Why Israel? What time is it?

According to a group of elite nuclear scientists, the world has inched closer to Doomsday. These experts, who regularly publish their opinions in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, last year moved the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight to reflect their heightened concerns regarding the dangers posed to humanity. The clock, a symbol of our troubled times, was first set 60 years ago shortly after the United States dropped its atomic bombs on Japan. It hangs in the University of Chicago.

Because of the seemingly unchecked nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, the rise of global terrorism, and new concerns about climate change, the scientists believe humanity is facing new and greater dangers than ever before. As if to highlight the lateness of the prophetic hour, the clock now reads five minutes to midnight. Moved only 18 times since 1947, the minute hand had been set at seven minutes to midnight since 2002. Its latest adjustment therefore, a decision made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors acting in consultation with other experts, is considered significant.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was founded by former Manhattan Project researchers for whom the sheer destructions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a wake-up call. The stark images of the dead and soon-to-die from radiation poisoning was all too much for those responsible for developing the most horrific weapons the world had ever seen.
To develop an atomic bomb was one thing; to witness its actual potential for causing death and destruction was quite another. In 1947, the primary threat to the human race was from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In 2007, global warming was added as yet another peril of increasing concern.

Global Warming
According to the scientific experts, “The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.”

If, as these experts suggest, the world is moving closer to Doomsday, then what time is it on the prophetic calendar? The Hebrew prophets, the Apostles, and Jesus of Nazareth all spoke about the end of days, and the ‘Signs of the Times’ that would point inevitably to Armageddon. When Jesus’ disciples asked about His Second Coming and the ‘End of the Age’ as they understood it, Jesus replied that no man knew the day or the hour, but His Father only. Instead, He spoke about ‘Signs’ that would signify that the time was near:
“And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.” Matthew 24: 6, 7

Signs of the Times
Any serious student of prophecy and history could easily point to the catastrophic World Wars of the 20th century, or to famines, earthquakes, and pestilences such as SARS and AIDS as proof of the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophetic words. Skeptics will be quick to point out, however, that there have always been wars, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes and pestilences so anyone, including Jesus, could make safe predictions of these signs as future events. But Jesus said more…He likened the signs to birth-pangs. As it is with the painful process of childbirth, so these catastrophic events would occur more frequently and with ever increasing intensity:
“For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall. And unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short.” Matthew 24:21, 22

Clearly, Jesus saw the rise of future world events and natural disasters threatening the very existence of humanity - perils which, without God’s intervention, could bring about the extinction of the human race. No serious observer of prophetic times, however, can ignore what is perhaps the greatest sign of all: The miraculous return of the Jews to their biblical homeland after nearly 2000 years of exile among the nations, a modern exodus which followed the significant decimation of the world’s Jewish population during the European Holocaust.

Israel: Modern Miracle
Who would have believed that Israel, a nation long since buried under the shifting sands of time, would re-emerge in 1948 to become one of the most advanced nations on planet earth, or that within 60 years of that rebirth Israeli research would be at the forefront of virtually every field of human endeavour, including the hi-tech industry? Was this the vibrant nation the prophet Ezekiel envisioned when he wrote about his vision of the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37), the prophecy of a nation without hope into which God would breathe new life?

But if Israel’s rebirth 60 years ago points to God’s providence and the fulfillment of His prophetic timetable concerning Israel, the Jewish nation’s presence and miraculous progress has only aggravated tensions in the Middle East. It’s all too clear that Israel’s Arab neighbours do not want her to prosper, much less remain as a Jewish homeland on an otherwise Arab Middle Eastern landscape, however small her diminishing territory may be. The emergence in recent years of Hamas and Hizb’allah, the terrorist proxies of the openly hostile enemies of Israel such as Iran and Syria, have only added to these increasing tensions and potential for all out war in the region.

But even these developments can be seen as fitting into the prophetic timetable. Jesus and the Hebrew prophets warned that the fight over Jerusalem would one day become the focus of the nations (Luke 21:24b; Zechariah 12:3).

Palestine: Nation or Place?
As if to underscore the accuracy of the prophets’ words, a new idea has emerged in recent days: the idea that Jerusalem should somehow be divided as a means of settling once and for all the jurisdictional dispute over the Holy City that continues between the Israelis on the one hand and the Palestinians on the other. The fact that Jerusalem has only ever been the capital city of one nation, Israel, has not stopped the Palestinians from also claiming a historical continuity with the Holy City. This recent claim is more myth than reality, however, since history has no record of a nation called Palestine. On the contrary, Palestine was the name the Roman Empire assigned to the region in the 2nd century as it tried to obliterate all memory of Israel (Psalm 83). But even then, and during the Jews’ prolonged exile from the land from A.D. 70 to 1948, history records that the Jewish nation alone can lay claim to having had Jerusalem as its capital city.

In fact, the more recent idea of the Palestinians as a race and nation displaced by a militarily stronger Israel is yet another myth promoted and made popular by the late Yasser Arafat. While Arafat won the propaganda war against Israel by portraying himself as the then current leader of this so-called displaced nation, he was in fact an Egyptian, born in Cairo. To be sure, there are some in the Palestinian population who can rightfully claim their ancestors had lived in the land for centuries. The vast majority of those in the Palestinian population as it exists today, however, are more likely to be the descendants of those who migrated to the land from other nations during the late 19th and 20th centuries. In other words, Arab and other migrants who found employment among Jewish farmers, people who themselves had migrated to the land following persecution and pogroms in Europe, Russia, and Ukraine etc.

The Looming Battle for Jerusalem
What is clear is that these historical realities will not stop the momentum to establish a Palestinian State this year and before a new president is elected in the United States, a goal clearly stated at the conclusion of the November, 2007 Annapolis Conference and reiterated by George Bush during his January 2008 visit to the region. In fact, this international push for a Palestinian State may well become the political slippery slope that leads eventually to World War 3 or, in the biblical scenario, to Armageddon.

As Israel continues her long, and often painful, journey through time, we are left to watch and wonder. Watch as she struggles, against a backdrop of diminishing hope, to find her place of acceptance among the nations. And then to wonder how any people could suffer so much and survive, much less prosper. There can be no satisfactory explanation of Israel other than by seeing the Jewish nation as the Bible presents them: the Chosen People of God. If this is who they are, then they are also those same chosen people to whom God has made promises – promises that a righteous God is bound to keep, in spite of the opposing goals of any and all nations!

Rev. Dr. John Tweedie is the Chairman of Christians for Israel. His 8-unit DVD teaching series Why Israel? is suitable for individual, church, and/or small groups. Each unit includes on location scenes and interviews recorded in Israel. Helpful leader and individual participant study guides are also available (www.whyisrael.ca).
Update: The Why Israel Series has recently been adapted for radio and is now available as an 8 unit broadcast series of 30 minute segments. For more information, or to find out how to have the series broadcast in your area, contact Christians for Israel.