As I demonstrated in my previous post, both Israel’s future and our security as New Testament saints rest upon both God’s promises and character. Those who believe that God has replaced Israel spiritually with the church (the essence of replacement theology), also erode our hope in Jesus’ imminent return for His church because our expectation also rests upon the veracity of God’s Word and His attributes.
That’s why I always begin my defense of the pre-Tribulation Rapture with biblical evidence regarding the Lord’s future restoration of a kingdom to Israel. It’s the first step in validating our glorious hope in Jesus’ appearing.
We know that God will someday restore a kingdom to Israel because:
A FUTURE RESTORED ISRAEL MAINTAINS THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE
One cannot deny the reality of a restored kingdom for Israel and at the same time interpret the prophetic words of Scripture in the way the authors intended them at the time they wrote them.
Zechariah prophesied about a time after Jesus’ crucifixion when a great number of the Israelites would repent and recognize Jesus as their Messiah. Using references in the context that cannot apply to anyone else, the prophet foresaw a time when Jacob’s descendants would recognize the One “they have pierced” as their true Messiah and weep signifying their regret and repentance (Zech. 12:10-13:1).
When Dr. David Reagan, Bible Scholar and founder of the Lamb and Lion Ministry, appeared on Jan Markell’s radio show, he explained how he came to believe in a future restoration of the nation of Israel. It happened as he noticed how Jesus literally fulfilled all the prophecies in the book of Zechariah related to His first coming. That led Dr. Reagan to conclude that there must be a literal fulfillment for the prophecies that remained unfulfilled regarding Israel and Jesus’ future reign.
The consistency of Bible interpretation demands that we apply a literal interpretation to texts that speak of a future restoration of Israel.
Isaiah 9:6-7 shows how consistency of interpretation necessitates Christ’s millennial rule. Those who deny a future for Israel agree that Jesus fulfilled this passage when He came into the world as a baby in Bethlehem. However, they switch to a much different mode of interpretation and suddenly regard words in this closely knit text regarding Christ’s future rule from the “throne of David” as merely symbolic.
God could not have made it any clearer than He did in Chronicles 16:14-16 and Psalm 105:8-11. In these texts, the Lord states that His covenant of the land with Abraham, Isaac, and the descendants of Jacob remains in effect forever. Why would God say it’s “an everlasting covenant” if he did not intend us to understand it “as an everlasting covenant?”
If the Lord says something is “everlasting,” it’s exactly that! It just doesn’t just go away because of bad behavior or reach fulfillment in some other mysterious way. The promise of the Land for the descendants of Jacob remains in effect today.
ISRAEL’S MIRACULOUS REEMERGENCE AS A NATION IS A NECESSARY FIRST STEP IN THE FULFILLMENT OF END TIME PROPHECY
Besides the above reasons, we recognize God’s hand at work in the miraculous emergence of Israel as a nation in 1948 and in God’s supernatural defense and preservation of the nation ever since that time.
Perhaps the most tragic error of those that promote replacement theology is that they remain blind to the signs of the time and don’t believe that we live in the last days. They fail to see that Israel’s reappearance as a nation was a necessary first step in the fulfillment of end time biblical prophecy.
Just as the Lord keeps His covenants with and promises to Israel, He will also keep His Word to us and will someday catch us up to meet Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Count on it!
In my next post, I will provide solid biblical evidence supporting the fact that Jesus will come for His church before the start of the seven-year Tribulation.
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