I am outraged at the recent anti-Semitic attacks in New York—one a day for the past week. The worst, of course, was a machete attack at a Hanukkah party in Monsey on Saturday injuring five people.
Public officials and Jewish leaders have decried the attacks, but I believe the Christian community must also speak up. We cannot tolerate anti-Semitism becoming the new norm. Charisma condemns anti-Semitism in all its forms, not only in the United States but around the world.
Charisma and I have long supported Israel and tried to build bridges with the Jewish community. Because of that, we have even more motivation to let our voices be heard—we stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters and condemn anti-Semitism. We also believe the perpetrators must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Sadly, a New York law allowed the perpetrators of some of the less violent attacks (hitting a woman with a bag and another hitting an elderly Hasidic Jew) to be released without bail. That makes their arrests a mere slap on the wrist.
Politicians on the left were quick to blame the attacks on Donald Trump (as they seem to do for anything bad that happens). However, the president is a strong supporter of Israel and went out of his way to show support for Jews with the massacres in Pittsburgh and San Diego in the past year. He has also been supportive of his daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism.
The left puts forward the narrative that anti-Semitism is a right-wing or white-supremacist phenomenon. While it is in some instances, the perpetrators in New York this week were not white. And anti-Semitism takes many forms besides violence—the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (advanced by many of the elites on the left) is anti-Semitism at its worst. It is designed to help destroy Israel by hurting it economically.
In a totally separate event, a gunman killed two people at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, on Sunday. Thankfully, the church’s head of security, Jack Wilson, killed the gunman in six seconds, but not before the gunman killed two other armed security volunteers who were attempting to stop him.
Texas recently passed a law permitting churches to allow licensed gun owners to provide security to prevent an attack like this. This was after the massacre at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, that left 27 dead in 2017. Yet that law was criticized by several top Democratic leaders, including Joe Biden, who oppose gun rights. They assume that fewer guns will result in less violence.
But Wilson is an example of “a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun.” Had Wilson not had a gun, how many of the 240 people in that church—who were taking communion at the time—would have been killed?
Evangelist Alveda King was on Fox and Friends articulating what I believe—that we must pray for the victims and their families and that Christians must show love. Only agape (unconditional) love will change people, not laws.
“We are under attack here in America and around the world. Our faith is under attack,” King said. “So we have to come together in prayer, in love, and to love each other regardless of skin color, religious affiliations and all of that.”
She went on to say that if we outlaw guns, then bad people with machetes or knives (as happened with the Hanukkah attack) will still attack because of evil.
As Spirit-filled Christians, we must also understand what is really at stake. It’s evil. It’s spiritual warfare. Even secular people will discuss this type of hate and violence as evil.
One of the people who knew the Texas gunman said he had a difficult life and fought demons. There are many disturbed people, many of them mentally ill, who need help. The authorities and the medical community can do some things to help deranged people. But these people also need help spiritually. They need their hearts to be changed.
News reports said the Texas gunman, who had been living on the streets, had ties to the church and had been helped by the church. An acquaintance said the gunman had a Bible verse for everything. So he was exposed to Christianity, but it obviously had not changed his heart. And it’s obvious his problems were very deep or he would not have murdered these people—in a church of all places.
As we enter a new year, I hope other Christians will be inspired to speak up as I am. I hope intercessors will pray against the spirit of violence and hatred that seems so rampant in our culture. Maybe as things seem to get worse and worse, people will get desperate enough to believe God to change not only hearts and lives but to change our culture as well. What is it going to take to have a true spiritual awakening in America?
Today in my podcast, I opine on this topic and give some more of my thoughts. As always, share it with others. Your doing so helped me get almost 2 million downloads, which is eight times more than I had in 2018. This is a big year for me and our country. That’s the reason I wrote God, Trump and the 2020 Election, which releases Jan. 14, 2020. Find out more at GodTrump2020.com.
Stephen Strang 
