Scripture Fulfilled In Sustaining Israel
By Tom Flannery, www.WorldNetDaily.com
This month, the world watched (millions with joy, millions of others in absolute rage) as Israel celebrated the 60th anniversary of its miraculous rebirth on May 14, 1948, and the nation’s many astounding accomplishments since that historic day � all of which have unfolded specifically as foretold in Scripture thousands of years earlier.
Indeed, all of Israel’s history � its future history � was recorded in precise detail in the pages of both the Old and New Testaments thousands of years before it ever happened.
Jesus warned as He was being taken to the cross, that the Jewish women weeping for Him should weep instead for themselves (Luke 23:27-31Luke 23:27-31
English: World English Bible - WEB
27 A great multitude of the people followed him, including women who also mourned and lamented him.
28 But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
29 For behold, the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’
30 Then they will begin to tell the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and tell the hills, ‘Cover us.’
31 For if they do these things in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?”
WP-Bible plugin). He was foretelling a future judgment upon the Jewish people and their nation for their rejection of Him, which He had already said would include the complete destruction of the Temple.
Jesus prophesied that “not one stone [of the Temple] shall be left here upon another” (Matthew 24:2Matthew 24:2
English: World English Bible - WEB
2 But he answered them, “Don’t you see all of these things? Most assuredly I tell you, there will not be left here one stone on another, that will not be thrown down.”
WP-Bible plugin), and not one of them was when Rome ransacked Israel, took the Jews into captivity, and reduced the Temple to rubble nearly 40 years later, in A.D. 70. For some 2,000e 2,000
English: World English Bible - WEB
Štetje svetopisemskih vrstic se začne z 1! Vrstica 0 ne obstaja!
WP-Bible plugin years after that, the Jewish people were dispersed throughout the world in what is known as the Diaspora.
Many have erroneously taught since then that this represented God washing His hands of Israel and the Jews forever. They promote Replacement Theology�the idea that the Church has replaced Israel in the plan of God.
Yet God Himself assures in His Word that, while He would certainly punish Israel and the Jews for their rebelliousness during the Church Age (as He did in Old Testament times), He would never totally abandon or utterly destroy them (Psalm 89:30-35Psalm 89:30-35
English: World English Bible - WEB
30 If his children forsake my law,
And don’t walk in my ordinances;
31 If they break my statutes,
And don’t keep my commandments;
32 Then I will punish their sin with the rod,
And their iniquity with stripes.
33 But I will not completely take my loving kindness from him,
Nor allow my faithfulness to fail.
34 I will not break my covenant,
Nor alter what my lips have uttered.
35 Once have I sworn by my holiness,
I will not lie to David.
WP-Bible plugin).
Thus, the Bible asks if a nation can be born “in a day” or “at once” (Isaiah 66:8Isaiah 66:8
English: World English Bible - WEB
8 Who has heard such a thing? who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? shall a nation be brought forth at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.
WP-Bible plugin). That rhetorical question was answered with a resounding “Yes!” on May 14, 1948, when this end-time prophecy foretold by God through Isaiah was miraculously fulfilled more than 2,000 years after it was recorded.
So, has God cast off His Chosen People and left them without hope? No, as this prophecy from Isaiah makes abundantly clear. In the New Testament, Paul answers this same question forcefully by inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “Certainly not! … God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew” (Romans 11:1-2Romans 11:1-2
English: World English Bible - WEB
11
1 I ask then, did God reject his people? May it never be! For I also am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
2 God didn’t reject his people, which he foreknew. Or don’t you know what the Scripture says about Elijah? How he pleads with God against Israel:
WP-Bible plugin). Thus, there are more Jews coming to saving faith in Yeshua (Jesus) today than at any time since the time of Christ, when the entire Church was Jewish and remained so for many years.
God promised in Ezekiel 37 that rather than forsaking the Jews in the End Times, He would revive them as a people by bringing them “out of their graves” (Hitler’s attempted extermination of the Jewish race in the Holocaust) and back to their homeland (Israel’s miraculous rebirth in 1948).
So much for Replacement Theology!
History has demonstrated that any people displaced from their homeland for more than five generations will be absorbed by the cultures into which they’ve migrated and lose their national identity. The Jews were out of the land for some 2,000e 2,000
English: World English Bible - WEB
Štetje svetopisemskih vrstic se začne z 1! Vrstica 0 ne obstaja!
WP-Bible plugin years during the Diaspora and, being persecuted wherever they went (often by those who claimed to be Christians yet violated the teachings of Jesus by their heinous actions), they had every reason to forsake their identity. But they didn’t. God preserved them as a people just as He promised all along (Jeremiah 30:11Jeremiah 30:11
English: World English Bible - WEB
11 For I am with you, says Yahweh, to save you: for I will make a full end of all the nations where I have scattered you, but I will not make a full end of you; but I will correct you in measure, and will in no way leave you unpunished.
WP-Bible plugin).
God also promised that when He brought them back into their land, He would never allow them to be uprooted from it again (Amos 9:15Amos 9:15
English: World English Bible - WEB
15 I will plant them on their land,
And they will no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them,”
says Yahweh your God.
WP-Bible plugin). Since that historic day in 1948, He has upheld this promise by supernaturally preserving the People and Nation through a litany of wars, intifadas, and terrorist attacks launched by their Arab enemies.
God’s Word revealed that Israel would be surrounded in the Last Days by enemies who would seek to destroy it but who would instead ultimately be destroyed by God (Zechariah 12:1-3Zechariah 12:1-3
English: World English Bible - WEB
12
1 An oracle. The word of Yahweh concerning Israel. Yahweh, who stretches out the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him says:
2 “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of reeling to all the surrounding peoples, and on Judah also will it be in the siege against Jerusalem.
3 It will happen in that day, that I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all the peoples. All who burden themselves with it will be severely wounded, and all the nations of the earth will be gathered together against it.
WP-Bible plugin). True to His Word as always, God has consistently blessed His Chosen People with victory through all these assaults over the past six decades, even when Israel was facing seemingly insurmountable odds militarily (starting on May 15, 1948, when the nascent state was attacked by five Arab nations). He has also fulfilled all other promises He made to the Jews about what He would do once He brought them back into their historic homeland.
The first of these promises concerned the land itself. In the 1800s, Mark Twain � a devout atheist � traveled to the Holy Land and mocked the idea that it would ever be of use to anyone ever again. He wrote in his book The Innocents Abroad how it was a desolate, unlivable land where you couldn’t find even cactus growing.
So much for the Bible, he seemed to be saying.
Yet God had promised thousands of years earlier that He would make the desert land bloom once the Jews returned (Isaiah 35:1-2Isaiah 35:1-2
English: World English Bible - WEB
35
1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.
2 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon: they shall see the glory of Yahweh, the excellency of our God.
WP-Bible plugin), and that is precisely what He’s done these past decades � so much so that Israel is now a leading exporter of fruit to the world. As God foretold: “Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6Isaiah 27:6
English: World English Bible - WEB
6 In days to come shall Jacob take root; Israel shall blossom and bud; and they shall fill the surface of the world with fruit.
WP-Bible plugin).
Other key prophecies involved the restoration of the once-dead Hebrew language (Zephaniah 3:9Zephaniah 3:9
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 For then I will purify the lips of the peoples, that they may all call on the name of Yahweh, to serve him shoulder to shoulder.
WP-Bible plugin) and the return of Jews to Israel from around the world (Jeremiah 31:8-12Jeremiah 31:8-12
English: World English Bible - WEB
8 Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her who travails with child together: a great company shall they return here.
9 They shall come with weeping; and with petitions will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters, in a straight way in which they shall not stumble; for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
10 Hear the word of Yahweh, you nations, and declare it in the islands afar off; and say, He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as shepherd does his flock.
11 For Yahweh has ransomed Jacob, and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he.
12 They shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow to the goodness of Yahweh, to the grain, and to the new wine, and to the oil, and to the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all.
WP-Bible plugin, Ezekiel 36:24Ezekiel 36:24
English: World English Bible - WEB
24 For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land.
WP-Bible plugin, etc.), both of which have been miraculously fulfilled.
And just as God has fulfilled His promise to restore Israel as a nation physically, He has also promised to restore the nation spiritually at the time of Christ’s Second Coming. God showed the prophet Zechariah this scene thousands of years in advance and revealed what will take place on that day: “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10Zechariah 12:10
English: World English Bible - WEB
10 I will pour on the house of David, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they will look to me After “me,” the Hebrew has the two letters “Aleph Tav” , not as a word, but as a grammatical marker. whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and will grieve bitterly for him, as one grieves for his firstborn.
WP-Bible plugin).
Just as Joseph revealed himself to his estranged brothers on their third time into the land and copious tears were shed among them (Genesis 45), Jesus is going to reveal Himself to His estranged brothers (the Jewish nation) now that He has brought them back into their Land for the third time. And when He does, they will weep and mourn for Him as one would for an “only son … for a firstborn.” Jesus is both God’s “only begotten Son” (John 3:16-18John 3:16-18
English: World English Bible - WEB
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
17 For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.
18 He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
WP-Bible plugin) and the “firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18Colossians 1:18
English: World English Bible - WEB
18 He is the head of the body, the assembly, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
WP-Bible plugin).
God’s self-references in this passage from Zechariah as both “Me” and “Him” underscore the truth of the Trinity � not three distinct Gods, but one true God in three distinct Persons. He is the God whom Scripture tells us never slumbers nor sleeps in defense of Israel, as these past 60 years and all the years of human history before that have continually borne out.
Subscribe: