hen I look in the sky, any vision of God I might have is clouded over by the smoke spewed out of Nazi ovens. Any time I think that maybe God exists, that possibility is consumed by the same flames that consumed the tender flesh of trainloads of Jewish children. Where was God when those crying children were torn from their mothers’ arms? Where was this Jesus as they were hurled into pits of fire? Where was the Messiah when Jewish babies’ bones were crushed under black SS boots? If the Messiah were ever going to come, He should have showed up at Auschwitz. He didn’t come then, so who needs him now? For me, God, even the idea of God, is the final victim of the Holocaust.”

The Clifford Goldstein Story, page 59

Like a jewel fallen on the forest floor, resplendent in its glory, yet tucked away amidst the shadows, nestled snugly in Daniel chapter 9 lies a most stupendous prophecy. It’s focus? The long expected Messiah. Specifically, the year He would first come to earth. Some tip-toe around this prophecy, others pretend it’s not there, some say it is unfathomable – but it’s there. Part of the reason most Jews won’t accept it is because of the way the so-called followers of this Messiah have treated them for almost 2,000 years. To the Jewish mind, tragically, among the horrors attributed to Christianity is the Holocaust. My first experience with this was in an elevator of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. There on the elevator door was framed a statement not too complimentary of the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, whom, up to that point, I'd unquestioningly adored.

For a thousand years prior to Luther, and with the Church’s clear sanction, millions of Jews scattered across Europe had to endure varying degrees of anti-Semitism, everything from the loss of their property to mass expulsions and the incredible sadism of the Inquisition. Among the charges leveled against the sons of Jacob? Deicide – i.e., killing the Son of God. In his book, Constantine’s Sword, Catholic scholar James Carroll has done yeoman’s work in chronicling this sordid history. The fount from which Hitler’s hatred sprung, its legacy is carved in stone, remembered in song and forever etched in the psyche, not only of those who survived the Final Solution, but of Jews everywhere, whose vow, justifiably, is “never again.” Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau – who dare deny? Mengele, Eichmann, Himmler – who can forget? To ensure we never forget, there on the majestic cupola of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem, the world’s largest Holocaust Memorial, on open display for the world to see, are the names, photographs and biographies of thousands slaughtered in what one has called, “the central tragedy of Western civilization.”

Bottom line: Church bred and Church sponsored anti-Semitism composed a significant part of the environment in which Luther was raised. If he did indeed write the book attributed to him, the only answer to this enigma, I believe, is the sentiment expressed on page 143 of The (New, Illustrated) Great Controversy. There Luther states: "I feel more and more every day how difficult it is to lay aside the scruples which one has imbibed in childhood.” On November 9th and 10th, 1938, the German master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, and the Nazis, would use Luther’s birthday as the day for inaugurating a reign of terror that left 1,000 synagogues destroyed, thousands of Jewish businesses plundered and 25,000 – 30,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps. It would go down in history as the night of broken glass, or Kristallnacht, and would be a faint precursor of the horrors of the Holocaust yet to come under Hitler.

Friend, I’d like to shatter the myth that Christianity had anything to do with this and prove to the Jewish people and the world that both the Inquisition and the Holocaust (or Shoah, as it should properly be called) were not Christianity at work at all. A study of the books of Daniel & The Revelation make this task not as difficult as it may seem. Why bother? Because as I’ve said, the biggest impediment to the Jews accepting their Messiah is not theology, but the false concept they have of Christianity. Tragically, as permanently as the brand of a hot iron is burned into a cow’s flesh, so permanently have the memories of the Inquisition and the ghettoes and the Holocaust been burned into the Jewish psyche … as the fruit of Christianity.

For better or for worse, I take this personally. That my Saviour, Jesus Christ, should be associated in the Jewish mind with the likes of Hitler, Goebbels and Barbie – this is a master-stroke of the devil himself and must be undone. This horrible caricature must be removed before the Jews, en masse, will give Christianity a second look. It must be removed to pave the way for their acceptance of passages like: (i) Psalm 22 and (ii) Isaiah 53, passages that foretold the suffering of the Messiah, and (iii) Daniel 9:24-27, verses that predicted the year of Messiah’s first Advent. This false impression of Christians as inquisitors, i.e., as people who tortured them, enforced baptism upon them, herded them into ghettoes and slaughtered them at will, must be removed. Above all, the horrors of the Holocaust as a Christian pogrom – this caricature has to be undone. The only way to do it is for Christians themselves to repudiate the so-called Christian hand that was behind both Inquisition and Holocaust.

The dots dismantling this caricature are in the public domain. I’d like to connect them in a documentary. To do it, we’ll need the help of all who, like me, take this smear on the face of Christ, personally. Our Donate Online page awaits you.