thought of the day.60

Long before Hitler, a seed of hatred was planted in the mind of humanity. Planted by the writers of Christian scriptures, it declared that Jews were responsible for the murder of God. In those writings Jesus demonizes unbelieving Jews, calling them “evil,” “serpents,” and children of the “devil.”

Following in Jesus’ footsteps, Paul demonized Elymas, calling him a “child of the devil,” and then blinded him (Acts 13:6-12). During the council of Nicaea—when Christianity was made the official religion of Rome—Jews were referred to as “mad”... “utterly depraved”...“murderers of our Lord.” Early fathers of the Christian church continued the demonizing of Jews inspiring nearly 2,000 years of persecution. Like Jesus, Saint Jerome denounced them as Judaic “serpents.” Saint John Chrysotom said “It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews.” Saint Fulgentius echos the violent words of Jesus by saying Jews who die outside the Catholic Church, will “go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Pope Pius IX saw Jews as "dogs who bark in the street." In a precursor of Nazi Germany, Pope Innocent III summoned The Fourth Council of the Lateran which stripped Jews of their civil rights and compelled them to wear a special mark to identify themselves in public. And leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, called Jews “desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous, and devilish” and said “We ought to take revenge … and kill them.”

The long history of demonizing Jews begun by Jesus led to Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Hitler said “the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” and exterminated some six million people while believing he was “acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator” and was “fighting for the work of the Lord.” Hitler is rightly condemned for the Nazi holocaust, yet Jesus promises an eternal holocaust which will torture countless more men, women and children forever and always and is praised.

Calling Jesus, “The Prince of Peace” is like calling Hitler, “The Lord of Love”.