“I will take you from among the nations, gather you of all the countries and bring you into your own land.” That’s what Ezekiel said. Wow! First, there’s this physical restoration of Israel. Then He says, “Then, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will take the heart of…” How can you get a new heart? I’ll tell you how. Read Jeremiah 31. The Lord said in verses 30 and 31, He said, “I will give you a New Testament, new covenant, and it will no longer be written on paper. It will be written on the plates of your heart.”
Your heart will change, and the word will be already on it. How? Only when you believe in Christ, the New Testament, new covenant. “I will take that heart of stone out of your chest, give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and you will keep My judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You shall also be my people and I will be your God.” So God began over the last 70 years, the physical restoration of Israel. It’s called aliyah in Hebrew, “to ascend, to go up to the house of the Lord.” Aliyah is going up. The Lord came down upon the mountain, maybe because Moses went up to get the law.
But Micah said, “Come up, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of God of Jacob.” So God is bringing the Jews back to the land. Did you know that there’s a new report that shows that a greater number of Jews are making aliyah? It means that we are closer to seeing Israel receive a new heart. Because first, they need to be restored physically to the land, and then they will be restored spiritually. He’s bringing the Jews, the Jewish people, back from the ends of the earth. Not just from one place, not just from Babylon. This time, from the four corners of the world.
It is quite curious, in light of all we see today, that people still believe that the modern nation of Israel is not the Israel of the Bible. Yet, there being a modern nation of Israel is one of the most consistent prophecies of the Old Testament. Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Amos all wrote of it, and yet the number of people who deny it continues to grow.
Jeremiah 31:37
Thus says the LORD: “If heaven above can be measured, And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the LORD.”
Obviously heaven cannot be measured nor the foundations of the earth searched out. The Lord hung the earth on nothing (Job 26:7) and measures the heavens with the span of His hand. What this can mean if it is not literal is anyone’s guess.
We see the return of physical Israel to their God-given homeland today. Yet, we see them there largely in unbelief that their Messiah has come in the person of Yeshua, Jesus of Nazareth. That can only mean the spiritual birth of the Jews is yet future when God takes their hearts of stone and gives them a heart of flesh.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
We might say that what the church has experienced for some 2000 years, the Jews who survive the Tribulation will experience also. They will all know the Lord, His word will be in their hearts, and their sins remembered no more.
The Jews are being regathered physically today right before our eyes. That means their renewal spiritually must not be too far off! We also need to remember that before the 70th week of Daniel begins, the church age has to come to an end.
Soon and very soon we are going to see the King, and not long after that, all Israel is going to see Him too!
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus,