Antisemitism ... in a nutshell

(This article is taken from the Saltshakers website)

Why does the world hate Jews so much? Are the reasons religious, political, cultural, economic, or is it just because they don't like the look of us? All these reasons have been given for this strange hatred. Jews have been simultaneously blamed for both communism and capitalism and poisoning wells during the Black Death, to say nothing of that old chestnut of killing Jesus. And the list goes on from there, stretching to the far distance. This hatred, this antisemitism, was even rife in Japan, a country that only had a handful of Jews, hardly enough to warrant such unreasonableness. It's so universal and so common, yet so irrational and illogical, you'd think that there was a brilliant strategic mind behind the whole idea.

… Let's pretend you were a person with a brilliant strategic mind. You are master of virtually all you survey, you have been granted power to influence others and this power is almost unlimited. You are the main man, top dog, the guv'nor. There's only one problem - you don't deserve these favours and payback time is approaching on a timetable that is fixed and unswerving. Your enjoyment of your position is only for a season and the clock is ticking. You know that you have a suspended sentence and you've violated the parole conditions, so jail is beckoning. You've committed the crime and you've got to do the time .... eventually.

You're not stupid and you know the punishment is a just one, but you still search for a loophole. You'd do anything to prolong this time of favour and you believe you've found a solution. You formulate a cunning plan. You have an enemy. He's already defeated you once, turning his death on the cross at Calvary from an apparent defeat to an astounding victory. You know that the next time you meet this enemy face-to-face is the day of your reckoning, with the lake of fire beckoning. Your plan is simple. You know that one day he will return to sort you out, that is inevitable, but perhaps you can still influence the timetable and prolong your 'salad days'.

The key to your success is the Jews, even though their role in this matter is rather as tools of your enemy. No wonder you hate them! Even though you can't stop your arch nemesis from returning to the Earth, you know very well that a key condition for his return concerns these Jews. In short, he will only return when the Jews ask him to return. So you're going to do your darndest to make sure that they're not going to want him to return.

You have a two-fold strategy, a brutal one and a subtle one. First go for the annihilation option then, if that doesn't work, poison their minds against their Messiah. A simple plan and a workable one, so you get to work.

It's just as well you were quick off the mark because you needed to get to work as soon as possible after your first defeat at Calvary. Your enemy seemed to play into your hands. It certainly helped that they were a stubborn people (though you did your bit to help) and rejected their Messiah, ensuring that they were going to get kicked out of the land and condemned to exile. That' s good, you can work with that.

So you got to work with the others, the Gentiles. It was hard at first, but once Christianity had been accepted as the state religion and watered down by wordly ambitions, it was plain sailing. All you had to do was to prod a little here, poke a little there, work on the basic human failing - human pride - and let them take it from there. 'Surely they brought it on themselves when they crucified our Saviour', 'Doesn't the scripture call them a 'synagogue of Satan'', 'God has rejected them, so must we'. These thoughts, once planted, spread like wildfire. Soon Jews were vilified, restricted in their freedoms, persecuted, exiled and killed. All by followers of the very religion started by their own Saviour, Jesus.

You make sure that the Jews knew very well why they were being singled out. You made sure that such words as 'crusade', 'inquisition' and 'christianity' entered into the Jewish psyche as terms to be feared and hated. And you made doubly sure that the words that jarred the soul most of all were the words 'Jesus' and 'Christ'. You made sure that these words, more than any other, provoked a level of fear and hatred that would stay with them long after the actions that led to all of this had ceased to have any relevance.

You sat back and watched your strategy unfold. The first part of your strategy was going well, thanks to the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the Czars, the Nazis, but this stubborn people still managed to survive intact. But that wasn't a problem for you, as the second part of your strategy saw to the rest of them. After all, they were 'Christ killers', weren't they? This strategy seemed to be a complete success and, shamefully, you couldn't have done it without your accomplices in the Church. You made sure that just hearing the words "Jesus Christ" were enough to produce a Pavlovian response of negativity, or even hatred, even among Jews whose experience of anti-Semitism were just at the level of the occasional playground taunt. You made sure that the average Jew would no more read the Christian scriptures and investigate the claims of Jesus than they would read Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'. It was a forbidden thing for them to do, a crime against their race!

Things were going well, but you grossly underestimated your enemy and the fact that there were plenty of Christians around who saw through your plans and knew enough of their scriptures to see that the Jews were a very special people indeed. A movement began in England in the nineteenth century, exploding in the USA and Israel in the latter parts of the twentieth century that you were powerless to stop. Jewish people were beginning to tear off the layers of prejudice that you had so deviously laid in their group mind and consider this Jesus and even become disciples of him. A huge crack began to appear in your strategy and it was getting wider by the day …

Satan's days are numbered. His mind is not as brilliant as he thinks. His carefully laid plans were being unpicked. Antisemitism was his idea and, although it won't go away as long as he is still around, as long as there are Jews turning to Jesus as their Messiah, it is doomed to failure. One day 'Israel will be saved' and Jews in the Land of Israel will turn to their Messiah, 'he who they had pierced' and ask him to return. Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus.

So, where do you stand on this issue? How has antiSemitism affected you? If you are a Gentile, perhaps you should examine your conscience for any crumbs of ill-will towards the Jews that you don't have against any other people group. If you find any, sweep them away, don't let the enemy have any hold on you, because, otherwise, you are part of the problem. Be part of the solution and spread this message to your friends and your Church. If you bless the Jews you will receive a blessing, though, be warned, the reverse is also true.

If you are Jewish then perhaps you should also examine yourself. Don't be shackled by history, otherwise you'll be playing into the hands of someone who has hated you for thousands of years, irrespective of whether you personally believe in his existence. He wants the very worst for you and history bears evidence of this. Please don't blame God, or true Christians, they are on your side. Start with a clean slate and read the New Testament and discover the claims of Jesus. It's difficult, I know, I've been there myself. But the rewards are awesome and your life will change for the better, forever.

(This article is based on material in the book The People of Many Names)