Contributor: Anonymous
Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” November 9th, 1938, was a night that marked widespread violence against German and Austrian synagogues, Jewish businesses, and Jews, themselves. Nearly 100 Jews were killed, and several thousand were sent to concentration camps. It marked the “beginning of the end” for Jews in Germany. Sixty-five years later, anti-Semitism is rising again in the world. It never really left. It just went underground. It is now beginning to sweep across the world in a tidal wave of hatred.
Recently, during his 21st Solidarity Mission to Israel, U.S. Pastor John C. Hagee, 63, said the following in an interview with The Jerusalem Post: “Global anti-Semitism is growing unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime.”
In the last week, we have seen the simultaneous bombings of two synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey, killing at least 20 people, including six Jews. We have seen arson attacks on a Jewish secondary school in a suburb of Paris, France, a synagogue in Manchester, England, and a Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA.
In the past six months Jewish cemeteries, Holocaust memorials, and synagogues have been desecrated and vandalized across Europe and South America.
France’s Chief Rabbi has warned Jewish men against wearing yarmulkes in public, suggesting baseball caps instead to minimize the chance of becoming targets of violence.
Several European nations have banned kosher slaughter, often under the guise of animal-protection. Switzerland has even considered banning the import of kosher meat.
The world is growing increasingly hostile to the Jewish people.
One of the questions we need to answer is, “Why is there anti-Semitism? Why is there this concerted hatred aimed at the Jewish people?”
In his book, “Your People Shall Be My People,” Don Finto addresses this very question:
Anti-Semitism is still the longest-held and deepest hatred in human history. This animosity had its beginning in the garden when God promised Eve that one of her descendants would crush the enemy’s head (See Gen. 3:15). The weight of this man-hatred later centered in Abraham and his descendants. God’s call to Abraham has been a mixed blessing. Under God’s supernatural protection, the Jewish people have survived, but they have had to endure the wrath of the nations. Since the time of Abraham’s call Satan has targeted this family for extinction. If he could destroy Abraham’s descendants, he would thwart the purposes of God in bringing the world’s Deliverer through Israel’s promised Son.
After Jesus came, Satan continued his assault against the Jewish Nation. He knew that the Jewish Messiah would return one day to a reestablished Jewish homeland and to both Jew and Gentile who are ready to receive Him.” (Finto, 65)
Don continues:
“Why now the continuation of anti-Semitism on all fronts? Why would Satan still provoke hatred for the Jews? Why would he now need to annihilate them as a race of people? Why have they been a target for persecution throughout the world in every century?
Because our invisible enemy knows something that many Christians have not discovered – that the promises of God will not be realized if Satan is successful in destroying Israel.” (Finto, 70)
So, why anti-Semitism? Simply, if Satan can destroy the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, then God is made out to be a liar. If just one of God’s promises fails to come to pass, God is proved fallible. God would cease to be “Almighty” and be just “part-mighty.”
So, another questions remains. Why the hunters? Why does God need the hunters? To answer that, let’s look a few scriptures first.
11 It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people who are left, from Assyria and Egypt, from Pathros and Cush, from Elam and Shinar, from Hamath and the Islands of the sea. 12He will set up a banner for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” – Isaiah 11:11-12 [NKJV]
5 Fear not for I am with you; I will bring your descendants from the east, and gather you from the west; 6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’ Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth – Isaiah 43:5-6 [NKJV]
8 Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the ends of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and the one who labors with child, together; a great throng shall return there. – Jeremiah 31:8 [NKJV]
14 “ I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them; they shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them. 15 I will plant them in their own land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them, says the Lord your God” – Amos 9:14,15
A great part of God’s plan for the Jewish people is their return to the land of Israel, that they are re-gathered together.
This return, “Aliyah,” is the destiny of every Jewish person on the planet. It is part of my destiny. For myself, it’s not a matter of “If”, but a matter of “when”; the “when” to be determined by my Heavenly Father.
God has two primary methods of getting His people back to the land – fishers and hunters.
16 ”Behold, I will send for many fisherman,” says the Lord, “and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.” – Jeremiah 16:16 [NKJV]
These are two very different methods. How does a fisher operate? They use bait, a lure. Fishers bring the fish to them. In the context of this analogy, once lured out, the fish are not killed but saved; moved from a hostile place to a place of refuge – not unlike some modern conservationist endeavors.
Hunters, for the most part, drive their prey before them, stalking, tracking, wearing down the energy and resolve of their prey, and finally killing them. Some hunters do use bait, drawing the prey out into the open, giving it a false sense of security and then killing it.
There have always been fishers trying to call the Jewish people home. Fishers have also been watchmen, warning the Jewish people of the danger that is coming. In the 1930s, there were fishers in Europe trying to call the Jewish people to what was then Palestine, a region of the Middle East under British rule.
One such fisher was Ziev Jabotinsky, a Ukrainian Jew who witnessed his first pogrom in 1903. In 1932 he warned European Jews, “Do everything you can to get out of Europe, because the ground is burning under your feet!” In June of 1939, he said the following:
“Zero hour is approaching. The hour of great destruction. D-E-S-T-R-U-C-T-I-O-N! Learn this word by heart! For three years I have implored you, appealing to you, warning you unceasingly, that the catastrophe is nigh. My hair has turned white, and I have grown old over these years, for my heart is bleeding that you do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spew forth its fires of destruction. I see a horrible vision. Time is growing short for you to be spared. I know you cannot see it, for you are troubled and confused by everyday concerns. For God’s sake, let everyone save himself so long as there is time to do so, for time is running short!” – (Roth, 66)
We all know what happened. Many European Jews failed to heed the warning and call of fishers, and when the hunters came, few escaped destruction.
In the wake of the bombings of the synagogues in Istanbul and death threats against the Chief Rabbi of Turkey, there has been a renewed call for the 30,000 Jews still living in Turkey to come home to Israel. However now, as then, many do not see the signs or sense the imminent danger.
Why does God need the hunters?
In a phone interview with The Jerusalem Post, Lina Filiba, Executive Vice President of the Turkish Jewish Community, said in response to the Aliyah question, “We appreciate our ties with Israel but we are citizens of Turkey.”
That is why the hunters are needed.
Bibliography:
Finto, Don, Your People Shall Be My People, Ventura, California,
Regal Books, 2001
Roth, Sid, Time is Running Short, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, Destiny Image, 1990