Intro to the End Times #17: What Will Happen to Israel?

On By CaitlynIn Bible Stuff, End Times

Intro to the End Times is a series walking through some of the key themes of the story of Jesus’ return from a historic premillennial perspective, with special focus on knowing the heart of Jesus as we partner with God through the most dramatic chapter of human history.

In the last post, we talked about the promises of the Abrahamic covenant, which is unconditional and unbreakable, and the Davidic covenant, which narrows the focus to David’s line. But in order to fulfill His promises to Abraham and David, God must make Israel righteous, which has never yet fully happened in history. He will do this the same way He made us righteous– through the blood of Jesus in the new covenant. We could summarize these three covenants this way:

  • Abrahamic covenant – WHAT – land, descendants, blessing to the nations
  • Davidic covenant – WHO – a righteous, eternal king from the line of David
  • New covenant – HOW – by putting His law in their hearts

In this post, we’re going to look at how this promise unfolds in the drama of the end times.

All Israel Will Be Saved

There is a fixed point in the future when all Israel is going to get saved. The magnificent wisdom of God is to cause this to happen at the transition of the age, as Jesus returns to establish His kingdom. Zechariah 12 describes the climactic battle of Jerusalem at the end of the Tribulation when God opens Israel’s eyes to who He is and give them the gift of repentance.

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”
(Zechariah 12:10, cf Revelation 1:7)

Earlier in Zechariah, there’s a phrase that brought me to tears in the prayer room when God started giving me His heart for Israel: “Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent me.” (Zec. 2:9) Can you hear the emotion in this phrase? “Oh, Israel, then you will finally know!” How His heart longs for this day! You can hear this same ache when He says:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! …For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
(Matthew 23:37-39)

So how is God going to accomplish this?

In Romans 11, Paul lays out a plan of such delicately balanced wisdom that only God could have conceived of it. God allowed the majority of Israel to reject the gospel, thus pushing the gospel out to the Gentiles, but the plan is to use the salvation of the Gentiles to provoke Israel to jealousy, so that they recognize and return to their God. This forces humility in all of us: the Gentiles must recognize that their faith rests squarely on the Jewish covenant, and Israel must recognize that the Gentiles have truth that they need!

“…through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous…. a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob'”
(Romans 11:11, 25-26)

When Jesus returns, Israel will see Him coming on the clouds, then riding through the desert delivering them again with miracles even greater than the Exodus (Mi. 7:15, Je. 23:7-8), and with the testimony of the faithful church through the Tribulation fresh in their minds, they will recognize with sudden, brilliant, terrible clarity that Yeshua was the Messiah all along. They’ll realize that He wasn’t just the gentile Christian God; He’s their own Mighty One of the Exodus, the Son of David, YHWH in flesh. They will mourn and repent, and be granted salvation spiritually and physically as He wipes away their sins and rescues them from the antichrist all at once.

And Jesus’ heart will burst with joy as His family welcomes Him home.

Before we move on: who exactly is “all Israel”? Answer: every Jewish person left alive on earth at that point, assuming they haven’t taken the mark of the beast. There are a number of verses referring to “those who are left” or the “survivors” of Israel turning to the Lord, following a time of great judgment. You’ll also see the phrase “in that day” a lot- this is a key phrase that almost always refers to the end times or the millennium!

“In that day the branch of the LORD shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel. And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning.”
(Isaiah 4:3)

“In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob… will lean on the LORD… A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. …only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness.”
(Isaiah 10:20-22)

“And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.”
(Joel 2:32)

Jacob’s Trouble

Satan is well aware of God’s promises in the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, and he knows that they’re all tied together. He’s figured out that the way to best way to strike against Jesus is to strike against His covenant people. In fact, Jesus said something really specific about His coming related to the people of Jerusalem, and Satan was paying attention:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
(Matthew 23:37-39)

To Satan, this looks like a loophole! He failed at preventing Jesus from being born, but if he can just prevent Jerusalem from saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,” he can prevent Jesus from coming back! To a large extent, anti-Semitism throughout history can be traced back to Satan’s desire to prevent Jesus’ return by eliminating the people whose invitation He has bound Himself to.

During the Tribulation, one of Satan’s top priorities is furious aggression against Israel, who is shown in this passage of Revelation as a woman:

“And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.”
(Revelation 12:13-16)

The Old Testament as well describes the Tribulation as a time of intense trouble for the people of Israel:

“Alas! That day is so great there is none like it; it is a time of distress for Jacob [NKJV ‘Jacob’s trouble’]; yet he shall be saved out of it.”
(Jeremiah 30:7)

“And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.”
(Daniel 12:1)

Satan’s fury, via the antichrist, will be intensely focused on Israel, much like Hitler’s fury during World War II. The question of Israel will become a dividing point among the nations, as we each have to decide whether we will stand with God in His love for His people, or stand passive and allow the antichrist to have his way. Even today, antisemitism is mounting, as Satan lays the foundation for the worst persecution of the Jewish people the world has ever known. (For more on God’s covenant with Israel and the history of antisemitism, I highly recommend the free documentary series Covenant and Controversy.)

Our Response

However, there’s lots of good news in the midst of the bad news. I’m grateful that every verse I shared above highlights God’s rescue of the Jewish people. A few posts from now, I’m going to cover what Jesus does when He appears- how He does the Exodus all over again and dramatically saves His people. For the moment, we can be assured that even in the midst of great persecution, there are also dramatic miracles taking place (like the earth opening up to swallow the dragon’s flood in Revelation 12!) and the Gentile church is rising up to stand with the Jews.

Which brings us full circle to the beginning of this post: all Israel will be saved when the Gentile church provokes her to jealousy. Can you imagine the kind of witness it will be when Gentile believers are hiding Jews in their homes like Corrie ten Boom, serving them with such love and compassion, and even laying down their lives for them? That witness of costly, faithful love will make a deep mark on the Jews, and no doubt will lead many of them to faith in their Messiah.

The deeper I have delved into studying the end times, the more I discover that it all centers around Israel. Whether you realize it or not, your theology of Israel will absolutely inform your eschatology. Is God really faithful to all of His promises? Is there still a unique place in His story for Israel?

I once heard a chilling statement from a teacher who was explaining their belief that there will be no tribulation because it all was fulfilled at the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD and we’re currently living in a symbolic millennial reign. Someone asked, “But what about Israel?” and the teacher immediately laughed and said, “I don’t care about Israel.” It hit me like a knife. They immediately backpedaled and said that they care about Israel as equally as they care about any other unsaved nation, but I felt like the enemy had just tipped his hand. His hatred for Israel seeps into our bad theology and impacts whether we will stand with the plans of God or not.

We urgently need to come into agreement with God’s love for Israel. The story of the Bible, especially regarding the end times, doesn’t make sense until we see that it’s all Israel-centric. God will be faithful to His promises to Abraham and all Israel will be saved, and Jesus will reign as the Son of David from Jerusalem forever. Satan will rage, and we must be ready to stand up and bear witness to Jesus’ sacrificial love for His people by even laying down our own lives for them.

When Israel at last confesses, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,” we will take Psalm 24 as our songbook and sing to Jerusalem,

“Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!”
(Psalm 24:7-8)

A few of my favorite resources on Israel:

(Full disclosure: I love to recommend resources to help you in your journey, and when I do I use Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase something through my links, I may receive a small commission. But if there’s a resource you want, I encourage you to get it wherever works best for you!)

For more recommendations, check out my Resources page.

Tweet
Share
Pin
Share
0 Shares