Recently a friend and I have been watching the TV show Band of Brothers. For those who do not know what Band of Brothers is about, it was an HBO show produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. The show follows the story of Easy, a company within the 101st airborne during WWII. One of the goals of the creators was to bring historical accuracy to the story. They brought in a Marine captain to advise on the show and interviewed surviving members of Easy Company. The company veterans saw previews of the show before the episodes were released and gave their approval.
We watched my favorite episode of Band of Brothers this week. The title is “Why We Fight.” In the episode, Easy discovers an abandoned Jewish concentration camp with the prisoners still inside. Upon opening it they find it filled with abused, emaciated half-alive Jews. The conditions of the camp were horrific. One of the prisoners describes how the German soldiers shot as many of them as they could before abandoning the camp and leaving before the Allies arrived. You cannot help but stare in pain at the broken and starved bodies of the prisoners.
While watching the episode, all you can feel is heartache and rage that a country could ruin any human being so mercilessly. Hitler and his regime were monsters. In the 21st century, we believe we are better than the past because of our technology. We think we have moved past such senseless hate. We are wrong.
As I watched the episode, God reminded me of Ephesians 6:12, ESV “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Until the end of the age when Christ returns, evil will persist. I dread the thought but another Hitler may rise in our life time as a pawn of the enemy to devastate humanity.
As Christians, we must resist the devil. We cannot forget his influence, his oppression in our lives. As Jesus resisted Satan in the wilderness, we can too with the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let us pray that an event like the holocaust will never happen again. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” ( James 4:7 ESV).
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