Has God Allowed Attacks On Israel In Order To Bring Them To Repentance?
First of all, I really enjoyed the Blue Letter Bible study guide. I have been studying for years with you. I just finished Deuteronomy, and I was wondering how you think all of the current events going on in Israel, from 2023 to the present, correlate to what is said in Deuteronomy? It seems to me that God is perhaps removing His hand of protection in order to allow Hamas to strike Israel and bring them back to a collective repentance. It’s so troubling how horrific all the events are, but I wondered what your thoughts were on this idea. I haven’t heard anybody say out loud recently that Israel has strayed far away from God, and that warfare and physical suffering at the hands of their enemies, though brutal and undesirable, in a sense could be a way to bring them back to repentance.
The Bible says that there will be great opposition, persecution, and tribulation that comes against the Jewish people. We’re talking about eschatology. Believers who love the Lord and take the Bible seriously have different ways in which they organize God’s unfolding plan, so I’ll answer from my view.
I believe that there will be a future period of time which Jesus called the Great Tribulation. It wasn’t fulfilled in A.D. 70. I believe the Old Testament refers to this time as well, such as the phrase, “The time of Jacob’s trouble.” I don’t think we are in that time right now, but I think that some of the suffering and difficulty of the Jewish people that we see right now can be a foreshadowing or “labor pains” before the culmination of it.
On many levels, I think God is trying to get the attention of the Jewish people and get them to repent and put their trust in Jesus Christ. Their present difficulties are one aspect of that. The Bible also says that, in the future, all Israel will be saved. It’s not going to be an easy road, but it’ll end up in a glorious result. Is this a fulfillment of the blessings and cursings listed in Deuteronomy? Yes, God promised that the cursings would ultimately drive Israel to repentance and restoration.