CHRISTIAN ZIONISM

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

I'm starting to think Christian Zionism was fomented by British-American Intelligence Agencies  in the late 19th-early 20th century during the run up to WWI.  

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CHRISTIAN ZIONISM

Taken from a Recent Series of Radio Broadcasts on KARI, Blaine, Washington, U.S.A.,by Alan Lazerte B.A.,LL.B

(Many portions of the programming are readings from "The Role of Gentile Christians in the Rebirth of the State of Israel"

written by Dr. Edward D. Brotsky; and available in full under the heading "JUDEO-CHRISTIAN STUDIES" on this Site)

Part One: "Zionism"

Today we begin a study of the subject of Christian Zionism. In answer to which you may say, "What in the world is that?" Well actually it is a movement, largely among Gentile Christians, supporting the right of the Jewish people to return to the Promised Land which has, of course, happened right before our eyes during this century.

But just back-up a moment. It has been well said that the word "Jew" is the most emotive, the most emotionally provocative word we can speak. If that is so, the word "Zionist" is equally emotive, and in some minds conjures up all sort of interpretations including the fraudulent Zionist Conspiracy Theory based on the forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion which is so popular even today amongst anti-Semites and anti-Zionists, and is quoted in many modern religious and political clashes.

So we are dealing with a controversial subject, of course. The Bible is controversial. The Jew is controversial. Zionism is controversial. Jesus is controversial.

But basically we are going to ask first the question:
"What is Zionism itself?"

Biblically understood Zionism is simply the return, or the various returns, of the Jewish people to Zion, to the land of Israel; to the land promised by God to Abraham and his descendants forever. These promises are sprinkled throughout the whole of Scripture, but we find the first one in Genesis 12:1-3; enlarged by Genesis 15:7: "God said unto Abraham, I am the LORD who brought you out of the land of Ur of the Chaldees to give this land to you to inherit it. And Abraham said, Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?

Then God makes a covenant with Abraham through the sacrificial system, and in verse 13 He said to Abraham, "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs (that is Egypt) and shall serve them and they shall afflict you there four hundred. But in the fourth generation you shall come out for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." The Amorites being the then residents of the land that was to become the Promised Land. Genesis 15:18-21, "In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abraham saying unto thy seed have I given this land from the River of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates." And then He indicates who is going to be moving out: the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. And that last one is of particular interest, because the Jebusites occupied the city of Jebus which later became Jerusalem itself. Now that, of course, is not the only scripture, but that is the one we will use now. So Zionism is the working out in flesh and blood right here on planet Earth of God's promise to Abraham. The promise depending more on the faithfulness of God than on the faithfulness of Abraham and his descendants.

Because of that covenant that God made with Abraham, the Jews came out of Egypt four hundred years later as promised by God. They went down into Egypt as seventy people. They came out, according to the Bible, six hundred thousand men plus women plus children; that was called the Exodus.

After the first Jewish captivity in Babylon about 600 B.C. the Persian leader Cyrus allowed the Jewish people to return to rebuild Jerusalem and reestablish their religion. So that would be the first application of Zionism. The first return of the Jewish people to the Promised Land some 530 years before the time of Christ. Then, of course, we had World War I and World War II and that terrible thing called the Holocaust, and then in 1948 A.D. we had the beginning of the return of the Jews out of all the nations of the earth to the modern State of Israel. So Zionism is the return of the Jewish people to the land promised to the patriarchs according to Scripture. That is Zionism properly understood.
Part Two: Christian Zionism

In the previous segment we looked at the question "What is Zionism?" and simply defined it as the biblical promises and prophecies made by God to the Jewish patriarchs that their descendants would occupy the Promised Land, what the world today calls Palestine, forever. Today we are going to look at the question

"What is Christian Zionism?"
You may never have heard of it before. Christian Zionism is a movement resulting from the Bible, mainly among Gentile Christians who share this interpretation and this vision of God being faithful to all His covenants; including the covenant He made with Abraham so long ago. We have been convinced by God to support this modern return, this latest and final return of the Jewish people to the Promised Land; by our prayers and fervent intercession and with our finances, actions and energies.

When did Christian Zionism emerge?
Well there has always been a thread of it running throughout history, but it has been the vast minority, because after the Jews were finally expelled from the Promised Land under Hadrian in 135 A.D. after the final Jewish revolt, (a century after Titus destroyed Jerusalem), the Church of course made up of both Jews and Gentile Christians was focusing on the quick return of Jesus. So theologically this subject of the Jewish return to the Promised Land was not occupying too many minds. However, about 500 years ago the relevance of these Scriptures moved from the back burner to the front burner; and it just gradually expanded as the fulfillment of most prophecies do. They start like a little trickle and they become a stream and then they go on flowing through history and they become a mighty river and a torrent that cannot be stopped.

The word "Zion" historically refers to the former Jebusite fortress in ancient Jerusalem which was later called the City of David. You can find it in II Samuel 5:7. In the Maccabean period Zion, of course, referred to the Temple Mount itself. Old Testament Zion was equated with the Temple and was the name for the religious centre of the Jews. The Hebrew Scriptures equate Zion with the Holy City Jerusalem. For instance, Psalm 135:21 reads: "Blessed be the Lord out of Zion who dwells at Jerusalem." Isaiah 24:23 reads: "The Lord of Host will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem." "Zionism is a term actually coined by Nathan Burnbaum in 1890 denoting the movement whose goal was the return of the Jewish people to what is today called Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel. From 1896 the term referred to the political movement founded by Theodore Hertzel aiming at the establishment of a Jewish State in the land of Israel." That is a quotation from the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Judica page 647

Great Christian statesmen became pro-Zionists in Britain as a result of the English Bible. It was the King James Version of the English Bible and its wide circulation and the study and reading of it which awakened the British believers to establish the first wide-spread movement. In the reign of King James I, in whose lifetime the authorized or King James Version was published under the title "The Holy Bible", Henry Finch (about 1560 A.D.), a member of British Parliament, a jurist and a legal writer, a Hebrewist (one who wrote in Hebrew for the sake of the Jewish people and translated into English) encouraged them from out of the Old and New Testaments to assert their claim to the Promised Land. Some of his quotations were taken from the prophet Isaiah, particularly chapter 43:4-7 where the Lord God of Israel declares that He will bring back His people from the East, the West, the North, and the South.. Michael Pragai in his book "Faith & Fulfilment: Christians and The Return To The Promised Land" says that Finch was a true forerunner of a modern non-Jewish Zionist - a Christian Zionist.

Some Gentile Christians interpreted certain texts of the Hebrew Scriptures as a mandate to help God in His declared cause for Israel. The prophet Jeremiah in the 31st chapter gives the Word of the LORD. "Hear the Word of the LORD, O ye nations. Declare it and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, therefore, they shall come and sing again in the heights of Zion." That is Jeremiah 31:10-12 paraphrased. Again in Isaiah 60, "The Gentiles shall come to thy light," declared the prophet Isaiah, "and the Kings to the brightness of thy rising. The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to thee Israel. Thou shalt suck the milk of the Gentiles and thou shalt know that I am the LORD, thy Saviour, thy Redeemer, the Might One of Jacob. They (the Gentiles) shall call thee (Israel) the City of the LORD, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel." This was the large beginning of the British movement. You might ask, "Were there any pro-Zionist Gentiles outside of England?"
Part Three: Outside England

On the last program we ended asking if there were Christian Gentiles that existed in the 15th and 16th centuries outside of England. We find one John Toland around the year 1700 A.D. from Ireland was an active participant in the theological and political debates in contemporary England. In 1714 he published his Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland on the Same Footing with All Other Nations. He was a forerunner of the modern human rights movement. He spoke against the backdrop of Jewish ghettos in Europe. Jews having no official status in England until 1866 when the House of Commons admitted Lionel de Rothchild, the first Jewish Member of Parliament. The most famous English Jew of the 19th century was, of course, Benjamin Disraeli, whom Queen Victoria nobled as Lord Beaconsfield, who twice became the Prime Minister of England, first in 1868.

A Danish pietist, Holeger Paulli (1644-1714) believed wholeheartedly in the Jewish return to the Promised Land as a condition for the Second Coming of Christ. He would have been motivated by Jesus' own promise to return in John 14:1-3 and by the promise of angelic messengers who at Jesus' ascension declared, "This same Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen Him go into heaven." (Acts 1:9-11) The Apostle Paul also wrote that the Deliverer (meaning the Messiah) would come to Zion; and all Israel would then be saved (Romans 11:26). Paulli published books and memoranda which he dispatched to the kings of France and England calling upon them to help the Jews in their desire to return and regain their statehood.

There were many others. For instance, back in England, Joseph Heir in 1771 published a scholarly essay entitled Observations Upon Prophecies Relating to the Restoration of the Jews. He drew public attention to the ancient Biblical promises from the Creator given to Abraham concerning the geographic area which the descendants of Abraham would occupy known as the Promised Land. Concerning the return of the Jews from the lands of their dispersion, Heir quoted at length from the Book of the prophet Ezekiel in the Holy Scriptures, particularly chapters 36 and 37. Here is pictured a major prophecy that the whole house of Israel would experience a resurrection from the graves of the Diaspora and the tribes would come together again bone to bone into the land of Israel.
Part Four: Other Views

What do Israeli leaders say about such a remarkable prophecy? When this Old Testament prophecy became a fact in recent history, Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, who became the second President of the State of Israel, commented as follows: "We are witnessing today the wondrous process of the joining of the tribes of Israel bone to bone and flesh to flesh; the merging of them into one nation. I pray that the Rock and Redeemer of Israel may prosper our ways and that in our days Judah may be saved and Israel dwell securely."

The first world leader of great reputation to acknowledge the Jewish claim to the Promised Land was no less than Napoleon. In 1799 during his attempt to conquer the Holy Land, which was unsuccessful - he never reached Jerusalem - his troops were decimated by disease, but he was in Jaffa with his armies; he was up in northern Galilee. Standing on Mount Tabor in Galilee, the traditional site of the transfiguration of Jesus before some of the disciples, Napoleon made a statement, which has been recorded, to the effect that when he did conquer the land he would see that the Jews got the City of Jerusalem to which they were entitled; and the land which God had promised to them.

There were other Pro-Zionist Christians as we move along in the 19th century. Palestine was under Turkish rule of course from 1517 to 1917 A.D. The Ottoman Empire was on the decline in the 19th century. Great Britain had, of course, a vital interest in the fate of the Turkish Empire as did most of the nations in Europe. It was the era when Christians in the Western world were taking an interest in Bible lands. Jews all over Europe were expressing their hope to return to their homeland. Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary, wrote in 1840 A.D. to the British Ambassador in Constantinople (the Sultan's seat). He expressed the British policy to keep the Ottoman regime in power as long as possible. He even made a recommendation to his Empire's benefit involving the Jewish people with reference to Palestine, and we will look at that in the next segment.

Looking again at Pro-Zionist Christians, Christian Zionists in the 19th century, we are going to quote Lord Palmerston, then British Foreign Secretary, who wrote the following in 1840: "There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine. It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan (Turkey) to encourage the Jews to return and settle in Palestine because the wealth that they would bring with them would increase the resources of the Sultan's dominions, and the Jewish people if returning under the sanction and protection at the invitation of the Sultan would be a check upon any future evil designs of Egypt or its neighbours. I wish to instruct your Excellency strongly to recommend to the Turkish government to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine."

Again in England, Lord Shaftesbury, who passed away in 1885, during his career made statements, being a man of unshakable faith who based his life on the Bible. He certainly encouraged in government circles that the Jews, whom he called God's Ancient People, be allowed to return to their land.
Part Five: Religious

What about the New Testament itself? Jesus spoke predictions about the future of Jerusalem and said that Jerusalem would be trodden down by Gentile powers, which it still is being today, until the fullness of the Gentiles be fulfilled. This is recorded in the Gospel of Luke 21:24. Jesus using the word "until" meant that this would end one day. He implied that a day will come when Gentiles will no longer rule in the Holy City and dictate its future. We are not quite there yet. The Gentiles are still trying to rule and even tell the Jewish State that it has no right to make Jerusalem its capitol. But these days of Gentile power in that area are coming to an end.

Jerusalem itself had become the religious centre of the Jewish nation when King David conquered the Jebusite fortress of Zion in the 10th century B.C. The Babylonians destroyed the Temple and the City in the 6th century B.C. under Nebuchadnezzar. Then the Persians brought the Holy City under their rule (we had mentioned Cyrus earlier). After the conquest of Alexander the Great and his successors, the Caliphates from Egypt and the Ptolemies from Syria, made Jerusalem a bone of contention as rival kingdoms in the 2nd century before Christ. The Maccabean victory over those Hellenistic kingdoms resulted in an autonomous Jewish state in the 2nd century before Christ which lasted about 125 years,until in 63 B.C. Roman General Pompey conquered the Jewish nation. Jerusalem again drove out the Romans during the Bar Kokhba Revolt one hundred years after Titus' destruction of the city in 70 A.D. This second and final revolt against Rome lasted only a few years. Then the Emperor Hadrian subdued the city for the Roman Empire. In turn, Jerusalem was trampled on by Persians in the 7th century, by Moslem Arabs, by Egyptians, by the Mameluks from Egypt, by the Crusaders, the Holy Roman Empire, then the Turkish Empire which for four hundred years until General Allenby of Britain took the City of Jerusalem from the Turks towards the end of World War I in December 1917.

General Allenby was a Christian Zionists of the highest standing. We must mention that for a brief period of about eight years the whole city was in the possession of Egypt (1832 to 1840). Then came finally, in our time, 1948 when the modern State of Israel was born.

However the ancient City of Jerusalem was still held by the Kingdom of Jordan ruled by the Hashemite Dynasty from 1948 to 1967. It was only during the Six Day War that the Holy City came back under Jewish rule on June 7th, 1967.
Part Six: Until Jerusalem is a Praise

We have been looking at the modern fulfillment of Scripture in Zionism, the return of the Jewish people to the Promised Land. We have been particularly focusing on the role of Gentile Christians in that process and in the rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948. I quote from Isaiah 60:3-10, "Thus saith the LORD God, Behold I will lift up My hand to the Gentiles and set up My ensign to the people. They shall bring thy sons in their bosoms and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. Kings shall be thy foster fathers and their queens thy nursing mothers. Israel shall know that I AM the LORD. The Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy risings. Aliens shall build up thy walls and their kings shall minister unto thee."

That prophecy has been operating for many centuries even back in the time of Cyrus of Persia. He certainly helped the Jews return from their seventy year captivity in the 6th century B.C. Surely that historic knowledge inspired the first Christian Zionists. Some Christians consider themselves included in the prophetic picture in Isaiah 62 which says: "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem. They shall never hold their peace day or night. You that are the LORD's remembrancers take ye no rest and give Him, the Sovereign of the Universe, no rest until He establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in all the earth."

Something happened in the late 19th century which greatly accelerated this move. In France, there was a scandal known as the Dreyfus Affair. Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer and someone on the staff was passing military information to Germany. Captain Drayfus was the only Jew on the staff and his loyalty was suspect. He was accused, tried, convicted and court-martialled and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island.. But famous writers like Emile Zola took up the battle to prove his innocence. The ugliest and most frightening aspect of the Dreyfus Affair was the anti-Semitism it brought to the surface throughout the general public of France.

The battle for Dreyfus' innocence continued until the President of France granted a pardon and he was released. With a new government in power, Dreyfus was reinstated in the army, promoted to the rank of Major and awarded the order of the Legion of Honour. After ten years of prison in chains, solitude, privation and tropical fever Drayfus was a figure of a broken man.

However, a Jewish journalist from Vienna named Theodore Herzl was assigned to cover that trial. What it did was not only to change the life of Theodore Herzl, but put the modern Zionist movement on the fast track. Following observing the trial and seeing the mobs screaming for "Death to the Jews!" in the streets of Paris, he conceived a program for a national and territorial solution and published it under the title The Jewish State in 1896. A year later, in 1897, the first Zionist Congress met in Basil, Switzerland. Herzl's vision for a homeland for the Jewish people was in Palestine.

To accomplish this he needed the sympathy of the Turkish Sultan, for Palestine was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and he needed the support of the Kaiser of Germany. Actually, Herzl had a Christian Zionist advisor by the name of William Hechler, a British clergyman ,who met Herzl in 1896 and became a sympathizer and close friend. Hechler said this: "All that this remarkable movement now requires is the public recognition and protection of the sovereigns of Europe. If the Jewish State is successful, which it must be according to the Bible, the Jews are then to be a blessing to the nations." Hechler, having connections with the British Government, personally wrote to the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and he answered in reply: "I have been able to notice that the immigration to the land of Palestine of those Jews who are ready for it is being prepared extremely well, and it is even financed soundly in every respect. I am convinced that the settlement of the Holy Land will soon bring blessing to the Land."

The very same year the Kaiser made a formal visit to Jerusalem, met Dr. Herzl and members of the Zionist organization just outside the Jaffa Gate of the old city of Jerusalem. Pragai in his book wrote: "It amounted to a clear act of recognition of the Zionist Movement by the sovereign of a crucially important Protestant European power, Germany." So the trickle has become a stream and is moving towards being a river which cannot be stopped.
Part Seven: "Providence"

It has well been said that God fulfills His ways mainly by what we call "the Providence of God". Like the Children of Israel,we don't see the details; we see the results. At the beginning of World War I, Britain found herself dangerously short of acetone, a chemical substance needed for producing the cordite explosive in artillery shells. Winston Churchill had succeeded Arthur Balfour as First Lord of the Admiralty. Dr. Cheim Weizmann, a Russian born Jew, was the teacher of chemistry at Manchester University. Churchill asked Weizmann if he could make 30,000 tons of acetone synthetically, and Dr. Wiseman undertook the difficult task.

At this point in W.W. I, the Allies were losing the war, and yet a year later Germany had been defeated. As Minister of Munitions, David Lloyd George, who later was to become Prime Minister, offered Weizmann a suitable honour in appreciation of his work. Weizmann replied that he wanted nothing for himself, only British support for the Jewish aspirations in Palestine. As it happened, by the Providence of God, at that time the British War Cabinet was made up of a number of Christian Zionists. Lord Arthur James Balfour himself, British Statesmen, on November 2, 1917, wrote a letter to the then most important Jew in England, Lord Rothschild, a Jewish scientist and in fact a member of the House of Lords. That letter in the name of the British Foreign Office became the famous Balfour Declaration which in part read: "His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Balfour himself was a dedicated Christian Zionist. No less a person than Abba Eban in his work of history entitled My People: The Story of the Jews remarked: "Without Balfour's help there would have been no Declaration."

There was also General Allenby, who captured Jerusalem from the Turks December 9, 1917, a dedicated Christian Zionist. There was David Lloyd George the Prime Minister of England when the Government issued the Balfour Declaration. There was Jan Smuts, the Defense Minister of South Africa, serving in the British War Cabinet, who was also an ardent Christian Zionist. General Smuts, a Welshman, inherited that nation's traditional outlook upon the Jewish people from the Old Testament; as did the Dutch people, and those who knew the Old Testament and believed it, always knew enough not to anything harmful to the Jewish people and to respect the people of the Book. Sir Herbert Samuel, a Jew, was invited by Prime Minister Lloyd George in 1920 to become the first Jew to govern the Holy Land since the Roman General Pompeii captured the temple in 63 B.C.
Part Eight: The U.S.A.

Then there is the role of the United States of America during these birth pains. American Presidents have a heritage of Christian appreciation for the Jewish legacy to the world - the Bible. The Puritans who came to America patterned their religious and secular lives after the Old Testament. The Hebrew language was in fact taught at Harvard University from 1635 A.D. onward.

President Lincoln had revoked General Grant's order in 1862 that all Jews be expelled from the territories under his authority. Grant sought to intervene in 1869 A.D. in Romania to restrain the anti-Jewish persecutions there.

Successive American presidents sought earnestly to check outrageous pogroms which began in Russia against the Jews in 1881. President Woodwork Wilson, the twenty-eighth president of the United States, the President during World War I, was disposed in favour of Zionism by his Presbyterian upbringing and the personal influence of Jewish Zionists in America. In spite of considerable opposition to the Jewish homeland in Palestine, Wilson gave encouragement to the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
Holocaust

The Jewish people were disillusioned by the answer of assimilation in Europe and elsewhere and the see-saw process of Jewish emancipation and reaction of honour and dishonour in the land of their dispersion. The final deciding factor came in the infamous, barbaric Nazi Holocaust. Jews and Christian Pro-Zionists were more convinced than ever, if Jews were to survive, a national homeland was imperative for the people of the Book in the land of the Bible.

It is a regrettable turn of events in British-Jewish relations that David Ben-Gurion had to fight against the British Government's White Paper of 1939 A.D. British resistance to Jewish immigration during the anti-Zionist years of Ernest Beven, the Prime Minister of England. In Palestine, the Jews had to resist Arab fighting from November 29th, 1947, the date that the United Nations agreed to partition Palestine, and that set up bad feelings between the Jewish nation to come and the British government. However, at midnight on May 14th, 1948, the British Mandate over Palestine ended, and that afternoon David Ben-Gurion stood in Tel Aviv and proclaimed the existence of modern Israel.

A few moments after Israel's proclamation of independence, the White House announced: "The United States recognizes the provisional government as the defacto authority of the new State of Israel." This was a personal decision of Harry S. Truman overruling the State Department. Truman later referred to himself in his own diaries as being the "modern Cyrus". He knew his place in history. No American president had as direct an impact on modern Jewish history as Truman.
Part Nine: Refuge From a Hostile World

In the previous program we looked at the important role that the United States and several of its presidents played in the rebirth of the modern State of Israel. Today, we want to go on and see what does this message say to the world at large about the Jewish return according to the promises of the Bible. Before that, however, I do want to quote something which David Ben-Gurion, the gentleman that announced the recreation of the Jewish State of Israel on May 15th, 1948, said: "Eretz Israel, the land of Israel, was the birth place of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance, and gave to the world the eternal Book of books. Accordingly, we hereby declare the establishment of the Jewish state of Eretz Israel to be known as Medinat Israel (the State of Israel)."

After outlining the principle and purposes of the State, he concluded, "Basing our trust in the Almighty we affix our signatures to this Proclamation at this session of the Provisional Council of State on the soil of the Homeland in the City of Tel Aviv on this Sabbath eve Airo Shabat the 5th of Iyar 5708 (on the Jewish calendar)."
Message For Whole World: God Keeps All His Promises

( The following portions of these radio messages were quoted mainly from Stan Goodenough's "BIBLE BRIEFING" A supplement to the "Middle East Digest" ,January 1997; published by the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem,Israel):

So we have the Jewish people back in the land with their own State. A place of refuge against the anti-Semitism and their enemies for the first time in nearly two thousand years. But through this whole thing, God is speaking to more than Israel, for in fact Israel's rebirth is one of God's messages to the world today. The rebirth of the Jewish homeland together with the ongoing massive ingathering of the world's Jews to their homeland has been a powerful message of God to humanity this last more than one hundred years.

Since late in the last century, when they first began arriving in large numbers, in the most barren and neglected Ottoman backwater that had once been the Land of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews have been brought together from over a hundred nations in accord with the ancient biblical promises and prophecies. Ezekiel 34: 12-15,28 reads: "As the shepherd seeks out his flock on the day that he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered. 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 all the inhabited places of the country. And they shall no longer be a prey to the nations. Nor shall other lands devour them. But they shall dwell safely and no one shall make them afraid."

Jeremiah 32:37,38,41 "Behold, I will gather them out of the countries where I have driven them in My anger. I will bring them back to this place and I will cause them to dwell safely. 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."

Much of the world rejects the Jewish claim to the Promised Land and the claim that they returned to a land of malarial swamps, desert, almost entirely denuded of trees. Instead the world has swallowed Arafat's propaganda and lies who told the U.N. in 1974: "The Jewish invasion began in 1881. Palestine then was a verdant area, inhabited mainly by many Arab peoples." But eye-witness accounts of hundreds of visitors to the land in the 18th and 19th centuries described how God kept to the letter His promise that the land of Israel would waste away and remain largely empty during the time of the Jewish Diaspora. Leviticus 26:23 promised: "I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you. Your land will be desolate and your cities waste." Zechariah 7:14, "But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land they left became desolate so that no one passed through or returned."

Writing in 1835 A.D. a French poet, Alphonse de Lamartine, said: "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object. Heard no living sound. We found the same void, the same silence that we should have found before the entombed gates of Pompeii or of Greece. A complete eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country; the tomb of a whole people." In 1867, Mark Twain described the Jezerel Valley now verdant in Galilee as being devoid of a single village; the Galilee "unpeopled desert; Jericho is a moldering ruin; Bethlehem as untended by any living creature"; and "renowned Jerusalem itself a pauper village." "Palestine sits in ashes," he lamented. "It is a hopeless, deary, heartbroken land." And so it was until about fourteen years later, Jews began to return and rebuild as God promised in Jeremiah 33:7. "I will cause the captives of Judah and the captives of Israel to return and will rebuild those places as at the first." And again in Ezekiel 36: "The desolate land shall be tilled instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass by. So they will say, 'This land that was desolate has become like a garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited." God is in the midst of keeping even greater promises to Israel.
The Second, and Final, Return of the Jewish People to the Promised Land

How barren and denuded the land was before the Jewish return that started en masse in 1948, but which had really been going on for one hundred years with different waves of immigration! Persecuted Jews coming out of Europe and particularly out of Russia, and draining the malarial swamps and causing the desert to bloom like a rose. Today, over one years after that return began in the late 1800's, the Jews continue to pour into the Promised Land. Since December 1989, in eight short years, one-third of all the former Soviet Union Jews, nearly 700,000 people, have made the return. "Alyiah" the Hebrew name for the return. Which means around 12 per cent of Israel's population today has arrived in the last seven years. In fact, nearly 100,000 more are expected in the year 1997. Year after year for hundreds and thousands of years the Jews have faithfully obeyed God's command to remember the Passover; thankful of the time when God delivered them from Egyptian bondage, and He smote the first born of Egypt including Pharaoh's own son.

No matter where they have been inside their Promised Land or in exile from it, and no matter under what conditions they have lived, in the brief interludes of peace and prosperity, or suffering the persecutions, Crusades, pogroms, expulsions, Inquisition, and Holocaust, the Jews have given thanks to the God who delivered them from Egypt and brought them to their Promised Land. And yet the Bible says that this second and final ingathering of the Jews that we are witnessing today will overshadow that great Passover event.

Jeremiah 16:14-15, "Therefore, behold the days are coming," says the LORD, "that it shall no more be said, 'The LORD lives who brought us up from the land of Egypt, but the LORD lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands where He had driven them. For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers."

Yes, in bringing physical Israel back home, God has been raising up an announcement, a banner to the nations - one they are unable to ignore no matter how unpopular it is - confronting the world with the reality of God's eternal existence; His undiminished sovereignty; and His unlimited might and power.

Isaiah 11:11,12 also predicted it. "It shall come to pass in that day that the LORD shall set His hand again the second time (the first, was the return from Babylon) to recover the remnant of His people who are left. He will set up a banner announcing to the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."

And again in Ezekiel 36:23 & 36: "And I will sanctify My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst, and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the LORD God, when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. Then the nations which are left all around you shall know that I the LORD have rebuilt the ruined places and planted what was desolate. I the LORD have spoken it and I will do it."

God told Joshua that He had brought them out of Egypt to bring them into the Promised Land, and today it is certain that God has brought them back to bless them in the land and to more than increase their physical inheritance, but to bring them back to Himself. The great purpose is yet largely unfulfilled: the rebirth of the Jewish people spiritually in the land.

A cataclysmic event, the ingathering of the Jews has shaken the dust of centuries of blindness from Christian eyes, awakening them to the fact that the nation of Israel still occupies its original, extraordinary, special place in God's purposes for mankind. None the less, ingrained anti-Semitism continues to colour the lenses through which many Christians are observing this incredible physical return. For even as they recognize that the Jews have been hounded and afflicted in every land in which they have sought refuge down the years, millions of these Christians still believe that the Jews are being returned to their ancient homeland only to face more of God's anger and judgment - to be driven to their knees. However, the Bible doesn't say so.

The Bible is quite clear on this matter. The dispersion from the land was a curse. The restoration to the land is a blessing - first, physically and then spiritually. What does the Bible promise regathered Israel? Psalm 80, the Shepherd of Israel is beseeched to cause His face to shine on the scattered people of Israel; not to pour out His anger upon them, and finishes "we shall be saved." Psalm 102:13, in the context of the regathering of the prophet writes, "You will arise and have mercy on Zion for the time to favour her, yes, the set time has come." Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Zephaniah promise that the Jews shall return and dwell safely and none shall make them afraid. Jeremiah 31:10 promises to regather Israel and keep him as a shepherd does his flock. In Isaiah 41:8-16, God tells regathered Israel, "Fear not and be not dismayed " ; He promised that His righteous right hand (not their own self-righteousness), will uphold Israel; and that those who strive and war with Israel shall perish and become nothing. In Ezekiel 20:41it says, "I will accept you as a sweet aroma when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered." In Zephaniah 3:15 He promises that He will take away Israel's judgments and cast out her enemies and that she shall see disaster no more. And in Deuteronomy 30:9, Jeremiah 32:41, Isaiah 62:5, and Zephaniah 3:17, God promises that as He returns Israel and plants her in the land, He will rejoice over her with gladness and singing.
Part Ten: The Proper Christian Attitude & Response

Last week we examined God's larger purpose in bringing the Jewish people back. It is more than an earthly covenant concerning some land. It has to do with their eternal destiny and their salvation, and the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy in chapter 37 of the resurrection of the valley of dry bones. However, even though we quoted many Scriptures, their are many Bible believers that think that the next war that is coming in the Middle East is going to bring Israel to its knees. They believe that until Israel is "hammered" they will not call out to God.

People who say such things apparently are not intimately connected to God because the threat of judgment does not change man's heart. It is the love of God that changes man's heart. God's love for Israel is going to call them to His bosom. This physical regathering of Israel is not readiness for another Jewish tragedy and holocaust as some so glibly say. It is instead in readiness for the restoration of the nation to their God.

Ezekiel 36:24-26, "I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Then I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; then I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

Ezekiel 39:29, "I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit upon the whole house of Israel,' says the LORD God."

As we read in 2 Samuel 7:23, this is a restoration that only Israel as a nation is destined for. While the Gentiles are descending into chaos, Israel is rising and destined for great things.

Imagine, if the physical restoration of the Jews has caused such a mighty stirring among the peoples of the world, what will their salvation and spiritual restoration do? Then the nations will truly no longer say, "Where is their God?" Looking upon Israel they will say, "There is there God!" "The nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the LORD God when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all the countries, and bring you into your own land, and I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean."

This great return of the Jews from the four-corners of the world is being aided and assisted by many Christian organizations, one of which is our own International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. Helping Jews home to Israel is one of their programs. To date they have, during the collapse of the former Soviet Union, brought fifty large plane loads of Jewish people out of persecution in Eastern Europe to the land of Israel. After finding a more economical way to do it, they have been using buses for several years and have brought some 26,000 Jewish people out of Eastern European hot spots including Georgia and very inhospitable places to Jewish people. Other organizations are bringing them out in large boats out of the Black Sea area to Haifa.
Why Gentile Christians Should be Assisting the Jewish Return
Today I want to give you seven reasons why Gentile Christians should be assisting in this process:
One can do no better than quote from the EXOBUS PROJECT (coordinated by the ICEJ,and headed by Phil Hunter of the UK) newsletter of 1995, as follows:   

   1. Firstly, because it is biblical. The Word of God makes it clear not only that He who scattered Israel will gather them (Jeremiah 31:10), but that God will use Gentiles to help carry them home (Isaiah 14:1,2 and 49:22). Dubbed by some as the second great commission, this mandate to help the Jews home is accepted by increasing numbers of Bible believing Christians and ministries.
   2. In addition to being biblical, Israel is now a nation. The Jews in the Diaspora, the dispersion, have always been in danger and Satan still seeks to destroy them. Many holocausts have taken place and most people hope that history will not be repeated. However, Jews outside Israel are still in danger of assimilation, anti-Semitism and even annihilation. The difference between past generations and now is that the Jews have a home to go to. Since 1948, Israel is a fact. In addition to being biblical and having a nation, chaos looms in the future.
   3. The breakup of the former Soviet Union with the resulting economic and political instability, the deepening of ecological problems and ethnic tangents, together with the deep-seated anti-Semitism are reminicent of prewar Germany. The Ukraine has the highest density of Jewish people in the former Soviet Union as well as the most tragic history of anti-Semitism. Centuries ago God said through the prophet Zechariah, "Come, come, flee from the land of the north." His words are true today as God calls Ukrainian Jewry in particular home. Also the Bible predicts a second exodus. Now with Jewish people from more than a hundred different nations in the land of Israel, God has His return well and truly underway.
   4. Romans 15: 27 "You Gentiles Owe it to the Jews to help them in Earthly matters"   A unique Jewish-Gentile cooperation began in 1991 when the Jewish Agency of Israel (the main instrument they use to facilitate Aliyah) contacted Christians through the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. This relationship has now led to the establishment of a network of operations from outlying towns and villages to major airports for direct flights to Israel from various points in Eastern Europe.
   5. Also, a fifth reason, there are increasing opportunities to reach out to the Jewish people and speak a prophetic word concerning God's desire for them to come home.
   6. Sixthly, God has and is raising up Gentiles who through various organizations are continuing to express support, comfort and love to the Jewish people upon arrival in Israel. The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem is not the only major financial supporter, but helps many of the new immigrants through the Soviet Jewry and Social Assistance Departments.
   7. And finally, the Scripture is clear in many passages like Ezekiel Chapter 37 that God's program is physical restoration of Israel, followed by spiritual restoration of Israel, to world-wide revival.(Romans 11:15,26) It is God's primary intention to bless the Jews in the land and from that land to make Jews a blessing to the whole world (" to all the families of the earth" ) to bring glory to His holy Name. (Genesis 12:3)

    The EXOBUS PROJECT is no longer under the auspices of the "International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem", but operates independently out of England; and can be contacted directly

        PO Box 1030
        HULL HU2 8YL
        England
        Tel +44 1482 217153
        Fax +44 1482 216565
        Email http://christianactionforisrael.org/judeochr/radio.html

[Timothy_Fitzpatrick]

"I'm starting to think Christian Zionism was fomented by British-American Intelligence Agencies in the late 19th-early 20th century during the run up to WWI."

Sure, why not? Also, throw a few cults and sects into the mix to divide up the Orthodoxy of Christianity and you have total destabilization.

[superzebra]

christian zionism:

according to benjamen natanyahu israeli PM:"christian zionist are scums,but we need every useful idiot".

i think christian zionism are more dangoures to usa more than the jews.the christian zionism gives to the jews all the power in the usa.

christian zionist are Fifth column to usa.the enemy within.

[superzebra]

christian zionism:

according to benjamen natanyahu israeli PM:"christian zionist are scums,but we need every useful idiot".

i think christian zionism are more dangoures to usa more than the jews.the christian zionism gives to the jews all the power in the usa.

christian zionist are Fifth column to usa.the enemy within.

[GordZilla]

christian zionism:

according to benjamen natanyahu israeli PM:"christian zionist are scums,but we need every useful idiot".

i think christian zionism are more dangoures to usa more than the jews.the christian zionism gives to the jews all the power in the usa.

christian zionist are Fifth column to usa.the enemy within.

Yes it would appear that way  -for sure, and it does beg for concern however ' truth can catch, in a day, a lie that has been running for years'.

The Christian Zionist, although it's very hard to get them to see the truth, they  can change their spots. When they FINALLY realize the errors of their ways, it becomes a  natural occurrence for them to drop it and find out what else they've been lied to about.  A Jew sees no error in his ways, and will NEVER change his  spots.

If we expose them to the point of utter brilliance, for all the world to see them  and all their lies, why then even the now x Christian Zionist can (and most probably will) become our ally - the Jew? again;  wont, nada ...ain't happening, no spots be changing.

I know it sounds like a pipe dream, but the Christian Zionists are worth the effort to try to wake. One at a time if we have to, but for sure once they wake very few of them will side with the Jew any more. We just have to make their crimes obvious and undeniable to everyone. That should be our collective goal. Once that's accomplished, good people will drop false ideologies and unite against a people who will not change and, even in the face of this new and  world-wide adversary, they will remain arrogant and defensive.

We all know Christian Zionism is not helping us, but one by one they could be. Our real enemy will  NEVER help us.  We should always keep that in mind, I think. 'Useful idiots' can be made aware and become great allies (and some already have   )That's the counter to lies; truth - and once known it can't be trumped  - It's a weapon we have at our disposal and they will never have at theirs.

[Helphand]

You'll certainly get a new view on the whole "Judeo-Christianity" meme and its associated deviltry if you read my fave rave of the minute, "CHRIST WAS NOT A JEW: An Epistle to the Gentiles" (published 1936)
by Jacob Elon Conner, A.B., Ph.D. now at

http://www.4shared.com/document/dbAkNNf1/JacobElonConner-ChristWasNotAJ.html

-- along with some other stuff old and new, compendium listing in Sanctum - Must Reads.

[abduLMaria]

I know it sounds like a pipe dream, but the Christian Zionists are worth the effort to try to wake. One at a time if we have to, but for sure once they wake very few of them will side with the Jew any more. We just have to make their crimes obvious and undeniable to everyone. That should be our collective goal. Once that's accomplished, good people will drop false ideologies and unite against a people who will not change and, even in the face of this new and  world-wide adversary, they will remain arrogant and defensive.

We all know Christian Zionism is not helping us, but one by one they could be. Our real enemy will  NEVER help us.  We should always keep that in mind, I think. 'Useful idiots' can be made aware and become great allies (and some already have   )That's the counter to lies; truth - and once known it can't be trumped  - It's a weapon we have at our disposal and they will never have at theirs.

perhaps, theoretically, they are "worth the effort".

However, having lived among the Christian Zionists in San Diego for 9 years, I would have to say, "converting" and "awakening" them is a futile effort.  They are self-lobotomizing - they take the Bible - a book written by humans - as the "word of God".

Of course, the Jews have made sure that that Bible is written from a Jewish point of view.  One of the Awakened Christians, such as Martin Luther, who had the courage to write "On the Lies of the Jews", is now mocked by Lutheran ministers in his own religion.

My stepfather is a Christian Zionist; so is one sister-in-law.  They could not be more brainwashed; they get their news from the telly; she is a reality show addict.  They could not conceive that the Jews have hijacked their own religion,  yet they have witnessed all the same events as the rest of us - the theft of 2 elections, 9-11, 3-11, 7-7, Operation Cast Lead, the attack on the Gaza Flotilla.

They even know that Iraq did not attack us on 9-11 - yet they support the Iraq War, because ... well ... "it will make America safer".  That's from my brother, who grew up & remains agnostic, yet chooses to let his world-view be constrained by his Christian Zionist wife and his Jewish Zionist boss and co-workers.

In other words, the evidence is in front of their faces - even in the mainstream media - and still they choose to ignore it ... so that they can persist with the delusions that "God loves them" and that "they're going to Heaven".

I will pass on trying to educate them and make sure that their children are aware of websites like PalestineRemembered.com.