There’s confusion today regarding the last days and the role Israel is said to play. I hope the following will clear up some of the mischaracterizations of Israel and the last days. Are we to believe that after 2000 years a single last-days generation of Jews living in Israel will be slaughtered during soon to occur Great Tribulation based on a reading of Zechariah 13:7-9?
“It will come about in all the land,” Declares the LORD,
“That two parts in it will be cut off and perish;
But the third will be left in it.
“And I will bring the third part through the fire,
Refine them as silver is refined,
And test them as gold is tested.
They will call on My name,
And I will answer them;
I will say, ‘They are My people,’
And they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’”
I watched a video presentation by Jonathan Cahn on the signs of the times where he maintains that Israel becoming a nation again in 1948 is the key end-time sign. Christians get excited about this. They believe “the rapture” is near. It’s not. Israel’s national status is not an end-time sign. Israel is no different from any other nation. Prophetic speculators like Cahn and recently Max Lucado do not explain the dark side of their version of Israel’s return to the land in 1948 as THE end-time “super sign.” Here’s what most Christians are not hearing even though the information is readily available.
On the September 18, 1991, edition of the “700 Club,” Sid Roth, host of “Messianic Vision,” stated that “two-thirds of the Jewish people [living in Israel] will be exterminated” during a future Great Tribulation. He bases this view on Zechariah 13:8-9.
Pat Robertson asked Roth: “You don’t foresee some kind of persecution against Jews in America, do you?” Roth responded: “Unfortunately, I believe God foresees this.” Roth believes that the end (pre-tribulational rapture) is near. Roth believes that Jews are destined to suffer based on a futurized interpretation of Zechariah 13:8-9.[1] He claims that today’s anti-Semitism is a prelude to an inevitable future Jewish tribulation. The reality of violent acts against Jews is all part of Israel’s prophetic history based on the parenthesis view that is fundamental to dispensational premillennialism.
The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance
Jet planes … missiles … and atomic weapons. You will search in vain in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and you will not find them. You will, however, find horses, bows and arrows, shields, clubs, and chariots. If the Gog and Magog prophecy was written for a time more than 2500 years in the future from Ezekiel’s day, why didn’t God describe the battle in terms that we could relate to and understand? Why confuse Ezekiel’s first readers and us?
Buy NowHal Lindsey described the judgment against Israel in AD 70 as a “picnic” compared to a super-holocaust that will lead to the slaughter of two-thirds of the Jews living in Israel.[2]
Kay Arthur, another dispensational author, has stated publicly that what lies ahead for Israel will make Hitler’s Holocaust look like “a Sunday school picnic.” In her novel, Israel My Beloved, the heroine is standing before a future scene where the Valley of Jehoshaphat is littered with the dead based on her understanding of Zechariah 13:8-9 that only a third of Israel will survive “the fire just as Zechariah promised”[3] during the future Great Tribulation will Israel is the target of God’s wrath:
“Auschwitz was nothing compared to this.[4]. . . I’ve watched as men, women, and children writhe in agony—an agony beyond the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the pogroms. Beyond the horrors of Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz—all the death camps combined. . . . We have experienced an agony beyond any horror the human mind can envision . . . beyond even Hitler.”[5]
Let’s not forget Jack Van Impe’s book Israel’s Final Holocaust where he writes that when the prophecy clock starts ticking again after the “rapture,” it “will be traumatic days for Israel. Just when peace seems to have come, it will be taken from her and she will be plunged into another bloody persecution, … a devastating explosion of persecution and misery for Israel….”[6] So God is just about to redeem a single generation of Jews after nearly 2000 years and—wait for it—God’s going to let the devil and his antichrist loose to kill millions of Jews, the “apple of God’s eye”?
Consider what dispensational author Thomas Ice wrote in his article “What do you do with a future National Israel in the Bible?” Ice contends “that Old Testament promises made to national Israel will literally be fulfilled in the future. This means the Bible teaches that God will return the Jews to their land before the tribulation begins (Isa. 11:11-12:6; Ezek. 20:33-44; 22:17-22; Zeph. 2:1-3). This has been accomplished and the stage is set as a result of the current existence of the modern state of Israel.” Then he goes on to write the following:
The Bible also indicates that before Israel enters into her time of national blessing she must first pass through the fire of the tribulation (Deut. 4:30; Jer. 30:5-9; Dan. 12:1; Zeph. 1:14-18). Even though the horrors of the Holocaust under Hitler were of an unimaginable magnitude, the Bible teaches that a time of even greater trial awaits Israel during the tribulation. Anti-Semitism will reach new heights, this time global in scope, in which two-thirds of world Jewry will be killed (Zech. 13:7-9; Rev. 12).Through this time God will protect His remnant so that before His second advent “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:36).
It’s “all that’s left of Israel [that] will be saved.” God finally determines to “save Israel” but He lets the antichrist loose on them and allows him to slaughter two-thirds of the Jews living in Israel. This is madness!
In his book Blow the Trumpet in Zion, Richard Booker writes:
What is this terrible tribulation that awaits the Jews? Moses said it would take place in the “latter days.” It is the last seven years of this age just prior to the coming of Messiah Jesus to earth. The Bible says this will be a time of suffering such as the world has never known.
*****
The Antichrist will march his troops into Israel and for a short period of time will occupy Jerusalem. Every nation will support his retaliation against Israel for their disturbing world peace. The Antichrist will kill two-thirds of all the Jews. This could mean that up to ten million Jews could be killed. The Antichrist will plunder the beloved city of Jerusalem, and one-half of the citizens will be forced into exile.[7]
In a December 2, 1984, sermon, the late Jerry Falwell said the following: “Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra.”
Charles Ryrie writes in his book The Best is Yet to Come that during this post-rapture period Israel will undergo “the worst bloodbath in Jewish history.”[8] The book’s title doesn’t seem appropriate considering that during this period of time most of the Jews will die!
Ten Popular Prophecy Myths Exposed and Answered
Millions of books have been sold proclaiming countless false prophecies. Many Christians are beginning to take a second look at the biblical prophetic record. A seismic shift in biblical eschatology is taking place around the world because Christians, some for the first time, are willing to challenge what they have been taught based on what the Bible actually says. Gary DeMar has taken on the task of exposing some of the popular myths foisted upon the public by prophetic speculators.
Buy NowJohn Walvoord follows a similar line of argument: “Israel is destined to have a particular time of suffering which will eclipse any thing that it has known in the past…. [T]he people of Israel … are placing themselves within the vortex of this future whirlwind which will destroy the majority of those living in the land of Palestine.”[9]
Arnold Fruchtenbaum states that during the Great Tribulation “Israel will suffer tremendous persecution (Matthew 24:15-28; Revelation 12:1-17). As a result of this persecution of the Jewish people, two-thirds are going to be killed.”[10]
Dr. Paige Patterson, who served as president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1992 to 2003, and as president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from 1998 to 2000, stated the following in a radio debate I had with him some years ago.
The present state of Israel is not the final form. The present state of Israel will be lost, eventually, and Israel will be run out of the land again, only to return when they accept the Messiah as Savior.[11]
Given Patterson’s end-time scenario, if Israel finds herself in a war with her neighbors, should Christians support Israel and thereby interfere with God’s plan for Israel? Not only are today’s prophecy pundits wrong in the way they interpret Scripture, but their conclusions are dangerous.
[1] Zechariah described a future holocaust. It was fulfilled in AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem and the slaughter of 1,100,000 Jews at the hands of the Romans. Jesus predicted it and described a way it could be escaped (Matt. 24:15-21). No one I know is teaching this from the dispensational side.
[2] Hal Lindsey, The Road to Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 220.
[3] Kay Arthur, Israel, My Beloved: A Novel (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1996), 433
[4] Arthur, Israel, My Beloved, 431.
[5] Arthur, Israel, My Beloved, 434.
[6] Jack Van Impe with Roger F. Campbell, Israel’s Final Holocaust (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979), 37.
[7] Richard Booker, Blow the Trumpet in Zion (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 1985), 112, 118.
[8] Charles C. Ryrie, The Best is Yet to Come (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1981), 86.
[9] John F. Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1962), 107, 113. Emphasis added.
[10] Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, “The Little Apocalypse of Zechariah,” The End Times Controversy: The Second Coming Under Attack, eds. Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2003), 262.
[11] Stated on Dallas, Texas, radio program (KCBI) in a debate with me on May 15, 1991.