I was recently interviewed by Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries. Jan is one of the best commentators around today, and she is bold in informing Christians about the dangers that lurk in the religious world.

Jan told me what a few others have said to me recently: there is a downturn of Bible prophecy teaching in churches today.

There are several reasons for that, some of them the fault of prophecy teachers. There is no doubt that over the past four decades — since the Six Day War and the publication of Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth — that some Bible prophecy “experts” have predicted the end of the world.

Of course we’re still here.

When I worked for a Christian book publisher, I noticed a sharp drop in interest for these books immediately after January 1, 2000. For some reason, hordes of people had anticipated that the end would come before that season’s college football bowl games had concluded.

I have no idea why.

Y2K seemed to drive much of this…panic. I see a similar feeling building as 2012 approaches, for the “Mayan calendar ends” as I’ve been told. By the way, look for Mark Hitchcock’s terrific new book on the subject, coming in early September.

The Bible says nothing about Y2K or the Mayan calendar. If you want to see hidden codes, I guess that’s your right, but the Bible itself is plain about the end of the world. There is one key to understanding the season:

The Jews will re-enter history.

Other events play a part in the end-times, but none have the “bigness” of the return of the Jews to their ancestral land.

The large, modern return began in the 1880s, after an expulsion that lasted the better part of 19 centuries. Of course, the real flood of immigrants into what was then known as Palestine began after World War II. Today, there are over six million Jews living in the State of Israel.

They live in homes, thousands of them. They drive cars. They have  a seat of government. They have a fabled army. Israel has embassies around the world. In the state, Jews live, breathe, eat, sleep, play, laugh, work, cry.

They are there.

All this is quite relevant to each of us, despite the earnest and sustained efforts by people like the Emergent community to denigrate and mock predictive prophecy in the Bible.

For one thing, God tells us specifically in the Scriptures that when He purposes to do something, He will do it. He is signaling us in a dramatic way right now — through the divinely appointed return of the Jews to the Holy Land — that He alone controls history. He alone raises up and puts down rulers. He alone decides when history concludes.

If He is clearly showing us this (let me say it again: the Jews have re-entered history), can we not see that all His other promises are valid and sure, as well?

When Jesus said that if even one sheep strays from the flock and is lost, He will leave the 99 others and go after the one (Matthew 18). You do understand (don’t you?)  that this means that you are precious to him. Perhaps you have become a lost sheep through an immoral lifestyle or perhaps it’s through no fault of your own (a torn relationship, job loss, physical illness); Jesus promised that He will come find you! Since Jesus is God, and He has fulfilled His promises to the Jews in dramatic fashion, does it not follow logically that He cares about you?

And let me be clear: what this further means is that He loves all people, just as the Sunday school song said. Arabs, Mexicans, the Irish, Jews.

Although a huge number of people today hate Jews, their very presence in their own land today is a spiritual earthquake for the rest of us. For it says: God is here.

He is with you, as well. 

So the Emergents and Churches for Middle East Peace and the Sabeel Center and Jimmy Carter can bash the Jews and Bible prophecy all they want.

They cannot erase this fact: the Jews are alive in the Land of Israel today. God cares for them, and in so doing, cares for all of us — even the Israel-bashers — even as individuals.

That’s why prophecy matters.

Originally published in One News Now, Prophecy Matters.  June 2009