Makow- Why the Rabbis Crucified Christ
by tts-admin | Apr 3, 2021 |
henrymakow.com — April 2, 2021
Jesus’ murder was part of a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil, Life and Death.
The reason for the Crucifixion is very simple. When Christ extended God’s Grace to all people, he offended the Jews’ sense of Choosiness.
by Henry Makow PhD — from April 19, 2019
What is vexing humanity? The truth is overlooked because we can’t believe anything so important could be so simple.
When Christ extended God’s Grace to all people, he offended the Jews’ sense of Choosiness. That, apparently, was an unpardonable sin.
Christ said God is in everyone.
The ability to hear God defines us as “human.”It enables us to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, sick and healthy.
This Divine Spirit infuses human life, according to all true religions.
Judaism, however, begs to differ.
Judaism maintains that only Jews have a soul; only Jews channel God’s will; only Jews are human. The earth belongs to Jews. Non-Jews exist to serve Jews.
The Jewish people is the God of the Jewish people, destined to rule the world.
The Jewish hatred of all things Christian stems from this primitive tribal ideology. I would hazard a guess that much of history can be explained by it.
But it gets worse. They need to destroy Christian civilization in order to rebuild the world in their own sick image. They call that “healing the world.”
We are very much like passengers in a plane that has been hijacked by a doomsday cult. We’re passengers on the Titanic. We’re in the thrall of some pretty sick people.
You see, God is their competition. He must be destroyed along with his adherents. In the meantime, mankind must be degraded to the level of – I won’t say animals; they are often very decent — Demons!
Mankind must be inducted into their cult, as their servants.
This is the ideology of a small doomsday cult, the Chabad. Most Jews dismiss these people as fanatics and just want to assimilate. They do not subscribe to this megalomania. They are not told about it. How could they be manipulated if they were? For smart people, I have never seen so many dupes. Especially considering how this lunacy puts all Jews in jeopardy.
Rabbi Joachim Prinz remarked on the “apparent inability of Jews to understand or predict their own catastrophes. The Jews, whose history consists of one tragedy after another, has yet to be prepared for any one of them.”
The Jewish leadership — the Rothschilds and their cohorts — do follow this ideology. They worship Lucifer and are willing to perform any depravity to prove it. Unfortunately, these lunatics control the world through the banking system.
They have finagled the credit cards of the nations and can afford to buy everything and everyone. They have. “Globalism” is but a mask for their tyranny.
The central banking system epitomizes the Cabalist Jewish ethos: exploiting the goyim. They extract billions of interest every year for producing “credit” out of thin air, something the goyim could do themselves if they weren’t so craven, venal and feckless.
PASSOVER
Continues …
One of the butlers at the rothschild mansion once said the table is always set for an empty place, in case the devil should ever want to come, the servants found this creepy.He said they were open satanists, who said they control the world
I am pleasantly surprised to discover, as I delve more deeply into the sacred texts, the startlingly similarities between Hinduism and Christianity!
” Why They Killed Jesus ”
The ” They ” should read ” We ”
” The Bible says, ” The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful [people], and be crucified, and the third day rise again ” (Luke 24:7). Who are these sinful people ? You and me. Our sins nailed Jesus Christ to the cross, and we have His blood on our hands. ”
Billy Graham
From: My Letter To You ( An open letter to all my friends )
Para -57-
When the Son of man came the first time,
the hate that the world has for him
increased day by day.
In the end the Son of man
was crucified for his purity of heart.
He exposed the world for what it is.
This world has ignored
the message according to the Gospel.
Now the time has come for this world to pay the penalty.
Judgment day is imminent.
The faithful witness
Source: ” Believers Information Network “
As for the killing of Christ we all did that. If I was there I would have been faithful to my original sin being ruled by the finality of my own life, and perhaps being the one pounding the nails into his feet. Without him in this life I would have kept trying to kill God and everything else which got in my way including myself, until I recognized the difference and made the choice. Most people still do not see it or want to see it. Perhaps they were not “chosen” to do so, or they think it will cost too much.
Jesus never existed, neither did the other characters in the bible. Has no one read the works of Conor MacDari? The original bible was written in Ireland by the Irish Magian priesthood who formed part of the Irish World Church of Iesa Chriost. Hebrew was a language that the Irish priesthood used and wrote the bible in that language. Irish and Hebrew are very very similar. Then the Romans usurped our church and renamed all the placenames and invented characters for the bible. “St Patrick” never existed and was used figuratively to describe what amounted to the killing of 180,000 Irish who were killed because they wouldn’t convert to the new religion. It was based on the concept that the kingdom of God lay within all of us and we were not born sinners as with Catholicism.
I am a Henry Makow fan this is among his best
He is an honest man and for a jew that is very rare,
Some have given a lot even their lives lives to warn us of the jew
Jesus Christ Adolf Hitler Wiliam Joyce etc
The original sin is a misnomer we are told babies are born in sin, what crap how can a baby commit sin
the truth is baptism was to wash away sins of previous lives as early Christianity along with the other major world religions taught reincarnation
well done Henry thankyou
Christianity was a myth developed by Titus Flavius and Romanised Jews to pacify rebellious Judeans ~ 79AD
Subsequently, and centuries later, the emperor Constantine used the religion to against all empire citizens.
Every truth seeker needs to read Joseph Atwill’s “Caesar’s Messiah”. As he ably demonstrates, Atwill shows how Jesus’ “ministry” paralleled Titus’ military campaign in Judea. including the destruction of Jerusalem. Titus was the New Testament’s “Son of Man”. The gospels need to be read in tandem with Josephus Flavius’ “War of The Jews” and other texts to understand gospels’ allegorical content.
Although Christianity does not have the hold it once it did, it still underlines a belief system that inculcates a dove philosophy within the European civilisation at the expense of hawk belief systems like Judaism and “Judaism’s Broom”, aka “Islam”.
The time for Christianity, like germ theory, should be up.
India and the Celtic kings said to the first missionaries “We already have this”, and were not learning anything new, but there is a big question about whether Jesus cared for all the people or just his sheep, Israel, the offspring of Jacob/Israel. He said Salvation is from the Jews, and that he only came to save the sinners like the tax-collectors, whose work he in fact did not hinder (Render unto Caesar…),and some of the letters are written only to the Scattered of Israel, banished by the priests but not by not God with his unbreakable covenant (possibly a Devil’s deal, as I see it) according to the opinion of the first Christians. It is Paul who first decides the doctrine is for everyone, yet he also grants Jews retention of their specialness, them being the vine and not a graft. Gentiles have a right to see Christianity as a Jewish affair.
Comments from 2019? Very odd.
Great post from beginning to end Henry.
Its nonsense to say jesus died for our sins
no on can pay anothers karmic bill
stupid jews swing live chickens over the heads while saying they
will carry the evil of the jew
laughable jews have the intellect of footballers
How can we be born sinners if Jesus died on the cross to take away all mankind’s sins esp for those who repented,, we r not born sinners but become sinners, and to say Jesus and the other Apostles didn’t excist, IMO there 2 much archeology and written evidence, and if no Jesus does that mean thers no Satan??,, and I suppose God didn’t create US it was the Annunakki, although imo God created the Annunakki,, as well as mankind oops sorry PCs humankind!
Comments from 2019 not odd u just change ur time date etc,, or use old comptr etc not up to date, and I don’t mean up 2 Date software,,
Christ never existed. If you think he did you are under a mass spell and haven’t studied the topic very deeply.
1. Josephus and the Flavians invented the Christ character, this is proven in the epic landmark book by Joseph Atwill ‘Caesar’s Messiah’ and wholly ignored by the editors and patrons of this website and Darkmoon. Pathetic.
2. No man has miracle power as attributed to the character portrayed in the N.T. No person can raise the dead or walk on water. Such ideas are taught to spell your mind and make you a believer, they are not real events. (see addendum on how the Jesus spell works)
3. Sin is a religious or mental concept. There is no such thing as sin in Nature. Priests invented sin in order to get control of your mind, thus no one can be forgiven for sins because sins do not exist. I repeat there is no such thing as sin that separates you from God. You can choose to live in harmony with Nature or not, it is your choice and you can change your mind at any time.
4. No other person can die for your sins. This idea is popular because humans do not want to be responsible for their behavior. The standard joke about this theology is that if you invent free forgiveness for sins then you will have sins in abundance.
5. Afterlife is not proven, heaven is space empire in the “heavens” above. Hell is earth, where we suffer. The purpose of Christian theology is to calm the human slave so they perform without fear for the owners of earth.
Addendum: How the Christian spell works. The writer of myth plays a big trick on your mind. Using Old Testament story lines and patterns, the writer invent a new god on paper, this is the “virgin” birth of the god that all the writers understand but the uninformed do not understand. This god is pure and holy because it was not born from sexual intercourse, as the writer is channeling sexual energy to the cult. Then this character is made out to be smart, boy Jesus goes into the temple and amazes the scribes, then he heals the sick and gives advice (that aligns with what the new power wants).
With each miracle Jesus is shown to have god like powers, making the blind see and raising a dead person. This is all written in logical order to make you believe that he raises himself from the dead. The purpose of Jesus’s miracles are to convince you he is real, but in reality he did not exist and no one can do what is said, and you know that, but deny it because the cult offers eternal life.
So because humans are sentient, self aware, they do not want to die and thus a religion which promises eternal heavenly afterlife (which is not proven) is a big seller. This sales job is so lucrative that hundreds of the worst con artists have made bank and bought multi-engine jets from marketing Christianity over the television. The preacher collects money upfront yet never has to deliver the car.
You should copy this post and print it out and paste it on your refrigerator.
“Jewish books are for Jews, and Jew religions, too.”
I’ll be bold and include Jewish fairy tales to the above.
Why not drop the Middle Eastern volcano Demon and his li’l sidekick?
Your ancestors will thank you for it.
Happy Springtime. Hail Estara!
In the holy bible Jesus teach us the power of belief, that is the secret to life .The only reason any creature exists on this earth or do not exist is because of a notion, remember this one, :to believe or not to believe “. is the answer.
jesus is an arteficial construct mixed out of diferent religions
(judaism, gnosis, hinduism, buddism etc.): there maybe has
existed a person of this kind or maybe jesus journeyed as jung
man to indian ashrams to study there in meditations. nobody
knows . but to think only to believe in him to be saved is a joke.
in hindu philosophy their old rishis discovered that A L L souls
are sparks of the ultimate truth and never any spark gets lost !
THEREFORE ANY THINKING OF CHOSENESS IS CRAZY
+ IDIOTIC !
Makow, the Christian who never read his Bible:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Where is your faith Makow?
You are nothing more than a false prophet!
Henry Makow has never claimed to be a “Christian”. So what’s your point?
To Yukon Jack–there is a very long procession of Bible Revisionists who will give you “the whole truth” about all parts of it, but not two of them agree. They all have to be the startling revelator.
Truth is often stranger than fiction, we are still ruled by the descendants of demons(.) who perform “Magick” to control us. Believe that? Jesus warned us about them 2 milennia a go.. Why not believe in His supernatural aspects or His advanced Godconciousnes. I think Jesus spend 17 years of his life in India.
Rixon
H.M. has claimed to be a Orthodox Christian in email exchanges I had with him and John Kaminski (over 10 years ago I think) he may not be confessing that now but he did in the past more than once. I doubt the claim based on his vengeful thinking and prose. I don’t care one way or another unless he used that claim to get a foot inside the patriot movement and promote himself.
The title of this essay “Why the Rabbis Crucified Christ” is an intentional deception by Makow, because no one ever crucified Christ as he did not exist.
Atwill points out that cruxifiction was reserved for crimes like treason and therefore it is unlikely anyone got that treatment for preaching, if there was some man named Jesus it was unlikely that he could just go tranversing around Judea in the first century AD as a revolutionary when it was occupied and brutally controlled by the Roman state.
The story of Jesus in the Temple is repeated in Josephus autobiography, and thus that story is Josephus casting himself as the Christ. Josephus writes the tale, Jesus is an anagram of Josephus, he was pressed into service of Rome after being caught in the war (around 67-68 A.D) Josephus is the Jewish scholar who writes the tale as the Gospels are targeted at the rebellious Jews Rome couldn’t control.
Christian is Roman State propaganda, and that is easily provable, Romans 13. Since the tale includes Jews makiong the decision to get rid of Jesus the trouble maker, the cruxifiction can be used as propaganda against Jewry, and Mel Gibson’s Passion movie is a big worry for Jews as the Goy wake up from the spell. Jews kill a whole lot of innocent people right now, not just Jesus.
I think most people who read this (excellent) site know Henry Makow is writing propaganda and promoting certain conspiracy theories he maintains as his truth. What is Makow’s ultimate desired goal is to keep Jews from getting the blame for their crimes so he puts it all off on the Masons etc. He’s wrong, anyone who claims to be a Jew is putting themselves into a special catagory separate from the rest of humanity, and in this they claim superiority over all others.
Thank you, dear brave Henry, for again reminding us how beyond finite human comprehension and exceedingly wonderful Wonderful truly is! “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” – Isaiah 9:6 ✝️ ? ?
I have honest doubts about Henry Makow’s sincerity. It’s his self-importance, I think. There’s a self-conscious locum to his journalism. A strained insistence upon highlighting thematically over-familiar disputations in the manner of a revelator while he plumbs the archives as a reiterator. I don’t know Mr. Makow though and I’ve been wrong about people in the past.
@Yukon Jack
Joseph Atwill’s “Caesar’s Messiah” What a joke. Flavius Josephus was born in 37 AD. He was a Jewish historian and his historical writings where he mentions Jesus as considered the Christ were written in 93-94 AD. He was no Christian and like the Jews who remained Jewish, Josephus, being of a Hebrew priestly cast, was hostile to Christianity as were the Romans in those the times. An indication of this is that Josephus made no reference to the spread of Christianity in Jewish communities all throughout the Roman Empire. Jack would probably argue of the basis of Atwill’s swill that that would prove that the spread of Christianity did not spread until after Josephus. But not so fast Jack. You also have to consider the scholarship regarding St. Paul. He was born in a Jewish community in the City of Tarsus in an area in the nation now called Turkey in 5 AD, and he was executed by the Romans in Rome most likely in 67 AD. He began his series of writings, now known as the Epistles, in about 40 AD. The crucifixion of Jesus was between 30 and 33 AD.
Josephus did not mention the rapid spread of Christianity from the death of Christ and is only concerned really about Jewish history and the Jewish rebellions in the Palestine area from 67AD to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. If you want unbiased history of the time you should read the Roman historian Tacitus writing in 110AD who also mentions Christ and his execution, the relevance being the origins of the new religion which came from the Jews, and which the Romans were already busy persecuting. Tacitus recounts the fire which burned Rome in 64 AD, and that Nero blamed the Christians. Therefore Jack, it appears that even before Josephus reached the age of majority, Christianity had spread all over the Roman Empire.
In any case, once you start studying any one of the Gospels with all of the tools of scripture scholarship, you soon come to the realization the accounts go beyond any clever human invention, and that the religion came from this man called Jesus whose entire short public life was his message which is probably the most important Word ever spoken to mankind by God. Jesus was the only one to put all of the Jewish history, covenants, backslidings, and returns together in their dealings with God as His chosen vessel, and to see the ultimate purpose of God which was through him as both the Messiah and the Suffering Servant. A mere man in hindsight now can see that relationship, but no man did at the time except Jesus, and a mere man would not be able to take on that burden which involved the physical and spiritual breaking through of our blindness, and the opening of the gates of heaven to anyone who is willing to make the choice.
If Jesus was not God himself in human form, or if God was not in Jesus in some profound way, then the atonement of Jesus “could” be considered as a very cruel affair of God for all of our ignorance, evils and failings, although many would disagree. Yet, if Jesus was divine then it was God himself vicariously taking on the burden of our debts through his own direct divine blood and offspring to mainly show us how to put it together and the way to Him.
Hmm.. Unless those rabbis were the money changer (today’s bankers) then I agree ..
Remember Our Lord was all loving & forgiving, & the only once he was violent, was ?? Guess against whom he used the whip ??
“Henry Makow has never claimed to be a “Christian”. So what’s your point?”
Where did I say he was?
What has a middle-eastern tribal god got to do with us living in the UK?
Nothing!
When we were great, and had an empire, we sang “Rule |Britannia” and how we never ever shall be slaves, until the Bliar took Her off our money, and since then the whole place has gone to the dogs.
I thought Henry was just light entertainment when you could have been posting interesting news such as “Brussels Court Rules that Belgium Must Lift ‘All Covid-19 Measures’ Within 30 Days”,
Oh, but you missed that bit of real news didn’t you?
@Karm ARGER
go to CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL but not on googl.
he is hindu patriot washing spoiled minds of hindus+
westerners . he is a hindurenaisance !
The transition from a Pagan civilization of great antiquity to our Christianized one is historically denoted as “The Dark Ages.” Why “dark”? What was lost?
We lost a successful narrative that aimed us towards a planet-nurturing world and we got caught up in a world governed by dogmatic faith.
The loss of that story largely accounts for the moral and spiritual degeneration of Western society, which now contaminates the entire world.
I hold Makow in complete contempt for pushing his god on us non-stop.
@zebedee
I SHALL NOT WANT
comes out of buddism and budda teached that your soul
can only be redeemed when you dont want anymore NOTHING
even not wanting to be redeemed and that teaches every real
indian guru : GO OUT OF THE BRAIN GO INTO YOUR HEARD !
with meditativ living .
Acts 2:22-24 KJVS
[22] Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: [23] Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: [24] Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
John 11:50-52 KJVS
[50] Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. [51] And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; [52] And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.
Dear Antisemit,
400 meters from my home is a Buddhist Peace Pagoda and a Buddhist Temple. You imagine you are going to teach me anything about Buddhism that I don’t already know?
You’re just as misinformed as Henry. Now will you please stop trying to hump my leg?
Dear Antisemit, this is what the likes of Henry fail to tell us:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/08/gary-g-kohls/the-73rd-anniversary-of-the-bombing-of-nagasaki/
“What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in 250 years of persecution (ie, destroy Japanese Christianity) American Christians did in mere seconds”
73 years ago (August 9, 1945) an all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb over Nagasaki City, Japan, instantly vaporizing, incinerating or otherwise annihilating tens of thousands of innocent civilians, a disproportionately large number of them Japanese Christians. The explosion mortally wounded uncountable thousands of other victims who succumbed to the blast, the intense heat and/or the radiation.
In 1945, the US was regarded as the most Christian nation in the world. (Christian, that is, if you can label as truly Christian a nation whose churches are proponents of 1) eye-for-an-eye retaliation, 2) are supportive of (at least by their silence) America’s military and economic exploitation of other nations and 3) fail to sincerely and thoroughly teach the ethics of Jesus as taught in his manifesto, the Sermon on the Mount). Sadly, the two military chaplains of the Nagasaki bomber crew were also products of those institutional failures to teach what Jesus taught – and then live that way – as has been the case for the vast majority of Christians, both clergy and lay, for the past 1700 years.
Ironically, prior to the bomb exploding nearly directly over the Urakami Cathedral at 11:02 AM, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan, and the massive cathedral was the largest Christian church in the Orient.
Those baptized and confirmed Christian airmen, following their wartime orders to the letter, did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride, albeit with a breath-taking number of near-fatal glitches in the mission. Most of us Americans would have done what the crew did if we had been in the shoes of the Bock’s Car crew. And, if we had never seen, heard or smelled the suffering humanity that the bomb caused on the ground, most of us would not have experienced any remorse for our participation in what was retrospectively regarded as a war crime – especially if we had been treated as heroes in the aftermath.
Indeed, the use of the most monstrous weapons of mass destruction in the history of warfare, was later defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal as an international war crime and a crime against humanity.
Of course, there was no way that the crew members knew that at the time of the mission. Some of the crew did admit that they had had some doubts about what they had participated in after the bomb actually detonated. But none of them actually witnessed the horrific suffering of the victims up close and personal. “Orders are orders” and disobedience in wartime is severely punishable, even by summary execution, so the crew obeyed the orders.
Making it Hard for Japan to Surrender
It had been only 3 days since the August 6th bomb had incinerated Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bomb was dropped amidst massive chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military command was just beginning a meeting with the Emperor to discuss how to surrender with honor. The military and civilian leadership of both nations had known for months that Japan had lost the war.
The only obstacle to ending the war had been the Allied Powers insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito would have been removed from his figurehead position in Japan and perhaps even subjected to war crime trials. That demand was intolerable for the Japanese, who regarded the Emperor as a deity.
The USSR had declared war against Japan the day before (August 8), hoping to regain territories lost to Japan in the humiliating (for Russia) Russo-Japanese War 40 years earlier, and Stalin’s army was now advancing across Manchuria. Russia’s entry into the war had been encouraged by President Truman before he knew of the success of the atom bomb test in New Mexico on July 16.
But now, Truman and his strategists knew that the bomb could elicit Japan’s surrender without Stalin’s help. So, not wanting to divide any of the spoils of war with the USSR, and because the US wanted to send an early cold war message to Russia (that the US was the new planetary superpower), Truman ordered bomber command to proceed with using the atomic bombs against a handful of target as weather permitted and as they became available (although no more fissionable material was actually available to make a fourth bomb).
The Decision to Target Nagasaki
August 1, 1945 was the earliest deployment date for the Japanese atom bomb missions, and the Target Committee in Washington, D.C. had already developed a list of relatively un-damaged Japanese cities that were to be excluded from the conventional USAAF (US Army Air Force) fire-bombing campaigns (that, during the first half of 1945, had used napalm to burn to the ground over 60 essentially defenseless Japanese cities).
The list of protected cities included Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura, Kyoto and Nagasaki. Those five cities were to be off-limits to the terror bombings that the other cities were being subjected to. They were to be preserved as potential targets for the new “gimmick” weapon that had been researched and developed in labs and manufacturing plants all across America over the several years since the Manhattan Project had begun.
Ironically, prior to August 6 and 9, the residents of those five cities had considered themselves lucky for not having been bombed as had the other large cities. Little did the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki know that they were only being temporarily spared for an even worse carnage in an experiment with a new weapon that could cause, with a single bomb, the mass destruction of entire cities that contained live human guinea pigs.
The Trinity Test
The plutonium bomb that had been used in the field test of the first atomic bomb was identical to the one dropped at Nagasaki. It had been blasphemously code-named “Trinity” (a distinctly Christian term) and had been detonated in secrecy 3 weeks earlier at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. The results were impressively destructive, but the blast had just killed a few hapless coyotes, rabbits, snakes and some other desert varmints.
Trinity also produced huge amounts of an entirely new type of rock that was later called “Trinitite”. Trinitite was a “man-made” radioactive molten lava rock that had been created from the intense heat that was twice the temperature of the sun.
At 3 am on the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress bomber (that had been “christened” Bock’s Car) took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the prayers and blessings of the crew’s Lutheran and Catholic chaplains.
Barely making it off the runway before the heavily loaded plane went into the ocean (the bomb weighed 10,000 pounds), it headed north for Kokura, the primary target. Bock’s Car’s bomb was code-named “Fat Man,” partly because of its shape and partly to honor the rotund Winston Churchill. “Little Boy”, first called “Thin Man” (after President Roosevelt), was the code name of the uranium bomb that had been dropped on Hiroshima three days earlier.
Nagasaki was Being Incinerated as Japan’s War Council was Again Debating Surrender Terms
Japan’s Supreme War Council in Tokyo, scheduled to convene their next meeting at 11 am on August 9, had absolutely no comprehension of what had really happened at Hiroshima. So the members were not inclined to heighten their sense of urgency concerning the issue of surrendering. The council was mostly concerned about Russia’s declaration of war than what was happening – as they were meeting – at Nagasaki.
But it was already too late, because by the time the War Council members were arising and heading to the meeting with the emperor, there was no chance to alter the course of history. Bock’s Car – flying under radio silence – was already approaching the southern islands of Japan, heading for Kokura, the primary target. The crew was hoping to beat an anticipated typhoon and the clouds that would have caused the mission to be delayed.
The Bock’s Car crew had instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting. But Kokura was clouded over. After making three failed bomb runs over the clouded-over city and then experiencing engine trouble on one of the four engines (using up valuable fuel all the while) the plane headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.
The History of Nagasaki Christianity
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. The city had the largest concentration of Christians in all of Japan. St. Mary’s Cathedral was the megachurch of its time, with 12,000 baptized members.
Nagasaki was the community where the legendary Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier planted a mission church in 1549. The Catholic community at Nagasaki grew and eventually prospered over the next several generations. However it eventually became clear to the Japanese that the (Catholic) Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests were exploiting Japan. It only took a couple of generations before all Europeans – and their foreign religion – were expelled from the country.
From 1600 until 1850, being a Christian in Japan was a capital crime. In the early 1600s, Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their faith were subject to unspeakable tortures – including crucifixion. After a well-publicized mass crucifixion was orchestrated, the reign of terror stopped, and it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity was extinct.
However, 250 years later, after the gunboat diplomacy of US Commodore Matthew Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in secret in a catacomb-like existence, completely unknown to the government.
With this revelation, the Japanese government started another purge; but because of international pressure, the persecutions stopped and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. By 1917, with no financial help from the government, the re-vitalized Christian community had built the massive St. Mary’s Cathedral in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.
Christians Killing Christians in the Name of Christ
So it was the height of irony that the massive Cathedral – one of only two Nagasaki landmarks that could be positively identified from 31,000 feet up – became Ground Zero for Fat Man. (The other identifiable aiming point landmark was the Mitsubishi armaments factory complex – which had run out of raw materials because of the Allied naval blockade.)
At 11:02 am, during Thursday morning confessions, an unknown number of Nagasaki Christians were boiled, evaporated, carbonized or otherwise disappeared in a scorching, radioactive fireball that exploded 500 meters above the cathedral. The “black rain” that soon came down from the mushroom cloud also contained the mingled cellular remains of many Nagasaki Christians as well as many more Shintoists and Buddhists. The theological implications of Nagasaki’s Black Rain surely should boggle the minds of theologians of all denominations.
The Nagasaki Christian Body Count
Most Nagasaki Christians did not survive the blast. 6,000 of them died instantly, including all who were at confession that morning. Of the 12,000 church members, 8,500 of them eventually died as a result of the bomb. Many of the others were seriously sickened with a highly lethal entirely new disease: radiation sickness.
Located nearby were three orders of nuns and a Christian girl’s school. They all disappeared into black smoke or became chunks of charcoal. Tens of thousands of other innocent non-Christian non-combatants also died instantly, and many more were mortally or incurably wounded. Some of the original victims (and their progeny) are still suffering from the trans-generational malignancies and immune deficiencies caused by the deadly plutonium and other radioactive isotopes produced by the bomb.
And here is one of the most important ironies of this article: What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in 250 years of persecution (ie, to destroy Japanese Christianity) American Christians did in mere seconds.
Even after a slow revival of Christianity since WWII, membership in Japanese Christian churches still represents a tiny fraction of 1% of the general population, and the average attendance at Christian worship services across the nation is reported to be only 30 per Sunday. Surely the decimation of Nagasaki at the end of the war crippled what at one time was a vibrant church.
George Zabelka, the Catholic Chaplain for the 509th Composite Group
Father George Zabelka was the Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group (the 1500 man USAAF group whose only mission was to deliver atomic bombs to their Japanese targets). Zabelka was one of the few World War II clergy leaders who eventually came to recognize the serious contradictions between what his modern church had taught him and what the early pacifist church believed concerning homicidal violence.
Several decades after Zabelka was discharged from the military chaplaincy, he finally concluded that both he and his church had made serious ethical and theological errors in religiously legitimating the organized mass slaughter that is modern war. He eventually came to understand that (as he articulated it) “the enemy of me and the enemy of my nation is not an enemy of God. Rather my enemy and my nation’s enemy are children of God who are loved by God and who therefore are to be loved (and not to be killed) by me as a follower of that loving God.”
Father Zabelka’s sudden conversion away from the standardized war-tolerant Christianity changed his Detroit, Michigan ministry around 180 degrees. His absolute commitment to the truth of gospel nonviolence – just like Martin Luther King’s committment – inspired him to devote the remaining decades of his life to speaking out against violence in all its forms, including the violence of militarism, racism and economic exploitation. Zabelka travelled to Nagasaki on the 50th anniversary of the bombing, tearfully repenting and asking for forgiveness for the part he had played in the crime.
Likewise, the Lutheran chaplain for the 509th, Pastor William Downey (formerly of Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, MN), in his counseling of soldiers who had become troubled by their participation in making murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a single bullet or by weapons of mass destruction.
Why Should Combat Veterans Embrace a Religion that Blessed the Wars that Ruined Their Souls?
In Daniel Hallock’s important book, , the author described a 1997 Buddhist retreat that was led by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. The retreat involved a number of combat-traumatized Vietnam War veterans who had left the Christianity of their birth. The veterans had responded positively to Nhat Hanh’s ministrations. Hallock wrote, “Clearly, Buddhism offers something that cannot be found in institutional Christianity. But then why should veterans embrace a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their souls? It is no wonder that they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what are, in large part, the truths of Christ.”
Hallock’s comment should be a sobering wake-up call to Christian leaders who seem to regard as important both the recruitment of new members and the retention of old ones. The fact that the US is a highly militarized nation makes the truths of gospel nonviolence difficult to teach and preach, especially to military veterans (particularly the homeless, over-medicated and suicidal ones) who may have lost their faith because of spiritually-traumatic horrors experienced on the battlefield.
I am a retired physician who has dealt with hundreds of psychologically traumatized patients (including combat-traumatized war veterans), and I know that violence, in all its forms, can irretrievably damage the mind, body, brain, soul and spirit. But the fact that the combat-traumatized type is totally preventable – and oftentimes virtually impossible to cure – makes prevention work really important.
An ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure when it comes to combat-induced PTSD. And where Christian churches should and could be instrumental in the prevention of the soul-destroying combat-type PTSD is by counseling their members to not participate in it – which should be obvious when considering the ethical message of the nonviolent Jesus, a message that guided the pacifist church in the first 3 centuries of its existence
Experiencing violence, whether as victimizer or victim, can be deadly, and it can run through families like a contagious plague. I have seen violence, neglect, abuse and the resultant traumatic psychological and neurological illnesses spread through both military and non-military families – even involving the 3rd and 4th generations after the initial traumas. And that has been the experience of the hibakusha (the long-suffering atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), whose progeny continue to suffer disease – which has likewise been the experience of many of the progeny of the warrior-perpetrators who participated in the act of killing in every war.
What Should be the Church’s Role in the Organized Mass Slaughter That is War?
Years ago I saw an unpublished Veteran’s Administration study that showed that, whereas most Vietnam War-era soldiers were active members of Christian churches before they went off to war the percentage of traumatized soldiers returning to their faith community approached zero. Daniel Hallock’s sobering message above helps explain why that is so.
Therefore the church – at least by its silence on the issue of war – seems to be promoting homicidal violence, contrary to the ethical teachings of Jesus, by failing to teach what the primitive church understood was one of the core teachings of Jesus, who said, in effect, that “violence is forbidden for those who wish to follow me”.
Therefore, by refraining from warning their adolescent members about the faith- and soul-destroying realities of war, the church is directly undermining the “retention” strategies in which all churches engage. The hidden history of Nagasaki has valuable lessons for crumbling American Christianity.
The Bock’s Car Crew and the Chain of Command
The Bock’s Car bomber crew, as are conscripted or enlisted men in any war, was at the bottom of a long, complex, and very anonymous chain of command whose superiors demand unconditional obedience from those below them in the chain. The Bock’s Car crew had been ordered to “pull the trigger” of the lethal weapon that had been conceptualized, designed, funded, manufactured and armed by any number of other war-profiteering entities, none of which would feel morally responsible for doing the dirty deed because they didn’t have literal blood on their hands.
As is true in all wars, soldier trigger-pullers are often the ones unjustly singled out and blamed for the killing in the combat zone, and therefore they often have the worst post-war guilt that is the most lethal part of combat-induced PTSD. However, the religious chaplains, who are responsible for the spiritual lives of their soldiers, are also at the bottom of the chain of command and may share their guilt feelings. Neither group usually knows the real reasons their commanders are ordering them to kill those that have been fingered as the “other”.
Hopefully this essay will promote needed discussions about the ethics of making murder for the state while simultaneously – and illogically – professing allegiance to the teachings of the nonviolent Jesus.
Friedman, Milton Best Price: null Buy New $13.46 (as of 12:05 EST – Details) The early church leaders, who knew the teachings and actions of Jesus best, rejected the nationalist, racist and militarist agendas of whatever passed for nationalism back then. And the Sermon on the Mount Christians of yesterday and today similarly reject the homicidal agendas of the national security state, the military-industrial complex, the war-profiteering corporations and the pre-Christian eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth retaliation doctrines that have, over the past 1700 years, enabled baptized Christians to willingly kill, if ordered to do so, other Christians or non-Christians in the name of Christ.
The hidden history of Nagasaki should be instructive for a struggling American Christianity.
I would be totally ashamed if I ever identified as an American Christian.
It is really sad so many antichrists exist in the truth community. Some are definite agents of the Luciferians trying to sow division to people, others are simply mislead sinners. In any case, Christianity is not for everyone, and only a tiny minority is meant to be saved, the rest will die. I am sorry but this has always been the case, and it is fair and just. If you disrespect your Creator and His Son, there is no other chance for you, you are already dead, you just don’t know it yet.