Millions of Christians look at end-times prophecy like a giant, undiscernible maze. But, as with so many seemingly complex systems, there is a key that unlocks everything. The key to unlocking Bible prophecy is this — GOD NEVER LIES!
Through the centuries, theologians came across prophecies they either didn’t like or that seemed impossible. So, they would fudge. It’s as if they were thinking, “God goofed up a little here, so I’ll explain it away.” Where His Word makes a plain statement of fact, they would hedge. “It says one thing, but it must mean something else,” they would explain. Bible interpretation loses its integrity when people begin to read into it whatever they want to find.
For instance, God made certain promises to Abraham. But the obvious interpretation of those promises involves things theologians of the Middle Ages either did not like or that did not seem possible. So, they “spiritualized” the promises. They didn’t like the fact that the obvious interpretation was a promise to Abraham’s physical descendants through the line of Isaac (and later Jacob). A Christian theologian of the dark ages would interpret that to mean, “a promise to Jews.” But, generally speaking, they didn’t like Jews. They wanted Jews relegated to the trash heap of history. It’s the same thing so many around the world still want.
Their other problem was that they just couldn’t see how the promises to Abraham regarding his descendants could come true. With every century that the Jews remained dispersed around the world, the more implausible the promises seemed. That is, they seemed implausible… until God started to miraculously fulfill those promises.
But by then, most theologians were locked into the old antisemitic, anti-Jew, and anti-Israel thinking. It had become a matter of faith (or maybe anti-faith) that God would not literally fulfill His promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and others. So, when He began to fulfill His Word before everyone’s eyes, they denied it was happening.
Some of them say that modern Israel cannot be the fulfillment of Bible prophecy because, as a nation, they have not repented and turned to Messiah Jesus. God promises that will happen, so how can today’s Israel be the renewed nation promised in prophecy? Prophecy itself answers the question. Ezekiel 36 explains that Israel would be brought back together and to the land. Then, at some point after being brought back, they would experience a national repentance.
Notice that they will first return to the land, and then return to God. In Ezekiel 36:24-25, God says to the people of Israel, “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness.” We don’t know the timing, but the order is clear — return, and then be cleansed.
The next chapter, Ezekiel 37, pictures the children of Israel as a bunch of bones in an ancient cemetery — utterly dry, and with the bones dispersed all over the place. In verse 4, God said to Ezekiel, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” In verses 7-8, Ezekiel testifies, “As I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew, and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them.” In the following verses, God gives them the breath of life.
Here again, we see the order. First, they are reassembled. Then, after being reunited in the land, they receive the breath of life. That’s where we are now. Israel is being reassembled before our eyes. As a whole, they don’t yet have the breath of life, but we can know that it’s coming because God said it would.
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