Julia Fisher comments on the fulfillment of prophecy

Julia Fisher

The future...what does it hold? Unless so many people were fascinated by this subject, why else would newspapers and magazines publish zodiacs? But how true are they? Who really knows what your future holds? Is your destiny already determined? If so by whom or by what?

The Bible has a lot to say about the future. It's full of prophecy. But how can we trust its reliability? One sure way is to see whether or not prophecy that has been fulfilled to date is accurate. For example, Isaiah who lived 700 BC, accurately describes the Messiah (chapter 53). Micah, who prophesied sometime between 750 and 686 BC, tells us that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (chapter 5). How did he know that?

Let us assume that the Bible is inspired by God and Isaiah and Micah were both believers in God and the Holy Spirit of God inspired them to write these prophecies. God claims to be the truth. He therefore cannot lie. Jesus was once asked by His disciples about the end of history. He told them to look at the signs in just the same way we look at a red sky at night and know that the following day the weather will be settled. So what are the signs we can be looking out for?

Look at the nation of Israel. In 1948 Israel became a sovereign state once again after 2000 years of being cast out of the land. In AD 70, the Romans sacked Jerusalem, the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people fled and ended up living all over the world. However, 'mysteriously', Jewish people started moving back to Palestine, as it was then called - a name given to the land of Israel by the Romans incidentally, who wanted to wipe all mention of Israel and the Jews from the face of the earth - in significant numbers just over a hundred years ago. These numbers increased dramatically just prior to the second World War and of course during the war as the Nazi threat made Europe unsafe for all Jewish people. After the Holocaust, the need for a safe homeland for the Jewish people became of paramount importance and Israel was dramatically reborn...just as the Bible predicted many times in the Old Testament, for example by Jeremiah (who prophesied between 626 BC and 586) in chapters 30 and 31; not to mention the accuracy of Isaiah's prophecy when he wrote, 'Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment?' (Isaiah 66:8), which is exactly how Israel came into being in 1948.

But why has God restored Israel? There has to be a reason. At present, a superficial glance at this tiny nation, surrounded as it is by hostile Arab nations, reveals frequent trouble and much internal political corruption. However, there is something going on in Israel that is defying the politics of the region. It's true, you have to look hard to find it, but the signs are there.

What is God doing today? One place to find the answer to this question is in what He told us between 593 and 571 BC through the prophet Ezekiel when he wrote, 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes. For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people and I will be your God.'

We conclude from this prophecy, and others like it, that God has allowed Israel to rise from the ashes for the honour of His name and for the sake of the nations - for our sake; so that we can be sure that He exists and that His word is true and can be trusted.
I have visited Israel many times over the past ten years and can testify to what I have seen; today there are over 10,000 Jewish believers in Jesus (they call Him Yeshua) living in Israel - ten years ago there were only a few hundred. There are many Arab Christians living in Israel too. And what is perhaps even more amazing is the way these two groups are increasingly being reconciled despite the politics of the region. I have written extensively about this reconciliation.

If you are serious about knowing God, then look at what the Bible has to say about the rise of Israel. It's an amazing story...it was accurately predicted hundreds of years ago. We are living in amazing days when Biblical prophecy is being fulfilled before our eyes. It's one of the signs of the times in which we live.