Page 32 - Eschatology - Student Ebook

the towns shall be resettled, and the ruined sites rebuilt. I will multiply men and beasts upon you,
and they shall increase and be fertile, and I will resettle you as you were formerly, and will make
you more prosperous than you were at first. And you shall know that I am the Lord. I will lead... My
people Israel to you, and they shall possess you. You shall be their heritage, and you shall not again
cause them to be bereaved.

The book of Ezekiel contains a dual prophecy to the People of Israel. In its first part, God tells the Jewish
People that the land assigned to them will remain desolate as long as it is occupied by strangers, and
they remain in exile. And so it was - a bleak, barren, undeveloped land - for over 2000 years. In the
second half of the prophecy, God describes the signs of the incipient redemption - how the land would
appear just before the Jewish People would return forever. This part of the promise, too, began to come
true, during the decades preceding the establishment of the Jewish state in Eretz Israel. This is the State
of Israel, referred to in a Jewish prayer as the "first flowering of our redemption". From the deep sleep
of oblivion in the absence of its sons and daughters, the land finally awakened.
On May 14, 1948 the State of Israel was declared and God's promise that the Jewish people would again
be sovereign in their land was fulfilled. The long anticipation, the pain and the yearning merged into that
old-new entity, an independent Jewish state in the Jewish homeland. The new State of Israel marked the
end of the 2000-year-old exile.

Today Jewish people from all over the world continue to return to Israel, where cities that were once
destroyed by their enemies have been rebuilt and where the soil is bursting with fruit, trees and flowers,
just as the prophet Ezekiel had foretold. According to Rashi, the great medieval commentator on the
Bible and Talmud, "When the Land of Israel gives its fruit abundantly, the redemption will be imminent,
and there can be no more manifest redemption than this." The unfaltering faith in God's promise that
the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would return to their homeland is a prophecy fulfilled of
extreme “end time” importance.

Why? Because Israel is intertwined into the end-time prophecies of the nations. As we continue our
study, you will certainly see how Israel continues to be the center of future prophecy!

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