Why God, Why? Why the Holocaust?

Upon seeing the name “Bialystok,” I cried. Perhaps the previous two hours at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., had affected me more than I realized.

My mother and her immediate family, the Hirshbeins, moved to the U.S. from Bialystok, Poland, before Hitler’s invasion. Those who escaped survived; the rest of the family perished as the Nazis eradicated the Jewish community of Bialystok.

The Holocaust was not the first atrocity in history, and sadly, according to the prophets, it won’t be the last. The Jewish prophet Zechariah predicted an even more horrible period for my people. Whereas about one-third of Jewish people in the world were murdered under the Nazis, Zechariah prophesies that two-thirds of the Jewish people will be lost in a future tribulation (Zech. 13:8).

The Enemy of God

Evil exists because of our free choice, which includes the freedom to love or rebel against God. But anti-Semitism is a special kind of evil. The Scriptures are clear regarding the basis for anti-Semitism: spiritual warfare. The Scriptures inform us that there is an enemy of God, HaSatan (Hebrew for “the Adversary”). The Adversary is working to defeat and dethrone God (Is. 14:12-14), as impotent, futile and laughable such a task may seem.

The Enemy’s Strategy

Scripture states that God cannot lie (Titus 1:2). The Adversary’s plan is to prove God wrong by nullifying His promises made to the Jewish people through the Jewish Messiah. God has promised that the Jewish people would always survive as a people (Jer. 31:35-37), and would also be the conduit of the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

Satan is trying to remove the Jews as a people, and his strategy is twofold:

1. Stop the Jews from living! The Psalms describe this most obvious strategy:

“Your enemies make an uproar. … They have given crafty counsel against Your people, and have consulted against Your treasured ones. They have said, ‘Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be no more remembered'” (Ps. 83:2-4).

Simply put: If you destroy the Jews, then you can prove God is a liar. For if God can’t keep His people as He promised, then no one can trust any of His promises. Additionally, if Satan can destroy Israel as a people, he proves himself to be greater than God!

Anti-Semitism is anti-God. This accounts for the Pharaohs, Hamans, Herods and Hitlers throughout the centuries. That they were tools of Satan in no way excuses their culpability; we all are responsible for our actions, regardless of who or what influences us in those actions.

2. Stop the Jews from living as Jews! The second, more subtle (though potentially just as effective) strategy is to make Jewish identity repugnant, or at least irrelevant, to Jewish people themselves. In this way, Jewish people would not want to remain Jewish, and Israel would cease to be an identifiable nation before God. In the book of Esther, we read of Mordecai’s bad advice, followed by Esther: “Don’t reveal you’re a Jew” (Esth. 2:10). Only when she abandoned that bad advice and revealed her Jewish identity was catastrophe averted.

This same bad advice has been relived by many of my people in every generation; in an attempt to fit into the Hellenistic culture of early second century B.C., some Jews actually had their circumcision surgically reversed! Even today, being Jewish is often so poorly understood that many make no attempt to maintain their heritage.

The shame of it all is that there are some Jewish believers in Yeshua who do not maintain their Jewish identity after coming to faith in Messiah. In some cases, these people didn’t value their Jewishness before they came to faith in Yeshua. For others, it is because they are told that as followers of Yeshua they are no longer Jews. In any case, by not identifying as Jews, they play right into Satan’s plan: to stop the Jewish people from existing as an identifiable people.

Though he was an apostle to the Gentiles, Paul understood what was at stake in this matter: the very faithfulness of God. Would the Good News of Yeshua that Paul proclaimed to Gentiles mean that God had rejected His people? His answer:

“God forbid! For I also am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew” (Rom. 11:1-2).

Every Jewish believer who states “I am an Israelite” or “I am a Jew” (Acts 22:3), as opposed to “I was a Jew” or “I am a former Jew,” confirms that God keeps His people. God is faithful, and Yeshua is the hope of Israel, not its destroyer!

Am Yisrael Chai!

The survival of the Jewish people is the lynchpin not only of the past work of God, but also of God’s future activity and victory, because the return of the Lord is tied to the repentance of Israel (Zech. 12:10, Acts 3:19-21). Yeshua said to the Jewish people:

“You will not see me again until you say, (‘Baruch Haba B’Shem Adonai,’) ‘Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord’” (Matt. 23:39).

Satan continues to do all he can to destroy Israel and the Jewish people now. At the same time, he is trying to make faith in Yeshua so alien and repugnant that no self-respecting Jew, let alone the nation, would ever desire to repent and turn to Yeshua!

Horrors of the magnitude of the Holocaust occur because of spiritual warfare, ultimately directed against Messiah Himself. Congregations of believers in Yeshua, Jewish or Gentile, who do not endeavor to bring the Good News to the Jewish people, play into Satan’s plot to prevent Israel from recognizing their Messiah. Hence, not only must we remember the Holocaust and “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Ps. 122:6), but believers should do all they can to bring the Good News of Messiah to the Jewish people around the world. {eoa}

Dr. Sam Nadler is a Jewish believer in Jesus who has been in messianic Jewish ministry for over 40 years.  Sam is the president of Word of Messiah Ministries, which is bringing the Good News to the Jew first but not to the Jew only, and planting messianic congregations in Jewish communities worldwide. To encourage and equip the body of Messiah in our shared calling, Sam is invited to speak in churches across the country, and has written multiple books on Jewish evangelism, discipleship and the Feasts of Israel. For more information and resources, or to invite Sam to speak at your church, visit: wordofmessiah.org.