by Tad Lindley
For thousands of years now, there have been men who hated the Jews. They have dedicated their lives to destroying the Hebrew people. For almost 2,000 years the Jews had no nation of their own. Their population spread out across the planet. They lived, and continue to do so today, among many nations, and yet through the grace of God, maintained their own identity and culture.
Haman hated the Jews
One Jewish man named Mordecai hurt Haman’s feelings and Haman set out to destroy the entire Jewish population of Persia. Haman was a man of immense power, second only to the king. He manipulated the king into signing into law a bill that called for the death of every Jewish man, woman, and child in Persia. His plan would have succeeded except for one woman. The Lord had placed a Jewish woman named Esther into the palace. She had risen from obscurity to become the Queen of Persia. She had hidden her Jewish background from even her husband. Through a tremendous turn of events, the Lord protected the Jewish people. Not only did he deliver them from the hands of Haman, but there was actually a mass conversion to Judaism (Esther 8:17). Read the whole book of Esther in your Bible tonight (it should take you less than an hour). It is an awesome testimony to God’s saving power.
You should have read your Bible, Haman
Long before Haman came forth from the womb, God visited an old man who had no children. The old man’s name was Abram (later changed to Abraham). Abram’s wife was unable to have children. She had long passed menopause, and Abraham himself was an old man. In the face of this failure to raise up children, the Lord spoke, “Thou shalt be a father of many nations…and I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee” (Genesis 17:4, 6). Seems like an odd promise to a man in his eighties and his wife not far behind, but when the Lord makes a promise, you can bank on it. When Abraham was 100 years old, his 90 year old wife gave birth to a boy named Isaac.
But the promise goes even deeper. Not only would kings come from his descendants, but all people would be blessed. In your Bible the Lord promised Abraham, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). This is an obvious reference to the fact that the Messiah would come out of the descendants of Abraham. If Haman had understood this, he never would have risen up against the Jewish people. In cursing them, he cursed himself and his children (his sons all died by impalement).
Hitler flunked history
In the 1930s Adolph Hitler rose to power in Germany. He took the frustration and discouragement of the German people and turned it against the Jewish people of Europe. A casual look at the holocaust might give us cause to think that Hitler defeated the Jewish people. But as the Jews were crying out, “Shema Israel, Adonai elohenu, Adonai ichod!” (Deuteronomy 6:4), while they collapsed in the gas chambers and starved to death in the concentration camps, the Lord heard their cries. Not only did Hitler’s empire completely collapse, but out of the ashes of the holocaust the nation of Israel was reborn. In 1948 Israel became a nation once again, and Jewish people from all over the world began to return to the land that God gave them (Genesis 17:8).
Hamas: history repeating itself
Since 1948 the nation of Israel has been under nearly constant siege by the nations around it. This is no surprise. Revelation 12:13-17 shows us that the dragon will be in hot pursuit of Israel at the end of time, but he will not be victorious. In fact any people who choose to rise up against Israel will not be successful in the end. The God of Abraham settled that a long time ago with this prophetic promise I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee… (Genesis 12:3). No nation, political group, or individual can rise up against the people of Israel and expect to be blessed.
Reverend Tad Lindley is a minister at the United Pentecostal Church in Bethel, Alaska.
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