Unwilling witnesses - persecution
The Jews have frequently been persecuted possibly because they seem to be different from other people.
There are many clear predictions that the Jews would suffer terrible persecution. Here is one example:
“And I will bring a sword against you
… I will send pestilence among you; and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy”. Leviticus 26 v 25
The persecution of the Jews by Adolf Hitler in the Second World War was one of the worst periods of persecution that the Jews have endured down the ages.
Martin Gilbert says in the preface to his Atlas of Jewish History:
“… I was surprised, depressed, and to some extent overwhelmed by the perpetual and irrational violence which pursued the Jews in every century and to almost every corner of the globe. If therefore, persecution, expulsion, torture, humiliation and mass murder haunt these pages, it is because they also haunt the Jewish story.”
Terrible suffering like this was predicted thousands of years earlier in the book of Deuteronomy: 28 v 65
“The Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul. Your life shall hang in doubt before you; you shall fear day and night, and have no assurance of life. In the morning you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were evening!’ And at evening you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were morning!’ because of the fear which terrifies your heart, and because of the sight which your eyes see.”
The terrible accuracy of these words is illustrated by the corpses discovered on the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.
But Jewish persecution, sometimes called anti-Semitism still continues today. In March 2008 a report entitled “Contemporary global anti Semitism” was presented to the United States Congress. The “Overview” on page 3 has the following comments:
“Over the last decade, U.S. embassies and consulates have reported an upsurge in anti- Semitism.”
In June 2012, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights issued a Working paper on Antisemitism which notes‘… "that antisemitism remains a problem for Jewish populations in particular and for civil society as a whole across the EU".
In the United Kingdom, an All-Party Parliamentary report into anti-Semitism produced a "feedback and response" document in May 2015. One of its contributors stated:
"At a time of rising anti-Semitism in the UK, the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Against Anti-Semitism report is timely and raises important areas for action to eradicate this awful form of hatred.
We can see that although persecution on the scale of the Holocaust no longer happens, some persecution still takes place just as the Bible predicted.
The Bible predicts another aspect of this animosity:
“And you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the Lord will drive you.” Deuteronomy 28 v 37
The Cassell’s English Dictionary tells us that colloquially, a “Jew” is “an extortionate tradesman” and “to Jew” means “to get the better of in a bargain”. This is yet another interesting fulfillment of a Bible prediction.
The Bible correctly foretold the terrible persecution the Jews would suffer
The challenge
We may be tempted to say “Well, yes, but these predictions were all lucky guesses. Anyone who knew anything about history could have foretold the future and got it right some of the time”
But using knowledge of history, no one would have come up with these predictions about the Jews at. No other people have suffered such terrible persecution for so long a period by so many different nations.
We should also bear in mind that anyone who could regularly predict unexpected events could make a small fortune at the bookmakers or on the stock market. The same person would also be in great demand by weather forecasters and politicians! Regularly predicting the unusual is something we just can’t do.
So we are presented with a challenge:
There is no way we can accurately predict unlikely future events. But the God of the Bible has done so with 100% accuracy.
Copyright - There are too many images on this site to list copyright details. Most are copyright and should not be copied. Copyright details for specific images can be requested using the contact page.