Knowing who to thank

There is some question, on the face of the evidence, whether God reestablished the Jews in Israel in 1948, or whether it was the British. I bring this up because some Christians are treating the formation of modern Israel as an article of faith: that the return of the Jews to their homeland in the 20th century was the prophesied return and, therefore, a major a milepost in end times prophetic history as it unfolds.

The problem is that someone who thinks that, without any doubt or reservation as to the rightness of his own judgment, will be devastated if the present nation of Israel gets thrown off its patch of ground. They will think prophecy itself has failed, not their understanding of it. Their faith will be shaken and  will crumble around them. After all, if you can't believe the Bible...

What they have done is create an understanding of prophecy that has, built into itself, a catastrophic single point of failure. If Israel falls, so does their whole reading of the Bible.

Always be ready to say that your reading of prophecy is provisional and contingent, or you are going a bit beyond your warrant to speak of such things. The end time prophecies will no doubt be clear after the fact, when all has been fulfilled in accordance with the scriptures, but they are anything but clear, in our day.

A past example: How many people could have correctly described the life of Jesus, before it happened, from the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah? Some in his own day rejected Jesus because they thought he didn't line up with the prophecies. Surely he did, but he did not line up with their reading. The suffering servant and rejected stranger were downplayed in their reading; the great king over all nations, on David's throne, was what they wanted to see.

It is safe to say that God has promised the Jews their homeland back, and as we see, they have it under their control now. Both those things are quite true. It is interesting that they are both true and modern Israel may indeed be the fulfillment of prophecy. May be. But is it of any relevance to note that Israel today is essentially secular in tone and conduct, with a high proportion of unreligious inhabitants? I've talked at length with just such a fellow, name Cohen, family background very Jewish, home Israel, and in religion an atheist, though he is good natured toward those who want to believe in old fashioned ideas. He's an excellent chap in many ways, funny and smart, fun to spend time with, and a patriot, but completely out of touch with spiritual matters and his people's prophetic tradition. If Mr. Cohen is the tool of prophecy, he is a thoroughly unwitting one.

It will help in the cause of Christian unity, not to mention scriptural accuracy, if all of us will treat our interpretive readings of this and all prophecies as limited by our limited human understanding. It's contingent: IF I have read this part correctly and made the right connection with that other part over there, THEN such and such is true. But considering the variety and disagreement that now exists in interpreting end time prophecies, that's a pretty bit IF. Only one reading can be true about the end times, but we have several, each with a faction insisting on it. We should take such arguments no more seriously than we take ourselves, and that should not be very seriously at all.