How To Commit Suicide

In spite of the so-called progress of the ages, there has been far too little attention given to the subject of suicide. With all our institutes for research, our scientific endeavours, our panels of experts in many fields, our modern technologies etc., the whole subject of how to commit suicide has been grossly neglected.

Even definitions are far too carelessly treated. Consider the following unsatisfactory definition: "Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life", by which is meant that a person decides to terminate bodily existence upon this earth by an act or process self-initiated. People want to commit self-murder, and do so.

But the definition does not fully comprehend either the act or the actors. It completely ignores another class of suicide, namely, people who don't want to commit suicide and yet unintentionally do so! And the amazing part is that neither they nor many with whom they associate even remotely suspect it. If we were to ask people in this category: "Do you want to commit suicide?" the answer would be, undoubtedly, "O dear me! No!"

And yet they do! Thousands of them! Millions of them!

It would indeed be a tragedy if a person entwined his body with a heavy chain and leapt to his death in sixty feet of water to commit suicide. But suicide is not limited to the individual human body. Whole nations commit suicide – the poppied fields of history are studded with the weed-grown tombs who have committed national self-murder.

The testimony of the past reveals that nations have unconsciously inoculated themselves with a deadly virus that has resulted in their own national self-destruction. That virus is anti-Semitism – Jew-hate.

God has declared that every nation that persecutes Israel will perish: " Behold, all who are incensed against you shall be ashamed and disgraced; they shall be as nothing, and those who strive with you shall perish " (Isaiah 41:11); " I will curse him that curses you " (Genesis 12:3), and this is a spiritual principle He has laid down.

Where is the mighty Assyrian nation today? Assyria became privy to her own destruction when she unconsciously aligned herself against this Divine spiritual principle. Jew-hate will seal the fate or any nation that indulges in it. National anti-Semitism is national suicide. The powerful Assyrian boasted his conquests against other nations, and then committed self-destruction when he turned against Israel and said in his pride: " As I have done to Samaria and her idols, shall I not do also to Jerusalem and her idols? " (Isaiah 10:11).

Here God's answer to this boast: " So the light of Israel will be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame; it will devour and burn his (Assyria's) thorns and his briars in one day. And it will consume the glory of his forest and of his fruitful field . . . " (Isaiah 10:17, 18).

" I will break the Assyrian in my land, and on the mountains tread him underfoot … This is the purpose that is purposed against the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. For the LORD of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? " (Isaiah 14:25-27).

Surely God's hand is stretched out against the nation that persecutes His people. Assyria is gone. Babylon is gone. Israel remains.

Antiquity is not alone in furnishing proofs of the folly of anti-Semitism. Current history steps forward and solemnly points to the downfall of Hitler. The moment he raised his hands against the Jews and caused his thoughtless nation to follow his insane policy of anti-Semitism, he automatically raised his hand against the stretched-out hand of Almighty God, and he destroyed himself and his nation.

We can almost hear over again his anti-Jewish utterances like the staccato rattle of his many murderous machine guns mowing down his helpless victims in the relentless prosecution of his Satanic vow to destroy Israel utterly from the earth. But the course of the ages and the sure testimony of God would make no exception of Adolph Hitler. God's word says: " I will bless them that bless you and I will curse him that curses you " and God's word is inviolable. As Shakespeare said: "Imperious Caesar! Dead! And turned to clay, now stops a hole to keep the wind away!"

Yes, the body of Hitler is dead, but he is a patriot indeed who warns his nation that the foul spirit of Hitler still marches on, and threatens not only other nations of the world, but also our own nation. Anti-Semitism is not only a Jewish concern; it is the concern of all who care for justice, decency and kindness, and who value the individual freedom won by centuries of struggle against tyranny.

Anti-Semitism involves the deliberate exaggeration of difference for base ends. In the forefront of the efforts to create division within any community the Nazis have always placed anti-Semitism, and we cannot afford to ignore the facts of the steady propagation of this evil throughout the world.

Physical suicide is terrible; national suicide is worse; but spiritual suicide is the worst; it is too terrible to describe. In the individual, it is rejection of God and this is spiritual suicide indeed.

The Jewish people are a God-given spiritual phenomenon, preserved by God for a God-declared spiritual mission to the world at the close of this age. Of them God declares: " Though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, yet I will not make a complete end of you " (Jeremiah 30:11).

Israel is suffering nationally for the national folly of rejecting God's Messiah Yeshua, but is being preserved by God for the recognition and repudiation of that folly. The individual anti-Semite is really expressing antagonism to the Messiah the Jew, and ultimately personal rejection of the God who sent Him. And it follows that personal rejection of God is spiritual suicide.

In the Divine estimation the individual soul is very precious indeed, and the Messiah said: " For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? " (Mark 8:36, 37). So valuable is a man's soul that God sent the Messiah Jesus to shed His precious blood as an atonement for the sin of that soul. The First Letter to the Corinthians states that " The Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures … " (15:3, 4).

So the way to commit suicide is to indulge in Jew-hate, which is in the ultimate rejection of the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah whom God sent into the world to provide salvation for the world. Jew-hate is in the ultimate spiritual suicide both now and for eternity, for " How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? " Letter to the Hebrews 2:3).