearly 100 times! Most of Jesus’ parables were about the kingdom. And as you saw above, Jesus said that the reason He was sent to earth was to preach about the kingdom. But do we hear this theme emphasized in the preaching of pastors today? No. All we hear is that Jesus’ primary purpose in coming to earth was to save us from our sin. Of course, that’s wonderfully important—but it still omits something vitally important. After all, wherever He went, He preached about the kingdom of God:

Matthew 4:23: And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.

This is repeated in Matthew 9:35:

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

And again in Luke 9:11:

But when the multitudes knew it, they followed Him; and He received them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who had need of healing.

He also made it the second petition in the model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come…

That’s how high it ranks in the priorities of Jesus, and where it should rank in ours. Then what are we doing, ignoring this doctrine? The kingdom of God is almost totally missing from the gospel of today!

Now, you might argue that while Jesus was alive, He couldn’t say much about salvation through His death and resurrection—but surely, after these were completed, His disciples’ main theme was about that, right? Not the case. They didn’t change the emphasis after He died and rose again.

Acts 8:12: But when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized

Acts 19:6-8: And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. 7 Now the men were about twelve in all. 8 And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God

Even at the end of Acts—when Paul is under house arrest in Rome, having written about finally giving his life for Christ, what is he still thinking about? Acts 28:23:

So when they had appointed him a day, many came to him at his lodging, to whom he explained and solemnly testified of the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus from both the Law of Moses and the Prophets, from morning till evening.

In Acts 28:30-31, we should ask, what did Paul emphasize for two whole years at the tail end of his ministry? The answer? The kingdom and Jesus:

Then Paul dwelt two years in his own rented house, and received all who came to him, 31 preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him.

As it was in Acts 8 above, these two verses have a dual emphasis in preaching: both Jesus Christ (and His salvation)—and the kingdom of God. The two go hand in hand. If you want Jesus as Savior, you need to accept His kingdom over your life too.

So let's learn more about the kingdom of God in this short paper.  Obviously, one of the main principles is:  He is the King in His kingdom, so we obey Him. Salvation is not the end of our religious effort; it is a means to an end—after we are saved, establishing our place in His kingdom should then be emphasized; what can we do to forward His kingdom? Notice carefully what Jesus said to Nicodemus:

John 3:3-5 (partial): Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot…enter the kingdom of God.

Being born again is not the end of our effort:  It is a means to another end. Our real purpose is not to gain salvation, but to live to the highest use in His kingdom, to please our King. So the kingdom is an absolutely crucial aspect of the gospel. When we tell people about salvation and ignore the kingdom, we are not preaching the full gospel. We’re only giving half of it. We can’t have the King apart from the kingdom. Preachers must also call people to become citizens of His kingdom.  And spell out our obligations.

So why is it that the gospel of the kingdom is not being preached? How did we miss this? We just don’t pay much attention to what the Scriptures really say anymore, I guess.

Well, now let’s get details about just what is the kingdom of God. All kingdoms have four components: (1) Ruler; (2) Subjects, or Citizens; (3) Domain, or the region the ruler has control; and (4) Laws. But God’s kingdom is sometimes different. God’s kingdom doesn’t have an earthly ruler—its ruler is Jesus Christ, who reigns from heaven. And unlike earthly kingdoms, who change rules, Jesus’ policies never change. They are spelled out in His infallible Word, the Bible. As to its subjects? The test, or method of determining who is a citizen in the kingdom of God is those who are born again and act like a citizen:  “bring forth the fruits thereof,” Matthew 21:43. What are the fruits? Holiness and praising God. The kingdom of God includes everyone IF they are bringing forth its fruits, if they are willing to gain in holiness. It excludes nobody—but those who exclude themselves by not bringing forth its fruits. To be heirs in this kingdom, we have to belong to Christ. We enter the kingdom through the new birth (see John 3). You can’t bring forth its fruits, you can’t be holy, without the help of the Holy Spirit, who is given to you at the new birth. It is His indwelling that brings forth fruit. See I Peter 2:9-10:

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people…that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God.

As to Domain: The kingdom of God’s subjects do not occupy a certain portion of the earth; they are interspersed among all the nations of the world.

But there are conflicts among His people—because we live under two kingdoms. You are a citizen in one of the kingdoms of the world, and you are a citizen in the kingdom of God. And since there are differences in their laws, those two kingdoms occasionally force a conflict, on occasion demanding of you two opposite actions at the same time. Of course, we are to follow our heavenly King; Jesus expects you to follow His laws, not the kingdom of darkness (Colossians 1:13). (That's a pretty stark comment on all the world's governments.)  This may mean persecution because many governments want you to respect them as your kingdom, and don't want you to give your allegiance elsewhere.  Persecution may arise in such a conflict.

Now you can’t avoid persecution by saying we don't have to think about God's kingdom until the far future, or we can try to say it is a spiritual kingdom, so I can ignore His commands. Luke 17:21 says the “kingdom of God is within you (KJV),” which some people translate as spiritual--but the phrase "within you" means “in the midst of you” (per Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words), a huge difference of meaning. Instead of saying “within me spiritually,” it says the kingdom is operating NOW among God’s people.

It’s important to keep in mind, as we think about this, that most of the people in the world (including the U.S.) are not citizens of God’s kingdom. Most people are not willing to be holy and sold out for Christ.  The people of the world cannot see the kingdom of God, and cannot understand our intolerance and refusal to keep up with the latest cultural trend. Jesus told Nicodemus, in John 3:3:

I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Colossians 1:13 says people are still in the kingdom of darkness. It also says we are NOW in the kingdom of God, if we’re saved and living for God—it’s not future:

He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love

If we’re not living in His kingdom while we’re on earth, we’re not going to be there after we die. But most professing Christians don’t even know what the kingdom of God is. People equate it with “the institutional church,” or with a certain political party, or even with a certain country. Those ideas put an unnecessary limitation on it. Thinking about it makes you want to know what our King wants from us, especially as we possibly approach the last days, because Scripture says we can expect conflict, as I alluded above; and we must make each decision in those conflicts to advance the kingdom, and endure the persecutions to be in heaven when the time comes (II Timothy 2:12).

The big difference between realizing you're a citizen of Christ's kingdom vs today's gospel is, if you're thinking kingdom thoughts, you're asking, if Jesus is my King, He is sovereign, and I have to know what His orders are (by reading the Word, by listening in prayer), I have to obey those orders, no matter if it screams against my logic (because His logic is 'way smarter than mine), to please Him.  With today's gospel, your pastors are often unreachable, if you have a group leader, they're busy, you don't respect them as ruler over your life.  

Keep in mind that salvation is not merely mental assent, but an active trust in Christ—it’s called “abiding in Christ.” Thereby we bear fruit. Knowing that we’re in His kingdom will help us to read the Word and obey the King’s commandments, versus ignoring them, which goes on way too much today. Read John 15:1-6 or my blog on Initial vs Final Salvation. Following His commandments are necessary for final salvation, for an eternity in the right place—heaven.

Acknowledgement: David Bercot’s CD, “The Kingdom of God,” Scroll Publishing

A New Look at Persecution and the Jews

 

Here is another great sermon by David Pawson.  When you read it, you will see God’s hand in current history.  Hopefully my Cliff’s Notes (since the sermon was over 1-1/2 hours) still caught all the highlights. 

History’s greatest disasters happened in the 20^th century.  And of all of them, the most horrific was the holocaust.  The murder of 6 million Jews, one-quarter of them children, still seems unbelievable in the world.  They weren’t even fighting anybody. It was genocide, the murder of a race. Euphemisms abounded—the Germans called it a “solution,” (as if there were a problem); it’s also called “ethnic cleansing.”

Here is a terrible fact that has been hidden from us.  In 1938, the nations of the world realized that the Jews of Europe were in mortal peril—150,000 had already fled Germany, and they all knew full well what Hitler was going to do, since he laid out his fanatical hatred of the Jews 13 years before in his autobiography, Mein Kampf.  Franklin D. Roosevelt called a 10-day conference in July at a famous spa resort on Lake Geneva called Evian-les-Baines; 32 nations’ diplomats showed up.  He wanted to discuss what could be done to help Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.  They finally decided that changing immigration laws were the only option.  They desperately needed to open up nations to fleeing Jewish refugees. But two of the ‘great powers’ (U.S. and France) flat-out refused to help. The U.S. said they ‘can’t take any more.’  This set the tone for the conference; only three nations offered minimal help—Britain offered to take a few thousand children. The Netherlands and the Dominican Republic were willing to take a few hundred adults.  So the conference was a failure, and after the first day, most of the delegates were out sailing on their boats on Lake Geneva.  Observers went back to Germany and reported to Hitler, “you can do what you like with the Jews, the nations don’t care.”  Mr. Pawson believes that World War II was God’s judgment on the Western nations.

It was realized as early as 1942 that the Jews were not only persecuted, but being exterminated as a regular daily occurrence in camps.  This was obtained through decoding of the Enigma spy decoder that the U.K. obtained a copy of; it was valuable for determining enemy positions.  Part of the reason we didn’t consider swooping in to rescue was that Hitler would know we figured out his Enigma, and change the code.  (Ed. Note:  But why didn’t we bomb all the railroad lines leading up to them, to at least slow down the slaughter?  And, since it was a good bet that the genocide would speed up if the Germans were losing, and since victory was pretty certain by early spring 1945 (when the Battle of the Bulge didn’t stop us), why did the Allies not send special elite troops of commandos to take control over the camps?  The Air Force could be sent to defend the commandos’ positions.  It would not have required any exhaustion of our forces at all.)

(Further notes:  Of nations under Nazi rule, Poland, where most of the death camps were, has the terrible distinction of wiping out the highest percentage of Jews who populated there pre-war:  they murdered 3 million of their 3.3 million original population, or 90%.  Shockingly, a close second place was Greece, who murdered 87% of its pre-war Jewish population. At the other end, Denmark only killed 1% of their populated Jews, despite pressure to do more from their Nazi masters.  Last note:  Most of the Ukrainian refugees, in their current war with Russia, are going to Poland—how will they treat them, I wonder?)

Back to Mr. Pawson:  I could tell many grisly stories about how ‘functional’ the Germans found their Jewish prisoners—hair for cushions, skin for lampshades, their fat for soap, even their ashes for fertilizer. In Treblinka, the fields were a yard deep in ashes. Let’s not go any further.  The whole story can be visually obtained in London, at the Imperial War Museum; or by reading Martin Gilbert’s book, ‘The Holocaust:  Jewish Tragedy.’

Think about the irony of it:  Germany, the land of Luther, together with Germanic Austria, with their combined beautiful culture in Berlin and Vienna, and their glorious history of musical composers—Beethoven, Mozart, Strauss—yet that is where the germ of Jewish hatred began—in a ‘Christian’ country, not in Islam. But Germany also led the world in theologians who believed in Higher Criticism—the purpose of whose efforts was to denounce as liars and fakery the God-inspired Scripture.  By destroying faith in the Bible, it helped empty the churches in Germany; and its poisoned work spread to Britain and the U.S. Many of our seminaries are still teaching our new pastors not to trust everything in Scripture as Truth.

The big question is, “why did this happen in Germany first?”  It was ‘Christian;’ the northern half was Protestant Lutheran, the southern half Catholic.  We’ll start with Hitler.  He didn’t always hate the Jews.  He started out as a failed watercolor artist in Vienna, so poor he didn’t have an overcoat.  And a rabbi took pity on him and gave him one, which Hitler wore for years.  But Vienna already had a strong anti-Semitic mood.  Jews were despised—but Hitler wrote this in his diary:  “In the Jew, I saw only a man who was of different religion; and therefore I was against the idea that he should be attacked just because he had a different faith.  Anti-Semitism is unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great people.”  Can you believe that?  So, what went wrong? He actually began his massive killing spree (October 1939) not with the Jews, but with the physically and mentally disabled.  They were herded into trucks, hose pipes were connected to passenger chambers, and they were gassed by carbon monoxide. Then he moved on to the elderly, whom he regarded as ‘useless eaters.’ He conducted this killing under the guise of a Euthanasia program. (Euthanasia is now legal in the following European countries:  Belgium, Netherlands, Holland and let’s throw in Canada—under Justin Trudeau—but not Britain; and surprise, it is legal in a Catholic country in Europe, Spain).  They often pressure the old, lonely patient shoved off into a nursing home, about quality of life, and assist in their death.  Hitler’s SS men asked no questions:  They tottered or wheeled them off to their death camps.  Then he moved on to undesirables, like half a million gypsies, the homeless, the tramps.  Hitler decided who was unworthy of belonging to a great people, the Aryans.  He didn’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses for no reason known; and he killed other Christians who spoke out and protested.  Two come to mind:

Dr Martin Niemoller, a theologian, had a famous quote that he used to explain his boldness on speaking out against Hitler:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me

As you can see, we should care when anybody was denied their civil rights, no matter if we agree with them.  Niemoller escaped, and lived until 1984.  Then there was Dr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, also a theologian, who helped plot the failed assassination attempt on Hitler.  But he was killed.

But Hitler eventually concentrated on the Jews.  Several reasons have been suggested for his changing his focus of hatred:  Could it have started because he obtained syphilis from his lover, a Jewish girl?  Hitler willingly shared her with his deplorable friends, so that possibility was his fault.  Could he have read a famous fraudulent booklet, which originated in Germany, called “The Protocols of the Ancient Elders of Zion,” which speculated that the Jews had a secret conspiracy to take the whole world over.  Or was it because he, having military aims, needed to unify the people by focusing on a common enemy that he blamed for their troubles?  The Jews filled that need for a scapegoat well.  Oh, Germany had troubles, that led to chaos. Extreme hyperinflation wiped out the value of savings for retirement, or anything else.  That plus their high unemployment led to a ripe situation for dictators.  They had also signed a humiliating treaty to end World War I, which forced them to pay reparations to the world which they damaged. The Allies rubbed their noses in it, and they sought revenge.  (The Allies needed the spirit of how Abraham Lincoln handled the South, not the spirit that pervaded at the Versailles Treaty.)  They were forced to set up a democratic system, which was not in accord with their military sense of blind obedience to leaders. Eventually they only had two choices for political parties that changed:  the extreme left-wing Communists (which Hitler felt they were full of Jews), or the right-wing fascists. The upper class people were reading Darwin, Karl Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche too much as well (even though two of them were Jews); it is said that Darwin banished God from nature, that Marx banished God from history, and Freud banished God from the human soul. From these poisoned sources, hey believed God did not care, and that life was an animalistic struggle for dominance. And in their nationalism, they believed that the superior Aryan working man was more honorable than the rich proletariats.

There were increasing outbursts of anti-Semitism; in Poland, in Russia (which had its pogroms), even in France, where a Jewish military officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was banished due to his spying.  But there was no evidence.  His fellow officer was the spy, but easily convinced people by planting the evidence on him, a Jew.  Interestingly, that incident had a part in leading to the founding of the Jewish state of Israel.  Through all the previous centuries, the Jews were persecuted in Europe on religious grounds—namely, deicide, killing the Son of God. But that didn’t bother Hitler as much as their race, which he considered inferior. 

Pawson considers that underlying all factors for their continuous persecution was the fact that they were the chosen people of God, as Scripture said.  And the majority of humanity is in rebellion to God.   BUT why should God allow His chosen people to be persecuted and murdered?  Why did He abandon His people in their hour of deepest need, during the holocaust?  Did He make it happen?  Many Jews have been asking their rabbis, and abandoning their faith, not getting an answer for this question.  Some say it was reincarnation (or karma), for the sins of the previous generations.  Some rabbis say, “we don’t understand God, He is mysterious, hidden. It’s not our place to question God—He is sovereign.”  There is nobility in that argument, but it is not satisfying.  A more realistic explanation is, without the holocaust, there never would have been the state of Israel. And the nation of Israel has a part to play in Scriptural prophecies of the end times. In any event, the nations of the world had an outpouring of compassion and guilt that seldom happens; they granted something that never would have happened otherwise (Hard to believe the racism of man, but between 1945 and 1948, the British were transporting Jewish refugees to barbed-wire camps in Cyprus, and even sending them back to Germany. The world has never really accepted refugees, no matter how desperate their circumstances.

Here's the most interesting answer floated to that question: Many rabbis quoted Isaiah 53, about the suffering servant of God, and felt that in the holocaust, the suffering Jews shed their blood, and were making atonement for the sins of God’s people in the whole world.  THAT seems arrogant.  But we know Isaiah 53 prophesies Jesus shedding His blood for His people—but, of course, the Jews don’t believe in Jesus, which is why they were under a curse.  Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 lists most of the curses for disobedience.  Other chapters listed the blessings for obedience.  The Jews chose the former.  Interestingly, the two curse chapters reads like a journalistic report of the holocaust.  Here is a verse that shows a character about God that you will never hear about; Deuteronomy 28:63 warns of a curse of disobedience:

Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you.

The Jews defied God terribly from 900 BC on, when Solomon’s death led to his sons splitting the kingdom.  They were defeated in war and oppressed countless times, but there were some incidents really severe that stand out.  They were massacred by Titus in 70 AD for their part in the death of Christ, but that was a short-lived suffering.  But it took til’ 1933 AD before God began administering a severe punishment that killed six times as many as the beating they took from the Romans, and it lasted 5 years in its greatest intensity. Mr. Pawson believes that the holocaust was partially due to how the Jews who lived in Germany forgot about God, and their connection to Him.  They were assimilated, and lost their identity, even their language (they spoke Yiddish in Germany).  But God’s chosen people were to be different, as we Christians are to be different from the world.  If they had abided in Him, He would have blessed them and they would be a wonderful evangel. But God had no use for His people who wanted to be the same as the world.  God knew that wherever Jews assimilate, anti-Semitism rears its ugly head.  Besides, it was another slap in the face and another defying their covenant they made with Him in Exodus.  To get God’s feeling about that, read Ezekiel 20:32-33:

“You say, ‘We want to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world…But what you have in mind will never happen. ³³ As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will reign over you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath. 

There it is again, this thing about God’s anger you probably never hear about.  We should always read Scripture with the focus being to know God.  It is stupid not to know what He wants, and pay the price for that ignorance, as we see with the Jews. We can learn a lot about God treating His people from the Old Testament.

Another dunderhead move by the Jews that probably added to their punishment was the following:  An agnostic Jew, Theodor Herzl, got a prophecy (sent by God), and persistently bothered all the Jewish influencers in all of Europe to seek their own land—oddly, he did this in the 1890s!  He tried to hold a Zionist congress of Jewish leaders in Munich in 1896, since he could see dangerous anti-Semitism on the horizon in Germany (this is why I claim it was a prophecy).  Would you believe, the German Jews appealed to their authorities and got him banned from such a meeting? He finally got It in Switzerland the next year, and later made a prediction that the Jews would get their nation in 50 years’ time.  (He was wrong by two months).  Herzl got his original inspiration from his anger over the Dreyfus incident.  But the nations remembered him later; he was a big reason they did get their country in 1948.  Unfortunately he died in 1904.  This incident proves that God will even work with someone who doesn’t even believe in Him to keep His plan rolling.  You have to believe God is in charge. I wish my history teacher could have taught us like Pawson taught.

Last, let’s consider Warsaw Poland, which had the most religious Jews left at the time (and there were not many overall).  Why did the whole city become a ghetto, and why did they get crushed in a futile battle with Nazi soldiers, if they were religious?  Well, because of their embrace of religious tradition and rejection of God’s Word.  They were supposed to be living under the Torah, or the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible).  Yes, there really were 613 commandments and bylaws in those books (thank God for the New Testament).  But Jewish law was allowed to become a confusing mishmash of God’s laws and rabbi’s traditions, such as in the Mishnah and Talmud.  It was already going on in Jesus’ day when He said, “you nullify the Word of God by your traditions.” (Matthew 15:6) But they ignored Him.  The legalistic tradition became burdensome; they didn’t like God.  Synagogues still discuss more interpretation of tradition than they do of their Holy Scripture. Sacrificial atonement for sin, a heart of the gospel to the Jew, had been replaced by repentance. Righteousness is an outward goal, not an inward one, as it should be. So the butchery of Warsaw was God’s answer.  He had used the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Midianites, the Edomites, now the Nazis—to discipline His people.  (That does not excuse those other nations who He uses to discipline them.)

Thank God for His mercy in this:  there was a limit to the sanctions of the covenant; i.e., on how much God’s discipline would hurt.  Any wrath outpoured would be temporary, first of all.  All the Old Testament prophets, while talking of Israel’s sin, always put out a hope for the future.  Secondly, God would never completely abandon His people—sanctions would never be total. Look at Jeremiah 31:35-36:

This is what the Lord says,

He who appoints the sun to shine by day,
       who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar,

       the Lord Almighty is his name:
³⁶ ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the Lord,
      ‘will Israel ever cease being a nation before me

 

Unfortunately, Israel is now learning Western ways and abandoning any sense of religion.  They have a higher percentage of agnostics than most nations. Few are orthodox, and are looked upon as the Amish in America. They must blame God for all their troubles, but if you read the Old Testament and what I’ve added above, the blame begins with them.  It is easy for people to blame God for suffering.  There is much to be learned about God in this paper, and by reading the Old Testament.  Do not assume God has changed His personality into a soft touch, like Grandpa God.  Jesus talked more of hell than anyone or any book of the Bible.  Matthew 7:13-14 says that only a FEW will reach life, or heaven.  The majority are headed for destruction, or hell.  Many, who assume they are “good” for heaven, will be shocked, on the day of judgment, to hear our Lord redirect them to hell, as He warned in Matthew 7:21-23:

  

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. ²² Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ ²³ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

 

Are you sure you are doing God’s will?  Do you definitely know God’s will that He is speaking of here? I have other blogs on this, but I urge you to a rapid reading through a red-letter Bible, and write the verses that speak of what pleases God’s will. “I accept Jesus” is nowhere near a complete answer.

 

While Mr. Pawson does a great job pointing out reasons for God’s allowing persecution of His people, we need to look at ourselves and learn from this.  If we have pain, or grief, it is not always due to some gross sin that we did.  Sometimes that’s true.  But other times, we just have to accept that in the sin-filled world, lives get messed up.  We learn patience.  If we are truly born again, hopefully we never lose our trust that God still loves us, and brings us closer to Him.  If our lives were always roses, we would easily decide that we don’t need God—and forget that His mercy in just letting us live is more than we deserve. We all deserve hell, because our sins defy His holiness.  It is too easy to forget Him, and we are so easily drawn to the world, and not in pleasing Him, which is where we should be.  Let us show mercy to others, as He showed to us.  On a practical level, let us donate to the less fortunate, let us not be so strict on immigration laws.  Let us defend the unborn.  Let us see ourselves as mistake-ridden like the Jews, let us learn from them, and get determined to change our lives, going His way, in His will.