{"id":1349,"date":"2011-06-08T22:01:22","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T03:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/08\/when-will-the-jewish-people-repent\/"},"modified":"2011-06-08T22:01:22","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T03:01:22","slug":"when-will-the-jewish-people-repent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/08\/when-will-the-jewish-people-repent\/","title":{"rendered":"When Will the Jewish People Repent?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Zechariah 12:10 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him<\/strong> as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Scripture is overwhelmingly clear that God’s promises will be fulfilled to his people, the nation of Israel, and they will be restored to him.  This hope is stated many times in the Old Testament, and several times in explicit connection with the response to the Messiah.  Zechariah 12:10 is one such passage that speaks of Israel’s response of repentance, and it says here directly that they will recognize that the one that they pierced is the one they should have accepted.  The Gospel of John makes it clear that Jesus is the pierced one (John 19:37), and the book of Revelation anticipates the Jewish people seeing Jesus coming with the clouds (Rev 1:7).<\/p>\n

The question that I want to address here is when this event occurs.  Will this prophecy be fulfilled when Jesus descends at the climax of the Tribulation to defeat the armies arrayed against Jerusalem (as described in Zech 14 and Rev 19)?  Will their repentance occur at the Second Coming?<\/p>\n

I was reading a blog recently which described<\/a> an individual attacking John MacArthur for believing that Israel is saved by sight when they see Jesus. I don’t know if this correctly reports MacArthur’s view or not, and it’s not important here.  It did remind me that I have essentially held this view for a long time.  I’ve taken “literally” the phrase in Zechariah 12 that “they will look on me” as referring to physical sight.  That is, at the moment that Jesus appears and they see him in the sky, then the majority of the Jewish people will be saved (cf. Rom 11:26).<\/p>\n

My view on this was challenged recently when I read an article by Paul D. Feinberg.  He wrote:<\/p>\n

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“There is good evidence that repentance precedes the return of Christ<\/strong> (Hos. 5:15\u20136:3). The sight of the Messiah is the cause of intense mourning over the years of rejection (Zech. 12:11-14). The return of Christ is signaled by Israel’s acceptance of their Messiah rather than being the occasion for their acceptance of salvation” (Willis and Master, eds., Issues in Dispensationalism, 231).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Logically and theologically<\/em>, this certainly makes sense. Throughout Scripture, the Lord typically requires faith before providing salvation.  (This doesn’t deny that he provides the faith, but it does mean that faith is chronologically prior<\/em> to salvation.)  Why does the Messiah return at one point and not another if there is no Jewish response before his return?  It seems more reasonable to understand his return (which is distinct from the rapture) as related to Israel’s repentance.<\/p>\n

Feinberg cites Hosea 5:15-6:3 to support the idea that repentance precedes salvation.<\/p>\n

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Hosea 5:15\u20136:3 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d<\/strong> Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt. And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me.” “Come, let us return to the Lord<\/strong>. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are many other examples which speak of restoration following repentance.  Many of these must be eschatological, for they speak of the restoration in terms that cannot be true of some mini-revival in the time of Nehemiah (when God did not live in their presence, forgive all sin, and remove all enemies).<\/p>\n

This brings us back to Zechariah 12 and the “look” of the Jews upon the one they have pierced.  (For background on what this means, read Isaiah 53, where the speakers recognize that they executed an innocent one who bore their sin.)  Is it possible that this “look” is a spiritual look and not a physical look?  Can Zechariah be speaking of an act of faith rather than of sight?  Grammatically, it certainly can, as the same construction (“look upon”) is used in Psalm 34:5:<\/p>\n

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Psalm 34:5 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Those who look to him<\/strong> are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In this psalm, David (in the cave of Adullam?) is beckoning his motley crew to seek the Lord.  He is obviously not asking them to look physically upon God, but rather to trust him by walking by faith.<\/p>\n

When Jesus was rejected by the nation of Israel, he declared to them:<\/p>\n

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Matt 23:39 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say<\/strong>, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. ‘” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thus it seems to me most accurate to interpret Zechariah’s prediction as a future repentance which results in the return of the Messiah to deliver Israel from the attacking nations and to establish his kingdom.  The timing of this repentance must be shortly before the Second Coming near the end of the seven-year Tribulation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zechariah 12:10 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-isaiah","category-prophets-besides-isaiah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}