When Israel was scattered among the nations, God’s very name—His reputation as promise-keeper and sovereign Ruler—was called into question. This is not opinion but biblical fact. The Lord said, “But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the LORD, and yet they had to go out of his land’” (Ezek. 36:20).
Didn’t God promise the land to His people Israel forever? “I give to you [Abraham] and your descendants after you the land . . . all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession” (Gen. 17:8, emphasis added). So, what happened?
When it comes to God’s sovereignty, the Enemy continues to sell two great lies—and people continue to buy them. The first is as old as Babel itself (Gen. 11). It is the notion that nations are masters of their own fate. The second is that if the nations try hard enough, they can destroy Israel (Ps. 83:4).
However, God’s Word stands against both of these lies. No nation exists outside God’s sovereign purview or is governed by luck or chance; and God will sanctify His great name among the nations through Israel (Ezek. 36:23), which will endure forever in its own land (Jer. 23:8; Ezek. 28:25).
God’s Sovereignty in Scripture
Scripture continually emphasizes the Lord’s sovereignty over the nations. Job asserted, “He makes nations great, and destroys them; He enlarges nations, and guides them” (Job 12:23).
King David proclaimed, “The LORD has established His throne in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all” (Ps. 103:19).
The prophet Daniel declared, “He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings” (Dan. 2:21). “The Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses” (4:25; cf. vv. 17, 34; 5:21; 7:14).
The experience of the patriarch Joseph teaches an important maxim about God: His will transcends everything. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt, intending to harm him; but God elevated Joseph to second in command of the entire country. “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good,” Joseph told them (Gen. 50:20). God used Joseph’s brothers to place His servant exactly where He wanted him to be.
In fact, Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is better understood in light of this truth. God devastated Egypt with 10 plagues, waging war against Egypt’s gods (Ex. 12:12), which included Pharaoh himself. Though Pharaoh thoroughly opposed God’s will, he ended up fulfilling God’s plan.
However, it is God’s subsequent establishment of the Mosaic Covenant and its terms that truly reveal the strength of God’s sovereign hand. How? Because God warned Israel that peace with the nations depended entirely on its obedience to this conditional covenant (Lev. 26:3–6, 14–17; Dt. 28:1, 7, 12–13, 25, 48–50). Without obedience, there would be no peace. God has the power to make the world conform to His will—for good or for ill.
History’s Confirmation
We now have a challenge for the skeptics. Does history conform to God’s prophecies? More than 3,400 years ago at Mount Sinai, God established with Israel His covenant of blessings and cursings. They are spelled out in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.
If the Bible is truly God’s Word, then Israel’s peace, or lack thereof, should be consistent with these blessings and cursings. As it turns out, both biblical and extrabiblical history line up perfectly with God’s declarations for Israel and the nations.
Biblical History After Moses. God promised to use the nations to execute judgment on Israel. That pledge certainly has come to pass. After Israel received the Promised Land, it entered into a tragic cycle of disobedience, judgment by oppressive foreign nations, repentance, and deliverance. The book of Judges records this pattern, known as the cycle of apostasy.
Eventually, God judged His people using Assyria (722 BC) and Babylon (586 BC) to disperse them. The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple.
At the time of Messiah Jesus’ advent to a partially regathered Israel, Rome was the new oppressor. The Roman Empire ultimately destroyed the Second Jewish Temple and scattered Israel yet again. Both the Temple’s destruction and Israel’s dispersion were foretold in Leviticus 26:31–33.
The religious leaders believed the return from exile in Babylon meant all the dispersion prophecies had been fulfilled. However, Jesus prophesied that the dispersion was far from over: “For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe. . . . For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Lk. 21:22–24).
Secular History. Indeed, an honest historian must admit that the last 2,000 years of history, following the Bible’s completion, confirms the accuracy of Jesus’ prophecy: Jerusalem has been repeatedly trampled by Gentile powers, while the Jewish people were driven from their land and scattered around the world.
To be clear, God’s use of wicked nations as instruments of punishment on Israel does not spell blessing for those nations. God promised in Genesis 12:3, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you” (cf. Num. 24:9). God’s use of Gentile powers like Assyria and Babylon only means He will judge those nations later (Isa. 10:5–19; Jer. 51:49). Where are the Roman Empire, Czarist Russia, and Nazi Germany today?
Israel may suffer punishment, but God vows to punish those whom He used to punish Israel. Why? Because of their arrogance, pride, and refusal to acknowledge Him. He also has vowed, “Yet for all that, when they [the Jewish people] are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor shall I abhor them, to utterly destroy them and break My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God” (Lev. 26:44). God has made no such promise to any other nation.
Furthermore, God revealed through the prophet Ezekiel that He would regather Israel to its land in two stages: (1) a political renewal, without a national indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Ezek. 37:1–7) and (2) a spiritual renewal of a completely regathered Israel (vv. 8–10). The first half of Ezekiel’s vision was fulfilled in the 20th century, while the second half is yet to come. History testifies that God keeps His word.
God’s Vindication
The Lord will vindicate His holy name. That is His reason for restoring Israel to the Promised Land. Israel doesn’t deserve to be restored any more than we who profess Jesus (Jewish and Gentile) deserve to be forgiven through His God-ordained atonement for sin: “I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went. And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, . . . and the nations shall know that I am the Lord . . . when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land” (36:22–24).
Jesus Himself guarantees a complete reversal of the Jewish dispersion at His return, stating His own direct role in the event: “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect [chosen] from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Mt. 24:30–31).
Today, the world obstructs and rejects Israel’s possession of its land. But at Jesus’ return, the words of Ezekiel will come to pass: “Then the nations which are left all around you [Israel] shall know that I, the LORD, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted what was desolate. I, the LORD, have spoken it, and I will do it” (Ezek. 36:36).
Amos 9:14–15 provides a divine promise that clearly still awaits fulfillment: “‘I will bring back the captives of My people Israel. . . . I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them,’ says the LORD your God.”
God alone has the ability to establish and sustain a permanent peace between Israel and the nations because, as the Christmas carol “Joy to the World” declares, “He rules the world in truth and grace.”
God indeed rules. Everything that happens, good and bad, is part of His great plan to bring salvation to mankind through His Chosen People Israel and to reestablish Israel in its own land—for His honor and His glory and to magnify His great name throughout the earth.
