Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times - Conscious Evolution TV

obin-bobinJewish–Christian Relations 135of God on earth. The Jews, who will survive the turmoils andterror of the great tribulation, will accept Jesus as their savior.There will follow a period of a thousand years of a righteousrule of Christ on earth, with Jerusalem as the capital of theentire world. The Jews will again inhabit David’s ancient kingdom,serving as Jesus’ right-hand people, assisting the righteousworld leader in administering the earth.Left Behind and the Return of the Jews to ZionIt is not difficult to see how the premillennialist faith wouldmotivate the interest of premillennialist evangelicals in the actualJews of the current period and stir efforts to bring the Jews tofulfill their role in history. The new messianic school has inspiredinterest in the prospect of the Jewish conversion to Christianity aswell as in the possibility of Jewish national restoration inPalestine. By the late nineteenth century, American evangelistscame out with proto-Zionist initiatives and created extensive networksof missionary activity among the Jews. 5 Like LaHaye andJenkins, evangelical writers promoted the idea that a Jewish commonwealthin the Holy Land is a crucial development toward theadvancement of the messianic times. Evangelical initiatives tobring about the restoration of the Jews to Zion can be traced toattempts by British evangelicals, as early as the 1840s, to persuadethe British government to propose the creation of a Jewishstate in Palestine. The leader of the evangelical party in Britain atthe time, the seventh Earl of Shaftesberry, sought ways to promotethe return of the Jews to Palestine, rationalizing his questwith the claim that a Jewish state there could serve as a bufferagainst future Egyptian aggression and expansion. 6 Evangelicalsupport played a key role in the rise of the Zionist movement inthe later decades of the nineteenth century. William Hechler, aBritish German evangelical preacher, for example, became anadvisor and confidant of Theodor Herzl, the founder of politicalZionism. Hechler, who saw in Zionism the beginning of the fulfillmentof prophecy, tried to help the Zionist movement bycourting the support of influential European statesmen.robin-bobin