Revelation 14:14-15 (NKJV), “…behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, ‘…the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’” Our Lord Jesus has returned as King and Reaper. Certainly we can see the chaos of earthly governments (kingly authority destroying the corrupt systems, Daniel 2:44), the binding and burning of the tares (Matthew 13:30, people leaving the churches), the increase of knowledge and travel (Michael as the returned Lord in Daniel 12:1 and 4). 

Probably the most powerful sign of our Lord’s return is the re-establishment of the nation of Israel after being ‘dead’ for more than 2000 years.  This never happened to any nation in human history. The fig tree in prophecy refers to the nation of Israel. Luke 21:29, 30, “And He told them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees:  as soon as they put forth leaves, you see for yourselves and know that summer is now near.’”  Since 1874, and especially since the establishment of the nation of Israel in 1948, hundreds of colonized countries have ‘sprung up’ as independent nations.  This multiplication of nations has also not happened before. 

In Ezekiel 38, the prophet is given a vision of the valley of dry bones that are gathered and gradually restored and finally given the ‘breath of life’.  This can be interpreted to refer to the land and people of ISRAEL .  First, they are gathered together as ‘bones.’ The first Jews to come back to Palestine had no real Jewish vitality. The land was a desolate wilderness. Nobody actually SPOKE Hebrew.  Great sacrifices were made to bring the land back into fertile productivity. Eliazar Ben Yehuda, with the help of his family, brought Hebrew back to life as a modern language.  The ‘bones’ took on human characteristics. 

The terrible pogroms of Europe, culminating with World War Two and the Holocaust, caused millions of Jews to flee to the British Mandate Palestine. In 1948, the ‘bones’ stood up and Israel was born as a nation among the nations of the world.  The full ‘breath of life’ will finally come into force at the beginning of the Kingdom of Blessing when Israel will recognize Jesus as their Messiah and Savior (Zechariah 12:10) of not just Israel, but of the entire world of mankind.

In Zechariah 14:7, we have, perhaps the most beautiful scripture of all to summarize the process of the establishing of God’s worldwide Kingdom of Peace: “For it will be a unique day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but it will come about that at the time of evening there will be light.”