Reply #33: The Evangelicals and Zionism........ (history) [View All]

[Joanne98]

Dispensationalism
Among conservative Christians in Britain, this unity of political destiny and religious fulfillment was given its theological form in the hands of an Irish pastor J.N. Darby. As Herzl was the father of Jewish Zionism, one could argue that Darby was the father of Christian Zionism. Darby's system - soon called Dispensationalism - taught a literal fulfillment of prophesies in the near-present age. He used the biblical books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah and Revelation to weave a consistent picture of the Last Days. The church is raptured, the anti-Christ arises, Armageddon erupts, and Christ returns to establish his kingdom on earth. But above all, the revival of Israel is the catalyst of the End Times.

Despite eight missionary trips to America, Darby was greeted here with indifference. But when leading evangelists such as Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday and Harry Ironsides saw how the drama and fear and hope in this scenario influenced audiences, Darby's views caught on like wildfire. In 1881, for instance, Horatio and Anna Spafford and 16 friends opened the American Colony in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City to watch - as they put it - "prophesy being fulfilled."

William Blackstone (1841-1935) was a Chicago evangelist and student of Moody. In 1878 he published Jesus is Coming which was America's first Dispensational best-seller. The book went through three editions and was translated into 42 languages. In 1890 Blackstone was visiting Jewish settlements in the Holy Land and organizing conferences in Chicago to restore Jews to Palestine. Blackstone worked closely with Jewish Zionists and in 1918 was hailed by the Zionist Conference of Philadelphia as a "Father of Zionism." In 1956 Israel memorialized him by naming a forest in his name.

In 1909 Cyrus Scofield published a popular study bible, the Scofield Reference Bible, and in its footnotes readers throughout America inherited Darby's theological program. (To date over 2 million of them have been sold.) In 1917 five weeks after the Balfour Declaration, the Turks handed Jerusalem over to Britain to the amazement of prophesy watchers. In 1918 dispensationalists organized their first prophesy conferences and they continued for decades. Before long - throughout the 1920s and for the next 40 years - Dispensationalism tied to Israel and prophesy became the litmus test of evangelical orthodoxy.

http://www.hcef.org/hcef/index.cfm/ID/159