Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 39:22

Timing: When will Israel Convert to Christ?

This restoration of the Jews to the Messianic fold, uniting the newly Messianic Jew with Gentile Christian in one church invisible, in one Body of Christ, is the focal point not just of some New Testament prophecies (notably Romans 11:15), but of many Old Testament ones also, including much of the book of Isaiah, parts of Jeremiah (e.g. Jeremiah 30), Ezekiel (obviously, given the title of this commentary!), Daniel and the so-called minor prophets.

But of all the relevant Old Testament prophecies of this development, perhaps none adds a timing specificity as much as Hosea does, as follows:

"Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth." (Hosea 6:1-3)

Gill makes a rather astonishing observation on the Hosea 6 quote above, that goes as follows:

"After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up"

The Jews, in their present state, are as dead men, both in a civil and spiritual sense, and their conversion and restoration will be as life from the dead [here Gill refers to Romans 11:15, which has particular specificity to the life their conversion brings to the current doubly dead state of the Sardian church during the slain condition of the Lord’s public witness in the West]; they are like persons buried, and, when they are restored, they will be raised out of their graves, both of sin and misery; see Romans 11:15, Ezekiel 37:11-14; the time of which is here fixed, after two days, and on the third; which Jarchi [aka Rashi] interprets of the two temples that have been destroyed, and of the third temple to be built, which the Jews expect, but in vain [the early church understood that Christ had promised in Matthew 24 that it would never be rebuilt, but today's futurism-intoxicated prophecy experts seem unaware of that], and when they hope for good times: Kimchi explains it of their three captivities, in Egypt, Babylon, and the present one, and so Ben Melech³, from which they hope to be raised, and live comfortably; which sense is much better than the former: and with it may be compared Vitringa's notion of the text, that the first day was between Israel's coming out of Egypt and the Babylonish captivity; the second day between that and the times of Antiochus [the vile Grecian king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes], which was the third night; then the third day followed, which is the times of the Messiah: but the Targum comes nearer the truth, which paraphrases the words thus,

"he will quicken us in the days of consolation which are to come, and in the day of the resurrection of the dead he will raise us up;"

whereby days of consolation are meant the days of the Messiah, with which the Jews generally connect the resurrection of the dead [but mistakenly so, for the first resurrection (of the just) comes at the end of the Laodicean aberrancy when Christ returns Personally, whereas the second resurrection (of the damned) comes at the end of the Millennial binding of Satan]; and if we understand them of the last days of the Messiah [by which Gill means the glorious Philadelphian church age, i.e., the Kingdom’s golden age, which contrary to popular bad eschatological thinking of the present day still, as of 2026, lies ahead, the present day being the closing moments of Sardis], it is not much amiss; for the words respect the quickening and raising up of the Jews in the latter day, the times of Christ's spiritual coming and reign [i.e. the Kingdom age of Daniel 7:18,22]: and these two and three days may be expressive of a long and short time, as interpreters differently explain them; of a long time, as the third day is a long time for a man to lie dead, when there can be little or no hope of his reviving, (see Luke 24:21); or of a short time, for which two or three days is a common phrase; and both true in this case: it is a long time Israel and Judah have been in captivity, and there may seem little hope of their restoration; but it will be a short time with the Lord, with whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years: and this I take to be the sense of the words, that after the second Millennium, or the Lord's two days, and at the beginning of the third [i.e. in the present, 21^st Century!], will be the time of their conversion and restoration, reckoning from the last destruction of them by the Romans; for not till then were Israel and Judah wholly in a state of death: many of Israel were mixed among those of Judah before the Babylonish captivity, and many returned with them from it; but, when destroyed by the Romans, there was an end of their civil and church state; which will both be revived on a better foundation at this period of time: but if this conjecture is not agreeable (for I only propose it as such), the sense may be taken thus, that in a short time after the repentance of Israel, and their conversion to the Lord, they will be brought into a very comfortable and happy state and condition, both with respect to things temporal and spiritual [NOTE that this blessing matrix applies not just to the newly converted nation of Israel and the newly Christian Jews worldwide, but to the rest of church invisible as well, the two parties being fused into one Body of Christ (as alluded to in Isaiah 54:13-14)];

"and we shall live in his sight;"

comfortably, in a civil sense, in their own land, and in the possession of all their privileges and liberties; and in a spiritual sense, by faith on Jesus Christ, whom they shall now embrace, and in the enjoyment of the Gospel and Gospel ordinances; and the prophet represents the penitents and faithful among them as believing and hoping for these things. (John Gill on Hosea 6:2).

Gill thereby adduces the maxim that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years" (2 Peter 3:8) in support of a proposal that the timing for the Jewish conversion to Christ would be around, or of the order, of two thousand years from the Roman Empire’s siege of Jerusalem in AD 70; that is, some time in our present century!

But Gill, modestly reluctant to insist on that proposal of his, offers the safety net of a more certain understanding of the passage, as applying (as it surely will) to the great peace and safety that the Christian Jewish nation of Israel, and by inference, its Gentile Christian brethren in the world beyond, shall enjoy from the time of the Jewish Epiphany and deliverance from Gog, onward.

That said, I think both understandings proposed by Gill are valid: the Jewish Epiphany will happen this 21^st Century and it will herald great spiritual and temporal blessedness for all of the Lord’s children.

However, I go further and say that it will happen around the close of the present decade, circa 2029/30, approximately a full 2,000 years (i.e. "two days") after the Ephesian church era began (rather than reckoned from AD 70-71 as Gill proposes), just as the three-and-a-half year silence of the Lord’s public witness, lying slain by the Scarlet Beast (the western elites' godless system), is at its end.

My argument for this proposed timing is thus:

1. Israel, bar the elect few who believed in Christ during His first advent, became or more specifically demonstrated - definitively - that they were "dead" to God at the opening of His ministry and that accordingly, have manifestly been in a spiritually dead state for the two "millennial days" that Gill proposes above from that time until now; that is, almost two thousand literal years, on the basis that Jesus was crucified ca. AD 30-33⁵ and therefore His ministry began AD 27-30.
2. Modern Israel's conversion to Christ is to happen while the Gentile church is "dead", hence that conversion is to bring "life from the dead" (Romans 11:15) to the Gentile church transcendent; it cannot bring life from the dead to an already lively church!
   
   Now, how more dead can the Gentile church be than (a) when it is in its present Sardian state⁶ ("thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead" Revelation 3:1) and (b) when its public witness against error (the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11) lies slain, that is, silenced, in the sight of the ungodly, thanks to the wicked actions of the beast from the bottomless pit (Revelation 11:7 - the same beast as that described in Revelation 17, i.e., secular, atheistic western power, as first proposed by Alexander Hislop in 1849 in his book, The Red Republic)?
   
   The conversion of the Jews must therefore bring not just irrevocable blessing to the Gentile church, but also happen when the Gentile church is at its lowest ebb, i.e., right at the close of the Sardis church age, on the eve of, and acting as a trigger event for, the glorious Philadelphian era in which the saints of the most High will, as Daniel 7:27 promises, possess the kingdom and dominion under heaven (i.e. assume temporal rulership over first one and then another and another nation until the whole world falls, in accordance with Daniel 2:44, under godly rule and the Gospel flourishes like never before, as Christ intimates in Revelation 3:7).
   
   But when will the Lord's public witness against error lie dead?
   
   Well, it already is thus here in the UK and in much of Europe, thanks to Satanic hate speech laws brought in by the beast system in its final scarlet (hyper socialist aka globalist) form, and the very same killing is underway in America and the rest of the West, all in the name of online safety, homeland security, anti-terrorism, etc., following the pattern of excuses for suppression attempted against Christians by the dying Roman empire of bygone times.
   
   With that all being so, it means that the Jews' conversion to Christ - and the concurrent or contemporaneous dreadful Great Day of the Lord Almighty, i.e., the last global war mankind will ever know and which begins with the Gog-led invasion of Palestine - will all occur around the present decade's end, because the clock is ticking down now that the Lord's public witness (i.e. out on the streets, or in open discourse with the ungodly) is effectively dead in every major western city.
3. The Kingdom of Daniel 7:18, etc., which begins with the life-from-the-dead effects upon the Gentile church caused by the conversion of the Jews promised in Romans 11:15, is elementally part of the same Kingdom that Jesus spoke of to the disciples in Luke 17:21:

   "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:21)

   Gill on this says:

   the words may be rendered,
   
   "the kingdom of God is among you;"
   
   and the meaning be, that the king Messiah was already come, and was among them, and his kingdom was already set up, of which the miracles of Christ were a full proof; (John Gill's commentary on Luke 17:21)

   And so I submit that the Kingdom in the alternative form of words proposed by Gill consists of a special presence of Christ among His people, the fruits whereof were extraordinary spiritual blessings along with temporal blessings, notably healing of illnesses and the general betterment of people's lives, all of which things are assured during the Philadelphian church age because by then, (a) the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 15-16 will be finished and therefore God will have completed His temporal judgments on humanity (hence the plagues are said to be the last plagues, the final of which includes the dismantling of all false religion, an obvious complement to the advance of the one true religion) and (b) the spiritual and temporal blessedness promised to the future Messianic house of Israel in the Old Testament prophets will come to fruition.
   
   That being the case, the spiritual reign of Christ that the English Puritans spoke of that would constitute the Philadelphian church age, i.e., the unprecedented worldwide success of the gospel of grace and the rulership of the nations falling like dominoes into the hands of godly, Christ-honouring men, is a second manifestation of the Kingdom Christ spoke of, the third one being the Millennium, when Christ return and reigns in Person among us,⁷ demonstrating a heavenward progression in blessedness upon humanity.
   
   Therefore, it seems to be the case that Gill's two thousand year proposal described above spans history from the commencement of the first manifestation of the Kingdom at the opening of Jesus' ministry to the second manifestation of the Kingdom at the opening of the Philadelphian church age which starts with the conversion of the Jews; this would again place the Jewish Epiphany at around the close of the present decade.