The Christian Factor In Anti-Semitism

Tape No. I-4391Page

Tonight our proclamation is a brief one taken from Isaiah 66:2, the latter part of the verse. These are the words of the Lord:

“This is the one I esteem: He who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.”

Have you ever paused to consider why we should tremble at the Word of God? Have you ever actually trembled at the Word of God? Did it ever enter your head that you should tremble at the Word of God? I’ll give you one among many reasons. Jesus said in John 14:

“The one who loves me is the one who will keep my word, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”

So, through the Word, God the Father and God the Son come to those who love it.

Now, if God the Father and God the Son were to come here in visible form this evening, every one of us would be on our faces on the floor. Well, God isn’t coming that way but He’s coming through His Word. I want to say that Scripture again:

“This is the one I esteem: He who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.”

I have a message tonight which I have never even tried to bring before. This is going to be a very difficult message to bring and I hope you’ll be indulgent. My theme is the Christian factor in anti-Semitism. Probably most of what I’m going to tell you will be totally unfamiliar to you as Christians and much of it may be extremely shocking. I’ll tell you one group of people to whom it is not unfamiliar, it’s the Jewish people.

I’m going to be quoting largely from a book called The Anguish of the Jewsby Edward H. Flannery. I want to say that I have no special connection with this book, I stand to gain nothing from its sales. I believe it contains information which most Christians desperately need.

Brother Dwight Prior, who I think knows the author slightly, quoted to me a statement by the author which I can only paraphrase. He said, “This book contains the pages of history which the Christians have torn out and torn up, but which the Jews have memorized by heart.” If you find it sometimes difficult to communicate to a Jew about Christianity, part of the difficulty lies in the fact that they have a totally different perspective on history than you do. They know a whole lot of things that happened in the past that we as Christians either never knew or have forgotten.

So, I’m going to do my best, that’s all I can say.

I’m bringing this message because I believe God wants me to and I believe it’s desperately needed in the church. We’ve been singing a lot of happy songs for which I thank God, but I want to tell you between that happiness and us there stand something that we have to put right. It won’t become a reality for most of us until we’ve put it right.

I think anti-Semitism is a misnomer, I’ve contested this but I’ve given up, it’s just no good, because anti-Semitism is derived from the name of Shem and it means being against Semites. Well, that’s not what it is because many of the Arabs are Semites, many of the other population of the Middle East are Semites. It’s not against them. What is it against in one word? Jews, that’s right. It should be called anti-Jewishness but there’s a kind of reluctance in us to face the dirty truth and so we camouflage it with religious phraseology.

Probably anti-Semitism could be traced back to about 200 BC but I want to deal with anti-Semitism that is specifically anti-Jewish. In other words, it’s against people who are Jewish because they’re Jewish, not because they’re money lenders or because they have political influence or they control the media, but solely because they are Jewish. There are lots of other groups of people whom some other people dislike. They dislike them for various reasons but I’m dealing only with the issue of people who hate other people simply because they’re Jews.

The main enduring impetus that has promoted and strengthened anti-Semitism throughout possibly nearly 2,000 years is the Christian church and Christian theology. There is nothing else in that field that can rival the influence that the Christian church and Christian theology have had in promoting and strengthening anti-Semitism.

Now I’m going to give you some quotations from some well known Christian leaders who are called saints. Amongst them are St. Gregory of Nissa who lived 331 through 396; St. Jerome from 340 to 420 who translated the Bible into Latin, the Vulgate version which is used today amongst the Catholics; but especially amongst a saint named Chrysostom who lived between 344 and 407. The ironic thing about him is that his name in Greek means “a golden mouth.” It couldn’t be more ironic. Here are some of the statements that he has made about the Jews. He had a problem because he lived in Antioch where there was a large Jewish population and some of his church members were going to the synagogue and mingling with Jews, and he disapproved of that strongly. He concluded the way to prevent it was to paint the Jews in the most terrible colors so that not one would ever want to associate with them again. These are just some of the things that this man with the golden mouth said:

“Of what to accuse the Jews. Of their rapine, their cupidity, their deception of the poor, of thieveries and huxterings. Indeed, a whole day would not suffice to tell all.”

However, he certainly tries to do it. This is how he goes on:

“How can Christians dare have the slightest converse with Jews? Most miserable of all men, men who are lustful, rapacious, greedy, profidious bandits. Are they not inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil, whom debauchery and drunkenness have given them the manners of the pig and the lusty goat? They know only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, get drunk, to kill and maim one another. Indeed, they have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts for they murder their offspring and immolate them to the devil. They are impure and impious.”

Concerning the synagogue he said:

“Not only is it a theater and a house of prostitution, but a cabin of brigands, a repair of wild beasts, a place of shame and ridicule, the domicile of the devil as is also the soul of the Jews. Indeed, Jews worship the devil. Their rights are criminal and impure, their religion is a disease, their synagogue again is an assembly of criminals, a den of thieves, a cavern of devils, an abyss of perdition.”

Those are the recorded words of a man who is still esteemed today in the church as a saint, and had a great influence in the 4th century of this era.

If you come to the matter of doctrine, there are three doctrines accepted and propagated by the church from that time onward which have had the greatest single effect in promoting anti-Semitism. I want to specify them because doctrine is important. Some people act as if doctrine doesn’t matter. That’s not true because what you teach people ultimately will come out in the way they live. And if you teach people wrong, ultimately they’ll live wrong. These are three established doctrines of the church. The first two are promoted by St. Augustine, the third one by others. The first doctrine is that the church is the true Israel; Israel is no longer Israel, the church is Israel. That is very widely taught in the contemporary Charismatic movement and it really is the source of anti-Semitism because once they’ve lost their identity, then you’re free to do anything you like to them. After all, they deserve it.

St. Augustine also tried to solve the problem of why the Jews continue to exist as a people when they’ve been so wicked. His conclusion was that God permits them to exist as a perpetual witness of the curse that comes upon those who reject Jesus. So, that is their theological function, to be a perpetual witness to the church and to all of the curse that results from disobeying God and rejecting Jesus. The implication is if you add to the curse you’re just helping God.

And the third, which is the most deadly of all, is that the Jews were guilty of deicide. Not homicide, that’s manslaughter, but deicide, killing God. This is such a horrendous crime that you can do anything to people who have committed it. They deserve anything you do to them and worse.

The results of that kind of teaching in the early period of the church up to and through the 4th century are stated this way. There are too many signs that stake out the permanence, the importance and the gravity of Christian anti-Semitism. These are the things that it produced in those centuries: contempt, (unintelligible), animosity, segregation, forced baptisms, appropriation of children, unjust trials, pogroms, exiles, systematic persecutions, theft and rapine, hatred, open or concealed, social degradation.

You need to understand why forced baptisms and appropriation of children go together. Because according to the understanding of baptism at that time if a person was baptized by what we would call Christening, he had become a Christian. And so, if you took Jewish children and baptized them, even without the approval of their parents, they then became Christians and it was illegal for a Jew to raise Christian children so you had to take the children from them. Do you understand? That’s the way this thing worked.

Then we go on to a later period, the period of the first crusade, which was 1096. You know the word crusade comes from the Latin word cruxfor a cross. So, a crusade is a war fought for the cross. The horrendous crimes that have been committed in the name of crusade would be too long to mention if I spoke all evening. I am always deeply concerned when I hear Christians call any kind of Christian gathering a crusade because in the eyes of both Jews and Muslims it’s the most wicked thing that they’ve ever been subjected to. When the crusaders arrived in Jerusalem the first time, I think in 1093, I’m not sure, they found a congregation of Jews gathered in a synagogue and they burnt the synagogue down with all the Jews inside. They also massacred all the Muslims that they could find. All this in the name of Christ.

So, never go to the Middle East with a crusade because you’ll start, as they say in America, with two strikes against you.

This is a description of what happened in the first crusade. The crusaders were going to the Holy Land to deliver it from the infidels, the Muslims and the Jews. But on the way through Europe they said to themselves, “Listen, we’ve got infidels amongst us who are worse than any of those in the Holy Land, the Jews. So, let’s deal with them first before we ever get to the Holy Land.” So they dealt with them with massacres all throughout the course of the crusades through Europe. This is a little description of some of the massacres.

“The general pattern of all massacres was the same. The perpetrators were the paupers, the poor men, who formed a sort of advanced guard for the more disciplined crusaders under Godfrey. The Jews were stoutly defended by the bishops, with a few exceptions, also by town authorities, the clergy and in many places by the people themselves.”

We need to take note of the fact that the Catholic hierarchy very many times did not approve of anti-Semitism but they were powerless to prevent it. The problem was they taught something which when they saw the fruits of it they couldn’t change. So this is a description.

“The massacres were clearly mob action reinforced by religious fanaticism. In most cases, a few Jews were baptized voluntarily. More again were baptized by force. Many were killed and there were numerous suicides . . .”

Because, many Jews being confronted with compulsory baptism would commit suicide rather than be baptized.

“From January to July of 1096 it is estimated that up to ten thousand died, probably one fourth to one third of the Jewish population of Germany and Northern France at the time.”

That is the pathway of the first crusade on its way to deliver the Holy Land.

Then we’ll go on a little further. You have to be very patient with me because this is very complicated to deliver this kind of message.

In the 12th century, the 1100s and onward, two new forms of attack were developed against the Jews. The first was they were accused of ritual murder and it was told that to celebrate their religious rites they had to have the blood of a Christian, preferably a Christian child. Anybody who knows the Jews would know that nothing would be more abhorrent to them than the blood of a Christian child. But these people were so superstitious they believed this. And so, whenever a Christian child was found dead, it was generally believed that the Jews had killed that child for the sake of using the blood in their religious ceremonies. There are one hundred fifty cases reported in history from that time onwards of this kind of what we call blood libel. And in most cases they led to murders and massacres.

Then the next form of slander was that they were guilty of desecrating the host; that is, the emblems in the Catholic church of the communion. It was widely reported that they took these emblems and used them in blasphemous ceremonies. One hundred cases have been reported from that time until now. I actually saw in the Observatorie Romano, which is the Roman Catholic Italian journal, in this century still reports of such cases. So, it’s lasted from 1100 through the 20th century.

Now, concerning this, this author says about it:

“The ritual murder calumny stands in the judgment of history as the most monstrous instrument of anti-Jewish persecution devised in the Middle Ages. To its account must be laid many of the tortures, forced baptisms, exiles and massacres of that and later ages. Its inception in the 12th century moreover indicates the course the Jewish image was taking: unbeliever and usurer now ritual murderer. Gradually stripped of his human features the Jews assumes a satanic guise.”

Generally speaking, when one group of people really wants to harm another group, they have to get them classified as somehow less than human. Then, anything you do is all right. This happened, of course, in this country at one time to the blacks and also to the native Americans. Both of them suffered fearfully from that process. But their sufferings are minimal by comparison with those of the Jews. But the principle is the same, these people are no longer human, it doesn’t matter what you do with them.

Ruth and I in 1981 rented an apartment in Jerusalem from a Jewish couple who came from Czechoslovakia and survived the Holocaust. They survived because they were protected by a Czech farmer. He wasn’t really pro Jewish but he thought about them like dogs, “Well, they’re good and healthy, it would be a shame to kill a healthy dog if you could keep it alive.” They told us in one place they heard a conversation about a group of people in a truck. The people said, “How many people are there in the truck?” They said, “Nine people and three Jews.” Can you see the implication of that? It takes a little while to sink in. Jews are not people. So, when you deal with them you’re not doing anything to people.

Then we have a new attack that comes forth which is they were accused of poisoning the wells throughout Europe.

“The following year there sprang up a new legend: the Jews in league with the King of Tunis and other infidel rulers [that’s Muslims] had conspired with the lepers to exterminate Christianity by poisoning wells with a secret formula reported to be composed of urine, herbs, human blood and a sacred host, revealed by the lepers under torture. The legend took a heavy toll. In many places arrests were made and many Jews were tortured and killed. In Shenon, France, 160 Jews were cast into a pit and burned.”

Five thousand in all were killed on the basis of this rumor that they had conspired with the Muslims to poison the wells of the Christians.

And then comes another tremendous disaster in the years 1347 through 1350, which we know as the Black Death. I know Americans are not, as a whole, very familiar with European history but I imagine most of you have at least heard of the Black Death which was a plague that struck Europe between the years of 1347 and 1350. Reportedly it was carried by rats, I don’t think that’s ever been confirmed. About one third of the population of Europe died in those years and no one knew how to deal with the plague. So, what to do? Whom to blame? Blame the Jews, why not? So, we read this:

“The Black Death was one of humanity’s epochal scourges. For Jews it was a tragedy to which after the fall of Jerusalem only the horrors of 1096 and 1939 were comparable.”

1939, the beginning of the Holocaust.

“For three hellish years Jewish communities all over Europe were torn to pieces by a populace crazed by the plague which, before it ended, carried off one third of the population. Bewildered by the plague’s ravages people looked for a cause. Before long the inevitable scapegoat was found. Who else but the arch-conspirator and poisoner, the Jew? This time too the weird formula for well poisoning elicited by torture was disclosed. A concoction of lizards, spiders, frogs, human hearts and, to be sure, sacred hosts. The story that the Jews in Spain had circulated the death dealing drug to poison the wells of all Christendom spread like wildfire. It was first believed in Southern France where the entire Jewish population of a town was burned. From there the deathly trail led into Northern Spain, then to Switzerland, into Bavaria, up the Rhine into Eastern Germany and to Belgium, Poland and Austria. It’s impossible to determine the extent of Jewish casualties during these years. In all, over 200 Jewish communities, large and small, were destroyed. The massacres were greatest in Germany where every sizable city was affected. And perhaps least in Austria because of the wholehearted intervention of Albert the Second who was the ruler of Austria. One may imagine the scope of the tragedy by the 10,000 casualties reported in Poland where they were comparatively light. Well over 10,000 were killed in Erfurt, Minsk and Breslow alone.”

Now we come to a very important conclusion of all this as a result of now, let’s say, six or seven centuries of deliberate slander and attack.

“Of grave significance was the utter deterioration of the Jewish image in the late Middle Ages. The disassociation of the imaginary from the real Jew effected earlier under theological influence was now complete. The terms Jewish and diabolical had become all but synonymous. The deliberate unbeliever and blasphemer [that’s the Jews] was not also ritual murderer and poisoner of mankind, arch-conspirator, oppressor of the poor, sorcerer and magician. In short, the agent of Satan. Medieval art gave dreadful evidence of the figure. Invariably the Jew was portrayed with horns, a tail and evil visage. His company is that of devils, sows, scorpions, and his poses grotesque. The image was further elaborated by men of letters, preachers and apologists, and were seized upon as a motive in popular aggressions. Finally, medieval anti-Semitism was a mob phenomenon. Superstitious and bloodthirsty elements among the masses, suffering under the lash of socio, political and national calamities found in the Jew the scapegoat needed to rationalize the evils of their lot. Fresh from barbarism, much of the population was incapable of understanding fully the nature of evil and the even less capable of putting into practice the Christian ideal of universal love.”

I have to say that I think it must be laid at the door of the church that they never really combated those lies. Sometimes the church leadership did not go along with it but they never effectively combated the result of the lies which they themselves had originally sown.

“The traumatic experiences of these years left its mark on the Jew. In a certain sense, a Jewish mentality was born. To their persecutors Jews reacted with cold fury, recoiling still further into themselves from an adversary no longer considered human [that’s the Christians]. Truly malicious references to things Christian appeared in Jewish writers and the cross became a symbol of disaster. [Bear that in mind.] For the Jews, the ultimate enemy symbolized by the cross...”

That’s why I think it’s unwise for zealous Christians to put a cross and a star of David together because it’s a howling blasphemy to Jewish people.

“...an unbridgeable chasm between Christian and Jew was dug, a chasm the Jews as well as the Christians sought to widen. To Christians, Jews degraded were looked upon as living proof of the malediction they were supposed to bear. Christians did not see that these despised Jews was in large part of Christian making.”

A certain commentator says this:

“If the Jew in literary description by the Christian, and in common imagination, is often a cringing and despicable figure, it should be remembered how he became so, so far as he did actually become so. The traits of characters are those which the Christian ancestors of the one bred in the Jewish ancestors of the others.”

Now we come to Martin Luther. This I think will shock some of you. Some of you are probably aware. I made a startling discovery in 1946 when I was learning Hebrew with the then Secretary of the Hebrew University. As a Christian I said something to him about Martin Luther and he said very deferentially but firmly, “You have to know that the Nazis used the writings of Martin Luther to promote their plan to liquidate the Jews.”

Later on, when I was writing my book The Last Word on the Middle East, I tried to obtain some of Luther’s writings to put in the book to substantiate what I was saying. But the passage that I found was so vulgar and so scurrilous that I would not put it in my book.

I’ll read some of the things. Originally when Martin Luther parted company with the Catholic church he believed that the Jews would flock to his new version because it was pure. When they didn’t, as with Muhammad earlier, he turned against them because they had rejected his movement. This is how it goes:

“When Jews did not meet his expectations [that’s Luther’s] or, worse, when some of his followers showed tendencies to Judaeize, Luther’s attitude toward took a dark turn. In 1542 he published a tract concerning the Jews and their lies in which he raged at them in a language that is at least equal in violence to anything uttered against them before or after. With biting sarcasm and occasional scatologic insult he renewed all the old charges of the past.”

You may be like me, I didn’t know what scatological was. I thought maybe it got something to do with eschatological. I looked it up in the dictionary, it means anything that deals with excrement. These are the charges:

“Jews are poisoners, ritual murderers, usurers. They are parasites on Christian society. They are worse than devils. It is harder to convert them than Satan himself. They are doomed to hell. They are in truth anti Christ. Their synagogues should be destroyed and their books seized. They should be forced to work with their hands. Better still, they should be expelled by the princes from their territories. Such were his outpourings, though in fairness it must be noted that his diatribes were interspersed with a random prayer and merciful word for Jews. During his last years Luther made repeated efforts to have the German princes oppress or expel Jews. In his last sermon, delivered a few days before his death, he called urgently for their expulsion from all Germany.”

What a tragedy, isn’t it? To die with that almost on your lips. What a warning to all of us. A man who had seen more of the truth than any man of his generation and yet carried away with a satanic deception.

Then we’ll turn to Poland just for a moment. Poland at this time was comparatively a place of refuge for many Jews but it didn’t continue that way. It says about a period between 1648 and 1658:

“Again the Jews were caught in a crossfire. In the Ukraine the Eastern Orthodox cossacks...”

Now you know Eastern Orthodox is the Russian version of Christianity, they were Christians.

“...hated not only the Polish Catholics who oppressed them but also their middlemen of alien faith, the Jews. In April of 1647 under Boganschemneski (phonetic) they allied themselves with the Tartars and the Zevorushtis (phonetic) [that’s non Christians].”

So here we have two Christian groups, the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholics, allied with the non Christians against who? Guess who? The Jews.

“And they ravaged Poland in a most barbarous fashion, reserving their worst cruelties for the Jews.”

(unintelligible) Marx described their happenings. I’m going to read this very carefully because it made such an impression on me. Remember, this is all being done in the name of Christianity.

“Estates were devastated, manor houses reduced to ashes and human beings barbarously done to death. The victims were flayed and burned alive, mutilated and left to the agony of a lingering death. Infants were slit like fish or slaughtered at the breasts of their mothers, or cast alive into wells. Women were ripped open and then sewed up again with live cats thrust into their bowels. Many, married or unmarried, were violated before the eyes of their menfolk, and those that were comely were carried away.”

I think I’m going to read a little bit of that again because I don’t think it sinks in the first time.

“The victims were flayed and burned alive, mutilated and left to the agony of a lingering death. Infants were slit like fish or slaughtered at the breasts of their mothers, or cast alive into wells. Women were ripped open and then sewed up again with live cats thrust into their bowels. Many, married or unmarried, were violated before the eyes of their menfolk, and those that were comely were carried away.”

It’s estimated that in those years between 100,000 and 500,000 Jews perished and it’s impossible to get accurate estimates. Seven hundred Jewish communities were totally destroyed.

Now you pass to rationalism and you say here are the rationalists, at least they’ll have a more rational view of Jews. Not a bit. It’s the most amazing thing. Voltaire, who was the leader of the assault on the Christian church and the Christian faith was equally evil towards the Jews. This is what he said:

“This great liberator from superstition actually approved the endless persecutions and massacres of the Jews, and gave credence to the blood accusation. No insult to Jews was too gross. ‘Jews are,’ Voltaire ranted, ‘the most imbecile people on the face of the earth; enemies of mankind; a people most obtuse, cruel and absurd; whose history is disgusting and abominable. In short, we find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition, and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.’”

Those are the words of Voltaire.

Then we pass to the end of the 19th century and the main scene shifts to Russia. At the end of the 19th century and on into the 20th century, frequent pogroms swept across Russia. Some say that they were actually organized by the czars, but it’s certain that the czars tolerated them and they were coordinated.

Now, the in-laws of Ruth’s first husband came from the Baltic as Jews. When Ruth was converted to Judaism, before she was a believer in Jesus, in 1952 the rabbi told her at that time, “The fact that you’ve married a Jew doesn’t mean you have to become a Jew. Think carefully. Because you don’t know what may await you. It can mean the gas chamber, it can mean torture, it may mean execution. Just don’t be hasty.” But she decided and was converted. Her in-laws told her that at that period in the Baltic and in Russia, the times that the Jews feared most were the Christian holidays, especially Easter and Christmas. And at that time they would go into hiding, they would go down into the cellars and hide themselves because the largely drunken Christian populace would sweep through the Jewish communities just destroying everything they found.

This is a description of the first pogrom.

“The first great pogrom commenced on Easter of 1881 and spread rapidly through southern Russia. A hundred Jewish communities were struck. Masses of Jews were maimed, murdered and impoverished as the police stood idly by. The attacks occurred almost simultaneously and followed the same general pattern everywhere.”

So now we’re into the 20th century and in 1905 an unknown Russian anti-Semite published a thing which has later been called The Protocols of Zion. How many of you have heard of them? Well, this claimed to be a secret document that this person had discovered describing the meeting of twenty-four Jewish elders, how they came together and plotted to overthrow all civilized society and take dominion over the world. This was not first widely believed but in 1919 it was widely circulated and has reached probably millions of people. You’ll find many people, some here in the United States, others in Europe and Germany, that really believe these protocols are an authentic, historic document, although they have been classified as totally unhistoric by the people who’ve researched them.

The interesting thing for Americans is that Henry Ford in his paper, The Dearborn Independent, which had a circulation of 700,000, endorsed and circulated these reports of The Protocols of Zion. Not only that, but a revised abbreviated edition was published and circulated in many languages throughout many nations. Eventually, under pressure from Jewish people, Henry Ford recanted and renounced. He said he had done wrong. But by that time hundreds of thousands of copies of these reports had circulated in his name to hundreds and millions of people around the earth. He had scattered the seed and there was no way he could take control of it again.

At the end of World War I when the Bolsheviks took over Russia there was a civil war of about two years between what was known as the white army and the red army. The red army was Bolsheviks, the White Army was more or less Orthodox Russian Christianity. This is a little account of what happened at that time. The white army viewed the Orthodox Jews as Bolsheviks, which was the most absurd thing because for an Orthodox Jew, Bolshevism was totally reprehensible. I mean, they rejected it totally. But nevertheless, thousands of them were put to death by the white army as Bolsheviks.

It says this:

“The worst excesses occurred in the Ukraine under Hettmann Pletura (phonetic) and General (unintelligible) where the Orthodox Jewish masses, to whom Bolshevism was a godless abomination, were put to the sword as Bolshevists.”

And here is a description of what they did. It’s somewhat similar to Poland.

“To save ammunition, soldiers often used only cold steel. Thus, the Jews were literally butchered by the thousands. The troops went systematically to work, street by street, and the butchers or ravishers, as the case might be, distinguished themselves by bestiality scarcely ever surpassed. It was considered a mercy by the Jews to be killed outright instead of being gradually tortured to death. A father gave all he possessed that his son might only be shot. Parents were forced to witness the torturing of their children, and children that of parents.”

All this was done in the name of Christianity, bear that in mind, by people professing to be Orthodox Christians.

Now we come to Adolf Hitler and there is no time or space to deal with Hitler. But bear in mind this is what I actually wrote in my book, The Last Word on the Middle East, concerning the Holocaust.

“The church sowed the harvest, the Nazis only reaped it.”

The Nazis could not have reaped that harvest if the seed had not been sown over centuries by the church. So, the responsibility for the Holocaust lies as much at the door of the church as it does at the door of the Nazis. The general estimate of the number of Jews that perished in the Holocaust is six million. This has been very carefully researched and it’s the general consensus.

At this time, there was a new dimension to anti-Semitism under Hitler, it became racial. It was not merely religious, it was racial. The Jews were an inferior race, a race under a curse. The Aryans, blonde, blue-eyed Germans, were the master race. It was their duty to exterminate this inferior Jewish race. So there’s a new aspect to that.

The estimates of Jews who had been massacred and killed in various ways prior to the Holocaust varies, but the lowest number generally put forward is seven million. So, if you add seven million to six million, you get thirteen million Jews who were destroyed on the basis of Christian teaching. I like to be careful with my words, I’m not always successful, but I try to avoid exaggeration. I think that what I’m telling is, if anything, an understatement.

You see, when we sing songs like we sang this evening earlier, which were beautiful, something in me always says those songs are beautiful but the people singing them really aren’t qualified to sing them. Now, there are exceptions to that. Because, there’s something that has to happen before we can really with the full heart and the anointing of the Holy Spirit sing songs like that. We have got to put things right with God and with the Jews.

You see, in this nation, thank God, in the last few decades there has been a fairly genuine attempt by the Christian church to acknowledge all the injustices done to the blacks in the name of Christianity and to make some kind of reparation or, at least, confession. And you realize again the same principle: at its worst, hatred of the blacks defined them as a lower race. To mistreat a black was not mistreating a human being, they were just blacks. And let me say, and I am English, I know very little of American history. I owe some of this to Americans who have told me. The treatment received by the blacks was far less awful than the treatment received by the native Americans. And up till now only in the last decade has there been any attempt by the Christian church to acknowledge its responsibility for the treatment of American Indians. An American lawyer that’s a friend of mine has passed on to his reward, he said to me, and it took my breath away, “In that period many Americans would shoot an Indian in just the same way they would shoot a dog.”

I hope you don’t resent my bringing this up. I think I’m the last person qualified to do it, in a way, but I don’t know anybody else that will do it. I believe it has to be done.

Since 1948 when the State of Israel came into being, and especially since 1967 when they regained control of the Old City, anti-Semitism has been given a new name. Do you know what it is? Anti-Zionism. But, it’s precisely the same old thing dressed up in a new name. So, the Arabs don’t want to abolish the Jews but they want to get rid of all the Zionists. If you got rid of all the Zionists out of Israel there wouldn’t be any Jews left. It’s exactly the same thing just dressed up under a new title.

You see, the devil is very clever to change our attitudes to things by changing names. Like, if you talk about an infant in a mother’s womb, then to kill that is murder. But, if you just talk about a fetus, well, what does it matter what you do to a fetus? The value of the act has not changed but the label has changed peoples’ attitude to the act.

And so, if you can declassify Jews, Blacks or Native Americans so that they’re below the human level, then you can do anything. You’re not guilty.

Now, this is not from yesterday, it’s from today. I’m going to give you two up to date examples. This first example is taken from a publication by Natan Sharansky. How many of you know who he was? Some of you, at least. He was perhaps the most famous Refusnik who escaped from Russian while Brezhnev was still in control, I think. And this is a document that he circulates just acquainting people with the current activities of anti-Semitism. And, particularly in the media. Here are three verbatim statements taken from the media in either 1993 or 1994. In other words, they’re up to date.

In the Dallas Morning Newson April 18, 1993, a commentator said:

“Israel created, following the Nazi Holocaust that exterminated more than six million Jews, has for this past decade found itself in a reversed role.”

In other words, the Jews are now perpetrating a Holocaust. Understand? Why is that done? Because if the minds of the Americans can be sufficiently poisoned against the Jews then they will side with the next Holocaust.

And then John Palmer on Discovery Channel, a television channel, on April 29, 1994, said this:

“Bosnia Muslims, Palestinian Muslims, the similarities are too great to ignore. Both groups have been forced from their homes.”

But that’s a complete distortion of history, a deliberate distortion. Do you know what I suspect, and I may be wrong, I suspect a lot of these commentators get some money from the Arabs. I mean, I think it’s very probable. It’s rather ironical, really, to think about it. The West people found the oil in the Arab countries, they didn’t find it themselves. They taught them how to get it out, treat it and make a profit out of it. Then they demand from the West payment for this oil which the West made available, and then they use the money against the West. See? It’s the most extraordinary satanic circle, really.

And this is the final one, which is October 20, 1994, in the World News Tonight, Dean Reynolds:

“The murder of twenty-three and wounding of forty-six in the terror bombing of the Tel Aviv bus spurred the Israelis to a wrathful backlash against the Muslim group Hamas.”

Notice it doesn’t say they were Jews. It’s very careful, it says the murder of twenty-three and wounding of forty-six. It doesn’t say they were all Jews. See how clever it is? “...spurred the Israelis to a wrathful backlash...” So, twenty-three people are murdered and forty-six people are wounded. Now, what’s the wrathful backlash? This is it:

“Israel closed the Garzan (phonetic) border temporarily and briefly suspended peace discussions.”

That’s the wrathful backlash against twenty-three people murdered and forty-six injured. Can you see it’s a system of lies, systematic lies designed to do one thing, to poison the minds of the American people against the Jewish people. And, specifically against the State of Israel. What is the aim? It’s exactly the same as it has been through nineteen centuries of history, it’s to bring the American people to the point where they will side with anti-Semitism and against the Jewish people.

I just want to read two concluding statements from this book. I think this book is rather a masterpiece, I must say. One significant thing about it is it was written by a Catholic priest. So, I mean, if anybody is not biased against the Catholic church is him. This is what he says concerning an overview of anti-Semitism.

“As the historian of anti-Semitism looks back over the millennia of horrors he has recorded, an inescapable conclusion emerges. Anti-Semitism is the longest and deepest hatred of human history. Other hatreds may have surpassed it in intensity for an historical moment but all in their turn have assumed or presently commence to assume their proper place in the dust bin of history. What other hatred has endured some twenty-three centuries and survived the genocide of six million of its victims in its 23rd century of existence only to find itself still intact and rich in potential for many more years of life?”

That is anti-Semitism, still intact and rich in potential for many more years of life.

And finally I think this is the point where we have to really answer to God as Christians. This is his kind of summing up.

“Gentile reaction to the Jewish fact took many forms throughout the centuries and sprung from many motivations to such a point that it is not possible to consider a homogeneous development. This must not dispense us, however, from seeking to identify the principle cause, historical or psychological, that best explains the durability and power of this unending animus. Does such a cause stand out? The microscopic view of its history that we have taken permits an answer. The cause is the deicide accusation.”

In other words, the one real root element in all of this is the charge that’s been brought, and still is brought against the Jews today, that when they crucified Jesus they murdered God. And, having murdered God, nothing is too bad for them.

And then he says at the end:

“Christian anti-Semitism thus has always remained in its core theological.”

In other words, it’s the theology of the Christian church that is the root cause of these indescribable horrors and agonies that have been perpetrated in the name of Christ for at least sixteen centuries.

Now, my question is do we need to do anything about it? Who’s going to do something about it? I thank God for the people who recognize that the church had to ask forgiveness from the blacks. I don’t really think we’ve done a thorough enough job up till now but we’ve done something. I have been teaching for probably twelve years that the church in America needs to acknowledge its guilt toward the Native American who used to be called the American Indian.

Let me say this, and this is just by the way. About fifteen years ago I had a kind of mental vision when I was in Florida of an Indian chief in his full war attire somewhere up in the heavenlies, smoking a pipe and puffing the smoke in my direction. I understood him to say contemptuously, “I was here long before you came and I’ll still be here when you’ve gone.” Out of that I came to understand, this is, incidentally, a kind of diversion. I hope it won’t divert us from the main theme, that the main spiritual superpower over America is Indian cult worship. I call it a superpower, actually, God gave me that word, because it extends from Northern Canada to the south of Argentina. It covers two whole continents. I personally believe that the full purposes of God in America will never be fulfilled until the church has dealt with that superpower. And to deal with the superpower, the first thing we have to do is confess our sins. As long as we are guilty we have no power whatever against Satan.

That’s just by the way but meanwhile tonight we’re dealing with the issue of a dark cloud of guilt that has rested over the Christian church and has grown darker and darker century by century for sixteen or seventeen centuries. I personally do not believe the church can ever experience the fullness of blessing that God desires for His people until we’ve come face to face with this crime in which we all share some of the guilt, our crime against God’s own chosen people, the Jews.

I listened to some of the beautiful songs we were singing. They’re wonderful songs but I really don’t think we have a right to sing those songs with our whole heart as long as we have the blood of Jews on our hands. Maybe you object to that statement but I think in many instances the church has been an accessory after the fact, if not the perpetrator. I believe God wants to bless the church. I believe God wants to release His blessing upon the United States but I believe there are barriers that keep that blessing away.

One barrier is our guilt towards the Native Americans. I don’t want to deal with that tonight, it’s really not my province. People have begun to take that up, John Dorsen (phonetic) and others. I support their efforts.

I may be wrong, I don’t know of any non Jewish Christian of any significance who has ever squarely faced the fact of the guilt of the church in respect to the Jewish people. Let me quote to you just one thing that God said in Zechariah 2:8 concerning the Jewish people. He said:

“He who touches you touches the apple of my eye.”

Do you realize what we’ve done? We’ve poked our finger into God’s eye.

There are certain simple steps I want to suggest.

First of all, we need to recognize the ultimate source of anti-Semitism. In one word, Satan. It’s his master strategy. Tomorrow I want to speak on how to pray for Israel and I want to try to show you that the whole consummation of God’s purposes for this age center in the Jewish people. They cannot be fulfilled except through the Jewish people. If Satan could destroy the Jewish people he would close the door to God’s program for the close of this age. In a sense, history revolves around the Jewish people. I’ll substantiate that statement tomorrow. I just say it tonight because I want you to understand how extremely important this is.

In 1946 I was talking to my first Hebrew teacher who was the Secretary of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He became a dear friend of ours, an Orthodox Jew. He got up and said his prayers in the middle of my lessons, he always faced towards Jerusalem when he prayed, and so on. But we became dear friends. At that time everybody was excited about the possibility of a Jewish state being born. I said to him, “If this Jewish state is born, what will be the foundation?” Bear in mind he was an Orthodox Jew. He looked at me and he said, “Science and culture.” I thought how can a Jew, a believer, say that? I said to him, “Well, in the last decade or so, no nation in Europe had a greater emphasis on science and culture than the German people and yet they used their science to make soap out of Jewish bones. So how can you say that science and culture will be an adequate foundation for your state?” We didn’t come to any conclusion on that but then I said to him, “If as you say anti-Semitism is a sociological factor due to the fact that Jews are an alien community in the midst of others, then the establishment of the State of Israel will solve it. But if it’s a spiritual power it will be the opposite, the establishment of the State of Israel will increase it and intensify it.” Well I think history has proved me right.

Let’s bear in mind we’re dealing with Satan. I tell you, to preach this message and to bring it out tonight I have faced as much spiritual opposition as I’ve ever faced at any time in my ministry. But thank God I knew where it came from and I was not going to let it deter me.

One thing that the majority of Christians have to repent of is indifference. Indifference is largely caused by ignorance. But ignorance is not an excuse. Whether you are aware of it or not, if you’ve committed a crime, you’re guilty. I would have to say we Christians are guilty. Can you say amen to that? Don’t say it if you don’t believe it. I believe we are guilty.

In a sense, God has laid at the door the blood of thirteen million Jews who’ve perished in terrible circumstances. What do we have to do? God’s remedies are always simple. I like that. He says if we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So the first thing we have to do is confess our sins. He says in Proverbs 28:13:

“He who covers his sin shall not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes his sin shall have mercy.”

So we have two options. We can cover it and not prosper or we can confess it and forsake it and receive God’s mercy. Those are the options.

I want to give you two scriptural patterns for confession. Then I’m going to suggest that we need to do some of what I’ve been talking about, in Nehemiah 1:6. This is Nehemiah’s prayer on behalf of the Jewish remnant that had returned from Babylon but were in terrible distress. He said to the Lord:

“Please let your ear be attentive and your eyes open that you may hear the prayer of your servant which I pray before you now, day and night, for the children of Israel your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against you. Both my father’s house and I have sinned.”

That’s the line we have to get to, “both my ancestors and I have sinned.” I cannot disassociate myself from the long history of the Christian church. I am part of it. We can’t say they have sinned, we have to say we have sinned. Both my ancestors and I, we have sinned.

And then the prayer of Daniel in Daniel 9, another pattern. Nehemiah and Daniel were two extremely righteous men, but when they were praying they did not stand apart and point at the other people and say, “They have sinned,” they said, “We have sinned.” As long as you pray about people and say “they have sinned,” your prayers don’t get very far. When you accept your share of responsibility God begins to listen.

This is how Daniel prayed, we’ll just read verses 3–9 of Daniel 9. Daniel says:

“Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplication with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.”

You see, you may get a little upset with me but I think, in a sense, fasting, sackcloth and ashes are more appropriate than dancing and rejoicing. I think of Mordecai, you know the story of Esther, when the decree went out for all the Jews in Shushan and in the whole of the Persian empire to be destroyed, Mordecai put on sackcloth and went out into the square of the city in front of the king’s gate and cried out with a loud and bitter cry. Esther, his cousin who was the queen inside the palace, sent one of her servants with a nice change of clothing and said, “Take off the sackcloth and put this on.” Mordecai said, “I am not taking the sackcloth off until the situation has changed.” I think in some sense it’s more appropriate to be wearing sackcloth than to be dancing. There is a time for dancing, God can give it.

When my first wife died I was absolutely overwhelmed with grief. Apart from my little African daughter I was living alone in a large house. Two Christian couples, uninvited, came to my home quite late in the evening and they started to sing and praise the Lord. After they had been singing a little while, something happened to me and I can say to God, “Thou has put off my sackcloth and girded me with dancing.” I literally did that. But you see, I couldn’t do it until the Lord made it possible. I couldn’t do it at my own will. I think there’s a time of great jubilation and dancing but my feeling is, I’m being very frank with you, I’ve got nothing to lose. I have no personal agenda, no reputation to maintain. I just feel that the church needs to be mourning rather than dancing right now.

If you look at the condition of this great nation, in one simple sentence it’s falling apart. You don’t have to listen to Christian preachers because all the secular media will tell you the same. You look at the church and basically it is incompetent to face the challenge, it doesn’t have the answer. So, what are we doing rejoicing? I believe we should be on our faces mourning like Daniel, like Nehemiah, like all the great saints of the Bible. When confronted with the sin of God’s people they fell on their faces and cried out to God and said, “God, have mercy. Have mercy.”

I think I need to relate something to you tonight, I didn’t intend to do it. At the beginning of February I was invited to hold a conference at CBN, you know what, Christian Broadcasting Network. I say you know what because I didn’t. We don’t have a television so we don’t know much about all that. We get on remarkably well without it, I’d like to say. Better than some people who have it. I’m not against television, I’m just being objective. We held this conference and there were about 330 some people who came mainly because they were interested in my teaching. We spent about two and a half days. I had the privilege of systematic Bible teaching for four hours packed, not in one meeting. I taught about the prophetic picture of the end time, what it will be like. And do you know what the Bible says that at the end time there will be fierce times. That’s the main descriptive word used. It’s going to get fiercer, dear brothers and sisters, it’s not going to get any easier. We’ve only just paddled in the margin up till now. And then I said, “I won’t tell you the title of my last message but it won’t be the one that’s published in the outline.” So, we got together on Sunday morning and I said, “Now I’ll unveil the title of my message. It is ‘Facing God’s Judgment.’” I gave, for me, a comparatively brief message. I mean, it didn’t last more than forty-five minutes which for me is brief. I pointed out that we all one day or another must stand before the judgment of God, none of us will escape, it’s an appointment none of us will miss.

I took as an example a little incident reported in one of the main weeklies, I forget whether it was Timeor Newsweek. The main issue is entitled “Shame,” some of you will remember it. In it was a story of a secular judge who was dealing with a teenage boy who had raped his younger sister and the judge said, “You’ve got to ask your sister for forgiveness.” So they brought the boy and the sister together and he said, “I’m sorry, sis. I’m sorry for what I did for you.” The judge said, “That’s not enough. You have to kneel down before your sister.” He said, “I’m not going to do that.” The judge said, “All right, back to prison.”

A week later they brought him out again, the judge said, “Are you willing to kneel before your sister?” He said, “Yes.” He knelt and asked her forgiveness. The whole room of people dissolved in tears.

See, there’s a lot of difference between just saying I’m sorry and kneeling down and saying I’m sorry.

And then to close I related something that had happened to me about a month earlier, just about Christmastime in New Zealand. About 2:00 AM God sometimes wakes me up if He’s got something to deal with me about. I was so under the dealing of God I had to get out of the bed and kneel by the bed and pray, which I don’t normally do. Then I had to get up and walk around the room because there was such pressure. I felt God was saying to me, “Will you ask Me to give you My heart for America?” I said, “Lord, your heart is broken over American. How could I bear that?” The Lord told me, “I have blessed America spiritually and materially as I’ve blessed no other nation in history. And see how they’ve responded?” But He didn’t lift the question, “Will you ask Me to give you My heart for America?”

So the next morning I shared it with Ruth and rather reluctantly, I’d have to say, we said, “Lord, we will ask you to give us your heart for America.” But when I thought it over I said to the Lord, “How could I do anything else? The American people have been so kind to me for so many years. They’ve been so generous, they’ve supported me, they’ve stood by me, they’ve supported my ministry. Lord, I can’t refuse.”

But I want to ask you, are you willing to ask Jesus to give you His heart for the Jewish people for America? Are you willing to enter into the real apprehension of the appalling evil that has been done in the name of Christ to the Jewish people, and the appalling evil that is inundating like a tide the United States of America? And basically, the church is standing with folded arms contemplating the scene.

I’ll tell you something else that happened. It happened two days ago. There was such a breakthrough in this meeting in February that we had about 330 people on their knees for an hour and a half crying out to God for mercy. All the people at CBN tell us the whole atmosphere has changed. People that were not even in the meeting came to Scott Ross the next day and said, “I don’t know what’s happened but I’m different.” So they decided to invite me back and I was there the day before yesterday. They closed the whole operation down between the hours of three and five and had the whole staff of CBN there. I spoke to them about prayer and fasting.

You see, there’s got to come some kind of a breakthrough, some kind of brokenness. We’re too stiff, too shut up, too afraid to let our feelings be seen, too afraid to share the feelings of Jesus for the situation. You can’t be an intercessor in any real sense until you share the burden of the Lord for the situation for which you’re praying.

So I’m suggesting to you for the next little while, who knows how long, maybe twenty minutes, it may be two hours. It doesn’t matter, time is not that important to God, that we humble ourselves before God and say, “God, we have sinned. We have been guilty of the blood of the Jewish people. We, the Christian church collectively for sixteen centuries have been the main instigators and perpetrators of anti-Semitism.” If you don’t believe that you really couldn’t feel guilty about it but I believe it.

I’ve tried in a few short, selected passages to give you a little overview, so what are we going to do? If you would like to take time now in the presence of God, to spend time in prayer, I want you to signify that to me by just standing to your feet for a moment. I don’t want to drag any horse to the water that is not willing to drink. Don’t stand unless you mean it. So, most of you are standing. I’m going to pray for you now. I’m going to pray a prayer that God’s spirit of intercession will fall upon you.

Ruth, would you come up and stand with me? Jim, would you come up? There are other leaders here, would you come up and take your place with me. I believe in corporate ministry. I don’t have any plan, I don’t have a program but I’m just going to pray that the Spirit of God will come upon us. Then I think I’m going to ask Jim to be sensitive to what the Spirit leads.

“Lord Jesus Christ, you who are head over all things to the church which is your body, tonight we gladly acknowledge your headship. We joyfully submit to your authority. We affirm that our lives are given over to you, that you have redeemed us by your precious blood out of the hand of the enemy. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, and we say we have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus out of the hand of the enemy. We are not in the enemy’s hand, the blood has separated us from the kingdom of darkness. God has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood the forgiveness of sins. Thank you, Lord, that we can have the forgiveness of sins. And now we stand before you not merely to acknowledge our own personal sins, whatever they may be, but we stand before you on behalf of the sins of the Christian church and we’re not separating any particular denomination or section of the church, the church. We stand before you, Lord, and acknowledge with shame and sorrow our unutterable guilt in the sufferings of the Jewish people. O God, there is no way that we can express the sense of guilt and sorrow that has come upon us. Lord, we want to offer ourselves to you tonight in whatever way is acceptable to you, a total offering: spirit, soul and body; our lives upon the altar. O God, pour out upon us a spirit of grace and of supplications. Release your Holy Spirit, Lord. Break through the hardness and the selfishness and the indifference of our hearts, Lord Jesus. We are ashamed before you of our indifference, Lord. O God, we are ashamed of our hardness, of our indifference, of our materialism, Lord. We have let so many things come between us and the interests of your kingdom and the purposes of your heart. Lord, forgive us. Grant us grace to repent. Grant us grace to say individually, ‘I’m sorry, Lord. I’m sorry, Lord. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I’m sorry, Lord. I didn’t know the real situation. My eyes have been blinded to the real facts but Lord, in the light of the truth I am sorry. Forgive me, Lord. Forgive me, Lord.’ Blot out our sins, Lord, as a cloud, and our transgressions as a thick cloud. Blot them out of your mercy, Lord. Blot out the dark cloud that hangs over the church in this land because of anti-Semitism, Lord. That dark cloud that withholds the real outpouring of your blessing. Blot it out, Lord, we pray. In Jesus’ name, blot it out, Lord. We cry to you in the name of Jesus. Pour out upon us, Lord, a spirit of grace and of supplications. Release your Spirit upon us in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

We have felt that it won’t be appropriate if those of us who are not Jewish would be given some opportunity to express our sorrow and our repentance toward the Jewish people. This can only be a token but we would ask those of you who are Jewish by background, by birth, by conversion, if you would just come to the front and face the people. I don’t want to embarrass you but I think we need to really deal with this thing as a reality. Then we will stretch out our hands toward you and say, “Forgive us. Forgive us on behalf of your people.”

(someone else talking, Jim?)

There’s been so many times that we have taken Christians to Israel on a pilgrimage and so many times the comment has been made, “If we could just be a witness. If we can just share the love of Christ. Or, if I can just witness to a Jewish person.” And in our own arrogance and lack of understanding of what we’ve been told tonight and what our history is as Christians we have no concept and no idea of the pain and suffering inflicted upon them as a nation and a people. Many of the Jewish people have no idea of why they’re so confused and why there’s such a blockage in their spirits of openness. As we were praying, as I was praying tonight and begging God forgiveness and interceding, the faces of so many of my Jewish friends in Israel kept coming to mind. I was repenting one by one and asking God to lift the veil, that we would be forgiven, that in some way we could express our deep, deep repentance. And, asking forgiveness. I think it is so right tonight of what Derek and Ruth have suggested here. It is a witness to my spirit that as we do that tonight to these that are representatives and a representation of the Jewish people, not only of today but of the heritage that they represent but the heritage that we represent; that there could be a union here tonight to break the damn that has kept those things that are the things that are in the heart of God. I believe that God desires that they ought to be lifted. The same God that placed it there is the same God that’s going to lift it. I can believe with all of my heart that we can let Him know as we repent tonight as touching the heart of the Jewish nation here tonight that we’re truly sorry and we want to be an encourager of the brethren, and a blessing and not the curse.

So would you just stretch out your hand. If some of you would like to come up, not a great crowd but just some that would like to come up and lay hands on them and just touch them. So many in the Christian faith rejected them and did not touch them, did not love them but raised a hand of rejection. We are concerned about the Jews rejecting Christ and yet the Christ that we represent, born of resentment and rejection.”

O Father God, forgive us. Forgive us, Father, for our history. Forgive us, Father, for the misrepresentation. The great God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We have been (unintelligible) desecrated the holy place. Forgive us, O God, for a hand raised against the Jewish people and the Jewish nation. Forgive us, O God. Father, as we touch the Jewish nation tonight, as we not only repent and ask your forgiveness but ask you, God, for a day of restoration. A day of new beginnings that truly 2 Corinthians 5:17 would come alive in us and come alive in this place; that the old nature, the old man has died and has passed away; and behold, this is a new day of new beginnings. Any man that is truly in Christ, the Messiah of Israel, is a new creation. Lord, for the redemptive moment right now, for the house of Israel, the church. O Father, that we might be one, that we would never ever in any way again reject the Jewish people. And the root system, Father, would be healthy that we’re grated into. We bless that in the name of Jesus. Thank you, Father, for the one that we touch right now. Thank you for the rich heritage that’s ours. Thank you for our Jewishness and our Jewish roots. Thank you, Father, for your forgiveness. Thank you, Lord. Bless the house of Israel, the house of David. O Father, that truly the eyes would be opened and the veil would be lifted. Grant that, O God, that as their rejection has meant such a great salvation to us, what will their acceptance be? Grant it, O God, Father, in Jesus’ name.”