The American holocaust

In recent years, near the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, WORLD has featured the transcript of a sermon that focuses on abortion. This year, we offer a sermon preached by Phillip Krueger, pastor of Sun City West Christian Church in Sun City West, Ariz., on June 14, 2015. —Mickey McLean

Seventy years ago terrible mistakes were made, and history is repeating itself.

There is a tendency to forget what happened in the past. We should learn from the past because we are likely to face the same tests past generations faced. The Bible says:

“What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again” (Ecclesiastes 3:15, NLT).

In the Bible, the number 70 represents a period of judgment. Ancient Israel spent 70 years in captivity in Babylon. Seventy sevens refers to the coming of Messiah (Daniel 9:24). Seventy years ago the U.S. federal debt was 260 billion. Seventy years ago (Sept. 2, 1945) Japan surrendered. Seventy years ago (April 30, 1945) Hitler committed suicide. Seventy years ago World War II ended in Europe. Seventy years ago Allied troops uncovered the full extent of crimes committed during the Holocaust. Seventy years ago (Nov. 20, 1945) the International Military Tribunal began the trial of 21 major Nazi leaders. 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the end of the German Holocaust.

This is an increasingly forgotten time and event in history. Of course, the Bible said this would happen:

“History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. Sometimes people say, ‘Here is something new!’ But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. We don’t remember what happened in the past …” (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11, NLT).

Seventy years ago …

Many would say the wickedest man in modern history is Adolph Hitler. But an entire generation does not know him. College-age adults were asked, “Have you ever heard of Adolph Hitler?” Most simply said, “No.” Other answers included:

They were asked if Hitler was evil and most said, “No.” One answered, “Hitler was the most famous criminal in the world.”

A generation is forgetting one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the human race. Some believe Hitler was a forerunner of the Antichrist:

“When the end comes near for those kingdoms, a bold and cruel king who tells lies will come. This will happen when many people have turned against God. This king will be very powerful, but his power will not come from himself. He will cause terrible destruction and will be successful in everything he does. He will destroy powerful people and even God’s holy people. This king will succeed by using lies and force. He will think that he is very important. He will destroy many people without warning; he will try to fight even the Prince of princes! But that cruel king will be destroyed, and not by human power” (Daniel 8:23-25, NCV).

Hitler is very well known in Germany. He masterminded the murder of 11 million people, including 6 million Jews—that’s more than the population of New York City and Chicago combined. This mass murder is called “The Holocaust.” Holocaust comes from the Greek holokauston (holo: wholly or completely and kauston: burnt), meaning: a wholly burnt offering to God.

Germany learned that looking the other way led to their national shame. In Austria, if you deny the Holocaust took place they will throw you in jail. They don’t want their societies to forget the terrible price the innocent paid while the masses went happily on their way. Germany has mandatory Holocaust education for its schoolchildren. The Germans know that those who have forgotten history are likely to repeat it.

Years ago we visited the concentration camp and museum at Dachau. Pictures of stacked, discarded bodies lined the walls as a reminder. Shortly after the war ended, our American military made the German citizens go through the concentrations camps to see the ovens and understand what had caused the smoke to billow from their chimneys. Our military wanted the German citizens to understand what the leaders they had allowed into power had done. There is film footage from the day the museum/mausoleum first opened. The German public was unaware of the horror that had taken place. Residents were filmed laughing and enjoying themselves as they neared the entry doors of death. Those same people were shown coming out weeping and appalled at seeing the truth with their own eyes. They became aware of countless medical experiments that had been performed on the innocent. Licensed doctors disposed of countless bodies like trash. The citizens learned that mass murder had been going on and millions of innocents forgotten. But not forgotten by God:

“But the Lord said, ‘Your brother’s blood calls to me from the ground. What have you done? You are hereby banished from this ground which you have defiled with your brother’s blood’” (Genesis 4:10-11, TLB).

Hitler called himself a Christian. His actions were not those of a Christian. He ended up hating Christianity and called it “a disease.” He said Judaism was an invention of the Jews.

He removed Christian pastors from their churches and replaced them with his Nazi pastors who would preach what the State wanted the people to hear. He replaced the cross with the swastika (the broken cross) and changed the First Commandment to “Honor your Führer and master.” Hitler took the place of God.

He hated the 10 Commandments and wanted to free his people from them. Hitler said, “History will recognize our movement as the great battle for humanity’s liberation; a liberation from the curse of Mount Sinai. … God is a tyrant who orders one to do the very things one doesn’t like.”

He had his own view of God that the Bible did not agree with. The God he created allowed him to do as he pleased. The Bible often repeats the words:

“… all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25, NLT).

Many churches today are rewriting the Bible to say what they want it to say. Hitler would approve of those who twist and distort Scripture. The Bible says, “… ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16, NIV). They make the Bible say what they want it to say so they can indulge their own wicked lifestyle with what they think are God’s blessings.

Indeed, the Scripture is fulfilled that “… a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth …” (2 Timothy 4:3-4, NLT). And, “How terrible it will be for people who call good things bad and bad things good, who think darkness is light and light is darkness, who think sour is sweet and sweet is sour. How terrible it will be for people who think they are wise and believe they are clever” (Isaiah 5:20-21, NCV).

Hitler twisted God’s Word. It laid the groundwork for mass murder. Hitler said, “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but not human.” Hitler preached: Jews are not really human beings. Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, reportedly said,“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The Hitler Doctrine dehumanized people, so it was OK to murder them by the millions.

This is happening today. By labeling a certain group as “non-persons,” it is OK to kill them.

In many cultures, women have no rights and are considered property. They can be disposed of for any reason. Blacks in this country, at one time, had no rights. In the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, said African-Americans, slave or free, could not be citizens and were not legally people, but were instead property of their owners. We look back at this with shock and regret. This was one of the causes of the Civil War. The Church and Christians led the charge against slavery.

If Hitler could sell the lie that Jews were not people, they could be exterminated without conscience. After all, how can you kill a non-human? The government of Germany said it was legal to kill Jews. Some wouldn’t personally kill Jews but would defend another person’s right to do so.

In Nazi Germany, churches increasingly were divided and under attack by Hitler’s regime. If the churches didn’t teach, cooperate, and endorse the State’s version of truth and support the laws passed that contradicted the Bible, they were shut down. Resisters were taken to camps, imprisoned, and executed.

Disobeying governing authorities cost many Christians their lives. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was part of the Christian resistance in Nazi Germany. He was a German Lutheran pastor and participated in the German Resistance movement against Nazism. Once again, it was the Church and Christians who identified a wrong and worked to change it. Bonhoeffer wanted to do something about the Holocaust of the Jews. Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship in 1937. He wrote about resisting the Socialist movement. Bonhoeffer was arrested in March 1943, imprisoned, and executed by hanging shortly before the war’s end.

Noncompliance is reserved for those cases where authority is forcing you to do evil. Hitler turned his country anti-Jewish. He was setting the stage for mass cleansings, concentration camps, and executions that were OK to the masses. Other citizens chose to ignore.

There was a forerunner to Hitler in the Old Testament. Let me tell you a story about the wickedest husband and wife power couple in Israel’s history. Together, they held the highest public office in the nation. He was the wickedest ruler in the history of his nation to that point. His wife was the evil genius behind her husband’s reign. She was proud, defiant, cunning, ruthless, vindictive, and sarcastic. She was not someone you would want to be your mother-in-law! She was murderously protective of her throne, her husband, and her place in history. The record shows that many people who were a threat to them conveniently ended up dead. Her signature legislation was that it was the right of every mother to choose to end the life of her baby. Because of their legislation, countless babies were sacrificed on the altar of selfishness and greed. May I introduce to you the ruler and his wife: King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Their story is found in 1 Kings 16.

When we think of someone who acts like “a Jezebel,” we picture a woman in a low-cut red dress—like Scarlett O’Hara at Ashley Wilkes’ birthday party in Gone with the Wind—someone who flirts with other women’s husbands. But this is not what the real Jezebel was like at all. She was a faithful wife who helped her husband entice the nation to participate in wholesale murder. She maintained it was the right of mothers to do whatever they wished with her babies. The baby was a mother’s property and could be sacrificed as she saw fit.

Jezebel was the forerunner of Adolph Hitler. Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Phoenicians. Ethbaal was a priest of the fertility gods Baal and Asherah. He killed his brother King Phelles so he could become the king of the Baal worshippers. Baal in Hebrew means “possessor” (his followers were “possessed”). To further his own political ambitions, Ethbaal gave his daughter Jezebel to be married to Ahab, king of Northern Israel.

Jezebel was just like her father. Because of her efforts, the government of Israel actually approved the wholesale slaughter of babies. She had two main worship centers built to Baal. These were altars of death. The one at Samaria needed 450 priests to handle all the sacrifices. The one in Jezreel had 400 priests to handle the thriving “business.”

Baal was the god of fertility and prosperity. He was also called Baal-Zebub or Beelzebub. Jesus compares this god, by name, to Satan himself.

To entice Baal-Zebub to bless the land, mothers sacrificed their children to the priests. The idol of Baal was in the form of a bull, hollowed out, a fire built inside. Babies were laid on his red-hot outstretched arms, and were burnt alive.

God says:

“… Israel has forsaken me and turned this valley into a place of wickedness. The people burn incense to foreign gods—idols never before acknowledged by this generation, by their ancestors, or by the kings of Judah. And they have filled this place with the blood of innocent children” (Jeremiah 19:4, NLT).

Archaeologists unearthed one of Baal’s sacrificial cemeteries in Carthage recently. It measured 60,000 square feet and was many layers deep. It contained the remains of more than 20,000 children.

Megiddo was another “high place” where babies were offered to Baal. The hill that Megiddo was built upon is called Har in Hebrew. From Har and Megiddo we get the word Armageddon. Mount Carmel overlooks Armageddon as the final battlefield between good and evil. The burial place of children will be the place of death for adults. How could the people of Israel, God’s people, have allowed this to happen? How could they lose all sensitivity to violence and bloodshed?

This is exactly what the German people did under Adolph Hitler.

Proverbs 6:17, states that one of the six things that God hates is “hands that shed innocent blood.” Hitler and Jezebel spilled innocent blood. Hitler led the nation of Germany to murder millions of what he considered “non-humans.” Jezebel led the nation of Israel to murder its babies because they were the property of their mothers.

Does God consider pre-born babies to be human beings? The Bible says:

“… I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you …” (Jeremiah 1:5, MSG).

An angel said of the pre-born John the Baptist:

“… he will be great in the sight of the Lord … and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born” (Luke 1:15, NIV).

The Apostle Paul said about himself:

“… even before I was born, God had chosen me to be his and called me—what kindness and grace” (Galatians 1:15, TLB).

David said:

“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. …O God, if only you would destroy the wicked! Get out of my life, you murderers!” (Psalm 139:13-16, 19, NLT).

Job said:

“… God is the one who gave life to each of us before we were born” (Job 31:15, CEV).

God gives life before birth!

Hitler killed 11 million “non-persons.” He is remembered as a monster. His country fell because of what he and his people did.

Jezebel killed countless innocent babies. She is remembered as a monster. She gave mothers the right to sacrifice their children on the altar of Beelzebub. Israel fell because of what Ahab and Jezebel did.

Abraham Lincoln said in 1858:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. … It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it … in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward. …”

Lincoln won the battle against slavery.

America is now in a new Civil War.

The innocent blood of more than 61 million unborn “non-persons” has been shed in the American Holocaust in the first 42 years after Roe v. Wade. This is more than five times as many killed by Hitler. This is America’s Holocaust.

This declaration was made at the National Memorial for the Unborn in Chattanooga, Tenn., on March 23, 1997:

“I am Norma McCorvey. I became known as Jane Roe on January 22, 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court released the Roe v. Wade decision which created a woman’s ‘right to abortion.’

“I am now a child of God, a new creature in Christ. I am forgiven and redeemed.

“Today, I publicly recant my involvement in the tragedy of abortion. I humbly ask forgiveness of the millions of women and unborn babies who have experienced the violence of abortion.

“In this place of healing, the National Memorial for the Unborn, I stand with those who honor the worth of every unborn child created in the image of God. I will strive, in the name of Jesus, to end this holocaust.”

More than 12 years ago, on June 9, 2003, Roe (Norma McCorvey) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion a woman’s legal right over her own body/property. The court rejected her plea.

The spirit of Jezebel is alive in in our country and in some churches.

Jesus said to the church in Thyatira:

“… I still have something against you because of that woman Jezebel. She calls herself a prophet, and you let her teach and mislead my servants to do immoral things …” (Revelation 2:20, CEV).

Is it possible to change the heart of our nation regarding women’s rights over their “non-person, personal property”?

In the history of the United States and the world, it has been Christians who have stood for the abused.

The Bible warns:

“Cursed is anyone who accepts payment to kill an innocent person. And all the people will reply, ‘Amen!’” (Deuteronomy 27:25, NLT)

And all God’s people said? “Amen!”