Hosea prophecy revealed

 

[Part I]

around 753 BC Hosea was a prophet that got caught to deliver a message to the descendants of Abraham, the Israelites. And in the book of Hosea we find a prophecy that lets them know that, because they rejected God they would be punished by the nation’s, but because of God's grace, He would save and one day revive them.

 

Now this prophecy was partially fulfilled in 722 BC, when the Assyrians came and took the Israelites into captivity, but what we are about to see is that the prophecy of Hosea was also written to parallel with the future and has fulfillment in a recent event, and by the end of this, it will be evident that the Bible has foretold history!

 

In the book of Hosea, we see a prophetic warning to the Israelites revealing that since they rejected God, his hand of protection would be removed, and their enemies would overtake them, but Hosea also offers hope, when he says that their nation will be revived and that one day they will even live in God's presence, when the Messiah the king from the lineage of David comes in the latter days to rule over the nations.

 

Now one thing I should say, whenever it mentions the Israelites, it's also referring to the Jewish people, because later the Israelites became known as Jews, so this prophecy largely concerns the Jewish people. So the book of Hosea mentions how the Israelites or the Jewish people would one day face persecution and destruction because of rejecting God, but in chapter 6 Hosea gives them hope and through a powerful prophecy he reveals two things:

 

Number one, he lets them know when God would forgive them and revive the Israelite nation

and number two: He lets them know when God will raise them up to live in his presence. 

 

And so the amazing thing is, Hosea here gives a timeframe for when the nation would be revived and history shows that this prophecy was spot-on. But before we can get into when their nation was revived, we must first look to see when it was destroyed, so let's look at the prophecy of Zechariah:

 

Zechariah 13 verse 7:

 

"awake o sword against my shepherd against the man who is close to me declares the lord almighty strike the Shepherd and the sheep will be scattered and I will turn my head against the little ones"

 

So here we have God speaking through Zachariah and He sentenced that when this person called the Shepherd is killed, that will begin the moment when the sheep will be scattered, and they will lose their nation. First of all throughout the Old Testament the people of God, the Jews or the Israelites, were always referred to as God's sheep his beloved people and God has always wanted to take care of them and keep them safe from their enemies, but here in Zechariah 13:7, we see that when this person this Shepherd who watches over the sheep is struck or killed, then the Sheep God's people the Israelites will be scattered.

 

Now to find out when they've lost their nation and when they were scattered, we must first see who the Shepherd is and when he was killed. Well look at what Jesus says in John chapter 10 verse 11:

 

"I am The Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the Sheep"

 

So it's clear that Jesus identified himself as, the shepherd that the Old Testament said, would be killed. Notice what Jesus said at the Last Supper, when it was almost time for him to die Matthew 26 verse 31:

 

"Then Jesus told them this very night you will all fall away on account of me for it is written I will strike the Shepherd and the Sheep of the flock will be scattered"

and so Jesus again he identifies himself as this shepherd. So the prophet

Zechariah said; that when the shepherd is killed, God's people, the Sheep, will be scattered. scattered from where?

 

From the place they have always wanted to be…Jerusalem

 

You see, this here is a prophecy that was fulfilled in history and it is one that no one can deny, because at the time of Jesus, the Israelites were the Jewish people they were safe in Jerusalem. They had their temple and they were at peace being in the Land of Israel, so no one would have ever predicted that one day, they would ever lose that.

 

But the impossible happened after Jesus, the shepherd, was killed. No one could have ever imagined it, but history shows that 40 years after Jesus was killed, Jerusalem and their temple were destroyed and after that, the scattering of God's people, the Jews, began. And this great event was so catastrophic, that historians have even given it a name… “the Jewish Diaspora.” The Jewish Diaspora refers to when the Jewish people were removed from their land and were taken captive by the nations.

 

Now the amazing thing is that not only Zachariah said that God's people would be scattered after the shepherd was killed, but even Jesus prophesied this. look at what he said in Luke.

 

Okay, so here Jesus was with his followers and he was letting them know that one day the Temple of Jerusalem would be destroyed, and here he is, about to let them know the fate of the Jewish people. after that happens in chapter 21 verse 24 he says; they will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all nations and then he says; this and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

 

This is this is so loaded, because here Jesus says that after he is killed and Jerusalem falls, the Jewish people will be taken captive by other nations and he says, many of them will be killed and Jerusalem will be controlled by the Gentiles which are non-Jewish people, until the appointed time would come for the Jews to regain their land.

 

Okay, so were Jesus and the Prophet Zechariah, right? did the Jewish people become scattered from their homeland and faced persecution and was Jerusalem taken over by Gentiles after the crucifixion let's look and see

 

[Video] https://youtu.be/wdnUzrC8l-Q (important to watch!)

 

God's Word it's powerful. The book of Zechariah said that when the shepherd, the man close to God, is killed, the sheep will be scattered and we see that history has unfolded exactly as Zechariah predicted. Jesus was killed in 30 AD and 40 years later in 70 AD Jerusalem was destroyed and then the people of Israel were taken captive and after that they were scattered among every nation in the world. It's no coincidence this is prophecy!

 

Now the last time we looked at how the Old Testament also predicted that Jerusalem would be destroyed, 40 years after Christ's death and that was fulfilled in 70 AD. (See Jonah prophecy)

 

It's all amazing you know, you could either conclude that it's all coincidence or God's Word is powerful, because it is absolutely mind-blowing that just as it was predicted after God's people reject it and killed his son, the Shepherd, that they were then banished from Jerusalem and then taken captives by every nation, just as the scripture said. Archaeological evidence like the Dead Sea Scrolls proves that all of this was written in the Old Testament. All these prophetic writings hundreds of years before Jesus even came to the world and so what we have just seen here are two major prophecies that have been fulfilled. The first was that the Jewish people would be scattered from their land after Jesus the shepherd was killed, and we saw that that started in 70 AD and the second prophecy well that gets even deeper, because it tells us the exact time when God would revive them and give them back their land.

 

All right get a good sip drinking water here. Okay, let's go back to Hosea chapter 6.

 

"As a reason come let us return to the Lord he has torn us to pieces but he will heal us he has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds and here it is, after two days he will revive us and on the third day he will raise us up that we may live in his presence."

 

It says; after two days the Jewish people would be revived, now remember with prophecy days and numbers are often in prophetic codes. In the Jonah Prophecy we saw a clear example of that, how the 40 days in the Book of Jonah, represented 40 years in the future. Well, this right here is also a prophetic code and we see the solution for this code in second Peter 3 verse 8 as it reads:

 

"With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day."

 

And also, in Psalm 90 verse 4:

 

"A thousand years in your sight are like a day that's just gone by."

 

Now this is interesting because we know that God lives an eternity, which is a dimension without beginning or end, so our 24-hour days are really irrelevant to God's time space. So, when it says that a day to God is a thousand years or a millennium, we must understand that Peter here, is referring to an Old Testament prophetic code. You see with prophecy the timeframe of events do have a literal fulfillment in Old Testament history, but to see how something that happened relates to the future fulfillment you have to use the prophetic code.

 

In the Book of Jonah, we saw that the code was; one day equals one year, and that shows clearly how the whole thing predicted exactly when the temple would be destroyed in 70 AD. Well here one day equals one millennium or 1000 years. Okay, so understanding that let's reread the prophecy:

 

After two millenniums he will revive us and on the third millennium he will raise us up, that we may live in his presence…

 

You see, the prophet was saying that the Israelite nation would be revived not in two literal days but in two millenniums, again a day to God is a thousand years, so let's see if this prophecy was fulfilled in history.

 

Well, first of all most historians agree that Jesus was crucified in 30d and at the point of his crucifixion, we have seen that that is the point when the Shepherd was struck, their persecution began and they lost their nation. So 30 ad marked the beginning of their fall so if you add one thousand or one millennium to 30 ad that brings you to 1030 ad so from 30 ad to 2030 ad.

 

Here you have one millennium or one prophetic day after they were scattered, but the prophecy said that it would be after two days that they would be revived. So if we count from 1030 ad to 2030 ad you have the second millennium or the second prophetic day. Okay, now remember Hosea said that after two days, they will be revived, but on the third day they will be raised to live in his presence, so when does this third day begin…?

 

Well, from 1030 to 2030 ad, that's the second day, so the third day is from 2030 AD to 3030 AD. So he says, that on the third day they will be raised to live in his presence, the third day beginning on 2030 AD, but before that he says; on the second day they would be revived, so I want to paint the picture. He says on the third day, that's when they would be raised to live in the presence of God, but before that in the second day that's when their nation would be revived. So we should be able to look and see it somewhere close to the third day, but in the second day, we should see in history where their nation Israel was revived.