From the Desk of Jeff King

God's calendar

The fall feasts of the Bible – Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot – are around the corner and that means two things for our family: a sweet, intimate time with the Lord, and alienation from friends and family.

Several years ago we learned that God’s appointed feasts are a picture and pattern of Messiah Yeshua’s first and second coming. We observe the fall and spring feasts simply and humbly in the privacy of our home, teaching our children the prophetic fulfillment of Messiah in them. We no longer celebrate Christmas and Easter, which has raised eyebrows of Christian friends and relatives. When we explain that these church traditions have pagan roots and are offensive to God, they look at us funny and change the subject. Alisa and I are very social people, but this topic can bring a conversation to a grinding halt. We've learned to keep quiet unless the Holy Spirit opens a door to share the truth.

God gave His prophetic calendar to point us to Yeshua. He never abandoned His appointed feasts, nor did He give man permission to replace them with pagan holidays. Deuteronomy 12:32 says, "Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it." When Messiah establishes His millennial kingdom on earth, the nations will come to Jerusalem each year to worship the King and keep the Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot (Zechariah 14:16). No one will be hanging Christmas lights or coloring eggs.

During his earthly ministry, Yeshua was a Torah-observant Jew who kept the Biblical feasts. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 4:15:16, "For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers . . . therefore I urge you, imitate me." Paul, one of the most brilliant Torah scholars of his day, did not abandon God’s set times when he became a follower of Yeshua. We are to follow his example, not the early church fathers who compromised and allowed pagan practices to creep into Christianity.

A holiday like Christmas is so ingrained into our culture that to separate yourself from it can invite suspicion and ridicule. December 25 is not the birthdate of Messiah, but is for nearly every pagan deity. Yeshua was born during the fall feasts, most likely on Rosh Hashanah. My 13-year-old stepdaughter politely explained this to her church youth group last Christmas but the leaders refused to acknowledge her. Mainstream Christianity has lost its way and no one seems to notice or care. Yeshua says narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life, and few find it (Matthew 7:14). God's calendar is a narrow gate.

The ship nobody wanted

Darkness overtook the SS St. Louis as it approached the Florida coastline on June 3, 1939. The lights of Miami winked in the distance – a beacon of hope to more than 900 Jewish refugees aboard the German luxury liner.

The Jews, who had sailed across the Atlantic to escape growing persecution in Nazi Germany, were close enough to see hotels and automobiles along the beach. Peering through binoculars, 12-year-old Herbert Karliner could not take his eyes off the shoreline. "I'd never seen coconut trees in my life. I was very impressed," says Karliner, pictured below with his father Joseph aboard the ship.

But the attraction was not mutual. A Coast Guard cutter and military plane shadowed the ship to discourage it from entering American waters. Asylum was denied by the State Department, and telegrams sent by the passenger committee to President Franklin D. Roosevelt went unanswered. "The mood on board was grim," says Liesl Loeb of Elkins Park, Pa., who was 10 at the time. "The captain thought he could land the ship at night, but the shore patrol made sure we kept moving."

Seeking refuge in America was a desperate move by the St. Louis. Days earlier the ship had been denied entry into Cuba – her original destination – after the government refused to honor the passengers' landing permits. Most of the Jews had sold possessions to book passage, pay off corrupt German officials and buy visas. For five days the St. Louis sailed in circles between Cuba and Florida as refuge was sought for the Jews in North, Central and South America.

But the Jews could not find a friend anywhere. A New York Times editorial lamented, "We can only hope that some hearts will soften somewhere and some refuge be found. The cruise of the St. Louis cries to heaven of man's inhumanity to men." Except for the Jewish community, the crisis failed to rally support from the American public, including the church. The final rejection came from Canada and its anti-Semitic immigration director Frederick Blair, who bragged about his success in denying European Jews entry into Canada. Karliner remembers the feeling of rejection: "Nobody in the world wanted us."

Running low on fuel and supplies, the St. Louis was ordered to return to its homeport in Hamburg, Germany. The passenger committee tried to maintain calm, but behind closed doors many Jewish families planned to commit suicide. "That to me was a shocker," says Jules Wallerstein of Norwalk, Conn. "I was 12 years old and realized it was the end of my life. My parents knew if we went back the trains would be waiting for us."

Aaron Pozner had another exit strategy: launch a mutiny. He and several Jewish youths stormed the bridge and overpowered the watch, then sent for German captain Gustav Schroeder. Pozner and two men surrounded the captain when he arrived and demanded he sail to any country other than Germany. According to the book Voyage of the Damned by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, Schroeder answered firmly, "The other passengers will not support you. You have not seized the engine room. My crew will overpower you. All you are doing is laying yourself open to a charge of piracy." The captain, who had compassion for the refugees, said he would overlook their criminal actions if they would leave the bridge, which they did. He promised the men he would do everything possible to land the Jews in England.

Pozner, a Hebrew teacher, already had been a target of Nazi brutality in Germany. During Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," he was dragged from his home and imprisoned briefly at Dachu, where he witnessed the murder of Jews by hanging, drowning and crucifixion. Pozner was released from camp on the condition he leave Germany within 14 days. As he traveled on foot to reach the St. Louis he was beaten and forced to sleep among bloody animal hides.

Schroeder kept his word by planning a daring rescue off the coast of England: running the St. Louis aground, setting it on fire and evacuating the passengers ashore. But an unexpected break kept the captain from taking those extreme measures. Four European nations – Great Britain, France, Belgium and Holland – granted temporary asylum to the Jews following exhaustive negotiations. The swing of emotions aboard the ship is captured in this telegram sent by passengers to Morris Troper, one of the chief negotiators: "907 St. Louis passengers who have been hanging between hope and despair for the past 13 days, today received your news, delivered on 6/13 that definitive arrangements have been made for all the passengers. Our gratitude is as immense as the sea that we have been sailing on since May 13."

The Jews, who had languished at sea for 40 days and 40 nights, disembarked in Antwerp, Belgium, and were moved to various locations. Relief for many of the Jews, however, was temporary as World War II erupted months later and trapped them in Nazi-occupied Europe. About a third of the St. Louis Jews, including Pozner, perished in concentration camps. Although many Jewish refugee ships were denied entry by western nations and forgotten, the St. Louis saga was well publicized and exploited by the Nazis for propaganda. The St. Louis snub helped convince Hitler he could launch his Final Solution without opposition from the West.

Karliner and a brother avoided capture by hiding in an unoccupied zone in France during the war. Karliner immigrated to America in 1947 and three years later was drafted into the Army, where he served as a translator in the Pacific. Today he lives in Miami. His parents and two sisters died at Auschwitz. On Kristallnacht, Herbert and his father watched helplessly as Nazis burned their prayer books and Torah scroll at the local synagogue. Joseph tried to rescue the scroll but was shoved back. The Karliner general store was vandalized and its windows shattered. Later, the gestapo rounded up Jewish men in town, including Joseph, and sent them to Buchenwald. Herbert says his father was unrecognizable when he returned from the prisoner camp three weeks later. The Karliners sold their business and home, purchased landing certificates for Cuba at an inflated price, and said goodbye to their homeland forever.

After landing in Britain, Liesl Loeb and her mother Lilli were allowed to book passage for New York. They left London during an air raid and sailed to America on a ship that was stalked by a U-boat. Jules Wallerstein and his family were living in a Brussels apartment when the Nazis invaded Belgium. They fled the country – receiving kind treatment from German soldiers along the way – and boarded a ship in Casablanca, Morocco, bound for America in 1941.

The St. Louis saga, one of the most shameful chapters in U.S. history, was immortalized in the 1976 movie Voyage of the Damned that received three Academy Award nominations, although Loeb says it was "a bad movie, very Hollywood." Books and documentaries were produced, but over time the subject has been buried and forgotten. The survivors are aging and their testimony is in jeopardy of passing with them.

But in recent years the Jews have received attention from an unexpected source. Christians in the United States and Canada, representing a church body that ignored their peril in 1939, are seeking reconciliation with public expressions of remorse and repentance. In November 2000, 250 Canadian Christians honored 25 surviving passengers at a private dinner at the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa. During the banquet, Baptist pastor Doug Blair – great nephew of the immigration director who snubbed the St. Louis – offered an apology so tender that the Jews rose spontaneously to embrace him.

"I have come to beg your forgiveness for the deep, deep wrong that was done to you," he addressed the survivors. "I understand very well that my name is not one dear to your heart. . . . Will you forgive me and let me call you my friends?" Karliner was especially moved by a letter written by a Canadian child: "Dear Jew, I'm sorry we didn't let you in because you are the apple of God's eye."

Weeks before the banquet, Karliner was invited by David Demian, director of Watchmen for the Nations ministry in Vancouver, B.C., to speak at church gatherings across Canada. In Vancouver, 400 Christians – moved by Karliner's testimony – rushed the platform, knelt at his feet and asked for forgiveness. "I didn’t know what to do," Karliner says in his thick German accent. "I tried to lift them up, but I couldn’t lift 400 people. When I think about it I still get goose pimples. I knew Jews who were coming to the Ottawa dinner. I couldn't tell them what I saw and felt. Nobody would believe me." Karliner also spoke at a church in Ottawa, where hundreds of Christians formed a protective circle around Karliner and several Jewish friends. The Gentiles repeated the Old Testament vow that Ruth spoke to Naomi: "Your people shall be my people and your God, my God (see Ruth 1:16)."

Survivors also received a formal apology from American Christians and government officials at an international prayer gathering in June 2001 at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the location of the Coast Guard station that sent the gunboat to intercept the St. Louis. During the three-day All Americas Convocation, Christians and Jews laid a wreath off Florida's eastern coast. Many survivors threw roses into the water in memory of lost loved ones.

In the process of building new relationships, Christians are slowly earning the trust of the surviving passengers, who were skeptical when church leaders first contacted them. "Never in my wildest expectations could I imagine the church of Canada as a whole would repent and apologize to the Jews," Karliner says. "But in my heart I wanted to give it a try."

As Jews entered the grand hall for the banquet in Ottawa, Christians broke into thunderous applause. The blast of a ram's horn filled the room as tears streamed down the faces of Jews and Gentiles. One survivor remarked, "I never had much of a wedding. I felt like a bride walking up the aisle on her wedding day."

Postscript

The struggle aboard the St. Louis did not end when its Jewish passengers disembarked in Belgium in June 1939. After completing summer cruises in the Caribbean, the ship was at sea without passengers when war was declared Sept. 3. Captain Gustav Schroeder commanded two daring voyages to return the St. Louis to its homeport in Hamburg. He slipped past the British blockade to reach safety in Murmansk, Russia, and four months later set sail for Hamburg. He arrived in Germany on New Year's Day.

The St. Louis was heavily damaged by Allied bombs in 1944 and six years later sold for scrap. Schroeder, who never returned to sea, struggled to make a living as a writer following the war. His Jewish passengers sent him food and clothing, and helped acquit him of any Nazi collaboration. The West German government awarded him a citation and medal in 1957, two years before his death, for his part in saving Jewish lives during the 1939 voyage. He is honored as a righteous Gentile at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.

Sin in the camp

I could barely stomach the news today of the Episcopal Church confirming Rev. V. Gene Robinson as its first openly gay bishop. I know we are living in the days of the apostate church and should not be surprised by these developments. But this morning I could not shake feelings of grief, sorrow and anger.

These professing ministers of the gospel profane the name of God in their arrogance and rebellion. Don't they fear God? How can they ignore His commandments? The warning against sodomy in Romans 1:26-27 is clear: "God gave them up to vile passions . . . the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due." Homosexuality is one of the sins mentioned in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 that will keep an unrepentant person from entering the kingdom of God.

What makes this sin all the more grievous is that Robinson is using the platform of ministry to justify and flaunt his abhorrent behavior. When he was cleared of misconduct allegations before Tuesday's confirmation vote, he made the outrageous statement, "God has once again brought an Easter out of Good Friday." My jaw about hit the floor. To compare the election of a gay bishop to the death and resurrection of Yeshua is blasphemy. And it's wrong to use the name Easter for this observance. Easter is derived from Eostre, the pagan Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. Yeshua – the Lamb of God – was sacrificed at Passover, buried on the Biblical Feast of Unleavened Bread and raised on the Feast of Firstfruits.

As I pondered today the whole issue of gay clergy – men defying God's law in the name of diversity and love – I found an answer in 1 Corinthians 2:11-14, which addresses spiritual wisdom. The apostle Paul says no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Believers can know the things of God because His Spirit resides in them. Verse 14 says the natural man – which in Greek means unregenerate man – does not understand things of the Spirit because they are foolishness to him. These corrupt ministers are natural men, unable to discern the gravity of their sin. Romans 1:28 also addresses their condition: "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting."

Seeing the light

David's song of praise in 2 Samuel 22 is, on the surface, a victory celebration after God had delivered him from his enemies. Verse 29 says, "For You are my lamp, O Lord; the Lord shall enlighten my darkness." According to the rabbinic commentary in ArtScroll's Rubin Edition of the Prophets, I-II Samuel, the verse also touches on another source of David's joy – God's Word. The sages write, "When someone realizes that the Torah is God's lamp to illuminate the world, and dedicates himself to study, God responds by giving him the understanding that removes his intellectual darkness." In Jewish tradition, Torah study is regarded as worship. And it appears that David embraced this concept with all his heart and soul.