JEWS AND CHRISTIANS, FELLOW TRAVELERS TO THE END OF DAYS (DANIEL 12) MARTIN M. VAN BRAUMAN Copyright © 2011 by Martin M. Van Brauman Published in The United States of America by Jews and Christians United For Israel 6510 Abrams Road, Suite 310 Dallas, Texas 75231 www.JewsandChristiansunitedforIsrael.org All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. ISBN 978-1-935769-21-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2012931426 Printed in the USA This book is dedicated to the Brauman generations who were murdered in the Holocaust. I am one of the few surviving remnants throughout the world carrying Brauman as the family last name. For the Jew: “to forget the victims is in fact to kill them a second time” – Elie Wiesel For the Christian: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil . Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer This book is derived from the author’s upcoming larger comprehensive work entitled Picking Up the Cross of Jewish Crucifixion: My Discovery of Being a “Remnant” of the Natural Branch of Abraham. Martin M. van Brauman Jews and Christians United For Israel 6510 Abrams Road, Suite 310 Dallas, Texas 75231 iii THE MISSION STATEMENT FOR JEWS AND CHRISTIANS UNITED FOR ISRAEL The mission of JEWS AND CHRISTIANS UNITED FOR ISRAEL © is to provide both Jews and Christians with an association through which, together, we can stand united against all forms of anti-Semitism and all forms of prejudice and discrimination and we can build bridges of communication and dialogue between Christians and Jews based upon mutual respect and a hunger for interreligious understanding. If you are a “born again” Christian (John 3:3-8), then when you read Ephesians 2:8-22, it is clearly written to all Christians that God has made us into one people with the Jews (Romans 3:28-31) and that God has not forsaken his People of Israel and we both wait upon the coming of the Messiah in the End of Days and all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:1-36). Until then, God expects and commands us to stand together with the Jews and the Nation of Israel. And as a Christian Zionist, I boldly declare, “. Thy People Shall Be My People, and Thy God My God.” Ruth 1:16. John M. Brown Founder of Jews and Christians United for Israel CONTENTS Introduction ......................................................................vi Chapter 1 The Eternal Covenant and Israel’s Mission ..................1 Chapter 2 Divine Providence .......................................................11 Chapter 3 Destruction And Rebirth, The Birth Pangs Of The Coming Messiah .............................................30 Chapter 4 Post-Holocaust Relationship With God And Between Jews And Christians .....................................53 Conclusion ......................................................................89 Notes ...............................................................................99 Glossary of Terms .........................................................117 Bibliography .................................................................123 Introduction What if you grew up never knowing any grandparents, because they had died for unexplained or confusing reasons long before you were born? What if you grew up never having any uncles and aunts, but having a few great aunts and uncles on your mother’s side who were secretive about your parents’ family history and whose true identities are still questionable? What if you grew up in an evangelical Christian background and were told that as a believer you are grafted through a wild olive shoot into God’s covenant with Abraham, as a spiritual branch of Abraham - a spiritual Jew? Historically, the Christian church has preached the replacement of the Jewish people and Israel with the Church, but what should be the covenantal relationship between the Jewish people and Gentiles professing faith in Jesus? Do Christian churches really understand what it means when they proclaim to their congregation that all of God’s promises are eternal? What should the Covenant of Abraham with the Jewish people really mean to the Christian? There are a few Christian leaders who are standing up for the eternal Covenantal people and Israel, such as Dr. David Jeremiah. Dr. Jeremiah in his book, I Never Thought I’d See the Day!, writes of Christians as vii the spiritual children of Abraham and that Israel is God’s chosen people and the continued existence of the Jewish people is by Divine Providence. For in Galatians 3:14, the scriptures proclaim that Jesus will redeem the Gentiles through their faith, so they can receive the Covenant given to Abraham. In Ephesians 2:11- 22, the scriptures explain that Gentiles are born excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the Covenant of the promise, without hope and without God in the world but with Jesus they are fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. In Genesis 12:3, God said that I will bless those who bless you [Abraham], and him who curses you I will curse; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. The Hebrew root meaning “to bless” also means “to graft,” in which those who bless you are grafted into the Jewish people by accepting the religious vision of Abraham and as a wild olive shoot . now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root. Romans 11:17. In Joshua 2:9-13, Rahab, the righteous Canaanite harlot said to the spies sent by Joshua into Jericho before the destruction of the city that I know that the Lord has given this land to you . [for] . we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorities east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed . for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below . please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family . and that you will save us from death. Like Rehab who was “grafted” into the Jewish people and became the great- great grandmother of King David, the ancestress to eight viii prophets including Jeremiah and was in the lineage to Jesus [Matthew 1:5], Christians must open their eyes to God’s eternal presence with the Jewish people by His Covenant with Abraham. What if later in life after your father has died and when it is too late to talk to anyone you discover that you are a natural branch of Abraham? What if you discover that your father after his death was Jewish? What if you discover at Yad Vashem that you are connected with a proud German- Jewish family name to a chain of generations stretching back to Berlin, Germany and a Brauman family migrating over the centuries throughout Eastern Europe? What do you do when you discover that you had distant family generations murdered at Auschwitz, sent to the Warsaw Ghetto and later murdered at Treblinka, sent to the Lodz Ghetto and die of starvation, and murdered in the streets and killing fields in Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, and Hungary? What do you do? First, you read to try to understand why, while praying to God asking for wisdom and for what should I do. To understand why did my father hide his Jewish family and identity beginning in 1936? What is the evil nature of this conflict between Judaism and Christianity? Since this discovery over the past five years, I have been reading the writings of Harry James Cargas, James Parkes, Arthur C. Cochrane, Irving Greenberg, John K. Roth, Elie Wiesel, Yehuda Bauer, Abraham Heschel, Eliezer Berkovits, Raul Hilberg, Ignaz Maybaum, Michael Berenbaum, Richard Rubenstein, David Patterson, Yaakov Astor, Jeremy Cohen, Ben Zion Dinur, Yaacov Herzog, Franz Rosenzweig, Lucy Dawidowicz, Paul M. van Buren, James Carroll, Franklin Littell, Emil Fackenheim, Hannah ix Arendt and many other leading Jewish and Christian authorities on Jewish history, theology and the Holocaust. However, during these five years of writing this book, without His Presence though the Holy Spirit to select the books to read, to provide the inspiration gleaned and to present the Scriptures illuminated, I could not have written this book. The purpose of this book is to present various insights gleaned from my readings of the well-known writers of historical events in Jewish history, of the conflict between Judaism and Christianity, of the Holocaust and of the restoration of Israel and Jerusalem to the Jewish people. Jewish history is also the history of anti-Semitism. Jewish history is unique for it is a history of suffering and persecution and a dialogue of God with man. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has commented that “Auschwitz represented a failure, a defeat for 2,000 years of Christian civilization.”1 The use of the word “Auschwitz” has come to symbolize the genocide of the Jews and the Holocaust.2 Wiesel has lamented who among the Christian community actually studies the Word of God. In Jacob’s vision of the future, he wept together with his persecuted descendants. And this was how he addressed God: In Your Book, it is written that one may not slaughter an animal and her young on the same day. This law shall not be observed by the enemy; he will kill mothers and their children in each other’s presence. I shall not ask You who will observe Your Law; I shall simply ask You to tell me 1 Harry James Cargas, When God and Man Failed: Non-Jew- ish Views of the Holocaust, (1st ed.