Prayer of Agreement to Bless the Jews

Dena Gewanter, MD

Few Christians understand what the Bible actually says about Israel and the Jewish people. Most ignore or overlook the fact that Jesus was a Jewish man, who quoted from the Tanach (Old Testament) in almost everything He said, observed Jewish laws, celebrated all the Jewish feasts and used examples in his teachings from Jewish history. Jesus said people would be judged according to how they treated ‘these brothers of mine’, the Jews. He said He “did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. ” Paul said that Jesus was “a servant to the Jews on behalf of God’s truth to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God.” The gates of heaven have the names of the twelve tribes of Israel on them. In the light of these Biblical truths, why do most Christians have such a disconnect with Hebraic traditions and the people who are the blood relatives of the Lord they serve and believe in?

Christians who do not understand the covenantal promises of God to Israel and His final plan for the Jewish people are missing an opportunity to see the amazing fulfillment of prophecies spoken thousands of years ago. The re-emergence of the State of Israel after almost two thousand years is a complete miracle! Jewish people from over one hundred twenty different countries have returned to Israel in fulfillment of multiple prophecies in the Bible; “In that day the Lord will reach out His Hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of His people… He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth. He banished the sons of Jacob from the Land He covenanted to their forefathers, but promised to bring them back in the last days, a promise that He is fulfilling at this very moment as a testimony to His own faithfulness and the veracity of His Word! In Jeremiah we read, “only if God breaks His covenant with day and night will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before Him,” and that God would plant the Jewish people in their land with “all His Heart and Soul .” How amazing to read that God planted them in Israel with all His heart and soul!

The land of Israel is the place where God dwells and Jerusalem is the city where the Lord chose to put His Name. The Jewish people are called His People. “For the sake of His Great Name the Lord will not reject His People, because the Lord was pleased to make you His own.”

Should we care about what is happening in Israel and with the Jewish people if we are Christians? Those who hate, reject, or even dismiss what the Bible says about Israel and the Jewish people may actually be bringing a curse upon themselves. If we hate the Jews or the nation of Israel, we are under God’s curse until we repent and are cleansed of this sin. Did you know that it is written, “God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel?” Joel clearly states that God will gather ALL the nations who scattered His inheritance, His people Israel, and divided up His land and will come into judgment against them. This should concern all Americans and those from the nations whose governments are trying to force Israel to divide the land that God covenanted to give the Jewish people.

While most committed Christians believe that we are living in the ‘last days’ before the return of the Messiah, few think seriously about the place of His return. We are told in Acts 3:21 that “Jesus must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything as He promised long ago through His holy prophets.” The Bible clearly states that He will come to fight against the nations who surround Jerusalem, standing on the Mount of Olives. This means that there must be Jewish believers living in Jerusalem who are praying for the Messiah to appear, as there are today.

God’s word says, “He is always watching over Israel,” and that the Jewish people are “the apple of His eye.” “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May those who love you be secure. For the sake of my brothers and friends…for the sake of the house of the Lord, I will seek your prosperity.” We see here that there is a blessing for those who pray for Jerusalem, both personally and corporately. “I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem, they will never be silent day or night. You, who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest and give Him no rest till He establishes Jerusalem, and makes her the praise of the earth.” Apparently, those who call upon God are supposed to give Him no rest until He makes Jerusalem the praise of the earth. Is this happening in your church and your personal prayer life?

The first believers were almost exclusively Jewish and incorporated all the Jewish feasts and ceremonies in their lives as followers of Yeshua (Jesus). After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, the Jewish people were expelled from Israel and scattered throughout the Roman Empire. Then, after the Roman Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity in 312 AD, he started to separate and isolate the Jews through physical expulsion, legal discrimination, and death sentences. Augustine wrote in 400 AD, “the true image of the Jew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver … and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus.” When there were unexplained epidemics, like the Black Plague, the Jews were often blamed and hundreds were murdered.

Between 1100 and 1270 AD, the Crusaders murdered thousands of Jewish people on the way to Jerusalem, streets ran with the blood of their victims. During the Spanish Inquisition, starting in 1230 AD, many thousands were tortured and killed, or forced to convert. The first Jewish ghettos were started in Italy in 1516; Jewish men were forced to wear horned hats and badges to distinguish them from Christians. Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic priest, said that the Jewish people should always live in servitude. Martin Luther wrote in the fifteen hundreds that “God’s anger with the Jew is so intense that Christians should… burn their synagogues, destroy their homes, deprive them of their prayer books, forbid them to teach, travel, own land, and all their money should be taken from them. ” Popes, kings and religious leaders in Europe all joined together in their persecution and discrimination against the Jewish people through the eighteen hundreds.

It is estimated that from the time of Christ until the time of the holocaust of Hitler, over seven million people were killed simply because they were religiously and ethnically Jewish.

During the time leading up to WW2, the world paid scant attention to the increasing persecution of the Jewish population of Europe. False publications like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion stating that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make matzah for Passover were widely distributed, and in fact, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is still a best seller in the Muslim world .

In the nineteen thirties, Hitler quoted Martin Luther in Mein Kampf, saying that he was ‘acting in accordance with the will of God by defending himself against the Jews’. In the United States, Henry Ford published a book defaming the Jewish people that was in agreement with Nazi ideology. North American universities made quotas against employing and enrolling them. Muslim leaders also cooperated with Hitler in the attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, and the Grand Mufti was a guest in Berlin during World War 2. Jewish people in Arab countries such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya were labeled ‘dhimmi’, (outcasts) and suffered religious persecution, beatings, rape, and forced conversions. Anti-Semitism was a milder problem in the Arab countries prior to World War 2, but during the time of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” propaganda spread throughout the Arab territories, and life for Jewish people in the Arab countries that had been their homes for centuries became intolerable. Records show that the US government knew about the Nazi concentration camps but did nothing to stop the cattle cars full of Jewish Europeans who were taken to the gas chambers. Canada even turned away a boat full of Jewish refugees; they were forced to return to Europe where most of the passengers were sent to their deaths in concentration camps. England, the occupying ruling country over what was then called Palestine, did everything in its power to prevent Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis from immigrating to Israel, yet actively encouraged Arab migration to the region. Thanks to the obsessively accurate record keeping of the Nazis, it is known that at least six million Jewish people were exterminated from 1939-1945. Of that number, one and one half million were children. Hitler’s goal was to seek out every member of the Jewish race from all countries dominated by Nazi Germany and to “wipe the race off the face of the earth.” The words and desires of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad and other radical Muslim clerics today echo the spirit behind Hitler’s demonic ideology.

In 1948, on the day after Israel was given statehood by the League of Nations, seven Arab nations attacked Israel. With no army, weapons, or air force, the Israeli’s miraculously beat back the Arabs from all sides and began to rebuild their homeland. “Can a country be born in a day, or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children.” All the wars fought by Israel have been won through the miracle of God’s intervention. To this day, many soldiers who fought in these wars tell of God’s invisible Hand turning battles in Israel’s favor. Many do not realize that the constant clamor for a Palestinian state is a thinly veiled plan to ultimately destroy the State of Israel; its very existence is an insult to the tenets of Islam. The Koran states that the land of Israel, once lived on by Muslims, must always belong to a Muslim. Sharing land and peaceful coexistence is unheard of in Islam. The Koran requires that Islam to be the dominant ruling power and Muslims are required by the Koran’s teachings to fight a jihad (holy war) to overthrow any country that is not controlled by Islam. This is why although there are twenty-two Islamic states and more than enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees in other Muslim countries, they continue to fight to overthrow Israel and refuse to accept one Jewish state; it is an abomination to their religious beliefs.

Israel is a desert land that has come to life in fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 27:6: “In days to come, Jacob will take root, Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit.” Yet, the United Nations has made more pronouncements against Israel than all the other countries of the world combined! One has to be reminded of the passage, “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against His Anointed One.” All Jewish people, and particularly those in Israel, desperately want to live in peace and not in the middle of so much conflict and hatred. Israel and the Jewish people are not at center stage because of righteousness or good works, nor because they are particularly evil or bad. It is simply because of election, something God CHOSE to do. In Romans 11:2 it clearly states, “God did not reject His people whom He foreknew.” Today, Some Christian leaders and groups are coming out in support of a Palestinian state, and against “Israeli occupation of Arab land”. The age old anti-Semitism that was dormant after World War 2 is rising up again, and now it is directed not only against the Jewish race, but also against their homeland. In God’s eyes, there is no separation of the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. Anti Zionism (opposition to the State of Israel) is the same entity as anti-Semitism.

Dear friends, if you want to keep yourselves from deception and from being used as an instrument against God's purposes in these last days, be sure to align yourself with God's plans as described in the Bible. Do not be deceived by the clamor of the masses. Search God's word and read what it says about Israel and the Jewish people; then pray for His will to be accomplished. You will surely be blessed and amazed as you watch God bring you into a deeper level of intimacy and revelation about His very heart and soul.