Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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The One True Church
Chapter 19 – “The Last Days” and Modern Israel
What does modern Israel have to do with biblical prophecy? Nothing.
All Bible prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The fundamental reason some people think that modern Israel is part of God’s plan is that they don’t believe Jesus came again when He said He would. Since they don’t believe that the Second Coming has happened yet, they grasp at straws trying to figure out and explain how God’s prophecies of the Second Coming can be fulfilled in the future. They’re never going to figure it out and they’re never going to be proven right. Believing Jesus is the only way out of their dilemma. And that means believing His prophecies of the Second Coming.
“The last days” described in the Bible were not the last days of the world. They were the last days of ancient Israel – the Israel that God began with Abraham and concluded with Jesus of Nazareth. The end of one age would be the beginning of many more.
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
Matthew 28:20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Ephesians 2:7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
In the passage from Matthew above, Jesus is found exhorting His apostles during the forty days after His resurrection but before His ascension to the right hand of God. When He says “the end of the age,” He’s using an expression they had heard Him use before (Matthew 13:39, 40, 49; 24:3) – a concept invoked multiple times in the book of the prophet Daniel, particularly in its last verse.
Daniel 12:13 But as for you, go your way to the end; then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age.”
The “end of the age” Daniel and Jesus were talking about was not the end of the world, but rather the end of Israel…which would be the beginning of many ages in Christ. This is the promise of Ephesians 2:7.
Israel existed to produce Christ. Once Christ was produced, Israel would no longer be needed. And Christ’s kingdom would be eternal. But in between Christ’s resurrection and the coming of the kingdom there would be spiritual Israel and physical Israel. Both would be obsolete for God’s purposes when the kingdom came. Israel had served its purpose in the redemptive plan of God.
How can modern Israel be an instrument of Christ? It proclaims itself as a secular, democratic nation – not a religious one. There are religious Jews among its citizenry, but they comprise only a minority. Moreover, these religious Jews exclude from their ranks any fellow Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah. Thus Jewishness in modern Israel is a matter of ethnicity – not relationship with God.
Given all these realities, how can modern Israel be considered an expression of “the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7 above)?
Neither the Bible nor modern history support the idea that modern Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. The last days of the Israel of God were long ago.
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