Last time we covered how what has come to be called ‘The 70 Weeks Prophecy’ revealed the exact day of Christ coming into His Kingdom. That date was April 6, 30 AD, the first Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem as King Messiah to acclimations of His Kingship. We know what followed. Crucifixion, His rising, not long afterward the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Another round of destruction and scattering in 132 AD – all as predicted in the Scriptures. The Prophets had on many occasions talked of the scattering of the Jewish People throughout the world – but always with the promise that there would come a return to the Land as a set up for the arrival of Messiah in the Last Days. “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. ….They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children will live there forever.” (Ezek. 37:21-22, 25)
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Recall that in putting down the Jewish Rebellion of AD 70 the Romans had murdered over one million Jews. Jerusalem was virtually destroyed. In AD 135, the Jews revolted again, and this time, Rome took more drastic measures, driving all but a tiny remnant of the population from the Land that had been given to them by God. The centuries that followed were only to get worse. Deuteronomy 28:36-37, had predicted the coming persecution. “The LORD will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods—wood and stone. And you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the LORD will drive you.” So it came to pass. In the centuries that followed the Jewish nation was scattered among the nations of the world. Their separation and persecution became legendary. Denounced as Christ-killers by some Christian leaders, their economic and social interactions were severely restricted. In much of Europe they were forbidden to own land. In Muslim countries they were subject to the onerous legal restrictions of Dhimmitude: – laws and special taxes imposed on all non-Muslims. They were kicked out of England in the 12th century and Spain in 1492. To make a living they gravitated to the occupations of trade and banking; many gathering wealth in the process, thereby aggravating the ignorant prejudices of the masses. Over the course of time this inevitably led to violence such as the Russian pogroms which devastated whole villages. Anti-Semitism culminated in Hitler’s Holocaust. Millions were murdered in the Nazi camps; – Auschwitz and Dachau and Treblinka and others.
In the meantime, Israel’s enemies overran God’s Holy Promised Land. Muslims for the most part, and Crusaders for some, occupied the Jewish homeland. Leviticus 26:32-33 had warned as much. “I will bring the land to desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it. I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you; your land shall be desolate and your cities waste.” This was a time of punishment. Jesus had put it this way in Luke 24:21. “Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” The Jews would not gain control of Jerusalem again until the ‘67 War.
Yet Israel was not forgotten in her exile. Though God used Ezekiel to pronounce judgment in his earlier writings, he later used him to offer hope. “And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the country.” (Ezekiel 24:13) And God gave Israel more than just a promise of nationhood. He promised blessing for the returned nation. Even her fertility would be restored. Isaiah 27:6 reads. “Those who come He shall cause to take root in Jacob; Israel shall blossom and bud, And fill the face of the world with fruit.” So in our day we’ve seen how this has come to pass. Isaiah 41:18 speaks of that fertility. “I will open rivers in desolate heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.” Joel 2:23 comforted them that even the rains would return to a then parched soil. “Be glad then, you children of Zion, And rejoice in the LORD your God; For He has given you the former rain faithfully, And He will cause the rain to come down for you— The former rain, And the latter rain in the first month.” And rainfall has increased in Israel at the rate of about 10% each decade, beginning about a century ago, when the Zionist movement began to bring Jews back to the Holy Land. God also promised their language would be revived. “For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, That they all may call on the name of the LORD, To serve Him with one accord.” (Zephaniah 3:9) For centuries, Hebrew was a dead language; as dormant as ancient Latin, Greek or Egyptian. Yet beginning in the 1880’s, a sickly scholar, Eliazar ben Yehuda, tirelessly effected its revival. He began with just the seven thousand known words related to Temple worship and invented thousands more. Modern Hebrew was the result. It is spoken by millions of Jews. It was the vehicle used to unite the millions of exiles pouring into the land from around the world, each with their own tongue.[i]
But before all of this could happen, the Jews had to return to the land. This was a people living on every continent, with colonies in every major country on the globe. No other ethnic group had survived more than five generations or about 200 years without a homeland. Recall the Holy Land had been, to use a modern term, cleansed of Jews by the Romans. This occurred first in 70 AD and again in the year 135 AD. They were a people that had rejected their Messiah, and so, by Divine decree had earned punishment. Yet God had promised to be merciful. In fact Ezekiel 37 tells us that God would first gather them to their land in unbelief. That chapter speaks of a great valley of dry bones. It is a picture of the scattered, defeated and lifeless nation of Israel. It is the story of how God will bring that nation back to life. Verse 8 describes a people without “breath,” or the Holy Spirit, without which there is no belief. But Ezekiel 37:11-14 promises a transformation, “Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves. I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land.” A rhapsodized Ezekiel confirms that promise again and again. The Jews would be gathered up from where they were scattered among the nations of the world, – and then this wonderful promise: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26) In the last hundred years, we have indeed seen a population of primarily secular Jews gather in Israel from all over the world, after eighteen centuries out of the land. It is in just the last several years that we see an increase in spiritual belief. There are growing expectations that the Messiah will soon come, preparations to rebuild the Temple, and a doubling of the Messianic (Christian) Jewish population to about 10,000.[ii] But the return has taken centuries.
Through those centuries, fledgling movements and rabbinic calls for aliyah, (the return of Jews to the Holy Land), had died in infancy. By the late 19th century however, God had moved through history in such a way as to allow the beginnings of Zionism to take root. Beginning in the 1870’s, Jews began to form societies to purchase land in Palestine from the Arab owners. The Arabs were only too happy to get rid of unproductive land, selling it at inflated prices. Then beginning in 1881, anti-Jewish pogroms began to sweep through Russia, with its large population of Jews, contributing to the urgency of the project. Jewish bankers, like the magnificently wealthy and powerful, House of Rothschild, contributed significantly to the project. By 1897, the 1st Zionist Congress was held under the organizing genius of Theodore Herzl. The movement saw the Jewish population of Palestine go from about 25,000 in the 1880’s to around 100,000 by WWI. At that conference, held August 29-31, a political movement was established that would one day result in the establishment of the modern state of Israel. After the deliberations were over on August 31st, Herzl penned what would prove to be a prophetic assessment of its importance and outcome a few days later on September 3rd. “Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word, it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years and certainly in 50, everyone will know it.”[iii] The Torah portion for that day, the 3rd of September contained the passage from Leviticus 25:10 which reads “and each of you shall return to his possession.” Now it gets more amazing. It was August 31, 1947, that UNSCOP proposed that Palestine be partitioned into Jewish and Arab states, exactly 50 years from the end of the 1st Zionist Congress. The UN vote to actually partition Palestine, creating modern Israel took place on November 29 of that same year. The Torah portion for that day includes the words: “Return to the land of your birth, to your ancestral land, to your homeland.” (Genesis 35:12)[iv]
Now it was during the course of the First World War that the British government announced the Balfour Declaration, promising a Jewish homeland in Palestine, in 1917. Though the British somewhat backed off their promise after the war, there was no putting the genie back in the bottle.[v] It turns out 1917 was a special year. It was a Jubilee year. Every 50 years, according to God’s law, Israel is to celebrate a Jubilee. This was a very special time. After seven cycles of seven years came the sabbatical year known as Jubilee, the 50th year. It was a time of restoration. Labor contracts were deemed satisfied. Slaves were released, debt forgiven. And most importantly of our purposes here, property was returned to its original and rightful owners. That which was lost is to be found. This was a picture of redemption and forgiveness. It was also the year of the promise of the return of the Land to its owners, to the Jews, to what would become Israel.
But there is something quite amazing in that declaration that proves that God had His hand in it. By 1917 the British were quite sure that they would gain control of the Middle East following the end of the war. Now HH Asquith had been Prime Minister and he was against the establishment of a Jewish State. However, his government collapsed in December of 1916 bringing Lloyd George to power. He brought with him Arthur Balfour as Foreign Secretary and both were in favor of a Jewish presence in Palestine. So on November 2, 1917, in a letter addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leading voice in Britain’s Jewish community, the government committed itself to working toward the establishment of a Jewish homeland. The letter read in part: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” Now Jonathan Cahn gives us the significance of the timing of that event. Now, it is custom, that each week has an assigned reading from the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible. Well, it so happens that on the sabbath before the week of the Balfour Declaration Genesis 12 was a part of the Torah portion. In the Tanach, the Hebrew Scriptures, in Genesis 12:7, it reads: “And the Lord appeared to Abram, and He said, ‘To your seed I will give this land,’ and there he built an altar to the Lord, Who had appeared to him.” So the Torah portion was declaring what would happen that very next week. And the first land that was claimed for Abraham was Beersheba – and it just so happens that the first land Britain took from the Ottoman Empire in that region was Beersheba. They did so at the Battle of Beersheba, which occurred on October 31, 1917, the very day that the cabinet approved the Balfour Declaration! The Sabbath portion for that week contained the words: “Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because the two of them swore an oath there.” (Genesis 21:31)[vi]
In his book, The Oracle, Jonathan Cahn points out that there is a prophecy in the Book of Haggai that proclaims a blessing. “Consider now from this day forward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month….But from this day I will bless you. (Haggai 2:18) This is God, through the Prophet, declaring the lifting of the curse. In that year of Jubilee, the 24th day of the ninth month was December 9, 1917. It was the day that Jerusalem was liberated. In the early morning hours of December 9th, two cooks from the British Army were in search of eggs when they were approached by “four policemen, several youths, the Jerusalem mayor” and an American photographer anxious to surrender the city. British forces had just made this possible by defeating the Turks in and around the city the night before.[vii] But it was after sundown, so the new Hebrew day had begun. Now look at Haggai 2:22. “I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms; I will destroy the strength of the Gentile kingdoms.” That is exactly what happened here! The Ottoman Empire lost its control of Palestine.[viii]
However, that was not the first hint of God’s hand in the matter. Go back 50 years from 1917 and it is 1867, another Jubilee year. Now it just so happens that in September of 1867, Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain visited the Holy Land. He was a famous skeptic, who once wrote: “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” He took quite the dim view of the offerings of what would be Israel, eventually publishing his impressions in a book that made him famous, called, Innocents Abroad. In one passage he wrote: “Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince… Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.”[ix] He called it “desolate and unlovely.” His descriptive disdain seemed to have no limits. “There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”[x] There are many such entries. Twain was not impressed. But what’s amazing, is NOT what Twain wrote but what the scriptures said about him. This is from the Torah portion that was read on Mark Twain’s very last day in Jerusalem. The passage is dealing with the judgement the Lord would mete out when Israel turned from their God. “so that the coming generation of your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, would say, when they see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses which the Lord has laid on it: ‘The whole land is brimstone, salt, and burning; it is not sown, nor does it bear, nor does any grass grow there, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and His wrath.’ All nations would say, ‘Why has the Lord done so to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?’ Then people would say: ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt; for they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods that they did not know and that He had not given to them.” (Deuteronomy 29:22-26)[xi]
So go back to our starting point. If 1917 was a Jubilee year, what was the next Jubilee year? That would be 1967. And it was in 1967 during the 6-Day War that Israel took control again of their eternal capital of Jerusalem. Fifty years! Another Jubilee! So is it just coincidence that in 2017, the next Jubilee year, the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. That action opened the floodgates to more prophetic / biblical fulfillments. The nation’s do indeed rage and are gathering up against Jerusalem – just as the scriptures foretold.
So it was that over the many centuries God had kept His people intact, even through their state of scattered exile. By the early 20th century He had prepared the way for their complete return and possession of the Land that He had given them in perpetuity. This was an amazing and varied lot; European Jews, Middle Eastern Jews, Jews from India and China and Africa. God was calling His people home. And it was all according to prophecy. All according to His unwavering Word!
Israel’s rebirth was a magnificent work of the Almighty. Scattered throughout the earth, language lost. But maintained their identity in exile. As JC points out, the word preceded the reality. Built on a prophecy. The language reborn before the nation reformed. The anthem written in anticipation of its need. The national mindset forming before the national boundaries. Cahn calls it a resurrection; a return to the fully-developed nation that would come.
[i] Grant R Jeffrey, The Signature of God, Frontier Research Publications, Toronto, 1996, pg 178-180
[ii] Number of Christian Jews in Israel Doubles to 10,000, Christianity Today, UK, April 30, 2005
[iii] Mike Schuster, The Mideast: A Century of Conflict: Part 1: Theodor Herzl and the First Zionist Congress, NPR.org, September 30, 2002
[iv] Jonathan Cahn, The Oracle, Front Line, Charisma Media / Charisma House Book Group, 2019, Chapter 11
[v] Mideast Web .org
[vi] Jonathan Cahn, The Oracle, Front Line, Charisma Media / Charisma House Book Group, 2019, Chapters 19 & 20
[vii]AVIVA AND SHMUEL BAR-AM, When the British captured the Holy Land, The Times of Israel, December 5, 2015
[viii] Jonathan Cahn, The Oracle, Front Line, Charisma Media / Charisma House Book Group, 2019, Chapter 23
[ix] Tuly Weisz, Mark Twain’s unwittingly prophetic vision for the State of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, September 23, 2017
[x] Chen Malul, Mark Twain in Palestine – “A Hopeless, Dreary, Heart-Broken Land”, https://blog.nli.org.il/en/mark-twain-in-palestine/, May 11, 2018
[xi] Jonathan Cahn, The Oracle, Front Line, Charisma Media / Charisma House Book Group, 2019, Chapter 11
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