Letter From a Jewish Born-Again Believer: May We Not Be Apathetic and Indifferent

By Maria Kneas
(Maria became a widow at a young age. She is the author of two Lighthouse Trails books, Strength for Tough Times, and How to Prepare for Hard Times and Persecution, and a number of LT booklets. Many have been comforted, exhorted, and edified through her writings.)

Dear Lighthouse Trails readers and Christian believers in Christ:

I am a born-again Christian believer who is also Jewish. My mother is Jewish, and I was raised on stories of the Holocaust.

Therefore, antisemitism hits me hard, at gut level; and the news of the attack on October 7th when Hamas attacked Israel, killing more than 1,400 people including babies and the elderly, was absolutely devastating. Jews were raped (including raping babies); they were beheaded (including beheading babies); and many were burned alive. And the people who did these things were so proud of what they were doing that they used their phones to make videos of it and post those videos on social media.

The next day, Israel started going after Hamas in Gaza. That always makes Israel look bad because Hamas uses human shields, and then Israel is blamed for those casualties. As we have learned now, Hamas has stored their weapons underneath hospitals, school, and day-care centers. They have had a huge underground complex with tunnels large enough to drive vehicles through them; and the hospitals, schools, etc. have shafts going down to those tunnels. Unlike Hamas’ treacherous tactics, Israel warns citizens before going after a hospital or school or whatever, giving them time to get patients or students or whoever to safety before it gets attacked. Why doesn’t the world understand that Hamas uses these facilities of the sick and the young, at least in part, to avoid being attacked, using the vulnerable as human shields. And when the facilities are destroyed in order to reach the terrorists, the world points the finger at Israel accusing her of committing genocide.

The mainstream media doesn’t tell the public about those things. Instead, they make it look like Israel is cruelly attacking hospitals and schools and day care centers, etc. Largely because of the media’s distortion of the truth, there have been protests against Israel in many nations, beginning on October 8th. These protests have gone beyond saying that Israel is bad. They quickly got to the point of antisemitism—saying that all Jews all over the world should be attacked because of what Israel is doing.

As a result, antisemitism has significantly increased world-wide, including here in America. In addition to having synagogues and Jewish schools and other Jewish things be vandalized, Jewish people are getting physically attacked. One American man was killed for carrying an Israeli flag.

It’s gotten so bad that many Jews are moving to Israel in spite of the war that is going on there. For example, many New York Jews believe they will be safer in Israel than they are walking down the streets of New York City.

In London and Berlin, people have been painting large stars of David on the houses of Jews. A man got into one of those houses and stabbed the woman who lived there. Before leaving, he painted a swastika on the door.

Here in America, a woman who was the number two person in her synagogue was stabbed over thirty times. It takes a LOT of hatred for somebody to stab a woman that badly.

There have been crowds of people in various cities around the world chanting, “Gas the Jews!” Even here in America. Crowds of young Americans have been chanting “Gas the Jews!” As a Jewish person and a Christian believer who understands Bible prophecy and Israel’s role in it, you can’t imagine how that feels to hear this.

I learned about these things within a few days following October 7th. Seeing the information was so painful and so stressful that I couldn’t continue watching. I know that Jesus told us not to be anxious, but that is easier said than done. I haven’t been able to sleep well; and the stress has caused me some health problems.

America is not immune to what happened in Germany. That kind of thing can happen here. Most of the Germans were decent people. They never expected anything like that to happen in their nation. Many of them didn’t even realize the extent of the horror of what was going on while it was happening. They didn’t find out about it fully until after the war was over, and General Eisenhower made them go to those concentration camps and see what had been done there. Perhaps it was fear or apathy that caused the majority of them to turn their heads and look the other way when the Jewish population was being persecuted. But they had also been conditioned to resent, despise, and even hate the Jews. There were many Lutherans in Germany at that time; and sadly, Hitler used the writings of Martin Luther, who had become very antisemitic later in life, to persuade the German people.

I have a friend whose family came here from Germany shortly after World War II. She often went to Germany to visit her grandmother and other relatives who were still there so she learned a lot about what life was like under the Nazis, and how dictatorship began low level and kept increasing. My friend told me that America reminds her of early-stage Nazi Germany. Clearly, she is seriously worried about what is going on here. And if the Jews get persecuted, then Christians will also be persecuted.

That happened in Germany. Hitler required the churches to have his picture up front where everybody saw it during the services. And he sent officers to the churches to force the people (including the pastors) to raise their hand in the Nazi salute and swear allegiance to Hitler. Anybody who refused to do that wound up in a concentration camp. Or else the men were sent to fight in the most dangerous areas of the war.

In addition, anybody who was not loyal to the government got sent to the camps. People were expected to obey orders without question. In America, that would result in having a lot of Christians wind up in those camps because they could not obey orders to do things that go against biblical morality.

Christians better get serious about praying for God to restrain this evil.

If Christians are able to do anything practical to fight this antisemitism (and other kinds of lawlessness), then they should do that as well. As Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” May we as Christian believers in today’s world not be deceived into thinking antisemitism is acceptable and even right, and may it not be thought of us in future generations (should the Lord tarry) that we were apathetic, indifferent, and even hateful toward those who are called “the apple of God’s eye.”

Maria Kneas

P.S. I do a lot of spontaneous praying. But when the following prayer came to me, I wrote it down. I pray this every day for myself and for all the people I regularly pray for as a group.

This is a prayer about trauma. And because the world is becoming more and more evil, many of God’s people are going through traumatic things. My prayer for deliverance from trauma is below. I hope that this will bless those of you who read it.

Maria

Maria’s Prayer for Deliverance From Trauma

Lord God, please set me and all the people I’m praying for free from every kind of harm caused by past trauma. Please protect us from present trauma, and protect us from future trauma.

Lord God, please deliver us from each and every way that trauma affects our thinking, our emotions, our behavior, and our relationships. Please heal us from all health problems related to trauma—physical health, mental health, emotional health, and spiritual health.

Lord, please deliver us from every way that trauma has caused problems for our relationship with You. Please set us free from everything that makes it difficult for us to fully trust You, and give us the strength to be totally committed to You.

Thank You for loving us. Thank You for creating us. And thank You for Your good plans for our lives.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (Isaiah 41:10)

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(photo from istockphoto.com; used with permission; design by Lighthouse Trails)