“Thus says the LORD, ‘I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of the LORD of hosts will be called the Holy Mountain.’ Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Old men and old women will again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each man with his staff in his hand because of age. And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets’” (Zech 8:3–5).
Although Jerusalem cannot yet be called the “City of Truth,” and God has not fully taken up His dwelling there, the city remains a modern miracle, one that many Christians overlook after falling prey to anti-Israel rhetoric and the habit of blaming the world’s problems on the Jews. When Zechariah first spoke this prophecy, the Jewish remnant that had returned from seventy years of exile in Babylon found his words nearly impossible to believe. The city and its temple were only a faint shadow of their former glory. That Jerusalem would one day become the most important mountain on earth, filled with life and visited by “many peoples and mighty nations,” must have sounded almost sarcastic.
…when I look at the people of Jerusalem today, despite the many challenges we face, I am encouraged to believe in even greater miracles still to come.
Yet consider the modern city of Jerusalem, filled with elderly men and women drinking coffee and speaking Hebrew together, and children laughing and playing in its streets after a two-thousand-year exile. Is this merely a historical coincidence or a political accident? Consider how Jerusalem came into being again after Rome razed it to the ground, how the Jewish people were scattered and persecuted wherever they lived, Jewish blood flowing in the streets of Germany during the First Crusade, and the expulsions from England and Spain. Consider also the horrors of Nazi Germany, followed by the attempt of five Arab armies to drive the Jews into the sea in 1947–1948.
How ironic it is that so many Israeli atheists fail to see a miracle looking back at them in the mirror. And how tragic it is that so many in the world fail to recognize the sheer improbability of Jerusalem filled once more with Jewish life apart from the existence of God. Yet a miracle it is, beyond any reasonable explanation. And when I look at the people of Jerusalem today, despite the many challenges we face, I am encouraged to believe in even greater miracles still to come.
“Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘If it is too difficult in the sight of the remnant of this people in those days, will it also be too difficult in My sight?’ declares the LORD of hosts” (Zech 8:6).
