Shortly before he died, Moses uttered an amazing prophecy: “So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the Earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. The Lord your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you” (Deuteronomy 30:1 7).
Moses, who lived around 1500 BC, declared that in the future, Israel would experience both the Bracha the Blessing, and the K’lahlah the Curse, based on our obedience or disobedience. Moses had already detailed the blessing and the curse in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. In the five centuries that followed the Exodus from Egypt and entrance into the Land, the people of Israel were, for the most part, close to God and experienced His blessings. To be certain, there were times when we abandoned the Lord, and the Holy One allowed our enemies to conquer us. But then in our distress, we turned to Him once again. The times of blessing reached their zenith under the reigns of David and Solomon.
After Solomon’s death the nation was divided by civil war. From the beginning, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was faithless to the Lord, and experienced the full measure of the curse, culminating when we were taken into captivity by the Assyrians around 722 BC. In the Southern Kingdom of Judah, there were still times of blessing – during the administrations of the good kings, but also times of terrible unfaithfulness under the evil kings. As the age of the kings drew to a close, the Kingdom of Judah had degenerated into wickedness, disobedience and lawlessness and, as promised, God sent the curse. The Babylonians invaded, killed many of our people, carried away thousands into exile and captivity, and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, thus ending the sacrifices that enabled us to draw close to God.
In accordance with His nature and in fulfillment of the word spoken through Moses, the Lord was merciful, and after 70 years He allowed the captivity to come to end. Many Jewish people returned to Israel, and we rebuilt the Temple and Jerusalem. The next several hundred years, during the reigns of the Persians and the Greeks, were generally good ones, although very difficult times returned in the time of the Maccabees. In the time when the Romans were in control, the most significant and amazing event in the history of the world happened! In His desire to bless us to the utmost, God sent into the world, not just another prophet, but His Son who is Immanuel God With Us in human form. The long anticipated Messiah, the anointed Ruler and Savior of Israel, came from Heaven to Earth, bringing us good news, offering us entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, providing blessing, salvation, help, wisdom, understanding, happiness and peace!
Sadly, the majority of the people and the leaders were far from God. Spiritually, we were like a desert. We had eyes, but couldn’t see the amazing things happening right in front of us; ears, but couldn’t hear and understand the glorious truths spoken to us. And in our spiritual bankruptcy, we rejected the Savior and the Prince of Life, and thereby broke our covenant with God, and turned away from Him. The Lord, being gracious, gave us an additional 40 years of testing, sending us apostles and prophets who did mighty works of power, demonstrating that Yeshua whom they served was indeed Israel’s true Messiah. Some believed, but most did not. So, at the end of 40 years, as God had warned, came judgment and the curse. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, killed hundreds of thousands, and sold many into a life of slavery. Many were exiled to the nations, where for most of the past two millennia we have suffered anti Semitic persecutions, the confiscation of our property, banishment, crusades, pogroms, all culminating with the Holocaust.
Almost 5.5 million of us are now back in our ancient homeland, but we have had to fight war after war with implacable enemies, intent on destroying us, greatly outnumbering us, and who are enriched with immense oil wealth. We face demonically inspired adversaries who infiltrate our cities, our cafes and restaurants, our buses, our neighborhoods to commit mass murder. Anti Semitism is growing around the world, and the majority of the nations of the world have no love for us, and show little support for us. We have been without a Temple and without the sacrifices that help us draw near to God, not just for 70 years, but for 1,933 years, more than 27 times as long as the Babylonian Captivity! Rather than approach God His way, through the salvation and atonement that Messiah Yeshua offers, the majority of our people have invented a Judaism, not based on the truest principles of the Torah, but on man made teachings which cannot save, cannot bring us near to the Lord, cannot reconcile us to the God from whom we are estranged. The true believers among the Chosen People the Messianic Jews, like Messiah, are despised and rejected, barely tolerated or acknowledged by the majority. Remaining in defiance against Messiah, the nation of Israel is still very much under God’s curse! Truly, as a people, we have experienced the blessing and the curse, just as the Lord told us we would!
Moses continued this amazing prophecy by telling us that, even while still experiencing the curse; while banished to the nations, if we would yet turn again in genuine faith to the Lord, and obey Him with all our heart and soul, the Almighty would end our captivity, and enable us to return to the Land of Israel in peace. It won’t matter how distant we are from the Land of Israel; the Lord will be compassionate and bring us back from there to the Land of our ancestors, since He intends that this Holy Land be the land of the physical descendants of the ancient Jewish people that it be our land as well! Once we are fully restored, both to the Land of Israel and the God of Israel, obeying His word and fulfilling His will, and participating in the New Covenant made by the Messiah, then the Lord will be very pleased with us, and we will once again experience the blessing great physical and material prosperity.
And, though the Lord allowed us to be persecuted among the nations, He will yet punish those same nations that mistreated us! You see, the Lord used their anti Semitism and hatred toward us to judge us. But though they ultimately served God’s purposes, their motives were not pure, and their intent was to destroy us, and what they did was wrong, and so they will be punished in their turn. So, this prophecy of the curse provides no justification for anti Semitism!
Where are we in this prophetic history of blessing and cursing? We experienced the blessing long ago. We’ve been experiencing the cursing for almost 2,000 years. We have witnessed the initial returnings of the Jewish people to our ancient Land, and a small minority of us are turning to the Lord. I believe that the reestablishment of the State of Israel and the growth of the Messianic Jewish movement is the beginning of the fulfillment of this ancient prophecy given by Moses so long ago. If I’m right, we will see more and more Jewish people turn to Messiah, along with growing anti-Semitism and pressure on the State of Israel, until Yeshua’s Return, when all Israel turns to Him and acknowledges that He is indeed our Messiah whom God sent. We will enter into the New Covenant, and then we, and the whole world, will experience God’s greatest blessing. What an awesome time that will be! May the Living God use us to help accomplish His purposes!