Understanding Messiah's Two Comings and Israel's Two Exiles

When the Lord brought the Children of Israel up out of Egypt to bring them into the land which He had promised their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Lord required one thing from the Israelis, and that was faithfulness to Him – and to Him alone!  

Once established in the Promise Land, Israel enjoyed the rich and bountiful promises of God. Over time, indulgence, ease and indifference set in and Israel drifted from the joy of obedience to God to the wantonness of idolatry. God sent prophet after prophet to call Israel back in efforts to reform her wandering heart to return to the Lord. She would not; therefore God clearly demonstrated that unfaithfulness will not possess His promises! God had brought them into the land and God took them out! God determined an appointed time of 70 years that Israel would be exiled to Babylon. This was Israel’s first exile.

While in exile, God spoke to two prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel – both to outline with further and greater detail the timeline of the Jewish people, the land of Israel and the Gentile nations. The Lord revealed to Ezekiel extraordinary detail about the end-times, even through the millennial reign of Messiah – the restoration of the nation of Israel and development of the land, the war of Gog and Magog, the rebuilding of the Third Temple – all within the context of the end-times.

God ministered to the prophet Daniel through a series of visions that gave explicit and calculated details of the future.  The prophecies of Daniel serve as an end-time architecture, a detailed outline of predetermined appointed times, known as Daniel’s 70 Weeks! While virtually every Book of the Bible tells of the end-times, Daniel’s 70 Weeks serves as a guideline for interpreting context and timing.

Upon the completion of Israel’s first exile, the appointed 70 years in Babylon, Israel returned to the promise land. The central focus of worship was re-established in rebuilding (Second) Temple. While Israel regained her strength in part, she would not be a sovereign and independent nation again until the appointed time foretold to Daniel, known in Scripture as the latter days. 

Between the first and second exiles of Israel was the first coming of Messiah, Jesus our Lord. The life, ministry, death (atonement for sin), and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ was and is the Gospel for all of mankind -- our opportunity to enter the doorway of repentance and stand upright in relation to God. Upon the completion of Messiah’s first mission of bringing the Gospel to all mankind, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, our world entered another appointed time known as the Age of the Gentiles. 

Israel, at the rejection of her Messiah, experienced her second exile not to return until the time of the end -- when God would once again restore Israel as a nation and at the second coming of Messiah!