By the way, I have an extensive podcast on this topic, but here’s the tidy overview…
I grew up thinking that Christianity was hostile towards the Jewish people. My primary examples of such violent hatred were the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, Adolph Hitler, and the KKK. I was told they were all Christians and obviously, and devilishly, hated Jews.
Then I researched Christianity for myself by reading the New Testament. There is NO WAY an authentic follower of Jesus (Yeshua) could align themselves with the activities of those three examples.
Not even for a millisecond!
Let’s take a step back for a moment and look at history. Jesus, his mother Mary, and her husband Joseph were all highly observant Jews. All of the disciples called to follow Jesus were Jews who loved Torah. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, was a Jew. Prior to being known as the Apostle Paul (who wrote much of the New Testament), Rabbi Saul was (you guessed it) Jewish.
And speaking of guesses, guess what? They were all persecuted for following the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the case of Jesus he was persecuted to death for claiming to be the promised Messiah, in accordance with prophets like Isaiah who said 700 years prior to the crucifixion:
He was despised and abandoned by men,
A man of great pain and familiar with sickness;
And like one from whom people hide their faces,
He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.
However, it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore,
And our pains that He carried;
Yet we ourselves assumed that He had been afflicted,
Struck down by God, and humiliated.
But He was pierced for our offenses,
He was crushed for our wrongdoings;
The punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him,
And by His wounds we are healed.
All of us, like sheep, have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the wrongdoing of us all
To fall on Him.
(Isaiah 53:3-6)
Hatred of the Jews goes back to the beginning. When God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees and promised that his seed would become a great nation, possess the land of Israel and that God would use the nation of Israel to bless the world, the Jewish people became public enemy number one in the eyes of Satan!
That’s right, Antisemitism is Satanic.
Whenever or wherever antisemitism has occurred in history, up to and including the current outbreak of disgusting acts being performed by Muslims.
The question is, what action should we take as followers of Jesus the Messiah? Jesus loved and wept for his brethren, God’s Chosen People. In fact, as Messiah he died a sacrificial death first for the Jews, and then for the Gentiles.
Is antisemitism to remain unchallenged by the true followers of Jesus?
NO. We cannot–we must not–stand by silently!
I know that true Christians love the Jewish people. In these increasingly troubled times, the Church has a unique opportunity to show Jewish friends that they are loved and, more importantly, that Yeshua loves them!
Through the Jewish patriarchs, the prophets, and the temple, God used the Jews to bring forth His Word, the Law, and morality to a world of sin. He sent forth His son, Jesus the Messiah, in a Jewish body to redeem the world of sin. Satan, the prince of the earth (John 14:30; Ephesians 2:2), has poisoned the minds of men with his hatred of the Jews.
Jewish persecution and antisemitism at large is sign of Satan’s hatred for a people chosen by God to reveal the Word of God, and the Messiah of God.