Anti-Semitism is alive and well throughout the nations of the world today, and unfortunately, the United States of America has not been exempt from this evil form of prejudice. No nation can afford to be anti-Semitic, and the Church is culpable for much of the anti-Semitism that has abounded in western civilization during the past two thousand years. A deficiency of Bible doctrine specific to the Jew’s place in the plan of God is largely responsible for anti-Semitism, past and present, in Europe and America. R.B. Thieme hit the nail right on the head when he wrote:“No one, especially the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, should ever participate in anti-Semitism. The believer must understand the historical and future plan of God for Israel. Keeping the divine perspective in mind guards against any form of anti-Semitism. The assimilation of divine perspective comes from hearing and believing the message of the Bible.”[1]
MARTIN LUTHER AND THE JEWS
It is widely known that Jews were severely persecuted under the Roman Catholicism that dominated Western Europe during the Dark Ages. Protestants are often less aware of the historical impact which has resulted from the anti-Semitism of the central figure of the Protestant Reformation.
It was, without question, the teachings and activity of Martin Luther that provided the impetus which launched the Reformation. Luther was used by God to recover important Biblical truths which had been abandoned for centuries. The spiritual darkness of the Dark Ages had been the direct result of the suppression of truth, and Martin Luther’s work contributed much toward the deliverance of the Church—and indeed civilization—from a long period of historical crisis. Yet, it must be recognized (and those who nearly worship the reformers would do well to recognize) that Martin Luther was a sinner, saved by grace, whose sin nature operated in him (as it does in every one of us) until the day he died and went to be with the Lord. Furthermore, the words penned by Martin Luther were not inspired by the Holy Spirit. Luther’s words—all of them—should be judged in the light of the words which are inspired by the Holy Spirit!
Martin Luther had a problem that surfaced in his later years and entered into his writings—a problem that Protestantism has often attempted to sweep under the rug. Martin Luther was terribly anti-Semitic. There are circumstances in Luther’s life which evidently shaped his anti-Semitic outlook. In his early years he had been vocally pro-Semitic in contrast to many of his contemporaries. He produced a tract in 1523 that was favorable to the Jews, entitled “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew.” He had been very optimistic about the Jews, expecting that in the wake of the turbulent historical changes that were transpiring, they would respond to Christ. However, after his attempts to evangelize the Jews failed, he became very disappointed and bitter—and very anti-Semitic. In 1543, Luther wrote an angry and vitriolic diatribe of considerable length entitled, “On the Jews and their Lies.” In it he bitterly lashed out at the Jews with some of the most vicious, bitter, and obscene rhetoric imaginable, including a seven point plan for dealing with Jews:
“What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:
“First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly—and I myself was unaware of it—will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.
“Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.
“Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them….
“Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses … in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: 'what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord.' Those villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16:18, 'You are Peter,' etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the right to teach.
“Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at home….
“Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that, as said above, they have no other means of earning a livelihood than usury, and by it they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess. Such money should now be used in no other way than the following: Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set himself up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children, and the maintenance of the old or feeble. For such evil gains are cursed if they are not put to use with God's blessing in a good and worthy cause.
“Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3:19). For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.”[2]
Martin Luther was a figure who is, with some good reason, revered by mainstream Protestantism. There are probably few Christians who are even aware of “On the Jews and their Lies.” Now granted, Luther was a very fiery and bombastic writer and speaker as was common in his time. There was, no doubt, some hyperbole involved in these rants. Also, it is certainly important to consider the work of an author in the context of his entire work, and in the context of the time and historical setting in which he wrote. Yet, is it any wonder that Jews might be suspicious of the motives of Christians—Protestant or otherwise?
After I had been away from my hometown for about fifteen years, I visited a Jewish friend and neighbor I had known since I was a little boy. Since I had last seen him I had believed on Jesus Christ, had graduated from a Bible college, and was involved in Christian outreach. When I told him I was now a Bible believing Christian, the first thing he asked me was, “Are you anti-Semitic?” Having learned some things since he asked me that question, I can now really understand why he would ask it.
FROM LUTHER TO HITLER
Luther’s anti-Semitism had far-reaching influence which has spanned a long period of time. Luther always remained a famous German hero, and Adolph Hitler exploited Luther’s popularity to his own advantage, quoting (though often misrepresenting) Luther’s writings to promote his own warped agenda. In his classic work, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," William L. Shirer contends that Martin Luther had a profound influence on the German people for both good bad—and that the bad influence reached down the generations of Germany, especially among Protestants, helping to pave the way for the tyranny of Nazi Germany:
“There is not space in this book to recount adequately the immense influence that Martin Luther, the Saxon peasant who became an Augustinian monk and launched the German Reformation, had on the Germans and their subsequent history. But it may be said in passing, that this towering but erratic genius, this savage anti-Semite and hater of Rome, who combined in his tempestuous character so many of the best and the worst qualities of the German—the coarseness, the boisterousness, the fanaticism, the intolerance, the violence, but also the honesty, the simplicity, the self-scrutiny, the passion for learning and for poetry and for righteousness in the eyes of God—left a mark on the life of the Germans, for both good and bad, more indelible, more fateful, than was wrought by any other single individual before or since.”[3] Shirer also noted:
“The great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of the Jews and when they were sent away he advised that they be deprived of ‘all their cash and jewels and silver and gold’ and, furthermore, ‘that their synagogues or schools be set on fire, that their houses be broken up and destroyed … and they be put under a roof or stable, like the gypsies … in misery and captivity as they incessantly lament and complain to God about us”—advice that was literally followed four centuries later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler.’[4]
So much hatred—so much tyranny—so much suffering; and objectivity would force one to conclude that Luther’s mindset regarding the Jews, in his later years, has certainly played a role in the way history has unfolded. Even some of the staunchest admirers of Luther are forced to admit that this was Luther at his lowest. But why did Martin Luther become so disappointed and disillusioned with the failure of the Jews to respond to Christ? How did he become bitter enough to engage in his anti-Semitic attacks? I would suggest that it was because he lacked dispensational understanding of the Jew’s role in the plan of God. Had the great expositor of Paul’s epistle to the Romans recognized the future of national and spiritual glory guaranteed to the racial species established through Abraham by God (Romans 11:12-15, 26-28)—had he recognized that the Mystery Dispensation is only a temporary departure from the prophetic plan, during which many, but not all, Jews will reject Christ (Romans 11:14, 25)—he would not have become disappointed by the response to the Gospel of many of the Jews in his time. He would not have become “arrogant toward the branches” (Romans 11:18); that is arrogant toward the Jews. It is not that anyone in Luther’s time was getting it right, dispensationally—but it is important that we learn from our own failures and the failures of others. As George Santayana said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”
THE GREAT CLASSIC OF RACIST AND PARANOID LITERATURE
In between the time of Luther and Hitler’s rise to power, a document surfaced that fueled, and continues to fuel anti-Semitism. This document has ignited fear and hatred of the Jew for almost a century. This document, rejected as a forgery and a fraud by serious scholars, is known as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. It is purported to be the confidential minutes of a secret Jewish conclave convened at the close of the nineteenth century. Naïve and gullible people, including doctrineless Christians, have been taken in by the fraud which is heralded as “proof” that Jews are involved in an ongoing plot to take over the world. The Protocols appeared in the very early years of the nineteen hundreds when a Russian monk named Serge Nilus edited several editions of the manuscript, each time providing a different account of how he discovered the document. The twenty-four sections of this booklet portray an alleged plot whereby the Jewish leaders would attain world domination by inciting revolution, by destroying Christian institutions, by disrupting education, etc. Reputable scholars, like Professor Norman Cohn, in his book, Warrant for Genocide, contend that this myth was actually invented from the inspiration of a nineteenth century political satire in France—in which the “plotters” were not even Jewish![5] The Protocols became a tool during the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 to incite anti-Semitism among the Russian people, which led to the slaughter of many Jews and even more publicity for the document. Hitler cited the Protocols in his propaganda, and the booklet has been published extensively throughout the world in many different languages. It is today used by neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and many in the Middle East who perceive an “international Jewish conspiracy.” You can find many duplications of the document from hate groups on the world-wide web.
HENRY FORD AND THE JEWS
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion has become highly publicized in the United States through an interesting source: Henry Ford. Henry Ford was a very complex and controversial figure, yet most would recognize that he has made some very important contributions to America. Amid all of Henry Ford’s greatness, his genius, his ingenuity, his values, his concern for the common man—there was a very serious flaw—that flaw was anti-Semitism. Neil Baldwin, in Henry Ford and the Jews, attributes much of Ford’s anti-Semitism to the Zeitgeist of mid-nineteenth century America:
“As early as the 1840s, while Grandfather John Ford was working the land in Dearbornville, a firm conviction was already in place among small-town Americans that they were an elect and favored people, doing God’s work. As Anglo-Saxons, most thought, they had come into a new territory that was their birthright to be cultivated ‘according to the intentions of the Creator.’”[6]
Baldwin notes that Ford, like so many American children, had been instructed and indoctrinated by McGuffey’s Readers, which, along with the great ideals and principles which they imparted, included a significant amount of prejudice against the Jew in stories such as “Shylock, or the Pound of Flesh” (from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, written during the 350 year expulsion of the Jews from England) and “The Good Son.”[7] In later life, Henry often expressed his gratitude for being reared up in “McGuffeyland,” and proudly quoted from these readers. Much of the American literature of this period was replete with subtle or overt ant-Semitism:
“The gospel of progress was synonymous with the Christian (generally Protestant) way during the ‘Great Century of Christian Expansion.’ Henry Ford recalled that he and his younger siblings were raised on a daily dosage of the American Tract Society’s The Illustrated Family Christian Almanac for the United States topping off the nightly fireside McGuffey readings. The almanac’s ‘Historical Tales for Young Protestants’ were classic representations in a widespread and popular genre of evangelical publications predicting, either implicitly or explicitly, that, sooner or later, the obsolete Jewish religion would give way entirely to ‘the new Israel’ of America. Who, the little boys and girls learned catechistically, was the ultimate symbol of persecuted goodness? Christ. And who persecuted Christ and crucified our Lord—as the grand old hymn had it? The Jews…”[8]
The Protocols began to be widely publicized in the United States through the efforts of Boris Brasol, a former Czarist prosecutor.[9] Henry Ford was taken in by the far-fetched conspiracy theory, and in 1920, The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper owned by Ford, published an American version of the Protocols in a series of articles entitled The International Jew: the World’s Foremost Problem. These articles were later republished in book form. A half a million copies were circulated in the USA, and the books were also translated into several different languages. Hitler is reported to have read The International Jew while in prison, where it influenced his book, Mein Kampf.
One Dearborn Independent article lauded The Protocols as “too terribly real for fiction, too well-sustained for speculation, too deep in its knowledge of the secret springs of life for forgery.” “The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on,” Ford stated in 1921. “They have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now.”[10]
Of course Jews and many others were outraged by these articles and put a lot of public pressure on Ford. Prominent lawyer Samuel Untermeyer described the effects of the circulation of The International Jew:
“Wherever there was a Ford car there was a Ford agency not far away, and wherever there was a Ford agency these vile libelous books in the language of the country were to be found. They, coupled with the magic name of Ford, have done more than could be undone in a century to sow, spread and ripen the poisonous seeds of anti-Semitism and race hatred. These articles are so fantastic and so naïve in their incredible fantasy that they read like the work of a lunatic, and but for the authority of the Ford name they would have never seen the light of day and would have been quite harmless if they had. With that name they spread like wildfire and became the Bible of every anti-Semite.”[11]
Despite the many complaints, The Dearborn Independent continued to attack the Jewish race. In 1927, the paper printed accusations against Jewish lawyer Aaron Sapiro and a number of Jewish bankers and merchants. They were allegedly seeking to control the nation’s wheat farming.[12] Sapiro sued for defamation, and finally, Ford publicly apologized to the Jews as a group and to individuals. Though he apologized for the articles, and even closed The Dearborn Independent, there are many who distrust his sincerity, as he later, in 1938, accepted from Hitler’s Nazi government, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.[13] Whether or not his sentiments were genuine, it is a fact that The International Jew is still at large, especially on the web sites of hate groups on the internet, inciting anti-Semitism in a new generation.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO US?
Neither Luther’s nor Ford’s anti-Semitism represents real Christianity. The hostility these two great men had toward the Jew was not even consistent with the many principles of truth that both of them espoused. Furthermore, Ford’s anti-Semitism certainly did not represent the America he loved and greatly contributed to. What is the most important lesson of all of this to us? Anti-Semitism among Christians is spawned by the ignorance of dispensational specificity in Bible doctrine, and the results can be far-reaching. The Bible clearly delineates the important place of the Jew in the plan of God.
Footnotes:
1. R.B. Thieme, Jr., Anti-Semitism (Houston: R.B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries, 1991), pp. xii-xiii.
2. Martin Luther, “On the Jews and Their Lies” in Internet Medieval Source Book, ed. Paul Halsall, 1987, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/luther-jews.html
3. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 91.
4. Ibid., p. 236.
5. Anti-Defamation League, “Anti-Semitic Myths,” 2002, http://www.adl.org/special_reports/protocols/protocols_into.asp
6. Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), pp. 27-28.
7. Ibid., pp. 2-3.
8. Ibid., p. 28.
9. Anti-Defamation League, op. cit., http://www.adl.org/special_reports/protocols/protocols_international.asp
10. Anti-Defamation League, “The International Jew: Anti-Semitism in the Roaring Twenties Revived on the Web,” 2000, http://www.adl.org/special_reports/ij/print.asp
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. www.lockman.org
This article is a revised excerpt from “Then the Proconsul Believed: A study of the Acts of the Apostles, Volume I—Acts Chapters 1—13,” by Lee Griffith, available free of charge, upon request.
Copyright © 2006 Lee Griffith. All rights reserved.
