Prophetic Proof of Purchase 003

Shalom, this is Yuval Shomron with another Prophetic Proof of Purchase. God has given the land of Israel to his chosen people. He is bringing them back from afar, as we see in JER 31:6-9 "For there shall be a day when watchmen On the hills of Ephraim shall call out, 'Arise, and let us go up to Zion, To the Lord our God.'" For thus says the Lord, "Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chiefs of the nations; Proclaim, give praise, and say, 'O Lord, save Thy people, the remnant of Israel.' "Behold, I am bringing them from the north country, And I will gather them from the remote parts of the earth, Among them the blind and the lame, The woman with child and she who is in labor with child, together; A great company, they shall return here. "With weeping they shall come, and by supplication I will lead them; I will make them walk by streams of waters, on a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I am a father to Israel, And Ephraim is My first-born."

Replacement theologians will tell you this scripture was fulfilled when Israel returned from the Babylonian exile. Well, there are some major problems with that theory.

First of all, verse seven speaks of the “remnant of Israel”. The Babylonian exile included a majority of the people of Israel, not a remnant. On the other hand, the holocaust saw the destruction of the majority of Jewish populations in almost every country it affected. Only a remnant returned.

Verse 8 speaks of returning from the North Country. Babylon is due east. In fact, during the time of Jeremiah’s prophecy, few Jews had strayed farther north than Phoenicia, or modern day Lebanon. After World War II, the Jewish people began to return from Europe, Russia, and North America, and indeed, the remotest parts of the Earth, which were not even populated until nearly 1500 years after the return from Babylon.

When we read of a “great company”, three specific events come to mind. Operation “Magic Carpet” in the early 1950’s, when tens of thousands of Jews returned from Yemen, Morocco, and other nearby Arab countries, “Operations Moses and Solomon” in the 1980’s and 90’s which ferried some 22,000 Ethiopian Jews back to Israel in miraculous air lifts, and of course the unprecedented immigration of nearly half a million Jews from the former Soviet Union, who returned within 2 years of the fall of the “Iron Curtain.”

Verse 9 mentions the weeping, which accompanied many of the remnant’s return in our days. Jeremiah was being particularly prophetic when he mentioned a “straight path without stumbling”. Considering the geography and terrain of the Diaspora, this journey could only be accomplished by jet planes.

As an interesting side note, the Hebrew word for “watchmen” in verse 6 is “notsrim”, the modern Hebrew word for “Christians”. Are you watching and praying for Israel? Then YOU are helping to fulfill prophecy.

This is Yuval Shomron in Jerusalem.