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This morning I’m going to do something different. Rabbi Yeshua taught in unexpected ways that surprised His audience – using parables and vivid images, and following His example, this teaching comes in the form of a story, inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, which uses fiction to expose spiritual realities. This title of this story is Instructions From A Principality.

The chamber was vast, filled with row upon row of lesser spirits. They were restless, shifting with barely contained anticipation.

Then he entered – slowly, with weighty deliberateness, emanating a dark aura of grays and blacks. He was full of rage, but it was a cold, analytical kind of rage.

The fallen angels have a hierarchy, as do the good angels. Among the ranks of the fallen, he was one of the “principalities and powers,” a ruler among rulers. As Michael the archangel is appointed to protect Israel, so this one had been assigned to oppose, distort and defile the people that heavenly prince protects.

He surveyed them with measured disdain.

“Lesser ones,” he began, his voice smooth and seductive, yet powerful, “as we get closer to the end of this age, the nation of Israel grows ever more important to the Enemy’s plans, and therefore to our unrelenting opposition.”

“I speak to you today of our ancient hatred that changes form but does not die.”

He paused, letting the words sink in.

“But first, you must understand the Enemy,” refusing to utter His Name. “For all His many other faults, He is consistent. He binds Himself to words, promises, covenants. And most absurd of all – indeed, most laughable, most foolish, most exasperating – He has bound Himself to a particular people.”

A ripple of resentment moved through the assembled demons.

“Yes,” the Principality continued, “a people chosen not for any inherent greatness on their part – but only because of His provocative purpose, His defiant purpose, His infuriating purpose, His contrarian design.”

He controlled his rage, eyes gleaming with malice.

“What the Enemy loves – we hate.

What He chooses – we target.

What He protects – we destroy.”

“Because humanity joined our rebellion, they share much in common with us. They are simple for us to influence, clay easily molded, readily manipulated.”

A cold smile formed on his lips.

“Individual sins corrupt single souls – necessary, useful enough. But national sins – civilizational sins – are far more useful. Consider how often we have been able to direct nations to try to destroy the Jews.”

Shadows swirled and coalesced behind him, unfolding like a dark, living tapestry of history:

Egypt – fear twisted into oppression and planned genocide.

Amalek – hatred without cause, targeting the weakest.

Canaan, Philistia, Syria, Edom, Moab – endless, grinding hostility.

Assyria, Babylon – conquest, ruin, exile.

Persia – Haman’s decree for total annihilation.

Greece – Antiochus’ attempt to erase their identity.

Rome. The conquest. The oppression. The destruction of the nation and Jerusalem and their Temple. The scattering to the nations.

“And yet, despite all our efforts – the Jewish people remain.”

His voice became icy.

“The Enemy preserves them – not because they are righteous, but because He stubbornly adheres to His word and advances His plan.”

“And after Rome” he continued, his tone precise, “we adapted. The exile of Israel offered new opportunities. Expulsions, inquisitions, forced conversions. Scattered among the nations, they should have assimilated and disappeared. Yet even in what He considered their state of disobedience, the Enemy helped them survive.”

“We turned His providence against them – portraying their endurance as self-made, their separateness as arrogance. In every land, we whispered: the Jews are not like us. They do not belong. They never will. Get rid of them.”

“Still, they persisted. And so we persisted.”

His tone revealed satisfaction.

“One of our greatest achievements came not from outside the Enemy’s camp, but from within. As the Roman empire embraced Christianity, we turned to the growing Church – and created a new kind of antisemitism: Christian antisemitism. We inspired Church leaders to weaponize theology – teachings that blamed, distorted, dehumanized. Hatred of the chosen people, preached from the pulpit. How exquisite. How gratifying.”

“Pogroms – carried out by mobs but stirred by religious authority. Crusades, called by popes and supported by Christian leaders. As some of their armies marched across Europe, they slaughtered Jewish communities – men, women and children – believing they were serving the Enemy.”

He continued, clinical and precise: “We established ghettos – isolated communities for the Jews. Separation. Containment. Restriction. Lack of opportunity. We encouraged laws restricting them from guilds, denying them land ownership, forcing them into limited roles such as moneylenders and bankers – and then condemned them for succeeding in those roles. This was not random. This was intentional. Systematic. Social. Economic. Religious. All justified in the name of the Enemy. Our greatest victories have occurred when hatred believes itself to be virtue.”

He smiled. “Wonderful.”

He looked at the fallen angels with a penetrating stare.

“And now we come to the present complication – the Israel problem. Beginning around 1880, their exiles began returning to their land. They formed a sliver of a state in 1948. Yet despite repeated wars launched against them – a mere handful surrounded by vastly larger nations saturated with hatred – they survived. Conflicts that should have destroyed them failed.”

He sneered. “Irritating anomalies – for now.”

“Ideas are more powerful than weapons. So you will exploit today’s political ideologies – especially the extremes on both the right and the left.”

“For those on the right, twist nationalism into demands for ethnic purity. Feed the old lies. Tell them the Jews are disloyal, that they control governments, banking, media and culture. These accusations don’t need to be proven – only repeated.”

“Holocaust – what a lovely, beautiful word for one of our greatest achievements: the deliberate, industrialized extermination of the Jews of Europe. Six million destroyed – two out of every three systematically hunted, stripped, starved, gassed, and reduced to ash, while much of the world looked away and pretended not to see. So close to our objective – yet not complete. If only the Nazis had been victorious and finished the task…”

“And when the political right is confronted with the evidence of this slaughter, only a few generations removed from it, teach them to deny it, minimize it, distort it. You will blind them to the glaring contradiction: if the Jews truly possessed the power they are accused of having, such a catastrophe would never have occurred.”

“For the political left, use the language of morality instead of conspiracy: ‘oppressor and oppressed,’ ‘justice and injustice.’ Take Israel – that tiny, persecuted nation – and invert everything. Turn the persecuted into the oppressor. David into Goliath. The underdog into the overdog. The survivor into the aggressor. Convince them they can oppose Israel while claiming to love the Jewish people. And make sure no other nation is judged by the same standards.”

“And there is another vital front – we must continue our radicalization of Islam. Frame the conflict with Israel as religious war – holy, inevitable, divinely sanctioned. Convince them that terrorism is piety – righteous and pleasing to the Enemy and worthy of a great reward. Stir up the surrounding nations so that the Jews are never accepted, never at peace, never able to rest.”

“Those of you working in the Middle East, especially the powerful angel who rules Persia, and those of you assisting him – you are to be commended for the excellent work you have been doing there for decades. Continue to inflame, to fund, to sustain the conflict without end.”

“And now we return to one of our most important efforts – the Church, which continues to grow, expand and extend its influence across the nations. New platforms, new voices, new generations – and therefore new opportunities for us.”

“You must reinforce one of our most effective doctrines: old, respectable and widely believed – Replacement Theology. The Church has replaced Israel. The Enemy’s promises to His special people are no longer binding. Israel is no different than any other nation. We have successfully indoctrinated most of the Church with this for centuries, and we must continue the indoctrination.”

“If we succeed – they will not believe every word the Enemy has spoken. They will spiritualize what is literal. They will oppose the nation He supports. They will undermine their own faith.”

“You will keep them from connecting history – especially modern history – to His prophecies. You will not allow them to understand that the Enemy constantly intervenes in human affairs, and is directing history to His predetermined end. You will prevent them from believing His many promises concerning the land, the exile and the regathering. He said He would scatter and that He would gather. But you will teach them to not take it literally, reinterpret it, explain it away, dismiss it. You will make them believe they are honoring Him while in reality accusing Him of not being faithful to His word.”

“How satisfying, how richly rewarding, how deeply pleasing.”

“And just as we have obscured His promises to Israel in the Old Testament, we will obscure parts of their New Testament as well. The Enemy told them clearly – only some of the Jewish branches were broken off, that the Gentiles were grafted into a Jewish tree with a Jewish root. Not to replace. Not to boast. Not to hate. But to provoke to jealousy. To lovingly bring them the truth. You will convince them of the opposite. Teach them the tree has changed, that the root no longer matters. Teach them to boast, to see themselves as superior. Teach them to ignore, to be indifferent. Because if they understand, their contempt may turn to compassion. Their indifference may turn to love. They may stand with the Enemy’s chosen ones.” He raised his voice. “And that must never happen.”

Silence filled the chamber.

“Lesser ones, this hatred must always adapt, changing its appearance but never its nature. Religious. Racial. Political. Ideological. Moral. But always justified. Always good. Always righteous.”

The shadows swirled with dark intensity.

“As we approach the Enemy’s return, we must intensify our efforts. Antisemitism must be brought to a boiling point – global in scale, reaching every nation, every people.”

“You know your mission. You have your assignments. Go, knowing that it is an honor to work for me in this most important area of our endeavors.”

“One final instruction” said the Principality: “above all, you must never allow the source of antisemitism to be revealed… us.”