The Holocaust was not the first atrocity in history, and sadly, according to the prophets, it won’t be the last. The Jewish prophet Zechariah predicted an even more horrible period for my people. About one third of Jewish people in the world were murdered under the Nazis. Zechariah prophesies that two thirds of the Jewish people will be lost in a future tribulation (Zech. 13:8).

Why, God, why? Why the Holocaust?

The Scriptures inform us that there is an enemy of God, HaSatan (Hebrew for "the adversary"). The Adversary is working to defeat and dethrone God (Isaiah 14:12-14), as impotent, futile, and laughable such a task may seem.

God cannot lie (Titus 1:2). The Adversary’s plan is to prove God wrong by nullifying God’s promises made to the Jewish people through the Jewish Messiah. God has promised that the Jewish people would always survive as a people (Jeremiah 31:35-37), and would also be the conduit of the Messiah, the savior of the world.

1. Stop the Jews from living! The Psalms describe this most obvious strategy:

Simply put: if you destroy the Jews then you can prove God is a liar. For if God can’t keep His people as He promised, then no one can trust any of His promises. Additionally, if Satan can destroy Israel as a people, he proves himself to be greater than God!

Anti-Semitism is anti-God. This accounts for the Pharaohs, Hamans, Herods and Hitlers throughout the centuries. That they are tools of Satan in no way excuses their culpability: we all are responsible for our actions, regardless of who or what influences us in those actions.

2. Stop the Jews from living as Jews! The second, more subtle (though potentially just as effective) strategy is to make Jewish identity repugnant, or at least irrelevant, to Jewish people themselves. In this way, Jewish people would not want to remain Jewish, and Israel would cease to be an identifiable nation before God.

In the book of Esther, we read of Mordecai’s bad advice, followed by Esther: "Don’t reveal you’re a Jew" (Esther 2:10). Only when she abandoned that bad advice and revealed her Jewish identity was catastrophe averted.

This same bad advice has been relived by many of our people in every generation; in an attempt to fit into the Hellenistic culture of early second century BCE, some Jews actually had their circumcision surgically reversed! Even today, being Jewish is often so poorly understood that many make no attempt to maintain their heritage.

The shame of it all is that there are some Jewish believers in Yeshua* who do not maintain their Jewish identity. In some cases they didn’t value their Jewishness before they came to faith in Yeshua. For others, it’s because they are told that as followers of Yeshua they are no longer Jews. In any case, by not identifying as Jews they play right into Satan’s plan: to stop the Jewish people from existing as an identifiable people. In so doing, we not only make our faith repulsive to the general Jewish community, we work against the very testimony of God’s faithfulness to the recognizable existence of the Jewish people (Jeremiah 31:36)!

Though he was an apostle to the Gentiles, Paul understood what was at stake: the very faithfulness of God. Would the Good News of Yeshua that Paul proclaimed to Gentiles mean that God had rejected His people? His answer:

Every Jewish believer who states "I am an Israelite" or "I am a Jew" (Acts 22:3)—as opposed to "I was a Jew" or "I am a former Jew"—confirms that God keeps His people. God is faithful, and Yeshua is the hope of Israel, not its destroyer!

God promised that the Redeemer of mankind and the Destroyer of Satan would be the Messiah of Israel (Gen. 3:15).

To prevent his own demise Satan would need to stop this Redeemer from coming and fulfilling His mission. We see how this dovetails with his previous ploy, since the Redeemer was promised to come through the Jewish people (Genesis 12:3; 22:18; 49:10; Isa.11:10; 49:5-7).

On this point, it seems, Satan has failed, since Messiah has come. But if Satan failed, then why is there still anti-Semitism today after Messiah’s resurrection?

Just as David could not rule over all of Israel and remove the adversaries until the people accepted him as king (2 Samuel 5:1-5), Yeshua will not return to reign on the Davidic throne and remove the adversary, Satan, until the Jewish people acknowledge Him as King.

Peter reiterates this point when he proclaims to the Jewish people:

The return of Yeshua will "restore everything" and bring "the times of refreshing." Messiah’s reign on earth is tied to the Jewish people "repenting and returning to God."

Therefore, Satan is desperately trying to avoid his own demise by preventing the return of Messiah. He is doing all he can do to destroy Israel and the Jewish people now; at the same time he is trying to make faith in Yeshua so alien and repugnant that no self-respecting Jew, let alone the nation, would ever desire to repent and turn to Yeshua!

Congregations of believers in Yeshua, Jewish or Gentile, who do not endeavor to bring the Good News to the Jewish people, play into this satanic plan to prevent Israel from recognizing their Messiah. Hence, not only must we remember the Holocaust and "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" (Psalm 122:6), but believers should do all they can to bring the Good News of Messiah to the Jewish people around the world.