Limapela Education Project
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A surprising number of biblical prophecies concern the regathering of the Jewish people to the land of Israel in the latter days, as a prelude to the return of the Messiah. Many of these prophecies, overlooked or spiritualised by Christians from the historic churches, foretell events which have occurred in the return of Jews to the land of Israel in modern times. Rob Yule gave his perspective on this controversial subject at Greyfriars' Classical Service on 29 March 2009.
Masada was the scene of the final act of resistance in the Jewish Revolt against the Romans in AD 73. There, the 960 defenders committed suicide rather than suffer the vengeance of the Romans.
Masada - a towering Herodian fortress high above the western shore of the Dead Sea - was excavated in 1963-64 by Yigael Yadin, the great Israeli soldier, archaeologist and later Deputy Prime Minister. Many unique finds were made on this site: among them, the dice probably used to decide the final suicides, and, in the oldest known synagogue in the world, a fragment of the prophecy of Ezekiel chapter 37.
Ezekiel 37 prophesies the restoration of Israel. Its rediscovery on Masada is a unique symbol of the continuity between ancient Israel and the modern state.
Several aspects of Jewish history are predicted in Ezekiel 37:
1. The attempt to annihilate Israel (37:1-2)
I can't read these verses without thinking of the scenes which greeted the Allies when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps in April and May 1945: hundreds of thin, emaciated bodies in mass graves. Did Ezekiel foresee the Holocaust - the attempted extermination of the Jewish race? This terrible episode in Jewish history cost the lives of 6 million Jews between 1939 and 1945.
2. The return to the land of Israel (37:12, 21)
This attempted annihilation of the Jewish people would be followed by a resurrection of 'the whole house of Israel' (37:11). Jews would be brought back from many nations where they have been dispersed, regathered in the land of Israel, and reconstituted as a nation. This aliya or 'return' to the land began in the 1880s, and speeded up after the Holocaust (in 1945) and the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands (in 1947-1948).
3. The recreation of Israel as a united nation (37:22)
Only under David and Solomon was Israel ever a united nation. Thereafter it was divided into a northern kingdom (ruled first from Shechem and then from Samaria) and a southern kingdom (with its capital in Jerusalem). Since 14 May 1948, Israel has again been a sovereign nation - and, since June 1967, it has been a united nation 'on the mountains of Israel' - the hill country of Judea and Samaria.
4. Israel's future conversion (37:23)
Israel's conversion is still to happen on a large scale, though the number of Messianic Jews in Israel, around 12,000, is now the highest it has been since New Testament times. Biblical prophecies of the regathering of Israel present a clear sequence - first a return to the land, then a return to their Lord (cf. 36:24-27). If we would pray for the conversion of the Jews, we should also pray for their return to the land of Israel.
5. The future Messianic destiny of Israel (37:24-25)
The prophets do not see Israel's restoration as an isolated event, an end in itself. They see it as a means to an end - a prelude to the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah - a king of the house of David - will rule over them. Our Saviour - the Jewish Messiah - will one day return and rule over Israel and the nations. Israel's restoration is preparing the 'returning pad' for the Messiah (Zechariah 14:4, Acts 1:6, 11).
1. No other nation has been twice exiled and twice regathered
The first exile was to Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar, with the return 70 years later under Cyrus the Persian. The second exile lasted 1,900 years, from AD 70 to the 20th century, and was a dispersion to and regathering from many nations all over the world. No other nation has twice lost its land and twice regained it, twice had its statehood and national institutions destroyed and twice had them restored.
2. No other nation's language has ceased to be widely spoken then been restored to common use
In the Middle Ages Hebrew became a dead language (like Latin), restricted to religious use (the Scriptures and rabbinical study). Indeed, this sacred association was one of the greatest barriers faced by the pioneer of modern Hebrew, Eliezer ben Yehuda - he had a Hebrew translation of Robinson Crusoe confiscated by the religious authorities in his youth! Almost single-handedly Ben Yehuda campaigned and worked for Hebrew to become a modern spoken language. He made his wife promise to speak only Hebrew in their home - the first Hebrew mother for nineteen centuries. He wanted twelve sons - the number of the tribes of Israel - and had eleven - the number of the faithful apostles! He suffered from tuberculosis, poverty, and ridicule. He published a Hebrew newspaper and gathered material for a 17-volume Hebrew dictionary.
3. No other nation has faced so many attempts to exterminate it
In ancient times numerous attempts were made to exterminate the Jewish nation: by the Pharaohs in Egypt, by Haman and the Persian king Ahasuerus [Xerxes], and by the Romans, who savagely suppressed the two Jewish Revolts (in AD 66-73 and 132-134). In the Middle Ages all Jews were expelled from England in 1290, and from Spain in 1492 - the mere list of expulsions in Paul Grosser and Edwin Halperin, Anti-Semitism (Secacus, N.J., Citadel Press, 1979), fills four pages (pp. 35-38). In modern times one thinks of the Russian and Polish pogroms of the 1880s, the 'final solution' of the Nazis from 1933-1945, more recently the hostility of the Arab states, especially Egypt and Syria, and now also Iran, about to achieve a nuclear capability.
In the nineteenth century Israel's restoration seemed so unlikely. Palestine was a backward province of the run-down Ottoman Turkish Empire. It had squalid, disease-ridden villages, malarial swamps, denuded, barren, rocky hills. The Jewish residents were poor, lacking self-confidence. This was the desolate country portrayed in David Roberts' etchings, or ridiculed by Mark Twain in his description of the abject state of the 'Holy Land.'
Yet for centuries there have been Christians - the so-called 'Christian Restorationists' - who believed in, wrote about, and prayed for the restoration of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1621 British parliamentarian Sir Henry Finch published The World's Great Restauration, whose prediction of a Jewish return to Palestine and ensuing world-wide dominion provoked King James I to imprison its author and publisher on a charge of sedition.
Many Puritans, like Oliver Cromwell, were restorationists. Johann Amos Comenius, the great 17th century Czech educationalist, foresaw a messianic age that would be preceded by the restoration of the Jews to their land. Many British evangelicals believed in a restored Jewish state: Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Shaftesbury, Sir Lawrence Oliphant. William Hechler, chaplain of the British Embassy in Vienna, was a friend and supporter of Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist Movement.
Lord Balfour, author of the Balfour Declaration expressing British support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, was a Christian who believed in Israel's restoration. So was Rees Howells, the Welsh coal miner and founder of the Bible College of Wales, who mobilised prayer in October and November 1947 for the United Nations to allow the partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel (Norman Grubb, Rees Howells, Intercessor, Guildford & London, Lutterworth, 1973, p. 244).
Many specific prophecies have been fulfilled in the restoration of modern Israel.
Isaiah 11:11 says 'In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people.' This cannot refer to the first return from exile in Babylon, but to a subsequent regathering from many nations in the latter days.
Jeremiah 16:14-16 speaks of the Lord bringing back the Israelites 'out of all the countries where he had banished them', using 'fishers' to lure them and 'hunters' to hunt them down. The Jewish people were 'fished' back by the Zionists and the Balfour Declaration of 1917. They were 'hunted' back by the Nazis and the Arabs.
Isaiah 66:8 asks 'Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment?' The state of Israel came into existence in one day: at 4 p.m., in the Tel Aviv Museum, on 14 May 1948, David Ben Gurion read the Declaration of Independence and announced its formation.
Jeremiah 31:8-9. Immigrants have come back to Israel from 'the land of the north' and 'from the ends of the earth' - from more than 90 countries. These verses are reminiscent of the newsreel photos of Jewish refugees from the 'displaced persons camps' of Europe after the Second World War and from the Arab states in 1948-1950: they were 'weak', 'lame' and destitute.
Amos 9:14-15. In the 19th century large tracts of Palestine were desolate and almost uninhabited. Now, as this passage foretold, the ancient 'ruined cities' are being rebuilt, 'vineyards' planted, 'gardens' established and the land being re-cultivated.
Zechariah 12:7 says that 'the Lord will save the dwellings of Judah first' - before Jerusalem. In fact, Jerusalem was without electricity on the day when the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, and had been under siege by the Arabs from earlier that year. The day after the state came into existence the Arab Legion attacked Jerusalem, and the Jews lost control of the Old City - retaining only West Jerusalem - till its capture during the Six Day War of 1967. Jewish sovereignty came later to Old Jerusalem than to the surrounding area, exactly as this prophecy foretold.
A great deal of controversy surrounds the state of Israel today. Many people deny that it has any prophetic significance or continuing place in God's purposes. This rejection comes from two quarters:
1. The politicisers
There is a strong Arabist influence in British policy-making, in the BBC, in the international media, and in the United Nations. This is partly from a desire to protect trade and oil supplies. But it links with left-wing 'liberation theology', which is hostile towards Israel and sympathetic to the Palestinian Authority and even to radical Islamic terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Zionism is the only national liberation movement that the Left conspicuously fails to support. According to this view Israel acts unjustly, so has no relation to biblical Israel or Israel in biblical prophecy.
2. The spiritualisers
On the other hand there are the historic Christian churches, and many evangelicals and Pentecostals, who spiritualise the biblical references to 'Israel', 'Zion', and 'the land'. They equate Israel with the Christian Church, the 'New Israel'. This is known as 'replacement theology': the Church is said to have replaced Israel, since Israel rejected the Messiah. No account is taken of Romans 9-11 and the promise that one day Israel will be restored and grafted back again into God's purposes.
People who deny modern Israel's place in God's purposes forfeit two things:
They lose the encouragement to faith that comes from learning about the great miracles of Israel's preservation, restoration and protection.
They lose the indication of time and place that Israel plays as God's prophetic time-clock and venue for the unfolding of end-time events and the approach of the Messiah's coming. Israel's restoration brings us to the very 'threshold of the Messiah'. 'When you see all these things, you know that he is near, right at the door.' (Matthew 24:33).
Rob Yule, 29 March 2009
© 2009, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
