Israel is at war, and the world has taken up sides. There are protests throughout the United States where people are gathering to support the Palestinians and hate the Jews. Hatred is the number one reaction of people who oppose Israel. It is not just a disagreement with policies or government overreach, it is an outright hatred for the Jewish nation.
Antisemitism has been growing around the world for years, and according to FBI reports, Jews are the highest targeted religious group:
· Anti-Jewish incidents: 51.4% of religion-related incidents
· Anti-Sikh incidents: 11.6%
· Anti-Islamic incidents: 9.6%
· Anti-Catholic incidents: 6.1%
· Anti-Eastern Orthodox (Russian, Greek, Other): 3.1%
Jews are hated and that hatred is rooted in a hate for God. It’s hard to imagine in this 21st Century that there are people who want to eliminate a people group. Hamas and other Islamic terrorists do not only want to have the land the Jews occupy, they also want to exterminate the people all together. Following World War II, the cry that came from the Jews and other world leaders was, “Never again,” yet on October 7 of this year, 1400 Jews … men, women, elderly, young adults, and children were slaughtered because they were Jewish.
So where does this insatiable hatred come from and why? Only the Bible gives us the real reason this hatred exists, and evil is at its core.
Revelation 12:17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.
This is the truth behind the hatred of the Jews and why this hatred never ends. God, and everything associated with Him,is the target of evil. The attack on human sexuality is an example of how evil operates. God says there are two genders, evil says there are more. God says marriage is between a man and a woman, and evil says you can marry anything, men to men, women to women, and humans to animals … it’s all okay. It is just a matter of time when evil will say sex with children is good for the development of the child. Evil will always distort God’s truth, and the assault on truth is unprecedented in our day.
In the last days evil and good will be indistinguishable from one another. ~David Wilkerson
Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
This is why evil can take hate and make it into good. Jews are bad people because they occupy land that is not theirs and are the perpetrators of hate toward the Palestinians. Evil always makes the victim the perpetrator. Everything that happens to the Jews is originally their fault.
Satan is the warlord of hate. His tactic of choice is the lie, and Jesus said that Satan is the father of lies. No matter what you read and what you hear or see in this world, all will contain a percentage of lies. The lie is so pervasive that the lie got mentioned in the top Ten Commandments. The Ninth Commandment is: “Do not testify falsely against your neighbor.” Yet, this is the one commandment that is predominately violated by most of us. Telling the truth is becoming a lost art in society because it is more advantageous to lie and get ahead than to tell the truth. In fact, as you read through the Ten Commandments, you can see the playbook agenda of evil. Get people to dismiss God with idols, self-indulgence, disrespect of others, immorality, stealing, murdering, lying and greed.
Helping humans to break all God’s Commandments is the motive behind Satan’s agenda here on earth. It is his hatred for God that makes anything God says or does his target to distort. God made a covenant with the Jews to be the instrument to bring the Messiah and salvation to the world. It is through the Jews that we have God’s Word, and it is through the Jews that we have a Messiah/Savior. No wonder the Jews are hated by evil in this world.
So, what do we do with all of this? Well, to be honest, we need to support Israel with our prayers, be mindful that hatred for God does not go away, and realize that as a follower of God, you too will be hated. Jesus told us this. They hated Him, and you too will be hated because of Him. Our job is not to hate back. Do good to those who are your enemies, do not give them reason or cause to justify their hatred by our responses to their attacks. That does not mean we do nothing to stop evil, it means that we do what is necessary to say no to evil and stand our ground in defending what is good. Opposing evil starts with the message of Christ. The Cross defeated evil and it is the only course of action to oppose it. The Jews have resisted the message of the Cross, and they too need to acknowledge their Savior Jesus because it was their covenant with God that brought Him into our world. We need to pray for Israel’s safety, and for God to lift their blindness concerning Jesus, the Savior of the world.
Let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Challenging the Culture with Truth … Larry Kutzler