Passive and active Arrogance. The reason for Anti-Semitism and the Holocausts. Revelation 17:16-17

GRACE BIBLE CHURCH
The Tree of Life is a weekly teaching summary.
For the week ending 06/01/03

Passive and Active Arrogance, The Reason for Anti-Semitism and the Holocausts
Revelation 17:16-17

Revelation 12:4 And his tail swept away a third of the angels of heaven, and [God] threw them to the earth. And the dragon [Satan] stood before the woman [the virgin Mary] who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he [Satan] might devour [destroy] her child [the humanity of Christ].

This "birth" refers to the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, well as the rebirth of Israel, both of which Satan opposed in every way he could. Satan will try anything to destroy the Jews. The Greek verb for "stood" is"histemi," which means to stand against, in the sense of antagonism. The dragon appeared before the woman, and he appeared with a very hostile intent. He stood before her to attack.

This all began back in the book of Deuteronomy in DEU 4:19-27; DEU 28:63-68 where God told Israel that if she continued to rebel against Him, she would suffer persecution more than any other nation in human history.

DEU 28:68 "And the Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I spoke to you, 'You will never see it again!' And there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer."

This is not God directly doing this to the Jews, but simply removing the hedge of protection and allowing Satan and the  kingdom of darkness to attack the Jews. Therefore, in Jer 29:17-19, because she rejected the Word of God, Israel was told that she would be a plague to people wherever she went: "Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'Behold, I am sending upon them the sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like split?open figs that cannot be eaten due to rottenness. And I will pursue them with the sword, with famine and with pestilence; and I will make them a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and a horror, and a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them, because they have not listened to My words,' declares the Lord, 'which I sent to them again and again by My servants the prophets; but you did not listen,' declares the Lord."

History records for us such events as the following:
1. The Crusaders massacred the Israelites under the pretext that the Israelites were "god killers"; from May to July 1096, 12,000 Jews were killed on the Rhine land.
2. On November 1, 1290 all Jews were exiled from England under penalty of hanging. They were not readmitted until 370 years later.
3. From spring to autumn in the year 1298, 100,000 Jews were killed in Franconia, Bavaria, and Austria.
4. In September 1306, 100,000 Jews were exiled from France under the threat of death.
5. In 1348 the Jews were accused of causing the black plague, and a million of them were killed.
6. On August 2, 1492, the Inquisition drove 300,000 Jews out of Spain under the threat of death.
7. From 1648-1658 about 400,000 Polish Jews were killed.
8. From 1941-1945, under the German dictator Adolph Hitler, over 6,000,000 European Jews were butchered in concentration camps.

For centuries the Jews could not even return to their homeland, ISA 5:6, "'And I will lay it waste; it will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.'"

DEU 11:17 "The anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain, and the ground will not yield its fruit; and you will perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you."

ZEC 7:14 "But I scattered them with a storm wind among all the nations whom they have not known. thus the land is desolated behind them, so that no one went back and forth, for they made the pleasant land desolate."

The main reason for the Jewish holocausts is simply their own arrogance in their rejection of their Messiah and His protection. God's desire is to protect His people; however, even though He will ultimately protect them, His justice will not violate their free will. The majority of Israel today is filled with arrogance against the truth (scar tissue of the soul and hardness of the heart). While many individual Jews have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, as a nation they have entered into passive arrogance. One of the many natural laws that the Lord Jesus Christ has put into operation to control human history is that passive arrogance demands the function of active arrogance against it.

Passive arrogance is generally associated with freedom and prosperity for three or four generations. Freedom and prosperity originate from a large pivot of believers and the principles of establishment. Passive arrogance accepts this freedom and prosperity totally apart from human virtue and a sense of responsibility. These people usually think that life owes them a living, and they are very ungrateful. Passive arrogance assumes one has a right to all those blessings and prosperity without any adherence to the laws of divine establishment. Therefore, because Jesus Christ controls history, no nation or race ever experiences a holocaust without following the historical trends that lead to such an event. Negative volition, apostasy, and passive arrogance or indifference create the vacuum that attracts the persecution of active arrogance, which brings holocaust and historical disaster.

Evil demands evil and cruelty demands cruelty, and therefore passive arrogance demands the function of active arrogance against it. Active arrogance punishes passive arrogance until it too becomes passive through prosperity. Therefore, a nation can be the instrument of punishment through active arrogance today, and tomorrow become the victim of holocaust because of passive arrogance and taking prosperity for granted. The group or nation that attacks and punishes is generally very cruel; it takes cruelty to punish cruelty, and evil to punish evil. This has always been the pattern of history and therefore part of the historical trend, which explains the Jewish holocausts and the rise and fall of nations and empires.

In the book of Revelation, Satan in his active arrogance, frustrated by his fall from heaven in the middle of the Tribulation, is the instrument of punishment of the Jews during the second half of the Tribulation.

REV 17:16 And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the harlot and will make her desolate and naked, and will eat her flesh and will burn her up with fire.

The "ten horns" and the "beast" represent political and historical degeneracy in the Tribulation period. The harlot (prostitute) represents religious degeneracy.

Historical degeneracy persecutes religious degeneracy in every generation. If the nation of Israel during the Church-age reaches the point of religious degeneracy, then a Gentile nation will be used to punish them. This is a part of God's plan to preserve the nation of Israel so that they will not self-destruct. Verse 17 answers the question of who has ordained political degeneracy to persecute religious degeneracy.

REV 17:17 For God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be fulfilled.

A holocaust takes place in the second half of the Tribulation, when the beast (political or historical degeneracy) destroys the prostitute (religious degeneracy). Political degeneracy of the revived Roman empire persecutes and destroys religious degeneracy of the Tribulation (the prostitute), and many Jews will die at this time. Through cosmic involvement these Jews have entered into a state of passive arrogance, which always attracts active arrogance (i.e., persecution). The anti-Semitic group is characterized by evil and active arrogance, which causes them to attack passive arrogance from a position of evil. This does not justify anti-Semitism, but explains it in terms of historical trends.

The Jews who will be the victims of Satan in the middle of the Tribulation are those apostate Jews who have developed passive arrogance through their residence and function in the cosmic system. They will be outside the wall of fire and the protection of God. There is a wall of fire and divine protection given to the Jews, ZEC 2:5, "'For I,' declares the Lord, 'will be a wall of fire around her, and I will be the glory in her midst.'" However, they can place themselves outside of this wall of fire and protection through their own volitional decisions.

JER 2:19 "Your own wickedness will correct you, and your apostasies will reprove you; know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God, and the dread of Me is not in you, declares the Lord God of hosts."

However, the Jews are God's chosen race, and He will always be faithful to them.

ZEC 2:8 For thus says the LORD of hosts, "After glory He has sent me against the nations which plunder you, for he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye."

MAL 3:17 "They [born-again Jews] are His jewels."

ISA 62:3 "They [true Israel] are His crown of glory."

Through their own free will, the Jews can make certain decisions to experientially place themselves in demonic danger, especially getting involved with religion. Religion produces arrogance and ignorance, as well as cruelty and persecution, which nullifies tolerance and substitutes tyranny. Religion suppresses freedom, and it does not allow others to make mistakes, but persecutes them vigorously, as does the religion of Islam.

Revelation 12:4">REV 12:4 And the dragon stood [who had stood] before the woman [Israel and the virgin Mary]...

The woman in past history was the Virgin Mary, but the woman in the Tribulation is Israel. Again, the verb "histemi" ("stood") means to "stand against" in antagonism. The perfect tense of this verb means that this action is still going on. The active voice means that Satan produces the action as the author of anti?Semitism. The indicative mood of the verb means that it is a reality of the intensified anti?Semitism prior to Second Advent.

Revelation 12:4">REV 12:4 And the dragon stood before the woman...

The Greek noun translated "woman" in this verse is "gunaikos," and it refers to Israel. Satan sought to destroy Israel at the point of the virgin birth, because while the Jews did not understand it as a sign, Satan did. Once again, just before the Second Advent, Satan will go after the woman, Israel.

Here we see Satan as the loser of the angelic conflict, because of the virgin birth, and because Christ went to the Cross, and because He won His strategic victory in bearing our sins in His own body on the Cross. There is no way any creature can defeat the Creator. Satan has challenged the Creator before in the First Advent. He will challenge the Creator in the middle of the Tribulation. These are the two greatest challenges he has ever raised.

Satan understands the Davidic covenant, and he has two chances to hinder its fulfillment, to prevent the Son of David from sitting on His throne in the Millennium. At his first chance, in the First Advent, he failed. One chance has been lost, the chance to stop the virgin birth, and after the virgin birth to hinder Christ from going to the Cross. At his second chance in the Tribulation, he will fail again. Satan thinks he can destroy all Israel so that there will be no Jew alive on the earth to receive the unconditional promises, such as the Davidic covenant, and no Jews to form a restored client nation for the Millennium, and then he will have won his point. Satan is especially sensitive to the Davidic covenant and its significance. Therefore, Satan attempts to frustrate the incarnation; he has always understood the consequences of the Davidic covenant.

With this in mind, when Adam was given a wonderful promise concerning the Messiah, that Christ would come as the seed of the woman, Satan understood this, and therefore he motivated Cain to murder Able, in Genesis chapter 4. Later came the demonic genetic attack on the human race in GEN 6:1-13, which were attacks on Adam's seed. When Satan discovered that it was no longer Adam's seed in general, because Adam's seed was now very extensive and God had narrowed it down to Abraham's seed, he then focused his attack on Abraham's seed. This is why Sarah wound up in the Harem of an Egyptian king, in GEN 12:10-20, but this attack failed. Then Pharaoh issued a command to kill the entire male line of Israel in Exo 1:10-16, but that also failed. The Pharaoh then attempted to annihilate Israel at the Red Sea, Exo 14, but once again Satan's attacks were unsuccessful.

All of these were attacks made on Abraham's seed. Satan was so successful at one time in the Old Testament that it came down to just one seed of David left. There was an attack, of course, in the dilemma of Joseph when he discovered that Mary was pregnant, and later there was Herod's command to exterminate the royal line in MAT 2:13-18. Satan's relentless attacks never cease.

For a more detailed study, order tapes IA11-272 to IA11-274.