A dying Jacob prophesied the AD 70 resurrection event at Christ's return

[3Resurrections]

Everyone remembers the predictions that the dying patriarch Jacob pronounced over each of his sons in Genesis 49. "And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days." (which was the last days of Israel as a people, before the power of the holy people was going to be shattered, according to Daniel 12:7).

The prediction which I am focused on in particular is the one for Judah in Genesis 49:10. "Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-giver from between his feet, UNTIL Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be."

Jacob's prophecy of "Shiloh" is about Christ Jesus, telling his sons that Judah would maintain the right to rule and govern among the twelve tribes UNTIL Shiloh / Christ Jesus came and gathered His people - the resurrected saints. These tribal distinctions disappeared with the destruction of the temple in AD 70, with Judah exercising that God-given right of dominance over the other tribes until that point. This "gathering of the people" predicted by Jacob in Genesis 49:10 is the same as the resurrection event in 2 Thessalonians 2:1 described as "our gathering together unto Him".

We see this God-given dominance of the tribe of Judah operating in Zechariah 12:4-7. The prophecy of Zechariah chapters 12-14 was called "the burden of the Lord for Israel" and described "the siege both against Judah and Jerusalem" (which was speaking of the AD 66-70 siege period).

"In that day, saith the Lord Almighty, I will smite every horse with amazement, and his rider with madness: but I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and I will smite all the horses of the nations with blindness. And the captains of thousands of Judah shall say in their hearts, We shall find for ourselves the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the Lord Almighty their God. In that day I will make the captains of thousands of Judah as a firebrand among wood, and as a torch of fire in stubble; and they shall devour on the right hand and on the left all the nations round about: and Jerusalem shall dwell again by herself, even in Jerusalem. And the Lord shall save the tabernacles of Judah as at the beginning, that the boast of the house of David, and the pride of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, may not magnify themselves against Judah."

Regardless of how one interprets this Zechariah 12:4-7 (LXX) passage, it is plain to see that God expressly used Judah as a tool of His judgment against those in Jerusalem during this AD 66-70 siege period in Jerusalem. That peculiar phrase "And the Lord shall save the tabernacles of Judah as at the beginning" is a reminder of how God chose Judah as the FIRST to go against the Canaanites in Judges chapter 1:1-2 & 8, when Israel was in the process of conquering the Canaanites.

"Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand...Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and had taken it, and smitten it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire..."

During the "days of vengeance" in Judea, God used this tribe of Judah to once again fight at Jerusalem, just as Zechariah 14:13-14 predicted. "And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour. And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem:..." This was a civil war conflict in Jerusalem in those AD 66-70 years, with Judah acting as the dominant tribe in Jerusalem right up until "Shiloh" came in AD 70, and gathered His people, the resurrected elect saints from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matt. 24:31).

After AD 70, the power of that formerly "holy people" had been shattered, so this tells us that the resurrection "gathering of the people" at the coming of "Shiloh" / Christ Jesus had to occur at the very point when the "lawgiver" tribe of Judah was being put down for all time. And we see Christ's second coming return being described in Zechariah 14:4-5, just when Judah had been fighting in Jerusalem as they had also fought back in the beginning of Israel as a nation conquering the Canaanites.