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Question About Prophecy
George
L. Faull
Dear Brother
Faull,
I have a
question concerning the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies.
I recently
read an explanation of Ezekiel 37 saying that it promises the restoration of
the Jews from captivity, but that it also promises some future
restoration of
the supposed Jews again to the promised land. I believe this restoration was a
"one time" event and having been fulfilled, there is no reason to
expect a second fulfillment of this prophecy.
What is giving
me trouble (in my mind) is Deuteronomy chapter 28. That passage was fulfilled when the Jews went into the Babylonian
captivity and was also fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem.
Answer:
Good thinking. However, the Deuteronomy passage is a warning of
what He would do every time His people sinned. It is just blessings and
cursings. It is just that the Romans fulfilled the warnings in more detail than
the Babylonians. Rome was the eagle (their emblem), and they did sell them to
the whole world, and specifically into Egypt, and no one wanted to buy the last
ten thousand. I do not see Deuteronomy
28 as a specific prophecy any more than "If you disobey me. I will
curse you, and you will suffer for what you have done.
Ezekiel is a different thing. It is a prophecy that North and South will be
brought back together, and david would be raised up to reign over them. Is this
David? No, he is not literal. The land to which the fathers looked was not
Jerusalem. It never became the capitol until David's time. It was a wicked
Jebusite city in the days of the fathers. For what land did they look?
Hebrews 11:10, 14-16, "10 For he looked for a city which hath
foundations, whose Builder and Maker is
God. 14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a
country. 15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that [country] from whence
they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. 16 But now they desire a better [country], that is, an
heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city."
They did come back after the
captivity, but the temple of Zerubbabel was only a shadow compared to the old
temple. But when Christ our David came to rule in His spiritual temple, the
Church, the true Israel of God possesses the Spirit."
Are
the agnostic and atheistic Zionists possessed of the Spirit of God? Remember,
if this is a literal restoration of Israel to literal Palestine, then there is
a literal restored temple and a literal sacrificial system in a literal
Jerusalem, that will literally last forever, and literal David will be its
king. What proves too much, proves nothing.