"Therefore behold, the days are coming," declares the LORD, "that it shall no more be said, 'The LORD lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,' but, 'The LORD lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.' For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers."
—Jeremiah 16:14–15
This amazing prophecy came from the pen of one of Israel's acknowledged major prophets. For more than 3,000 years the Jews celebrated the exodus of Moses from Egypt's bondage as the greatest event in their history. Yet Jeremiah declares there is coming a second exodus that will be so great that the first exodus will pale by comparison.
Jeremiah states that the people will come from "the land of the north," which I believe is Russia. In the Bible, all directions are given from Jerusalem. In the mind of God, Jerusalem is the center of the universe.
Jeremiah expanded his prophecy of Exodus II to include "all the lands where He had driven them." As I write this book, the chief rabbi of Israel has his representatives going to the four corners of the earth to help Jewish people return to Zion. Exodus II is far from complete, as the mighty right hand of God continues to gather "the apple of His eye" to the land given to Abraham and his seed almost 6,000 years ago.
Fishers and Hunters
The Bible is a book of parables and word pictures describing principles of truth from God to man. The prophet Jeremiah puts his pen to parchment and paints a vivid picture of the human agents God intended to use to bring the Jewish people back to Israel.
"But now I will send for many fishermen" declares the LORD, "and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks."
—Jeremiah 16:16, NIV
I believe this verse indicates that the positive comes before the negative. Grace and mercy come before judgment. The fishermen come before the hunters. First, God sent the fishermen to Israel. These were the Zionists, men like Theodor Herzl who called for the Jews of Europe and the world to come to Palestine and establish the Jewish state. The Jews were encouraged to escape while there was still time. The situation for Jews in Europe would only get worse, not better.
A fisherman is one who draws his target toward him with bait. Herzl and his fellow Zionists were God's fishermen, calling the sons and daughters of Abraham home. Herzl was deeply disappointed that the Jews of the world did not respond in greater numbers.
God then sent the hunters. The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear. No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler's Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have—Israel. I stand amazed at the accuracy of God's Word and its relevance for our time. I am stricken with awe and wonder at His boundless love for Israel and the Jewish people and His divine determination that the promise He gave
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob become reality.
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob become reality.
"Go to the potter's house."
In Jeremiah 18, the prophet presents a second vivid picture of the process God will use to bring Israel to its divine destiny. God tells Jeremiah to go down to the potter's house, and God declares that He Himself will be the potter.
"Arise and go down to the potter's house." ... Then I went down to the potter's house, and there he was making something on the wheel. Yet the vessel that he made of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?" says the LORD. "As the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel."
—Jeremiah 18:2–6, MEV
God makes it absolutely clear that He is the potter, and the pot in His hand is the nation of Israel. The first time the Lord set out to mold Israel as a potter molds the clay, He envisioned that the clay pot was marred in His hand.
God did not cast the pot away. Instead, He crushed the clay on the wheel and formed it into a second pot, whereby the divine destiny of the Jewish people could be realized according to His eternal plan.
On one of my many trips to Israel, I was taken to a potter's house in Hebron. Here the potter was making pottery on a pottery wheel just as masters of his craft had done for thousands of years before. He took a lump of clay, moistened his hands and, as he pumped the spinning wheel with his feet, carefully began shaping the clay into the image locked in his mind.
He found lumps and imperfections in the clay and plucked them out, throwing them onto the floor. Patiently, he shaped the pot, and when it didn't come together, he smashed it and began again. The second pot came out perfectly as everyone in our group applauded.
God, the Master Potter, has shaped Israel a second time. The process continues with imperfections being plucked out and cast aside. The pot will reach perfection when Messiah comes, and the whole earth will applaud as Jerusalem becomes the "praise in the earth" (Isa. 62:7).
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God's chosen people, the Jews, and the promised land of Israel are the hub that forms the wheel of prophecy. All end-time prophecy focuses first and foremost on Israel's importance to God and His eternal covenant with them: "All the land of Canaan, where you now live as strangers, I will give to you and to your descendants for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God" (Gen. 17:8). But because of the Jews' disobedience and rebellion, they were scattered around the globe, and control of their promised land of Israel slipped right out of their fingers for hundreds of years.
More than 2,600 years ago the prophet Ezekiel prophesied the resurrection of Israel from the Gentile graves in the lands to which she had been scattered, predicting the rebirth of Israel, which took place on May 14, 1948. Ezekiel also prophesied about the holy war that would take place in Israel some time after Israel's restoration to independence.
God gave Ezekiel a vision of a valley full of dry bones. I want to make it very clear that I do not believe that Ezekiel's vision has anything to do with the resurrection of the dead saints of the church. In Ezekiel 37:11, God told Ezekiel, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel." There is no doubt in the text that this could only be Israel.
In a vision, God took Ezekiel to a valley full of dead bones that were very dry and scattered. This was God's physical portrayal of the nation of Israel. Israel ceased to be a nation in A.D. 70 when the Jews were scattered to the ends of the earth by the Roman army under Titus. It would be more than 2,000 years before Israel became a recognized state again in May 1948—and the bones grew very dry!
God asked Ezekiel a perplexing question: "He said to me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?'"(Ezek. 37:3).
Ezekiel responded to God by saying, "O Lord GOD, You know" (v. 3). In other words, he was saying, "I don't see how it's possible. Death has done its work. Life is gone. Lord, if these bones live, it will require the miracle-working power of Jehovah God."
For nearly 50 years I have preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to audiences all over the earth. I have stood in churches, cathedrals, auditoriums, football stadiums and a preaching field in Nigeria with more than 3,000,000 people attending. Yet, like Ezekiel, as I have looked over the audiences large and small, I have often thought, "Can these bones live?"
In response to Ezekiel's question, God told him to do something very strange. It was the strangest message to the deadest congregation in the history of preaching! God told him to preach the Word of the Lord to the dry bones. "Again He said to me, 'Prophesy over these bones and say to them, "O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord"'" (v. 4).
The word "prophesy" doesn't always mean to foretell or to predict. Here, it means to speak out or to preach a message to the people of God. There is supernatural power in the spoken Word of God.
Ezekiel's faith conquered the limitations of his carnal mind, and he obeyed the voice of God. It is a Bible fact: Obedience brings blessing, and disobedience brings judgment. Ezekiel looked at the valley full of scattered, very dry bones and preached this message:
Thus says the Lord God to these bones: "Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord."
—Ezekiel 37:5–6
Ezekiel proclaimed that God was going to do a supernatural work that would make those dry, lifeless, scattered bones live again. It would be a reversal of death and corruption.
In perfect obedience to the Word of God, Ezekiel said:
So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone. Indeed, as I looked, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over; but there was no breath in them.
—Ezekiel 37:7–8
Notice that the restoration to life for the bones was a process. It was not an instantaneous event. The bones were dry, scattered, and dead for a very long time. The dry bones in Ezekiel's vision represent the nation of Israel during the Diaspora, beginning in A.D. 70 (Ezek. 37:11). Gradually the bones came together, and the sinews and flesh came upon them.
It was at this point of Israel's gradual restoration that people like Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, began to call the Jews back to Israel. The "sinews and flesh" continued to come together as the Jews of the earth returned to Eretz, Israel, to drain the swamps and transform the desert into a rose. On May 14, 1948, at 4:32 p.m., the State of Israel, after 2,000 years, was reborn. Ezekiel's prophetic vision was fulfilled:
Then say to them, "Thus says the Lord GOD: 'Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land.'"
—Ezekiel 37:21
God made it exceedingly clear that He would bring the Jews back to "their own land." He would not bring them back to the Palestinians' land—He would restore them to the promised land of the eternal covenant God had made with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants.
At the conclusion of Ezekiel 37, the nation of Israel had been physically reborn. Today they have a flag; they have a constitution; they have a prime minister and a Knesset. They have a police force, a powerful military and the world's best intelligence agencies. They have Jerusalem, the city of God. They have a nation. They have everything but spiritual life.
Like the dry bones of Ezekiel 37, Israel awaits the spiritual awakening of the breath of God and to the coming of Messiah.
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