Israel: The Super Sign of the End-Times (Part 8)

By Todd Baker
B'rit Hadashah Ministries

Zionism no doubt enjoyed a popular resurgence in the latter half of the nineteenth century due directly to the increasing hatred and hostility explicitly shown toward the Jews throughout Europe. That hatred and hostility has always been an inherent part of European culture dating back to the days of the Roman Empire. The greatest concentration of anti-Semitic hostilities against the Chosen People was in Eastern Europe and Russia. In fact, hatred for the Jews was so bad in Russia that the Czar in 1903 commissioned his secret police to forge a document entitled The Protocols of the Elders in Zion. This forgery allegedly was supposed to be the blueprint and planned conspiracy for Jewish world domination drawn up by a group of influential Jews as codified in the twenty-four protocols. The Czar was to use this fabrication to justify a bloody pogrom carried out throughout Russia and the Ukraine from 1903 to 1906.

Such a tidal wave of anti-Semitism that had and would engulf Europe in the 19th and the 20th centuries created a strong and unquenchable desire among many European Jews to return to their ancient homeland of Israel. This prompted an early leader and pioneer of Zionism, Russian Doctor Leon Pinsker, to write a seminal work of Modern day Zionism entitled Auto-Emancipation in 1882. In it, Pinsker basically proposed that the only solution to protect the Jewish people from ongoing anti-Semitism was for them to have a national homeland of their own. Initially, he thought this Jewish State could be established anywhere in the world, but eventually came to the firm conviction that such a homeland could only be planted where ancient Israel had originally been located.

A decade after this, Zionism’s political ideas and concepts for a Jewish homeland were formally defined by its leading proponent, Theodor Herzl, in his foundational work The Jewish State. This book formed the constitutional basis for the First Zionist Congress convened on August 27, 1897, at Basel, Switzerland; 204 delegates from 17 countries attended the Congress. Herzl worked tirelessly to gain support and backing for a Jewish State indefatigably traveling throughout Europe meeting with the monarchs, statesmen, and politicians to obtain legal acceptance for a Jewish homeland. At the Fifth Zionist Congress held in August 1903 (Herzl’s last before his death in 1904), Herzl tentatively accepted the British proposal to establish a Jewish State in the country of Uganda located in East Africa. After much debate and deliberation among the delegates of the Fifth Congress, the Uganda proposal was rejected. The delegates came to the firm and uncompromising conclusion that a Jewish State could only be established in the land of their ancestors - the land of Israel.

This unshakable resolve would only grow, intensify, and be carried to eventual fruition some forty-five years later with the birth of the modern nation of Israel.

Theodor Herzl’s vision was really the greater vision of God to restore His people, Israel, to the land He gave to Abraham, their founding father, and his Jewish descendants after him for an eternal possession in fulfillment of those End-time prophecies that the Jews would be regathered back to Israel as a sign and precondition for the return of the Messiah - Jesus of Nazareth. Satan knows of these prophecies and, within a generation of these pioneers of Zionism, was allowed by the providence of God to try to subvert and prevent the Jewish people from returning to their ancient God-given homeland. But the die had already been cast. In the modern-day movement of Zionism, God was beginning to focus His attention again on the “everlasting nation” so that many of the promises of their latter day restoration to the land in preparation for the Messiah’s return would be realized as supernaturally foretold in the Word of God. The prophecy of Isaiah 41:8-10 stands fulfilled in this distinct regard:

“But you, Israel, are My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the descendants of Abraham My friend. You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest regions, and said to you: ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away. Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’”

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