Christian Zionism Quotes
Mr. Brandeis was Louis D. Brandeis, first Jewish Supreme Court Justice and one of the leading Zionist world leaders. Theodor Herzel is generally credited with being the father of Zionism but his treatise was written in 1895. Four years earlier, Blackstone, a Methodist Evangelical Minister, had drafted what has come to be called the Blackstone Memorial, which was a petition to President Benjamin Harrison to have American foreign policy work to return the Jews to Palestine where they would have a state and government. The petition was signed by over 400 notables. Straus, Brandeis and other Jewish Zionists credited Blackstone even though history has almost forgotten him. See {614860} for quotes from the Blackstone Memorial.
This Mormon prayer turned out to foresage one of the most fascinating set of events in world history. In 1841, an American Mormon leader and prophet journeyed all the way to Jerusalem to consecrate Palestine for the Jewish people. His prayer predicted the creation of the state of Israel with a Jewish government and its capital in Jerusalem. He stated that David, a descendent from the biblical Jewish King David will be its first ruler. Over 100 years later the state of Israel came into being and its first prime minister was Jewish David Ben-Gurion. This regathering of the Jews in Israel had been prophesized in the Bible, but this seems to be the first modern action taken to make it happen. This was more than 20 years before the first Jewish writing appeared advocating the Jewish return to Palestine--Moses Hess's 1862 work, Rome & Jerusalem; The Last National Question. It was over 50 years before Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, even published his first work on the subject.
It was signed by over 400 American notables—politicians and clergy, Christian and Jewish. Signers included the Mayors of Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, congressmen and editors of most of the leading newspapers of the day. Blackstone’s Memorial predated the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl by 4 years and Blackstone, thought a Christian, was credited as being the “Father of Zionism” by many of the American Jewish Zionist leaders. See {614859}.
