This evening in Israel marks the beginning of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Holocaust of the Jewish people, in particular, by the Nazi regime during WWII is unique in its scale and impact. There is really no other effort at genocide that compares historically.
Holocaust is a Greek word meaning “whole-burnt offering by fire”. This is a term for one of the sacrifices offered unto YHVH God by Israel under the Law of Moses. It is also the word used to describe the sacrifice of Jesus Christ/Yeshua the Messiah in His crucifixion.
The sacrifice of approximately 6,000,000 Jews — unwilling though it was on their part — was the catalyst to move the principalities and authorities of the world to grant the Jewish people a sovereign homeland in Palestine/The State of Israel by a large majority in the United Nations in November 1947 — 30 years after the Balfour Declaration proclaimed by the British Government during WWI.
In our day and generation there is a growing movement in the world to de-legitimize the reality of the Holocaust — either by denying it altogether, or by minimizing its scale and scope, or else by making it comparable to other genocides. This movement even has adherents among some Jews and Israelis and some Christians. If the Holocaust can be de-ligitimized for what it was — despite all the evidence to the contrary — it helps in legitimizing the de-ligitimization of the “resurrection” of the State of Israel’s right to exist and its right to continue to defend itself.
About 2000 years ago, the Israeli Jewish people as a whole de-legitimized the uniqueness and impact of the “holocaust” of the Messiah, the Son of God. By so doing, our people also continue until today to deny or minimize the reality of the actual and unique resurrection of Jesus, proof that God justified Him during His life and through His being put to death.
Just as the one true God is active today to bring His people Israel back to Himself through their repentance over our ultimate rebellion against Him, so, too, is the same God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob working to bring the nations to accept HIS JUSTIFICATION of the re-establishment of a nation of Jews back in the very land which He promised to those Fathers and to their descendants as an everlasting possession. God’s long-suffering over His own beloved people is for the purpose of salvation, that many more would be saved by repentance and faith in His gospel. This same attribute of our God is working to bring salvation to many more Gentiles, i.e., non-Jews/Israelis, and to bring both Jews, Christians, and nations to fear Him who alone forgives sins.
The salvation of all depends on their relationship to Jesus Christ, and is connected in some measure to their relationship to the least of His brethren. (I will leave that an open comment.) The inheritance which the God of Israel offers to nations is connected to the salvation of ‘all’ Israel, His first-born among the nations. There are others which will become His, but not without the first-born.
Holocaust Remembrance Day offers much to chew and to meditate on. Yeshua Messiah is Lord of all history, and He is the Keeper of His people — both of the flesh, and also of the Spirit.
