WHY DOES SATAN HATE THE JEWISH PEOPLE?
IT GOES BACK TO THE TIME OF CREATION
The root of anti-Semitism goes back to the time of creation. God cursed mankind’s first parents, but He did not leave them or their offspring without hope. In His mercy, He gave them a messianic hope by promising them the Messianic Seed of the Woman who would, figuratively speaking, crush Satan’s head (Genesis 3:15). No doubt shocked and angered, Satan set out to destroy all possibility of that hope ever materializing.
In Genesis 12:1-4, God called out a man from among His people to begin a new people through whom He would bring forth the Seed of the Woman. God called Abraham out from among the Chaldeans to father the nation Israel. From that moment on, Satan has focused his venom upon the Jews. If Satan could destroy Israel, he could prevent the birth of the Seed and his own subsequent demise. Having been unable to prevent the birth of the Seed, he still seeks to destroy Israel for he knows that it is the national salvation of Israel that will trigger the Seeds return (Hosea 5:15; Matt. 23:37-39).
It must be noted that Satan’s efforts at preventing Messiah’s advents is the spiritual root of all anti-Semitism. No means has been spared by Satan in his attempts to destroy the messianic hope by means of destroying the Jews, and his chief avenues of attack have been physical and theological.
Satan hates the Jewish people and will do everything in his power to destroy them. The most powerful, dangerous, and intelligent being on this planet who is God’s adversary, has quite a focused plan. Let’s think back and briefly review what Satan has been doing from the beginning of human history and how his spirit came to possess the world.
(1). In Eden’s outer garden, Satan got the first son born on earth, Cain, to kill his brother Abel, who was a true servant of God.
(2). In Noah’s day, Satan got a group of demons to interfere with humanity and corrupt the race so that only eight humans were left who loved and served the Lord. God was so angered with the human race that He sent a flood to destroy the entire world, except for these eight people. The human race was spared Satan’s attempt to annihilate it.
(3). In Genesis 11, when God finally let His plan be seen by his choice of Abraham to be the father of His chosen people of destiny, the Jews, Satan went into high gear.
(4). God revealed the people He had chosen to be the human vehicle through which His Word, His Son, His Church, and finally His end of days would unfold through. And so, Satan had a target.
(5). Anti-Semitism is as old as Genesis 11, when God called out Abram, over 4000 years ago. Hatred of the Jews is at the heart of Satan, and all who share that hatred are doing Satan’s plan.
(6). So, as soon as possible after Genesis 11 (by chapter 16), Satan discouraged Abram and incited him into fathering an heir God had not chosen, named Ishmael. Then Satan went on to try to corrupt Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
(7). By the time of Exodus, while the chosen people of God were in Egypt, Satan tried to get the male children killed to stop the line of promise.
(8). From Exodus 12 through 1 Samuel 8, and over the next 400 years from Joshua through Samuel, were years of idols and evils that Satan sent to corrupt the chosen people of destiny.
(9). From 1 Samuel 9 to the end of 2 Chronicles, covering the next 400 years from Saul to the captivity, Satan made sure these were years of growing apostasy and finally God was so fed up with Israel He allowed them to be massacred and enslaved and exiled from His land.
(10). From the exile years in the book of Esther we see how in the next century that Satan almost got the Jewish people all exterminated by Haman in Persia.
(11). When God sent His own Son, Christ Jesus, to redeem the world, Satan came up with a plan to attempt to stop Him. The result was: All two-year-old babies and under were killed mercilessly by a decree from Herod.
(12). Then a number of years later, the Roman Army killed more than 1 million Jews and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, known as the first Jewish revolt.
(13). Sixty-five years later came the second Jewish revolt in A.D. 132-135. The city of Jerusalem was totally destroyed, and all the Jews were dispersed from the land of Israel. Emperor Hadrian gave the land of Israel the name Palestine, named after the Philistines who were ancient antagonists of Israel.
(14). Passing the dark ages, we come to another horrible event of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler was another puppet who was a part of Satan’s evil plan to destroy God’s chosen people. After trying to destroy the Jewish people wherever they went in the world throughout the dark ages (Crusades, Inquisition’s, etc.) and not succeeding, the devil thought of another plan and that was to burn the Jewish people of Europe by raising Hitler to do so. Even though many of Europe’s Jewish population went to gas chambers, God spared the remnant of His everlasting covenant with Abraham. In May of 1948, God had given the Jewish people back their land. “Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once (Isaiah 66:8)?” Just as prophesied, on May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was born in one day with its own flag, stamp, army, currency, and government, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy made some 2,500 years earlier. Another one of God’s prophecy has been fulfilled and Satan could not stop it.
You would think after so many attempts to stop God’s plan and to destroy God’s people throughout the ages, that Satan would realize his failures and quit pursuing his goal. No, never, not Satan. (Recently in history, we had Yasser Arafat the “father” of modern-day terrorism and his desire to destroy modern day Israel). Look, in order for Satan to succeed, he knows that he must destroy Israel and the Jewish people to prevent the Messiah from coming. So, |none of these pogroms (organized persecutions), holocausts, and massacres were the idea of Haman, the Roman Emperors or Hitler. All those murderous desires flow from the most evil one of all, Satan, who wants to disrupt God’s plan. He knows that God’s plan is centered on the chosen Jewish people of promise. If Satan can destroy them, he has won.
There is no other explanation for the intense hatred and enmity that has smoldered for century after century against the Jewish people other than it is promoted by the devil. Satan, the Dragon, is fixated on destroying the people of promise. No nation or ethnic group has ever been hunted down more, persecuted more, put into exile more, tracked down and exterminated like the Jewish people have for more than the past 2,500 years.
God has written history and put on paper that He is going to have a remnant of Israel at their final and most desperate hour (Zechariah 12-14). Satan can read. He knows the written down parts of God’s plan and has intensified his efforts to do everything he possibly can to thwart God from carrying out and fulfilling His plans for the ages. Quite frankly it is a war between God and Satan – the conflict of the ages.
According to the Scriptures, the Jewish people are at the center of God’s plan. We know this to be true because of Bible prophecy. God’s plan of redemption for the world involves the Jewish nation directly and the devil knows this very well. According to history, everything that has happened to the Jewish people is part of the plan of God. God has chosen and blessed this nation and even today His hand continues to lead Israel even though they themselves may not realize it.
As we have just seen and witnessed, anti-Semitism is an evil spirit that fights God through His chosen people Israel. The devil has found the way to pursue the plan and the people of God. Some people wrongly think that God is punishing the Jewish people for their disobedience through anti-Semitism just as the early church had. That is simply not true because anti-Semitism is designed to attack not only the people of God but also the plan of God and this tactic is of the devil.
THE JEWISH ATTITUDE
Now, after having disclosed all of this, I hope you can understand why it is so difficult to share the gospel with Jewish people. Because Jews have been persecuted and killed throughout history, in the name of Jesus by professing Christians. How Satan has twisted and perverted the minds of the early church fathers into becoming Jewish hate mongers. How Satan had deceived virtually the entire church into believing that Israel is no longer God’s chosen people, and that status has now been transferred to the church. Had the early church fathers not been influenced and deceived by Satan, then the sad legacy of anti-Semitic hatred from the church may have been avoided.
Most Jewish people look upon Christianity as their mortal enemy. Any Jew who converts to Christianity is considered a traitor, for he is viewed as one who has joined the enemy. That is the reason why Orthodox Jews react so strongly to anyone who converts to Christianity. Having said that, this is the reason why today, thanks be to God, the Messianic Jewish Movement is such a miracle.
BOTTOM LINE:
Why is anti-Semitism so widespread, so persistent, so virulent, and so irrational? It is because it is fundamentally a supernatural phenomenon. Satan hates the Jews with a passion. No means has been spared by Satan in his attempts to destroy the messianic hope by means of destroying the Jews, and his chief avenues of attack have been physical and theological. He is determined to destroy every Jew on the planet so that God cannot keep his promises to them. Satan tried to annihilate them in the Holocaust and he failed. He will try to destroy them once again during the last half of the Great Tribulation and according to the book of Revelation, Satan will fail once again.
God is in control, not Satan. God has the wisdom and power to orchestrate all the evil of Satan and mankind to the triumph of His perfect will in history. The Jews will be preserved. A great remnant will be saved. All the promises to the Jews will be fulfilled. And when will this occur? At the end of the Great Tribulation when Jesus returns to triumph over Satan (Battle of Armageddon). On that glorious day, national Israel will recognize their Messiah, whom their forefathers had pierced, and they will cry out: “Baruch Haba Bashem Adonai,” meaning “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord (Matthew 22:39).” Israel will finally recognize and welcome their rejected Messiah. Hallelujah!
Oscar
Oscar Leske
Facebook – Signs Of Our Times
Understanding The Signs Of Our Times .com
stevelampman@comcast.net stevelampman.com
Transforming Power; The Work of God on Behalf of Man
And
Lian Muan Kim –
Koinonia Baptist Seminary, Yangon