Martin Luther and His Connection to Adolf Hitler

All of human history has stories of God using VERY failed men to accomplish His purposes.  Why?  Because ALL MEN ARE FAILED MEN!!  God allows us the privilege of allowing Him to work through us.

We all know that King David seduced and impregnated his best friends wife and then had his best friend killed to cover it up.  Moses was flawed, Abraham was flawed, Donald Trump is flawed, you are flawed and I'm terribly flawed.

With that as a backdrop, let's revisit Martin Luther who had the balls to stand up to the demonically inspired Catholic church in the 1500's and started the roots of Protestantism.  But when the Jews still rejected his new writings of the Reformation, he ended up throwing the Jews under the bus.  It's said that Adolf Hitler carried around Luther's writings as he was drawing up plans to kill all the Jews.

Today the ELCA Lutheran church I grew up in suffers horribly from "replacement theology".  They believe that God is done with the Jews and that Christ-followers inherited all the promises God made to the Jews.  Most have become biblical illiterates and have removed large parts of the Bible in their attempt to manufacture a Jesus that fits their liberal views.  When I quoted Jesus in the book of John to one long-time ELCA member, he said, "Yes, but JOHN wrote that!  We can't know that Jesus said that!  There were lots of people named John walking around 2000 years ago!"  And when I quoted Galatians to another long time member he said, "At our church, we choose not to use the book of Galatians or follow much of what it says, because Paul was CLEARLY upset when he wrote it and said some things I'm sure he greatly regrets."

Lord have mercy.

Luther's most insane rants, however, were reserved for the Jews. Even in those days, when religious anti-Semitism was completely normal and Jews were treated as second rate people, Luther's completely delirious and insane hatred of Jews was noticed by many. "He is a master in the art of distortion, slander, defamation and exaggeration", his contemporary Erasmus - who was also an anti-Semite - mentioned.(1) In his "On the Jews and Their Lies", one of the most horrible anti-Semitic lampoons of all times, Luther calls the Jews among other things "prophet-murderers", "bloodhounds", "liars", "a brood of serpents and children of the devil", "seducers of the people", "usurers", "stranglers", "indolent bellies", "this stinking scum" and "moldy leaven". Jews were supposedly "blinded", "cursed", "evil", "vindictive", "greedy", "blasphemous", "jealous", "conceited", "possessed", "stubborn" and "incorrigible". They would rule "us", poison "our" wells, "kidnap" our children, pierce them through to catch their blood and use it for matzo, a flat Jewish bread. They are "our" land's "misfortune".(4) Luther uses all conceivable anti-Semitic myths and stereotypes, except of course racial anti-Semitism, which was developed only in the nineteenth century. 

Luther was one of the first to say that one should get rid of the Jews by killing them all. With him starts the ideology of the "Final Solution" of "the Jewish Question", the horrible objective of a world without Jews. For centuries Christian rulers and ideologues had argued that the Jewish religion had become redundant and should end. With the birth of Christ, supposedly the son of God, the promise of the coming of the Messiah was fulfilled. And since the Jews had not accepted the Messiah and had supposedly even crucified him, they were rejected and doomed by God. God had punished the Jews by sending them forever into exile. He would no longer consider the Jews his chosen people, they were replaced by the Christians. 

"Therefore, in any case, away with them!!", was the essence of Luther's propositions to the authorities of his day and age. Because "we are at fault in not slaying them". He urged the rulers to really start persecuting the Jews. "Meanwhile our princes and rulers sit there and snore with mouths hanging open and permit the Jews to take, steal, and rob from their open money bags and treasures whatever they want. That is, they let the Jews, by means of their usury, skin and fleece them and their subjects and make them beggars with their own money. For the Jews, who are exiles, should really have nothing, and whatever they have must surely be our property. They do not work, and they do not earn anything from us, nor do we give or present it to them, and yet they are in possession of our money and goods and are our masters in our own country and in their exile. A thief is condemned to hang for the theft of ten florins, and if he robs anyone on the highway, he forfeits his head. But when a Jew steals and robs ten tons of gold through his usury, he is more highly esteemed than God himself", Luther complains. Sometimes his social economic anti-Semitic rants seems to outpace even his traditional religious anti-Semitism. "They let us work in the sweat of our brow to earn money and property while they sit behind the stove, idle away the time, fart, and roast pears. They stuff themselves, guzzle, and live in luxury and ease from our hard-earned goods. With their accursed usury they hold us and our property captive. Moreover, they mock and deride us because we work and let them play the role of lazy squires at our expense and in our land." From his self made underdog position, Luther accused the people in power that they were letting themselves be ruled by Jews. In reality Jews were repressed, outlawed and driven out of many countries in Luther's age. 

"Although one cannot declare Luther guilty of the Nazi crimes, he also cannot be found innocent of his co-responsibility for the rise and the criminal history of this anti-Semitism. One has to at least say that Luther has seriously lowered the threshold from ousting to the liquidation of the Jews", Süss writes. What Hitler did, Luther advised, with the exception of the gas chambers. Luther was a trailblazer to the Shoah. That's the inevitable conclusion one has to draw from Luther's writings. In "On the Jews and Their Lies" he had developed a seven point pogrom plan which the Nazi's strictly followed, starting with the Kristallnacht on November 9th, 1938. "First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them", he wrote. He furthermore called to destroy the homes of the Jews, to take away their holy books, to kill rabbis who still want to teach, to disallow Jews on the streets, to forbid their "usury", to take all their money and jewelry, and to impose forced labor on strong and young Jews. And when the rulers didn't want to do all that, to at least drive them out of the country, towards Jerusalem. He influenced German rulers to persecute the Jews more. 

The Nazi's didn't need to exaggerate the demonization of the Jews to be able to use it gratefully. In 1923 Hitler praised Luther, and called him the greatest German genius, who "saw the Jew as we today are starting to see him."(1) In the days after the Kristallnacht, the Bishop of Thüringen wrote happily that Luther, who was born on November 10th 1483, couldn't wish a more beautiful birthday gift. During the Second World War many religious leaders called upon Luther to justify the liquidation policy against the Jews. And during the Nuremburg trails after the war, Julius Streicher, chief editor of the anti-Semitic magazine Der Stürmer, defended himself by saying that even a "genius" like Luther hated the Jews, and he was loved by friend and foe alike. "He would today have been in the dock in my place, if "On the Jews and Their Lies" would have been brought in by the prosecutors", Streicher claimed. 

https://www.doorbraak.eu/gebladerte/30142v01.htm

If you are reading this and still part of a Lutheran Church that is ordaining gays, confirming fornication in their youth, rejecting the authority of scripture and creating a Jesus that votes Democrat, is terrified of global warming, supports abortion on demand, would tear down all border walls and would drive a Prius to save the wales....you might want to get away from that place and find a church that doesn't carry the scars of Martin Luther right in their name.

Not only scars, but quite possible curses.  "I will bless those who bless you (Israel and Jews) and I will curse those who curse you."--God