Thru the Bible - Questions & Answers

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Guest (Male): You're listening to the question and answer program with our Bible teacher Dr. J. Vernon McGee. And this program is a ministry of the Through the Bible Radio Network. Now, our first question today comes to us from a listener in Winter Park, Florida. He says, it's my understanding that you teach that the current return of the Israelites to Israel is not a fulfillment of prophecy because when God returns them to that land, it will be in belief, not unbelief.

However, one expositor stated that God could bring Israel back in unbelief based on Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 24 and 25. In your book on Ezekiel, you seem to avoid these verses altogether. Could you please explain your position on these two verses in Ezekiel 36?

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Well, those two verses are only part of a longer prophecy. I was taking the entire prophecy and giving in a nutshell my interpretation of the entire prophecy. And because of that, I did not go into detail because this had been up so many times before like Isaiah and Jeremiah. And it would come up again and again in the minor prophets that I did not see any reason for repetition of this.

I'm glad though that you've called attention to it because it may look to you that I purposely avoided these two verses, which I did not do at all. I considered the whole prophecy here. You understand these two verses are just part of a much larger prophecy.

And I do not mean to infer that Israel will not go back in unbelief, but go back in belief. They do go back in unbelief, and this man is entirely right about that. But the question is not their return in unbelief. The question is when do they return in unbelief?

My thinking is they do not return in unbelief till the beginning of the Great Tribulation Period. My feeling is that as long as the church is in the world, they will not go back to the land and God will wind up the clock of prophecy, which is I S R A E L and not G R U E N or B U L O V A.

But God will not begin to move with the nation Israel and the Gentiles in the world until He calls the people out of the world. So what you have here is a total prophecy that has to do with the return of Israel back to the land after He's through with the church.

I do not think any return of Israel to the land today, either in belief or unbelief, would be a fulfillment of prophecy. So it has to do with the time this prophecy here does. And I think that we can date it very easily because don't lift out just two verses and build an interpretation on that. Use the entire prophecy. And actually, this prophecy goes on over into the 37th chapter, and that's where you're going to get the order of events. And let me run through that if you don't mind.

Now, I'm going to move up in the prophecy, actually not to the very beginning. It really begins in verse 16 where it says, "Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land." And He goes back to the time before the captivity when they did dwell in the land. And the reason that He has scattered them is because they had turned to other gods. But God says, "I do have pity upon them, and there is a time coming when I will return them to the land."

Now, I'll pick up reading again at verse 22. You begin with 24. And let me take more of the prophecy here than you've given. "Therefore, say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God, I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for Mine own holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went. And I will sanctify My great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them, and the heathen shall know that I'm the Lord," saith the Lord God, "when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes."

Now, the nation Israel, it's been scattered throughout the world. Honestly, they've been no credit to God at all during all this period. They have moved entirely away from the Old Testament. Even the so-called orthodox, they attempt to follow meticulously some of the ritual of the Old Testament. But you remember that the Lord Jesus said that the letter killeth, it's the Spirit that maketh alive.

And the spirit of the thing is gone. So that they have not honored God. And as a result, God is not using them today. Now, God says, though, "Though you have disgraced Me, I pity you, and I have mercy upon you, and I intend to not throw you overboard. I intend to return you to that land."

Now, He says, "For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries. And I'll bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give unto you, and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I'll give you a heart of flesh. And I'll put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them."

Now you see, when you put all this prophecy together, that when God returns them back to their land, He's going to put the Spirit of God within them. And they're going to be a credit and a witness to the world in that day. Now, surely, no one today would say the present return of Israel to that land has caused the world to turn to God.

In fact, the matter is a great many, I think, have been turned the other way around. And the very interesting thing is, in that day, He goes on to say, if you move down in the prophecy, "And they shall say, 'This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden.'" Has that happened today? Of course not. That land is not like the Garden of Eden. And a few orange trees and tomato plants just haven't made it that. It's marvelous what's happened over there. But to say that you have the fulfillment of prophecy is certainly to negate prophecy and to make the Word of God sound as if the Lord is boasting and using superlatives when He ought not to be using them.

Well, when God returns them to the land, all the superlatives are going to be true. Now, this is the same program that we have given by James on the day that they met in Jerusalem for the first Council of the Church, and that's recorded in the 15th chapter of Acts. We're told in verse 13 of Acts 15, "And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, 'Men and brethren, hearken unto me. Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name.'"

That is, God today is calling a people out of the Gentiles along with members of the nation Israel into this body that we know as the Church. Paul speaks of it as that both Jew and Gentile are now made into a new body, and that's the Church. And now James goes on to say in verse 15, "And to this agree the words of the prophets, as it is written, 'After this,' after what? After God gets through with the Church, calling a people out of the world. And the Church is complete. He'll take the Church out of the world."

And what will He do? "After this I will return and build again the Tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I'll set it up. That the residue of man might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom My name is called," saith the Lord, "who doeth all these things." Now today He's calling out of the Gentiles a people. Then it will be all the Gentiles.

Now, what will be the order of events when God will return them back to the land in unbelief and then fill them with His Spirit, make them alive in the Lord, and alive to God and a witness to Him in the world? When's that all going to take place? Well, will you notice that in Ezekiel 37, and you just continue right on into chapter 37 here, and He gives here the order of the events. And you will remember it was the vision of the valley of dead bones.

Now, let me read verse one of chapter 37. "The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones." Now, I'm not going to read the rest of that part of the prophecy. You remember, He went out in the valley, and there were bones, and they were scattered, and they were very dead. And so God asks Ezekiel, says, "Can these bones live?" And Ezekiel just simply said, "Well, you know, I don't." As far as Ezekiel was concerned, they were dead bones, and that's about all you could say about it. There was no possibility of Ezekiel having anything to do with bringing life to them.

Now, Ezekiel made it very clear that those bones, as far as he could see, could not live. Then the bones began to come together. They began to form skeletons. And then, the next thing happened, flesh came upon those bones. But what do you have now? Just a lot of corpses around. All you have is, you still have a graveyard. Only instead of being bones, they're bones with flesh and skin upon them. And that's all you have.

And now, this is the interpretation. This is God's interpretation. What does all that mean? This gives you the order of events. Listen to this. "Then He said unto me, 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.'" And when He says, "The whole house of Israel," He means the 12 tribes. He means Israel. Very simple, if you just let it say what it wants to say. "Behold, they say, 'Our bones are dried, our hope is lost, we're cut off for our parts.'" They said, "We're through. We're scattered everywhere."

Now God says, "I'm going to bring these bones together." Now, what happens? "Therefore, prophesy and say unto them, 'Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, and I'm going to bring you into the land of Israel.'" He brings them there as dead bones. He's just moving quite a few corpses there. That's all.

Now, I think that's what you have today, if you want to try to use this prophecy to somehow or another fit into current events. Maybe Israel has come together. The bones have. And maybe there is flesh on it. But what do you have? You have a corpse. There's no life there. The prophecy has not literally been fulfilled, you see. If this present return to the land is this that's mentioned here, then it ought to follow through. It hasn't followed through, not at all.

Now will you notice, "And ye shall know that I'm the Lord when I've opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up out of your graves. And I shall put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land. Then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it and performed it," saith the Lord.

Now, as I understand prophecy, and the order of events, and the proper sequence, that God today is calling a people out of the world in the Church. He's not actually dealing with the nation Israel as a nation, as He did in the past. Now, God intends to complete His purpose in the Church, and it'll be taken out of the world because the Church is to go to a place that the Lord Jesus is preparing for it.

Now, when the Church leaves the world, God is going to turn again to use these people. In that day they'll not be a disgrace. They're going to be filled with the Spirit of God. We're told that 144,000 of them and out of each tribe will be sealed to be witnesses for God throughout the world during the Great Tribulation Period, you see. So that when we're talking about the children of Israel returning back to the land of Israel, and when I say they're not going to return until after the Church is removed from the Earth, and after the Tribulation begins, at some period after the Church removes, that I'm not saying that they're going to be returned after they believe.

They'll be returned in unbelief then. And if that's going to be so supernatural, that's going to cause multitudes of them to turn to God. Now, we're in a different time capsule today, altogether different. We're in this period when God's calling a people out to His name. Now, to take the prophecies of the Old Testament like this and wrench them right out of their context and apply them today, it's to my judgment, mutilating prophecy. It's not taking it up.

And even when Ezekiel went to the trouble of going to the Valley of Dead Bones and getting that vision, and then giving us the interpretation God had given him of this, that when the bones come together, and they come back in the land of Israel, as they have today, all you've got is nothing in the world but a lot of dead bones. You don't have spiritual life at all. That is, if you wanted to make the prophecy apply to the present time. But I think when that time comes, God will be the one that will bring all of these bones together. He'll put the flesh upon it. He's the one that's going to breathe life into them. He's the one that'll make them a nation, and it'll be like a resurrection, life from the dead. They'll become a witness for God throughout the world.

Now, I happen to be one of the hard heads that just will not accept their present return as being a fulfillment of prophecy. Sure they've gone back in unbelief, and sure they're going to go back in unbelief when God returns them. But when He returns them in unbelief, believe me, there will be a sequence of events, going from scattered dead bones to bones coming together to flesh, and then to life being put into the corpses that are there.

So I think that's the picture that you have here in Ezekiel, and instead of it teaching the fact that the present return is fulfillment of prophecy, it really teaches the very opposite.

Guest (Male): From the prophetic book of Ezekiel, we move to the prophetic book of Isaiah with this question from a listener in Garland, Texas. Could you please explain Isaiah chapter 65 verse 17?

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And the verse reads, "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new Earth, and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." Well, I take it that the thing that really that you're interested in concerning this question is, when will God create the new heavens and the new Earth? And the other question that might arise from this is that he says, "And the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." And it will be so wonderful, the new heavens and the new Earth are going to be so wonderful because you and I live in a sin-marred universe.

Now, when God creates a new heavens and a new Earth, it'll be so wonderful, we'll forget all about this one that we've been in. But I have a notion that what you're interested in, how does it fit into the time schedule that we have given to us in the Word of God? The very interesting thing is that we have immediately after this, the description given to us of the Millennial Reign of Christ here upon this Earth.

And that has led some to believe that you have a chronological order here, and that this new heavens and new Earth is created at the beginning of the Millennium. Well, the problem with that is that the desert is made to blossom as the rose, but nothing's said about it being a new Earth at all. And death will still be prevalent during this period. The last enemy is not going to be destroyed until after Satan's final rebellion after the thousand years.

So that you cannot fit that into this that Isaiah is giving you a chronological outline. But if you've read Isaiah and studied it up to here, you know that that has not been the method that he has followed at all. So I'd like to deal with that question when will God create a new heavens and a new Earth? Well, we should look, I think, at two other references.

One is here in the 51st chapter of Isaiah, and it's verse 16. It says, "And I've put My words in thy mouth, and I've covered thee with the shadow of Mine hand, that I may plant the heavens and lay the foundation of the Earth and say to Zion, Thou art My people." Another reference is found over in the 66th chapter at verse 22. And I'll read that. "But as the new heavens and the new Earth, which I will make, shall remain before Me," saith the Lord, "so shall your seed and your name remain."

Now, what he's doing in both those passages is making it very clear to Israel that though a new Earth is going to come into existence, that doesn't mean that they will not have the same piece of real estate that God vouchsafed to them before. The physical shape of it may be very much like the universe we're in, this Earth. I'm sure that a great many people would like to make some improvements. Well, there'll be a new Earth, and those improvements will be there. But Israel will still be a people, still have a land. And that's the thing that he's making clear, I think, to them here.

Now we have one other reference. And it's an important one, and it's in the Book of Revelation. And it says, "I saw a new heaven and a new Earth, for the first heaven and the first Earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." Now, we have here this tremendous picture of the new heavens and the new Earth given to us.

And there are several things that make it interesting. One is that here in Revelation, where you do have a chronological order followed, it comes in after the Millennium. And after the Millennium, why for the first time, the new heavens and the new Earth come into view. They weren't seen up to this point. They mean He may have had them off somewhere, just brought them now into view. But as far as the stage on which humanity was playing out its sordid story, why it's still on this old Earth and it's on also in the old heavens, by the way. But this is something new coming along.

He does mention one great geographical change that will be made: there'll be no more sea. And the sea today actually makes life possible on this Earth. And so you can see that God's going to bring into existence an altogether different method in that day, and it'll be a very wonderful method, you may be sure. And so many people seem to be disappointed that they're going to miss the sea.

Well, if you're a child of God today, you're going to be in that New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. There's always a question how far down does it come. I do not know how close it comes to the Earth. I would take it that it comes in sight of the Earth. And that means that it could be almost any distance. But I believe that the New Jerusalem will become the center of God's creation, because He will be in the New Jerusalem, and God the Son will be there, and I take it, God the Holy Spirit.

All be in the New Jerusalem. And that'll be the center of God's universe. I have in my book, the second volume, quite an extended passage on the New Jerusalem because I felt like it hasn't been dealt with enough today. We're so occupied with the here and now that we forget where we're going to move someday, at our permanent address. And so it's a very wonderful place, by the way, as best I can tell, where we're going to be throughout eternity. And it'll become the center of God's universe. So the new heavens and the new Earth will come into existence apparently at the end of the Millennium and the beginning of eternity. And that is a pretty nice place for it to come in according to the way I see it.

Guest (Male): If you'd like more information on prophecy in God's Word, then we'd like to suggest a very helpful book called J. Vernon McGee on Prophecy. It covers a number of topics, including the rapture, the tribulation, the millennium, and the Antichrist to name just a few. You can find more information by contacting our offices or going to our website. We continue Dr. McGee's five-year journey through God's Word this week on the Through the Bible radio program heard Monday through Friday on this station. We provide upon request, notes and outlines to follow along in the study. To ask about ordering the prophecy book or to be placed on the mailing list for the notes, just call us at 1-800-65 Bible, Monday through Thursday, from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Or write to questions and answers in the US, Box 7100, Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C 6B1. When you access our website at ttb.org, you can find links to our online bookstore for the prophecy volume, a request form to be on the mailing list for the notes, and links to Facebook, Twitter, and our apps. Because of God's great love for us, we know that He desires to answer all your questions and solve all your problems.

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Sin had left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow

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