 BUSH TALK by Rev. Bruce Lieske Founding Executive Director Lutherans in Jewish Evangelism Jesus is ultimately the only real solution to peace in the world. |
In April of this year, my wife and I toured some of the Luther sites in Germany.
One of the places that we visited was Eisenach, located in the former East Germany, where Martin Luther attended school as a boy about 1500. Some 300 years later, J. S. Bach attended the very same school. Eisenach is also the location of the Wartburg, the castle where Luther translated the New Testament into German, and where he was hidden from the death threats of Emperor Charles V. As we walked around Eisenach these great moments in church history become personal, alive and filled with even more meaning. One day I walked down to the river in Eisenach and found an unusual memorial. In the middle of a simple, rectangular, graveled area stood a beautiful bed of purple flowers formed in the outline of a Jewish Star of David.  At the head of the area was a stone memorial with these words inscribed: An diesem Ort stand die Synagoge der judischen Religionsgemeinschart Eisenach. Sie wurde am 9.November 1938 von natioinalsozialistischen Horden verwustet und niedergebrannt. A rough translation of the German is: “On this site stood the synagogue of the Jewish religious community of Eisenach. It was destroyed on November 9, 1938 by Nazi hordes and never rebuilt.” This plain memorial recalled the infamous Krystalnacht (Night of Broken Glass) of November 9-10, 1938, when Nazis and other Germans burned more than 100 synagogues to the ground, and smashed the windows and burned 10,000 Jewish stores to the ground after looting their contents. Jews were beaten and murdered, and Krystalnacht came to represent the beginning of the Holocaust. We all know the rest of the story. Consider that memorial in Eisenach, the city with special significance for the Protestant Reformation, as a symbolic “global canary in the coal mine.” Why? Before the advent of modern detection devices, coal miners would take caged canaries into the mines with them. Canaries are very sensitive to carbon monoxide and methane – two dangerous gases frequently found admixed with seams of coal. Both gases can be explosive, and both are odorless, colorless and tasteless. They can also silently replace oxygen causing suffocation. When a miner saw his canary teetering on the perch, or falling dead to the bottom of the cage, he knew it was time to leave the mine as quickly as possible. |
It may not be an infallible rule, but historically when evil stalks mankind the first to feel its presence are the Jewish people. Jewish people are the “canary in the coal mine” to detect evil. Anti-Semitism is the harbinger of trouble for everybody. It was the beginning of the end for the great Spanish Empire of the 15th and 16th centuries, it was the death knell for 60,000,000 in WW II, and today we are noting the open eruption of virulent Islamic anti-Semitism. Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map. Quoting the Koran and the hadith, Muslim preachers world-wide openly express their hatred for the Jews.
Why? What is this evil? Video-taped beheadings, the mutual Islamic destruction of mosques, the shooting of hundreds of children in their backs, the torching of churches in Indonesia – all of these things are evidence of satanic activity as indicated in Revelation 12:17. Ultimately we have only one defense, and it is an offense! Jesus responded to Peter’s statement of faith in Him: “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it” (Mathew 16:18). Today, in Jerusalem, Israel, Jews and Arabs are coming to faith in Messiah Jesus and they are worshipping together as brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus is ultimately the only real solution to peace in the world. He alone can stand against satanic activity! He told his disciples – even as He tells us – “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you” (Luke 10:19). In Eisenach, at the Wartburg, Luther is said to have thrown an inkwell at the devil. Could be! As we face the rising tide of radical Islam, the human face of Satan himself, we do well to remember what Luther wrote in his hymn A mighty Fortress is our God: With might of ours can naught be done, Soon were our loss effected; But for us fights the valiant One, Whom God himself elected. Ask ye, Who is this? Jesus Christ it is, Of sabaoth Lord, And there’s none other God; He holds the field forever … This world’s prince may still Scowl fierce as he will, he can harm us none, He’s judged; the deed is done; One little word can fell him. We have materials that examine the relationship between Islam, the Jewish people and Christianity. Phone or email at 1-877-457-5556 x220 or blieske7@bellsouth.net. |
