Day Two: The Ancient Prophecies

The simple fact that the Jewish people have endured as a people through nearly two thousand years of being scattered among the nations is amazing. The survival of the Jews as a people for so long, sprinkled as a tiny minority around the world in the face of enormous persecution, is so unlikely as to be unbelievable, except as an act of God. But for that group to be regathered into a new nation, in their original homeland, despite enormous worldwide political opposition, is truly preposterous—so unlikely that it can only be explained as a miracle. 

But of course those who believe the Bible know that God had always promised to reestablish Israel. In fact, the regathering of Israel is the most frequently prophesied event in the Old Testament.  

The diaspora—the dispersal of the Jewish people into the nations around the world—is clearly and repeatedly prophesied in the Old Testament.  In fact, in Deuteronomy 28, before the Israelites had even entered the promised land, Moses laid out the blessings that would flow to the Israelites if they obeyed God’s commands and the curses that will fall on them if they did not. This prophecy precisely describes the state of the Jews for centuries before the founding of modern Israel in 1948. 

But while God clearly promised that he would scatter the people if they did not obey him, a few chapters later, in Deuteronomy 30, he promises that eventually he would regather Israel into its homeland. He says, 

The LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors

God has begun to fulfill the promise of this more-than-three-thousand-year-old prophecy over the last two centuries. Through a series of improbable historical events—including two world wars and the Holocaust—and despite nearly uniform worldwide opposition, the Jews now possess the land God gave to their ancestors.

Of course, Deuteronomy 30 is not the only Old Testament prophecy of the return of the Jewish people to their homeland.  Others include Isaiah 10:12 and Jeremiah 31:10. And Zechariah 8:7-8 promises that the regathered nation would include the city of Jerusalem.  

The restoration of the Israelites to their ancestral land has always been, in a sense, inevitable, because of the promise God gave Abraham in Genesis 17:8: “The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you . . .” Even though God removed his people from the land for many centuries, it was always certain that they would one day return to claim it again. After all, God had promised it to them as an “everlasting possession.”