Showing posts with label Red Army. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Red Army. Show all posts

Sunday, January 27, 2019

The Holocaust Remains a Wake-Up Call for the Church - Charles Gardner ISRAEL TODAY

The Holocaust Remains a Wake-Up Call for the Church

Sunday, January 27, 2019 |  Charles Gardner ISRAEL TODAY
Nearly three-quarters of a century has passed since the Red Army liberated the notorious Auschwitz death camp on January 27, 1945, a date now marked by the annual Holocaust Memorial Day here in Britain and elsewhere.
It is held with the intention of ensuring that it never happens again. But alas, anti-Semitism is back to haunt us, proving the point often made that we never learn from history.
In the UK, we face the dreadful possibility of having a Prime Minister with strong anti-Israel sympathies if the party currently holding onto power by the skin of its teeth does not get its act together.
In the US, they have witnessed the ghastly spectre of a congresswoman who took “swearing in” quite literally as she launched a profanity-laced tirade against President Trump on taking office.
Democrat Rashida Tlaib and Representative Ilhan Omar are the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, with the latter having already expressed her opposition to Israel.
Anti-Semitism has also been cited among issues affecting the Women’s March movement in America. In fact, it is on the rise worldwide, with left and right forming an unholy alliance against God’s chosen people.
On the other hand, there is increasing support for Israel from unexpected quarters. Take Brazil, for instance. Its new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has boldly declared his intention of following the US lead in moving his embassy to Jerusalem. And Wilson Witzel actually requested the sound of a shofar to accompany his inauguration as a Brazilian state governor, so strong is his support for the Jewish state.
So what does this mean? Nations, communities and individuals are lining up for battle (whether knowingly or not) in anticipation, no doubt, of the day of judgment when the sheep are separated from the goats (see Ezekiel 34.17, Matthew 25.31-46, Joel 3.2) on the basis of how they treated the Jewish people.
In the midst of all this, the silence from most leaders of the Christian church has been deafening – just as it was in Germany and elsewhere during the Shoah. I guess this is largely because of the dangerous and heretical Replacement Theology that has certainly swept through much of the British church.
We should be witnessing stirring calls from our pulpits to stand with the Jews, but somehow they don’t see the connection. That’s because they have been disconnected from the roots of their faith, and have forgotten that we worship the God of Israel, who has sent his Son as Messiah, first for the Jews and also for the Gentiles.
We owe them everything – the Law, the Prophets, the Patriarchs, the entire Bible (Luke being the only Gentile author) and most of all Jesus, who will soon return as the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Rev 5.5).
That the Jewish state is once more under severe threat was illustrated by the surface-to-surface missile fired into Israel by Syrian-based Iranian forces on Sunday. Fortunately, it was successfully intercepted.
Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of the late evangelist Billy Graham, is currently suffering severe side-effects from cancer treatment which she believes could be a message for Israel.
Recalling that God had some of his prophets live out the message he gave them, she wonders if her current life and death battle relates to the Jewish nation, reborn just a week before she came into the world.
“The warning I feel deep within is that Israel is in danger of a surprise attack in this, her 70th year,” she writes, urging them to return to the Lord (Joel 2.12-14) and us Gentiles to pray for the peace of Jerusalem “and for the whole House of Israel”.
If we truly love Jesus, we will love the Jews – as many of our Arab friends testify on finding peace and reconciliation at the cross. Wake up, church!
PHOTO: Visitors seen at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
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Monday, January 30, 2017

Heroes of the Holocaust - Charles Gardner ISRAEL TODAY

Heroes of the Holocaust

Monday, January 30, 2017 |  Charles Gardner  ISRAEL TODAY
Seventy-two years after the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army on January 27 1945, Britain and other nations are acknowledged Holocaust Memorial Day at a time when anti-Semitism is once more on the rise.
Israel itself, which has since risen from the ashes of that dreadful scourge that wiped out six million European Jews, is under dire threat from enemies on all sides while attacks on synagogues and other Jewish centres are still being carried out in the ‘civilised’ West. Only this last weekend in north-west London, a swastika-daubed brick was hurled through a Jewish family’s window while others were pelted with eggs.[1]
The fragile borders to which the United Nations expect Israel to agree (just nine miles wide in places) have for good reason been described by politicians as ‘Auschwitz lines’ because they leave the Jewish state highly vulnerable to attack from neighbouring states who have repeatedly threatened to wipe them off the map.
It was also in January 1945 that one of the most heroic accounts of the war took place. But the incredible story has only just surfaced because the hero concerned never spoke about it.
The truth was finally unearthed by his granddaughter when asked to focus on a family member as part of a college assignment. Her widowed grandmother gave her the diary kept by her husband during his time in a prisoner-of-war camp which revealed the astonishing fact that, by standing up to the German commandant, Master Sgt Roddie Edmonds, of Knoxville, Tennessee, had saved the lives of 200 American Jews.
As the highest-ranking officer there, Edmonds was made responsible for the camp’s 1,292 American GIs, 200 of whom were Jewish. Then one day the Germans ordered all Jewish POWs to report outside their barracks the following morning. Knowing what awaited them – being moved to a slave labour camp at the very least – he decided to resist the directive, ordering all his men to fall out the following morning.
The commandant, Major Siegmann, duly ordered Edmonds to identify the Jewish soldiers, to which the sergeant responded: “We are all Jews here.”
Holding his pistol to Edmonds’ head, the commandant repeated the order. But the sergeant – a devout Christian – refused.
“According to the Geneva Convention, we only have to give our name, rank and serial number. If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us, and after the war you will be tried for war crimes,” Edmonds had said, according to one of the men saved that day.
Edmonds’ pastor son Chris regards all of them as heroes as they could easily have identified the Jews among them to save their skin. But they all stood together. Late last year Roddie Edmonds was posthumously awarded the Yehi Or (Let there be light) Award by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. He has also been honoured by Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.[2]
But as Jews were herded into cattle trucks for transporting to death camps, there weren’t many Roddies about who dared to speak up and stand up on their behalf.
These days, where controversial issues are concerned, leaders still prefer to keep their heads below the proverbial parapet while remaining ‘impartial’. But there is a time when we must take sides. We must choose between life and death, between God and evil. If we claim to be Christian, we have no option.
“Neutrality is only an illusion,” writes Robert Stearns. “Those who are not for God are against Him. (Matthew 12.30a) “The German public’s unfortunate legacy during World War II lies not in what they did in response to their despotic leader and his horrendous practices, but in what they did not do.”[3]
This did not apply, however, to Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, young Christians who led the White Rose leaflet campaign of resistance for which they paid with their lives. Prophetically, they asked the question: “Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes… reach the light of day?”[4]
Stearns also points out that, when the Nazis invaded European nations, many monarchs vacated their thrones and fled. But King Christian X stayed in Denmark as he defied the bullies. And thanks to his example, most Danish Jews survived the war.[5]
Princess Alice, the Queen’s mother-in-law, has also been recognized by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum as ‘righteous among the nations’ for saving a Jewish family during the war, and is buried on the Mount of Olives.
As Princess of Greece, she hid Jewish widow Rachel Cohen and two of her five children in her home. Rachel’s husband had in 1913 helped King George I of Greece, in return for which the king offered him any service he could perform, should he ever need it. When the Nazi threat emerged, his son recalled this promise and appealed to the Princess, who duly honoured her father’s pledge. Prince Charles last year fulfilled a longstanding wish to visit his grandmother’s grave.[6]
It’s interesting in this respect that Prince Charles has compared the dangers facing minority faith groups across the world today with the “dark days of the 1930s”.[7]
The Queen herself is a wonderful example of someone who is prepared to make an uncompromising stand for faith and truth, declaring in her latest Christmas message to the nation: “Jesus Christ lived in obscurity for much of his life and was maligned and rejected by many, though he had done no wrong. Millions now follow his teaching and find in him the guiding light of their lives. I am one of them…”
Are we, like the Queen, courageous enough to tell the entire world that we are followers of Jesus and, as such, will do all we can to stand up to the evil that lurks in every dark corner of our land?
Roddie Edmonds was prepared to die for 200 Jewish men. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. But the greatest sacrifice of all was when Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus), “though he had done no wrong”, laid down his life for both Jews and Gentiles on a stake outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City after being “led like a lamb to the slaughter” during the Passover feast (Isaiah 53.7). He bought our pardon; he paid the price.
  1. Jerusalem News Network, January 24 2017, quoting Algemeiner  ↩
  2. Gateway News (South Africa), December 1 2016, originally published by The Times of Israel  ↩
  3. The Cry of Mordecai by Robert Stearns (Destiny Image)  ↩
  4. Ibid  ↩
  5. Ibid  ↩
  6. Torch magazine, Christians United for Israel – UK, Dec 2016-Feb 2017  ↩
  7. Saltshakers December 24 2016, quoting Premier Online  ↩
Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon, and Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com
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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Prophetic? - Russian warship docks in Israel for first time


Russian warship docks in Israel for first time

Monday, May 13, 2013 |  Yossi Aloni  
For the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, a Russian warship docked at the port city of Haifa earlier this month. The "Azov" of Russian's Black Sea Fleet came to Israel at the request of the Association of Russian War Veterans to help celebrate the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.
Jewish veterans of the Red Army who later immigrated to Israel were invited to participate in a ceremony aboard the massive ship.
However, there was another even more important, even historical, reason for the visit - with the looming collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, Russia is on the lookout for new Middle East alliances.
Russia has long maintained a large naval base in Tartus, the second largest port city in Syria. But with Syria's ongoing civil war likely to end in that country descending into factional warfare and chaos, Russia is concerned for its interests in the region.
Recent reports are that Moscow is searching for a new Mediterranean seaport to maintain strategic balance in the region. Russian delegations have reportedly examined Egypt and Algeria.
But Israeli officials say that the Arab Spring has changed Russia's view of Israel, and Moscow now understands that in this volatile and unpredictable region, the Jewish state is an anchor of stability.
"There are things on which we do not agree with Russia, but there is a general understanding that we defend the same principles of democracy and security," said one official in Jerusalem. "They share our concern over Islamic fundamentalism taking over the Middle East. The Russians realize now more than ever that you can rely on Israel."
The Russians very loudly publicized the Azov's visit to Israel, and their decision to mark the victory over the Nazis together with Jewish veterans. "Russia is proud of its connection to this historical event, and wants to remind everyone that we fought on the right side," read a statement from the Russians. "There is something to be understood from this for the contemporary Middle East. Where we decided to make anchor is a clear statement, both to the Israelis and the entire region."
There was a general understanding that the Azov's visit was not a one-time event, and that other Russian warships would come calling in the near future. Israelis officials did not deny that they are open to further cooperation with Moscow.
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