Jews have come home in unbelief – Exactly as the prophets said

Scripture told us to expect a Jewish return to the land before a national turning to Messiah. That “return in unbelief” can help evangelicals resist the new antisemitism, avoid romanticizing any government, and pray more biblically for Israel and her neighbors.

Not long ago, a secular Israeli friend tried to explain why, after building a successful life in North America, he was still thinking about going “back home” to Israel.

He is not religious. He is not part of a settler movement. He is weary of war and politics. Yet he told me, almost apologetically, “I don’t even know why. It’s like there’s a magnet. I just feel I belong there.”

That “magnet” is everything and nothing at once: family, Hebrew, history, trauma, culture — and, if Scripture is to be believed, the hand of God.

What makes his story so striking, especially for readers of ALL ISRAEL NEWS, is that the Jewish people are returning to their ancient land largely in unbelief. Most Israeli Jews today do not confess Yeshua as Messiah, and many are secular or loosely observant. And yet, after two thousand years of dispersion, they are home again — in roughly the same numbers as before the Holocaust, and on the same narrow strip of land the Bible calls Israel.

For many evangelicals who love Israel and follow the headlines — from the trauma of October 7 to the ongoing war of words and rockets — that combination of return and unbelief can feel confusing. For the prophets, it was expected.

This is not a glitch in God’s plan. It is part of the script.

A demographic miracle in the shadow of the Shoah

On the eve of the Holocaust in 1939, there were about 16.6 million Jews worldwide. The vast majority lived in Europe. Six years later, after the Nazi death machine and its collaborators did their work, only about 11 million remained. More than one-third of the entire Jewish people had been murdered.

Nearly eight decades on, the global Jewish population has only recently approached that pre-war peak. A 2023 analysis by the Jewish Agency for Israel and reporting in the Times of Israel estimate about 15.7 million Jews worldwide, with roughly 7.2 million living in Israel — about 46% of world Jewry.

Later updates show the trend continuing: On the eve of Rosh Hashanah 2024, the global Jewish population was estimated at 15.8 million, with about 7.3 million Jews in Israel and 6.3 million in the United States — again, roughly 46% of world Jewry in Israel.

In 1939, by contrast, only about 3% of the world’s Jews lived in what was then British Mandate Palestine — fewer than half a million people. Today, close to half live in the modern State of Israel. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, summarized by Israel’s official portal and outlets such as i24News, the country’s population recently stood at around 9.9 million, including over 7.4 million Jews.

Within a single lifetime, the Jewish people have gone from being a mostly European people, with a small foothold in the land of Israel, to being a people whose largest and most dynamic community is back in that land. Israel is now the demographic engine of the Jewish future.

No honest historian in 1939 — or even 1945 — would have predicted that outcome. Yet the Hebrew prophets, writing 2,500–2,700 years ago, described a future in which God would scatter Israel to the ends of the earth and then bring them home again.

The covenant that would not die

The story does not begin in 1948, but in Genesis 12, when God calls Abram to “go…to the land that I will show you,” promising to make him into a great nation, to bless those who bless him, and to curse those who curse him (Gen. 12:1–3). That promise is unilateral and unconditional: God binds Himself to it in a covenant ratified in Genesis 15 and reaffirmed in Genesis 17.

Israel’s continued existence and the Jewish people’s unique tie to the land are rooted in that covenant, not in a United Nations vote.

Centuries later, Moses warned that persistent rebellion would bring severe judgment, including exile:

“The LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other…”
— Deuteronomy 28:64

But the same Moses also spoke of mercy after exile:

“…then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you.”
— Deuteronomy 30:3

The God who scatters Israel in discipline also promises to regather them in grace. The scattering is real; so is the homecoming.

The prophets saw this second homecoming — and they saw unbelief

Isaiah takes Moses’ theme and looks far beyond the Babylonian exile. He foresees a future in which the Lord:

“will raise a signal for the nations
and will assemble the banished of Israel,
and gather the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth.”
— Isaiah 11:12

This is not simply the return from Babylon, which involved a relatively small number of exiles returning from a single empire. Isaiah speaks of a worldwide regathering “from the four corners of the earth,” tied closely to the Messianic reign of Isaiah 11:1–10.

Ezekiel develops the same theme in unforgettable images.

In Ezekiel 36, the Lord promises to bring Israel back to their land, to multiply the people, and to rebuild the ruined cities. Only after they are back in the land does He promise to sprinkle clean water on them, give them a new heart, and put His Spirit within them (Ezek. 36:24–27).

Then comes the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel sees scattered bones come together, then sinews and flesh cover them. Only later does the breath (ruach) of life enter them so that they stand as a vast living army.

Jewish and Christian readers alike have long seen in this a two-stage restoration:

1. A physical regathering of the Jewish people to their land while still in unbelief — bones and sinews, a national body without spiritual life.

2. A spiritual renewal when God breathes His Spirit upon them and brings them to faith.

Look at modern Israel through that lens:

• A people regathered from “the four corners of the earth,”

• In a land long desolate and contested,

• Speaking ancient Hebrew as a modern tongue,

• Yet mostly secular or non-Messianic.

It looks suspiciously like the first stage Ezekiel described.

“Isn’t this just politics?”

At this point, some Christians object: “Aren’t you just reading modern headlines back into ancient prophecies? Isn’t the State of Israel just another modern nation-state, like Belgium or Brazil?”

We must be clear about two things at once.

First, yes, Israel is a modern state with a secular government, fallible leaders, and real sins. No Knesset coalition is above critique. The Bible never calls us to baptize every policy decision as the will of God.

Second, the combination of facts we now see cannot be shrugged off as coincidence:

• A people preserved through two millennia of dispersion,

• The Holocaust’s attempted extermination of European Jewry,

• A return to the same land promised to Abraham and his descendants,

• The rebirth of Hebrew as a spoken language,

• And now, nearly half of world Jewry living in that land.

From a biblical perspective, that looks exactly like what Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Ezekiel said God would do: scatter, preserve, regather.

Demographers such as Professor Sergio DellaPergola, whose work underlies releases by the Jewish Agency and coverage in Times of Israel, note that about 46% of the world’s Jews now live in Israel, with roughly 6.3 million in the United States.

Historically, it is astonishing; theologically, it is familiar.

Return in unbelief: not a problem, but a prophecy

Many believers stumble here. They assume that if Israel’s rebirth has any prophetic significance, then:

• Israel’s leaders must be righteous,

• Its policies must be just, and

• Its people must already be walking closely with God.

But Scripture never says that.

In fact, the prophetic pattern runs the other way: first a return, then repentance.

• In Deuteronomy 30, repentance and regathering are intertwined, but the text clearly envisions God acting in mercy toward a people who have already experienced the curse of exile.

• In Ezekiel 36–37, God brings the people back to the land while they are still profaning His name among the nations, then sanctifies His name by transforming them.

• In Zechariah 12:10, the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem are already in the land when God pours out “a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy,” leading them to look “on me, on him whom they have pierced” and to mourn.

The New Testament confirms the same pattern.

In Romans 9–11, Paul wrestles with Israel’s current unbelief and yet insists:

“For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
— Romans 11:29

He describes a present partial hardening on Israel “until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25), and then looks forward to a future national turning to Messiah:

“And in this way all Israel will be saved.”
— Romans 11:26

Put together, Scripture expects a season in which:

• Israel is back in the land,

• Still largely in unbelief,

• Under intense pressure,

• Yet mysteriously preserved, until God opens their eyes.

That is the tension we feel when we meet a secular Israeli engineer, a skeptical Tel Aviv artist, or a deeply wounded Holocaust survivor in Haifa — physically home, spiritually far, and yet right at the center of God’s unfolding plan.

Antisemitism’s new mask

The prophetic picture is not only about Israel’s return; it is also about the nations’ rage.

In recent years, antisemitism has surged worldwide. In the United States alone, the Anti-Defamation League’s Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024 recorded 9,354 incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault — more than 25 per day, the highest level since tracking began in 1979 and part of an almost nine-fold rise over the past decade.

For the first time, a majority of those incidents were directly tied to anger at Israel and Zionism, with many campus and street protests sliding from legitimate criticism of Israeli policy into calls for Israel’s elimination and open praise for terror groups.

European and global monitoring bodies report similar spikes: Jewish schools and synagogues under threat, Jewish students harassed on campuses, “From the river to the sea” chanted in Western capitals as if the annihilation of Israel were a moral ideal.

ALL ISRAEL NEWS has chronicled these trends and the way anti-Zionism has become, in Greg Denham’s phrase, an “ideological virus infecting young Evangelicals: Why anti-Zionism is anti-Christ,” as support for Israel among 18–29-year-old evangelicals has plunged.

The prophets were not naïve about this. Psalm 83, Ezekiel 38–39, and Zechariah 12 all describe periods of intense hostility toward Israel, coupled with God’s determination to defend His people and vindicate His name through their deliverance.

We do not honor Scripture by forcing every headline into a specific prophecy chart. But we also do not honor Scripture by pretending that:

• A still-wounded people,

• Returning to a still-contested land,

• Facing renewed hatred worldwide,

is some strange “accident” the Bible never anticipated.

Five ways this should shape us

So what should Bible-believing Christians — especially those who follow Israel news every day — do with all of this?

1. Reject replacement theology and cheap supersessionism

The New Testament never says, “God is finished with ethnic Israel.” Instead, Paul warns Gentile believers not to become arrogant toward the Jewish people:

“…remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.”
— Romans 11:18

Any theology that erases God’s promises to Abraham’s physical descendants contradicts Paul’s careful argument. We must not baptize every decision of the State of Israel as righteous — but neither may we pretend that the Jewish people have been written out of God’s story.

ALL ISRAEL NEWS has already run strong correctives to “erase & replace” theology and the new anti-Zionism inside the Church, such as “Why Israel still matters: The faithfulness of God in a modern miracle” and Greg Denham’s “Erase & replace: The lie of Replacement Theology — And the attempt to write Israel out of God’s plan.”

Your Bible, not the latest hashtag, must set your categories.

2. Keep the cross at the center, not politics

Dispensational or not, we must keep the gospel central.

The Jewish people, like all of us, need salvation in Yeshua the Messiah. If our love for Israel never moves us to pray for Jewish people to know Jesus, we have lost the plot.

At the same time, a “spiritualized” theology that ignores the very real return of the Jewish people to their land tears the New Testament loose from its Old Testament roots. The apostles wrote in a world where the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still mattered — and they still matter now.

3. Stand against antisemitism in every form

When antisemitism surges — from far-right extremists, far-left radicals, Islamist ideologues, or confused students — Christians should be the first to say “no.”

We do not have to endorse every decision of the Israeli government to insist that:

• Jewish students be safe on our campuses,

• Jewish institutions be protected, and

• Jewish neighbors be treated with dignity as image-bearers of God.

A people who have not yet fully recovered demographically from the Holocaust should not have to wonder whether they are safe in New York, Paris, London, or Los Angeles.

4. Treat Jewish people as neighbors, not as props in our prophecy charts

The Jewish student in your classroom, the Israeli coworker on Zoom, the elderly Holocaust survivor down the street — these are not “signs of the times.” They are human beings, often carrying deep generational trauma.

Some are wary of Christians because of the Church’s long history of antisemitism. Listening well, loving well, and sharing Yeshua with humility honors both them and the God of Israel.

5. Let God’s faithfulness to Israel strengthen your faith

If God can preserve the Jewish people through Babylon, Rome, medieval persecutions, pogroms, the Shoah, October 7, and modern jihadist terror — and still bring them back to the same land after two thousand years — then He can keep His promises to you.

The God who keeps covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the same God who promises never to leave nor forsake those who are in Christ.

“Home in unbelief” — and the story is not finished

We should not romanticize Israel’s present condition.

The nation is deeply divided. Many young Israelis are secular or disillusioned. The trauma of October 7 and the ongoing conflict with Iran-backed terror groups have left painful moral and spiritual questions hanging over the society. Honest Christians can acknowledge genuine suffering and injustice on both sides of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

But none of that negates the prophetic significance of the Jewish return. In many ways, it intensifies it.

The prophets told us to expect:

• A people back in their land,

• Still wrestling with sin and unbelief,

• Still arguing with their God,

• Yet irresistibly drawn home and preserved against all odds,

• Awaiting a future outpouring of grace.

That is precisely what we are seeing.

The bones have come together. The sinews and flesh are there. The body is standing again on its feet in the land of promise. But the breath of spiritual life — that great turning to Messiah that Paul longs for in Romans 11 — is still ahead.

For now, the Jews have indeed come home in unbelief, exactly as the prophets said. For evangelicals who take the Bible seriously, that reality should not unsettle our faith. It should deepen our awe and sharpen our prayers.

We are living in a generation that gets to watch the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob keep His word on the evening news.

The right response is not speculation, but worship, repentance, and renewed urgency to proclaim the gospel “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16) — trusting that the One who brought Israel home in unbelief will, in His time, bring them all the way home to Himself.