Latest / truthunedited / THE HIDDEN TRUTH_ Why the Jewish People STILL Reject Jesus as Messiah
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: They waited two thousand years for the Messiah. They memorized
- 0:04Speaker 1: the prophecies. They begged God for his arrival. But when
- 0:08Speaker 1: he finally showed up, they demanded his public execution. Why?
- 0:14Speaker 1: What if I told you that the very people Jesus
- 0:16Speaker 1: came to rescue, the very ones who prayed for him
- 0:19Speaker 1: for thousands of years, cried out for his death instead
- 0:22Speaker 1: of his crown? He opened blind eyes. He raised the dead.
- 0:27Speaker 1: He walked their streets. Every sign of the Messiah was
- 0:31Speaker 1: standing right in front of them in the dust of Jerusalem.
- 0:35Speaker 1: And yet, they demanded his cross instead of his crown.
- 0:40Speaker 1: And here is the paradox that history tries to bury.
- 0:44Speaker 1: While the Jewish nation largely turned away, countless Gentiles from
- 0:49Speaker 1: every pagan corner of the Roman Empire embraced him as saviour,
- 0:53Speaker 1: Stay with me. Because today we are uncovering the six
- 0:59Speaker 1: hidden historical and theological reasons behind one of the deepest
- 1:03Speaker 1: mysteries in faith. And once you see them, you will
- 1:07Speaker 1: never read your Bible the same way again. Before we
- 1:11Speaker 1: dive in, please subscribe to Bible Origins so you never
- 1:15Speaker 1: miss another deep dive into the hidden history of Scripture.
- 1:19Speaker 1: Now let us begin. Reason 1. They expected a warlord,
- 1:25Speaker 1: not a wandering rabbi. To understand why the Jewish people
- 1:30Speaker 1: rejected Jesus, we must first understand what they were desperately
- 1:34Speaker 1: waiting for. This was not a casual religious preference. This
- 1:38Speaker 1: was a matter of national survival. The story begins with Abraham.
- 1:45Speaker 1: God promised him something extraordinary. I will make you a
- 1:49Speaker 1: great nation, and through you all peoples of the earth
- 1:52Speaker 1: will be blessed. Israel was chosen not for privilege, but
- 1:57Speaker 1: for purpose. At Mount Sinai, God gave them the Torah.
- 2:02Speaker 1: 613 commands. Sabbath rest. Dietary laws. Ritual purity. These were
- 2:10Speaker 1: not optional customs. They were identity markers. They reminded Israel daily,
- 2:14Speaker 1: You are different. You are mine. For centuries, the prophets
- 2:20Speaker 1: kept hope alive. Isaiah spoke of a child born to rule.
- 2:25Speaker 1: Mighty God, Prince of Peace. Jeremiah promised a righteous branch
- 2:30Speaker 1: from David's line. Daniel saw an anointed one whose kingdom
- 2:35Speaker 1: would never end. But by the first century, the Jewish
- 2:38Speaker 1: people were not living in a kingdom. They were trapped
- 2:41Speaker 1: under the iron boot of Rome. Babylon had enslaved them.
- 2:45Speaker 1: Greece had humiliated them. and now Rome was crushing them
- 2:50Speaker 1: under staggering taxes and brutal military occupation. When Roman soldiers
- 2:56Speaker 1: marched through Jerusalem, they were not guests. They were conquerors,
- 3:01Speaker 1: and the Jewish people were praying desperately for one thing,
- 3:04Speaker 1: a deliverer, a warrior king, a son of David with
- 3:08Speaker 1: a sword who would overthrow the legions and restore Israel
- 3:10Speaker 1: as the dominant superpower on earth. But here is what
- 3:14Speaker 1: made their situation even more complicated. By the time Jesus arrived,
- 3:19Speaker 1: Judea had already been flooded with false prophets and failed revolutionaries.
- 3:25Speaker 1: The Jewish historian Josephus documented something extraordinary. A man named
- 3:30Speaker 1: Theudas led 400 followers to the Jordan River, claiming he
- 3:34Speaker 1: would part the waters just like Moses. Roman soldiers slaughtered
- 3:39Speaker 1: them all. Another man, known only as the Egyptian, led 4,000
- 3:45Speaker 1: men to the Mount of Olives, promising to collapse the
- 3:48Speaker 1: walls of Jerusalem with a word. Rome cut them down
- 3:52Speaker 1: without mercy. Every single one of these men claimed divine authority.
- 3:58Speaker 1: Every single one of them promised liberation. And every single
- 4:02Speaker 1: one of them left behind nothing but blood and broken families.
- 4:07Speaker 1: By the time Jesus of Nazareth stood up in the
- 4:10Speaker 1: synagogue and began teaching, the Jewish people had already been
- 4:13Speaker 1: burned so many times by false messiahs that their skepticism
- 4:17Speaker 1: was not irrational. It was survival instinct. Every failed revolutionary
- 4:23Speaker 1: made it harder to trust the next one. So when
- 4:26Speaker 1: Jesus arrived, what did he look like? He rode into
- 4:30Speaker 1: Jerusalem on a donkey, not a war horse. He said,
- 4:33Speaker 1: Turn the other cheek. He said, Pay your taxes to Caesar.
- 4:38Speaker 1: He knelt in the dirt and washed the feet of fishermen.
- 4:42Speaker 1: To a zealot whose family had been crucified by Roman soldiers,
- 4:46Speaker 1: this did not feel like the Messiah. This felt like
- 4:49Speaker 1: national betrayal. Their expectation was a lion with a sword.
- 4:55Speaker 1: What they saw was a lamb with a message of mercy.
- 4:58Speaker 1: They rejected the peaceful Messiah because they wanted a warrior
- 5:02Speaker 1: to save them from Rome. And 37 years later, Rome
- 5:07Speaker 1: destroyed them entirely. But failing to overthrow Rome was not
- 5:12Speaker 1: the real reason they killed him. The real scandal is
- 5:15Speaker 1: buried in a single terrifying verse in the book of Deuteronomy.
- 5:21Speaker 1: A verse that proved to the ancient Jewish mind that
- 5:24Speaker 1: Jesus of Nazareth was not the Messiah. He was cursed
- 5:28Speaker 1: by God. Reason 2. The stumbling block of the cross.
- 5:35Speaker 1: Anyone who is hung on a pole is under God's curse.
- 5:38Speaker 1: That is Deuteronomy chapter 21 verse 23. You have to
- 5:43Speaker 1: understand how horrific this was to the first century mind.
- 5:47Speaker 1: The Messiah is by definition the ultimate victor. The anointed
- 5:52Speaker 1: unstoppable champion of God. The Roman cross was the ultimate
- 5:57Speaker 1: symbol of defeat, shame, and weakness. Therefore, a crucified Messiah
- 6:03Speaker 1: was a complete and absolute oxymoron. It mathematically did not compute.
- 6:08Speaker 1: If he was hanging dead on a piece of Roman timber,
- 6:12Speaker 1: the Torah explicitly stated he was legally cursed by God.
- 6:16Speaker 1: Cursed men cannot be anointed kings. The cross did not
- 6:20Speaker 1: just kill Jesus in their eyes. It theologically disqualified him.
- 6:25Speaker 1: How could the Messiah, the one sent to save Israel,
- 6:29Speaker 1: die the death reserved for criminals, rebels, and slaves? How
- 6:33Speaker 1: could God's chosen one be nailed to wood and left
- 6:37Speaker 1: to suffocate in public humiliation? Jewish sources themselves acknowledge the
- 6:43Speaker 1: execution happened. The Babylonian Talmud records a startling passage. On
- 6:49Speaker 1: the eve of Passover, Yeshu was hung because he practiced
- 6:53Speaker 1: sorcery and led Israel astray. This is not Christian propaganda,
- 6:58Speaker 1: this is a Jewish record, but notice what it says.
- 7:03Speaker 1: They attributed his miracles not to divine power, but to sorcery.
- 7:09Speaker 1: To them, an executed man performing supernatural acts could only
- 7:13Speaker 1: be explained by dark magic, not by the hand of God.
- 7:18Speaker 1: It was their theological framework doing its job, The Apostle Paul,
- 7:22Speaker 1: himself a former Pharisee, understood this tension better than anyone.
- 7:27Speaker 1: He wrote to the church in Corinth and said, We
- 7:30Speaker 1: preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness
- 7:35Speaker 1: to Gentiles. The Greek word he used for stumbling block
- 7:39Speaker 1: is skandalon. It means scandal. It means offense. It means
- 7:44Speaker 1: a trap that catches your foot and sends you crashing
- 7:47Speaker 1: to the ground. The exact mechanism behind Jesus used to
- 7:52Speaker 1: save the world was the exact mechanism that offended Israel's
- 7:56Speaker 1: entire theological understanding of God's victory. The cross that disqualified
- 8:01Speaker 1: him in their eyes became the instrument that qualified the
- 8:05Speaker 1: entire human race for salvation. But the cross was not
- 8:10Speaker 1: the only threat. Jesus did something even more dangerous than dying.
- 8:15Speaker 1: While he was alive, he walked into the most sacred,
- 8:19Speaker 1: most powerful, most profitable building on earth, and he physically
- 8:23Speaker 1: attacked the men who ran it. Reason 3. He threatened
- 8:29Speaker 1: the temple empire built on extortion. The temple in 33
- 8:35Speaker 1: AD was not just a house of worship, it was
- 8:38Speaker 1: an economic powerhouse, generating the ancient equivalent of tens of
- 8:42Speaker 1: millions of dollars annually. And at the center of this
- 8:46Speaker 1: empire sat the Sadducees, the priestly aristocracy who controlled every transaction,
- 8:54Speaker 1: every sacrifice, and every coin that passed through those gates.
- 9:00Speaker 1: There was a system in place called the Bazaars of Annas,
- 9:03Speaker 1: named after the former high priest whose family ran the operation.
- 9:08Speaker 1: Jewish pilgrims traveling from across the Roman world were required
- 9:12Speaker 1: to purchase animals for sacrifice. But there was a catch.
- 9:16Speaker 1: They could not bring their own animals. They had to
- 9:19Speaker 1: buy pre-approved temple-certified livestock at wildly inflated prices from stalls
- 9:26Speaker 1: owned by the high priest's family. It was a religiously
- 9:30Speaker 1: sanctioned extortion racket. The poorest pilgrims in Israel, the ones
- 9:35Speaker 1: who could barely afford the journey to Jerusalem, were being
- 9:38Speaker 1: bled dry by the very priests who claimed to represent God.
- 9:42Speaker 1: The Pharisees, on the other hand, prided themselves on guarding
- 9:46Speaker 1: the law. They built fences around God's commands, rule upon rule,
- 9:52Speaker 1: restriction upon restriction. They turned the Sabbath into a minefield
- 9:57Speaker 1: of regulations. Jesus cut through their fences like fire through
- 10:01Speaker 1: dry grass. He healed on the Sabbath. He allowed his
- 10:05Speaker 1: disciples to pluck grain on the holy day. And when
- 10:09Speaker 1: they confronted him, he answered with devastating simplicity. The Sabbath
- 10:15Speaker 1: was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Then
- 10:19Speaker 1: came the moment that signed his death warrant. Jesus walked
- 10:23Speaker 1: into the temple courts, braided a whip, and overturned the tables.
- 10:28Speaker 1: Coins scattered across the stone floor, doves flew free, sacrificial
- 10:34Speaker 1: animals stampeded through the courtyard, and he thundered, My father's
- 10:39Speaker 1: house is not a den of thieves. He was not
- 10:43Speaker 1: making a theological point. He was physically destroying their primary
- 10:48Speaker 1: revenue stream, but he did not stop there. He made
- 10:52Speaker 1: a claim so audacious it shook the entire religious establishment.
- 10:57Speaker 1: Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in
- 11:01Speaker 1: three days. He was declaring their entire sacred sacrificial system obsolete.
- 11:07Speaker 1: His body was the new temple. The place where God
- 11:10Speaker 1: would meet humanity was no longer a building in Jerusalem.
- 11:14Speaker 1: It was a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth. And then came
- 11:18Speaker 1: his boldest claim. He stood before the leaders and declared,
- 11:23Speaker 1: Before Abraham was, I am. He took upon himself the
- 11:28Speaker 1: very name God revealed to Moses in the burning bush.
- 11:32Speaker 1: The leaders immediately picked up stones to kill him on
- 11:35Speaker 1: the spot. For them, this was the highest blasphemy imaginable.
- 11:40Speaker 1: This was not a prophet speaking on behalf of God.
- 11:44Speaker 1: This was a man claiming to be God himself. Caiaphas,
- 11:49Speaker 1: the high priest, made a cold political calculation. It is
- 11:54Speaker 1: better that one man die for the people than that
- 11:56Speaker 1: the whole nation perish. In his mind, killing Jesus was
- 12:01Speaker 1: not murder. It was a brutal survival necessity. If this
- 12:06Speaker 1: movement spread, Rome would see it as rebellion. And Rome's
- 12:10Speaker 1: response to rebellion... was always the same. Crucifixion, siege, slaughter.
- 12:19Speaker 1: Caiaphas believed he was protecting the nation by eliminating the threat.
- 12:23Speaker 1: They killed Jesus specifically to protect the temple and preserve
- 12:27Speaker 1: peace with Rome. And 37 years later, Rome burned the
- 12:32Speaker 1: temple to the ground and slaughtered the nation anyway. Every
- 12:37Speaker 1: single thing they murdered the Messiah to protect was destroyed.
- 12:42Speaker 1: Before you judge the high priests for protecting their empire
- 12:46Speaker 1: over the Messiah, ask yourself honestly. What comfortable empire are
- 12:52Speaker 1: you currently defending against God? What religious routine, what financial security,
- 12:58Speaker 1: what secret habit are you vigorously protecting simply because surrendering
- 13:03Speaker 1: it to Jesus would cost you too much? We judge
- 13:06Speaker 1: Caiaphas for choosing his temple over the truth. but how
- 13:09Speaker 1: many of us do the exact same thing every single day?
- 13:13Speaker 1: But the institutional fracture went even deeper than personal conviction.
- 13:19Speaker 1: Around 90 AD, Jewish authorities took a decisive step. They
- 13:24Speaker 1: added a 12th benediction to the Amida prayer, the central
- 13:28Speaker 1: prayer recited in every synagogue service. This benediction was widely
- 13:32Speaker 1: understood as a formal liturgical exclusion of Jewish Christians from
- 13:38Speaker 1: known as Nazarenes or Minim, from synagogue worship. Any Jewish
- 13:43Speaker 1: believer in Jesus who stood to recite these words would
- 13:47Speaker 1: be forced to curse themselves. The split between Judaism and
- 13:51Speaker 1: Christianity was not a slow, peaceful divorce. It was a formal,
- 13:56Speaker 1: institutional excommunication. Within a single generation of the crucifixion, the
- 14:02Speaker 1: two faiths were permanently and violently severed. But the conflict
- 14:07Speaker 1: went even deeper than money, politics, and institutional power. At
- 14:11Speaker 1: its absolute heart, the rejection of Jesus was about something
- 14:15Speaker 1: that still divides Judaism and Christianity to this very day.
- 14:20Speaker 1: It was about how the exact same sacred scriptures can
- 14:24Speaker 1: be read by two groups of people and produce two
- 14:27Speaker 1: completely opposite conclusions. Reason four, he claimed to be God.
- 14:33Speaker 1: For 2,000 years, brilliant Jewish and Christian scholars have read
- 14:38Speaker 1: the same verse and reached completely opposite conclusions. Take Isaiah
- 14:43Speaker 1: chapter 53. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for
- 14:48Speaker 1: our iniquities, and by his wounds we are healed. Christians
- 14:53Speaker 1: see this as a prophecy written 700 years before Christ,
- 14:58Speaker 1: perfectly fulfilled in the crucifixion, a suffering servant who takes
- 15:02Speaker 1: upon himself the sins of the world. But Jewish scholars
- 15:06Speaker 1: read the same passage and see something entirely different. To them,
- 15:10Speaker 1: the suffering servant is not one man. It is Israel itself,
- 15:15Speaker 1: the nation wounded by exile, oppressed by empires, carrying the
- 15:20Speaker 1: weight of the world's hatred. Isaiah is describing the collective
- 15:25Speaker 1: suffering of the Jewish people across millennia, not a single
- 15:29Speaker 1: Messiah dying on a Roman cross. This is not a
- 15:33Speaker 1: modern debate. Around 155 AD, barely a century after the crucifixion,
- 15:40Speaker 1: a Christian philosopher named Justin sat down with a Jewish
- 15:44Speaker 1: teacher named Trifo. They debated this exact text face-to-face. Justin
- 15:50Speaker 1: argued that Isaiah 53 pointed unmistakably to Jesus. Trifo argued
- 15:58Speaker 1: just as passionately that it described the nation of Israel.
- 16:02Speaker 1: The interpretive battle has been raging for almost 2,000 years.
- 16:06Speaker 1: The same tension exists in the book of Daniel. Christians
- 16:11Speaker 1: read Daniel chapter 9 and see the anointed one cut
- 16:15Speaker 1: off as a clear prophecy of the Messiah's death. aligning
- 16:19Speaker 1: perfectly with the crucifixion timeline. Jewish scholars read the same
- 16:24Speaker 1: vision and point to the Maccabean period, the desecration of
- 16:28Speaker 1: the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, and the wars that scarred
- 16:33Speaker 1: their land in the second century before Christ. Same scriptures,
- 16:38Speaker 1: completely different lenses, completely different conclusions. They used the Torah
- 16:44Speaker 1: itself to reject the one who wrote it. The very
- 16:48Speaker 1: scriptures they defended became the wall that kept them from
- 16:51Speaker 1: seeing the author standing in their midst. But there was
- 16:55Speaker 1: an even deeper theological barrier, one that went beyond prophetic interpretation.
- 17:01Speaker 1: It struck at the very foundation of Jewish faith. Hear,
- 17:07Speaker 1: O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
- 17:11Speaker 1: That is Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4. The Shema. It
- 17:15Speaker 1: is not just a prayer. It is the bedrock of
- 17:18Speaker 1: Jewish monotheism. It is the first scripture a Jewish child learns.
- 17:24Speaker 1: It is the last prayer a faithful Jew recites before death.
- 17:29Speaker 1: Within ancient Jewish thought, the Messiah was never expected to
- 17:33Speaker 1: be divine. He was expected to be a strictly human
- 17:37Speaker 1: descendant of David, anointed by God, but not God himself.
- 17:42Speaker 1: A king, a warrior, a prophet, but not deity incarnate.
- 17:48Speaker 1: Christians proclaim Jesus as the divine Son of God, one
- 17:51Speaker 1: with the Father, the Word made flesh. But to a
- 17:55Speaker 1: first-century Jew, the idea of God becoming a bleeding, suffering
- 17:59Speaker 1: man on a Roman cross seemed not just biologically impossible,
- 18:03Speaker 1: but legally blasphemous. To accept Jesus as divine felt like
- 18:09Speaker 1: breaking the absolute first commandment of Moses. The Shema was
- 18:13Speaker 1: not just a prayer, it was the bedrock of their
- 18:15Speaker 1: entire civilization, and Jesus was standing on it with a hammer.
- 18:21Speaker 1: Reason 5. The two Messiahs paradox. The Old Testament prophecies
- 18:27Speaker 1: present two seemingly impossible pictures of the Messiah. Isaiah 53
- 18:32Speaker 1: describes a suffering, dying servant. Daniel 7 describes a triumphant,
- 18:38Speaker 1: conquering king arriving on the clouds of heaven. How can
- 18:42Speaker 1: the Messiah be crushed and rule the earth? How can
- 18:45Speaker 1: he die and reign forever? The prophetic canyon was so
- 18:50Speaker 1: deep and the contradiction seemed so extreme that later rabbinic
- 18:55Speaker 1: tradition developed an astonishing radical solution. They split the Messiah
- 19:00Speaker 1: into two, Messiah Ben-Joseph, the son of Joseph from the
- 19:05Speaker 1: tribe of Ephraim, a warrior who would suffer and die
- 19:09Speaker 1: in battle against the enemies of God, and Messiah Ben David,
- 19:14Speaker 1: the son of David, from the tribe of Judah, the
- 19:17Speaker 1: ultimate victor who would resurrect the dead, rebuild the temple,
- 19:21Speaker 1: and usher in eternal peace. They could not conceive that
- 19:26Speaker 1: it was the same Messiah coming twice, once as a
- 19:30Speaker 1: lamb to take away the sin of the world, and
- 19:33Speaker 1: a second time as a lion to judge the living
- 19:36Speaker 1: and the dead. But here is where the story takes
- 19:40Speaker 1: a stunning turn. Jewish tradition itself acknowledges a dying, pierced Messiah.
- 19:46Speaker 1: The Babylonian Talmud records a passage in tractate Sukkah, where
- 19:51Speaker 1: the rabbis discuss a future national mourning over the death
- 19:55Speaker 1: of Messiah Ben-Joseph. They apply the words of the prophet Zechariah,
- 20:00Speaker 1: they will look upon the one they have pierced, to
- 20:03Speaker 1: this dying Messiah figure. The passage continues, describes an entire
- 20:07Speaker 1: nation mourning family by family apart, a grief so deep
- 20:12Speaker 1: it separates even husbands and wives into solitary weeping. The
- 20:17Speaker 1: concept of a suffering, dying Messiah is not a Christian invention.
- 20:23Speaker 1: It is embedded in the Talmud itself. Jewish tradition acknowledges
- 20:28Speaker 1: a Messiah who is pierced, who is mourned, and who dies.
- 20:33Speaker 1: They simply assigned that death as to a different Messiah
- 20:37Speaker 1: than Christians do. But the grief is the same. The
- 20:41Speaker 1: piercing is the same. The mourning is the same. The
- 20:46Speaker 1: only question that remains is this. Was it one Messiah
- 20:50Speaker 1: or two? They split the Messiah into two because a
- 20:54Speaker 1: suffering king was inconceivable. But he was always one. The
- 20:58Speaker 1: lamb and the lion were always the same person. They
- 21:01Speaker 1: just could not see the 2,000-year gap between his first
- 21:05Speaker 1: footprint and his second. But the sixth reason is the
- 21:09Speaker 1: one that will shake you. It does not just explain
- 21:12Speaker 1: the first century rejection. It explains why most Jewish people
- 21:16Speaker 1: still reject him today. And the answer has nothing to
- 21:20Speaker 1: do with theology. It has to do with the unspeakable
- 21:24Speaker 1: crimes committed in his name. Reason 6. Two thousand years
- 21:30Speaker 1: of suffering made it impossible to trust him. The Torah
- 21:34Speaker 1: was not only a religion, it was their entire survival identity.
- 21:39Speaker 1: The Sabbath, dietary laws, and rituals were the fences that
- 21:43Speaker 1: kept the Jewish people alive through two thousand years of exile, dispersion,
- 21:48Speaker 1: and genocide. To accept Jesus means redefining that identity and
- 21:54Speaker 1: abandoning the very boundaries that preserved their existence. But the
- 21:59Speaker 1: historical trauma goes far deeper than theology. The Crusades. In 1096,
- 22:06Speaker 1: Christian armies marched toward Jerusalem to reclaim the Holy Land
- 22:11Speaker 1: from Muslim control. But along the way, they massacred entire
- 22:16Speaker 1: Jewish communities in the Rhineland. Men, women, and children slaughtered
- 22:21Speaker 1: in their synagogues. The Crusaders claimed they were doing God's work.
- 22:27Speaker 1: They wore crosses on their chests as they murdered Jewish
- 22:30Speaker 1: families who had nothing to do with the conflict in Jerusalem.
- 22:34Speaker 1: The Inquisition. Beginning in 1492, the Spanish Inquisition forced Jews
- 22:41Speaker 1: to convert to Christianity under threat of torture and death.
- 22:46Speaker 1: Families were torn apart. Ancient Torah scrolls were burned. Those
- 22:52Speaker 1: who refused to renounce their faith were executed publicly. The
- 22:56Speaker 1: institutional church claiming to represent Jesus wielded the sword of
- 23:01Speaker 1: persecution against the very people Jesus came from, the pogroms.
- 23:08Speaker 1: For centuries, waves of organized anti-Jewish violence swept across Eastern Europe.
- 23:14Speaker 1: Villages destroyed. Synagogues burned, families driven from their homes, and
- 23:20Speaker 1: in many cases, the violence was fueled by twisted Christian
- 23:24Speaker 1: theology that blamed the Jewish people for the death of Christ.
- 23:28Speaker 1: The Holocaust. Six million Jewish men, women, and children systematically
- 23:35Speaker 1: murdered by the Nazi regime. And while the Holocaust was
- 23:39Speaker 1: driven by racist ideology, anti-Semitic propaganda was often wrapped in
- 23:44Speaker 1: distorted Christian language. Centuries of theological hostility had created a
- 23:50Speaker 1: cultural soil where such evil could take root. The cross,
- 23:55Speaker 1: which for a Christian is the ultimate symbol of love
- 23:58Speaker 1: and salvation, literally became a symbol of terror, oppression, and
- 24:02Speaker 1: genocide to the Jewish people. For many modern Jews, embracing
- 24:07Speaker 1: Jesus feels like the ultimate betrayal of their ancestors who
- 24:11Speaker 1: died resisting forced conversion. This is not blindness. This is
- 24:18Speaker 1: not stubbornness. This is generational trauma carved into the soul
- 24:23Speaker 1: of an entire civilization. And this brings us to the
- 24:26Speaker 1: most haunting theological question of all. If Jesus truly was
- 24:32Speaker 1: the Messiah... Why did God allow the very people he
- 24:36Speaker 1: came for to find him so impossible to accept? The
- 24:40Speaker 1: Apostle Paul himself, a devout Pharisee who once persecuted Christians,
- 24:45Speaker 1: wrestled with this exact question. And he arrived at a breathtaking,
- 24:49Speaker 1: mysterious answer. A partial hardening came over Israel for one specific,
- 24:56Speaker 1: shocking reason. To open the door for the Gentiles. If
- 25:02Speaker 1: the Jewish nation had completely accepted Jesus as their earthly
- 25:06Speaker 1: king in 33 AD, the kingdom might have remained a localized,
- 25:11Speaker 1: nationalistic Jewish movement tucked safely away in Judea. Their rejection
- 25:16Speaker 1: became the exact mechanism that forced the apostles out into
- 25:20Speaker 1: the pagan world, bringing the gospel to the Romans, the Greeks,
- 25:24Speaker 1: and eventually to the ends of the earth. Their stumbling
- 25:27Speaker 1: pushed the door of salvation wide open. Paul wrote to
- 25:32Speaker 1: the Gentile believers in Rome with a fierce warning, Do
- 25:36Speaker 1: not be arrogant. You do not support the root. The
- 25:40Speaker 1: root supports you. You stand only by mercy, never by merit.
- 25:45Speaker 1: God's promises to Abraham remain utterly irrevocable. He has not
- 25:51Speaker 1: replaced Israel. He has not forgotten them. The covenant stands.
- 25:55Speaker 1: They rejected the Messiah to preserve their national survival, and
- 26:00Speaker 1: across two thousand years of exile and persecution, their survival
- 26:05Speaker 1: was carried by the very gospel they refused. The God
- 26:09Speaker 1: they thought abandoned them was protecting them through the covenant
- 26:13Speaker 1: they did not recognize. A day is coming when the
- 26:17Speaker 1: eyes of the nation will finally open, and they will
- 26:20Speaker 1: recognize the Messiah they once rejected. The prophet Zechariah wrote,
- 26:26Speaker 1: They will look upon me, the one they have pierced,
- 26:30Speaker 1: and they will mourn for him as one mourns for
- 26:33Speaker 1: an only child. It will be a day of profound
- 26:37Speaker 1: historical grief, followed by the greatest national redemption the world
- 26:41Speaker 1: has ever witnessed. So now you see the full picture.
- 26:46Speaker 1: Their scriptures seem to disqualify him. Their leaders chose to
- 26:51Speaker 1: destroy him. and two thousand years of trauma made it
- 26:55Speaker 1: nearly impossible to embrace him. But beneath every layer of rejection,
- 27:00Speaker 1: the sovereign hand of God was opening the door of
- 27:04Speaker 1: salvation to the entire world. And if you are honest
- 27:08Speaker 1: with yourself, the same patterns live in you. Not because
- 27:12Speaker 1: you are Jewish, but because you are human. We all
- 27:16Speaker 1: build expectations of what God should do for us. And
- 27:20Speaker 1: when he does not match the version we created in
- 27:23Speaker 1: our minds, we turn away. We want the God who
- 27:27Speaker 1: fixes our problems. We struggle with the God who hands
- 27:31Speaker 1: us a cross. Israel wanted a lion. They could not
- 27:35Speaker 1: accept the lamb. And every one of us has done
- 27:37Speaker 1: the same thing in our own way, in our own time,
- 27:40Speaker 1: in our own life. Their story is not over. Paul
- 27:44Speaker 1: declared it with absolute certainty. All Israel will be saved.
- 27:49Speaker 1: not because they earned it, not because they finally figured
- 27:52Speaker 1: it out, but because the God who made a covenant
- 27:56Speaker 1: with Abraham 4,000 years ago does not break his word.
- 28:02Speaker 1: The promise stands, the covenant holds, and the day is
- 28:06Speaker 1: coming when the nation that rejected their Messiah will finally
- 28:11Speaker 1: see his face and realize he never stopped reaching for them.
- 28:17Speaker 1: Before you go, I want you to do something. Offer
- 28:21Speaker 1: a prayer from your heart for the Jewish people in
- 28:23Speaker 1: the comment section. Pray that the eyes of their understanding
- 28:27Speaker 1: would be opened and they would see the Messiah who
- 28:30Speaker 1: has never stopped loving them, not the Christ of the Crusades,
- 28:34Speaker 1: the real one. The carpenter from Nazareth who wept over
- 28:38Speaker 1: Jerusalem and said, how often I long to gather you.
- 28:43Speaker 1: Subscribe to Bible Origins and explore the other teachings on
- 28:47Speaker 1: this channel. They will change the way you read your
- 28:50Speaker 1: Bible forever.