In discussions regarding how Christians should view Israel, past and present, there are always a number of factors that influence opinions, such as how one interprets Romans 11, the nature of the Mosaic/Old Covenant, or the role of the Mosaic law, for instance. But such discussions often end in stalemate with one issue: the supposed fulfillment of the modern state of Israel in Bible prophecy. Such claims can be heard all over the theological spectrum, from hard Dispensationalists to mainstream evangelical schools of thought. It has been firmly rooted, in the American church at least, that the creation of Israel in 1948 is one of the most significant fulfillments of prophecy that the modern world has witnessed since the first century.
Christians who are not convinced of the particulars of Dispensational or even historic premillennialism, those who have studied end times literature from a non-futurist perspective, or even those who are familiar with the history and present behavior of Israel against its neighbors and those it occupies, may feel as though they have legitimate grievances and objections with the idea of Christian support for Zionism. And yet, when it comes to the issue of prophecy and its fulfilment in Israel, it can be difficult to counter these claims in the moment. It has been difficult for me as well and it is my goal as part of this series to provide you with evidence and rationale to properly understand just what is being offered in these prophecies and how the Christian should understand them.
The Importance of Prophecy as Proof
It is no surprise that the appeal to prophecy is a powerful one for any Christian on just about any issue. Throughout Christian history, prophecy has played an important role in establishing the authority of Scripture. As we have written about before, Augustine and Aquinas both appealed to the fulfillment of prophecy as helping to ground the validity and authority of Scripture. And in the New Testament age, Christ’s fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy regarding the coming of the Messiah was and still is profoundly important to showing the reliability and continuity of the whole of Scripture.
For the premillennialist, especially one of the Dispensational variety, prophecy is also particularly important as it relates to the future of Israel. As we have discussed in previous articles, the Dispensational tenets of a literal interpretation of Scripture and a distinct separation between Israel and the church define the approach taken toward the entire Bible, especially end-times subjects. As Scofield himself, founding father of Dispensationalism, reiterates, “Not one instance exists of a ‘spiritual’ or figurative fulfilment of prophecy. Jerusalem is always Jerusalem, Israel is always Israel, Zion is always Zion … Prophecies may never be spiritualized, but are always literal.”
Given these assumptions, then, the Dispensationalist logic goes something like this: God made the Abrahamic covenant, along with its promises, with Abraham and his descendants, as well as the Mosaic covenant along with the Mosaic law. These promises were then fulfilled in Israel along with later prophecies of exile and restoration. Since these prophecies were made to and regarding Israel, they must be fulfilled by Israel. Therefore, because many prophecies given at the time have not been fulfilled, they remain to be fulfilled in the future. And, since they were given to ethnic Israel in a particular place, we should expect them to be fulfilled in ethnic Israel in a particular place as well.
At first glance, this sort of argument has logical consistency. And, in the moment, it can be difficult to counter any particular point, especially for those with no particular inclination or training toward other theological alternatives. But for those who have studied other end times perspectives, and for those who are familiar with modern Israel’s history and treatment and abuse of its neighbors and those that it occupies, these two perspectives can seem irreconcilable. If these two views conflict and contradict, which is accurate?
The Importance of Obedience to the Covenant
A common refrain among those who are inclined to see modern Israel as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy is that “God keeps His promises.” At first blush, this is a claim that no Christian would care to deny. But the words of the International Christian Embassy echo this statement and its assumptions: “We simply believe the Bible. And that Bible, which we understand has not been revoked, makes it quite clear that God has given this land as an eternal inheritance to the Jewish people… According to God’s distribution of nations, the Land of Israel has been given to the Jewish People by God as an everlasting possession by an eternal covenant.”
So, the implication is this: that God has promised the land as an inheritance to Israel, along with their future restoration and kingdom, and because this is an everlasting covenant and the land is an everlasting possession, then God’s promises in this case require a restoration of Israel to the land and that, because of this, we should expect something akin to the modern state of Israel. This generally extends from the original promise to Abraham and his descendants from Genesis 17:8, “And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
Now, there is some disagreement regarding whether or not the Abrahamic Covenant is truly a “conditional covenant,” meaning that it is only in force so long as both parties uphold the terms of the covenant, both man and God. We have looked specifically at whether the land of Israel belongs to the Jews in other articles and our focus here is one specifically regarding prophecy so the exact nature of the Abrahamic covenant is not entirely in focus here. However, for our purposes, we are interested in a very specific question: In regards to Biblical prophecy, on its face, is there reason to expect that ethnic Israel will be regathered to the Promised Land in the future? Or, is there reason to believe that this cannot or will not be the case, given Scriptural clues regarding the nature of the Abrahamic covenant?
Regardless of whether the Abrahamic covenant itself was conditional or could be rescinded, Scripture seems to give us many examples of curses and results of disobedience that are relevant to whether Israel would continue to enjoy the blessings of that covenant, namely residence and possession of the land. Within the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy 28 shows clear guidance that obedience is required for continued blessing, “15 But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you…And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it,” and these warnings are also present in Leviticus 18. Joshua contains similar language in chapter 7, verse 12, “I will be with you no more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you,” and later in chapter 23,
“16 if you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given to you.”
So, whether the Abrahamic covenant promises were themselves conditional, Scripture clearly does state stipulations for the enjoyment of the blessings of that covenant. Stephen Sizer succinctly summarizes, “So, the unconditional promises concerning the land were always clarified or supplemented by conditional clauses. These made continued residence in the land dependent on adherence to the covenant terms.”
This brings us to an important question, then, regarding the justification of the claim that God keeps His promises to Israel and that promise requires a return to the land. It seems clear that ethnic Israel must obey God’s commands in order to enjoy the blessings of possession of the land. They were ejected multiple times for failing to meet those requirements and, unless Scripture has been rescinded, must continue to meet such requirements to stay there now. Considering the makeup of early Zionist immigrants and current citizens, full of secular and non-practicing Jews (Gary Burge relates from an Israeli source that even as of 1992, “fewer than thirty percent of Israelis are actually practicing their religion”), many of them socialists or communists from Europe and Russia, and considering the history of violence in its founding and maintenance, this may be a difficult standard to reach.
The Pattern of Repentance, Revival, & Restoration
This phenomenon and pattern, modeled in Scripture, wherein Israel is taken in, falls away from God’s covenant commands, is ejected from His graces, then repents and is drawn into covenant relationship with God again, is an important one when considering Bible prophecy regarding Israel. The regathering and restoration of the scattered tribes of Israel and Judah is a major theme among many prominently cited Bible prophecies that some claim point to the future physical restoration of Israel. Jeremiah 23, 31, and Ezekiel 34 are among the passages that speak of the gathering of the remnant, as a shepherd to his flock, and the replanting of them in the land.
But recall the pattern outlined above. Within the passages describing the blessings and curses of the covenant and the loss of blessings due to disobedience, there is at least an implied relationship inherent in the cycle, that of blessed covenant relationship, disobedience and falling away, repentance and obedience, and thena restoration of the relationship and blessings. We should expect, then, to see a restored repentance within Israel prior to their restoration. This is actually more explicit in scriptural passages like Deuteronomy 30:2-5, addressed to Israel, that when “2 [you] return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. 4 If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. 5 And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers.”
All this points to the conclusion that, as Sizer states, “the Old Testament promises about the Jews’ return to the land were accompanied by the promise that they would also return to the Lord.” And, yet, as mentioned above, this is not quite what was seen in the decades leading up to 1948, nor in the years afterward. The number of secular Jews migrating to Palestine was concerning to Christian scholars at the time, those attempting to see a fulfillment of prophecies like this in a future and developing new state of Israel. Scofield appears to have originally expected a restoration of the Jewish people to Palestine as a Christian nation, not a Jewish one, coinciding with the Parousia. This is even more evident in the footnotes of the Scofield reference Bible as later revisions were edited to accomodate the unexpected events, removing language paralleling the expected spiritual restoration and repentance.
Hal Lindsey, noted author of Dispensational works like “The Late Great Planet Earth” attempted to explain this phenomena with a novel interpretation of Ezekiel 37, better known as Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. Lindsey attempted to demarcate Israel’s physical restoration as a nation with the initial physical reconstitution of the bones in verses 7-8, and Israel’s eventual, future spiritual renewal and rebirth with the skeleton’s subsequent invigoration with the breath of life that follows just after in verses 9-10.
To say that this reading of the text is strained is surely accurate though it is a welcome one for those looking to link the unfolding of current events with Scripture. But we must ask, if Israel, distinct as an entity according to Dispensationalism, remains under their historic covenant, and this covenant has historically required such obedience and repentance to enjoy the blessings of that covenant, is it wise to be so swift in explaining away the further outworkings of that covenant due to a novel reading of one quite imaginative prophetic vision? Does this one example truly merit a rewriting of the established pattern of restoration for Israel?
Indeed, just four chapters prior, in Ezekiel 33, God affirms this very expectation of holiness and obedience as a pre-requisite for possession of the land: “24 Son of man, the inhabitants of these waste places in the land of Israel keep saying, ‘Abraham was only one man, yet he got possession of the land; but we are many; the land is surely given us to possess.’ 25 Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord God: You eat flesh with the blood and lift up your eyes to your idols and shed blood; shall you then possess the land? 26 You rely on the sword, you commit abominations, and each of you defiles his neighbor’s wife; shall you then possess the land?”
As Alistair Donaldson concludes, “the promises given to Israel were not like automatic guarantees to be received apart from faith and obedience.” Therefore, since inheritance of the promises of God for Israel seems to be dependent on other factors than just physical descendance, we should remain skeptical to just these sorts of claims made every day to justify all manner of Israeli or Jewish actions, both past and present.
The Bottom Line
Hopefully, this analysis of the importance of Biblical prophecy to Dispensationalism and of the nature of the promises of the land covenant itself have helped you in developing a perspective with which to approach these prophecies. But the question still remains, if modern Israel does not reasonably fulfill these prophecies, how should we understand their fulfillment and, if they have yet to be fulfilled, when should we expect them to be? These questions are just what we intend to answer in Part 2 of this series.