thee" (and that is where they are now, and have been for 1,900 years or more) "And shalt

return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey His voice according to all that I command

thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul: That then

the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity . . . . . and will return and gather thee from all the

nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out unto

the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from

thence will he fetch thee: And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy

above thy fathers".  That has never been fully fulfilled;  there have been partial

fulfillments, but not a complete one.

We go on to Isa. 43: 5: "Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the

east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south,

Keep not back: bring My sons from far, and My daughters from the ends of the earth".

We are told in Jer. 31: 10 that He which scattered Israel will also gather him; and just

as Israel must be the literal nation who were scattered, so the gathering must refer to the

same people.

And finally, to Ezek. 37: 21.  The prophet is instructed to say this to them:

"Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen" (from among the

Gentile nations) "whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring

them into their own land"; this must be the literal land that God promised to Abraham.

In our earlier studies we went back to the very beginning and saw the geographical

boundaries that God set to that land, from the great river Nile to the river Euphrates, and

this cannot be spiritualized and make sense. Verse 22: "And I will make them one

nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; And one king shall be king to them all:

and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms

any more . . . . ." Verse 24: "And David my servant shall be king over them; and they

shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in My judgments and observe My statutes,

and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob My servant,

wherein your fathers have dwelt". Again this must be the same land. "And they shall

dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children for ever: and

My servant David shall be their prince for ever. Moreover, I will make a covenant of

peace with them: it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will place them,

and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My

tabernacle also shall be with them; yea, I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

And the heathen (the Gentile nations) shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when

My sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore". As we have seen, we are

dealing with a God who does not change His mind.

"The gifts and the calling of God are without change of mind", and these rest then, not

upon anything that Israel are, or what they have done, but upon God's unchanging love

and His unchangeable purpose, and they stand four-square upon the wonderful

redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's Cross. That is sufficient, surely,

to establish a future of blessing for this nation. So in our consideration, then, of the plan

of God, we must have a place for the restored, saved, cleansed and, at last, useable people