Nation of Israel - Resurrected
God chose and called out the natural nation of Israel (the Jewish people) from the time of Abraham. To Israel, God gave His law, the covenants and the promises. From Israel came the Saviour, Jesus the Christ (1) (Romans 9:4,5). Through Israel all nations will be blessed; Paul says that “the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ” (2) (Galatians 3:14).
The Old Testament is God’s inspired record of Israel’s history and tells (sadly) how the nation disobeyed His laws and, as a result, experienced the consequences promised in the law for disobedience. Israel was scattered from their land; became a curse and byword in the earth and persecuted at the mercy of their enemies (3) (Deuteronomy 28:25,37). The Nazi Germans inflicted the Holocaust on the Jews from 1933-1945, the greatest evil ever to afflict the Jewish people, resulting in the deaths of six million (4) (Jeremiah 30:7).
Yet God promised, through His prophets, that Israel would be restored and not permanently cast away. The nation would be resurrected. In the words of the prophet Ezekiel, dry bones would come out of graves. The bones would be covered with flesh, then receive the breath of life and stand on their feet. The Jews are regathered to their land of Israel (5) (Ezekiel 37:7-12). The Jews will be cleansed and forgiven at Jesus’s return, and blessed forever in the Kingdom (6) (Jeremiah 31:4, 8-10, 33,34).
As a result of their persecution, Jews began returning to the land called Palestine about 150 years ago. Many returned in the wake of the Holocaust, and the restored Jewish state was proclaimed in May, 1948. To this day, the nation of Israel survives and grows as a witness to the Bible’s truth, despite the ongoing anti-Semitic actions from the nations of the world and particularly her local enemies. The Jewish people await the return of their Messiah—presently in blindness, but soon to know their Messiah as Jesus, and be permanently restored and their enemies defeated (7) (Zechariah 12:10).
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