This Topic on Modern-Day Israel will show that the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 was a key event toward the fulfillment of Old Testament promises concerning Israel. Certainly, the birth of the State of Israel caused many proponents of a literal Millennial Kingdom to see that event as a fulfillment of prophecy. Had those proponents seriously pursued that initial reaction, they might have discovered that the 47½-year time span generated from that May 14 starting date, created a timeline identical to the one that produced the Old Testament Davidic kingdom. Undoubtedly, that would have sparked the realization that the State of Israel was somehow being used as God's prophetic "clock" to fulfill His original promise to king David, that Messiah will eventually set up His everlasting Kingdom upon the throne of David.

Unfortunately, a theological barrier to such thinking was the teaching of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture, which taught that the Body of Christ would be gathered up just prior to Daniel's 70^th Week, followed by the coming of Antichrist and a period of Great Tribulation. It also included a doctrine of "imminence", teaching that the "Rapture" of the Body of Christ could always be considered about to occur without warning. Naturally, this very definition disallowed the existence of any timeline prior to the Rapture.

In retrospect, the confusion that now exists about the sequence of End Time events might well have been avoided had it been recognized many years ago that the military campaigns directed by Adolph Hitler during World War II were carbon copies of the account given in (Daniel 11.40-45), which prophesied of military campaigns that would be directed by a "willful King" during the End Times. That knowledge would have alerted Bible students to the possibility that World War II had actually fulfilled that time of Great Tribulation over a half-century ago.

Perhaps such understanding would have propelled serious Bible students to focus on the 1988-1995 seven-year portion of the State of Israel's timeline, which paralleled the beginning of David's kingdom, for they surely would have discovered that all of the major events in the world during that period, like the 1989 fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the first Iraqi war, the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Oslo Peace Accord, each were timed with both Levitical and 360-day Calendars, appropriate only for Daniel's 70^th Week.

This Topic will review these prophetic implications of the 20^th century from World War II through 1995, so that the reader can be set on a path leading to an understanding of Daniel's full 70 Weeks in the following Topic.