What God Says About The Future Of Israel

"Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, so that no one went through you, I will make you an eternal excellence, a joy of many generations." Isaiah 60:15 What validates the Bible is its prophecies. God says that he declares the end from the beginning, and so he does!This is a prophecy about Israel's future, her glorious future after she has been fully restored by God in her land. And truly the land was forsaken. The author Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) visited the land in the 1860's and wrote:

"Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?" "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent - not for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings." "... 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. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye that that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem..."

When Israel lost her land in 70 A.D. the Jews were dispersed throughout the earth for a very long time. No one was able to settle her land, because for as long as the Jews weren't there it didn't rain, so the land would not produce. Her land was "forsaken and hated, so that no one went through." (Isaiah 60:15) But the God of Israel promised that she would be repopulated once again when the time of her dispersion was over, and this time it will be forever as God makes Israel "an eternal excellence." In the late 19th century, Jews slowly began coming back to the land and in 1948 Israel was once again proclaimed a nation, after 2,000 years! God is in the process of restoring it, and when the Messiah returns, in that glorious day soon to come, all the enemies of Israel will be destroyed, and there will be an end to the "everlasting hatred" which has assailed her from the beginning. In 1967 Israel took the Temple Mount and it was captured on video:

Thus says the Lord: "VIOLENCE shall NO LONGER be heard in your land, neither wasting nor destruction within your borders; but you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise." Isaiah 60:18 It is in this final restoration of the land of Israel to her rightful owners, that the long-awaited Messiah will come, and he will reveal himself to those who had rejected him. They will come to the shocking revelation of who he is: "And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; THEN THEY WILL LOOK ON ME WHOM THEY PIERCED." Zechariah 12:10 The shock of recognition: "And one will say to him, ‘WHAT ARE THESE WOUNDS IN YOUR HANDS?’ Then he will answer, ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.'" Zechariah 13:6 The Bible's story of Jacob's son Joseph who was banished by his brothers is a "type" of the Messiah being banished by his brothers, the Jewish people. In the end, in one of the most heart-wrenching passages in the Bible, Joseph reveals to his brothers who he is. You can read the story in Genesis 45. The Messiah, like Joseph, will make known his identity to his brothers, and when they recognize him they will go into deep mourning, they will mourn greatly what was done to him when Israel rejected him. "Yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn. In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem..." Zechariah 12:10-11 But he, the Messiah, the King of Israel, will forgive them, and restore them fully. He will raise up Israel and the newly-repentant Jewish people as he promised so long ago. "Also your people shall all be righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified." Isaiah 60:21 Israel has a bright future ahead, says the God who proclaims the end from the beginning. But before he comes, there will be a terrible time, a 7-year period of horrific suffering as Satan is allowed his last hour on this earth. The Scriptures tell us that those who belong to Jesus will be taken from the earth before that terrible time begins. Bow before Jesus Christ even now and be saved, for he is your Creator and he holds his nail-scarred hands out to you that you might escape the severe tribulation that is about to take over the earth as God judges the Christ-rejecting world and prepares his people Israel to receive her Messiah. Turn to him now and be saved lest you be left behind to endure that terrible time. More: Israel's Covenant