The Bible Was Right

[Resource Manager]

The Miracle of the Return

 

It is this wholly improbable and seemingly impossible event which is the final piece of evidence in the marvellous chain of “ the Bible was right” prophecies. The Old Testament had already made plain—plain beyond cavil—that the scattered people would be re-gathered. There is nothing clearer in all the Scriptures than the promises that the Jews would return to their own land. Listen to these wonderful words which ring as clear as a bell about this great news:

 

“For, to, the day is come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers and they shall possess it.” (Jeremiah 30:3)

 

“Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.” (Jeremiah 31:10)

 

“For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all countries and I will bring you into your own land.” (Jeremiah 36:24)

 

“Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, whither they be gone, and gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land.” (Jeremiah 37:21)

 

Let us be quite clear about the import of these verses of Scripture. It is not that someone in the 20th century, having witnessed the return of the Jews to their own land, has scoured the Scriptures looking for verses which might indicate that the Jews would go back to Palestine. On the contrary. These Scriptures have been understood for centuries to mean just that and nothing less. The word was so plain that Bible readers never doubted what they meant. The obstinate fact for those who believed the Scriptures was that Palestine remained a poorly cultivated country dominated by the Turkish power and there was no sign of any change. The promises seemed to be dormant.

 

But God’s word never fails. The Bible had been right, the Bible was right, and the Bible would be right. In other words, the turn of the tide was waiting for the fulfilment of “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled”.

[Resource Manager]

The Tide Turns

 

The turn of the tide came. Towards the end of the 19th century, a new longing was awakened in the heart of some Jews. A little spark of their old nationhood had been kindled and it was fanned into flame. The Zionist movement was formed and in due course it directed its effort to the establishment of a place in Palestine for Jews. Slowly at first, but with a wondrous intensity, the longing for “home” grew in the hearts of thousands of Jews, known as the Jews of the Dispersion, most of whom had never in their lives set foot in Palestine.

 

Finally, a great lift was given to their hopes when, during the first World War, the British Government promised to use its best endeavours to establish in Palestine a national home for the Jews. That was the promise given in the Balfour Declaration.

 

This was the real beginning. The Jews had at last an anchor in their own land. From a few thousands of Jews who were there at the end of the last century, the population grew. It grew by sheer idealism against the restraining hand of the British Mandate. Despite hindrances and hardships, they came back in their hundreds, in their thousands, drawn by an unrestrainable inner yearning, awakened by who knows what, after more than eighteen hundred years of quiescence. The bitter and almost unbelievable persecutions of Nazi Germany increased the great urge and the struggle for survival was added to the almost evangelistic fire of Zionism. Britain struggled hard to maintain some kind of balance between the Palestinian occupants of Palestine and the incoming tide of Jews who were constantly expanding their toehold on the land and working with extraordinary industry to bring fertility back to the neglected and poorly farmed soil.

 

Even the end of the second World War and the revelation that up to six million Jews had died in the concentration camps and by persecution in Nazi Germany and her satellites did not bring freedom of access to Palestine to the Jews who were striving to create nationhood out of annihilation, community out of the ghettoes.

 

In the end the British gave up the struggle to maintain the situation and left the country to find its own solution. Thus, the State of Israel was born in May 1948, and the Bible was proved right once again.

 

The Witness Today

 

There are now about three million Jews in Israel, gathered there by God, though most of them would not acknowledge that God’s hand is in their regathering. They exist as an independent sovereign state for the first time for two thousand five hundred years. Indeed, it was at that time, when they were taken captive to Babylon, that the prophet Daniel had spoken of “the times” that would pass over Israel and the world.

 

But what does this miraculous rebirth of Israel signify? How does it stand in the purpose of God? It is a strange fact that Israel was destroyed as a nation in A.D. 70 because they had rejected Christ and then had refused the glad tidings of the Gospel. They have now returned to Palestine nigh on nineteen hundred years later—still in disbelief of Christ, indeed large parts of the nation are not even believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There has been no change of heart and the present nation of Israel believes in itself and almost only in itself.

 

The Scripture which foretold the end of Gentile times and paved the way for the return of the Jews to their own land also foretold world problems and distress which would accompany the resurgence of the Jews.

[Resource Manager]

Chapter 7

 

WHERE DO YOU STAND?

 

World Problems

 

There has hardly been a time in world history when so many dark and permanent problems have pressed upon mankind without any sign of relief or help. The Middle East is a focus of so much trouble. The advent of Israel has upset the balance of power and fomented an old hatred between Arab and Jew. Even the world powers have aligned themselves according to their attitude to Israel. It is interesting also that the Middle East is the treasury of a large part of the world’s oil. The power of oil has been felt in every nation under the sun and the economies of the world have been seriously affected by the awakening of the Arabs to the stranglehold they could have on world money.

 

It is not merely the dimensions and complexity of the problems that beset the world which are the fulfilment of prophecy, but the fact also that they have appeared at a time when the Jews have returned to their own land and have established their own nation and state. This coming together of events is unique in world history and is totally beyond the capacity of any man to engineer. It is the Bible’s token that the Bible was right! Right all the time and every time!

[Resource Manager]

What Next?

 

What then? What does the Bible offer other than an unbelieving nation returned to their own land after nineteen hundred years and a multiplicity of problems of seemingly insoluble composition? These are but “signs”, signs of the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are the evidence, the irrefutable guarantees that the Lord Jesus Christ will return personally to the earth. No one on earth would have been held as rebellious or foolish not to believe in the second coming of Christ if there had been no sign, no evidence, no witnesses to the truth of the promise. But God does not work like that. In every age men have been able to see proof of the truths of God’s word. In every age God has given abundant proof. It is never the proof that is lacking but, simply, the will to believe it and to accept its consequences.

 

“The Lord God will do nothing but he revealeth his secret to his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7)

 

This is the Scriptural principle, and with it runs a clearly stated second:

 

“Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” (Isaiah 46:9-10)

 

There is no doubt therefore that the Lord Jesus Christ will return to the earth. God has given His Signs. A little consideration will show that it is most beautifully fitting and right that the Lord himself should appear again on earth among men. His return will be the crown to all that has gone before. All the ancient promises will be fulfilled in him. The promised Seed of the Woman, the Deliverer, the Saviour, the Redeemer, the son of Abraham, the son of David, the son of God —the Lord Jesus Christ—will be back on earth again as King of kings and Lord of lords. The memory of his rejection, shame and crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem will be swept away, or remembered only as the means whereby the world which has rejected God, shamed His name and killed His Son will be turned again to acknowledge the sovereignty of God and His merciful over-lordship. Christ will be enthroned in Jerusalem where David was king, not as a human king with all the limitations which that would hold, but immortal, glorious, all powerful, all righteous, reigning over a worldwide kingdom and educating the nations in service to God.

 

This powerful and timely return of Jesus Christ was foretold by the Lord himself in that same prophecy of the downfall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 which promised the reawakening of the nation at the end of Gentile times. This is what the same prophecy said:

 

“Then shall they see the son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, arid lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:27-28)

 

If the Bible has been right thus far, it will surely be right at the end in the coming of Christ. The Lord Jesus himself will appear on earth as the final evidence of God’s purposes and supremacy.

[Resource Manager]

The Second Coming and Ourselves

 

The glorious second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is the theme of a host of Scriptures. It is the essential and wonderful complement to the first coming in which our redemption was wrought by the wondrous life, submissive death and glorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

“The Bible was right”, is not simply a logical and incontrovertible proof of the truth of Scripture. It is certainly that, but it is more. When the Bible is right, God is right. Indeed, it is because God is right that the Bible, His inspired word, must be right.

 

When we know that God is right, we can— nay, we must—take careful note of the consequences of that understanding. If God has been right in the fulfilment of His word through millennia of time we can be absolutely sure that He will also fulfil all that He has said concerning His love and His care for us.

 

It was God’s word that foretold the rise and fall of nations and the history of the Jews. It was God’s word which foretold in graphic detail the work of redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ, redemption wrought for us.

 

Because the word of God has proven true in these respects, so Jesus Christ the Son of God as our Saviour is true also. Indeed, he is called the Way, the Truth and the Life. All that God has said concerning him has been confirmed and to those who accept him and his teaching in a life of willing discipleship, forgiveness of sins and eternal life are promised.

 

Where do you stand in relation to Christ? He is the pivot of the world, the essence of the promises of God, the meaning behind all creation, the only hope for man and men. Where do you stand? There is no neutral position for those who know about him. His love and longing for us are clear as they were for Jerusalem. Remember—

 

“How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings ...”?

 

There is no human past, however dark, which God will not forgive; no present life, however wayward, that he cannot change for the willing minded. Repentance brings forgiveness.

Discipleship brings hope of that glorious future planned for the sons of God when all the promises of God will be fulfilled.

 

Those promises are the present delight and peace of mind of those who become the servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. For them life has new meaning and an undying hope. It is then that the Bible is right for you.

 

The world and its history have meaning and purpose. No longer are they a fortuitous unfolding of events. Instead history is being providentially moulded so that the intertwined promises of God, culminating in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, will be realised by the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth when the Lord Jesus Christ returns and is enthroned in Jerusalem.

 

And, if you are among those who, knowing these things to be true, change their allegiance from man and self to Christ and to God in accordance with the simple commands given in the Scripture, you will inherit eternal life with Christ at his return. This is a wonderful hope and a prospect beyond anything our minds could otherwise contemplate. To be freed from the limitations of mortality and delivered from death into sinless joy in fellowship with God for ever is the prospect of inheritance for the saints of God in whatever age they have lived. At the return of Christ all who have known and understood this hope, with the opportunity and responsibility it brings, both the living and the dead, will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. The faithful will receive the gift of immortality, countless and endless and expanding joys; the unfaithful and unworthy will learn of their folly and self-will in which they have dishonoured Christ and his Father and they will pass away from the judgment seat of Christ, the only hope of life, into their chosen destiny, eternal oblivion.

 

At which side of Christ do you wish to stand when he returns? On his right among the faithful? or on his left among those who will go into outer darkness with wailing and gnashing of teeth? Surely there is only one sensible choice for those who know beyond all reasonable doubt that the Bible is right.

 

HARRY TENNANT

 

TheBibleWasRight.pdf