David Baron

Zechariah: A Commentary on His Visions and Prophecy

Even after becoming a believer in Christ I kept my ingrained prejudice concerning the Jewish people in the sense that, though I was now forced -in a way of speaking- to love them, to pray for them and understand them, they -the Jews who stubbornly kept ignoring Jesus' words, which were first meant to them and, then, to the rest of the world, had to be really hard-to-love fellows. I mean, I couldn't keep from putting some blame on them for their suffering, while simultaneously addressing to them my loving thoughts and wishes. Yes, that's when heart and mind don't work in tandem. But now David Baron throws at me, in one final and unrefutable sentence a piece of reasoning that I and -hopefully, nobody can argue with:

“Some time ago a person said: ' The Jews are today more stiff-necked and blinder than ever before '. Who has made them thus?”

The Jews might rightly ask: "Can He be our Redeemer whose followers have treated us thus in His name?" But as Baron says, "All this the Gentile nations have done to Israel out of cruel, selfish motives, and not out of regard for God at all."

David Baron -remember this book was first published in 1918- asks where are today those Ancient nations who lifted up their hands against the Jewish people; and one may ask today: where are those old Catholic nations, guardians of the Only True Catholic religion through their Vatican popes and Gestapo-like Inquisitions? And what happened to the one-thousand year nazi Reich of Germany and its leader? This book, as all truly important books, is not only about religion or prophecy, it is history, it is a reminder of real stories that happened in the world -of times very close to us, up to yesterday, and that have vital links to the history of the Jewish nation, to Christ, and finally to both Jews and Christians of today.

As David Baron very rightly says, prophecy was not written so that it may be fulfilled, leaving us hopeless witnesses, but because it will be fulfilled, which leaves man as a free and responsible agent, free to make choices regarding God's most cherished people, the Jews spread all over the world, and responsible to give an account, if not in this life in the afterlife, for our behavior towards the Jews. So this book is important to all types of persons, not only Christians and Jews, but everybody, because it affects all nations so far as those nations have taken in many Jews that were scattered from Israel by God (Jer. 31:10), and given over to punishment, but at the same time, those nations were warned: “Make not a full end” (Jer. v.10). This brings to my mind our national shame [I mean of Spain] when we sent away our Jews in 1492, by which Spain did try to make a full end; the many Protestants burned in the stakes as heretics during the Counter reformation; and finally, in the 1600s, we sent the moriscos away. In view of our recent history, I am prone to say that only was left the scum of the Spanish race here. And thus we have earned our national miseries as fit rewards, to be shared by generations still to come.

Baron asks some very intriguing questions: "what might have been if the nation [Israel], as a nation, instead of rejecting, had accepted Christ, we can only guess and speculate about ... if, instead on one Paul, there were thousands of Pauls ... if Jerusalem, instead of Rome, had remained the capital of Christendom, and the Jew, instead of the Greek and Roman, the guiding spirit in the councils of the Church!" One thing is sure, history would have saved us a lot of suffering, and probably it wouldn't have been 2000+ years since His First Coming.

Read this book. It is easy to read. As I said, it is not just prophecy here, its issues are eternal and worldwide.