Luke 21:24 — And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
Since 2005, January 27th has been observed as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime in Germany. Two things struck me as I thought about this today.
The first thought was about the thread of hate that runs through history. From Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews recounted in Esther, through the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, through the persecutions of Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages, to the Holocaust, to the never-ending hostility to the modern state of Israel — the acid thread of hate corrodes its way through history.
The second thought was about the indestructible spirit of the Jewish people. Mordechai resists Haman’s plot, the Maccabees rebel against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Zealots resist the Romans at Masada, and so it went … In modern times, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, the Israeli war of Independence in 1948, the Six Day War of 1967 … The flame burns on.
A poem was found on the wall of a cave in Cologne where Jews had been in hiding. The translation by Hilda Schiff is luminous in it’s communication of that spirit of endurance:

I Believe

I believe in the sun though it is late in rising.
I believe in love, though it is absent
I believe in God though he is silent…

We Christians should be aware. There is a time coming when we will be the victims. So far we have played two roles in this tragic history. We have played the persecutor and — worse in it’s way — we have played the bystander. Deny it how we will, Christianity stood by and watched the holocaust. Renowned holocaust scholar D. S. Wyman summarized the response of American Christians: “At the heart of Christianity is the commitment to help the helpless. Yet, for the most part, America’s Christian Churches looked away while European Jews perished.”
We Christians have been persecutors, and bystanders … but the time is surely coming when we will be the victims. It might be that the signs are already all around us.
We live in an era when the Christian worldview is rapidly becoming the minority point of view. As we lovingly, but firmly, seek to defend the beliefs we hold dear we see brothers and sisters being prosecuted. We see businesses being destroyed. We hear moral truths being condemned as “hate speech”.
It will be no surprise if Christians face increasingly violent persecution. We may not face official death squads knocking on the door and taking Christians to concentration camps and death squads. Perhaps we will face “vigilantes” killing Christians without fear of retribution. It will be time to remember that we reap what we sow, and that “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: (1 Peter 2:21 KJVDA)”. It will be our time to endure.