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Romans 3:1-20
What About the Jews?
Page
2
Continuation
of Cecil Roth’s “A History Of The Jews, From Earliest
Time Through The Six Day War”
There were, indeed, a couple of brief, ignoble interludes before the
curtain finally fell. The same mercenary
considerations which had prompted the expulsion of the Jews soon made it
advisable to encourage their resettlement. Accordingly, in 1315, Philip the Fair's brother, Louis X, issued an
edict permitting them to return to the country for a period of twelve
years. The few who cared to avail themselves of
this hazardous opportunity were entirely insufficient, whether in number or in
intellectual calibre, to reestablish the great
traditions of their fathers. Almost
immediately after, they had to undergo a period of tribulation barely rivaled
even in the tragic record of the Jewish Middle Ages. In 1320, a Crusading movement sprang up
spontaneously amongst the shepherds of southern France, the so-called Pastoureaux. Few,
if any, ultimately embarked for the East, but all seized the opportunity of
striking a blow for the religion of Jesus nearer to home. A wave of massacres of almost unprecedented
horror swept through the country, community after community being
annihilated. [Now in the 1940's, and
more recently in the 1980-1990s we've seen the "ethnic cleansing"
which has taken place in Jugoslavia, the murder of
hundreds of thousands, the annihilation of whole communities. So plug that understanding into what has been
written here.] In the following year, a
similar wave of feeling, diverted this time into a purely ludicrous channel,
brought about a recurrence. A report was
circulated widely that the Jews and lepers, brother-outcasts, had been
poisoning the wells by arrangement with the infidel kings of Tunis and Granada
[Spain]. This ridiculous pretext was
eagerly followed up. Massacres took
place in many cities. An enormous
indemnity was levied on the communities of the whole realm. Finally, contrary to the terms of the
agreement of only seven years before, the new king, Charles IV, expelled the
Jews from his dominions without notice.
A period of thirty-seven
years elapsed before the experiment of toleration was tried again. However, in 1359, after the financial crisis
which followed the disastrous defeat at Poitiers, a few financiers accepted an
invitation to resettle in the country. The Crown protected them, until a charge was brought against the Jews of
Paris of having persuaded one of their number to return to Judaism after
accepting baptism. For this heinous
crime, the principal members of the community were arrested and flogged, and it
was determined to banish the whole of the wretched remnant. On September 17th, 1394, the mad
Charles VI signed the fatal order. A few
months were granted them to sell their property and settle their debts, a
process not made any more easy because of the
subsequent order, by which their Christian debtors were absolved from paying
their dues. Ultimately, when the limit
was expired, they were escorted to the frontier by the royal provosts.
Some of the exiles sought
refuge in the south, at Lyons, where they were allowed by the local authorities
to remain until 1420; in the County of Provence, where they were not finally
expelled until the beginning of the sixteenth century; or in the possessions of
the Holy See about Avignon and Carpentras, where
Papal policy of tolerance allowed them to remain permanently, in enjoyment of
toleration if of nothing else. Others
crossed into Italy, where near Asti, they established a little group of
congregations which continued until our own day to preserve the ancient French
rite of prayers. But the majority, in
all probability, made their way over the Pyrenees or across the Rhine, where
further scenes in the age-long tragedy had meanwhile been enacted.
From Germany, owing to its
peculiar political conditions, there was at no time any general expulsion, as
in England or in France. It figures
instead in history as the classical land of Jewish martyrdom, where banishment
was employed only locally and sporadically to complete the work of
massacre. The famous Golden Bull of the
Emperor Charles IV (1356) alienated all rights in the Jews, as in other sources
of revenue, in the territories of the seven greater potentates who were members
of the Electoral College. Minor rulers,
bishops, and even free cities, claimed similar prerogatives, subject only to a
very remote Imperial control. In
consequence, when the Jews were driven out of one district, there was generally
another willing to receive them, in consideration of some immediate monetary
advantage. Thus, though thee were few parts of the country which did not embark on
a policy of exclusion at one period or another, there was no time, from the
year 1000 onward (if not in Roman times), when Germany was without any Jewish
population.
On the other hand, there
was barely any intermission in the constant sequence of massacre. The example set in the first Crusade was
followed with fatal regularity. When
external occasion was wanting, the blood libel, or a charge of the desecration
of the Host, was always at hand to serve as pretext. So long as the central authority retained any
strength, the Jews enjoyed a certain degree of protection. On its decay, they were at the mercy of every
wave of prejudice, superstition, dissatisfaction, or violence. In 1298, in consequence of a charge of ritual
murder at Rottingen, a whole series of exterminatory
attacks, inspired by a noble named Rindfleisch, swept
through Franconia, Bavaria, and Austria. In 1336, a similar outbreak took place in Alsace, Suabia,
and Franconia at the hands of a mob frankly calling themselves Judenschlager (literally, Jew-slayer, or slayers of the
Jews), led by two nobles nicknamed Armleder, from a
strip of leather which they wore round their arms. [This sounds like it is right out of World
War II Germany, armbands, slaughter of the Jews-it all matches. Hitler wasn't doing anything different, he
just went a little further and was through Eichmann a little more efficient.] The
names of over one hundred places where massacres occurred at this period were
subsequently remembered. Yet this was
the merest episode in the history of German Jewry.
It was in 1348 and the
following year that the fury reached its height. The Black Death was devastating Europe,
sweeping away everywhere over one-third or more of the population. It was the greatest scourge of its kind in
history. No natural explanation could be
found. Responsibility for it, as for any
other mysterious visitation, was automatically laid on the Jews. The ridiculousness of the charge should have
been apparent even to fourteenth century credulity, for the plague raged
virulently even in those places, such as England, where the Christian
population was absolutely unadulterated, and elsewhere the Jews suffered with
the rest, though their hygienic manner of life and their superior medical
knowledge may have reduced their mortality. It was when the outbreak had reach Savoy that the charges became
properly formulated in all their grotesque horror. At Chillon, a
certain Jew "confessed" under torture, that an elaborate plot had
been evolved in the south of France by certain of his co-religionists, who had
concocted a poison out of spiders, frogs, lizards, human flesh, the hearts of
Christians, and consecrated Hosts. The
powder made from this infernal brew had been distributed amongst the various
communities, to be deposited in the wells from which Christians drew their
water. To this the terrible contagion
which was sweeping Europe was due!
This ridiculous farrago of
nonsense was sufficient to seal the fate of the community of Chillon, the whole of which was put to death with a
refinement of horror. Hence the tale
spread like wildfire throughout Switzerland, along the Rhine, and even into
Austria and Poland. There followed in
its train the most terrible series of massacres that had ever been known even
in the long history of Jewish martyrdom. Sixty large communities, and one hundred and fifty small, were utterly
exterminated. This was the climax of
disaster for German Jewry, just as the great expulsions had been for England
and France. Never again did they recover
their previous prosperity or their numerical weight.
When the storm had died
down, a large number of the cities thought better of the vows made in the heat
of the moment never to harbor Jews again in their midst, and summoned them back
again to supply the local financial requirements. The period which followed was one of
comparative quiescence, if only for lack of victims. King Wenceslaus (1378-1400), however,
initiated the shortsighted policy of the periodical cancellation of the whole
or part of the debts due to the Jews in return for some immediate monetary
payment from the debtors. It was
therefore impossible for the Jews to recover the position which their
predecessors had held, and the hegemony of German Jewry passed, with the
refugees, to the East.
There followed an
interlude when the Jews of Austria, who in 1244 had received a model charter
which guaranteed their rights and safety, enjoyed a certain degree of
relative prosperity, succeeded as usual
by intellectual activity and the emergence of a few scholars of note. This was ended by the revival of religious
passions following the rise in Bohemia of the Hussite movement, an anticipation
of the Protestantism which was to make its appearance one hundred years
later. The Hussites did not show themselves by any means well-disposed towards the Jews. Nevertheless, the latter were suspected of
complicity in the movement, and were made to suffer on that account. Every one of the successive expeditions sent
to champion the cause of orthodoxy began its work, like the Crusaders of two
centuries before, by an attack upon the various Judengasse, and massacre once again
succeeded massacre. In 1420, a
trumped-up accusation of ritual murder and Host desecration resulted in the
extermination of the community of Vienna, a disaster long remembered as the Wiener Geserah [Geserah in Hebrew means "evil
decree"].
For some years after,
conditions continued precarious. The
General Council of the Catholic Church which met as Basle from 1431 to 1433, in
order to remedy the deplorable condition of ecclesiastical affairs, solemnly
re-enacted all past anti-Jewish legislation down to its least detail. Not long after, a fiery and eloquent, but
strangely fanatical Franciscan friar name John of Capistrano, almost the
embodiment of the anti-Hussite reaction, was commissioned to see that the
policy of the Council was carried into effect. Everywhere, from Sicily northward, anti-Jewish excesses followed in his
train. At Breslau, in 1453, an alleged
desecration of the Host led to a mock trial under his personal auspices. Forty-one martyrs were burned to death before
his lodgings in the Salzring. All other Jews were stripped of their goods and banished,
their children under seven years of age having previously been taken away to be
brought up in the Christian faith. The example was faithfully
followed in the rest of the province. Thus the Papal emissary passed on, attended by a constant procession of
outrages, burnings, and massacres, toward Poland." [And that is just a tiny portion of Jewish
"Diaspora" history, taken from Cecil Roth's "A History of the
Jews, From The Earliest Times Through the Six Day
War".] Is it any wonder why the
Messianic Jews who have accepted Christ refuse to be called “Christians”? They know their past, the history of their
people.
God Has Not Forsaken The Jews
Yeah, it was prophecied that they would be
scattered. But God has not forsaken
them. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 1, “So it shall become, when all of these
things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I set before you,
and you call them to mind in all the nations where the Lord your God has
banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your
heart and soul according to all that I commanded you today, you and your sons,
then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity and will have compassion
on you, and will gather you again from all the people where the Lord your God
has scattered you. If your outcasts are
at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and
from there he will bring you back. And
the Lord your God will bring you into the land where your fathers possessed,
and you shall possess it, and he will prosper you and multiply you more than
your fathers. Moreover the Lord your
God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the
Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may
live. And the Lord your God will
inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you and
persecute you”(Deuteronomy 30:1-7) It's interesting, we've already
seen this in our lifetimes beginning to be fulfilled as God has brought the
nation of Israel back into their land to possess it. [i.e. this prophecy
Moses was giving was specifically to the Israelites, the Jews] And as you watch the politics today, you'd
better understand that God has promised them that land. It's their land. They were booted out of their land, some
other renegade tribes came in, and have been squatting on their land that they
were kicked out of. But it belongs to
Israel. It doesn't belong to the Palestinians. It belongs to Israel. And if we're going to believe the Word of
God, we've got to believe that. It
doesn't mean we're behind everything that the Israeli government does, because
they're certainly not listening to God [at this moment in time, history]. But we need to understand that that nation is
there in fulfillment of prophecy. God
said, "I'll scatter you!" But
he says in the last days, especially in Ezekiel 36, 37, and 39 "I'll draw
you back into your land, you'll plant those vineyards, you'll plant those fruit
trees, you'll make the desert blossom, I'll build the nation in one
day"--which the Lord did, they became a nation in a day. They're in the land in fulfillment of
prophecy. [Now for some denominations,
the way they interpret prophecy, Ezekiel 36 is thought to have already occurred
as of 1948 and the founding of the Israeli government. Others, pointing to the
verses in Ezekiel 36 which talk about the Holy Spirit being given to the whole
nation, being poured out on them, say this prophecy is yet to be fulfilled at
the 2nd coming of Jesus, Yeshua, the
Messiah. But Pastor J. Mark Martin is
correct in saying that has begun to be fulfilled. Another prophecy, which does specifically
prophecy about the event that occurred in 1948 is found in Zephaniah
2:7 “And the coast [talking of the
Promised Land] shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed
thereupon.” Timing of this prophecy can be
established as the “end times” by vs.
3 in the same chapter, which states: “Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth,
which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be
ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger.” That's a direct reference to the tribulation
and verses 1-3 are a direct call by Yahweh, who became Jesus Christ, for the
greater Body of Christ to unite, just before the coming of the tribulation,
WWIII [see https://unityinchrist.com/prophets/Zephaniah/Zephaniah1.htm and scroll to chapter 2, verses 1-3] Verse 7 thus must be in context with verse
3. In 1945, August of that year, the
world entered into the end times in the sense that man could now wipe himself
off the face of the earth with nuclear weapons. I.e. the prophecies of
global-threatening annihilation could now be brought about by mankind, whereas
they couldn't before this date in history. Then three short years after the events that occurred on two Japanese
cities, Israel was born as a nation, i.e. “Judah returned to the coast”
officially in 1948. It all fits.] "And God will turn their hearts toward him" During that last three and a half years of
this earth's history before the glorious coming of Christ, there will be a
terrible time of tribulation for Israel, but during that time their hearts will
be turned back to God, and their hearts will be turned toward Messiah. I mean, we saw the way that God intervened in
this last war. And as I read my Bible, I
see Ezekiel 38 and 39, as the former Soviet Union countries gather together
with Islamic forces and attack Israel, God is going to rise up and defend
them. [Some denominations say this event
described in Ezekiel 38 & 39 occur at the 2nd coming, while
others say it occurs a few years after his 2nd coming, when Israel
is dwelling safely under Yeshua's protection, as he
rules from Jerusalem. It really makes no
difference, as the outcome for the poor hapless souls who will attempt to
attack Israel is the same, swift death brought on by the Lord and his holy army.] Do you know that Iran now has nuclear
weapons? It's not a matter of will they,
they have them now. And it's only a
matter of time that Iran, with the other confederation of nations, mentioned in
Ezekiel 38 & 39, that they'll enter in, attacking Israel, and we're going
to see God defend, I mean, if we're here. I'm not so sure we're going to see it, the rapture might occur before
then, but I mean, we're close, gang, that return of the Lord is at hand [in a
historic way of viewing time]. “When you see these things, lift
up your heads and rejoice, knowing that your redemption draws nigh.”
The Jews Will Come To Recognize The Stone That
The Builders Rejected, Their Messiah
‘But didn't Jesus say, Mark, didn't Jesus say that the kingdom has been
taken away from the Jews?’ Yeah,
we have nothing to hide. Look at Matthew
21. That's a good question. Now I want you to get the whole context of
[Matthew] 21, OK. Matthew 21, the first
eleven verses, this is the triumphal entry, and remember Jesus was entering
Jerusalem as Messiah, in fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy there
in Daniel 9. Entering into Jerusalem on
the exact day that Daniel predicted he would enter Jerusalem. But he's rejected. He weeps, 'Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, we've
slain the prophets, if only you'd known this your day!' he says. But instead, he predicts that Jerusalem would
be destroyed by invading armies, and scattered because they've rejected their
Messiah. Then he tells, he curses the
fig tree, again, symbolic of this nation that has a lot of leaves, a lot of
potential, but no fruit. The fruit is
repentance. No fruit, no
repentance. Then he tells two parables
about a son who is rejected and destroyed by enemies. And then he quotes the verse, Psalm 118:22-23, “the stone,” (verse 42 of Matthew 21), “The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief
cornerstone from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” Now
this verse had lot of history behind it. The tradition is that when they were building Solomon's temple, that as
they were building the temple, all the stones had to be pre-cut, there was not
to be the sound of a chisel or hammer on the Holy Mount. It was all prefabricated, these huge stones,
and put into place. One stone was
hoisted up early on, and they tried to find the place for it, it didn't look
right, the timing [of it's placement] wasn't right. So they said, ‘This is a mistake!’ and they rejected the stone and they rolled
it down into the ravine, and forgot about it for a couple of years while they
were building the temple. But then,
before they could dedicate the temple, there was one space, the cornerstone in
fact, was missing. The chief capstone,
cornerstone wasn't there. ‘Well, what happened? How did we make this goof?’ And one
guy remembered, ‘Wait, remember early on? Remember
years ago, this stone was sent to us, it didn't look right to us, we weren't
expecting it then? It didn't fit in
where we thought it should fit, so what did we do? We rejected it.’ And
they went down and did some investigation, and they discovered that was the
stone. They hoisted it back in
place. Now that is exactly what happened
to Israel, Jesus is the stone which the builders rejected. He came to them, you see, but he came at a
time when they weren't expecting him. He
came and didn't fit into their scheme
of how things ought to be. He came and
the builders rejected him, they said ‘Forget
it, you're not our Messiah!’ and
they rejected him and cast him away, threw him into the grave. But later he will come back and they'll
realize ‘This is the missing piece.’ [Zechariah 12:2-9 is about the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ, and
how he will save Jerusalem. In verses 10-14 is described a great fast, a great mourning,
and verse 10 graphically points out why all the Jews left
alive in Israel will mourn and fast. It
states “And I will
pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit
of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have
pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in
bitterness for his firstborn.” All the Jews left alive in
Jerusalem, and by extension the whole Israeli nation, and maybe even around the
world, will recognize Yeshua of Nazareth, Jesus, as
their Messiah. Zechariah 12:10 is living, prophetic proof of that.] This is the one we've been looking for. And Zechariah the prophet says “They will look upon the one they have pierced, and they mourn as one
mourns for an only son, and a spirit of grace and supplication will be poured
out upon them.” And there will be a tremendous revival in Israel. [OT prophecy points out (Ezekiel I believe)
that one third of the Israeli nation survives to the 2nd coming of
Christ. This entire one third will be
mourning and recognizing Jesus as their Messiah. God will then pour out his Holy Spirit upon
them--a whole nation of Jewish believers in one day! Currently, that's over one million people,
folks. This revival has already begun
amongst Messianic Jewish believers in Yeshua, right
now. Be sure to check out the link at
the end of this article titled The Two Branches of the Body of Christ, Jewish
& Gentile. Be sure to read about the
beginning of this miraculous return of the Jews to their Messiah.] [transcript of a
connective expository sermon on Romans 3:1-20(page2), given by Pastor J. Mark
Martin, Calvary Community Church, P.O. Box 39607, Phoenix, Arizona 85069]
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