Antisemitism Rearing Its Ugly Head Again.
Part I of II
In this article, I am using material I borrowed from my Jewish friends, who have far better resources than I do.
Israel’s return to her land in 1948 is the Biblical prophecy’s latest and greatest fulfillment. While the fulfillment of the prophecy is far from complete, Jews from all four corners of the earth are returning to their homeland.
The great prophet Isaiah foretold of this day, “For the LORD has called you back like a wife deserted and wounded in spirit, the wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” says your God” (Isaiah 54:6).
As a supporter of Israel, this flashing light keeps blinking in the back of my mind. Indeed, God did not create antisemitism, but why does he allow it to continue? My best answer to date is that it’s just a matter of time. In his all-wise providence, he has his calendar of fulfilled prophecies hanging on the wall of history.
Isaiah 55:8-9, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. 9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
It is disheartening to consider that the Holocaust, which occurred only a decade ago, is now resurfacing. Today, Israel is fighting for its very existence again. Vandals vandalize Jewish homes, businesses, cemeteries, and houses of worship in America, Australia, South America, and Europe simply because they are Jewish.
An Anti-Defamation League report estimated that more than one billion people around the world harbor anti-Semitic attitudes.
You would think that Germany, the birthplace of these snake eggs, would forbid the mere mention of the term antisemitic. But the sparks are flying again; who knows where they will land this time? Nevertheless, this stands for sure: modern-day Israel is here to stay. The weeping prophet Jeremiah, who saw Israel scattered in his day, also foresaw this modern day and wrote, “It will be said, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where He had banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land I gave their ancestors” (Jeremiah 16:15).
Two thousand years ago, after the death and resurrection of Christ, the Romans smashed Israel to the ground, destroyed her second temple, and killed one million of her people. The survivors fled to the four points of the compass. However, Jeremiah’s prophecy about their return to Israel has come true in the last century and continues to this day!
Even in the face of intended evil, God can bring good. He used antisemitism to motivate modern-day Israel’s rebirth and the return of millions of Jews to their land.
Since 1882, waves of Jewish people have been fleeing their exiled lands to immigrate to Israel, the land of their forefathers.
The First Wave spanned from 1882 to 1903, followed by the Second Wave from 1904 to 1914.
Most of the Jews fled Russia due to organized massacres called pogroms. They migrated to the United States, where today there are about 5.5 million Jews. Seventy-five thousand people fled to Israel, bringing much-needed population and eventual prosperity to many villages that became cities.
Jews living in the Arab country of Yemen were also persecuted and fled to Israel.
God used Rothschild, a wealthy Jewish financier, to fund these immigrations and build a new Israel.
Third Wave (1919–1923)
Anti-Semitism also played a role in this; 40,000 Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe, fled to Israel.
Fourth Wave (1924–1929)
This time, some 82,000 Jews fled Europe, mainly from Hungary and Poland, because of anti-Semitism.
Fifth Wave (1929–1939)
This was due to the rise of Nazi Germany’s “final solution” to rid Europe of all Jews; some 250,000 immigrated to Israel.
By 1940, the Jewish population in the Holy Land had reached 450,000, almost half a million. Less than a decade later, after the horrendous deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust, another 688,000 European Jews fled to Israel.
Simultaneously, anti-Semitism grew in Arab Muslim countries, and 800,000 Arabic-speaking Jews fled to Israel due to violent persecution.
Around two million Jews returned to Israel in total, and the United Nations reestablished and recognized the modern Biblical State of Israel.
Some say that the hatred, threats, lies, boycotts, mocking, blaming, stabbings, and shootings against Jewish people around the world fulfilled Jeremiah’s prophetic Scripture about fishers and hunters: “I will restore them to the land I gave their ancestors. I will send for many fishermen, declares the LORD, and they will catch them. After that, I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill, even from the clefts of the rocks” (Jeremiah 16:15–16).
The situation in France is becoming alarming. Anti-Semitic acts there have significantly increased. There are approximately 500,000 Jews in present-day France; though it has the largest Jewish population in Europe, two hundred have fled like it was pre-war Germany.
Amid all this hatred, God continuously expresses in Scripture His love for Israel and His contempt for those who are “hunting” the Jewish people to destroy them. He says:
“May those who bless you [Israel] be blessed and those who curse you be cursed!” (Numbers 24:9; Genesis 12:3, 27:29)
To be continued…