Anti-Semitic graffiti in Europe
Continuing antisemitism in France is causing many Jews to leave:
French Synagogues Closing as Jews Flee Anti-Semitism
French Jews are fleeing parts of the Paris suburbs to escape anti-Semitic hostility, the levels of which have not been seen since World War Two, reports the Paris newspaper 20 Minutes.
The paper says the exodus from Seine-Saint-Denis is so great that many synagogues have closed due to lack of attendees. …
Agence France-Presse says more than 5,000 Jews left France last year on top of the record 7,900 who left in 2015 and 7,231 in 2014. At least 40-thousand have emigrated since 2006. 12/15/17 https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2017/december/her-7-year-old-daughter-was-killed-in-front-of-her-now-this-mother-helps-others-heal
Sadly, antisemitism was not just a phenomena during WWII as its roots go much further back. Having more and more Islamic immigrants come to Europe, however, is also a factor for problems in the 21st century. And this is not limited to France:
December 16, 2017
VIENNA – Austrian conservatives led by Sebastian Kurz reached a coalition deal with the anti-immigration Freedom Party on Friday, paving the way for Austria to become the only western European country with a far-right party in government. …
“When the nationalist wolf puts on a blue sheep skin it does not change its nature, only its appearance,” said Oskar Deutsch, head of Austria’s main Jewish association, in an open letter on Facebook to both centrist parties.
“If OVP and SPO believe they can tame the wolf, they are deceiving themselves,” Deutsch said.
Founded by former Nazis six decades ago, the Freedom Party long ago left the political fringes to establish itself as a mainstream party.
Strache insists that antisemites have no place in today’s FPO, which routinely has to expel members who step over the line. He has visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and has called antisemitism a crime.
“[The FPO] make scapegoats of people who think and look differently,” Deutsch said, adding that “almost daily” there were racist and antisemitic incidents.
“Symbolic visits to Israel cannot conceal all this. Austria’s Jewish community will not whitewash [this].” http://www.jpost.com/International/Austrias-far-right-Freedom-Party-strikes-deal-to-enter-government-518197
BERLIN, Germany (JTA) — Anti-Semitism among Muslim refugees is rampant and requires urgent attention, a new study suggests. …
The tensions run deep, the new study indicates. Anti-Semitic attitudes and rejection of Israel are widespread among the newcomers, the head of the Ramer Institute, Deidre Berger, said in a statement. https://www.timesofisrael.com/anti-semitism-rampant-among-muslim-refugees-in-germany-study/
Antisemitism and threats against Jewish facilities are wrong.
My wife and I attended Worldwide Church of God services in a Jewish Community Center in Long Beach, California for a number of years. At least once it was hit by anti-Semitic graffiti during the time we attended.
Many Jews are targeted simply because of their ethnicity. And like Adolf Hitler demonstrated, it is not just Islamic leaders that can have antisemitic traits.
European leaders and their predecessors in the Roman Empire who claimed Christianity have long promoted antisemitism.
For example, according to Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, Book III chapter 18, the Eastern Orthodox saint and Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century stated:
Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way.
The way that Jesus, who was Jewish, taught differently was love. Jesus never taught to have ‘nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd.’ Roman Catholics refer to Constantine as ‘Constantine the Great,’ but he obviously held anti-semitic views.
Around 332, Constantine issued what is known as the Edict Against the Heretics which included persecution against Christians who held to the original faith and had practices, such as the date of Passover, the same as the Jews (see also Persecutions by Church and State).
In 387, the Eastern Orthodox saint and bishop John Chrysostom preached the following:
The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in quick succession: the feast of Trumpets, the feast of Tabernacles, the fasts. There are many in our ranks who say they think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts and observing their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the Church right now…If the Jewish ceremonies are venerable and great, ours are lies…Does God hate their festivals and do you share in them? He did not say this or that festival, but all of them together. (John Chrysostom. Homily I Against the Jews I:5;VI:5;VII:2. Preached at Antioch, Syria in the Fall of 387 AD. Medieval Sourcebook: Saint John Chrysostom (c.347-407) : Eight Homilies Against the Jews. Fordham University. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html 12/10/05).
John Chrysostom preached the following in his Homily Against the Jews (of which there are at least eight anti-Semitic homilies):
But do not be surprised that I called the Jews pitiable. They really are pitiable and miserable (I:II:1).
So the godlessness of the Jews and the pagans is on a par. But the Jews practice a deceit which is more dangerous (I:VI:4).
Do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old? (I:VI:7).
Since it is against the Jews that I wish to draw up my battle line, let me extend my instruction further. Let me show that, by fasting now, the Jews dishonor the law and trample underfoot God’s commands because they are always doing everything contrary to his decrees. When God wished them to fast, they got fat and flabby (VI:IV:2).
Indeed, the fasting of the Jews, which is more disgraceful than any drunkenness, is over and gone (VIII:I:5).
John Chrysostom is considered to be a major Roman Catholic saint. He is one of the four ‘doctors of the church’ who is shown supporting a large black chair that is called the Cathedra Petri (Chair of Peter) in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. The late Joseph Tkach of the old Worldwide Church of God once referred to this chair as Satan’s throne (see Might Satan’s throne be the ‘Cathedra Petri’?).
The improperly named Protestant publication Christianity Today once had a link titled, “Person of the Week: John Chrysostom” which went to an article titled: John Chrysostom Early church’s greatest preacher. So, Protestants too, endorse an anti-Semite. More on him can be found in the article John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople and Antisemite.
As far as Protestant leaders themselves with anti-Semitic views, one can notice some of the teachings of Martin Luther, who wrote in the 16th century:
My heart is fuller of these thoughts than my tongue can tell. I have come to the conclusion that the Jews will always curse and blaspheme God as all the prophets have predicted. He who neither reads nor understands this, as yet knows no theology, in my opinion. And so I presume the men of Cologne cannot understand the Scripture, because it is necessary that such things take place to fulfill prophecy. If they are trying to stop the Jews blaspheming, they are working to prove the Bible and God liars (“Martin Luther’s to George Spalatin,” from Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporan, Letters, trans. by P. Smith (1913), Vol. 1, pp. 28-29).
Furthermore he wrote:
I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that those miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews and who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them…They are so blind and stupid that they see neither the words found in Genesis 17 nor the whole of Scripture, which mightily and explicitly condemns this lie…They are real liars and bloodhounds who have not only continually perverted and falsified all of Scripture with their mendacious glosses from the beginning until the present day. Their heart’s most ardent sighing and yearning and hoping is set on the day on which they can deal with us Gentiles as they did with the Gentiles in Persia at the time of Esther…The worse a Jew is, the more arrogant he is, solely because he is a Jew — that is, a person descended from Abraham’s seed, circumcised, and under the law of Moses. David and other pious Jews were not as conceited as the present-day, incorrigible Jews…I wanted to present this to us Germans so that we might see what rascals the blind Jews are and how powerfully the truth of God in our midst stands with us and against them (Medieval Sourcebook: Martin Luther (1483-1546): On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543)
Martin Luther advised his followers:
…to burn down Jewish schools and synagogues, and to throw pitch and sulphur into the flames; to destroy their homes; to confiscate their ready money in gold and silver; to take from them their sacred books, even the whole Bible; and if that did not help matters, to hunt them of the country like mad dogs (Luther’s Works, vol. Xx, pp. 2230-2632 as quoted in Stoddard JL. Rebuilding a Lost Faith, 1922, p.99).
Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch (Martin Luther (1483-1546): On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 as quoted from Luther’s Works, Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). pp 268293).
Leaders esteemed by the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants have all advocated horrible antisemitism.
Many people hate others, and the Jews tend to be one of the more hated groups. But that is not how people are to live.
Notice something that God had Moses record:
8 You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:18)
It is not just Jews that are hated or will be in the future. Throughout history, true Christians have sometimes been called “Jews” and have been subject to persecution supposedly directed towards Jews. True Christians also had to suffer through the so-called Inquisition, which utilized torture against those that had Church of God beliefs–and more is expected in the future (see Persecutions by Church and State). Protestant leaders have also promoted antisemitism and Church of God persecution (see The Similarities and Dissimilarities between Martin Luther and Herbert W. Armstrong) and Eastern Orthodox (see John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople and Antisemite).
It is not just physical, ethnic Jews that are at risk–spiritual ones are as well (cf. Romans 2:28-29; John 15:20; see also The Spanish Inquisition and Early Protestant Persecutions).
Jesus Himself foretold of persecution for Christians. There was a poem many years back that said something like:
They first came for the Jews, but as I was not a Jew, I paid no attention,
Then they came from one group then another, then lastly they came for me.
Those in the true Church of God have always been on the side being persecuted and has never been on the side of the persecutors. And this will be true again in the future.
Racial hatred is wrong. People should not be terrorists nor antisemitic. People should not hate others.
Sadly, many in Europe and elsewhere still hold anti-Semitic views, and some take direct anti-Semitic actions. It is little wonder that many Jews are leaving, and others are considering leaving.
Sadly, we will see persecution greatly increase before Jesus returns (cf. Daniel 7:25; 11:30-35; see also Persecutions by Church and State)–this will affect Philadelphian Christians.
The underlying antisemitism in Europe and throughout the world will allow for this, especially when the time comes when the Beast’s government mandates it (Revelation 13:15-17).
Radio News Reporter: Bill Wedekind.
