an_unshakeable_faith.. - Holy Bible Institute

Israel’s very land is a powerful witness to the accuracy of ancient Bible prophecy. Modern Israelhas performed an agricultural wonder through technology, but she has not been able to changethe fact that 80% of the land remains arid or semi-arid. And this was God’s judgment infulfillment of Bible prophecy.2. Dispersion and PersecutionMoses prophesied that Israel would “be plucked from off the land” and scattered “among allpeople, from the one end of the earth even unto the other,” and there she would “find no ease,neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart,and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind; and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thoushalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life” (Deut. 28:63-67).The prophecy began to be fulfilled with the destruction of Israel’s First Temple and her 70-yearcaptivity to Babylon in 586 B.C., but that was only the beginning. Moses said that theDeuteronomy prophecy would be fulfilled “in the latter days” (Deut. 31:29), which did not beginuntil the first coming of Christ.In 70 A.D. Israel’s Second Temple was destroyed by Roman armies and 65 years later Jerusalemwas razed after Rome put down the Bar Kokhba revolt. A pagan city was built on the site,dedicated to Jupiter. The Emperor Hadrian changed Judea’s name to Syria Palestina. Multitudesof Jews were slaughtered and most of the rest were carried away captive or fled to other parts ofthe world.For 1,900 years Israel has been dispersed, and she has been persecuted and tormented wherevershe has wandered.She has been hated by the Romans, the Greeks, the Muslims, the Roman Catholic Church, theByzantines and the Orthodox Church, the Spanish (the Jews were evicted from Spain in 1492),the Venetians (Jews were forced to live in the ghetto), the English (Jews were expelled fromEngland in 1290), the Russians (Jews were driven out of Russia in the 1880s), the Germans, theearly Lutherans, and many others. And anti-semitism is on the rise again today.The Holocaust of World War II was another fulfillment of the ancient prophecy in Deuteronomy28. The Holocaust museum in Jerusalem witnesses to the bitter sorrow that Israel experienced atthe hands of the Germans. The nine galleries in the main museum are devoted to differentchapters of the Holocaust, from the rise of Hitler to his death. There are hundreds of disturbingphotos and artifacts. Arrests in the middle of the night. Destroyed synagogues. Jews marked witharmbands and the star of David. Jews mocked, beaten, spit on, burned, shot, poisoned. Heaps ofcorpses. Frightened children. Pathetic faces peering out of cattle cars. Starved men.Yet Israel remained a distinct people through the long centuries of her dispersion. In 1754 BishopThomas Newton wrote of the Jews:77