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Jews in Poland has to Wear the Above Badge After Germany Invaded in WWII (Daniel Ullrich, Threedots)

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Nearly 1/4 of the world’s population is considered to be antisemitic:

May 13, 2014

A new survey has concluded that about a quarter of the world’s population … holds anti-Semitic views.

The New York-based Anti-Defamation League said Tuesday that it polled more than 53,000 people in 102 countries and territories over the last year, asking them whether they felt that 11 negative stereotypes about Jews were probably true or false, or did not know. The survey defined someone as anti-Semitic if that person agreed with six or more of the statements.

Among the stereotypes cited in the survey were “Jews are more loyal to Israel than [their home] country,” “Jews have too much power in the business world” and “Jews are responsible for most wars in the world.”

The survey found the highest concentration of anti-Semitism in the Middle East and North Africa, with 74 percent of those polled agreeing with a majority of the anti-Semitic stereotypes.  By contrast, the anti-Semitism figure was 34 percent in eastern Europe, 24 percent in western Europe, 23 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 22 percent in Asia, 19 percent in the Americas and 14 percent in Oceania.

The polling found that only 54 percent of the people surveyed had heard of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis during World War II. Those surveyed also often significantly overestimated the number of Jews in the world, while the actual figure is less than one-fifth of 1 percent.  http://www.voanews.com/content/survey-finds-quarter-of-world-holds-anti-semitic-views-/1913932.html

It will not surprise me if the percentage of those who hate Jews will rise.

Many people hate others, and the Jews tend to be of the more hated groups.  But that is not how people are to live.

Notice something that God had Moses record:

8 You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.  (Leviticus 19:18)

But it is not just Jews that are hated or will be in the future.  Throughout history, true Christians have sometimes been called “Jews” and have been subject to persecution supposedly directed towards Jews.  True Christians also had to suffer through the so-called Inquisition, which utilized torture against those that had Church of God beliefs.

Notice some statements from the antisemite John Chrysostom, Orthodox Bishop of Constantinople:

But do not be surprised that I called the Jews pitiable. They really are pitiable and miserable (John Chrysostom. Homily Against the Jews I:II:1. Preached at Antioch, Syria in the Fall of 387 AD. Medieval Sourcebook: Saint John Chrysostom (c.347-407) : Eight Homilies Against the Jews. Fordham University. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html ).

So the godlessness of the Jews and the pagans is on a par. But the Jews practice a deceit which is more dangerous (I:VI:4).

Do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old? (I:VI:7).

Since it is against the Jews that I wish to draw up my battle line, let me extend my instruction further. Let me show that, by fasting now, the Jews dishonor the law and trample underfoot God’s commands because they are always doing everything contrary to his decrees. When God wished them to fast, they got fat and flabby (VI:IV:2).

Indeed, the fasting of the Jews, which is more disgraceful than any drunkenness, is over and gone (VIII:I:5).

But the facts are that the Holy Days were kept by Jesus, the New Testament Church, and those faithful to their teachings. And the other fact is that no where in the Bible do we see hatred against the Jews. Jesus taught we were to love our neighbor (and most the of “neighbors” He was then talking to were Jewish).

Notice some statements from the antisemite  Martin Luther, a Protestant Reformer:

My heart is fuller of these thoughts than my tongue can tell. I have come to the conclusion that the Jews will always curse and blaspheme God as all the prophets have predicted. He who neither reads nor understands this, as yet knows no theology, in my opinion. And so I presume the men of Cologne cannot understand the Scripture, because it is necessary that such things take place to fulfill prophecy. If they are trying to stop the Jews blaspheming, they are working to prove the Bible and God liars (“Martin Luther’s to George Spalatin,” from Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporan, Letters, trans. by P. Smith (1913), Vol. 1, pp. 28-29).

Furthermore he wrote,

I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that those miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews and who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them…They are so blind and stupid that they see neither the words found in Genesis 17 nor the whole of Scripture, which mightily and explicitly condemns this lie…They are real liars and bloodhounds who have not only continually perverted and falsified all of Scripture with their mendacious glosses from the beginning until the present day. Their heart’s most ardent sighing and yearning and hoping is set on the day on which they can deal with us Gentiles as they did with the Gentiles in Persia at the time of Esther…The worse a Jew is, the more arrogant he is, solely because he is a Jew — that is, a person descended from Abraham’s seed, circumcised, and under the law of Moses. David and other pious Jews were not as conceited as the present-day, incorrigible Jews…I wanted to present this to us Germans so that we might see what rascals the blind Jews are and how powerfully the truth of God in our midst stands with us and against them (Medieval Sourcebook: Martin Luther (1483-1546): On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543)

Martin Luther advised his followers,

…to burn down Jewish schools and synagogues, and to throw pitch and sulphur into the flames; to destroy their homes; to confiscate their ready money in gold and silver; to take from them their sacred books, even the whole Bible; and if that did not help matters, to hunt them of the country like mad dogs (Luther’s Works, vol. Xx, pp. 2230-2632 as quoted in Stoddard JL. Rebuilding a Lost Faith, 1922, p.99).

Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch (Martin Luther (1483-1546): On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 as quoted from Luther’s Works, Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). pp 268­293).

It perhaps show be pointed out that sometimes those in the true Church of God have been considered to be secretly Jews by some in Greco-Roman faiths:

In the Middle Ages, the Popes and the Councils were successful in destroying the Jewish revolutionary movements which appeared within Christianity in the form of false teaching and which were introduced by those who were Christians in appearance but Jews in secret. The latter then recruited upright and good Christians for the arising heretical movement by persuading the latter in a crafty way.

The secret Jews organised and controlled in secret manner the movements, which were the creative and driving force of wicked false teachings, such as those of the Iconoclasts, the Cathars, the Patarines, the Albigensians, the Hussites, the Alumbrados and others. (Pinay, Maurice. The Plot Against the Church, Part Four Chapter One. Translated from the German and Spanish editions of the same work. 1962)

The above book is still recommended by and for many Catholics (though some others distance themselves from it).  Hence, some of the Greco-Romans have considered some of whom we in the Continuing Church of God include in our tracing of our spiritual ancestors (like some of the Cathars and Albigenses) to have been a secret Jewish group that only professed Christ.

Is it any wonder that since leaders of the Greco-Roman religions have been antisemitic, that many people still are today?

Here are some Christian beliefs that the Greco-Romans have considered to be “Jewish” that its agents have persecuted Church of God believers for:

• Keeping Passover on the 14th
• Refusing to eat unclean meat
• Would work on Sunday
• Keeping the Sabbath
• Keeping the Holy Days of Leviticus 23
• Rejecting trinitariansim
• Rejecting idols
• Rejecting Roman sacraments
• Objecting to the dress of the Roman ministry
• Teaching the millennium

Jesus Himself foretold of persecution for true Christians and that they would be subject to massive hatred:

9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.  10 And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.  (Matthew 24:9-10)

11 But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand, or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.  12 Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.  13 And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end shall be saved.  (Mark 13:11-13)

16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.  17 And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake.  (Luke 21:16-17)

18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.  19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.  20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.  21 But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.  (John 15:18-22)

Antisemitism and hatred are wrong.  There was a poem that said something like:

They first came for the Jews, but as I was not a Jew, I paid no attention,

Then they came from one group then another, then lastly they came for me.

Those in the true Church of God have always been the side being persecuted and has never been on the side of the persecutors. And this will be true again in the future. Racial hatred is wrong.  People should not be antisemitic.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2014 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Church History, Prophecy, Religious News.

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