A Coming Time of Martyrdom

Many don't grasp the fact that true Christianity is deeply rooted in the writings of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. The last generation of Christians will not escape the same burdens that the Jews have had to bear for centuries.

by John Ross Schroeder

During June arsonists desecrated two more synagogues in the north of London. It's rather hard to believe that more than 100 British synagogues have been attacked in the last four years. Yet this has happened in the green and pleasant land which, since the 17th century, has had a long history of basic tolerance toward the Jewish community.

As Jewish author Simon S. Montefiore observed in The New Statesman: "11 September and Iraq have sparked the return of a medieval anti-Semitism" (June 28, 2004). In many countries the Jews in general are now falsely seen as a unified and dangerous political cabal, hatching all manner of conspiracies against the Palestinians in particular and mankind in general. Some are ludicrous in the extreme, but still readily believed by all too many gullible people.

A long history of persecution

In the wake of a wave of anti-Semitic attacks involving looting and murder, Russian Jew Menachem Ussishkin lamented the long history of Jewish misfortunes before Allied statesmen at the Paris Peace Conference on Feb. 27, 1919, following World War I (1914-1918).

Speaking in Hebrew, he said: "Nowhere have we found rest for our weary spirit nor for our aching feet. Persecution, expulsion, cruel riots, unbroken distress—such have been our lot during all these generations in all of the countries of the world, and in these very days—when the wielders of the world's destiny have proclaimed the liberation of the nations, the equality of the nations and the self-determination of every separate nation—Russian Jewry, which I represent here, is undergoing fresh torrents of murder and rioting, the like of which were never known even in the Middle Ages" (quoted by historian Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History, 1999, p. 41).

The Bible records accounts of anti-Semitism. Remember the book of Esther? Haman plotted to kill all Jews, old and young, throughout the kingdom of Ahasuerus (Esther 3:6-13). Haman even managed to obtain the king's signature on his decree of destruction, but God intervened and prevented it through the heroic efforts of Queen Esther and her guardian, Mordecai.

Read the full article at www.wnponline.org/wnp/wnp0407/martyrdom.htm

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