The Root Cause of Antisemitism (updated)

Podcast on The Messianic Jewish Expositor.

In the previous message about The Promised Land Covenant We just a little bit talked about Replacement Theology.

So, Why are some people against the Jews? We often hear that people are against the Jews because they haven’t been properly educated, so the answer is more education. If that were the case surely the problem would have been cured long ago at least in some locations. But that has not occurred. Antisemitism is found all over the world. No, the cause is much deeper than lack of education. My friends, it has to do with the Messiah. When the Messiah returns certain things are going to happen. bad things for the enemy of our souls, Satan. He will be finished. The Book of Revelation talks about this in detail. Now Yeshua, Jesus, the Messiah is Jewish. He has a very strong connection to the Jewish people and they have a role in His return. Let me tell you something. If Jesus was not Jewish there would be no Jew hatred. If Jesus was Italian we’d be dealing with hatred of Italy and hatred of people descended from Italians both in Italy and in every other country where Italian people and their descendants dwell, instead of Jew hatred because the return of Messiah would be dependent on Italian people. By the way, I don’t know why I chose to use Italian people in this example. Maybe it’s because I care for Italian people and knew many of them growing up in New York and then later on in Boston and in Pittsburgh. In fact without the friendship in college of Joe, an Italian American man who helped me through some tough times I might never have become a doctor. And another Joe, also a close friend and an Italian American, was the minister who performed the ceremony when Suzanne and I got married. But the example would work with any nationality. Jesus however is not any nationality. He is Jewish and came from Israel. Why? I don’t know exactly. It’s what God decided.

But your response to all this, to what I’m telling you, should be “Can you prove this Art? Because that sounds like utter nonsense to me”. I believe that I can prove it. And, if you believe my proof, what does that mean for you, my Jewish brothers and sisters? Is what I am about to tell you going to drive you toward Yeshua, your Messiah, or is it going to drive you away? You see, what I am telling you is absolutely outrageous. I am telling you that anti-Semitism or Jew hatred is an indirect proof that Jesus is the Messiah, because Jesus, Yeshua, is a Jew and when He returns Satan is done for. If the Jewish Nation can be annihilated - not one single Jew remaining alive - then the Messiah will not return. That is what Satan wants of course and he’s been working on it for many centuries! And as the season of Yeshua’s return draws closer Satan is ramping up his efforts much more aggressively.

Does this make sense to you folks? In fact I hope you will soon see that it is the only explanation that makes any sense, any sense at all.

At this point I’d like to talk with you about definition of terms. Technically anti-Semitism means against Semites and Semites are the descendants of Shem, one of Noah’s three sons, and from Shem came not only the Jews but also other descendants of Abraham including Arabs. Anti-Semitism does not normally mean anti-Arab. So a better term would probably be anti-Judaism. But Judaism is the practice of a religion and anti- Semitism describes hostility or hatred of Jewish people whether they practice the religion of Judaism or not. Hitler, for e.g., didn’t care if a Jew practiced Judaism or not. To the Nazi’s a person was a Jew if he or she was a physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and having one Jewish grandparent was enough to count that person Jewish. Such a person was to be eliminated, killed. In fact Hitler’s goal was to eliminate or annihilate the entire Jewish race. And as we shall see there have been others in the past who also wanted to annihilate the Jewish race. So what shall we call hostility toward the Jews with the desire to annihilate them? I believe that we can call those who hate the Jews, Jew Haters and we can call the practice Jew Hatred. And what about those who say they have no problem with the Jews at all, that it’s just Israel they hate? If the Messiah was Italian, these people would say “We love Italian people. We just hate the country of Italy and want to annihilate it”. Now does that make any sense? Of course not. Such people are either badly confused and don’t understand what they’re saying or they are charlatans and deceivers. Israel is a nation not just a land. Israel is made up of the Jewish people, all of the Jewish people, whether they live in the land of Israel or not. That’s how God sees it. If you hate Israel you’re a Jew Hater plain and simple.

Now before we go further, we need to know three things:

FIRST: What is the evidence for Jew Hatred? Is there such a thing? Has Jew Hatred always been around? Is it widespread? Was it around before there was any significant return of Jews to The Promised Land, even before the modern State of Israel was founded in 1948? Didn’t there have to be Jew Hatred in order for the Holocaust to have occurred? Are there people and even governments today that deny that the Holocaust ever occurred? I’m going to do my best to show you that the answers to all of these questions is yes.

SECOND: The second thing we need to know is the reason for Jew Hatred.

THIRD: And the third thing we need to know is this: is there a cure for Jew Hatred? I’ve already said that education alone is not the cure. So, is there a cure?

So, first, what is the evidence for Jew hatred?

I’m going to give you a relatively short answer because I believe that anyone with an open mind can see that antisemitism or Jew Hatred is real. We have many examples in the Bible:

We have Pharoah attempting to kill all male Hebrew children at birth. Exodus 1:15-17

Exodus 1:15–17 TLV

Moreover the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, and said, “When you help the Hebrew women during childbirth, look at the sex. If it’s a son, then kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.” Yet the midwives feared God, so they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the boys live.

We have the attempt of Haman in the Book of Esther attempting to annihilate all Jews.

Esther 3:8–9 NASB

8 Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of all other people, and they do not observe the king’s laws, so it is not in the king’s interest to let them remain.9 “If it is pleasing to the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who carry on the king’s business, to put into the king’s treasuries.”

We have Antiochus Epiphanes in Daniel 8 and in the Book of Maccabees in the Apocrypha attempting to expunge Judaism.

1 Maccabees 1:41–50 NRSV

41 Then the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, 42 and that all should give up their particular customs. 43 All the Gentiles accepted the command of the king. Many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath. 44 And the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the towns of Judah; he directed them to follow customs strange to the land, 45 to forbid burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, to profane sabbaths and festivals, 46 to defile the sanctuary and the priests, 47 to build altars and sacred precincts and shrines for idols, to sacrifice swine and other unclean animals, 48 and to leave their sons uncircumcised. They were to make themselves abominable by everything unclean and profane, 49 so that they would forget the law and change all the ordinances. 50 He added, “And whoever does not obey the command of the king shall die.”

In post Biblical times we have the Spanish Inquisition attempting to annihilate all Jewry by either forcing Jews to give up their religion and all Jewish practices or killing those who would not obey this order.

And we have Hitler’s Final Solution in which Hitler tried to annihilate the Jewish race in Europe and had he succeeded I’m sure he would not have stopped until no Jew would be left on planet earth.

Now I certainly haven’t documented for you every major instance of antisemitism in history; there are many many more that could be mentioned. But rather I’ve selected those instances in which either the annihilation of the Jewish race or the annihilation of the Jewish religion or both was clearly in the mind of the perpetrators and there is a particular reason for this. We’ve already touched on the reason but we need to talk more about it and we’ll do that now.

To see what the root cause of Jew Hatred is we need to look at a particular Bible verse. A very foundational Bible verse. Let me read it to you:

Genesis 3:15 NASB

15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

The Lord, God, is speaking in this verse. He is addressing the Serpent and talking about the consequences of something that had just happened in the Garden of Eden involving our first parents, Adam and Eve. God told Adam that he could eat the fruit of any tree in the Garden except the fruit of The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil. And God warned Adam that if he ate of that fruit he would die, he would surely die, and he would die that very day. This instruction, this dire warning, was given to Adam even before God created Eve. But by extension through Adam, the first man and the head of the human race, this warning was also for Eve. The Serpent through deception tricked Eve and she ate of the forbidden fruit and gave some to Adam and he also ate of it. What happened immediately following this is known as The Fall. The Fall is a profoundly important event that led to catastrophic consequences, both physical and spiritual for each and every one of us, and these consequences began immediately. The biggest consequence was death but it wasn’t the only consequence. Why these consequences? The consequences occurred because sin entered the human race right then. Let me read a verse to you from the New Testament book of Romans.

Romans 5:12 NIV

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

This New Testament verse explains through whom sin entered the world. It was through one man, Adam. The verse also clearly links death to sin and tells us that sin entering this one man brought death to all people because all people sinned. How did that happen? Think of sin as a principle or a fundamental essence. It’s something immutable like a law of nature or a law of physics like the law of gravity. However this principle or law is spiritual, not physical, and it is horribly evil and it is devastating. It entered Adam and although sin is not a gene, if it helps you to understand, you could think of sin as an autosomal dominant gene, a spiritual gene. It entered Adam, the first man, and it entered Eve, the first woman, because of the Fall, and it has been inherited by each and every human ever since.

Among other things the Fall is why we die, why you and I don’t live forever as God originally intended us to do. It’s also responsible for the corruption of our planet. The Fall has had incalculable consequences and it continues to have consequences today. It is profoundly important. BECAUSE OF THE FALL, BECAUSE ADAM AND EVE ATE OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT IN THE GARDEN, SIN ENTERED THE HUMAN RACE. BECAUSE OF THE FALL EVERY SINGLE MAN EVER BORN HAS SIN SPIRITUALLY HARDWIRED INTO HIM AND EVERY SINGLE WOMAN EVER BORN HAS SIN SPIRITUALLY HARDWIRED INTO HER. AND BECAUSE SIN IS THE CAUSE OF DEATH EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US EVENTUALLY DIE. BECAUSE OF THE FALL THE RULERSHIP OF THIS WORLD, IN A CERTAIN LIMITED YET VERY IMPORTANT SENSE, WAS CEDED TO SATAN AND HE BECAME THE god (that’s god with a small g) OF THIS WORLD.

There is a verse in the New Testament that speaks to this:

Romans 6:23 NIV

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Because we all have sin in us, we all eventually die. It is the sin principle in us that causes each one of us to commit sins. But God wants you to know that there is a cure, there is eternal life and freedom from the dominion and rulership of sin in Messiah. I’m going to read that verse once more.

Romans 6:23 NIV

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We are here today to talk about the root cause of Jew Hatred. What about that?

The Fall was involved.

The Fall, through which sin entered every single one of us, was caused by an act so evil and so consequential and so costly that the punishment that God has planned for the main perpetrator, Satan, is to spend eternity in the Lake of Fire, which is Hell. You and I cannot with our finite minds even imagine how horrific this punishment is going to be. It will be a punishment fitted perfectly to the severity of the evil deed committed and fully earned by the main perpetrator. I believe that the prospect of this punishment has the perpetrator of The Fall, Satan, so terrified and so filled with rage and so filled with hatred against God that there is nothing that he will not do in an attempt to avoid this punishment. Satan’s attempt to avoid this punishment is the root cause of Jew Hatred. How does this work? I’m going to tell you. I’m going to read Genesis 3:15 once more. God is speaking to the serpent, but really to Satan who is in the serpent.

Genesis 3:15 NASB

15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

This verse, Genesis 3:15, is the first foreshadowing of a redeemer, the Messiah, who will reverse the curse of the Fall.

Let’s now just focus on the last part of this verse:

He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

Who is bruising whom on the head and who is bruising whom on the heel? Adonai, the LORD is explaining to the Serpent that a Person, One Individual, a Deliverer, a Redeemer is going to bruise or crush the Serpent’s head at some point in the future and that the Serpent will bruise or crush this Redeemer’s heel. This verse only makes sense if the Seed of the woman is singular and not plural and that is how the original Hebrew was written.

Now to show you that the pronouns in the original Hebrew were singular I want to read Genesis 3:14-15 to you in the King James version of the Bible because back in those days (1611) the words use for pronouns were different than they are today. Today, “you” can be second person singular or second person plural. Language was different back then. Here are the verses in the King James Version:

Genesis 3:14–15 (KJV 1900)

14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

The pronouns thou, thy, and thee are all second person singular which is the way it is in the original Hebrew. Now why am I emphasizing this? First, because it is important to understand in order to make proper sense of these two verses. But isn’t this obvious, you might ask? No, Not to everyone! I’m going to read to you these two verses from the Jewish Publication Society Tanach (Old Testament) of 1985:

Genesis 3:14–15 (Tanakh)

14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you did this, More cursed shall you be Than all cattle And all the wild beasts: On your belly shall you crawl And dirt shall you eat All the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your offspring and hers; They shall strike at your head, And you shall strike at their heel.”

Now when you read these two verses from this version, The Tanakh, you can’t possibly see a single redeemer, the Messiah, here. The translation of verse 15 evacuates the verse of its full and proper meaning. It’s important not to miss this. Now is this an attempt on the part of these liberal Jewish translators to write Yeshua, Jesus, out of these verses? It’s possible. The Lord will have to judge. I can tell you that the translation of Genesis 3:15 on the Ultra Orthodox Chabad website does not make this pronoun switch. They have it translated correctly.

But to restate: the Redeemer, the Messiah, Yeshua, the God-Man, one single individual is going to bruise Satan on the head and Satan is going to bruise Messiah on the heel. Now there is a verse in the New Testament that speaks to this very issue. The verse is Galatians 3:16

Galatians 3:16 TLV

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. It doesn’t say, “and to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “and to your seed,” who is the Messiah.

That verse, Galatians 3:16 refers back to Genesis 22:18. Let me read that verse to you.

Genesis 22:18 TLV

In your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed—because you obeyed My voice.”

This Galatians verse is talking about the Messiah and I believe that Genesis 3:15 is saying the very same thing, meaning that the woman’s seed is singular representing one deliverer who is the messiah.

But there is yet another reason why the Redeemer must be an individual. That’s because this Deliverer or Redeemer must fit the picture of a Biblical Kinsman Redeemer as ordained by God. The Kinsman Redeemer, called the Goel in Hebrew, is described in a number of places in the Tanach (the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament) and this Goel is an individual and not a group of people. The best known Kinsman Redeemer in the Old Testament is Boaz who redeemed Ruth, a Gentile woman, who became the great grandmother of King David. To be a Kinsman Redeemer and to Redeem a person or a people, three things are required. The Redeemer must be a blood relative, he must be able to redeem, and he must be willing to redeem. Boaz was a blood relative of Ruth’s late husband. Boaz was able to redeem Ruth; he was rich. And Boaz was willing to redeem Ruth, the wife of Mahlon because he loved her. Let me read you a verse from the Book of Leviticus:

Leviticus 25:47–49 TLV

47 “If an outsider or sojourner with you becomes rich, while your brother beside him has become poor and sells himself to the outsider dwelling among you or to a member of the outsider’s family, 48 after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, 49 or his uncle or his uncle’s son may redeem him, or anyone who is a close relative to him from his family may also redeem him. Or if he has grown rich, he may redeem himself.

This Law of the Kinsman Redeemer is found in numerous places in the Tanach. But I want to share with you a passage in the New Testament where a profound example and application of this Kinsman Redeemer Law is applied to the Redeemer of the entire human race:

Galatians 4:4–5 NASB

4 But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,5 in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

The consequences of The Fall required a Kinsman Redeemer to redeem us. The Jewish Messiah functioned as our Kinsman Redeemer. The Jewish Messiah, Yeshua, in order to redeem us had to be a blood relative. That is why even though He was and is the Son of God and equal to God, he had to be human also so that He could be our blood relative. He had to be without sin in order to be able to redeem us and to do that He had to keep the the Law, the Law of Moses, perfectly which He could only do if He was without sin. The Son of God was without sin. And He had to be willing to redeem us, and He was and is. He willingly laid down His own life as the necessary blood sacrifice for us. Only the sacrifice of His perfect sinless blood could suffice to redeem us all. Let’s look at John 10:

John 10:17–18 TLV

17 “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life, so that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”

Can a Kinsman Redeemer who is Jewish redeem Gentiles? Meaning those of us here now, right here, who were not born Jewish? Absolutely! Ruth was a Gentile who in fact was grafted into the spiritual Olive Tree of Israel. In fact I believe we can even say that Ruth is a type of the Church.

So let’s sum up what we’ve talked about today so far. In the Garden of Eden, a real place, Satan deceived Eve and told her that she could safely eat the fruit of The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil. She and Adam ate of this fruit and in so doing broke the one prohibition or negative commandment that God gave them. What happened then is referred to as The Fall. Sin entered into Adam and Eve. Because sin causes death (sin is the cause of all death) they died spiritually right then and eventually they died physically. God’s original plan was that they would never die but rather have eternal life (and the same for us). Profound consequences for Adam and Eve and for us and for the physical earth that we live on, and for the whole world followed. But God even at this point held out hope for Adam and Eve and their descendants. A Redeemer would come, a Kinsman Redeemer, the Seed of the woman and He would disable Satan and later crush the Serpent’s head. This Messiah would reverse the consequences of the Fall. And the eventual punishment of the main perpetrator of the Fall, Satan, would be profound. He would spend eternity in the Lake of Fire. This certain punishment and the fear of it on Satan’s part would lead to his unending and relentless attempts to engineer the annihilation of the Jewish people because it is through the Jewish people that the Messiah, the One who will crush Satan’s head, would come. That is the root cause of Jew Hatred.

How does that work? For the consequences of The Fall to be reversed the Messiah had to come the first time, 2,000 years ago.

He came and He made Himself an offering for sin in order to redeem us. Israel as a nation did not accept Him at that time, although individual Jewish people have accepted Him and continue to do so. He has to return, to come a second time, to finish the job and to redeem the Nation of Israel. AND He will not return from heaven to planet earth unless the Jewish people as a Nation plead for Him to return to save them. And the Messiah, Yeshua, WON’T RETURN UNLESS SOMETHING VERY SPECIFIC HAPPENS:

Matthew 23:37–39 NASB

37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.38 “Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!39 “For I say to you, from now on you shall not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

In Hebrew it’s Baruch haba b’Shem Adonai. It comes from Psalm 118 in the Tanach, the Hebrew Scriptures.

Psalm 118:26 (TLV)

Baruch haba b’Shem Adonai—

Blessed is He who comes

in the Name of Adonai.

We bless you from the House of Adonai.

So, unless the Jewish people in Jerusalem say Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD, Baruch haba b’Shem Adonai, they won’t see Jesus again. He won’t return. Who would benefit from that? Satan!

Let me read to you a passage from the Old Testament book of the prophet Zechariah that is relevant here. The passage is describing something that is going to happen on a particular day at the end of a period of time referred to by the prophet Jeremiah as The Time of Jacob’s Trouble. It will be an incredibly horrific time. It’s also known as The Great Tribulation.

Zechariah 12:8–10 (NASB)

8 “In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the one who is feeble among them in that day will be like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the angel of the Lord before them.9 “And it will come about in that day that I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a first-born.

God is going to pour out a Spirit of grace and supplication on the Jewish people. They will recognize their Messiah, Yeshua, and they will mourn. They will repent. They will fulfill what Yeshua said in Matthew 23 and will say Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, Baruch haba b’Shem Adonai which was foreshadowed in Psalm 118:26

and what is prophesied in Hosea chapter 5 will likewise be fulfilled:

Hosea 5:14–15 (NASB)

14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, And like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear to pieces and go away, I will carry away, and there will be none to deliver.15 I will go away and return to My place Until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.

These two verses in Hosea are about Yeshua, Jesus. At the end of The Time of Jacob’s Trouble which is The Great Tribulation they will earnestly seek Him and they will accept Him and then He will rescue them. He will redeem them. It’s going to be glorious! But what about the connection to Jew Hatred? If the entire Jewish race is annihilated before this time there will not be one single Jewish person left to look on Him and to mourn and to accept Him, and that has to happen before Messiah will return to rescue the Jewish people and set up His Messianic Kingdom. That is why Satan must annihilate the entire Jewish race. That is the ultimate reason for Jew Hatred. Because when Messiah Yeshua, Jesus, returns Satan’s career is finished and Satan knows that.

Now I need to ask you a very important question. Do you want to have the assurance of eternal life now? I hope your answer is yes. I answered yes 26 years ago and I’ve had the peace that passes all understanding ever since. I’ve had no fear of death ever since. My dear friend, please do not put this decision off. Accept our Messiah, Yeshua, now and be saved. Please don’t wait. You could die tomorrow and if you haven’t accepted Yeshua you will have given up the right to a place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Or, if you don’t die, you could enter The Time of Jacob’s Trouble. Believe me you don’t want to be in that time of great tribulation. Let me read you one more passage today:

John 3:16–18 TLV

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. The one who believes in Him is not condemned; but whoever does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not put his trust in the name of the one and only Ben-Elohim.

What must you do to be saved? Just say a simple prayer something like this one:

Lord Yeshua, I know that you are the Son of God, Ben- Elohim, and that you shed your blood and died for me so that all my sins could be forgiven and so I could spend eternity in heaven with God. I ask you to save me today. Thank you Lord.

As we close, I realize that there is one thing that we have not addressed today: What is the Cure for Antisemitism? I hope to address that with you in the near future.

Please feel free to write to me with you questions or comments at [e-mail]. If you’d like to read a written version of this message you can go to sermons.faithlife.com/ and find it under Arthur Wolinsky.

God bless you my friends. And until the next time this is Art Wolinsky, The Messianic Jewish Expositor signing off.