Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Attributed to George Santayana

 

At the end of World War II, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower was stunned by the discovery of death camps. No one was prepared for piles of dead bodies or survivors looking like living skeletons. Such inhumanity seemed unconscionable. Eisenhower foresaw a day when the horrors of the Holocaust might be denied, so he asked the media to document the scene. He made the Germans living in surrounding towns and soldiers not fighting at the front to witness the atrocities for themselves. This must not be forgotten; it must never happen again.

Sadly, antisemitism is once again rearing its ugly head in our day. Less than eighty years after allied troops crushed the Nazi regime, antisemitism has reappeared – not just in a foreign nation with a maniacal egotistical ruler like Hitler, but in the halls of American government, respected universities, major news media, and the entertainment industry. Because America’s influence is ‘exported’ around the world in nanoseconds, militant Islamic groups and tens of thousands of ignorant or misguided people are rioting and threatening Jews around the world.

 

When Hamas, a terrorist group that from its beginning has been committed to killing Jews and destroying Israel, brutally attacked Israeli citizens in what can only be described as a heinous crime against humanity last month, the outcry was great at first, but quickly subsided when Israel began to retaliate. Suddenly unspeakable acts were forgotten, and Hamas and its cohorts began calling for a cease-fire. Imagine in the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan and its allies calling for a cease-fire! It would have been ridiculed by all. But in our morally and ethically challenged culture, it’s no surprise. Just a couple of days ago, a man here (I’m in Australia) was siding with Hamas in its atrocities.

For a generation and more, cultural elites and social movers have been feeding western minds that which is observably false. To borrow Paul’s words in Romans 1, ‘professing ourselves to be wise, we have become fools.’ Like the citizens in Hans Christian Anderson’s epic The Emperor’s New Clothes, we have become conditioned to look at what is self-evidently true, and call it false (and vice versa). An unborn baby isn’t a baby. Creation wasn’t created – it just accidentally came into being. Men can get pregnant. Girls can become boys. 2+2 can equal 5. The succession of human theories denying obvious truth is stunning.

In recent years, this humanistic onslaught has gained a beachhead in the Christian church – what is supposed to be “the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Timothy 3.15). If the people of God do not stand up for truth in a culture of lies, that culture will face a precipitous fall. And if we aren’t on the ‘front lines,’ we’re not really in the battle at all. Too many churches are yielding ground to unbiblical and wicked lies today. Every Christian must make a choice now, before the battle reaches our doorstep: Will we stand for truth, or not?

In Nazi Germany, church leaders and renowned theologians took the popular road, supporting Hitler’s rise to power and enabling his atrocities. Their memory is forever tarnished because of their weakness and complicity in the face of evil.

Today, neo-Nazi groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran and other Islamic regimes, are rising. They make no secret of their violent antisemitism, and yet, many in America are complicit in this horror. Christians who stand for those “human rights” which, as our Declaration of Independence puts it, are “self-evident” and “endowed by our Creator,” must not be silent.

Let us defend the truth on two fronts. First and foremost, let us declare the love and grace of God to save forever all who believe in Jesus as God’s Son and Savior, whose death and resurrection is the only final hope for mankind. Second, let us declare the holiness and justice of God who will one day judge the living and the dead, and therefore stand against any ‘progressive’ theories of man, which can never replace God’s unchanging Word.