place in A.D. 70 when Titus and the Roman Tenth Legion destroyed Judah and Jerusalem and drove the survivors into exile. This dispersion lasted until it began to be reversed with the rebirth of the state of Israel in June 1948.
PREDICTIONS OF ISRAELâS SECOND AND FINAL RESTORATION
These predictions cut to the heart of the current Arab-Israeli Conflict. They show that the âTitle Deed to the land of Israelâ was never revoked. It is still binding on the basis of the divine oath by which it was originally given. The Muslims absolutely reject this. So their current attempts to drive Israel out of the Holy Land are in direct defiance of God.
Moses predicts the following at the end of the same message that he made the above predictions:
When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you andbring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. 21
It is important to note that God does not say âifâ but âwhenâ throughout this prediction. This is because God views the repentance as certain, since He will cause it to happen. It is also very clear that God addresses this promise to the believing remnant of the physical descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacobânot to some allegorical offsprings in the church.
The prophet Ezekiel also speaks of this final restoration from the worldwide Roman dispersion:
This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant.
Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you
. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, both those who are older than you and those who are younger. I will give them to you as daughters, but not on the basis of my covenant with you. So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the LORD. Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign LORD. 22
Note that God anticipated that Israel would despise His oath and break the Mosaic covenant. He warns that He will discipline them, as they deserve. Yet despite all they will do, He still promises that He will fulfill to them the covenant made with their fathers.
There is no excuse for those who call themselves Christian to deny the clear, simple, literal statements of Godâs Word about the Israelitesâ covenant rights. The traditional prophetic view ofmany mainline churches that is based on unwarranted allegorical interpretations of these passages has caused great chaos and suffering to the descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
David Levi and Isaac Da Costa, who were Christian Biblical scholars of the nineteenth century, clearly point out a great inconsistency in the interpretation of Biblical prophecy concerning the nation of Israel by theological systems such as Preterism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism. âWhat can be more absurd,â they write, âthan to explain the prophecies, which foretell the calamity to befall the Jews, in a literal sense, and then those, which bespeak their future blessing, in a mystical and spiritual sense?â 23
A SPECIFIC PREDICTION OF FINAL