Over several decades so many Christian ministers have said that the Biblical “end times” were about to begin, or had already begun, that large numbers of professing Christians have become cynical or blase about any such claim. However, there are numerous warnings in Scripture of the events of end-times. If we claim to be believers in Jesus Christ, we need to be aware of them. Among the warnings cynics intentionally miss are those given by Jesus Christ who, when speaking of end-times events, repeated phrases like this:

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42).

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AWARENESS

Some current and recent world events are so strikingly similar to Biblical prophecies of end-times, that in my opinion they cannot be ignored. If the time of Christ’s return is not at hand, then what’s happening in our world is an incredible set of coincidences which will probably never be repeated. I will present some of those prophecies and recent events here for your consideration.

THE MEASURING STICK: ISRAEL

By far the most relevant prophecies concerning end-times relate to the nation of Israel. But why Israel? Isn’t Israel just one of the many little nations of the world; insignificant and unimportant, not to mention highly troubled? The answer in part, is that Israel is the nation through which God decided to provide the genealogical line to the humanity of Christ. A real savior required a real family and a real nation to be born and raised in. It could have been China-but if it were we would all be asking “Why China?”

You can trace the human line to the Messiah, Jesus Christ, all the way from Adam to Mary, in the pages of the Bible. His divine nature, of course, derives not from Joseph but from God.

Look at Israel on a map of the world if you can find it, and you will be amazed that such a tiny nation could find itself the centre of world attention almost every day, for decades. More United Nations resolutions have been raised and passed against Israel than against any other nation in the world, including China and Russia. How could this be? In answer, Scripture describes a phenomenon of a perpetual and global hatred of Israel, particularly as the return of Christ nears. It speaks of earth-shaking events yet to be fulfilled, centred on the land of Israel, and particularly Jerusalem. The world-wide hatred for Jews is also prophesied, and again, is disproportionate to its size.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not painting Israel as an innocent victim without its own faults. God’s justice will deal with us all. Israel is not a nation of righteous people. God didn’t choose Israel because they were any better or more holy than other nations. The significant thing here is that Israel is the Bible’s greatest indicator of end-time events.

Another important reason Israel is highly significant is that God has made promises to ancient Israel and to the fathers of the nation which have not yet been fulfilled. God keeps His promises, and He choose to bless Israel despite their failings, just as he chooses to bless followers of Jesus despite their past sins.

THE EARLIEST WARNING OF EXILE BECAUSE OF SIN

You may be aware of some of the Biblical history of the nation of Israel: how it came about first by a family line recorded in the events at Babel, to God’s calling of Abram and Abram’s journey to and in Canaan. Abram’s son was Isaac, and Jacob Isaac’s son. The early tribe of Hebrews-the children of Jacob-found themselves in slavery in Egypt. Later, after the Exodus, and in the desert where the rebellious and ungrateful Israelites had wandered for forty years, God through Moses spoke of blessings or curses which would come upon the nation, depending on whether they obeyed the Word of the Lord. Among those potential curses was a warning of exile. If at any time in the future Israel persistently turned its back on the Lord in sin and rebellion, the people would be removed from their land and would face persecution wherever they went:

Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart (Deuteronomy 28:63-65).

EXILE

The nation of Israel has faced trouble from surrounding nations many times in its history, but has only been fully removed from its homeland twice. In the first exile the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and then the southern kingdom-Judah-were taken captive, by Assyria and Babylon respectively. After seventy years the Lord restored Judah and a remnant of Jews from northern tribes to Jerusalem and the land, ending the first exile.

Centuries later, just decades after Jesus was rejected and crucified by the religious leaders, and because Israel as a nation had continued to rebel against the Lord, God abandoned Israel to the consequences, and Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem. Jesus Christ had foretold this during his earthly ministry. Here’s one of the warnings he gave:

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:41-44).

SECOND EXILE

Rome not only destroyed Jerusalem completely, killing over a million Jews, but also removed Israel’s presence from the land, driving survivors not just to Babylon or any single nation, but across the face of the earth. This is the second exile of Jews. To this day you can see an ancient monument to this set of events: the Titus Arch located on the Via Sacra, Rome. It was constructed in c. AD 81 by Emperor Domitian to commemorate Titus’s deification, and the victory of Titus together with their father, Vespasian, against the Jewish rebellion in Judea.

This is indisputable history, despite what Arabs and especially Palestinians try to say today, when they claim that there never was an Israeli presence in the land in ancient times. The archaeological evidence is overwhelming. It’s also a documented fact that the Romans renamed Israel’s land “Palestina” as a reference to Israel’s ancient enemies, the Philistines, as a final insult to Israel.

THE CHURCH IS NOT ISRAEL

Some in the Church have attempted to wash the nation of Israel from consideration as Gods’ chosen nation. They say that God rejected Israel forever once Christ was crucified. However, Scripture describes God’s love for Israel as being everlasting. He would not reject then forever, He said. You can plainly see in the New Testament that apostles of Christ, while observing that the Church was one body no matter what the ethnic background of individual believers, they still distinguished between Jews and Gentiles. Paul explicitly stated that God had not rejected Israel permanently (see Romans chapters 9 to 11).

ISRAEL’S FINAL RETURN

The Bible tells us that God was not finished with the nation of Israel in the first century, even after He allowed Rome to destroy Jerusalem and to drive Israelites from the land. Instead, Israel as a nation was being dealt a temporary-if severe-judgment. Numerous Biblical prophecies foretell the return of Israel before the beginning of end times events. The second exile lasted nineteen hundred years, from the first century until the twentieth, and wherever Jews went among the nations they were persecuted, just as God through Moses warned would happen. The climax of this treatment was at the hand of Hitler, who put to death six million Jews in his gas ovens, in an attempt to extinguish the Jewish race.

A SUMMARY OF BIBLICAL END-TIMES EVENTS RELATING TO ISRAEL

Here is a very brief summary of what Scripture says would happen to Israel and the world at the end of the nation’s exile. Again, relevant Scriptures are documented below.

Jews would return to their ancient homeland out of all nations of the world, to a land which had been largely unoccupied. They would build a prosperous economy, and they would multiply greatly in population. They would be harassed and attacked from all sides by peoples groups claiming that the land belonged to them. Jerusalem would be the main point of contention, for the whole world, as it is today:

Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it (Zechariah 12:2-3).

These predictions and others have been fulfilled as prophesied. The new state of Israel was born on May 14th,1948. It was immediately attacked by Arab nations on all sides which declared that the new state was illegitimate and would be driven into the sea. Israelis miraculously defended their new country, though attacks continued.

Israelis rapidly grew a thriving economy, and became world leaders in technology, farming techniques, the arts, and many other forms of human activity. The Hebrew language was re-created and is now used commonly. Population growth was rapid and the tiny land now contains around ten million Jews.

Muslim nations continue to refuse to accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel, and particularly their presence in Jerusalem. Radical Islamists such the Iranian Republic and their proxy armies Hezbollah and Hamas, Palestinians in general, all claim Jerusalem as belonging to them and not to Israelis. They vow regularly to drive Israel into the sea and to “liberate” the land. These people consider themselves to be “on the road to Jerusalem”, and it’s a documented fact that such groups have vowed and plotted for decades to destroy Israel.

The United Nations has continuously opposed Israel, and only a few nations-sometimes one or even none-have stood with Israel against United Nations condemnations, and efforts to shrink and weaken Israeli control of their tiny land-the only Jewish nation in the world. If, or when, the United States stops supporting Israel, the Jews will be on their own against the world. One or two Arab nations currently support Israel since their common enemy is Iran. According to Scripture, this support will eventually be turned to total opposition.

STILL TO COME

Once the nation is regathered, says Scripture, and still being seen as a newly regathered nation, it would face attacks first by surrounding nations. Israelis would put up an incredible fight (as the present-day nation has done already) dealing their enemies continuous defeats and frustrations. God through Zechariah, when speaking of Israel being under siege in end-times, says this of Israel’s defense:

“On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a firepot in a woodpile, like a flaming torch among sheaves. They will consume all the surrounding peoples right and left, but Jerusalem will remain intact in her place” (Zechariah 12:6).

Incredibly, the world blames Israel for the situation in the Middle-East. The truth is that unbelieving humanity doesn’t want Israel to defend its own people and its own land.

THE FINAL SOLUTION-AGAIN

Ultimately, under the power of Antichrist, all nations of the world will come against the land of Israel, and particularly Jerusalem, to remove Jews once and for all. Israel will be seemingly close to defeat and annihilation. At this point Christ will return, initially to deliver Israel, and to defeat all those gathered against her. Surviving Jews will realize at that moment that the man their forefathers had sent to the cross is in fact their Messiah.

THE LAST RETURN FROM EXILE

Several Old Testament prophecies foretell a final return of exiled Jews to their ancient homeland. Here’s one from Isaiah:

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).

Which return to the land is Isaiah speaking of? He speaks of only two returns from total exile before Israel’s ultimate restoration. Isaiah’s “second time” may translate simply as a repeat, but the principle remains: there is to be a final return of the nation of Israel to the land, after which it will be restored permanently, and will never be removed again.

Here’s another similar promise of return from the Old Testament book of Joel. This one is linked to the end-times attack of the nations upon Israel:

“In those days and at that time,
    when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,
I will gather all nations
    and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
There I will put them on trial
    for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel,
because they scattered my people among the nations
    and divided up my land (Joel 3:1-2).

ALIYAH

While there has always been a small population of Jews in the land of “Palestine”, the nation was seen to be “reborn” in 1948 when the United Nations passed a resolution allowing for the forming of a new state within the ancient homeland. This decision has been seen by many since as a “mistake”. However, in the middle of it all, God has been at work to bring about His will.

The UN resolution was largely as the result of what happened to Jews during the Second World War a few years earlier. Since that time, and even to the present, Jews have been moving to the new state from all over the world. This phenomenon is known by Israelis-who are aware that this is a return from world-wide exile-as “Aliyah”. You can find statistics on Aliyah online, and how the steady flow continues.

EZEKIEL’S PROPHECY

The prophet Ezekiel recorded God’s words concerning an end-times regathering of Israel. It would be a miraculous regathering, wrote Ezekiel. It would be a regathering from all the nations of the world. It would be a regathering to the ancient homeland which had been left desolate, and most significant of all, it would be a regathering to a land claimed by nations and peoples surrounding it.

Scripture records that the land would be “desolate” for a long time before the miraculous return. Despite the claims of Palestinians and others that the land was always inhabited by them, history records something different. There may have been Beduin scattered over the land, but no nation of “Palestine” existed. 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”).

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.

IS THE CURRENT CONFLICT WITH HAMAS SIGNIFICANT?

Reality is mirroring what God foretold. We are surely in those times the Bible speaks of, unless you’re intent on believing it’s all incredible coincidence. The current conflict may well be foretold specifically, some say, in Psalm 83 and parts of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the one I noted above in Zechariah. Or it may not be. What’s happening may just be a continuation of hostilities in general: an ongoing tension. It certainly is fulfilment of Scriptures which states that the nations and peoples groups surrounding Israel would be in violent opposition to the existence of the state of Israel. 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. They’ve been Israel’s mortal enemies since ancient times, and will continue to be so until Christ returns.

• APOLOGETICS
• BIBLE PROPHECY