by John Hagee
The Jewish community in Spain tried desperately to have the Edict of Expulsion repealed. A delegation consisting of Abraham Senior and Isaac Abravanel obtained an audience with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Senior, the Chief Rabbi of Castile, was, in effect, the leader of Spanish Jewry. Isaac Abravanel, a scholar and philosopher, was the financial adviser whose skill had enabled Spain to conquer Granada.
They appealed to the king and queen for mercy, and to strengthen their case they offered a substantial payment in exchange for revocation of the decree. According to one version of this meeting, the delegation placed the bag of money on the table.
Moved both by the power of their arguments and by the sight of the gold, Ferdinand and Isabella hesitated. “Just then, the Grand Inquisitor, Thomas de Torquemada, entered the room. He approached the table, set the cross he held in his hand near the bag of gold, and said, pointing to the figure of Jesus on the cross, ‘Here He is, sell Him!’ The royal couple’s doubts vanished. They rejected the delegation’s pleas and ordered the Jews to prepare for departure.”15
Lest we believe that anti-Semitism was exclusive to the Roman church, let me direct you to Martin Luther (1483–1586), the primary leader of the Protestant Reformation.
Having been disillusioned by the corruption of the Roman church, Luther turned to Scripture for solace. He discovered that salvation comes through faith in Christ and not through Rome. After being excommunicated by the Church and marked as a “convicted heretic” for his vocal and written criticisms of its doctrines, Luther went into hiding where he translated the New Testament into German, giving the “common people” the opportunity to benefit from its truths.
Luther initially was a friend of the Jews, writing that “treating the Jews in an unfriendly way was unchristian.” He truly believed that his revelation of salvation through grace would appeal to the Jewish people. However, when his efforts to convert them failed, Luther became angry and vindictive. He subsequently wrote a pamphlet, Against the Jews and Their Lies.
Luther declared the Jews as “public enemies” and beseeched that the Church and civil leaders take action against the Jewish people. Among his evil recommendations: (1) burn synagogues and Jewish schools, (2) raze and destroy Jewish homes, (3) take their prayer books and Talmudic writings, (4) forbid Rabbis to teach, (5) take their silver and gold, (6) make them work for their keep.
Martin Luther’s Against the Jews and Their Lies was a blueprint for “Kristallnacht,” so much so that in honor of Luther’s works, the first synagogues were burned on his birthday. Many believe Hitler’s “Final Solution” was inspired by Luther’s written works, which embodied his vile hatred against the Jewish people.
Why were the Jewish people segregated, tortured, killed, and banished?
For one reason and one reason only: they were a people who would not convert from their belief in the One God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Remember, as I said in chapter 1, it may have been called Christianity for hundreds of years, but the acts of the Inquisition had nothing to do with Christianity. They had nothing to do with the love of God. They were not connected to our Savior and Lord. These villainous acts were nothing more than religious tyranny. They were the acts of pious church leaders whose souls had been poisoned with the evil seed of anti-Semitism. The Inquisition should never be labeled as one that was sanctioned by the message of Jesus Christ. Never!
A HARBOR OF REFUGE
God caused Christopher Columbus to discover the “new world,” which would eventually become America, a refuge to the Jewish people and all who were oppressed by tyrants and religious dictators around the world.
God had promised Abraham centuries before in Genesis 12:3,
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
God has blessed America because we opened our arms to the seed of Abraham who have blessed the world beyond measure. I believe the day America turns its back on Israel and the Jewish people will be the exact day in history when God Almighty lifts His hand of blessing from America. The policies of our present government are putting daylight between Washington and Israel. Beware, America! God is watching! His honor and integrity rest upon His supernatural defense of Israel.
Israel is the only nation in the history of the world created by a sovereign act of God. God, the Creator of heaven and earth, entered into a real estate covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that the land of Israel would be theirs forever (Genesis 13:14–15; 17:7–8). Israel must never be separated from this ancient Bible covenant.
God continued His proclamation concerning Abraham and the Jewish people, saying, “I will curse him who curses you” (Genesis 12:3). The era of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s reign in Spain before the expulsion of the Jews is recorded in history as the Spanish Golden Age. The prosperity of Spain plummeted after the Jews were expelled and has never recovered.
Ever since the Edict of Expulsion, Spain has been ruled by dictators and despots, and today is facing national bankruptcy. In the twenty-first century, Spain is controlled by radical Islamists who blow up their trains and plot the death of anyone who dares to resist them.16 The irony cannot be ignored—the Jews who were expelled from Spain were a people who loved life. The radical Islamists love death. Spain is experiencing the curse of Genesis 12:3!
God continues His proclamation to Abraham, stating, “And in you [the Jewish people] all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Every person reading this book has been blessed by the contributions that the Jewish people have given to the world. As we have stated, the Jewish people have given us the Bible, the patriarchs, the first family of Christianity, and the apostles. Christianity cannot explain its existence without Judaism. That’s why our faith is referred as the Judeo-Christian faith. Our roots are found in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The Spanish Inquisition was a time of tears and tribulation that would end in triumph for the Jewish people as God brought them to America’s harbor of protection.
The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 was a world-changing moment. The mantle of prosperity was lifted from Spain and placed upon the shoulders of an infant nation that would become the United States of America. God Almighty used the Four Blood Moons of 1493–94 as a heavenly billboard to mankind.
Now let us explore the meaning of the Four Blood Moons of 1949–50 when miraculously, after two thousand years, Israel became a state.
CHAPTER 14
The Four Blood Moons of 1949–50
I will take you from among the nations,
gather you out of all countries, and bring you into
your own land. . . . Then you shall dwell in the land
that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people,
and I will be your God.
—EZEKIEL 36:24, 28
The second appearance of Four Blood Moons that are significantly linked to Jewish history was reported by NASA during 1949–50.1 They occurred during the rebirth of the State of Israel, which began in 1948. The mighty right hand of God gathered the Jewish people who, beginning in AD 70, had been scattered across the earth when Titus besieged Jerusalem. The Jewish people of the Diaspora were brought back to Israel, just as the Old Testament prophets had prophesied.
This Tetrad, beginning in 1949, occurred on the Jewish holidays of Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles:
1. Passover, April 13, 1949
2. Feast of Tabernacles, October 7, 1949
3. Passover, April 2, 1950
4. Feast of Tabernacles, September 26, 1950
BLOOD MOONS OF 1949–50
A total solar eclipse took place on September 12, 1950, before the Feast of Tabernacles on September 26.
What was happening to the Jewish people during this time?
It was in 1948 that Israel was once again declared a nation. There is no greater miracle in human history than the miracle of the ingathering of
the seed of Abraham. The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. The Land of Israel was where their spiritual identity was shaped. The Land of Israel is where the Jewish people will reside forever.
After being forcibly exiled by Titus in AD 70 the Jewish people never lost their love and connection to their sacred land. Throughout the Diaspora they never ceased to hope for the restoration of their national identity and freedom. Their constant prayer was, “Next year in Jerusalem.”
Compelled by the Abrahamic covenant and as a result of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and Holocaust, the Jewish people endeavored in reestablishing themselves in their ancient homeland more than ever. They returned to the Land as pioneers or ma’pilim, which were immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel (the Land of Israel) in defiance of restrictive legislation. They committed themselves to make the deserts bloom, to revive the Hebrew language, to build villages and towns, all the while ready to defend themselves from the enemies that were dedicated to their destruction.
These were peace-loving people who desired nothing more than independent nationhood which would open the gates of their biblical homeland to every Jewish person scattered among the nations.
THEODORE HERZL—THE VISIONARY
In 1897, Theodore Herzl, who is known as the founder of Zionism, convened the First Zionist Congress and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in their own country. This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 and reaffirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations, which specifically gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel (Land of Israel) and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild their national homeland.
Herzl was motivated by his personal experience of anti-Semitism while studying at the university in Vienna and, specifically, the trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894. Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was unjustly accused of treason, primarily because of the predominant anti-Semitic atmosphere in Vienna. Herzl witnessed mobs shouting, “Death to the Jews” and resolved that there was only one solution: the mass immigration of Jews to a land that they could call their own. This was the genesis of Zionism, the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their covenant homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty.2
MENACHEM BEGIN—THE WARRIOR
Menachem Begin was a Jewish youth leader in Poland when the Russians invaded during World War II. He was captured and placed in prison, where he was interrogated every night for hours. He slept in a cell infected by fleas. I will never forget him saying to me, “The first flea is considered an invader, and the rest are considered welcomed friends.”
After Begin’s release, he immediately traveled to what was then called Palestine (named after WWI for territories under the British Mandate, which included not only present-day Israel but also present-day Jordan). It was a time when Britain was decidedly pro-Arab. However, due to the Balfour Declaration, the governed body was forced to allow Jews to immigrate to Palestine. But they limited the number of immigrants by creating the harsh White Paper policy of 1939. This policy was decidedly influenced by the Arabs and limited the number of Jewish immigrants into Palestine to a meager ten thousand per year.
Here’s the problem: this was during the Holocaust when Hitler was sending twenty thousand Jews per day to the concentration camps of Europe. The Jews who were privileged to receive immigration documents to Palestine had a ticket to life; those who did not were at first put in ghettos and then sent to the camps where they were treated like animals by the demonized anti-Semitic Nazis. Making matters worse, the British army rounded up any Jewish person without immigration documents who managed to get to Palestine and then sent them back to Hitler’s death camps.3
When Menachem Begin arrived in Palestine and witnessed the British army put Jews by the hundreds on the trains back to Europe and to Hitler’s death camps, he decided to form the paramilitary group known as the Irgun. The word Irgun in Hebrew means “our group.” The purpose of the Irgun was to teach Jewish men how to fight and liberate their fellow Jews from the trains and ships headed for Hitler’s death camps.
Under the radar of British intelligence, the Irgun imported the machinery to manufacture their own rifles and ammunition. The Irgun also developed a percussion bomb that was placed on the train tracks. When the train, loaded with captured Jews bound for the death camps, would pass over the percussion bomb, it was timed to blow up between the engine and the coal car. It cut the train like a knife. The engine sailed down the tracks, the cars slowed down, and Menachem’s Irgun boarded the trains and liberated their fellow Jews.
The British put out a very lucrative bounty for the capture of Menachem Begin. Begin’s resolve became as steel while he was in the Russian prisons. On one occasion, he hid in the fireplace of his home for three days straight while the British Intelligence officers interrogated his wife who was just a few feet away. He may have looked like a bespectacled mild-mannered schoolteacher, but he was a dedicated warrior and liberator of the Jewish people.
The King David Hotel was the command center for the British army with approximately three hundred British officers and soldiers living on the premises. Menachem Begin and the Irgun wired the King David Hotel with explosives. The British commander was then called by phone and given the opportunity to evacuate the hotel prior to the explosion. The British commanding officer vigorously refused to obey the orders of a Jew and believed the call to be a prank. The Irgun then detonated a small bomb in the middle of the street in front of the hotel to demonstrate it was no hoax.
The British still refused to leave the King David Hotel. The explosives were set off and several hundred British soldiers needlessly perished.4
Menachem Begin was characterized as a terrorist. Not so! He was committed to saving the lives of the Jewish people. He was eventually rewarded by the people of Israel when they elected him prime minister. It was my pleasure to meet with him several times during his very successful administration. In fact, I have his autographed picture hanging on my study wall.
He was a devout man who studied the Torah every day. After his term in office, he taught a Bible class in his home every Friday night. I believe that without Menachem Begin and his Irgun organization the British would not have left Palestine and thousands more Jewish lives would have been lost to the Holocaust.
When you go to Israel, I encourage you to visit the Menachem Begin Museum. There you will fully appreciate the heroic exploits of this fearless man and you will better understand the urgent compulsion of the Jewish people to reestablish the nation of Israel. May God bless the sacred memory of this dedicated defender of Israel.
DAVID BEN-GURION—THE DIPLOMAT
Ben-Gurion was a Zionist statesman and political leader, the first prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53, 1955–63) of Israel.
It was Ben-Gurion who delivered Israel’s declaration of independence in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948. His charismatic personality won him the adoration of the masses; he was revered as the “Father of the Nation.”
In 1906 the twenty-year-old Ben-Gurion immigrated to Palestine and worked as a farmer in the Jewish agricultural settlements for several years. As the Jewish settlement strengthened and deepened its roots in Palestine, anxiety mounted among the Palestinian Arabs, resulting in violent clashes between the two communities.
Ben-Gurion reacted to the British White Paper Policy of 1939 by calling upon the Jewish community to rise against the British and on May 12, 1942, he assembled an emergency conference of American Zionists in New York City where the convention decided upon the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine after the war.5
At the end of World War II, Ben-Gurion again led the Jewish community in its successful struggle against the British mandate; and in May 1948, in accordance with a decision of the United Nations General Assembly, and with the support of the United States, the State of Israel was established. The Dec
laration of Statehood read in part:
ACCORDINGLY WE, Members of The People’s Council, Representatives of The Jewish Community of Eretz-Israel And of The Zionist Movement, Are Here Assembled On The Day of The Termination of The British Mandate Over Eretz-Israel And, By Virtue of Our Natural And Historic Right And On The Strength of The Resolution of The United Nations General Assembly, Hereby Declare The Establishment of A Jewish State In Eretz-Israel, To Be Known As The State of Israel. . . .
Placing Our Trust In The Almighty, We Affix Our Signatures To This Proclamation At This Session Of The Provisional Council Of State, On The Soil Of The Homeland, In The City of Tel-Aviv, On This Sabbath Eve The 5th Day Of Iyar, 5708—14th May, 1948.6
Ben-Gurion viewed the newborn state as the direct continuation of Jewish history that had been interrupted two thousand years earlier when the Roman legions had crushed the Hebrew freedom fighters and banished the Jews from their land. He saw the Jews’ period of exile as a prolonged interlude in the history of Israel and declared that they had now regained their rightful home. David Ben-Gurion believed that Israel was “a country built more on her people . . . the Jews will come from everywhere . . . from France, from Russia, from America and from Yemen . . . their faith is their passport.”7
Israel was reborn in the month of Iyar—the “second month” has always held great biblical significance. It was in the second month that King Solomon began to build the First Temple (1 Kings 6:1); it was in the second month, on the same exact day, that Ezra began to rebuild the Second Temple (Ezra 3:8). And it was in the second month on the 5th day of Iyar, that Israel was reborn as a nation.
Who has ever heard of such things?
