Is the current conflict in Israel of prophetic significance? Does it signify the beginning of end-times events? Is it spoken of in the Bible? Is it a fulfillment? These questions are being asked among a large portion of the evangelical world.
The most simple answer, perhaps, is “Nobody knows for sure”. If you see a prophecy special on TV or hear one on the radio, in which claimed “experts” are matching up the current conflict to certain Bible passages with confidence, be wary. Why? because the conflict between Israelis and extremists on the other side has been ongoing since the founding of the new state of Isreal in 1948, and of course for centuries before. What’s happening is really nothing new: it’s a continuation of hostilities between the same peoples groups, which started back in the time of Moses and Joshua. You could say it started in the time of Abraham, when Isaac and Ishmael came into the world, four thousand years ago.
A MEETING WITH DESTINY
Having said that, the truth is that there is going to be a crescendo, a climax and a culmination of the ongoing conflict, according to Scripture and simple observation, and there are a number of reasons to believe that climax is not far in the future. In fact there are solid reasons to hold that conviction, so that if you’re a fairly young person, you can rightfully expect to see the return of Jesus Christ in your lifetime. I will expand on this thought below.
Many Christians (and non-Christians) will groan cynically at such an assertion. “People have been saying such things for generations” they say, and it’s true: people have been saying that for a long time. But just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it will never happen.
What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” (Mark 13:37).
Bible prophecies are there in Scripture in order for us to see that our God does indeed know the end from the beginning. They’re also sometimes there so that we can know what will happen before it happens. To ignore what God has foretold just because it hasn’t happened yet is unwise, to put it mildly. And God has said a lot about what is going on in our time in the Middle East.
I’ve outlined the history and prophecies in the Bible concerning Israel in other posts, along with Scriptural references.. I’ve also listed some at the end of this post. But we could put future events involving Israel into a brief summary here. When we do that, a light shines onto our present time, and we have to say to ourselves that what is happening now is either an incredible set of coincidences-aligning with Scripture as they do-or that what is happening is the proverbial pot boiling. It’s the stage being set for the grand finale of Gods’ grand Plan of the ages, and in our lifetimes!
A SUMMARY OF END TIMES EVENTS CONCERNING ISRAEL
The Bible tells us that God did not finish with the nation of Israel in the first century, as some denominations teach. Instead, Israel met its demise temporarily, at the hands of the Roman legions, as a direct result of its rejection of the Christ. The Romans scattered Jews over the face of the earth, and wherever they went they were persecuted. This was forewarned as far back as the time of Moses: if the nation turned its back on God, it would suffer and be removed from the land.
The BIble prophesies one final regathering of the nation. During that regathering the nation would prosper, and its population would boom. However, the nation would not be walking with their God at the time. Israel would be surrounded by nations hostile to its presense and even its existence. It would be attacked from all sides, until in one last effort, all the nations of the world would come against the land to remove it from Jerusalem and to finish off the Jewish nation. At that time, says Scripture, Christ will come and deliver Israel, and punish those who attacked it and persecuted it.
FULFILLED IN OUR TIME
The world has indeed seen the rebirth of the nation, nineteen hundred years after its defeat by the Romans. Israel has been prospering and growing steadily in population. As prophesied, Jews have been moving to Isreal from all nations of the world, having been in exile for centuries. Meanwhile nations and terror goups around the new state and even in it have plotted the demise of Israel, and have made attempts to bring that about, without success. The October 7th massacre was just one more of those attempts, albeit a terrible one. Around the world, hatred for Israel has grown, fuelled by an anti-Semitic media, so that huge demonstrations are held in nations which once defeated Jew-haters, in support of people who murder Israelis.
Reality is mirroring what God has foretold. We are in those times the Bible speaks of, unless you are intent on believing it is all incredible coincidence. The current conflict may well be foretold specifically, some say, in Psalm 83 and parts of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Or it may not. What is happening may just be a continuation of hostilitiies in general. It’s an ongoing tension. It’s the proverbial frog in the pot, slowly coming to a boil. We simply won’t know if this war is foretold until it’s over or more developed. But without doubt, the antagonists are listed in Scripture. The enemies of Israel according to Scripture are the enemies of Israel in our time.
These facts are incredible when you consider how long ago the prophecies were given, and when you consider that the nation of Israel has no desire to see all the nations around it in such vehement opposition to its existence.
So how long do we have until the proverbial grand finale; the final act, for which the “stage is being set” in our rime? I believe that’s not such a tough question to answer as some like to tell us. While it’s true that we can’t set dates, I think we can know the general time-and this is it.
The predicament of the modern state of Israel is to be considered alongside the state of our world at large. I’m not one for speculating on such things as “blood moons” or “what the Lord told me” as some of the big names do. Instead, I take cold, sober directions from the Bible. And the Bible tells of certain conditions existing prior to the return of Christ. These include mass deception, false teachers and fake miracles; unbelief and an antagonism towards the God of the Bible; a global financial system and the means to control every single financial transaction; a huge increase in immorality of every kind, along with an increase in violence and war, crime and dishonesty. All these things are in process now, as anyone with an open mind can see.
At this point I want to share something I wrote several months ago: the result of decades of my own research and observation. I say “my own”, because I discovered a long time ago that many, or most, Bible prophecy “experts” have a habit of following common prescriptions, cliches and politically-correct interpretations.
TIME LIMITS ON THE LITERAL FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECIES CONCERNING ISRAEL
There are two challenges to the entire Israel regathering “scenario” (to use a prophetic cliché) which, rather than being negatives, may be clear indication-the clearest we have-that our present age will see the Tribulation and so the return of Jesus Christ. Together with any fulfillment of the other signs we see today, we can perhaps commit ourselves to the idea that the coming of Christ is soon. The alternative is a metaphorical, unknowable, vague interpretation of Scripture, in which we can’t be sure of anything, and which suggests falsely that God wishes to confuse billions of people.
CHALLENGE 1: THE “SECOND” RETURN FROM EXILE
The first challenge concerns a Biblical limit to the number of returns of the nation from total exile. Isaiah wrote:
In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people…he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth (Isaiah 11:11-12).
In the Bible only two returns are allowed from total exile. Isaiah’s “second time” may possibly translate simply as a repeat. However, the principle remains. The first return in the sixth century BC occurred after ancient Israel-the northern kingdom-was destroyed by Assyria, and after Judah was invaded and carried off by the the Babylonians. Read about this return in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Some may try to claim that Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in Nehemiah’s day, but there are two huge problems with this view. First, they have to explain away a lot of God’s promises in this passage, and secondly Scripture makes clear that the exiles returned the first time specifically from Babylon:
Now these are the people of the province who came up from the captivity of the exiles, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken captive to Babylon (they returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to their own town) (Ezra 2:1).
In contrast, the Isaiah return-the second return-is:
…from the four quarters of the earth (Isaiah 11:11-12).
Likewise, the Ezekiel account of the regathering of Israel is from all nations, not just Babylon:
In future years you will invade a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. They had been brought out from the nations, and now all of them live in safety (Ezekiel 38:8).
God’s promises to the nation of Israel upon their second return include complete and permanent peace and security. That has not happened in any past event, unless you struggle and wrestle and twist Scripture to replace the state of Israel with the Church.
A FAKE RETURN OF AN ENTIRE NATION FROM EXILE?
The second return to the land began in 1948, when the United Nations officially allowed for a new state of Israel in the ancient homeland. The claims of some that the present-day state of Israel, and the current regathering is bogus and the real one refers to the Church, or is yet future, don’t fit the facts or the rest of Scripture. If the miraculous events of the past several decades and the struggles between Israelis and their neighbors and the world are not those prophesied, they are an incredibly realistic and detailed dress-rehearsal. Also, believing that the real return is yet future demands, according to Scripture, that the current inhabitants of the land are to be driven out by some huge war or other disaster and sent back into exile in all nations of the world. The land would have to be invaded and claimed by enemies again, and then left empty and waste for a very long period of time.
Scripture speaks of the prophesied regathering as replenishing a desolate land:
In future years you will invade a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate (Ezekiel 38:8).
In 1867, almost 1800 years after Jews were driven from the land by the legions of Rome, Mark Twain travelled through the land before the present-day regathering began. He wrote:
“Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?” (From “The Innocents Abroad”).
How many times in the course of human history can the incredible set of events prophesied actually play out, in such an amazing series of what would have to be “coincidences”, as they have over the last several decades? It seems to me that either the 20th/21st century restoration of Israel-the current one-must be the second regathering spoken of in Isaiah, or we would have to accept that the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel and others were accurate but at the same time wrong, and therefore didn’t speak the word of God at all. In that case, no Biblical scripture could be trusted. Jesus was wrong to quote Isaiah as much as he did, and was himself a charlatan. We would in this case be without a savior.
Also, when you consider other conditions in our world at this time in relation to Biblical prophesies, it seems obvious that there’s much more than just coincidence at work here.
CHALLENGE 2: THE INVASION OF A LAND RECENTLY REGATHERED
The other time-issue concerns a Biblical limit on the time which can transpire between the regathering of Jews to the land and end times events. To my knowledge nobody seems to notice this: it’s a “between-the-lines” prophecy. Prophecies in Ezekiel foretell an international assault on Israel and the Middle-East in general ending in God’s clear and decisive intervention, after which the whole world will know there is a God who is still the Protector of Israel. This assault is said to come, in the eyes of the invaders soon after the return from exile. The attackers say to themselves:
I will plunder and loot and turn my hand against the resettled ruins and the people gathered from the nations, rich in livestock and goods, living at the center of the land. (Ezekiel 38:12).
God says through Ezekiel that they will come:
…against a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate (Ezekiel 38:8).
The Ezekiel invasion is, therefore, not long after the return from exile, but long enough (as I will show later) for the nation to proper and grow in population. Today Israel is blooming, growing internally, prosperous and filling up with Jews and converts from all over the globe.
HOW LONG IS “RECENT” IN SCRIPTURE?
The above Ezekiel passage and others indicate that Israel will be invaded by nations who recognize that its regathering is recent. So the very large question is, just how long a time period, scripturally-speaking, could be considered “recent”? Here’s my theory.
Jews, says the prophecy, upon regathering from the nations of the world, would boom in population and in economic success (Scripture references given below). Something like this would naturally take some time, but it has happened in just a few decades. Aliyah has continued apace for several decades. You can find online compiled annual figures for Aliyah (return to the land).
We Bible students know that to the Lord “a thousand years is as a day”, so using that scale of what time seems like to God, the “recent” period from the regathering of Israel to the invasion could be many thousands of years. However, in contrast, Israel (Jews and those from the northern tribes who had joined with Judah) were expelled from their land for seventy years in ancient times (Ezra 1:1) and God had told Isaiah many centuries BC that Ephraim was “about to” be judged by Assyria (Isaiah 8:7 NIV). That “about to” period was sixty-five years (7:8).
The two ideas of something in human history being recent, and “thousands of years”, don’t fit together well to us mortals, and the invading force of end-times in Ezekiel chapter 38 certainly wouldn’t see an event thousands of years previous as being recent. God’s words, “sixty-five years” were meaningful as a relatively short time-period to Isaiah, and perhaps to us, but thousands of years or even hundreds are not. The idea of a short time period in Ezekiel must be seen as being truly recent to humans-not thousands of years long.
I’m not setting dates by saying that sixty-five years is the time period we must look for, but it seems logical that it’s a “ball-park” number. It could actually be fifty, or seventy, eighty, or more. Or it could be less. At what point would the regathering of Israel not be considered by its invaders to be recent any more? And when exactly would the “prophetic clock” for this prophecy start ticking: 1948? 1967? Perhaps it would start when the majority of Jews had returned from the nations- the year 1990, or 2010 or 2025.
We could create a maximum time of fulfillment so that, say, seventy-five years from the dwindling of returnees to the land from the nations would take us to the year 2085. This would be the very latest date we could reasonably expect the prophecies of Ezekiel to be fulfilled. Alternatively, If we add sixty-five years to 1967, the year Israelis regained their ancient capital which figures so highly in last-days prophecy, we get the year 2032.
The Ezekiel invasion of Israel and the Middle-East must take place in a time period reasonably soon after Israel’s regathering. The alternative is that Bible prophecies regarding end-times are either greatly allegorized and impossible to make clear sense of, or are simply untrue and therefore not the Word of God.
ISRAEL IN SCRIPTURE: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
THE LAND OF CANAAN WAS PROMISED TO ABRAHAM’S DESCENDANTS…
Genesis 13: 14 – 17
Genesis 17: 8
…THROUGH THE LINEAGE OF ISAAC, NOT ISHMAEL:
Genesis 17: 18 – 21
THE PROMISE IS IRREVOCABLE – IT CANNOT BE CANCELLED:
Jeremiah 31: 35 -37
Romans 11:25– 32
Isaiah 49: 14 – 18
EXILE FROM THE LAND WAS A PART OF GOD’S JUDGEMENT ON ISRAEL’S REBELLION:
Deuteronomy 28, especially v.63 – 65
THE FIRST COMPLETE EXILE WAS TO BABYLON:
Daniel 1: 1 – 2
Ezra 5: 11 – 16
THE SECOND WAS TO ALL NATIONS:
Ezekiel 36: 16 – 19
Ezekiel 36: 3
Matthew 23: 33 – 39
GOD SAID THE SECOND EXILE WAS TO BE THE LAST:
Isaiah 11:10– 16
Ezekiel 37: 21 – 25
JEWS WOULD BE MIRACULOUSLY REGATHERED TO THEIR LAND BEFORE THE LAST DAYS:
Ezekiel 38: 8 – 9
Ezekiel 39 21 – 29
Zephaniah 2: 1 – 3
THE WASTE-LAND WOULD BECOME FERTILE AND DENSELY POPULATED:
Ezekiel 36: 8 – 12
Ezekiel 36: 30 – 38
Joel 3:1-2
ISRAEL’S ENEMIES WOULD SAY THAT THE LAND WAS THEIRS:
Ezekiel 36: 1 – 7
Ezekiel 35
ISRAEL WOULD NOT REPENT OF THEIR REBELLION UNTIL THE RETURN OF JESUS:
Ezekiel 36: 22, 23, 31, 32
Ezekiel 39: 21 – 29
Romans 11:25– 27
JERUSALEM WOULD BE A SOURCE OF ANGER AND TURMOIL FOR THE NATIONS:
Zechariah 12: 1 – 10, especially 2, 3
Zechariah 14: 1 – 19, especially 2, 3
Matthew 24: 14 – 22
Revelation 16: 1 – 2
THE SO-CALLED ‘OCCUPIED WEST BANK’ IS ‘JUDAH’ IN PROPHECY:
Zechariah 12, verses 2, 6 and 7.
Zechariah 14:14
Joel 3:1
Matthew 24:15-22
JERUSALEM AND JUDAH WOULD BE THE DISPUTED TERRITORIES
Zechariah 12: 2-3
ISRAEL WILL BE ATTACKED BY THE WORLD COMMUNITY, AND JERUSALEM WILL BE DIVIDED FORCEFULLY:
Zechariah 12:2, 3
Zechariah 14:2-9
THE ENEMIES OF ISRAEL TODAY WERE PROPHECIED 2500 YEARS AGO
All the nations around Israel: Ezekiel 36 – 39; Zechariah 12:2
Russia: Ezekiel 38
Iran (called Persia until 20th C): Ezekiel 38
Turkey(then Gomer) Ezekiel 38
All nations of the world – see below
ALL NATIONS WILL BE ANGRY WITH THE BIBLICAL GOD AS WELL AS WITH ISRAEL:
Revelation 19 – 19
Psalm 2: 1 – 6
Revelation 11: 18
ALL NATIONS WILL ATTACK ISRAEL (PERHAPS TWO SEPARATE ATTACKS):
Joel 3, especially verses 1 – 2
Zechariah 12:3
Zechariah 14:2
Revelation 16: 14 – 16
Ezekiel 38: 1 – 9
THE ATTACKS WILL BE SOON AFTER ISRAEL’S REGATHERING TO THE LAND (see notes above):
Ezekiel 38:7-9
Ezekiel 39:25-27
BUT FIRST, THERE MAY BE A TEMPORARY ‘PEACE’ OR (MORE LIKELY) SECURITY PACT INVOLVING ISRAEL:
1 Thessalonians 5: 1 – 4
Daniel 8: 25 (esp. see the KJV)
Daniel 9: 27
Ezekiel 38: 14 – 16
THERE MAY OR MAY NOT BE A JEWISH TEMPLE OR WORSHIP CENTER BUILT AT ABOUT THIS TIME IN J:
Daniel 9: 27
Revelation 11: 1 – 2
2 Thessalonians 2: 4 – 6
Matthew 24: 15
PEOPLE WILL BE LIVING ‘NORMALLY‘, UNTIL THE TRIBULATION STARTS:
Matthew 24: 37 – 39
Ezekiel 39: 6
GOD WILL DEFEND ISRAEL:
Zechariah 14: 2 – 5 and verse 12
Zechariah 12: 9
Isaiah 34:1 – 10
Joel 3: 16
Ezekiel 38: 17 – 23
Matthew 24: 30
THIS WILL BE THE END OF HUMAN RULE OVER THE EARTH:
Revelation 19 and 20
Daniel 2: 42 – 45
Isaiah 34: 1 – 4
Zechariah 14: 9 and v 16 – 19
Fuel for Faith 