I was sitting in a coffee shop in Litchfield, Minnesota, this summer with a dear pastor friend and a gentleman named Virgil, who works for Campus Crusade for Christ. We were chatting about various aspects of the Church and theology when Virgil said he had been having a conversation with a Rabbi who was talking about when Abraham led Isaac up the mountain to make holocaust of him.
Virgil stopped the Rabbi in mid-conversation and asked about how the Rabbi had just used the word "holocaust."
The Rabbi told him "holocaust" means "burnt offering."
All three of us sat there with our jaws hanging open for a second as we pondered this.
And, as each of us remembered that the bodies of approximately six million of God's Chosen People had been incinerated in places with names like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachua, and about 15,000 others, we had questions in the depths of our souls.
Questions like: "If The Holocaust was a burnt offering, to whom?" It certainly wasn't God, because the offering of Jesus on that cross ended the need for any more offerings of any kind. And, "If burnt offerings were made for the forgiveness of sins, how could this do anything like that?"
The answers to our questions were immediately obvious, as that event in the history of the world has none of God's fingerprints on it, but it is covered in the filth and disgusting grime that is the trademark of the enemy of our souls --who distorts and corrupts and perverts the good things of God.
As I have pondered this over the days following that conversation, I looked up the word and did some research. Sure enough, it is an ancient Greek word that exactly means "burnt offering."
I also have a recurring vision of The Dome of the Rock.
Located in Old Jerusalem, it is a magnificent gold-domed building that dominates any view of the City of David. Most people think it's a mosque, but it is not. It is a shrine built in about 691 AD by Muslims on the spot where the Jewish Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Muslims believe this is the spot where Muhammed was taken up into heaven to meet with God, although none of the inscriptions written inside the shrine commemorate this. Some Jews believe The Foundation Stone (the rock on which God built the world) is housed within the compound's walls.
One thing we do know is that, at the very center of the structure, under that giant golden dome, the native rock at the peak of the Temple Mount is exposed with no flooring built over it --because both Jews and Muslims believe this is the very spot on which Abraham bound his only son and prepared to make holocaust of him.
Likewise, Abraham and Isaac are at the very center of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian culture. In all three cultures, Abraham's only son did not die on that hill that is now capped with that golden dome because God had mercy and spared him. We Christians know that God did that because His plan was that someday a Son of Abraham, and of David, and of God would die on a nearby hill called Calvary, not as a burnt offering, but as the Lamb of God --the perfect and final sacrifice for all mankind.
Let us all pray that the world would repent from its increasing anti-Semitism and remember that all of mankind vowed that the kind of hate responsible for The Holocaust would never have a place anywhere in this world again.
Today's Praise
Genesis 22:15-18
"Then the angel of the LORD called again to Abraham from heaven. “This is what the LORD says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.”
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