Israel becomes a nation.

A decade or two ago, I wrote books by blogging through them. I'm not sure that this was a good practice, but it helped me picture an audience, which is a good thing when writing.

Several times over the last decades, I've also started a book on the end times. I've never finished it, of course. I have in mind a popular audience, particularly a Left Behind audience. I think I may have come to write a little too advanced for this audience. At the same time, my circles have become so populist that I wonder if my style has drifted from the more academic realm. 

In any case, I'm trying to shake myself loose on this project, so I thought I'd blog a little on one of the chapters.

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1. After nearly 2000 years in exile, Israel became a nation again in 1948. It sent shock waves through the prophecy world. Many believed that it signaled the beginning of the final generation of people on earth before Jesus would return and the end times would begin. Several passages in the Old Testament talk about the gathering of Israel back to its land. Here are a few:

Jeremiah 31:10: “Hear the word of Yahweh, O nations, and declare it among the coastlands from afar. And say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him like a shepherd his flock.’”

Ezekiel 36:24: “I will take you from the nations, and I will gather you from all the lands, and I will cause you to come to your land.”

Ezekiel 37:21-22: “I am taking the children of Israel from the midst of the nations to which they have gone, and I will gather them from around and I will cause them to come to their land. I will make them one people on the hills of Israel. And one king will be king over them all. they shall no longer be two peoples, nor will they ever be divided into two kingdoms again.”

2. The problem with these three passages is that none of them were actually about today. They were all fulfilled already in 538 BC. In that year, the Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and reestablish Israel as a political entity. Many of them did. In 516 the temple was rebuilt, and in the late 400s BC, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. 

Jeremiah and Ezekiel both wrote during a time when Israel was in exile (more specifically, the southern kingdom of Judah). The Babylonians had come and pounded them. They had destroyed Jerusalem. They had destroyed the temple. They had taken the elite away to a far-off country. Some had gone down to Egypt to escape. Some even built a temple there for Yahweh. When Jeremiah and Ezekiel wrote, Israel was scattered.

Meanwhile, the Assyrians had scattered the northern kingdom of Israel a century and a half earlier. Israel had been divided into two kingdoms, a northern one called Israel and a southern one named Judah. In 722 BC, the Assyrians came in and wiped out the kingdom to the north.

So, Israel was scattered in the early 500s BC when Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied. They both predicted rightly that God would bring Israel back from the nations. And he did. In 539 BC Cyrus, king of Persia, pounded the Babylonians (see Isa. 45:1). The Jews returned.

3. So these passages were not, in the first place, about modern times originally. However, could they also be about modern times? In other words, a double meaning? 

We see the phenomenon of double meanings throughout the New Testament. Some have called this phenomenon a "sensus plenior" or taking the words of the Old Testament in a "fuller sense" than they were originally intended. A good example of this dynamic is when Jesus warns of the "abomination that causes desolation" in Mark 13:14. We'll return to this verse in chapter 7 for a fuller exploration.

This verse also was not originally about modern times. In fact, the verse has already had two fulfillments. The first was in 167 BC when the Syrians defiled the Jerusalem temple by offering a pig sacrifice on its altar and erecting an altar to Zeus within it. This was the original referent of Daniel 11:31.  

However, as we will see, the context of Mark 13:14 points instead to the defilement and destruction of the temple in AD 70. The beginning of Mark 13 makes it clear that the topic under discussion is when that temple will be destroyed. This event happened in AD 70.

Accordingly, this verse in Daniel has already had two fulfillments. Will it have a third? Time will tell. But before we go too far along that road, we should know that there is nothing that would lead us to expect another fulfillment. We will talk more about that question in chapter 7.

4. So, Old Testament passages apparently can have more than one fulfillment. Is Israel becoming a nation in 1948 another fulfillment of these verses? Far be it from me to say that it is not. God can fulfill Scripture however he wants to.

However, I am not sure that everyone who thinks so has actually reckoned with the fact that it has already been fulfilled. The first and primary fulfillment took place 2500 years ago. There is no need biblically for another fulfillment.

Someone might argue that some aspects of these passages remain unfulfilled. For example, not every Jew returned to Israel. On the other hand, it doesn't really say that every Jew would return. And, of course, far from every Jew has returned even today.

Israel did not generally have a king after the return either, and there was never a clear return of the northern kingdom to the land. We will think more about the fulfillment of Ezekiel in later chapters. Israel did briefly have a couple kings. In the early first century BC there were some kings of Israel, and Herod the Great was a king. Under Herod's rule, both north and south were united.

In later chapters, I will argue that Ezekiel cannot be precisely fulfilled because Hebrews and Revelation indicate God's glory will never fill an earthly temple again. This is not a problem because prophecy is often fulfilled in ways that were blurry to the prophet but that become clear in hindsight. Since we have the New Testament (and history), we know the precise fulfillments.
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Thanks. That helped get my juices flowing. Any suggestions about style or tenor are welcome!