ÿþ<table border="1" cellspacing="150" cellpadding="50" align=""> <tr> <td> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Isreal Lost</title> </head> <body> <font face=arial size=3> <b>Israel Lost</b><br> <i><font face="times">Prophecy teachers miss the mark</i></font face="times"><br> <font size=1 face=arial>Occasionally updated and edited. Copyright &copy; 2011<hr>Kenn Gividen | <a href="http://www.kenngividen.com">KennGividen.com</a><br><br><br></font size=1> <font size=2 face=arial> <img src="http://kenngividen.com/pic/kenn" border="1" width="100" hspace="10" align="left">Stonewall Jackson famously remarked to General Richard Ewell, "He who does not see the hand of God in this is blind, Sir, blind!" <br><br> It was June, 1862. The occasion was the Confederacy's defeat of the Union Army in the Battle of Port Republic and Cross Keys. The Union armies retreated. Jackson controlled the upper and middle Shenandoah Valley. In his mind the triumph was a harbinger of the things to come. God was on the side of the South and victory was imminent. <br><br> Fast forward three years to June, 1865. Robert E. Lee had surrendered 98,270 Confederate troops, the South lay in ruins and the final shots of the American Civil War were heard. <br><br> Stonewall Jackson's prophetic pronouncement was wrong. <br><br> Growing up in fundamentalism I often heard preachers make similar pronouncements. The hand of God was clearly seen as prophecy was fulfilled before our very eyes. Only the willfully blind failed to recognize that the emergence of Israel was a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The generation who witnessed the birth of Israel on May 14, 1948 would live to see the Second Coming of Jesus. A biblical generation, they said, was 40 years. Jesus would return no later than 1988. <br><br> In cadence with Israel's birth was the menace from her north, the Soviet Union. The stage was set, they said, for the battle of Armageddon when the nations of the world would be defeated by God's Chosen People. <br><br> Jesus, of course, failed to return on schedule. And the demise of the Soviet Union produced little more than a blush on the cheeks of Bible prophecy scholars. They stuck to their guns. They meant 'Russia,' they said. Not the 'Soviet Union.' <br><br> Another pronouncement involved the massive return of Jews to their homeland. Millions immigrated to the tiny Jewish nation from around the world. God was at work. Ezekiel's 'dry bones' prophecy was coming to life before our very eyes. <br><br> After the turn of the century things began to change. The flow of Jewish immigrants to Israel subsided. By 2007 there were actually more Jews emigrating out of Israel than immigrating into it. That trend has continued every year to date. It appears the Stonewall Jacksons of Bible prophecy may have spoken too soon. <br><br> Furthermore, the world's Jewish population is in decline. The Jewish Agency's Institute for Jewish People Policy Planning warns that the Jewish population declines by 150 per day; 50,000 per year. <br><br> The Jewish birth rate in Israel, 2.9 per woman, offers little consolation. While it exceeds the 2.1 rate required to sustain a population, recent research reveals that half of Israel's young people want to leave the country.[1] That could effectively diminish the birth rate from 2.9 per woman to less than 1.5. While Bible Prophecy teachers make much ado about the inflow of Jews to Israel, they ignore the outflow. <br><br> They also ignore Israel's emerging Arab population. Israel's Jewish birth rate falls far below that of Palestinian Arabs in Israel and the West Bank, which is 3.7 children per woman. "This means that by 2020, the population of Jews out of the total population of Israel plus the West Bank, without counting Gaza, would decline to 56%." [2] <br><br> When Gaza is included, the future for Israel's Jewish majority grows even more bleak. In 2000 the Jewish majority was 55 percent. By 2010 that majority had reduced to 52 percent. The Jewish majority would be lost in or about 2015. [2] <br><br> And what about Russia, the menace from the North? <br><br> Prophecy teachers in the late twentieth century seemed fond of forming the future to fit current events. The Soviet Union was a daunting danger, a clear prediction straight from the pages of the Bible. One merely had to connect the prophetic dots. There was, of course, no verbatim passage that clearly announced an impending invasion from that specific nation during our generation. <br><br> Today we know that Russia is shrinking and her military becoming increasingly impotent. "Between 2010 and 2025, Russia's pool of potential military recruits, aged 20-29, will decline by 44 percent, according to the United Nations." [3] By 2017 "Russia is likely to have only 650,000 18-year-old males from which to maintain an army that today relies on 750,000 recruits."[4] <br><br> That's not to say Jewish immigration to Israel will never increase. An international economic crisis could be a catalyst that drives the Diaspora Jews to Israel's friendly turf. Given the prospects of a world depression, I may go with them. <br><br> Nor is it to suppose that Russia could never invade Israel. <br><br> It is to say that, like Stonewall Jackson, teachers of Bible prophecy are inclined to presume the future with a bias based on current events. <br><br> It is to acknowledge that the popular prophetic hand-wringing of the late 20th century -- that neatly packaged the emergence of Israel and a Russian invasion within our generation -- was beyond preposterous. It was downright silly. <br><br> It is also to note that prophecy teachers seem oblivious to their dismal track record. They simply move on to new and improved hand wringers; prophetic interpretations that cannot be trusted. <br><br><font size=1 face=arial> 1. John Mearshimer, "Saving Israel from Itself," American Conservative, May 18, 2009 <br><br> 2. http://jppi.org.il/uploads/Jewish_Demographic_Policies_DellaPergola.pdf.pdf <br><br> 3. Richard Fairbanks and Paul Hewitt, "Demography vs. an Imperial Impuse," Washington Times, Sept. 17, 2008 <br><br> 4. William Hawkins, "U.S. Need Not Decline," Washington Times, Dec. 4, 2008, quoting the National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2005 <br><br><hr><font size=2 face=arial> November 22, 2011