Israel's In The News Again, So...

[Tyson]

we can expect "end times" biblists to wax orgasmic over recent events. No doubt you will hear many of them talking about Israel's miraculous restoration in 1948 and that it was predicted in the Bible, thus reasoning the Bible is inspired by biblegod.

 

Well a funny thing happened on the way to this conclusion. The bible does NOT predict any such return, at least not in 1948. If one takes the time to even notice, it should come as more than surprising that the New Testament is mum on the so-called prophecy of Israel's 1948 restoration. In fact, check any of the post-exilic prophets like Haggai and Malachi and you will also find a dearth of information on this so-called prophecy. Why? Well it is clearly evident that that only biblical authors who predicted any such thing are those who lived BEFORE and DURING the Babylonian exile (2nd Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, etc). The return they envisoned and was speaking of was the one they were privy to or foresaw in he near future, not some return 2,500 years down the road.

 

There was no need for the prophets AFTER the exile to predict any such thing because the Jews were already back in their homeland (well some of them) so it stands to reason that by the New Testament times there was still no reason to predict any future return because the Jews were still inhabiting Judea/Galilee.

 

Now after the destruction of the Jewish temple in A.D 70 and the subsequent scattering of Jews then and later in 135 A.D, there arose the notion that the predictions by the pre-exilic prophets pertained to yet another time in the future as opposed to the idea that such "prophecies" were already fulfilled with the return of he Jews in 539 B.C under decree of king Cyrus of Persia.