Sid: I don’t know a better way for you to be red hot for the Messiah than for you come to our Days of Elijah Celebration but unfortunately it’s already happened but we have the 2 hour video and 2 Jewish men that are red-hot for the Messiah myself and Dr. Michael Brown. Here I want you to hear the continuation of Dr. Michael Brown’s message which is really the sad history of what is called “Christian” anti-Semitism and the word should not go together but wait until you hear about Martin Luther.
Dr. Michael Brown: You say but Mike let’s be honest a lot of the church was hardly the church at all and I mean it was so apostate, it was so filled with dead tradition thank God for the reformation, thank God that people came around and said “The Bible alone is our guide, the Bible alone is our source of truth; in fact the name we know best is Martin Luther.” This man risked everything, this man of incredible courage forehead of steel took down a church of his day and took on its culture, his society of his day and went against it because of scriptural conviction an extraordinary man.
In 1523 he wrote a book that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. He looked around and he saw the way that Jews were treated Martin Luther said “If I’d been a Jew” and it was very insulting He said “I saw course blockheads like that running the church, bishops and popes just railing on them he said “I’d rather be a pig than become a Christian.” He said “Look we need to reach out to these Jewish people we’re just their younger brothers; I mean after all their the blood brothers of the Messiah and we’re just the younger ones that have been taken in and Jesus was born a Jew and perhaps if we reach out with sensitivity we can win some of them.”
Twenty years later 1543 Martin Luther was older he was sick he had seen Jewish writings blaspheming Jesus and various other things provoked him he wrote some very very ugly things. This man whose writings were so powerful the John and Charles Wesley were both born again listening to parts of his commentaries being read. The light went on and they got saved. This man who stood against dead tradition and said “The just shall live by faith” this man turned vehemently against the Jewish people. He wrote a little book called concerning the Jews and their lives it was only one of several that was publications that he wrote against the Jews. Then it’s so painful and striking as you can still get that book in neo-Nazi catalogs today. Adolph Hitler considered Luther a genius, one historian called Martin Luther “The John the Baptist of Adolph Hitler.” The man that prepared the way for the holocaust Martin Luther! You just can’t point out there and say it wasn’t one of us, this was the one who came to the revelation from scripture that’s something that we all hold to today.
Luther gave the princes in Germany counsel as to how to deal with the Jews. Listen to what he said, first he said “A Jew or a Jewish heart is as hard of stone and iron and cannot be moved by any means and some they are the devils children damned to hell.” Although some of them derive the crazy notion from the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans that all Jews must be converted this is not so St. Paul meant something quite different.”
So what do you do with the Jews then Mr. Luther? How do we deal with them?
“Verily he says “A hopeless, wicked, venomous thing is the existence of these Jews who for 1400 years have been and still are “Our pest, torment, and misfortune.”
No Christian next to the devil has no enemy more cruel, more vale then a true Jew.”
And this is what he wrote and this is council:
- Their synagogues or churches should be set on fire. And whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it. And this is thought to be done for the honor of God and Christianity.
- Their homes should be broken down and destroyed for they perpetrate the same things in it that they do in the synagogues. For this reason they ought to be put under one roof or a stable like gypsies.
- They should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmud’s which idolatry lies cursing and blasphemy are taught.
- Their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more.
And then he went on with his counsel. As you’ll find on my volume on “Answering Jewish Rejection to Jesus” most of his followers in his day did not like his teaching on this. They liked his earlier teaching out to the Jewish people. But at just the right time Satan has these seeds planted Hitler and the Nazis pull out the sermons of Krystal Nacht. Great Christian God hates the Jews and they pull out the sermons of Luther. Listen to me this is recent history; most historians date the beginning of the holocaust to what is called Krystal Nacht, the night of broken glass. What happened at that time? What was done, what was the first thing that they did they set the synagogues on fire. They broke down Jewish homes, smashed Jewish homes smashed the windows that’s why it’s called the night of broken glass. And do you know when they launched it? Do you know what day they picked in November to launch this? The Birthday of Martin Luther.
Listen to what one leading German churchman said at that time. He applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day. November 10th 1938 on Luther’s Birthday the synagogues are burning in Germany. He said “The German people ought to heed these words of the greatest anti-Semite of his time the warner of his people against the Jews. When one of the leading Nazi war criminals was put on trail he said “If Martin Luther was here he’d be on trial as well.”
How in the world could this happen? You know during the Holocaust there were churches that required Jews that were in their midst Jewish believers to wear the yellow arm band the Star of David identifying them as Jews and then they were turned over the authorities. See in the Middle Ages they after the crusades there was the inquisition and then one of the major rules of the inquisition was that some Jews under pressure outwardly converted but continued to live as Jews secretly and the inquisition had to weed them out. It went on for 100’s of years in different parts of the world.
Sid was just telling me about a book about the Mexican Inquisition where people are searching hunting everywhere to see there is any Jewish blood, any Jewish practice, any Jewish custom in the church at all it had to be weeded out. Where in the world does that come from?
Scholars have shown that every single act of the Nazis every act of discrimination and bringing Jews together in ghettos everything up to extermination in the concentration camps every single decree, every act, every single discriminatory thing done against the Jews had a precedent in church history they were only doing what the church had previously done just all together.
And then one of the great German Christian scholars of the day you go to any seminary, you go to any scholarly pastors library and he’s got these guys books this theological dictionary of the New Testament on his shelf. He wrote in favor of Jews being put out of Germany as second class citizens to roam and suffer. He thought that extermination was a good idea but it really wouldn’t work. Books were written in that day to prove that Jesus was not Jewish by Christian leaders.
Now today I’ve got quotes in “Our Hands are Stained With Blood” from Christian teachers some of who you will see on TBN militantly denouncing modern Israel and saying “No connection exists between modern Israel and the Israel of the Bible; we’ve got no business supporting them and when we support them we are hurting our witness to the Muslim world.” How in the world is that?
These leading Evangelicals that I mentioned to you before from leading Institutions are urging President Bush to modify his policy toward Israel. How is it? How is it that every single nation in the world establishes this is our capitol and everyone recognizes it with one exception only. Jerusalem.
How is it that there is only one city in the world right now that is the center of world controversy?
How is it that Zachariah 12 says that “In the end all nations are going to come up against Jerusalem?” Why just one city? Why is this whole battle over the Jew, why this murderous, demonic spirit? I’ll tell you it entered the church many hypocritical believers, but it even affected true believers and it affects true believers in this day, there’s a misunderstanding; it says “God is finished with Israel; God has replaced Israel.” And even though there are people who love the Jewish people who teach this it opens the door for things like the Holocaust.
And I want to tell you seriously and honestly it blesses my heart it has since I was first saved to see believers who love Israel and love the Jewish people but it’s going to have to go beyond a sentimental attachment. It’s got to go beyond “Wasn’t it so nice to hear the Hebrew quoted, oh I love that dance, I love that music because it may cost your life to save the Jew in the future.
Sid: Sobering words by Dr. Michael Brown from the Days of Elijah Celebration.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth