As regular readers of this website know, we shy away from the more Hollywood-ish aspects of prophecy interpretation. In our interpretations of Bible prophecy, you will not find cars and buses careening off the road, airplanes falling from the sky, or millions of Chinese soldiers leading the charge against Israel on the plains of Megiddo. That’s because we don’t regard Bible prophecy as fodder for entertainment of the faithful. Predictive prophecy has one purpose, and that purpose is to testify to the authority of the Word of God, and it can only be understood and do that AFTER a prophesied event has happened in history.
So, was modern Israel predicted in the Bible? Yes, it was foretold by Jesus who said in 30 CE, “And they [the Jewish people] … shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24)
The first part of that prophecy began to be fulfilled in 66-70 CE, when the Jews were exiled from the land of Israel by Roman legions and forcefully dispersed among the Roman Empire, and over subsequent centuries dispersed among the nations of the world. That forced dispersion began to end with the re-gathering of the Jewish people to Palestine that began in the late-1800s and accelerated with the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. Then, in 1950, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed the Law of Return, which said that any Jew living anywhere in the world could come to live in Israel. That ended the Jewish people being led away captive among the nations (i.e., there was no political or legal restriction preventing a Jew from living in the Promised Land).
Seventeen years later the second part of Jesus’ prophecy was fulfilled. In 1967, by the miraculous deliverance of Israel during the Six-Day War. Jewish forces liberated Old City Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from the Arabs (Gentiles), ending the almost two-thousand year period of Old City Jerusalem and Temple Mount history during which both were trampled down by the Gentiles (i.e., both being under non-Jewish rule), and they remain under Jewish sovereignty today.
As much as some Christians like to ignore the eschatology of Jesus by teaching incorrectly that the “times of the Gentiles” are still underway, often as a way of negating God’s land promise to his people Israel to satisfy a secular pro-Palestinian political agenda that has infected the liberal Christian church (especially in Europe), there in the Book of Luke is the biblical basis that proves that a modern Jewish nation of Israel occupying the land, even in unbelief, is indeed the fulfillment of prophecy.
Luke 21:24 gives us the two signs that allow us to identify modern Israel as the fulfillment of prophecy with confidence, in this case two signs in a prophecy that came from the mouth of Jesus himself. Those nations and people who want to undo what was predicted in the Bible and has been fulfilled in history are in essence opposing the will of God, which is not a very smart thing to do.