What would it take … really?

Ezekiel 36:24

For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land.

Jeremiah 23

7: “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when they will no longer say, 'As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,'

8: but, 'As the LORD lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them.' Then they will live on their own soil.”

The move of God to bring the Jewish people back home to the Land of Israel has many aspects in common with the Kingdom of God. As with the Kingdom of God, the insight to follow God's hand in returning to the Land is a work of the Spirit that few would be able to see without God's help. It is something that typically does not make sense in the natural. It is thus a work initiated by God but which requires people to willingly respond. As with the Kingdom of God, it is difficult for the rich to enter. Aliyah over the past 150 years has been fueled primarily by those who were destitute both materially and situationally (i.e. the poor in spirit). As with the Kingdom of God, those who follow through are blessed in ways that most cannot understand who have not followed through. As with the Kingdom of God, those who make aliyah enter into a war. That war is not due to anything they have done wrong, but rather because of Satan's desire to desecrate God's Name and fight against God.

For people who do not grow up in a believing environment (and for some who do), there are typically two components involved for those people to come into God's kingdom. The first component is the preparation of the heart by God's Spirit. The second is either the preaching of the Gospel and/or an encounter with God's Word. The first component, that of preparing people's hearts is usually a combination of internal and external preparations. By internal preparations, I am referring to the work of God's Spirit directly in the hearts of someone to reveal Himself to them or to “take the veil off their eyes” to see the truth. By external preparations, I am referring to God's work in someone's circumstances to cause them to be open to the truth. Depending on the person, this external work could be very minor or it could involve major life changes that lead the person to consider a change of direction.

Just as these two components are typically required to bring people into God's Kingdom, the same two components are typically required to work in the hearts of Jewish people living in the Diaspora to make aliyah. I have found over the years that speaking to people about making aliyah when God has not prepared their hearts is like talking to a wall. Aliyah is something that is not on their agenda and no amount of facts will change their mind. Most of these people consider Israel to be a foreign nation that happens to have a large Jewish population as opposed to being their homeland from which they were previously exiled and to which they should now return.

With an understanding of these similarities between the Kingdom of God and the move of God to bring the Jewish people back home to Israel, I would like to discuss what it might look like to have a fulfillment of the Scriptures that were quoted at the beginning of this article. In other words, what would it really take for these Scriptures (and many other Scriptures like them) to actually come to pass?

The First Wave of Aliyah started in 1882. Over the past 150 years, approximately half of the Jewish people have been regathered to the Land of Israel. Nearly none of the Northern Kingdom tribes have been regathered yet, but for now, let's focus just on those from the Southern Kingdom (i.e. Judah) – those referred to as the Jewish people (from the word Judah).

Over the last two millennia, the Jewish people have faced antisemitic persecution from every nation to which they journeyed. For most of that time, there was not much of an option to move to Israel. In the late 1800s, a Zionistic movement was established to try to rebuild the Land of Israel to once again be the dwelling place of the Jewish people. This move was a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the word of God. The First Wave of Aliyah in 1882 was composed primarily of immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe: areas of the world which had some of the worst antisemitism. The people who came had little to lose and much to gain. This is not to minimize the difficulties they knew they would face, and many other difficulties that they didn't realize they would have to face. However, concerning survival, many people saw that the situation they had in their home country was less than ideal due to antisemitism and the difficulty in making even a bare-subsistence income.

Following the First Wave of Aliyah, the population in the Land increased despite tremendous upheavals all over the world including World War I and the Great Depression. After the stock market crash of 1929, The Nazi party in Germany gained a lot of power and took over Germany in the 1930s, making life steadily worse for its Jewish population. Despite the steadily eroding condition for the German Jews of the 1930s and warnings issued by Zionists, most German Jews refused to believe that Germany would actually get to the point of trying to kill all of them. As with the rich man who went away from Yeshua very sad when told to sell his possessions and give to the poor, those who had a relatively high standard of living were not very interested in leaving Germany to move to a land that, from their perspective, was undeveloped and under constant attack by the Arab world. While it is true that the world now has the hindsight of the Holocaust, most in the world believe that the events leading up to the Holocaust could never happen again.

Last November, I wrote here about the significance of the October 7 date in which the Swords of Iron war began. As stated in that article, I believe that the war started on Shmini Atzeret (the day after Succot) because God was sending a message that He would use the war to begin the final regathering of the Jewish people from their temporary homes (their “Succot”) in the Diaspora.

But what would it really take to do that?

To change the heart of a people usually requires an extended period of time in difficult circumstances. Before Elijah's contest on Mount Carmel for Israel to determine the true God, there were three years without rain. The supernatural experience on Mount Carmel in and of itself would not have been enough to turn the hearts of the people back to God had it not been for the preceding three years without rain. The people of Israel had been intent upon praying to Baal for rain, and they needed to first question their world view – the idea that they could rely on Baal for that rain.

A change in world view is what is needed to trigger huge aliyah from the wealthy nations.

As Israel wages a war against Hamas, Hamas has been waging a different type of war against Israel – a war waged through a propaganda campaign. The explosion of antisemitism all over the world, and especially in the United States is the result of an intentional campaign funded by state actors; however, the “ground” of people's hearts has been prepared for this campaign for several decades of funding in universities and political meddling by those same state actors.

Jeremiah prophesied the following:

Jeremiah 16

15: but, 'As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries where He had banished them.' For I will restore them to their own land which I gave to their fathers.

16: “Behold, I am going to send for many fishermen,” declares the LORD, “and they will fish for them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain and every hill and from the clefts of the rocks.

According to this prophecy, God would accomplish this ingathering through the use of fishermen and hunters. Despite the huge increase in antisemitic acts over the past few months, most Jewish people would not consider making aliyah. I have family and friends living in the United States. It is clear from conversations with them, that aliyah is not on the agenda for them. This is true even of the few of them who believe in Yeshua. Current world events are looked upon as an annoyance. The antisemitic acts are looked upon as sad one-of-a-kind events that will soon pass so that “we can all get back to the way things were before”. Most of the Jewish people from poor nations with long histories of antisemitism have already made aliyah. Remaining Diaspora Jewry is composed primarily of those living in wealthy nations. Nearly half of the world's Jews currently live in the US.

While most of the Jewish people living in the Diaspora have not yet seriously considered making aliyah, the results of a recent survey show there is some movement of thought in that direction. 42% of those surveyed feel unsafe wearing Jewish symbols in public since October 7. 80% feel antisemitism is a problem, and 7% have considered leaving the country due to antisemitism (though that does not mean that those 7% have thought about moving to Israel). Seeds are being sewn and the process of changing hearts has begun. Furthermore, another survey indicates that classic antisemitic tropes have taken root in the population of the US and other nations to an extent that is hard to imagine. 51% of people polled in the US believe that US Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the US. 19% believe that Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars (up from 5% who believed this in 2015). 33% believe that Jews talk too much about the Holocaust and 11% believe that the numbers from the Holocaust are substantially distorted. The numbers are far worse when considering only those under the age of 40. The trend indicates that within about 10 years, the majority of the population of the US will tend toward an antisemitic and anti-Israel world-view.

If the Swords of Iron war is indeed the catalyst for the final return of the Jews from the Diaspora, then conditions in the US, Europe, and elsewhere in the world will have to get much worse. Until antisemitic violence comes to one's neighborhood, family, or friends, the news articles are too impersonal. As long as the standard of living remains very high in these nations of the Diaspora, we will witness the difficulty that the rich have in considering making aliyah. Until we see a much more widespread level of antisemitism and/or a much more failed economy in Western nations, it is unlikely for the final ingathering to occur in earnest. Furthermore, even as conditions worsen in the Diaspora, it is also important that Israel is seen as a viable alternative. That will require the war to end in such a way that Israel once again is viewed as a nation with relatively secure borders. As I mentioned in the previously quoted article, the October 7 date may also point to a likely supernatural victory for Israel over its enemies, a victory which would not only help secure its borders, but also cause many in the world (Diaspora Jews, Muslims, Israelis, and others) to question their world-view.

The tragedy of October 7 and the explosion of antisemitism around the world is a result of Satan's attempt to destroy Israel and all of Israel's descendants. The end result, however, will be that God preserves Israel and fulfills all that He has spoken concerning her. Satan's attempts to destroy the nation will ultimately result in fulfilling God's word to bring the Jewish people back home again. According to Ezekiel 36, God will bring the descendants of Israel back home to their land to show His Name holy in the sight of the nations. Each day when we pray according to the Lord's prayer for Him to sanctify His Name (that is to keep His Name holy), we should be praying for this fulfillment of prophecy.

Let us pray that as God creates the external conditions in the lives of Diaspora Jewry to encourage aliyah, that He also works in their hearts to give them a vision for aliyah. Let us also pray for Israel to secure its borders. Considering that the Swords of Iron War does not appear to be nearing a complete conclusion anytime soon and still needs to deal with Hezbollah in the north, a situation which is likely to result in even greater world-wide antisemitism, at the end of the war we may in fact see the conditions in the Diaspora approach the conditions necessary to trigger a huge ingathering beyond anything the world has ever seen. An ingathering so great, that it will cause the world to no longer say 'As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,' but, 'As the LORD lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where He had driven them.'