The Question Column
QUESTION: It is frequently stated that when the Jews are restored to the land of Palestine it will be in belief, and that their present restoration is in unbelief. Please explain this, for I do not understand it. How will they be saved and accept Christ as their Messiah out of their own land?
ANSWER: That there will be large numbers of Jews in the land of Palestine during the Tribulation, Daniel’s Seventieth Week, seems quite clear from the fact that the Lord Jesus, speaking of that time, says, “Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains, etc.” (Matt. 24:15ff.). But that the restoration of Israel to Palestine, predicted many times in the Old Testament, as for example, in Jeremiah 23:7, 8, will take place “after the tribulation of those days,” is clear from Matthew 24:29-31, where we find that the Lord “shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” How will they know and believe in Christ as their Messiah, if they are not in their own land? Verse 30 tells us: “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in Heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of the heavens with power and great glory” (cf, Zech, 12:10).
—E. S. English in Our Hope
Magazine, March 1948
(Please send all questions to Dr. James T. Naismith, 66 Morgandale Crescent, Scarborough, Ontario, M1W 1S3).