Today, is the 71^st birthday of the modern State of Israel.

 

Last year, to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of this joyous occasion—President Donald Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem. In doing this, the United States of America officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel!  The rebirth—or more precisely the ‘resurrection’ of the nation of Israel was prophesied in the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel chapter 37.

 

In this chapter, God is prophesying that Israel will become a nation again in the last days.

 

Ezekiel 37:12–14 (NKJV) Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves. I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it,” says the Lord.’ ”

 

God promised the Jewish people, who had been scattered from their land, that He would raise the nation from “the dead” (v.1-11) by bringing the Jewish people back to the land He had given them and that they would become a nation once again—in the last days.

 

“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; and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they ever be divided into two kingdoms again.

 

This prophecy has already been partially fulfilled (it will be completely fulfilled when Messiah reigns from Jerusalem over the earth during the Millennial Kingdom).

 

On May 14^th, 1948 Israel was ‘raised from the dead’ after 1900 years by declaring itself a nation.  When Israel was to become a nation again, God had prophesied that the city of Jerusalem would become a major problem for the international community leading up to an invasion of Israel.

 

And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.

 

The U.N. spends 40% of its time on what to do about Jerusalem. The Muslim nations are irate that Israel is in control of Jerusalem (and went ‘ballistic’ when the U.S. moved its embassy to Jerusalem officially recognizing it as the capital of Israel).

 

To delegitimize Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its sacred city, the Muslim nations of the world call it their sacred city—even though it is never mentioned in the Koran.  For over a thousand years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital of Israel and has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity.

 

Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital—and Arab leaders never even came to visit it!   

 

Jews pray facing Jerusalem—Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.  They claim that Israel has stolen that land from the poor Palestinian people—they call the Jewish presence there an illegal “occupation” and they have vowed to “liberate” Palestine.  But the truth is there has never been a Palestinian people, nation, language, culture, or religion.

 

The claim of descent from a Palestinian people who lived for thousands of years in a land called Palestine is pure historical revisionism—it is a lie!

 

That land was Canaan, inhabited by Canaanites, whom God destroyed because of their wickedness.  Canaan became the Promised Land—the land that God gave to Abraham and his descendants, the Jewish people.

 

Genesis 17:8 (NKJV) “…I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

 

Those who call themselves Palestinians today are Arabs by birth, language, culture and religion—and are close relatives to Arabs in the surrounding countries from where most of them came attracted by Israel’s prosperity.

 

In 70 A.D. the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans and most of the Jewish people were either killed or scattered from their land.

 

In A.D. 130, the Romans rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city with a temple to Jupiter where the Jewish temple had stood—this provoked the Jewish people living in the land to rebellion and roughly 500,000 Jews were killed and thousands more were sold into slavery.

 

The Romans angrily renamed Israel “Syria Palestina” after Israel’s ancient enemies the Philistines—and at that point everyone living there, both Jews and Arabs, became “Palestinians”.

 

During WWII, the British Army had a Palestinian Brigade made up entirely of Jewish volunteers. The Palestinian Symphony Orchestra was an all-Jewish orchestra, and The Palestinian Post was an all-Jewish newspaper.

 

However, God had not ‘forgotten’ His promises to His people, and His prophecies for them and their land and in November of 1917 it began to be fulfilled with The Balfour Declaration.

 

The Balfour Declaration said that the British government (the most powerful nation in the world at that time) endorsed the establishment of a homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people.  The Jewish people were very excited at the prospect of having a nation again in their ancient homeland.

 

However the British government dragged its feet and in May of 1939 the British government altered its policy in a White Paper recommending a limit of 75,000 further Jewish immigrants to the land with a total end of Jewish immigration by 1944—unless the resident Palestinian Arabs of the region consented to further Jewish immigration (they had to know there was no way the Arabs living in the land would ever agree to that!).

 

Zionists condemned the new policy, accusing Britain of favoring the Arabs.

 

After that—the British Empire began to decline, and Britain went from superpower status to a relatively insignificant country.  We see the same thing with Germany after its defeat in WWII and how it declined—which I and many other believe was because of the way it treated the Jewish people.

 

This was in fulfillment of the promise that God made to Abraham and his descendants in Genesis 12—

 

I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

 

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the executive head of the Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of the Jewish state—and the modern State of Israel was born!

 

The next day five Muslim nations attacked Israel in an effort to destroy the newborn Jewish State—these included Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.  The fact that Israel won this war, later called “The War of Liberation”, was an absolute miracle of God! (Google-“miracles associated with the War of Liberation”)

 

In April of 1949 the Israel-Transjordan Armistice Agreement was signed officially dividing control of Jerusalem between Israel and Jordan—the Jordanians occupied East Jerusalem, while the Jews maintained control over the West part of the city.

 

So, Jerusalem was still partially being controlled by Gentiles—but then came 1967 and the Six-Day War.  In 1967, Israel, once again forced to fight overwhelming odds for its very survival, took on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a short war that was fought from June 5th thru the 10th.

 

Israel won a decisive victory resulting in the capture of the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, Old City of Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.  At this point Jerusalem was finally and firmly back under Jewish control for the first time in 1900 years!  And yet—the Arabs living in Israel still call themselves Palestinians and claim it as their homeland.

 

The Muslim nations still refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist—and there is not an Arab map still to this day that shows the nation of Israel!

 

The Muslim nations of the world have vowed to destroy Israel in the name of Allah—and so the Muslim world has been gearing up for a holy war against Israel for a long time now.  The Bible predicts that in the end times, Israel will be attacked by a confederation of enemy nations—mostly made up of Muslim nations (Ezekiel 38 & 39).

 

Those of you who have been keeping up on the Middle-East know that the scenario the Bible predicted over 2500 years ago is being fulfilled in our day—in other words the right nations are coming together in a confederacy against Israel.

 

This will lead eventually to the rapture of the Church, the coming of the Antichrist and finally to the return of Jesus Christ to the planet earth to establish His Kingdom!  Things are certainly getting exciting if you’re a child of God living in these days!

 

As Jesus said, “When you see these things beginning to happen—look up for your redemption is getting close!” (Luke 21:28)