Interest in the Holy Land was high because interest in the end times rose among evangelicals in the European nations.  Also during the 19^th century archaeology was emerging as an academic discipline that defended the historicity of the Scriptures.  The 19^th century saw the rise of examining the Bible as any other literary or historical book.  Arab nations had no such interests and they did not engage on this development of Jerusalem and the “Near East” as Europeans identified the region.

Read Part 1, “Why Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem?”

Read Part 2. “The Conflicting Narrative of Jerusalem”

Read Part 3, “Pain: God’s Megaphone”

Is there a divine purpose in the Jewish return to the land?  After all, the return to the land under the leadership of Theodore Herzl and the Zionist Congress was a secular movement.  Many Jews objected asserting that Judaism was a religion not a nationality.  Those who were the most religious such as the ultra-Orthodox believed the Messiah should reassemble the Jews and establish the State not secular Jewish leaders acting on their own initiative.

As a consequence to hear some speak of the return of the Jews, as if the Jews return to their Jewish homeland was accomplished by human assertiveness and power.  Ironically the early Zionists were motivated to establish a homeland by evangelical Christians.  Dating back to the Reformation, Protestant pastors had prophesied the return of the Jews to “Israel.”

Numerous evangelicals had prophesied that a ruler would arise who would break Roman Catholic rule in Europe and enable the Jews to return to their homeland.  Napoleon both unwittingly and yet intentionally fulfilled both prophesies.  He undermined the Roman Catholic Church and enabled the Jews to have a vision for their homeland.

Napoleon raised the expectations first among European Christians in the early part of the 19^th century and then the Jewish people at the end of the 19^th century to establish a homeland for the Jews.

On May 22, 1799 Napoleon published a declaration after his victory at Mount Tabor in the Jezreel Valley over the Turkish General Dzessar Pasha (the Butcher of Acre).

“Israelites arise!  Ye exiled, arise! Hasten! Now is the moment which may not return for thousands of years, to claim the restoration of civic rights among the population of the universe which have shamefully been withheld from you for thousands of years, to claim your political existence as a nation among nations, and the unlimited right to worship Jehovah according to your faith, publicly and most probably forever . . .”[1]

Napoleon went further to promise that the French nation would provide support and help for the Jewish people to “remain the master of its fate against all comers.”[2]

Soon after this declaration, Napoleon was defeated at Acre and his army harassed and decimated as they retreated to Egypt as a result nothing came of his invitation.  Yet upon returning to France, Napoleon convened an assembly in Paris on April 25, 1806 of French and Italian Jewish leaders.  The Jewish delegates affirmed their allegiances to France.  This allowed the Jews to maintain a dual citizenship with France and yet maintain an identity as a citizen of the Jewish people.  In 1806 the Jews were recognized as a people not just a religion.  This was critical to their aspiring to have a homeland as a people group not only for religious reasons.

Why did Napoleon do this?  Napoleon was seeking to fulfill evangelical prophecies regarding a political leader who would both overthrow the Pope and enable the Jews to return to Palestine.  Napoleon saw himself as a Messianic figure.

Napoleon called for the formation of a Great Sanhedrin designed to allow the Jewish leaders to govern their people with a distinctive national identity and still participate as an emancipated people within the French nation.  “James Bicheno in a new edition of the Restoration of the Jews claimed that the Sanhedrin ‘constituted a link in the chain of events which was to bring about the restoration of the Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine.’”[3] The Sanhedrin provoked opposition from the orthodox Jewish leaders and the French Catholic Church.  The Sanhedrin ended prematurely because of this opposition, but for the first time the Jewish people had some sense of representative government that recognized their civil and religious liberties.

The British formed what became the London Jews Society (LJS) in1815.  This society addressed the civil welfare and future restoration to a homeland of the Jewish peoples.  The LJS as a Church of England mission promoted the establishment of a consulate in Jerusalem.  Such a consulate was permitted by the Ottoman Turkish government in 1838.  In need of a chapel for the consulate, Christ Church was built in 1849 across from David’s Tower at the Jaffa Gate.  British involvement in Jerusalem was in part to counter the French and Russian presence.  Yet the British consulate drew the French and Russians to also build consulates. The French desired to protect the Roman Catholic Church.  The Russian consulate desired to protect the Eastern Orthodox Church in Jerusalem and the “Holy Land.”

Diplomatic and political interests fueled speculation that God was calling His people back to Palestine.  Lord Shaftesbury of England was deeply desirous to see such a return.  He supported Lord Palmerston in his leadership to promote such a movement.  Palmerston wrote on July 24, 1840:

Anxious about the hopes and prospects of the Jewish people.  Everything seems ripe for their return to Palestine . . .  Could the five Powers of the West be induced to guarantee the security of life and possessions to the Hebrew race, they would now flow back in rapidly augmenting numbers.  Then by the blessing of God I will prepare a document, fortify it by all the evidence I can accumulate, and, confiding to the wisdom and mercy of the Almighty, lay it before the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.”

Interest in Jerusalem continued to escalate with King Fredrick William IV of Prussia desiring to establish a worldwide Protestant church with Jerusalem as the center.  This vision prompted the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches to restore their patriarchates in Jerusalem.

“What was in 1838 a small insignificant walled town in the Turkish Empire with only one European consulate, the British, had by 1845 become a focal point of interest throughout the European capitals.”[4]

The interest in Palestine climaxed in a war started by the Roman Catholic accusation that the Greek Orthodox had stolen the Silver Star that marked the birthplace of Jesus from the grotto in the Church of the Nativity.  Czar Nicholas of Russia, eager to gain Turkish lands, provoked the war in the Crimea (the Crimean War) against Turkey, Britain, and France.

Interest in the Holy Land was high because interest in the end times rose among evangelicals in the European nations.  Also during the 19^th century archaeology was emerging as an academic discipline that defended the historicity of the Scriptures.  The 19^th century saw the rise of examining the Bible as any other literary or historical book.  Arab nations had no such interests and they did not engage on this development of Jerusalem and the “Near East” as Europeans identified the region.

As a consequence, these European nations focused on the plight of the Jewish people in Palestine.  Jewish leaders such as Moses Montefiore bought land outside of Jerusalem’s Old City and demonstrated by his windmill that there could be life outside of Jerusalem’s walls.  The first Jewish suburb “Mishkenot Sha‘ananim” was built.

The French Roman Catholics intensified their efforts in Jerusalem rebuilding St. Anne, the Crusader church at Bethesda near St. Stephen’s Gate.  The Ecole Biblique was opened which became famous for their archaeological studies in the 20^th century.

The colonial powers scrambled for land and influence outside of Jerusalem’s walls.  Meanwhile, a growing sense of Jewish nationalism was developing apart from the Orthodox belief that the Messiah would first come before Israelites were to be gathered in Eretz-Israel, Moses Hess expressed the view that Israel as a state could exist apart from the Messiah in Rome and Jerusalem published in 1860.

The assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881 provoked pogroms scapegoating the Jews for this crime.  With the help of the Rothschild family and the London Jews Society, Jewish people began the first aliyah or immigration to Israel in 1881 and 1882.  This marked the beginning of the idea of Israel as the national homeland of the Jews.  Colonies such as Rishon le Tzion (First in Zion) were established.

The Dreyfus Affair where the French military captain Alfred Dreyfus was put on trial for treason became the spark to motivate Jewish interest in returning to Palestine and establishing a state.  Dreyfus was a French army officer.   He was convicted of treason and many in France and throughout the world saw Dreyfus’ conviction as evidence of anti-Semitism.  Even the Arab Muslim press objected to the anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus trial.  Certainly the Hungarian Jewish journalist Theodore Herzl saw this trial as racist hatred for the Jews.  His book The Jewish State in 1896 was advocating the Jews return to Palestine and establishing a homeland.  This marked the beginnings of Zionism.  The first Jewish National Congress was held in August 1897.

The Zionist congress expressed the view that anti-Semitism could not be combated.  The need was for a homeland where Jewish people could live out their Jewishness.  Such a homeland would allow the Jews to defend themselves.  The vision was for a Jewish state for Jews to celebrate holidays, Shabbat, kosher laws and to live as Jewish people without struggle or fear.

Herzl attempted to bargain with the Turks to allow such a homeland.  During Kaiser Wilhelm’s trip to Jerusalem – that was ostentatiously enabled by the Turks – they opened the wall at the Jaffa Gate so that the Kaiser could ride into the city in his automobile along with his considerable entourage.  The Kaiser was in Jerusalem to open the German Church of the Redeemer on Reformation Day, 1898.

German interest in Jerusalem raised the commitment of the British to consider the land of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews.  During the First World War, Britain took the lead in fighting the Ottoman Turks who were allies to the Germans.  With General Allenby’s defeat of the Turks at Beersheva in Israel on October 31, 1917, the way was open for Jerusalem to come under British control.  The British on November 2, 1917 passed the Balfour Declaration favoring the establishment of a national homeland for the Jewish people without prejudicing the civil or religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

By December 9, 1917, General Allenby received the surrender of Jerusalem from the Turkish Muslims.  Jews embraced Greeks and multitudes celebrated.  The hopes of a Jewish restoration to the land rested solely with the British government.  No other European power had a say.  The British had made their commitment with the Balfour Declaration.  Whatever concerns the French had were settled with the Sikes-Picot Agreement of 1916 giving French hegemony over Lebanon and Syria and leaving Palestine and Iraq to British custodial care.  There were no Middle Eastern nations at this time, just the Ottoman Empire.

The British Jewish Legion led by Jewish leaders such as Jabotinsky, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben Gurion fought for Britain against Turkey with hopes of providing leadership in a new Palestine.  For the Zionist movement, the laying of the cornerstone for the Hebrew University in 1918 was fulfillment of the dream of preserving Jewish identity.

The Biblical prophecies seemed to give substantial warrant to the expectations of the Jewish return to the land.  For example:

Joel 3:20 – But Judah shall abide forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.

Amos 9:11-15 – “On that day I will raise up The tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, and repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old;  that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the Gentiles who are called by My name,” says the Lord who does this thing.  “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them; They shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them.  I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them,” says the Lord your God.

Micah 4:6-7 – ⁶ “In that day,” says the Lord, “I will assemble the lame, I will gather the outcast and those whom I have afflicted; ⁷ I will make the lame a remnant, and the outcast a strong nation; so the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion From now on, even forever.

Zephaniah 3:14-15 – ¹⁴ Sing, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! ¹⁵ The Lord has taken away your judgments, He has cast out your enemy. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; You shall see disaster no more.

Isaiah 35:1, 6, 10 – The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad for them, And the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose; . . . ⁶ Then the lame shall leap like a deer, And the tongue of the dumb sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert. . . ¹⁰ 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.

Isaiah 60:18, 21 – ¹³ “The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, The cypress, the pine, and the box tree together, To beautify the place of My sanctuary; And I will make the place of My feet glorious. ¹⁴ Also the sons of those who afflicted you Shall come bowing to you, And all those who despised you shall fall prostrate at the soles of your feet; And they shall call you The City of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

Jeremiah 32:37-40 – ³⁷ 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. ³⁸ They shall be My people, and I will be their God; ³⁹ 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. ⁴⁰ 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.

Ezekiel 37:21-25  – ²¹ “Then say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; ²² and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they ever be divided into two kingdoms again. ²³ They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will deliver them from all their dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be My people, and I will be their God.  ²⁴ “David My servant shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd; they shall also walk in My judgments and observe My statutes, and do them. ²⁵ Then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob My servant, where your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell there, they, their children, and their children’s children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever.

Yet these prophesies also indicate that those who return will have a spiritual transformation, a new heart.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 – ³¹ “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— ³² not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. ³³ But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. ³⁴ No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Those Jews who return will submit to David (that is the Son of David) their king and fear the Lord.

Hosea 3:4-5 – ⁴For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. ⁵ Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.

Ezekiel 37:24-25 – ²⁴ “David My servant shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd; they shall also walk in My judgments and observe My statutes, and do them. ²⁵ Then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob My servant, where your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell there, they, their children, and their children’s children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever.”

The living God will be their God (Zechariah 8:7-8) and they will know the Lord as their God (Ezekiel 28:25-26).

Many scholars and pastors would insist these passages are fulfilled in the return from the Babylonian exile at the end of the 6^th century BC and into the 5^th century BC under Cyrus.

A careful reading of these prophecies indicates that the Lord shall “set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people . . .” (Isaiah 11:11).  This second gathering is from the four corners of the earth (Isaiah 11:12).

Isaiah prophesies that the return to the land shall be from “the land of the north, and from all the lands where He had driven them.  I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers” (Jeremiah 16:14-16).

These prophecies indicate that there are two events where God will return His people from exile. The first return was during Ezra and Nehemiah.  The second return of the Jews will result in a spiritual revival and renewal of the Jewish people.  With only three one-hundreds of a percent of Jews in Israel who believe Jesus is their Messiah this second expectation has not yet been fulfilled.

Does the lack of spiritual turning to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mean that the prophecies regarding the return of the Jews are not valid?

Is it possible that the return is to the church and not to the land of Palestine?  Those who take all the references to Jerusalem or to Zion as the church are considered to hold a view called “replacement theology.”  The church is viewed as the “Israel” that fulfills these prophecies.

Contrary to this view is Jeremiah 31:7-34.  This prophecy speaks of the Lord bringing the remnant of Israel from the north country and gathering them from the ends of the earth who will then establish a new covenant with the house of Israel (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The writer of Hebrews sees this new covenant as being in effect at the time Hebrews 8:7-13 was written.  Yet the people had not yet been gathered from the north and from many distant lands.  The complete fulfillment of the prophecy must be in the future.

Has God not maintained an identity of the Jewish people for two millennia?  Is this merely coincidental or is it providential?  Is the return of the Jews to Palestine beyond the control of God or is it providential with a purpose of blessing both the Arabs and the Jews, and the whole world?  The pain of the present may give birth to God’s pouring out of His peace that will cause all nations to marvel.

What to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem:

• Ponder the Scriptures cited in this chapter. Does God have a plan for the State of Israel?  Pray for God’s wisdom as to how He has fulfilled these promises and may yet fulfill them.
• Pray for the Jewish leaders to reflect on these Scriptural promises and their relationship to the present day State of Israel.
• Pray that both Evangelicals and Messianic Jews would see their unity in “the church.”

Dr. Douglas W. Kittredge is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is pastor of New Life in Christ PCA in Fredericksburg, Va.

[1] Sachar Harry, A History of Israel,  Alfred Knopf, NY, 1976, p. 22.

[2]  Barbara Tuchman, Bible and Sword, Minerva Press, New York, 1956, p. 163.

[3] Kelvin Crombie, Anzacs, Empires and Israeli’s Restoration, 1798-1948, Vocational Education and Training Publications,

3^rd printing, 2000.

[4] Ibid, p. 59