God Hides a Thing. We must find it. No. 1 -- Why Have Jews Been so Viciously Persecuted?

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Proverbs 25:1).

It appears frequently God hides things in plain view and only by a most patient seeking out of a thing is the matter revealed. 

Perhaps one of the saddest truths of all history is that the Jews did not recognize their Messiah when He came to them.  But an accompanying mystery is that God allowed their eyes to be blinded to the truth in order that gentiles could be grafted into the Abrahamic Covenant (of salvation).  The Apostle Paul quoted Isaiah saying, “God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, to this very day” (Romans 11:8).  Next he quoted David, saying “Let their table become a snare and a trap a stumbling block and a recompense to them let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back always” (Romans 11:9).

There is a further mystery accompanying this blindness, a mystery afflicting most Jews and virtually all gentiles for at least two thousand years.  This mystery can be reduced to a question:  why is it hell seems bent on destruction of the Jew?  Hell is mentioned as the culprit because it’s larger than any local petty bias.  The scope of attempts to destroy the Jew, earlier the people of Israel, goes all the way back to the Pharaoh who put in place a gradual plan of genocide by commanding destruction of all male babies—Moses escaped this to grow up, be “called”  of God, and lead the Israelites out of this trap.

Prior to this incident Hell worked along a far more insidious plan enticing Jews into idolatry, provoking the wrath of their very God against them.  After the Bablyonian captivity the Jews would not be suckered into this trap again.

From the time of Christ forward, we’re talking nearly 2,000 years,  Hell has enlisted the aid of a surprising foe as the most vicious and consistent enemy of the Jews, the church.  Dr. Michael L. Brown details the shameful details in his book, Our Hands are Stained with Blood.  When the church wasn’t acting against the Jews, various governments took up the slack, other times the two were in total collusion.  Now that the church has backed off, Muslims have stepped forward to continue the assault—full bore, from May 15, 1948 to the present moment.

Now somewhere amidst all the carnage and shameful acts perpetrated against the Jew, someone needs to ask “Why?”  “Why is it for 2,000 years, discounting the previous 1,500 years, has there been a concerted effort to destroy the Children of Abraham?  The answer is critical for both Jew and Christian.  In the next installment I will attempt an answer.