I became a Christian at age 12, in a Revival meeting and have tried to serve our Lord ever since. Prophecy was a common subject in those days, especially by evangelists. All Fundamental, Bible believing preachers spoke often of the Second Coming of Christ and the prophecies of things which would precede His Return, the Rapture, Tribulation Period and Millennial Kingdom. The prophecy they quoted which seemed, at the time, to be an impossibility, was the Regathering of the Jews and Reestablishment of a Jewish nation of Israel, where it had once been, in the midst of their worst enemies. Most Christians believed it, but could not conceive of it happening. Everyone knew of the dispersion of the Jews by the Roman Empire soon after Jesus was crucified, and the end of the Jewish nation. It had been given to the Philistines by the Roman Emperor. Then there had been no Jewish nation for nearly 2000 years and they had been persecuted and scattered into every nation on earth. However, they had maintained their Jewish blood line by a strict adherence to their faith and custom of marrying only Jewish men and women. Miraculously the Jewish people, while scattered into every nation, remained separate from Gentiles as a pure nationality without a nation. What possible miracle could God produce which would force the world, especially the Muslim world, to relent to a new nation of Israel being carved out of lands the Philistines had occupied for almost 2000 years? And, how could the first returning Jews survive there long enough to build a nation? The answer is, the Nazi Holocaust and the Muslims having sided with Germany and Italy in World War 2. When the world saw what the Nazis had done to 6 million Jews in the ovens of the Holocaust, at that moment in time, a temporary sympathy, by the world, for the Jews thought justice required the Jews be given a new homeland where it once had been. That could not have happened at any other moment in history, before or after. The world would not have agreed to it before that moment and the Muslims, growing stronger and richer due to the discovery of oil, would not have allowed it after that moment. It happened May 14,1948. I was a 17 year old Marine in Boot Camp on that date. Israel again had a homeland.
Why did their dispersion end and a restored Israel begin? Obviously God had fulfilled his judgment upon his people, ending with the Nazi Holocaust. The Jews had been without a nation 2000 years, since God's removal of them from the land He had given them in Genesis 12:1-7. They had occupied the land for 2000 years and then had lost it for another 2000 years because of their denial of their Messiah, Christ and demand that he be crucified by the Romans. This also had been prophesied.....
"... The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet." Psm. 22:16
The Jews' continual disobedience of the Lord's commands and their rejection of their prophesied Messiah, brought about God's scattering them, by the hand of Rome, "into all the kingdoms of earth."
"...I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth." Jer.34:17.
This same prophet also prophesied that after a long dispersion into all the earth, the scattering would end and God would regather them to Jerusalem and and restore their nation.....
"And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive." Jer. 29:14.
To confirm what I said earlier about this prophecy being preached many years before its fulfillment in May of 1948, I will use a book entitled Bible Readings For The Home Circle copyrighted in 1914, 34 years before its fulfillment in 1948. In a section of the book titled, The Gathering Of Israel, the above verse is referenced.
That section is also introduced with this verse...
Isa.11:11-12. "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."
So the Jews now have their restored nation, They are home and the balance of history will unfold in and around that nation after the fulfillment of The Church age (Rev.3:22), and the Rapture (Rev.4:1), and then the Tribulation (Rev.4:5) through the rest of the book of The Revelation, all of which is called "Jacob's trouble" in....
Jer.30:7 "Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jabob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it."
Yes, the Jews will "be saved" during the Tribulation, almost as a nation, or all that is left of it, after seven years of persecution and death under the Antichrist. The Tribulation is "Jabob's trouble", to draw them to Christ .... not Christian's punishment... Not Christian's trouble. We will be gone, raptured.
"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." Zech.12:10.
