Jeremiah 30: Foreigners will not enslave them. “David” (Messiah) will be their king. The return is tied to “Jacob’s Trouble”, i.e., the Great Tribulation. There will be a full end to the nations to which Israel was scattered. All of Israel’s oppressors will be scattered. Jahweh will be Israel’s God.

That’s a difficult start to the search. None of those things have happened!

Maybe Jeremiah 31 will be helpful: Worship will be to the Lord God, in Zion. They will be redeemed as they are coming in to the land. There will be no more sorrow at all. Jews will as a nation accept the New Covenant, a law written on their hearts for eternity.

Hmmm. Still no light here. Everyone knows that these happenings too are absent from the modern scene.

Jeremiah 33? As the captives return, they are forgiven. Desolation will be turned to joy. The Branch (the Messiah), known as Righteousness, will be raised up. Burnt offerings and sacrifices looking back to Calvary will be initiated.

Jeremiah offers no help at all. Let’s take a look at Ezekiel.

39:25 ff. God says he will bring back Jewish captives after their awful shame, and at that time they shall know that He is the Lord. He will hide His face no more, because He shall have poured out His Spirit on Israel.

Has that happened? Not really. At least not much.

Isaiah adds that the “Redeemed” of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing. Everlasting joy will be upon their heads. They will never again depart from the Lord after they return.

Joel and Zephaniah (not to mention Jesus in Matthew 25) all agree that the nations will be gathered together for judgment when He brings them back. Those who have afflicted Israel will “get theirs.”

Amos: They, Israel, will be sifted among all the nations, then at their return the Tabernacle of David will be restored, Gentiles will be added to the mix, they’ll no longer be pulled up, and on and on…

Simply not happening!

So have the Jews truly “returned” in the sense the Bible foretold? God is always correct, 100%. There are too many prophecies coming together here and saying the same thing for us to ignore them.

The problem is what we have done with Matthew 24 and Luke 21. We took some very seriously obvious Tribulation passages and made them all be fulfilled in AD 70. So in the eyes of many, the scattering took place when Israel was sacked by the Romans, and the gathering took place in 1948.

Doesn’t work. Read the fine print. Luke says that during the final Tribulation time, and both Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts are tied to the end, not to A.D. 70, Israel will once more be scattered. But this time when they are gathered, they will come back as indicated in all the above Scriptures. The “times of the Gentiles” are identified as a 42-month period at the end of history during which Gentiles will trample Jerusalem, and the Jews will be dealt with one final time.

Unfortunately, “never again” cannot be said about a Jewish Holocaust. We should announce this with tears, but announce it we must. The Tribulation is still ahead of us. I say “us” because Israel’s trouble will be the world’s trouble this time.

The current “return” of Israel is indeed an end-time sign, because there must be a land called Israel in the last days. And the stage must be set to pick up where Jewish history officially ended, per Daniel’s 70-week prophecy, in the hands of Rome.

But there will be another return. There will be no such thing as a “secular” Jew in that day. There will be no anti-Christ Jew in that day. Israel will look upon her Messiah, weep, and reach out to Him. Then, and only then, is Israel returned. Then will Jerusalem be the joy of the whole earth, not the burdensome stone that it is today.