Chinese Jews are returning to their own homeland in Israel. Jews have been living in China for over a thousand years. The largest concentration of Jewish community is in Kaifeng, China. Incidentally, Kaifeng is the capital city during the Song dynasty where the legendary Iron-Face Judge, Justice Bao served as Magistrate known for honesty and integrity.
The Jews in Kaifeng at its peak numbered as many as 5000 during the Ming Dynasty between 14th and 17th century. Some Chinese Jews had attained high ranks in the Chinese civil service. Unfortunately, despite the success of some Chinese Jews, the Jewish community declined and by mid 19th century, their Jewish way of life nearly faded away.
However, these modern descendants of the Chinese Jews still carried on with their Jewish practice passed down from their forefathers through word of mouth. Now there is an awakening of the Jewish roots in these Chinese Jews. So some of them are returning to Israel.
Read more about the Return of the Chinese Jews.
Watch the video on the Return of the Chinese Jews to Israel.
Who put this desire in their hearts to want to return to Israel to reconnect with their Jewish heritage? It might be quite pointless a hundred years ago to return to Israel where Israel was still not a State and the Jews were still scattered throughout the world. It is different today. The State of Israel has come into existence on 14 May 1948. Thousands and thousands of Jews have returned to their ancestral homeland. Likewise the Jews in China today.
If you think this is a fascinating historical event, a far more remarkable event will take place in the future. When the Lord has properly and conclusively dealt with the children of Israel during the times of Jacob’s trouble and after they have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their Messiah, not only more Jews will return to their own homeland in Israel, the Gentile nations will assist in the repatriation of the Jews and even submit to them.
Isaiah 49:19-23
For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been? Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.
The Gentiles in the future shall look up to the Jews for they will know that God is will Israel. They certainly want to know and learn from the God of Israel, the God of the whole world during the Kingdom Age.
Zechariah 8:20-23
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; It shall yet come to pass, that there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities: And the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the LORD, and to seek the LORD of hosts: I will go also. Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.
Regarding the return of the Chinese Jews, and other Jews alike, it is the Lord’s faithfulness in preserving them. The Lord has a covenant with them since time immemorial.
Isaiah 59:21: As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.
Jeremiah 33:20-26
Thus saith the LORD; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season; Then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne; and with the Levites the priests, my ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me. Moreover the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying, Considerest thou not what this people have spoken, saying, The two families which the LORD hath chosen, he hath even cast them off? thus they have despised my people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith the LORD; If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.
Psalms 89:28: My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him.
Psalms 89:34: My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.
Leviticus 26:42-46
Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land. The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God. But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD. These are the statutes and judgments and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.
The Lord has repeatedly proclaimed He will not break His covenant with the children of Israel. So the return of the Jews to Israel may look marvelous in our eyes today but it is the Lord’s doing to prepare the Jews to confront their Messiah in the future.
Meanwhile, the Jews are still blinded and as such, they do persecute Christians from time to time just like the days during the time of the apostles’ ministry. Notwithstanding, our attitude towards the Jews has to be in alignment with God’s decreed will.
Romans 11:25: For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.
Romans 11:28: As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes.
2 Corinthians 3:14-16
But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
Christians better wake up to the idea that the Church is not here to replace the nation of Israel. Israel shall be converted in the future to fulfill God’s promises to them.
Exodus 19:6: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
Deuteronomy 28:13: And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them:
What else do you expect when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to earth to restore the Kingdom to Israel that the disciples so enquired?
Acts 1:6: When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?
When the Lord Jesus Christ reigns from Jerusalem, will Israel not be the head of the nations on earth?
Like it or not, when the Lord finally sits on the throne of David on earth, Israel shall be the head of nations in this world.
Don’t be arrogant to insist that the Church has replaced the nation of Israel. This will never happen, no, nor ever shall be. Amen!
