It's past time for both the Jewish and Christian communities to be made aware of something:
God used Gentile Christians to help rebirth Israel.
The information that follows is not new. It can be verified with historical documents. Although the information is available in the public sphere, it is not well-known to either community. It would serve both communities well if this information were recognized more widely and used as a bridge between us
William Blackstone: What the Christian and Jewish Communities Have Forgotten
Decades before Theodor Herzl wrote The Jewish State, American Christian William E. Blackstone was already advocating for the restoration of the Jewish people to their ancestral land.
Blackstone loved Bible prophecy. In 1878, Blackstone published Jesus is Coming. It sold millions of copies and was translated into 42 languages.
Blackstone loved the Jewish people, especially the Russian Jewish community that was fleeing pogroms. In 1887, he founded the Chicago Hebrew Mission. That same organization operates today under the name
. 138 years later, the mission remains the same: share the Jewish Messiah, stand against antisemitism and equip others to do the same.
In November 1890, Blackstone organized the first ecumenical conference between Christians and Jews in America, titled The Past, Present and Future of Israel.
One year later—4 years before Herzl encountered the Dreyfus Affair—Blackstone presented a petition to President Benjamin Harrison urging support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Here is an excerpt from that petition, an original copy from the 1891 Chicago Tribune hangs in my office:
"Why shall not the powers which under the treaty of Berlin, in 1878, gave Bulgaria to the Bulgarians and Servia to the Servians now give Palestine back to the Jews? These provinces... were wrested from the Turks and given to their natural owners. Does not Palestine as rightfully belong to the Jews?"
How was Blackstone viewed by the Jewish community?
On May 8, 1916, the first US Supreme Court Justice of Jewish decent, Louis Brandies, wrote the following in a letter to Nathan Straus, after whom Netanya, Israel is named:
“Mr. Brandeis is perfectly infatuated with the work that you have done along the lines of Zionism... he agrees with me that you are the Father of Zionism, as your work antedates Herzl.”
Justice Brandeis wrote to Blackstone directly:
“That document [Blackstone's Petition], ante-dating as it did Theodore Herzl’s own participation in the Zionist movement, is destined to become of historical significance... I hope you will keep me fully informed of the progress... so that we may give such aid as may be possible in rendering it effective.”
Before Herzl convened a congress, Blackstone was already laying the groundwork.