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Christian Zionism Book

Commentary by Dr. Gerhard Falk

     

 

 

The Restoration of Israel

 

   The Restoration of Israel is the name of a book I published one month ago. That is my 16th book. There are a number of books also called by that title. These are all written by Christian believers who seek to demonstrate that the Christian god will reappear on the return of all Jews to the Holy Land.

   Therefore I have used the same title for my book, which is based on a socio-historical analysis of the facts concerning the third Jewish commonwealth.

    The book begins with a discussion of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, and its translation into English by Tyndale in 1530. William Tyndale was a Roman Catholic as were all Englishmen before Henry VIII left the church. That church had prohibited the translation of the Bible into any vernacular language. Therefore, Tyndale was burned to death at the stake for translating the Torah. A century earlier, Wycliffe had translated the Torah from the Latin into English. Already dead, his body was exhumed, burned and the ashes thrown into a river.

    The Tyndale translation eventually became the famous “King James Version” after King James of Scotland ascended the throne of England in 1605. That led to a great deal of interest in the Hebrew patriarchs and finally Jewish literature. Englishmen began to discuss the possibility of a return of the Jews to their ancient homeland. The Biblical foundations of Christian Zionism were therefore inherent in the study of the Bible by so many “establishment” upper class English politicians. From there the idea of Christian Zionism spread to American Protestantism and has influenced many of our leading politicians, including the current president, George W. Bush.

   Despite the enhancement of the Biblical Jews, literature in all European languages has been contemptuous of Jews. This is demonstrated by reviewing both British and American literature since Shakespeare. As a consequence, support for Zionism and Israel has always been ambivalent, as can be seen in the conduct of such supporters of Israel as Harry Truman or Richard Nixon, who cursed Jews even as they gave major help to Israel when needed.

   I have discussed American “restorationism” at length. Here we find the Christian fundamentalists in the forefront of support for Israel. They therefore influenced a number of U.S. presidents to do the same. Only Franklin Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter stand out as enemies of the Jewish people among all the other presidents, whose attitude and conduct towards Israel I have reviewed in detail.

    Next I discuss the Jewish response to Zionism. It may come as a surprise to some that the Jewish response to Zionism was almost entirely negative until after the HOLOCAUST. American Jews were so afraid of being accused of double loyalty that they rejected Zionism and even opposed the partition of the Holy Land in 1947. European Jews, almost all living in Eastern Europe, refused any support for Zionism on the grounds that only the Messiah may legitimately bring the Jewish people back to their land. In other words, the rabbis of the Russian Empire were afraid of losing power if the Jews migrated to any new land, even the U.S.A.

   The Moslem response to Zionism was most positive in the early years of that movement. In fact, the only viable leader of the Arabs at the beginning of the 20th century signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann encouraging Jews to move to the Holy Land.

    The book concludes with a discussion of the Christian response to Zionism, both in light of the old “Displacement Theology” and the new “Two Covenant Theology”.

  My principal thesis in this book is that Israel could not have been re-established without the help, both militarily and politically, of the English Protestant establishment. Whatever their motives, we owe a great deal to those 19th century Englishmen who promoted our interests when we ourselves were blind to them. This in no way diminishes the heroism of the early Zionists and founders of Medinath Yisroel. It only explains the history of the Restoration of Israel in the words of that great German historian Leopold von Ranke: “Wie es eigentlich gewesen ist”.

Shalom u’vracha.

Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including The Restoration of Israel (2006).

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