THE GREAT INGATHERING
“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him.” 2 Thess. 2:1
What is this gathering together? Some have argued that this is the rapture of the church that occurs secretly before the seven years of Tribulation inflicts the world and is the same event described by Paul in his previous epistle when the church —dead and living — shall meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:16-17). In this brief article I wish to show that there is but one event left in redemptive history, an event foretold long ago by the Old Testament prophets which is the great hope of all who have placed their trust in the Messiah. In this letter, Paul is attempting to comfort the Thessalonian believers that Christ is coming back to judge the world and save His people; it will be a visible event that will be public and unmistakable for all to see. Before that happens there will be some horrific things happening in and around the temple and in the world in general. Paul believes the believers ought to be aware of these things. After that, God will ‘gather together’ His people to Himself together in one grand climactic act. This event was spoken of in the Old Covenant, though wrapped in types and shadows. We pause here to remind the reader that almost everything Paul talks about in his writings have their roots in the Old Testament. Paul, more than any other writer, realized that once the Temple was destroyed (70AD) the door was opened for a return of the Lord in power and glory. This return would be a cosmic event of gargantuan proportions that would bring history to a close. And it would center around Jesus Himself, the great Redeemer of the entire universe who would bring all creation back as one cohesive whole just as it was in the beginning. This event will happen when history has run its course and the purposes of God in the gospel age are fulfilled. Paul notes:
“That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him” (Ephesians 1:10).
As time draws to a close, all the promises of God will converge in one grand and glorious fulfillment in the coming of Messiah. It is He who will restore the order and beauty to creation that was forfeited long ago in Eden. And the consummate event of this total restoration will be when the Son draws all His people to Himself as the Good Shepherd and will usher in this new and glorious age. What’s more the devil who inhabited the original garden will have no place in this new world, having been permanently exiled to a lake of fire. In every sense this ‘New Eden’ will surpass the old; there will be no more possibility of sin and no chance any evil could enter her gates. In other words the true Shepherd and His flock will dwell together in perfect shalom forever.
In addition, this gathering of the sheep is the sole work of the Great Shepherd. Man does not enlist himself into this eternity of grace. It is a reality that was initiated by God and sustained by God. Once before man tried to initiate his own ingathering at Babel and it was a total disaster. In other words, this final ingathering will be accomplished by God’s determination and by His power. After the failure at Babel, God initiated this grand plan by calling an idolater from Ur of the Chaldees, Abram by name. In calling this man, God was establishing a people for Himself and through Abram, now Abraham, God would bless all the nations. This is the first hint that one day there would be a great ingathering of the nations. The rest of the Old Testament outlines God’s intricate plan to draw all nations to Himself through one man and subsequently through one nation. And from that nation would emerge that anointed one who would provide an atonement for the nations and who would one day call home all those who would trust in His atoning work.
This ingathering would be typified and interwoven into Israel’s history. Several times Israel would be scattered only to be gathered back together by God. We think of the return from Egypt and after that return from a Babylonian exile by the hand of Persian King, Cyrus. The concept of ingathering becomes part of the prophetic vocabulary and is mentioned repeatedly in the later prophets. Though these ingatherings are seen as events in Israel’s history, the promises attached to them can only be found in an ultimate ingathering at the end of time. This return is early on promised in the Torah.
“That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee” (Deut. 30:3).
Before the people of Israel have even a hint they shall one day go into exile, God is already promising a great return.
More than any other seer, the great prophet Isaiah speaks of that great ingathering. During his life he witnessed the fall and exile of the Northern Tribes and witnessed signs of the inevitable exile of the kingdom of Judah. Though Judah ignored Isaiah’s warnings, the prophet nevertheless comforted his people with the prospect of an eventual return of the captives. He says,
“And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, And come to Zion with singing, With everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, And sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Is 35:10).
In another remarkable passage Isaiah depicts the ingathering of God’s people from the four corners of the globe.
“Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your descendants from the east,
And gather you from the west; will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
And to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’ Bring My sons from afar,
And My daughters from the ends of the earth— Everyone who is called by My name,
Whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him.” (43:5-7).
Isaiah continues to hold out this prospect by promising that the glory of Zion will one day return, not merely the earthly Zion of Palestine but a heavenly Zion where all true ‘Jews’ will abide forever.
“So the ransomed of the LORD shall return, And come to Zion with singing, With everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness; Sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (51:11).
Certainly Isaiah was looking forward to Israel’s return to the promise land. What he didn’t see clearly was that God was using his prophetic voice to describe an even greater ingathering, an ingathering of the nations at the final coming of Messiah, not a gathering to the earthly Zion but to the heavenly one.
Not to be outdone, Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, speaks similarly.
“‘In that day,’ says the LORD, ‘I will assemble the lame, I will gather the outcast And those whom I have afflicted’” (4:6).
In another, fantastic prophecy Micah depicts the same event under the imagery of a shepherd gathering His flock together.
“I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob, I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together like sheep of the fold, Like a flock in the midst of their pasture; They shall make a loud noise because of so many people. The one who breaks open will come up before them; They will break out, pass through the gate, and go out by it. Their king will pass before them, with the LORD at their head” (Micah 2:12-13).
This final ingathering of all the peoples will be as a King/Shepherd leading His people in triumph. Bible students will see a hint of this prophecy repeated by Jesus Himself in His discourse on the Good Shepherd in John 10.
“‘Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:7-10).
Notice that Jesus sees Himself as the One who gathers His sheep and leads them in and out to green pastures. He contrasts His ministry to the deceptive leadership of the devil, a ministry aimed to scatter and kill. All this points to a great reversal of Eden. Jesus now reclaims His possessions and the devil, once the potentate of the garden, has been defeated and banished forever. Yes, Jesus will ultimately win. He does not merely offer life, but He actually gives life to His own. And it will all be consummated at the final ingathering.
Whether the Jews actually drew comfort from these promises or not is hard to decipher. God, however, uses Israel’s experiences in returning from exile to picture what God will do in the final ingathering of all humanity. Some theologians have tried to take texts like the one above and apply them strictly to the nation Israel and to some future, national restoration of the Jews. But this fails to heed the storyline of the Bible. It all begins with chaos in a garden where the entire human race is condemned and ends in a heavenly garden where the all the nations are eternally blessed. Israel is not the termination point of God’s program but an instrument that leads to it. And to the extent that Israel believes in this grand ingathering and gospel that heralds it, is the extent she shall be grafted in and be saved.
As we move along to the next set of prophets the details of this ingathering becomes more explicit. In the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel the nation has already been exiled to Babylon. It is not surprising that in these books we find the most references not only to a future ingathering of Israel from exile but to a final gathering of God’s people at the end of time. Let me share some verses,
“‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!’ says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel against the shepherds who feed My people: ‘You have scattered My flock, driven them away, and not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for the evil of your doings,’ says the Lord. ‘But I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries where I have driven them, and bring them back to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase’” (Jeremiah 23:1-3).
The shepherds of Israel were not only incapable of leading the people and calling the nation back together, the leaders were actually complicit in her demise. Obviously this final ingathering here spoken of had little to do with the ethnic nation.
A long quote from Jeremiah 32:36-41 is key to understanding what this ingathering will look like and when it shall take place in redemptive history. It goes like this,
“Now therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, ‘It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence: Behold, I will gather them out of all countries where I have driven them in My anger, in My fury, and in great wrath; I will bring them back to this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely. They shall be My people, and I will be their God; then I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul.’”
Let us look at this key text and see if it in any way was fulfilled in the life of the nation of Israel? First Jeremiah says, “These people are those who will be gathered out of ‘all countries.’” Right away we see that this is worldwide call for a return, not simply Israel's return from Babylon. Then it says that this calling will usher in a era of peace. The exiles will live with ‘one heart and one way.’ Did that happen in Israel? Certainly not. Idolatry, wars and general unrest continued throughout Israel’s history. Jeremiah continues by stating the people being ingathered will ‘fear Me forever.’ This hints at an eternal salvation where the people will dwell as God’s obedient children for ever and ever. Again the author is describing a kingdom far beyond anything Israel ever experienced. It is further mentioned that God will establish a covenant with His people, an everlasting covenant. The terms of this covenant are that God will always do His people good and that His people will fear Him and never turn away from Him. But we all know that Israel being children of Adam were incapable of this high calling. Never in Israel’s history was such a relationship between God and the nation forged. Now at last the reader sees that this passage clearly describes and era that surpasses any era found on the earth. And when compared with the last few chapters of Revelation, we find many parallels between this world foreseen by Jeremiah with the New Jerusalem described in Revelation chapter 21. Note that the Jews were called back to Jerusalem from Babylon. Similarly the inhabitants of God’s eternal city will be called out of a worldwide Babylon described in Revelation 18:4. This final kingdom, as we have stated before, consists of souls from every tribe and nation (Rev. 5:9, 21:24). And as was promised by Jeremiah, the inhabitants will freely and joyfully obey their King (Rev. 22:3) and they will be free of strife, anguish and tears (Rev. 21:4). So then, there can be little doubt that this prophecy of Jeremiah speaks of a future ingathering that is unworldly yet is inclusive of the whole world. And it is to this new world toward which God has been moving for the entirety of the Bible.
A similar passage is found in the contemporary prophet Ezekiel who writes while already sitting in the land of exile. He says,
“‘As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them in good pasture, and their fold shall be on the high mountains of Israel. There they shall lie down in a good fold and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will feed My flock, and I will make them lie down,’ says the Lord God. ‘I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment.’”
The parallels to the final ingathering are again striking. The shepherd/sheep motif is used to describe what this eternal kingdom will look like. God will call His sheep to Himself and ‘bring back what was driven away.’ There is a whisper of this section in Ezekiel in the story of Zacchaeus in Luke chapter 19. Jesus calls one of His lost sheep out of a sycamore tree and brings him to Himself as a demonstration of what this ingathering will look like. At the conclusion of that story Jesus says, “The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). Matthew 24:31 notes the same idea on a larger scale.
“And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
So what is God’s final great work on behalf of the human race? May I suggest that it is to show that Jesus who has paid the price for the redemption of His people will gather all His children to Himself and forever dwell with them as the Great Shepherd with His sheep. At the cross He saw His seed and was satisfied and in the great ingathering His satisfaction will be complete. This, then, is the great gathering that Paul alludes to in his writings. Not some secret stealing away of the church to avoid tribulation, but a public and triumphant ingathering of all God’s redeemed people - beaten, bloody and bruised — as history draws to a close.
And is there applications for us? Indeed, many. This paradigm gives all Christians, especially those who suffer, a grandiose vision of their final triumphant end when God will gather them to Himself in an eternal peace. And there they shall forever stand as trophies of His grace for all creation to witness. Yes, we can suffer now because Jesus has vowed to ingather all who have trusted Him. And there is nothing to stop Him in heaven, on earth, or under the earth. Hallelujah and amen.