New revelation on return from dispersion to land prophecy fulfilled  Ezekiel 4: 4-6

By Bill Copeland

May 14, 2007 ( 59th birthday of Israel becoming a nation again on May 14, 1948)

Most Bible students are familiar with the Jewish 70 years of Babylonian captivity described in such books as Jeremiah and Daniel.  But there is also another little known or taught about judgment on Israel and Judah in the book of Ezekiel that also parallels the 70 year judgment.
If you read Ezekiel 4: 4-6 you find the story of God telling the prophet Ezekiel to lay on his left side 390 days illustrating God’s applying judgment to Israel.  Ezekiel was then to lay on his right side forty days illustrating God’s applying judgment to Judah.  God told Ezekiel that each day represented a year.  So the total number of years of this judgment was 390 years + 40 years = 430 years. Ezekiel’s action was not to represent the time of Israel’s sinning, as the 70 years represented, but the time of its punishment.
To Bible scholars down through history it has never been certain what this judgment actually played out to be.  Many commentaries have tried to explain it away as the days representing the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, but the scripture is very clear that the days are representing years, and the siege did not last 430 years.
Why did God intact a parallel punishment to the 70 year punishment?  Because God knew that Israel would not be repetitive even after 70 years. Most of the people taken away in the captivities did not ever return to the promise land.  Most of them stayed in wicked Babylon, only less than 50,000 returned and most of them with little faith.  Israel never became a free nation or gained control of the land ever again until 1948.
We know from the historian Josephus that the 70 year captivity ended in the spring of 536 BC.  If you take 430 years-70 years you end up with 360 years of further punishment according to Ezekiel’s prophecy.  If you go forward in history 360 years you come to the year 176 BC in which nothing of significance happens in Israeli history, they certainly do not posses the promised land.
But if you know about a divine principle revealed to Israel in Leviticus 26:18 where God tells Israel that after being punished for her sins, if she still did not repent, the previous punishment would be multiplied by 7.
If you take 7x 360 years you get 2,530 years that equal 907,200 days (Israel calendar has 360 days to a year).  If you then convert that 907,200 days to our 365.25 day years you come up with 2,483.8 years.
If you start at 536 BC and count forward 2,483.8 years you will come to the spring of 1948.  I have a feeling if we knew for certain the exact spring day of the ending of the 70 year captivity it would end exactly on May 14, 1948.
God’s Word is amazing!  He is revealing new and marvelous truths and signs in these last days in what I call the “terminal generation”, that last generation that began on May 14,1948 and will see the glorious return of Jesus Christ in the skies to gather those who have a bride relationship with Him.

Rev. Bill Copeland is a teacher of Bible “end times prophecy” and the author of the new book The Apostasy