Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. If you’re a new listener to our program, we’re going through Dave Hunt’s book, A Cup of Trembling: Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy. And Dave, I know we have a tendency to repeat ourselves, but we never know who’d going to tune in from time to time. This book by Dave is out of print. The topic of the book, theme of the book, is about Jerusalem, about Israel, not just what’s going on today, but the book lays out the historic foundation for what we see happening in the Middle East with regard to Israel, with regard to Jerusalem, and the Jews.
Dave: And the prophetic background and foundation.
Tom: Right. We are currently in chapter 10 of the book. The title of that chapter is “The Final Solution.” But Dave, I want to intro that by going back to the last few paragraphs of chapter 9 because I think you put in capsule form here…well, it’s really an intro, or a segue, into chapter 10, which as I said is titled, “The Final Solution.” I’m going to read a few things and maybe you can comment on them.
You write: “Anti-Semitism is clearly too universal and enduring throughout history to have its source in any human agency. The effort to destroy the descendants of Isaac and Jacob has been consistently pursued for thousands of years. That time period is so far beyond the lifespan of any human being that no mortal could be behind it.”
Dave: That’s exactly right, Tom. And I think it’s very clear. As the Bible foretold—and this was all laid out in prophecy in detail, anti-Semitism we’re talking about, of course—are the Jews such horrible people that they should be hated everywhere? In every society. In every culture. In every time period in history, as you just read. And it’s so universal, and it’s so enduring—how do we explain it? Has the whole human race conspired? No they had never all gotten together. It is satanic. Now maybe that sounds extreme, but there is no way you can get around it. This is satanic. Why do we say that? Why would Satan be so obsessed with destroying the Jews? We talked about it in the past—for two reasons: Because the Messiah was to come through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, an Jacob—if he could destroy the Jews, no Messiah! He has won his battle with God. Secondly, because God has tied His integrity to Israel. He’s called “the God of Israel” 203 times. He’s made promises—promises of a full restoration to these people that he would preserve them in spite of all the anti-Semitism. He would bring them back into their land, the Messiah would return to reign over them. No Jews left on this earth—no Second Coming. And God has been proven to be a liar.
So obviously, Satan must destroy these people. And a major instrument of Satan today—and I will not apologize for saying it—is Islam. And let me quote once again—we’ve quoted Muhammad in the past—Muhammad said, “The last day will not come until the Muslims confront the Jews and the Muslims destroy them, and in that day, Allah will give a voice to the rocks and trees, and they will cry out, Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me! Come and kill him!”
So the very purpose of Islam—and “It cannot reach the last day, when the good deeds are weighed against the bad,” is to destroy the Jews. They must all be destroyed.
Tom: Dave, chapter 10, however, which we’re going to get into, deals with Europe and Europe’s preparation for the Holocaust, which happened during World War II. But what you’re saying here, and I think this is an important point, many people look back upon the Holocaust and say, “Well, it was just the work of one madman.” And yet, you point out in this chapter there were tremendous signs available for anyone—a history—the roots of anti-Semitism preceded Hitler, and…but nobody took heed to that. And as we began to see these things developing right up until the very time of Adolph Hitler, no one was warned. And even after his regime had begun to perpetrate this horror, still people looked the other way.
So, in effect, talking about Islam, or bringing that up, is anybody taking heed out there?
Dave: Tom, as you know, it goes all the way back to the Catholic Church. There were more than 100 anti-Semitic documents up until that time, and it has often been said that Hitler could not have done what he did without centuries of preparation, as you mentioned, by the Catholic Church. But the Muslims for 1,300 years had been doing the same thing in Islamic countries. The Catholic Church put the Jews in ghettos, made them wear an identifying badge, or hat. Islam did the same thing. Jews were slaughtered throughout the Muslim world for centuries.
And then as you were pointing out, Hitler even laid it out in spades in Mein Kampf. He said what was going to happen. He said when war breaks out it would be the destruction of the Jewish race. But, as you mentioned, nobody heeded this.
Tom: And for the reasons that you present here, because it was already…there was already a bias, there was already a prejudice, there was already a development of that in the hearts and minds of the Europeans—not just the Germans but throughout Europe…
Dave: Exactly…
Tom: And the U.S. doesn’t get off squeaky clean in this as well.
Dave: Indeed they don’t.
Tom: So Dave, let me just quote again, beginning with chapter 10, you write: “That this greatest act of genocide in human history resulted from the efficient execution of a carefully laid plan by perhaps the best educated and most culturally advanced civilization the world had seen to that date raises the level of repugnance beyond one’s capacity for feeling.” In other words, you really can’t lay it on this madman, this German Fuerher, and his troops.
Dave: He couldn’t have imposed it upon Germany by himself. There…it was amazing, and it was shocking, it was horrifying, how eagerly cities, villages, took upon this Judenfrei—Jew-free—character that…of course, Hitler made the laws, and his Brownshirts helped to carry it out, but there was not an uprising by the German people. There was no defense of the Jews. In fact there was anti-Semitism—it had been in Russia, it was in Poland, it was throughout Europe.
Tom: Right, so he just methodically set a structure—he orchestrated this, but he had the players to work with. Not just his own troops or, certainly he imposed laws, but the laws were accepted and…
Dave: Exactly…
Tom: …but only few rebelled against it.
Dave: There were some, and there were heroes. We don’t want to forget them. But as a whole, Germany went along with this. And, in fact, they were encouraged by the Arab world. In fact, the Arabs were hoping the Muslims—Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, for example, who was Hitler’s close friend, Himmler’s friend—they were hoping that Hitler would take over North Africa, and that in the process, they would wipe out all the Jews in so-called Palestine. That was their intention.
Tom: Dave, you mentioned the Catholic Church, and with regard to the roots of much of this. But if my memory serves me well, Martin Luther also played a large part in this.
Dave: Yes, he did. In 1542 he wrote a pamphlet titled Against the Jews and Their Lies. It was actually filled with lies about Jews. And it advocated tearing out their tongues, burning down their synagogues, and so forth. But that was a carryover from his Catholicism. He was an Augustinian monk. And although there was a Reformation, and we thank God that Luther stood up against the pope in many aspects, yet he carried much of it over into the Reformation, and the Protestant reformers continued n some of Roman Catholicism, as did Calvin, and so forth. Infant baptism, for example—baptismal regeneration—still practiced by the so-called Reform churches today, and many other things.
Tom: Church state, certainly, situations …
Dave: Exactly. The church and the state were working together, and the state enforced the doctrines of the church, and today in Europe you have the state church still in existence.
Tom: Dave, as I go through this chapter, I think of some of the details that you present. It isn’t just a matter of “Oh, I didn’t know that, or I didn’t know that.” I think, as you point out, a lot of this information needs to be presented—and this is why I appreciate…one reason I appreciate the book—but also is why we’re talking about this. This information needs to prick the hearts of our listeners here, with regard to what could take place down the line, especially with regard to what you said about Islam.
Dave: Well, Tom, as you know, anti-Semitism is sweeping the world today. It’s on our university campuses. And it was in the textbooks in Germany. They began to change it. A blue-eyed Aryan youth, praising the wholesome lifestyle of the New Order, and so forth Contrasted with these clean-cut faces were the caricatured likenesses of the hated Jew—dark visaged, scowling, morally depraved, shrewd, calculating. The national textbooks, beginning with the lowest grades taught the schoolchildren the “proper attitude” toward the Jew.
Here’s a typical page in a primary school textbook: In contrast to the proud, blond Aryan picture there, “who can work and fight,” with an ugly, dark Jew described as “the greatest scoundrel in the whole Reich.” And the instruction to the young minds was “trust no fox and no Jew.” I mean this went on and on.
And, Tom, today we have it in Muslim schools; we have it in the Palestinian Authority textbooks; we have it in Syria; we have it in Egypt; certainly in Saudi Arabia, and in Muslim academies in the United States, where no map shows the existence of Israel; and these academies, like the mosques in the United States, are supported with billions by Saudi Arabia.
Tom: Dave, going back to Europe, many think, “Oh, this whole anti-Semitism thing—it was Germany and it was Hitler,” and so on. But I want to read a quote here that you have from Martin Gilbert, who really gives us some information about the background which made the Holocaust possible. He writes: “Even in the nineteenth century, when Jews were allowed growing participation in national life, no decade passed without Jews in one European state or another being accused of murdering Christian children in order to use their blood in the baking of Passover bread. The “blood libel,” coming as it did with outbursts of popular violence against Jews, reflected deep prejudices, which no amount of modernity or liberal education seemed able to overcome. Jew hatred, with its 2,000-year-old history, could arise both as a spontaneous outburst of popular instincts and as a deliberately fanned instrument of scapegoat politics.”
He talks about the Ukrainian town of Proskurov: “Seventeen hundred Jews were murdered on February 15, 1919, by followers of the Ukrainian nationalist leader, Simon Petlura, and by the end of the year, Petlura’s gangs had killed at least 60,000 Jews.” In 1919!
Dave: Mm-hmm. Well, you had had 6,000 Jews killed in Fez, Morocco, back in the 1600s by the Muslims, and, Tom, it just goes back to what you began the program with: the universality and the continuity of this all over the world and down through history. There is some other power than human imagination and hatred behind this. And of course, those who oppose Israel oppose God because God has laid out His plans for Israel. He’s promised to bless them.
And Tom, we could have peace in the Middle East very quickly if the Muslims—and if Israel itself, because they don’t believe this either—if the United Nations, European Union, United States, would say, “Okay, let’s accept what the Bible says. Let’s go by what God has said.” You would have instant peace. Of course, peace comes into the heart when we accept what the Bible says about sin and our need of redemption and that God came to this earth as a man through the virgin birth, paid the penalty for our sins. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there will never be peace on this earth until men are at peace with God—they can never be at peace with one another until they are at peace with God.
And, Tom, it really astounds me that there are many evangelical Christians, very sound when it comes to the gospel and the doctrines of Christianity, but when it comes to what God said about Israel, they will not accept it. And they say, “The church has replaced Israel. Israel has no more significance. Those people over there aren’t real Jews. And the fact that they are back there doesn’t mean anything.”
But it does, prophetically. It is a fulfillment of prophecy, and this is one of the major things we’ve pointed out in this book. It’s subtitled “Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy.”
Tom: Dave, the point you’re making—there are people that should know better, and even sometimes we think, Well, this couldn’t happen in a highly educated society. People just know better! They wouldn’t stoop to this. This is a thing of barbarians, and so on. But, Dave, here’s some things that you point out in your book, which gives you an idea of at what level this took place.
Dave, on April 7, 1933, when Hitler really put his program in, that is, the Aryan ideal, certain laws were passed with the encouragement of the people. Nobody rebelled against this or objected to it—well, that is, very few. But “In Frankfurt, on the day of this first ‘Aryan law,’ German Jewish teachers were forbidden to teach in the universities, German Jewish actors to perform on the stage, and German Jewish musicians to play in concerts….On April 13…at Berlin University, notices appeared… ‘Our most dangerous opponent is the Jew….’ Expulsion of the Jews from the universities was rapid and total [including even Nobel prize winners]. Albert Einstein was forced into exile. Germany had responded positively to the first step, and Hitler’s diabolical plan was assured of success.”
This is not Brownshirts in the streets. That’s my point.
Dave: It’s horrifying to contemplate, Tom, and we need to remember it. We need to be reminded of it, and we could just throw in many other examples: the ocean liner St Louis, 1,100 escapees—I mean, these people were trying to get out of Nazi Germany. They saw what was coming. And they went to every port in South, Central, North America, including American ports. They were turned away at every one, although 700 of them actually had valid entry permits for the United States—they were just not quite up to that date. It was a few months in advance of this. We sent them back to Hitler’s ovens.
Even worse, we’ve probably mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. Hitler had not invaded Hungary until 1944, after his defeat on the Russian front. There were still 500,000 Hungarian Jews, untouched. And Hitler needed money. The Nazis offered to sell them to the Allies for $2 apiece. For $1 million, you could have rescued 500,000 Hungarian Jews from the ovens! By God’s grace, Wallenberg, with false identity papers and so forth, rescued 100,000. Incredible. Then he was swallowed up—we don’t know what ever happened to him—in Russia. But 400,000 went to the ovens.
Britain, who had the mandate—they were administering the so-called Palestinian territories, and they had been told by the League of Nations, the whole world, to bring Jews in. Instead they let Arabs in, and they kept the Jews out. And Britain said, “There is no room in Palestine for these Hungarian Jews.” And they turned them away. And they turned away, later, Holocaust survivors inside of the Promised Land, driven back by the British Navy. And I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: You could count the demise of the British Empire “upon which the sun never sank; Britannia rule the waves,” you could count its demise from the time they betrayed the Jews, because God said, Genesis:12:3And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
See All...: “I will curse those who curse you….” And woe to the United States when we really turn against Israel, which almost seems inevitable. The state department of the United States has been opposed to Israel, there have been secret workings behind the scenes…because the Arabs have the oil.
So, anti-Semitism is not dead. Satan is still pursuing his program, and he still hopes to wipe them out, which would prevent the Second Coming.
Tom: Dave, again, you say this is—and it’s really clear—this is beyond human agency. This is demonic. And all you have to do is look at some of the things that took place, not just…I know the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah writes), but when you begin to see some of these acts, they’re irrational and demonic. For example, the Nazi party chief, Walther Buch, explained, “Those who murdered Jews could not be punished because they were simply carrying out orders. Those who raped Jews, however, were ‘expelled from the party and turned over to civil courts’ not for rape but for having ‘violated the Nuremburg racial laws, which forbade sexual intercourse between Gentiles and Jews.” The Aryan myth, here.
But—unbelievable!
Dave: Tom, it’s worse than we can even begin to describe on this program. God said, “I’ll bless those that bless you.” These are God’s chosen people. They have sinned. So have we. This is God’s grace—His mercy. It is extended to us as well. Let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and let us pray for the Arabs and the Muslims as well, and seek to bring the gospel to them.