New TBN Special Explores Why Hanukkah Should Matter to Christians

For so many, the concept of Hanukkah in popular society has taken on the idea that these eight nights of celebration is the Jewish equivalent of Christmas. But it is so much more than that.

Known as the Feast of Dedication, Hanukkah is a Jewish festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire roughly 200 years before the birth of Christ.

While this is certainly a consequential development in the Jewish faith, those who proclaim faith in Jesus Christ have often turned a blind eye to this festival, dismissing it as having little if anything to do with the celebration of Christmas. The fact of the matter is that it has more to do with the Christian faith than most Bible-believing people might think.

In Hanukkah Special with Erick Stakelbeck airing throughout the holiday season on the TBN app, veteran journalist Stakelbeck explores the the City of David in Ancient Jerusalem and visits the sites where the legendary exploits of the Maccabees and the Hanukkah story actually happened.

I recently sat down with Stakelbeck to discuss why Hanukkah should matter to Christians, how it is even more important this year in light of the present turmoil in the Middle East, and why it is celebrated over a period of eight days rather than one.

If you were trying to encourage a family member or friend to take the time to sit down and watch your Hanukkah special, what would you say to them? What would your sales pitch be?

I'd say first and foremost, Jesus celebrated Hanukkah. The Gospel of John, chapter 10, lays out how Jesus observed what is also called the Feast of Dedication. That is Hanukkah. It's also called the Festival of Lights. But the Gospel of John says that Jesus was walking in Jerusalem, in the temple or near the temple during the Feast of Dedication. So, he went up to Jerusalem to observe Hanukkah. And for me, that's the simplest answer here. I care about what God cares about, about what Jesus cares about, and the Gospel is clear that Jesus observed the Feast of Dedication. So, automatically as a follower of Jesus, this holiday has great importance and significance for me, and I feel that I need to know more about it. Now, growing up, like a lot of gentile Christians, I looked at Hanukkah as kind of the Jewish version of Christmas.

I felt bad for my Jewish friends. They didn't have Christmas. Wow, you guys don't celebrate Christmas. You don't know what you're missing out on. And they said, “Well, we do Hanukkah.” They get gifts on eight nights. We get one day. I had no concept of what Hanukkah was all about. And then, as I got older, I learned about the Gospels, the Feast of Dedication, and the story of the Maccabees. This is so central to the Hanukkah story, and which I think gives great relevance to Hanukkah for all of us today in that the Maccabees were, I guess you could say, religious freedom fighters. Judah the Hammer. And they were fighting against oppression by pagan ultra secular Greek rulers who were at the time ruling over Israel, the Lucian Empire. They tried to ban Judaism. They defiled the temple in Jerusalem, and the Maccabees fought back. And today, we're in a battle in many ways to preserve religious freedom, including right here in the West. So it really resonates.

Hanukkah is known far and wide as a Jewish holiday. Why should Hanukkah also be considered important to Christians? What is the significance of Hanukkah?

I think number one, the fact that Jesus observed it, that anything Jesus observed automatically piques my interest as laid out in the Gospel of John. Secondly, the Maccabee story, with Judah the Hammer and his brothers led by their father Mattathias. It's an amazing story. Now, it's not canon in the Protestant Bible. The two books of the Maccabees are in the Catholic Bible, but not in the Protestant version of the Bible. Nonetheless, they are an accurate historical record of what happened during this time, a little under 200 years before the birth of Jesus. The Maccabees were basically the men of Israel who said, enough is enough. And the final straw is when these Greek overlords, the Lucian Empire, descended from Alexander the Great when he ruled over Israel and Antioch. 

Antiochus Epiphanes was this leader who was an absolute tyrant. He was based in Syria, but he ruled over Israel and banned the practice of Judaism. He defiled the temple in Jerusalem, the holy temple, to the point where he put a pig in the temple. This was a total affront to any observant Jew. And he disallowed Jews from getting circumcised, from keeping the law, which is obviously the law of Moses, a central pillar of their religion. So, Judaism was outlawed. Again, this is a little under 200 years before the time of Jesus. And finally, the Maccabee family, Judah, his father Mattathias, and his brothers, they rose up. They led a rebellion. These were guerrilla fighters. They were undermanned, overmatched, and outgunned. They didn't have guns at the time, but let's say out-armed by the Greeks. And yet they prevailed in a stunning victory. They defeated the Greek Empire, the solution empire.

They rededicated the temple in Jerusalem. That's why it's called the Feast of Dedication. And the Hanukkah miracle came when they only had enough oil as they were rededicating the temple, to light the Menorah in the temple for one night. That was it. And yet, the Menorah burned for eight nights straight. It was miraculous. They had barely any oil to even light the Menorah in the first place. Yet it burned for eight straight nights. That's why we have the eight days of Hanukkah that the Jewish people observe. I believe Christians also have a stake in, and I don't say we have to do full on observance of Hanukkah, but it's a holiday that we should have a new appreciation for considering the story and considering the stakes today. We are in a struggle for religious freedom against militant secularists and atheists. And secondly, considering what Israel's going through right now in the war against Hamas, they are in another fight for its existence, another fight to preserve the Jewish state and the Jewish people. So, Hanukkah has never been as timely as it is right now.

What is something new you may have learned about Hanukkah while putting this special together that you never knew before, something that really made you take pause and go, “Wow!”

I think what stuck out to me is that growing up I had many secular Jewish friends, who were not particularly observant Jews. And again, I'm a gentile Christian, but I grew up in the city of Philadelphia, which is a very diverse place. I had a lot of Jewish friends, and they celebrated Hanukkah, but there was no real religious significance for them. It was kind of a cultural thing. Some of my secular Jewish friends would go to the synagogue one day a year on Yom Kippur. In Christianity, we would call them the Christmas and Easter people, twice a year, they're in church. They put their time in, they observe it. It's a cultural thing. It's an excuse to get together with family and friends and go out to dinner. And that's how I viewed Hanukkah.

Even my Jewish friends growing up who were overwhelmingly secular, that's how they viewed it. I think what struck me here, was in observant Jews and in the people of Israel, the stirring that Hanukkah inspired in them. It was a spiritual stirring and a striving to be closer to God. I didn't know the story when I was younger, and I kind of trivialized Hanukkah in a sense and said, well, that's the Jewish version of Christmas. But to really dig in on this special, I knew the story of the Maccabees, but to go to Modi'in and to hear some of the specifics about the battles and the long odds the Maccabees fought against was just incredible to see what they overcame with the help of God Almighty. But to hear the passion of what the Jewish people talked about when I interviewed them for this program is anything but trivial.

With all the turmoil that is happening in the Middle East these days, why is the story and practice of Hanukkah that much more special this year?

Hanukkah is a central story in the history of the Jewish people that changed the trajectory of the history of the Jewish people. And what really stuck out to me, is every guest on this program made it very clear and made it a point to say, Hanukkah matters today, now more than ever, with what Israel is facing and what followers of Jesus are facing right now. Christian persecution has never been higher around the world, violent Christian persecution. Mostly, it hasn’t taken the violent form of course here in the United States, but certainly Christians have been increasingly marginalized in the culture. And the Maccabees fought for freedom. They fought for religious freedom and the freedom to practice their religion and say what they wanted to say when it came to their God. And that certainly resonates with us today.

You have quite a group of experts for this program including Rabbi Jason Sobel, Dennis Prager, Dumisani Washington, and Dr. Jeffrey Seif. What do these folks bring to the table that no one else can?

I'll start with Pastor Dumisani Washington, who I thought had a fascinating angle here. He's an African-American pastor, and he drew parallels between the struggle for freedom that the Maccabees waged and the struggle for freedom during the days of slavery for African-Americans. So that was a really cool parallel that he drew. Number one, how African Americans during that time drew on the Maccabees for inspiration and strength. So, that to me was fascinating. Dr. Jeffrey Seif and Rabbi Jason Sobel were also very interesting because these are both Jewish believers in Jesus, in Yeshua, as Messianic Jews would call Him. So, their understanding of Hanukkah, once they began to follow Jesus, took on a whole new meaning. They said, “Wow, Yeshua observed Hanukkah as laid out in the Gospel of John 10.  So, it was interesting to hear not only a Jewish angle on it, but a Jewish follower of Jesus angle. Then Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated radio host, a brilliant guy, drew more into the parallel of defending western civilization, defending Judeo-Christian civil civilization against the modern day Hellen's today. It's hard to ignore the modern parallel to the Maccabee Hanukkah story with what we are facing right now.

After people have had a chance to watch the Hanukkah Special with Erick Stakelbeck, what would you like to see audiences take away from the viewing experience? What is your greatest hope for the program?

I would like to see the audience have a whole new appreciation for Hanukkah, number one. And number two, I hope people will get in better touch as a Christian with their Jewish roots. We're followers of Jesus, but he is a Jewish rabbi from the Galilee region of Israel. So I think in the history of Christendom over the past 2,000 years, the Jewishness of our faith has really been lost in many ways. We've had replacement theology take hold in many denominations saying that God was done with the Jews. The rebirth of Israel really means nothing. It's just happenstance. And yet Jesus was Jewish. His mother was Jewish. The disciples were Jewish. The Bible is essentially the history of the Jewish people from creation up until the time of Jesus. So, we do have Semitic roots as Gentile Christians, and Christianity was originally considered a Jewish sect in the First Century, after the founding.

So, I think it's good for us as believers. This is important to God and if it's important to God, it should be important to us. So, I think knowing the Hanukkah story, knowing the significance of it, why it's so special, why it's so relevant today, matters for us as well in terms of growing in our faith. Jesus didn't have blonde hair and blue eyes. He was semitic and he lived in the land of Israel. He was Middle Eastern. So I think it's very cool for Christians to get in touch with that and to better know the roots of their faith and where it all derived from.  

Hanukkah Special with Erick Stakelbeck is airing throughout the holiday season on the TBN app.