ADVENT FOR ADULTS #18

December 18^th … 7 NIGHTS TIL CHRISTMAS

THE RISING AGAIN OF ISRAEL

“And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel.” [Luke 2:34]

The nation of Israel has fallen many times in the course of history. Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, the city of Jerusalem was surrounded by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, the walls were breached, the Temple destroyed, and the population either slaughtered or hauled off to Babylon. Forty years after Christ was crucified, the city was again surrounded, the walls breached, the Temple destroyed, and this time the people who were not killed were dispersed throughout the whole Roman Empire. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD ended the Jewish presence in what had been the Land of Israel for a thousand years.

Then after their initial dispersal by the Romans, the Jewish people were scattered even farther afield, into all the world. They became citizens in every country under heaven. Everywhere they went, they survived, thrived, and multiplied, all the while retaining their distinctive Jewish identity. Unfortunately, they were often persecuted in the countries where they stayed, so much so that the dictionary lists a special word coined for the persecution of Jews— pogrom, n. an organized massacre, especially of Jews.

Then when Hitler came to power in Germany, he ordered their extermination. To escape the Nazis many tried to flee the country. “Thousands stand outside the consulates of America, England, and other countries, waiting through the night for admission so that they may register their names…[their children are banned from public parks]…. and on the door of their school the legend is painted “Cursed be the Jew.” [1]

In July 1938 President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened a conference at Evian, France, “It was hailed as a humanitarian gesture of concern for the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and promised a solution to reducing the emigration barriers of the political refugees.” Hitler responded with “I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals, will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid.” But very little practical aid was given. “At Evian, thirty-two countries met to solve the problem of the refugees. Even observers from Nazi Germany were allowed to audit these proceedings, which might well have influenced Hitler’s ultimate decision to rid the world of the Jewish “criminals” by extermination. Jews as such, however, were not represented, because they had no state, and [their] leading spokesman Chaim Weizmann was prohibited from speaking even in private session, because Great Britain had protested against it.”[2] It was partly because of this failure of the free world to come to their aid, that six million Jews were exterminated in Hitler’s death-camps

“Because they had no state” they were not allowed at Evian to make their appeal for help. This is precisely why the Jewish people were so concerned to get a home of their own. Not welcome anywhere in the world, where were they to go? Ultimately this crisis pushed the world to the brink of finally taking serious action on what others had been saying for many, many years.

For instance, in 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte had launched a campaign to conquer Palestine and had made a pledge to “restore the country the Jews”. And in 1847 Alexander W.C. Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford, wrote: “The Jewish race, so wonderfully preserved, may yet have another stage of national existence open to them, may once more obtain possession of their native land…the soil of Palestine still enjoys her Sabbaths, and only waits for the return of her banished children, and the application of industry, commensurate with her agricultural capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance, and be all that she ever was in the days of Solomon.”[3]

Notice the phrase banished children. It was God who had banished his children, who had driven out them out of their land and dispersed them among the nations. (We’ll talk about the reasons for this tomorrow.)

And now, finally, after 2000 years, God has begun to re-gather his people back to their ancient homeland. And of course, although this re-gathering began silently in the 1890’s, it actually became visible on the world stage on that fateful day of May 14, 1948,when in Tel Aviv, the Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, establishing the first Jewish state in 2,000 years.[4]

Of course, the re-gathering is not yet complete. It has only begun. The Jews who have come to Israel are for the most part secular Jews. This means that for the most part they are only Jews by birth— not by rebirth. They were born Jewish, as members of the Jewish race, but they are not yet born again, as Jesus spoke of in John 3:7 “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” In fact, the present situation in Israel is calamitous. The Jewish people are pressed from within and without. There has been so much opposition to the re-establishing the nation of Israel, both by many of the Arab countries who are calling for the annihilation of Israel, and the worldwide liberal press who castigate Israel for having usurped the land from the “poor Palestinians”.

These opposing factions ignore two things— history (and history, if it is accurately assessed, is on the side of the Jews) and God.

What needs to be factored into what has become known as “the Mid-East Crisis” is that there is a God in heaven who has an opinion in the matter. It seems everybody’s opinion counts except God’s. God has from the beginning declared Zion to be the place where his son— HIS king— will eventually rule: “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” [Psalm 2:6] That is God’s will, and because there is such continual opposition over this matter, for this reason the ancient prophet declared “the LORD hath a controversy with the nations.” [Jeremiah 25:31] This means that the world as a whole will resist the rising again of Israel.

Essentially this is what is happening today, in every human heart that is being led to consider the topic. Are the Jews, the people of God, to be permitted to have a homeland of their own, in the sight of all the other nations of the world who have a homeland of their own? Because as we celebrate the birth of his son, we must remember this son is a King, and a king must have a country: “And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.” [Matthew 2:6]

NEXT: WHY ISRAEL FELL

GO TO START: ADVENT FOR ADULTS #1

[2] Ibid Pg 334

[3] Ibid, pg 91

[4] If you want to read the amazing details as to the timing of this event, click here:

The “Coincidence” of Israel’s Captivity & Return to Her Land

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ADVENT FOR ADULTS #18

THE RISING AGAIN OF ISRAEL