Israel in Prophecy - Part 1

A Nation Reborn

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The prophet Zechariah spoke the word of God regarding the end times saying:

I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves. [Zechariah 12:2-3]

Is that not true today? Just look at Israel. This tiny nation of five million people is certainly the focus of world attention. Three religions - Islam, Christianity, and Judaism - claim Jerusalem as a holy site. And with it comes bitter strife.

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Jerusalem is a typical city, with its noise, crowds, and pollution. However there are no great rivers flowing through it. It has no port. The nearest airport is many miles away. No world governmental body or financial institution is headquartered there.1 The city otherwise has little strategic importance from a military standpoint. Yet look at all the attention Jerusalem garners.

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The fact that a Jewish homeland exists at all is astounding in itself. The last of the Jews were expelled from Israel by the Romans in A.D. 135. They were scattered across Europe and eventually the Americas. Yet they returned and became a nation again in 1948. Never in all the history of mankind has a nation retained it identity more than five hundred years after its expulsion from its homeland - until Israel.2

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This was not just happenstance; it was part of God's plan all along as it was outlined in Ezekiel 37. Bit by bit, piece by piece, Jews around the world have been gathering back to their homeland.

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The rebirth of Israel can be traced back to 1916, in the midst of the Great War (World War I). The war was going badly for Great Britain. They needed to speed up the process of producing TNT and a smokeless gunpowder. A Jewish scientist by the name of Dr. Chaim Weizmann had the formula that would change the course of the war in favor of the Allies. The British government asked Weizmann to name his price. He requested that Palestine (which the British had just conquered from the Ottoman Empire) be declared the international homeland for the Jewish people. On November 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration did just that.

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Little by little, Jewish settler began adding to those already in Palestine. In 1917, there were 25,000 Jews living in Palestine. By 1945 that number had grown to half a million. But by then, the British had reversed their position on the declaration, supported Arab independence instead. Keeping the peace between the Arabs and the Jews was proving to be too much for the British, and after World War II, they withdrew from Palestine.3 In 1947, the United Nations agreed to establish an Arab state and a Jewish state in Palestine. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed as a sovereign nation, followed by a 15-month war during which Israel fought off her Arab neighbors trying to wipe her off the map.

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Seems to be a clear-cut fulfillment of the prophecy laid out in Ezekiel 37:1-14.

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Notes:

1. LaHaye, Tim, and Jenkins, Jerry B. Are We Living In the End Times? Wheaton IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1999, p.46.

2. Ibid., p.48.

3. Ibid., pp. 50-53