Christians will often attempt to assert that anti-Semitism is
a product of "godless" skeptics.
They will often portray Adolf Hitler as the poster boy for the
effects of "godlessness" on humanity.
However, the extermination of the Jews which became one of the
policy goals of the Third Reich during World War II was not
something which sprang from the minds of agnostic or atheistic
skeptics.
First, some background on mass killing from the Bible.
The Bible God is a jealous male warrior God:
Psa 24:8
Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD
mighty in battle.
Exo 34:14
Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is
Jealous, is a jealous God.
This Bible God moves various groups around like chess pieces as
part of his divine plan for mankind.
Instilling fear in various populations and destroying them is
routine for this deity
Deut 2:24-25,31-35
Moses continued, "Then the LORD said, `Now cross the Arnon
Gorge! Look, I will help you defeat Sihon the Amorite, king of
Heshbon, and I will give you his land. Attack him and begin to
occupy the land. Beginning today I will make all people
throughout the earth terrified of you. When they hear reports
about you, they will tremble with dread and fear.'
Then the LORD said to me, `Look, I have begun to hand King Sihon
and his land over to you. Begin now to conquer and occupy his
land.' Then King Sihon declared war on us and mobilized his
forces at Jahaz. But the LORD our God handed him over to us, and
we crushed him, his sons, and all his people. We conquered all
his towns and completely destroyed everyone--men, women, and
children. Not a single person was spared. We took all the
livestock as plunder for ourselves, along with anything of value
from the towns we ransacked.
As evidenced by the scripture, the Bible God's plans for the
evolution of humanity often involve the annihilation of any
people deemed unworthy to live.
The Old Testament is filled with these examples of mass genocide
or "final solutions". The Hebrews or Jews practiced
genocide as instructed by the Bible God. Here is another example
where God directs his favorite "chosen" people to
exterminate others.
Deut 7:1-4,10
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering
to possess and drives out before you many nations--the Hittites,
Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and
Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you-
and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you
have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no
treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their
sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn
your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the
LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
But those who hate him he will repay to their face by
destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who
hate him.
This laundry list of "wicked" people who
"hated" God were as the text states, to be destroyed
TOTALLY and shown NO MERCY.
Naturally, since the Bible God says these other cultures were
wicked, that settles the matter.
These wicked people are to be killed.
However, if a skeptic presses in questioning the ethical merits
of such killing, Christians will embark on a wide variety of
apologetics to excuse away these types of killings as being the
righteous judgment of God on "evil" people. They will
declare that these killings were not genocide but were actually
"deportations".
Apologists will also claim that only the hard core
"evil" people died because the rest
"migrated" away from the impending Israelite conquest.
In doing this they employ a wonderful circular apologetic tactic.
Christian apologists simply say that because the people of that
part of the world "heard" about how the God of the
Israelites was the most the supreme deity of the universe, they
all knew that resistance to any Israelite occupation and
aggression would be futile.
From the story about the conquest of Jericho:
Josh 2:10-11(Rahab the prostitute speaking)
We(non-Israelites) have heard how the LORD dried up the water of
the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did
to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the
Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.
When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone's courage
failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven
above and on the earth below.
[Note: There is no historical evidence of Moses or the
Exodus in Egyptian records.]
In other words, the word had spread to infidels that the
Israelite God was the master of the universe and any infidels
that didn't flee or "migrate" out of the targeted
territory could only have been the hard core God haters. The fate
of Jericho is then sealed by the Lord:
Josh 6:17
The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the LORD.
Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house
shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent.
The destruction of Jericho is then completed:
Josh 6:21
They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword
every living thing in it--men and women, young and old, cattle,
sheep and donkeys.
The circular rationalization is now complete. Since the Bible
says that the people whose lands would be taken over by the
Israelites knew that the Israelites had the one true God of
universe on their side, any resistance to God's chosen people
would be futile. Any people who didn't leave the area must have
been hard core God haters and deserved to be killed.
The God of Israel had given these lands as "land
grants" to his chosen people and the former tenets were
expelled as squatters.
In other words, if a group of people come up to your house and
tell you to leave, you had better do it because you've heard that
this group had the one true God on their side.
These are the types of wonderfully squeaky clean rationalizations
that Christian apologists use to explain away the various mass
killings ordered by the Bible God.
In the simplistic universe Christians live in, explaining these
killings can be converted to the following generic formula which
keeps the Bible God "holy".
Christian apologetic doctrine:
The Bible says God is holy and all those people he ordered
destroyed were evil and hated him.
The exterminated "wicked" people got what they deserved
because they "rejected" the one true God of the
universe.
By employing this rationalization, Christians don't have to
justify ANYTHING that the Bible God ordered done. Since
everything the Bible God does is holy by definition, no action
commanded or done by God can ever be questioned as unjust or
morally unsound.
Christian logic is a wonderfully airtight system which makes the
lives of believers easier as they don't have to think or be
bothered reflecting on the actions and instructions of their God.
Given this background, mass killings of various groups can always
be religiously justified by claiming that the targeted group
rejected the one true God.
Despite all the Christian rhetoric about Hitler being a psychotic
"godless" despot, the foundations of his anti-Semitic
views has a source which very few Christians are honest enough to
acknowledge.
The evolution of anti-Semitism which culminated with Hitler's
policy of extermination of the Jews has it's roots the New
Testament and Christianity.
The New Testament lays the blame for the death of Jesus at the
feet of the Jews and portrays them as wicked.
Here's a typical Christian response to this unpleasant fact.
[Christian states:
The Leader of Christianity(Jesus) was a Jew and all of the first
Christians were Jews yet you claim anti-Semitism has its roots in
Christianity. Somebody pick me up off of the floor!]
Unfortunately for this Christian, attempting to laugh off the
problem exposes him as being Biblically ignorant. This Christian
needs to pick up a Bible and actually read it rather than pick
himself up off the floor. The New Testament itself plants the
seeds of anti-Semitism.
Many of the first Christians were hybrid Jews and scorned the
traditional Jewish belief system.
Let's see how the New Testament portrays traditional Jews:
John 5:16,18
So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews
persecuted him.
For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not
only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his
own Father, making himself equal with God.
John 7:1
After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away
from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life.
John 8:44(Jesus speaking)
You(Jews) belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry
out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning,
not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he
lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the
father of lies.
Matt 12:34(Jesus speaking to the Jewish Pharisees)
You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?
For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
1 Thes 2:14-15
For you, brothers, became imitators of God's churches in Judea,
which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own countrymen
the same things those churches suffered from the Jews, who killed
the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They
displease God and are hostile to all men.
Acts 4:10
then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the
name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you(Jews) crucified but
whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you
healed.
Acts 5:30
The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead--whom
you(Jews)had killed by hanging him on a tree.
The above verses portray the Jews as responsible for killing
Jesus and being evil and "sons of the devil".
According to St. Paul, the Jews "displease God and are
hostile to all men".
These verses were tailor made for anyone who wanted to take
action against Jews.
Whether Christians like it or not, the foundation for
anti-Semitism is alive and well in the New Testament.
[Another Christian writes:
And you will see that most mentally disturbed individuals are not
Christians, but rather atheists and agnostics. It is the
Christian community that is the most mentally sound.]
Since idiotic statements like this are so commonly made regarding
Hitler and the extermination of Jews in Europe during World War
II, an examination of these claims is warranted.
Whether or not Hitler was a Christian can be, and has been,
debated back and forth for years. It should be known that the
Vatican recognized Hitler as enough of a Christian to sign an
agreement or Concordat with him in 1933.
Some quotes of Hitler follow:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and
Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in
loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews
for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and
who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a
fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read
through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in
His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the
brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the
world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand
years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever
before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His
blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow
myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for
truth and justice... And if there is anything which could
demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that
daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own
people.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the
will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the
Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Where did Hitler get the idea that Jews were a poison who stood
against God's truth?
Could he have read the New Testament and reached this conclusion?
Were there any others who also reached this conclusion before
Hitler did?
The answer to this last question is a resounding YES.
Another example of the "mentally sound" Christian mind
which is guided by the "Holy Spirit" comes from none
other than the great Christian reformer MARTIN LUTHER who was the
founding father of the Protestant faith and communities.
From the Holy Spirit inspired Luther, in his book "The Jews
and their Lies" regarding proper policy towards Jews, God's
servant Luther states:
"Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a
trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against
this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil
and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:
First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are
able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could
also throw in some hellfire. That would demonstrate to God our
serious resolve and be evidence to all the world that it was in
ignorance that we tolerated such houses, in which the Jews have
reviled God, our dear Creator and Father, and his Son most
shamefully up till now but that we have now given them their due
reward."(end quote)
It was Martin Luther, the great Christian, the cornerstone of the
Protestant faith, who helped set the stage for the policy of
genocide of Jews in WWII by Hitler. Luther's writings were not
unknown to Hitler.
And if Christians attempt to tap dance around this by falling
back on the excuse that Martin Luther wasn't a "true"
Christian, then the whole religious reformation which he spawned
which formed the Protestant faith isn't any more valid than his
inspiration from God concerning the Jews or theology.
If Luther's condemnation of Jews wasn't "inspired" by
God, then it calls into question all his ideas which rabid
Protestant fundamentalist Christians praise as "properly
interpreted" Christian teachings.
Protestants need to crawl back to the Roman Catholic church and
the Pope on their knees begging for forgiveness for following
Luther and breaking away from the church.
Where could Luther have gotten his ideas about the Jews from if
he didn't receive them from Godly inspiration?
Let's follow the ugly trail of holy bread crumbs further back in
history.
Luther could have easily gotten his view on Jews from
"Saint" Paul who stated that Jews who didn't conform to
his teachings were, according to Paul, "liars, evil brutes,
corrupted, detestable, unfit for doing anything good, and must be
silenced."
Paul's vilification of Jews who did not bow down to his gospel
follows:
Titus 1:10-16
For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers,
especially those of the circumcision group(Jews).
They must be silenced, because they are
ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to
teach--and that for the sake of dishonest gain.
Even one of their own prophets has said, "Cretans are always
liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons."
This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that
they will be sound in the faith
and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the commands of
those who reject the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but
to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure.
In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.
They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They
are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.
It's little wonder that Martin Luther vilified the Jews to the
Europeans.
His views are supported directly from God's word as written by
the Holy Spirit inspired Paul.
After all, it was "Saint" Paul who wrote:
2 Tim 3:16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the
man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
And as Paul declared so clearly in Titus 1:10-16, anyone
who didn't agree with his version of God's word and taught
otherwise "must be silenced".
Adolf Hitler was simply acting as God's servant in silencing the
Jews as the great Christians Luther and St. Paul instructed
followers of Christ to do.
In summary, the supporting evidence for the policy of
anti-Semitism as practiced by Hitler can be found in
Christianity. Whenever zealous believers empower themselves by
claiming to do "God's work", the results are
predictable and always the same. The "sheep" will be
separated from the "goats", and the goats eliminated.
There is nothing holy about such a system as it relies on it's
own authority to carry out "divine" justice. By using
nothing more than a book with the words "Holy Bible"
stamped on it, any action can be justified as long as the general
population is convinced of the authority of that book.
That's why it's important to offset some of the constant
Christian hype and spin about how holy their God and beliefs are.
When zealous Christians attempt to paint their brand of theology
as morally superior to all others and proclaim their system to be
the only true path to salvation, keep in mind that their path
leads nowhere when the facts are examined.
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