Romans
3:1-20
What About the Jews?
Page 2
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 who 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".]
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.
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 holy his 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."
'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.]
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