The End Time: Bible Prophecy Concerning Israel—Part One

In This Issue:

The End Time: Daniel’s Last Week—Part Two

The End Time: The New World Order—Part Three

The Bible and Prophecy

It is obvious from reading the Bible that this revelation from God is a two-dimensional book: It is a book of history from its perspective of time, and it is a book of prophecy from its perspective of eternity. This revelation is like the keystone in a stone arch. Like history, only a certain part of that keystone is visible; like prophecy, much of the success of the stone arch remains invisible to the human eye. All of the crucial, invisible parts of a well-built stone arch are drawn together by the keystone; nevertheless, we only see the face of the keystone. Prophecy in the Bible is always hidden though it may be manifested in prophetic words. It is only after the prophecy becomes history that we look upon it with an accurate interpretation.

There is no book in all of history that presents the uniqueness of prophecy like the Bible; across its pages are at least 8,145 prophecies. These prophecies of Scripture become the permeating power of history. Infallibly rendered by heaven they tell of what is coming and become the keystone to bring everything into continuity.

To help us to see this uniqueness, the Book of Daniel becomes a classic view of these two dimensions of history and eternity. This book has two natural divisions: the first six chapters are historic (though prophecy is sprinkled through these chapters); the last six chapters present prophecy. Chapter 1 reveals the surface of a keystone: God bringing four young men down into captivity in Babylon. At the end of this chapter we learn that Daniel continues into the first year of Cyrus, a period of seventy years filled with prophecies! God’s providence brought forth this young man Daniel into his prime at an early age, made him a part of a Gentile empire, and sustained him into another Gentile empire.

Although this keystone of history was visible, that which undergirded the history of the Book of Daniel was prophecy. We must understand very clearly that behind all history is prophecy. It is prophecy that makes clear the unfolding continuity of history. History only unfolds in the light of God’s sovereign appointment. Although we must acknowledge that the foreknowledge of God is part of it, we do not undermine in any way the sovereignty of God. In spite of what man will do with his own will, God is making certain His plan is fulfilled. His plan is not given in the light of what man would do; it is in the light of what God would do amidst man’s doings. The hidden law of the keystone, though partially visible, is the invisible power maintaining the continuity of human history’s unfolding. Thus, the invisible (prophecy) becomes visible (history).

The Bible reveals to us there will be epochs. Epochs are certain periods of time marked by distinctive features, events, or crucibles which alter the course of history, accelerate a direction of history, or bring to naught a direction of history. Epochs are of great importance. An epoch can be marked by a person that arises in history (like Cyrus) or an event (the Babylonian Captivity). We may think an age is going along in a certain direction and destiny, when all of a sudden God brings a crisis that changes or alters the course of world history. Therefore it is important that we not automatically conclude that what is presently unfolding will continue unaltered; a new epoch could easily arise and change history.

The Battle of Armageddon will be a classic epoch that comes to change the direction of what seems to be the inevitable, final destruction of Israel or the inevitable, final destruction of man. And in that one battle, which we believe (according to the Book of Daniel) lasts for thirty days, there is this drastic transition from the collapse of humanity in a matter of days till the triumph of world peace through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Epochs, bringing a transition of the old to the new, usually produce a radical change. But in the acknowledgment of this principle, the epochs we have alluded to eventually brought final good. We must never look at anything that happens or anyone arising in history, no matter how great, as the inevitable conclusion because it could change. The conclusion we must come to is that God is in history because He gives prophecy, no matter how delightful or how dark any given epoch may be.

The Appointment of Israel

When God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt in the fifteenth century B.C., it was His desire to bring about a new dispensation, a new economy, a new working of God in the earth. Chapters 12 and 13 of Exodus record that right after the midnight hour some three million people made an exodus from the land of Goshen in Egypt to birth a new nation overnight. God then hid them in the wilderness forty years while the nations of the world were in transition. This marked the beginning of a new era that was to affect powerfully all the future of the world’s history. Up until this time in Bible history, God used a Flood to judge the world; He used fire and brimstone against Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain. Now, with the birth of Israel overnight, God had chosen a different strategy by which to judge the world. This nation now became His judge in the earth. For the first time, a people in the earth became His sword; a people of the earth became His scepter. How will this work?

Note the Lord’s plan in Deuteronomy 32:7, 8:

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam [Gen. 10], he set the bounds of the people [or He set the bounds of the nations] according to the number of the children of Israel.

Geographically, Jerusalem is the center of the earth; this is where God placed His judge, Israel. It is the appropriate place for God’s sword, God’s scepter to rule the world from the centrality of the earth.

In addition, Deuteronomy 20:10 tells us of the laws of warfare:

When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people [or nations, in verse 17, or the Canaanites], which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.

This passage of Scripture tells us there are two contexts of cities. There are the cities of the people that inhabited Canaan. At the time of Israel’s entrance into Canaan the cup of these local nations was full; Israel was to utterly exterminate these cities. There were also cities “very far off” from Israel. These cities were treated differently. First they were to confront them. If they declared peace, then Israel was to make them do tribute; if they refused to have peace with Israel, then they were to utterly destroy that nation. These verses declare that God’s intent was not simply to give a land to Israel (we call Canaan), but He appointed Israel to be the judge of the earth and scepter or ruler of the earth, with absolute control of Canaan; and those beyond Canaan, those very far off (what was known at that time as the ends of the earth) were to be under tribute. Nonetheless, according to Judges 1, Israel did not do this! Therefore, they were unable to go to the cities far off and make them serve Israel.

This reminds us of Adam. Though God told him that he was to have dominion over everything of the earth, He did not initially give him that. He gave Adam the Garden with the responsibility to keep it; however, Adam did not keep the Garden. He permitted a serpent to come from the field into the Garden, and he refused to do the will of God in that Garden. And according to Hebrews 2, the rest of the world will not come under his dominion. Also in Hebrews 2, “we see not yet all things put under him [man]” (v. 8). It was the same with Israel. They were to rule not only Canaan but also the world. The God of heaven appointed them to be the ruler.

The Book of Judges reveals that Israel went through four hundred years of declensions into apostasy. They were up and down, a little reviving here, a little reviving there (under rulers such as Hezekiah and Josiah). We do read of the days of David and Solomon, at which time the kingdom was growing well beyond Canaan. But neither one of these men went to the ends of the earth.

Prophecy of the Transition of the Kingdom

God had desired through the theocracy of Israel (and later more specifically Judah) to rule all the nations of the earth. God gave Israel from the days of Moses to the days of Zedekiah a thousand years to do right, to conquer, to overcome beyond the boundaries of Canaan. Israel failed to perform God’s will; they did not overcome Canaan, to say nothing of the world. Because of the nation’s sins, their perpetual backslidings, God made a transition of epic proportion. He changed His approach to rulership in the world.

We must remember the promise given in 2 Samuel 7:16 long before the captivity of the Jews: “And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.” Isaiah 55:4, 5 states that it was God’s will for the people of the earth (or the “nations” in the Hebrew) to come to David. That was God’s wish. In spite of all of the sin and all of the apostasy in Judah, only one dynasty ruled from the days of David to Zedekiah. Nevertheless, the prophecy here is that David’s kingdom would be forever.

Because of the permanence of the apostasy in the days of Zedekiah, God made a dispensational move. Since Israel did not conquer the earth, God took the scepter from Israel (through the tribe of Judah) and gave it to the Gentiles to rule the world. It was the hope that once the seventy years of the captivity were over that the transition of the scepter would be given back to Judah (Daniel 9). But as Daniel was coming to the sixty-eighth year of the seventy appointed years of captivity, God explained to him that, “Seventy weeks [of years] are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city” (Dan. 9:24). Not just seventy years but 490 years are appointed for Israel under Gentile powers.

Four hundred eighty-three years passed from the day of the announcement to rebuild the city of Jerusalem to the very day that Christ entered into Jerusalem on the triumphant Sunday. By Acts 1:6 it seems that the disciples believed that all of the prophecy had been fulfilled: “When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus did not deny the fact of a restoration; note the way He answered in verse 7, “It is not for you to know [or discern] the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put [about the kingdom] in his own power [or authority].” The answer was that it was not time for this restoration to take place. Sixty-nine weeks of years had been concluded; but there is a final week yet to be accomplished. We have been waiting two thousand years for that final last week to pass from being prophecy to being history.

Note Jeremiah 27:12, 13:

I spake also to Zedekiah king of Judah [the last king] according to all these words, saying, Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people, and live [and if you do this, you will live]. Why will ye die, thou and thy people, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, as the LORD hath spoken against the nation that will not serve the king of Babylon?

Zedekiah’s reign became the epoch for the transition. At the end of his reign God took the scepter out of Judah’s hand and gave it to Nebuchadnezzar. It is for this reason that Nebuchadnezzar is viewed as the head of gold in Daniel 2. God honored him by making him the first ruler of the “times of the Gentiles”; God granted him the permission, the appointment to rule the world. At this point in history Babylon will be the largest empire that ever existed; each empire thereafter increased in geography (the Medes and the Persians, the Greeks and the Macedonians, and Rome). The power of the Gentiles to conquer and rule the world continued to spread. This power still continues until a final world ruler will encompass literally the entire planet Earth with the scepter.

God used Nebuchadnezzar to judge the world, including judging Israel. Note Ezekiel 21:25:

And, thou, profane wicked prince of Israel [Zedekiah], whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Remove the diadem [take away the symbol of the scepter, the symbol of global rulership], and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low [the Gentile], and abase him that is high [the Jew]. I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come [Christ Jesus, the Messiah] whose right it is [to rule]; and I will give it [the diadem to] him.”

This is a prophecy giving us tremendous insight that the scepter of the Gentiles will not cease until the coming of Jesus Christ to set up His kingdom. This has not happened yet. In Luke 21:24 Christ declared:

And they [the people of Israel] shall fall by the edge of the sword [beginning with Nebuchadnezzar], and shall be led away captive into all nations [Gr., Gentiles]: . . . Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles [the appointed seasons of the nations] be fulfilled.

To this day the Gentiles are ruling the world by divine permission.

The Nation of Israel

The question may be asked, why are the nations of the earth so against Israel? Satan knows the prophecies of Scripture. Although they have not become visible yet, the invisible energy and power behind history as it unfolds declares that God is going to take the scepter away from the Gentiles and give it back to Israel. Satan knows that prophecy, and his plan through the nations is to destroy Israel in order to destroy the prophecies of such a future return. Psalm 2 declares that the nations are against the Lord and His anointed. When this Psalm was penned, they were against the Lord and against His anointed, who was David. But at the Captivity this appointment of rulership was given to the Gentiles, and it continues to this day.

In our day and time, we are beginning to see providence slowly commence the removing of that scepter from the hands of Gentile authority. What epoch will transpire to grab that scepter? It will be the Battle of Armageddon. This is the reason the nations of the earth are against Israel. They are afraid. Just as in the days of Pharaoh in Exodus 1, the nations fear the Jews will become too many, that they will rise and take the kingdom over. The Devil knows the prophecies of the Bible that they (Israel) are to come back. As long as Israel was scattered to the ends of the earth, there was no way for this kingdom to come back. History has told the story repeatedly of the two thousand years of the persecuting, scattering, and killing (genocide) of the Jews in the European countries; now all the countries of the world are out to destroy this small nation.

We understand that God did not allow Israel to be destroyed before the birth of Christ, because that seed had to come from them. Now that Christ has already been manifested, what is the purpose of Israel? Their purpose is bound up in the prophecy that they will rule the world! We have seen in the past two thousand years the prince of this world endeavoring to exterminate them; it is no small miracle that they have even had a seed alive. The nations have kept them in ruins; the nations have kept Canaan in ruins; the nations have controlled Jerusalem. There seemed to have been no hope for them to ever return. Six million of Hitler’s twelve million executions were Jews. He was part of the Devil’s plan to exterminate them before they arose mightily in the earth.

It is amazing that in the period of each of the World Wars of the twentieth century, out of the worst conditions epochal events brought providences to the Jews. On November 2, 1917, right after World War I, a letter was sent by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Walter Rothschild (2nd Baron Rothschild). Baron Rothschild was head of the Jewish League at that time; Balfour’s letter became known as the Balfour Declaration. A brief excerpt declared:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people [that had never been known before], and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of the object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

This Balfour Declaration became incorporated even in the mandate for Palestine. Right after World War I, all of a sudden, a land was to be established for the Jews; this land was Canaan. It is a land that through history has been designated by God in the center of the earth for them. Following the great Holocaust of World War II and its extermination of six million Jews, Providence moved toward the birth of the nation of Israel. The 1917 Balfour Declaration provided for Jews to come back to the land; then in 1947-1948, they became a nation. They had not been known as a nation since the Babylonian Captivity!

Another epoch occurred between June 5 and June 10, six days in 1967. The Six-Day War was fought by Israel against the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, known as the United Arab Republic at that time. Israel did the impossible: they took possession of the land and Jerusalem. Although the United Nations had appointed Tel-Aviv as Israel’s capital, in the Six-Day War Israel claimed Jerusalem as their capital. This scared the Gentile world. It seemed most logical that the heavy-weight champion in that area, the Islamic Arabs should have won. If the war had been extended for even six months or a year, Israel would never have survived. An Almighty God allowed a swift conquest in six days; their enemies were still reeling in shock.

Over the centuries tension has been mounting between Israel and the Gentile world. The Gentiles in their hatred against God believe they cannot allow Israel to take the scepter back. The Gentiles have grown weary of hearing that Israel is the so-called anointed nation versus the Arabic world which declares they are the anointed ones. The centuries have expressed this tension through the Arabic world’s walling up the Eastern Gate, building a mosque over the Holy of holies, and burying the Islamic believers by the thousands right outside the Eastern Gate. They will do anything and everything to stop prophecy.

How do we know the prophecies are true? Because that keystone is seen behind them. Tracing the finger down the arch, prophecies are becoming history. What was invisible is now becoming visible. The nations of the earth do not want that scepter to ever go back to Israel. There will be one to arise who will endeavor, at least on the surface, to settle the commotion, to settle the uneasiness; he will be the Antichrist.

The Antichrist is viewed from two perspectives in prophecy. First, he is seen as the apex of the scepter of the Gentile nations; he will be the first one to literally control the entire world. He will even make a covenant with the Jews presenting himself as their friend. This befriending of Israel appears to occur during the first 3½ years of Daniel’s last week. However, in the last 3½ years, Antichrist will turn against Israel and rise to be the world leader of the remaining nations on the earth. Second, he will bring the culmination of the times of the Gentiles. There will be no other Gentile to rule. The Battle of Armageddon will be the resolve of this time period.

This last week of Daniel stands in prophecy and has not yet become history. According to Daniel 9:24, six things about the Jews and Jerusalem must be accomplished before the end of those seventy weeks of years: 1) to finish the transgression, 2) to make an end of sins, 3) to make reconciliation for iniquity, 4) to bring in everlasting righteousness, 5) to seal up the vision and prophecy, and 6) to anoint the most Holy. These things were not accomplished in the 483 years leading up to the Messiah.

These events will finish the transgression (the apostasy) of the Jews, making an end of Israel’s sins, making reconciliation (or kaphar, the final “atonement”) for iniquity. We call the last 3½ years of Daniel’s last week, Israel’s Day of Atonement. This is when a remnant of the nation of Israel will turn to God and realize they have crucified their Messiah; this will make an end of sins and make atonement for their iniquity. The first three in the listing of Daniel 9:24 will need the troubles. The last three will need the presence of their Messiah. Following their atonement, when Christ will come back to fight the Battle of Armageddon, there will be the ushering in of everlasting righteousness, the sealing up of the vision and prophecy, and the anointing of the most Holy.

Note Zechariah 14:1, 2:

Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations [the Gentiles] against Jerusalem to battle [the final annihilation of the city]; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled [ransacked], and the women ravished [raped to pollute the Jewish line]; and half of the city [Jerusalem] shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people [the remnant; the small part of the remnant] shall not be cut off from the city.

When it appears that it’s over—the genocide of Israel—“then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations [the Gentiles], as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east” (Zech. 14:3, 4).

Conclusion

We will see America turn its back on Israel, as part of all the nations against Israel, to make sure the scepter will never be regained by them again. Yet we know in Zechariah 14, when Jesus comes and fights the Battle of Armageddon, He will then go back to the city of Jerusalem and set up the kingdom. This will be a key throughout the ends of the earth: the Jew has taken over the world. It is not just that Jesus Christ is going to come and rule and reign. But He is a Jew that will take over the kingdom; a Jew will come back and fight for the Jews to get that land back; it will be the Jews who will be restored permanently to their land. He’s a Jew. He’s a Jew, and that is another reason why the Gentile world hates Jesus. But this is His chosen people through Israel.

The Bible tells me to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for that nation. They are in apostasy. They are not Christians; they still are in a posture of rejection of the Messiah, but they are coming back. It does not matter what Washington does nor how other nations in the earth join together in their intense hatred against Israel; it still must be said that Israel is the apple of God’s eye. May God help us in these days to live with a consciousness of these end-time prophecies.

Straightway: A Publication of the Foundations Ministries

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Related Links

The Bible and Prophecy

The Appointment of Israel

Prophecy of the Transition of the Kingdom

The Nation of Israel

Conclusion