Many prophecies predict that the Jews will return to Israel in the Last Days and use this claim to say that it is the last days. However, the claim is neither true nor does it really say what it appears to say. The Judahites or Jews went into captivity in Babylon in the sixth century before Christ. It is not clear how many went to Babylon, but certainly not everyone. It is estimated that at the time of the destruction of the first Temple, there were 50,000 people in Judah and Benjamin had long before been absorbed into that tribe's territory. If the prominent people were taken away and we are generous, we might say that 7,000 were taken away. That number does not consist of all; it consists of 35%. Most of the Jews were left in Judah.
Now some 70 years later a group of Jews returned to Judah. They purified those who came back and those who stayed and anyone who had a foreign wife was excluded from the people. For the next 1000 years, Babylon and later Babylon and Alexandria were the primary places that Jews lived. The more authoritative Talmud is called the Bavli or Babylonian Talmud as it was written in Babylon were most of the Jewish scholars lived and where its teachings had a greater importance. At the time of Jesus, it is estimated that there were some 16,000,000 Jews in the world who identified themselves as Jewish and may be twice that number that had fallen away due to the captivity. About 1,000,000 of these people lived in the territory of Herod the Great. At the same time, there probably were 1,000,000 Jews living in Parthian territory including Babylon and 1,000,000 Jews living in or around Alexandria in Egypt. It is because the vast majority of Jews did not live in Palestina that Phariseeism or Rabbinic Judaism was able to establish itself as supreme after the destruction of the second Temple.
At the time of the Bar Kochba revolution in 132 C.E., there were about 2,000,000 persons in the same area as was the domain of Herod the Great. One half of those people were Nasorean Jews, follows of Jesus; the other half were Pharisees. The other 21 sects of Judaism were gone. Between 70 A.D. and 135 A.D., most Jews were forced to leave Judah.
Today, there are 12,000,000 people who claim to be Jews. But, there are 150,000,000 people who descend from Jacob. The prophecies of the return that were given by Jeremiah talk about two separate returns. The first return is spoken of in Jeremiah 16:14-15.That prophecy says that G-d will bring the Israelites home from all the lands to which he had banished them. It is important to realize that Israel and Jacob are the same persons, but that Jacob is the man before he was renewed by his struggle with the Archangel of the Presence and Israel is that man after the struggle. Thus, Israelites are believers in the Jewish faith, but the descendants of Jacob may or may not be believers. The first return happened when the Jews came back from Babylon. They were Israelites, all believers. Most of the Jews stayed in Babylon because they were not Israelites, the were not believers. This prophecy has been fulfilled.
However, Jeremiah 23:7-8 talk about another return. This return will be of all the descendants of the house of Israel. Thus it includes those who remained Jewish after the first return and those who did not. The number included in this return is 150,000,000. Israel today is composed of roughly 2.75 million believing Jews, 2.75 million secular Jews, and 1.5 million Christians, Bahai, Druze, Muslim and other religious groups. So, the Israel of today is neither the result of the first return or the second return. It is not the Israel spoken of in prophecy.
Many Christians support Israel because they believe that this first prophecy applies to today. It does not. The most orthodox Jews, the Hasids, deny that Israel is the Israel of prophecy. The establishment of the State of Israel is catalyst for the fulfillment of many prophecies, but it is not the promised return. That is still to happen. For that reason, we should not support Israel because it is the Holy Land, but rather because it is a democratic, civilized, modern and forward thinking nation.
The most important sign of the End Times has not happened. And we know it. Because the second important sign of the End Times will be the rebuilding of the Temple and that has not happened either.
