The world was shocked when Jews in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk received orders to register and that any Jew who refused would have their citizenship revoked, be forced to leave the country, and have their property confiscated. The warning leaflets written in Russian were distributed outside a synagogue during Passover. The flyers were addressed to Ukrainian citizens of Jewish nationality.
The one responsible for this heinous ruse is the Prince of the Power of the Air. It is not the first time Jews have been targeted, nor will it be the last. As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter in just over two weeks and Jews celebrate Passover next month, I am reminded of the forced registration/taxation of all Jews which was cleverly implemented by Herod. It would provide the information necessary so that he could eventually kill a Jew from the lineage of David—Yeshua ben Jospeh, the Lord our Salvation, or Jesus.
King Herod’s obsession to kill the firstborn because of his demonic fear meant this Child would fulfill prophecies that go all the way back to Mount Moriah, where Abraham made a covenant with God over Isaac and where King David chose to build the first Temple. This hatred for the Jews has not diminished, nor has the fiendish virus of anti-Semitism been stamped out.
A Personal Tragedy
Over 60 years ago, my mother shook her finger in my face and shouted, “Christians kill Jews; Christians hate Jews. Jesus died. Don’t dig him up. The Pope, Adolf Hitler, and Billy Graham are all Christians.” She said that because she caught me watching a Billy Graham program after Saturday morning cartoons. My mother then told me a horror story about her grandfather, a rabbi. He and his congregation in the Ukraine were burned to death in his synagogue on the Shabbat. She said, “Russian Orthodox Christians boarded up the windows and lit fires while screaming ‘Christ killers’!”
Regretfully, my father, who attended an Assembly of God Church and called himself a born-again Christian, hated Jews. It’s hard to believe he could have married a Jewish woman, but he did. He went to church on Sunday and was called, “Brother Bob” by the congregation, yet the Jew he hated the most was me. He believed I was the product of an affair between my mother and a Jewish man. From the age of four to the age of 11, I suffered unspeakable abuse—beaten with extension cords and coat hangers, locked in a canning cellar beneath the house, and ultimately strangled and left for dead—simply because I was a Jew. Over the 40-plus years I’ve defended the nation of Israel and worked with its leaders, there is one thing I clearly recognize: Jews are not killed in Israel over land; they are killed because they are Jewish.
God's Covenant
God’s prophetic clock is still on the Jews. It all began with them, and will all end with them according to Psalm 102: 16, “When the Lord shall build up Zion, then shall He appear in His glory.” He is a covenant God and every promise He made to the Jewish people will be kept, as will every promise He has made to those who have been washed in the blood of the Passover Lamb and redeemed.
