DAILY ARTICLE - 2/27/06

Is Prophecy Being Fulfilled At This Time?

by Terry James

This year’s Pre-Trib Research Center meetings at Dallas got off to a somewhat contentious start. The very first speaker –a scholarly-type–that is, an academician used to lecturing in seminaries, presented a paper that put forth --as he always does—that the things many of us view as issues and events at least somewhat meeting requirements to be endtime prophetic signs are little more than coincidence. The record-breaking hurricanes and weird weather patterns, the tsunami stemming from the great Indian Ocean quake, the many earthquakes, should not –he informed—be considered any more than cyclical weather patterns and normal seismic activity. His is a view that adheres to the stamped-in-gold-leaf declaration that there is no prophecy that God’s Word says must precede the rapture; therefore, there will be no prophetic signal(s) that will precede that great, imminent event.

But, he had to concede, the nation Israel being back in its homeland –the land whose heart is Jerusalem—is perhaps the one exception to the hard and fast rule that no prophecy will precede the rapture.

No people in history other than Israel have had their nation disbanded, and the people scattered, then been regathered in their native land, their ancient national language restored. This miracle of God took place in contemporary times –the process completed May 14, 1948.

Those scholars who hold that no prophecy is being currently fulfilled most often say that Israel’s coming back as a nation can, or even likely will be again, put out of the land.The Jews, in other words, are not back in their God-given homeland for the final time, as delineated in Bible prophecy yet future. The Jews will again likely be scattered into the nations of the world.

Even my favorite teacher, the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee, believed for all but the last few years of his life that this would likely be modern Israel’s fate. The Jews would be again scattered, because they were back in the land God gave them in unbelief. Dr. David Hocking told the Pre-Trib gathering last year that Dr. McGee changed his thinking on this matter not long before he died in 1988. The great Thru The Bible radio teacher at last concluded that God was again beginning to return the Jews for the wrap-up of human history.

So, if the Jews coming back to the land and again living within a nation named Israel, with Jerusalem at the center of their daily life–the Temple Mount at the center of the longing of at least the religious Jews--it is logical to conclude we are seeing prophecy in the process of fulfillment. We can see the predicted beginning of this process, and its fulfillment in the following verse.

“And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country” (Ezekiel 34:13).

The Jews began coming back into the land from all over the world in the 1800s. The migration continued and accelerated until the modern Jewish state was born in 1948. The greatest migration has occurred since, and is prophesied to grow mightily. But, they inhabit only a tiny fraction of the land God gave them. The completion of the latter part of the above Scripture awaits fulfillment in Christ’s millennial kingdom.

This generation has watched the beginning of fulfillment of prophecy with Israel’s return as a nation, just as God promised. This being the case, how can the long-held line that there is no prophecy that precedes the rapture still be held?

To make the point of the importance of Israel’s being back in its own land as prophesied in the Bible, with its ancient language –Hebrew—we should look at one of my favorite verses: “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28).

If Israel’s being back in the land God gave them is a prophecy that is even a degree of fulfillment, then Luke 21:28 is in play in this generation. ”These things” have already begun to “come to pass.” Therefore, the signals we are seeing like, the EU being the precursor of the revived roman Empire, Russia being in position as the leader of the coming Gog-Magog invasion of Ezekiel 38-39, the record-breaking hurricanes, earthquakes, and the great Indonesian tsunami are all significant as prophecy in the process of fulfillment. They are indeed “stage setting,” but they must also be strongly considered as prophecy in the process of fulfillment.

What this all means, of course, is that we have been seeing these things for some time. Jesus said that when they begin to happen we –Christians—are to look up and look for His coming for us. He didn’t say that when all of these things have “come to pass,” but He said “when they “begin to come to pass,” we are to lift our heads, because His coming for us is near, even at the door.

SOURCE: Rapture Ready