Deut 28.15-68 sadly tells the history of Israel, from the time of the destruction of the First Temple, to the destruction of the Second Temple, the dispersion into the nations the last two thousand years, and even to the Holocaust. The covenantal “hedge” was removed at some point exposing the people (how could it happen unless God gave them up and removed the hedge of protection-Deut 32.30). In the 1700’s there was a move in Germany for Jews to move away from the Torah. This movement was called Reform Judaism. Jews assimilated into the nations around them and they wanted to be accepted. The Holocaust (Olah) was the result of what Moses warned about here. He pleads with the people to choose the Lord and the Torah. But after all these years, and all they have been through, they still don’t get it, and that’s the problem. But the world is like this, too. God has been rejected for 6000 years. They have no heart to know, or eyes to see, or ears to hear, the word of the Lord.
So what happened in the Holocaust? How could something like that happen? The subject of the Holocaust has caused many to ask those questions. What we are going to present will be hard to accept by many who will read this, but it is nevertheless the truth. The biggest curse of all is to have no sense of being part of a curse. From the verses found in Deut 28.15-68 we will attempt to answer the questions posed previously, “What happened in the Holocaust?” and “How could it happen?”
We ask that you read what we are going present with an open mind. We do not mean to hurt or offend anyone, or cause anyone distress. But we want to interpret the Holocaust in light of what Moses has said in Deut 28.15-68. If the God of 586 BC and what happened in the destruction and the horrors of the First Temple is the God of 1933 to 1945, then it is vain to condemn the rod of his fury as the cause, rather than as the instrument of his wrath.
How could Israel be systematically destroyed by the most civilized people on earth-Germany? It was a nation that the Jewish people had a long love affair with, even to the point of celebrating Germany as the Messianic coming, because many Jews felt that if the world would be as Germany, that would be just like the coming of the Messiah! This view came about because the Jewish people had lost the Torah long before and they settled for a secular ethic and morality that impressed many. To be annihilated by that very nation is not something that can be overlooked. There is something intended for our instruction and the fact that people have not sought after or learned from that instruction almost guarantees that Israel will experience it again, and they will in the Birth-pains of the Messiah.
The Holocaust is a malignant tumor that is very significant in modern Jewish life because of the magnitude of it all. It is the most devastating event in the modern era for the whole world. If people do not assess and understand what happened by the Scriptures, all mankind will suffer a loss that cannot be estimated. Suffering and loss can open up issues of truth and reality like nothing else. The only thing that could be more tragic is to have gone through such things and not understand what all the suffering meant in the intentions of the Lord. People just can’t bring themselves to the realization that the author of all this was the Lord. There has been very little written on the question of , “Where was God and why did he allow this to happen?”
People can talk about “How” it was done by man, but cannot say “Why.” There is a great chasm between those two questions. Historians have gone over the literature and the mechanics of how this could have been pulled off. There can even be a partial answer to the “Why” when you analyze the Nazis and Hitler’s hatred for the Jews, but that does not answer the great question about where the Lord was during all this. People say that God is power and he had the ability to intervene and he should have revealed himself to deliver, but he was silent (or was he). This is a naive notion that draws on a traditional idea about God. This brings out the question that either God has a moral defect and is indifferent to suffering, or he is powerless to do anything about it. Or, as some have concluded, God simply does not exist. However, God gives the answer to the”How” and the “Why” in Deut 29.22-29. They have forsaken the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt!
Few look to the Scriptures for an explanation. In place of that, organizations raise up Holocaust museums because it is hoped that with education another Holocaust can be averted, with “Never Again” being the rallying cry. But the Holocaust came at the hands of the the most educated people at the time. This shows how misplaced the faith of the Jewish people is at this time, still convinced that the education of man will avoid a repetition of the horrors experienced, while ignoring the explanation and warnings of Moses in the Scriptures.
The Jewish people have not followed Moses for over two thousand years. For example, in Poland, the ones who were most religious (Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox) suffered the greatest because what men said was exalted over what Moses said (John 5.39-47). What men think is impressive does not mean God thinks that way. Being “religious” does not necessarily mean “knowledgeable.” Israel failed to understand the calamities in 70 AD. To do so would have laid the groundwork for teshuvah (repentance) in the truth. But they did not, resulting in Rabbinic Judaism. Yeshua, and that revelation alone, saves us from mere concepts of God and the things man conceives. Israel did not conceive of the concept of God, nor are we the standard of what we think he is. He reveals himself in his terms, at his will, just read the book of Job for instance. He is not our image. A God in our image does not make demands and is convenient. Each denomination has a god in their own image. Yeshua 2000 years ago tried to penetrate this man-made system, and they killed him. He contradicted every category that was held dear. Born in a stable (Sukkah), with parents of no reputation, grew up in Nazareth (that was despised by many), lived a hidden life for 30 years, died as a criminal near a refuse dump-that is our God. Certainly God was “nobler” than that.
Yeshua was the burning bush and people turned away from him and refused to see it. By refusing to “see” the holocaust of Yeshua, the next holocaust was inevitable. By refusing to interpret their own catastrophes correctly (that their actions set in motion) they made themselves subject to the next…and so on. The worst deception of all is an erroneous view of Yehovah, in his severity and his goodness. To miss that you miss the Lord; to know him in truth, in his judgments, as well as his mercies. This is not “theology”, it is reality.
To understand the tragedy, we must understand how the Jewish people celebrated the Germanic civilization. They had an exalted view of man, and illustrious civilization committed a horrible act, the systematic annihilation of European Jews. And it was this civilization that the Jews idolized and admired above all others. But the music, the culture, the education did not save them. The biblical expectation of Messiah and prophecy was lost. For many “emancipated Jews” Germany itself became for many the Messianic fulfillment. The Jewish celebration of man was validated by the humane German civilization in which they lived. This is why, we believe, God necessarily required Germany to bring the devastation of the Holocaust on them. When Israel worshipped Assyrian gods, God used the Assyrians against them. When Israel worshipped Babylonian gods, God used Babylon against them.
To be a German Jew was the highest dignity that they could have hoped for. When Polish Jews came to Germany as immigrants, German Jews would look with contempt on them for being crude, religious. They had long beards and side-locks called “peyot.” They were farmers and workmen. German Jews thought they were superior (Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, etc). They lacked the understanding of human depravity and did not anticipate the evil that fallen man could do. German civilization became the very instrument of their own destruction. And still, the Jewish people and Judaism celebrates Jewish life as superior morally and ethically. They have no concept of sin and do not think they have committed a transgression of a kind that would justify the Holocaust. But these events must bring them to the realization that it was their failures as men in relation to Moses and the Torah, and Yeshua, that brought this upon them. Israel acts like everyone else and other nations, contrary to what God had planned for the nation (Deut 4.6-8). Biblical destiny will be fulfilled despite this. God’s word, his name, his covenants and his honor are at stake.
God’s view of man can be seen in such verses as Ecc 7.20; Psa 53.3-4; Psa 130.3, 143.2. However, nobody wants to agree with him. The sinful flesh does not always exalt itself in rape, murder or thefts. It can express itself through intellect, music, art, business, science and accomplishment. But the human flesh is rotten all the way through. The sinner refuses to see himself as a sinner because he is a sinner! There is self-exaltation of Jewish life in the area of human accomplishment and brilliance that is a lie. What will it take to test this character and reveal these flaws. Failure to yield to the word of God regarding our human condition is pride, and this requires judgment to fall. So, being a sinner makes it hard for us to recognize ourselves as sinners. If man is going to see himself as a sinner, we must confront God as a righteous judge. This revelation is contained in the crucifixion of Yeshua and the Holocaust. It is in the depths of despair, darkness and affliction that man realizes he is a sinner. Even sin refuses to call itself sin. The greatest revelation of sin is the price God paid for the propitiation of sin in the “Olah” or “holocaust” of Yeshua. What reveals sin as sin is the judgment that results from sin. What reveals the mercy of God was his own willingness to bear the price himself. What is the price of refusing to consider that act? We have lost the one great provision sinners have to understand their condition, and the price paid for them. To dismiss either the cross or the efficacy of the one “raised up on the cross” is the same mindset the Revisionists use to dispute or reject the historicity of the Nazi Holocaust.
God is a God of judgment. “Where was God?” people ask. “Why was he silent during the Holocaust?” Either God is dead, or we accept the testimony of Moses and the Torah that God’s silence is in proportion to our sin. The Holocaust was God’s judgment, not an accident or a result of an aberration of “antisemitism.” God works through nations as rods of chastisement (Isa 10.5 with Assyrians, but it’s the same coneot wuth the Babylonians and the Romans, for example), and this brings a fear of God as judge. Without this, we have no fear of God and cannot answer the “Why’s” of the Holocaust. We have lost the perspective of God as judge. His wrath and judgment makes his power known, and this is an offense against our calculated religious sensibilities of the way we would like God to be in our own mind. One holocaust is meant to teach us and save us from another “fire.” How far will God go to teach us this, to save us from the “lake of fire?”
So the question is, what was God judging?’ Elie Wiesel was a survivor and a spokesman on the Holocaust. He did not consider that the sufferings of Israel’s history were prophesied in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. His view is a summation of man’s self-exaltation over God. It always begins with the word “I.” Human arrogance exalting its opinion, it’s thought, and its will above God himself. To refuse to consider the word of God in the Torah is a sign of sin and apostasy. The root cause of the Holocaust is God’s judgment on the sin of self-exaltation by man at the expense of God’s word, man’s opinion over God himself.
Israel’s history is connected to their covenantal obligation in the Torah. If Israel was banished from the land for failing to live in his covenantal demands, how can Israel unilaterally repossess the land without first considering the God of Mount Sinai and his covenant? Lev 26.14-46 speaks of the “vengeance of the covenant.” Acknowledgement of sin, and the sins of the fathers, and realizing that the punishments were just and righteous, is when God will remember his covenant (Lev 26.39-42). We need to see a “whole people” brought into judgment. We are joined to the past, and unresolved sin. Israel needs to break the continuum of sin. The justification for the relentless hunt for Nazi criminals becomes, ironically, Israel’s own indictment in itself. God’s indictment of Israel can be found in Jer 7.24-26. God brings the past into the present with the words, “until today.” It is in acknowledging their personal guilt and responsibility in the acts of their fathers that they can break themselves away from them. What Israel has suffered historically is the judgment of God, consisting of exiles, persecutions, pogroms, forced conversions, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, and terrorism. These should be viewed in the larger context of covenantal unfaithfulness. Jeremiah hints at this unbroken continuum of sin in Jer 8.5. Israel was involved in the murder of Yeshua (Acts 3.13-15), and this has been cruelly exploited by Israel’s enemies, but it still remains true. This truth has not been spoken to the Jewish people kindly, in a redemptive way, with hearts that understood that it was their sin also that implicated them in his death. There is a great sin that needs to be acknowledged (Hos 5.15; Jer 3.25). God is waiting to comfort Israel. A broken spirit and a contrite heart he will not despise (Psa 51.17).
A marginal knowledge of Scripture and of God testifies against Israel. Israel has chosen to believe a secular, socialized or political explanation for the Holocaust, rather than find an answer in God’s word. Deut 32 has what is called the “The Song of Moses” and it is a specific warning prior to coming into the land about the Holocaust. It forewarns of judgment. In seeking to understand the Holocaust, Israel does not connect it to the Scriptures. There is a controversy going on as to why the Allies did not bomb the concentration and death camps and the railroad tracks when it was in their power to do so. The answer is found in God. When he brings a judgment he will bring it with totality and fullness of intention, through men or despite men. “I will hide my countenance from them” means no man can deter it (Deut 32.23-25). This song should be known by heart. It would have saved Israel from the destruction that is spoken about and predicted there. Israel preferred a kind of religion that they believed was “definitive Judaism”, but it did not provide biblical awareness. The tragic absence of that forewarning is the testimony of Judaism’s failure to produce the desired effect. Interpreting the Holocaust as the consequence of sin is totally incompatible with modern Jewish self-assessment. The way that they see and justify themselves is not going to save them from judgment that will come according to the Lord’s terms. If you want to see his judgments, then look at the Holocaust of Israel and the Messiah. That is God judging, and if you don’t see God there, you don’t see. If we have a complaint about seeing God there, then our own complaint itself is a testimony that what he says of our condition is true. And not to see God in our judgements results in our blaming of men. Man thinks that if God delays and withholds his judgments, that the calamity, when it comes, is no longer related to sin.
God’s judgment as mercy can be his final provision to unwilling men, when every other grace to get our attention has failed. Then he will restore us in mercy. The nations will see this (Ezek 36.35-36). If they don’t repent then they, too, will receive his judgments. Israel is the people of the covenant, and with it comes the greater judgment and the passage of time means nothing, God has not changed. His mercy is to call us to repentance before the fulfillment of what is prophetically declared in his word.
That covenant is also called the “New” (or renewed) Covenant that is ratified in the blood of the Messiah, and it is promised to a restored nation (Jer 31.31-34). Israel in the very near future is going to suffer devastation on a wider scale in what is called the “Birth-pains of the Messiah” or “tribulation” period. Demonic hatred (a return of the ancient shedim/gods which is behind all idol worship) will be released in every nation, not just one like in Germany. There will be no place to hide. That is why the Jewish people are told to return back to the land. There will be a sifting in the last days (Amos 9; Ezek 20.33) but God will restore Israel because God has chosen Israel to be a statement of our humanity. Israel is a “witness people” to demonstrate himself, if not by their virtue, then by their vices. God wants to convert Israel to himself, not to Replacement Theology Christianity or any other so-called religion. Jeremiah and Ezekiel adhere to the recognition of calamity as judgment because it was only there, in concordance with his own word, that the revelation of true hope can be found (Jer 31.16-17). God is waiting for Israel to acknowledge the death of his Messiah, and set in motion their salvation (Ezek 39.22). If they plead an exemption in any manner, then they are lost and without hope.
Like the prophets of doom Jeremiah and Ezekiel, one must present, unsparingly, the case for the catastrophes of Israel as being the wrath of God according to his word, especially in our passages in Deut 28.15-68. This view from Deuteronomy has been validated by history. The state of Israel known today will fail. Suffering before the glory is the axis of Israel’s prophetic expectation. Isa 51-52 reads like the crucifixion of a nation, at God’s hands with terms like the “cup of his fury”, “the rebuke of thy God” and “at the hand of the Lord.” Yehovah calls Israel to “awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem (Isa 51.17-23, 52.1-2).” God’s most severe judgments are always redemptive, his severity is his mercy (Heb 12.5-11). His chastening is not his final word (Jer 31.10-17). There is hope (Isa 54.1-3; Zech 8.22; Isa 55.5; Isa 56.7-8; Isa 60.1-3). Their “light” is not human or Talmudic brilliance, but they will “know the Lord” in a redemptive way with an imputed righteousness of God (Isa 60.21, 61.11, 62.3-5; Psa 102.12-22).
Finally, what about personal restoration? Peter made it clear the culpability of all Israel in Yeshua’s death, whether they were present or not, willing participants or not (Acts 2.36-38). Yeshua said we are implicated in the sins of our fathers when he rebuked the Pharisees from Beit Shammai in Matt 23.29-36. Only true repentance can save us (Rom 10.12-13, Acts 4.12, Matt 1.21) and only in Yeshua (John 1.29; 12.27). Yeshua is the prophesied Messiah (John 5.39-47; Isa 52.13 through 53.12). We must humble ourselves and confess Yeshua to be saved (Rom 10.9-13). If the God of 586 BC and the Babylonian Captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple and the deportation of the Jewish people to Babylon is the God of 1933 to 1945 and the Holocaust, then it is vain to blame the rod of his anger as the cause (Germany and the Nazis), rather than the instrument of that wrath.
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