BENEDETTO XVI: Benedict does the right thing but says the wrong thing.

Pope Benedict recently visited Poland's Auschwitz and Birkenau WWII death camps and represented the Catholic congregation and the context excellently.

Typically, Benedict did not mention his own personal experiences during the war. Raised by his anti-Nazi father, Benedict was enrolled in the Hitler Youth as a teenager against his will and then was drafted into the German army in the last months of the war.

Pope Benedict's tact and diplomacy were almost faultless; he avoided offending the Poles, the Germans, the Jews, the survivors, and even Israel. Kudos!

But then he blew it all and offended God. How? By asking Him, not privately but publicly, why He allowed the Holocaust; not once but several times.

"To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible - and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany," he said later.

"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

I don't want to dilute the horrible suffering of the Jewish people during the holocaust one Iota, but clearly their own Scriptures warn them by the threat of judgment when God said ...

"if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

2 Chronicles 7:14

And again here through the prophet Amos ...

Hear this word which the LORD has spoken against you, sons of Israel, against the entire family which He brought up from the land of Egypt: "You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth; Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."

3:1-2

"The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the Earth," he said, standing near the demolished crematoriums where the Nazis burned the bodies of their victims."

Over and over Jehovah warned Israel and her proud and stiff-necked people to expect judgment for individual and corporate sin ... did they listen, have they ever listened? No! The hard truth is, NO! And they are not listening today. (And for that matter, neither is most of the Church.)

"By destroying Israel with the Shoah, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention."

What they didn't know and what Pharaoh didn't know, but Benedict knows, is that the they were being used of God to humble His people to bring them to their Messiah, His Son. They have continued to commit the ultimate and unforgivable sin of rejecting His Son.

When He comes again at His second advent, He is coming without regard to salvation but with regard to final judgment ...

"Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."

Revelation 22:12-13

Oh, my dear people, please pray for the children of God who are the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that they might hear the voice of their Savior,

"I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star."

Revelation 22:16

Since salvation is out of the Jews [John 4:22], we owe them an eternal debt of gratitude for all the patriarchs and all their history [1 Corinthians 10:11].

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HT: Christian Post

TAGS: Auschwitz, Benedict XVI, Birkenau,
Catholic, Holocaust, Israel, Jews, Judgment,
Pope, Rebellion, Religion, Sin, WWII