SANDRA TEPLINSKY JOINS PRAYER CALL WEDS! 9PM EST. Sandra is an extraordinary prophetic voice for Israel and the author of numerous books, including “Why Still Care About Israel” and “Israel’s Anointing.” Conference call number: 805-399-1200 access code 552-690. Use *6 to mute/unmute. Invite your friends to join us!
70th Anniversary of Liberation of Auschwitz
We must never forget. And we must never allow this evil to rise again.
We’ve all rehearsed the rhetoric, echoed through countless voices every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day. As we take this day to remember those who succumbed and honor those who liberated the world from this horror, my fear prophetically is that we are actually believing our own rhetoric.
Because the seedbed of this same magnitude of evil is being tolerated on our very watch.
This Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorates the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Not coincidentally, it is also Turnaround Tuesday. As we seek God to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers, let us today open wide the windows of our conscience so that the witness of our fathers and mothers can penetrate through again. Dare to return the gaze of emaciated, haunted eyes. Remember their cries. And let us together move beyond the comfort of rhetoric to the resolve of action.
Because again, the seedbed of this same magnitude of evil is being tolerated on our watch.
The Magnitude was Unperceived
It was during the liberation of Auschwitz that two horrors began to be exposed. First and most obvious was the full magnitude of the Holocaust. The second evil, less obvious but almost equally reprehensible, is the exposure of our refusal to believe what was before our eyes all along—until it was almost too late.
Take into account that Europe and America were war-weary, just recovering from World War I. Appeasement and bridge-building were embraced as policy. Thus from the very beginning of the Holocaust, when reports of a systematic slaughter of Jews first started to leak to the world, our diplomats, spies, military leaders and heads of state all glossed over the reports.
Because for these leaders and ours, to perceive the evil is to become responsible before God for its end.
Jews disappearing to concentration camps? Simply forced labor for the Nazi war machine. The ashy smoke and putrid scent? Factory pollution. It could all be explained away.
Exposing Evil—And Overcoming
Until the liberation of Auschwitz. As the truth became exposed, the magnitude of the Holocaust defied even the most extraordinary reports. More than six million Jews, along with Poles, gypsies, gays and lesbians, the elderly and infirm, had indeed been systematically exterminated.
Again, the enormity of this evil was not fully grasped by the Allies until the war was almost over. And yet it was going on before our very eyes.
What lessons can we gain from this day—the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation? How can we honor our fathers and mothers who endured and succumbed—who refused at first to believe, and then relentlessly and heroically overcame?
Because their legacy literally commands us to learn and respond. Evil actions must be exposed—and acted upon when they are exposed. “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them” (Eph. 5:17).
Appeasement or Engagement?
Whereas our fathers faced the Nazis, their children and ours are facing ISIS, Al Queda and other Sunni extremists. We are facing Iran, Hezbollah and other Shia extremists. And we are facing countless other existential threats, internal as well as external.
Once again, the politics of appeasement are many times being embraced and employed.
In Europe, “appeasement agreements” similar to what we are seeing today were thought to have secured peace—until nation after nation fell to the Nazis. On our watch, nobody seemed to believe Iraq would fall to ISIS.
Then and now, imagine the lives that could have been saved if only our leaders had only believed the reports on their desks… and engaged.
Engaging by the Spirit
Let me close by conveying a prophetic perception I’ve shared many times before. Just as God raised up Rees Howells and others to watch and pray through WWII, so He is summoning to engage and overcome by the Spirit this hour.
Perhaps that’s why the Lord has recently been speaking to us about His “special forces.” Rees Howells was a special forces warrior by the Holy Spirit. Like Elisha, he saw enemy advances long before they actually occurred. He prayed through to breakthrough. And his notes today would then become the headlines of tomorrow.
Accuracy, integrity, resolve and perseverance that exposes and overcomes. Beloved, we need this kind of intercession today!
Because again, the seedbed of this magnitude of evil is being tolerated on our watch. We must overcome, and yet we cannot overcome by natural means alone. Watch for the Lord to grant prophetic clarity, strategy and equipping in the months ahead. “Not by might nor by power but by My Spirit, says the Lord!”
Lamplighter Ministries stands with precious friends in Poland, Israel and throughout the world in remembrance of the tragedies of Auschwitz and the Holocaust—and the courageous resolve of those summoned to overcome.
