The Real Real Restoration of Israel

In yesterday’s post, we discussed Matt Littlefield’s view that the largely unbelieving Jewish nation occupying Israel today is not the fulfillment of Bible prophecy concerning the restoration of Israel that we are led to expect by Paul’s teaching in Romans 11 and corresponding OT passages. Unlike some students of scripture, Matt is not an abrogationist. He believes the promised restoration of God’s earthly people will indeed occur, only not until Messiah returns.

That would be fine so far as it goes, except it leads him to conclude that any return of Jews to Israel prior to the Second Coming of Christ (such as the one that occurred after WWII and continues apace) is therefore a cheat, a fake, a false fulfillment, an exercise in fleshly effort and/or a lie of the devil. He worries that Christians are being deceived by it.

I think that’s going too far, and I have tried to set out my own position concerning the largely secular Jewish presence in Israel. I believe we are looking at prophetic fulfillment in progress, just not yet fully realized. Only time will tell.

Mining the Minors: Micah (19)

Last week we suggested that in his final chapter, Micah is speaking with the voice of Israel’s remnant in a manner that may be understood both historically and prophetically.

Both ways of looking at the chapter were predictive at the time these words were given to Micah to share with his nation, but they were fulfilled with respect to the first timeframe, and still await fulfillment in the second. One is a matter of history, and we can look back through the later prophets and historians of the Old Testament to see how the things Micah predicted occurred roughly a century afterward.

The second way of looking at the chapter connects it with the book of Revelation.

Mining the Minors: Micah (18)

Chapter 6 concluded with God speaking, rendering judgment on Judah for its sins. The final chapter of Micah represents yet another change of voice, as Micah now begins to speak on behalf of the Israelite remnant.

The chapter lends itself to interpretation on at least two levels. On the first, it is an expression of faith and repentance from the 6th century BC Judean remnant before and during Babylonian exile. That captivity was still more than a century away when Micah prophesied. On the second, it reads as an expression of faith and repentance from the Israelite remnant thousands of years later, during the great tribulation, looking forward into the millennial reign of Christ.

Mining the Minors: Micah (14)

From one end of the Bible to another, the Holy Spirit quite frequently assigns layers of spiritual significance to real personages, cities and nations.

In Ezekiel, for example, the “prince of Tyre” is an analog for Satan himself. Manifestly, the real, human prince of Tyre never appeared in Eden. Likewise, John calls Jerusalem “Sodom and Egypt” in the book of Revelation, perhaps because the people of that city have at times displayed the moral character of both places. Again, in Galatians, Paul uses Hagar and Sarah as allegories for two covenants.

Observing this principle may help us with a few verses in Micah 5 when our attempts to interpret him literally hit the wall. Back to that thought in a bit. Let’s do the comparatively easy stuff first.

He Who Now Restrains

“Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.”

That day, Paul says, shall not come unless there be a falling away first. A “falling away” is a departure from what has always been held, from what has traditionally been known and believed. And this falling away, as we shall see, is on the part of those who profess to be obedient to the teaching of the gospel.

Persistent Prayer and Tribulation

“There was a widow in that city who kept coming to him …”

Don’t measure God’s care for you by what you’ve got and haven’t got; by your problems or your prosperity. Don’t measure those things. They have nothing to do with the character of God.

The character of God is to be measured at the cross — “God so loved the world”, “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” — that’s where the measure of God’s love is. That never changes.

Prophetic Trajectories in Matthew

Matthew 10 recounts the commission of the twelve disciples to take the good news of the kingdom to all the cities of Israel.

There is a specifically ethnic character to this set of instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” instructs the Lord.

At this time and for this specific purpose, the Lord equips his servants with a tool kit you and I do not possess in taking the message of gospel to the world today: he “gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.”

Persecution and Wrath

A great number of Christians believe the Church will go through the Great Tribulation.

Reasons for this vary. For some it’s all about heavenly trumpets: how many there are, and when they sound. For others, the teaching of the apostle Paul that the godly “shall suffer persecution” and the words of the Lord himself that “in the world you will have tribulation” tip the scales in favor of a Church that will suffer through the end times along with the world. Others compare the order of events in John’s Revelation visions with the future described by the Lord Jesus in the gospels, leading them to anticipate martyrdom like so many of our fellow believers throughout history. Still others believe the doctrine of the Rapture originated in the 16th century counter-reformation teaching of Papal Rome, and therefore consider it discredited.

All these are arguments from detail.