Israel: The Super Sign of the End-Times (Part 9)

By Todd Baker
B'rit Hadashah Ministries

World War One and its aftermath was the next significant stage and development for Zionism and the Jewish return to their ancient God-given homeland of Israel. The British had successfully defeated the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East who ruled Jerusalem and the land of Israel for exactly four hundred years (1517-1917)! The British victory was a critical one in this terribly bloody war that eventually brought final victory to the allies. One prominent leader of the Zionist movement arguably helped turn the tide of World War I in Britain’s favor. That person was the brilliant Jewish chemist Dr. Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952). During the midpoint of the war (1916), Britain’s navy was dangerously low on gunpowder for their naval artillery, so much so that if supplies were not quickly increased, they were in jeopardy of losing the war to the Germans. First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, called on the ingenious Weizmann to prodigiously develop some 30,000 tons of acetone to produce a synthetic type of gunpowder extracted from maize. He was able to successfully accomplish this and earned the profound gratitude of the British government and at the same time greatly contributed to England’s victory in World War I.

To express their sincere thanks, British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, wrote an official letter from the British government to Lord Lionel Rothschild, a gifted and leading senior member of the Zionist Federation of England, expressing Britain’s formal support for a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine (the British term for what was ancient biblical Israel). This letter became what is known today as “The Balfour Declaration.” The letter dated November 2, 1917 in part read:

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty’s Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours Sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

In this momentous document of Jewish history lay the beginning for the eventual reestablishment of the nation of Israel in the modern day. Balfour was able to convince The War Cabinet to sign off on this official endorsement for a Jewish State with the help of the British Prime Minister and the largely overlooked skillful and persuasive Roman Catholic diplomat, Sir Mark Sykes. Balfour’s intention here was not political or personal, but self-admittedly biblical. For he simply believed from a literal and simple reading of Scripture that the God of Israel would in due time restore the Jewish people back into the land of Israel before the return of Christ as foretold in the many prophecies of the Old Testament (See Barbara Tuchman, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour, page 311). The Balfour Declaration was confirmatory of this truth in the affairs of human government and illustrates the fact that in the common, mundane, and ordinary affairs of men, God sovereignly chooses a particular point in time and history to fulfill His plan for history through the instrumentality of rulers, authorities, and individuals. Implementation of the Balfour Declaration occurred a year later in 1918 when the Zionist Commission headed by Chaim Weizmann traveled to what was then called Palestine to begin surveying the land for the return of Jewish immigrants to Israel.

A modern myth about this period of time usually promoted by Arab propaganda and the Western media is that there were hardly any Jews living in Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nothing could be further from the truth. There were already as many as 55,000 Jews living in the land by 1918 and were to later serve as the demographic nucleus for a reborn Jewish State! Indeed, from the time of Christ, there has always been a significant Jewish presence living in the Holy Land after the dispersion of A.D. 70.

President Woodrow Wilson publicly voiced the American government’s full support of the Balfour Declaration on August 31, 1918. Here was the beginning point of the United States’ long support for the existence of the Jewish State of Israel and one of the main reasons why God has so richly blessed our nation to this day. All the more why we as American, Bible-believing, Zionist Christians must always defend the Jewish people’s right to exist in their own ancient homeland as the nation of Israel.

In these rattling and shaking sounds of an ancient people being called back to their God-given homeland, a very important prophecy of the End-Times was and is being fulfilled now — a prophecy of the rebirth and regathering of the Jewish people back to Israel by God from the graveyard of nations where He had previously scattered them. This prophecy is none other than the famous dry bones prophecy of Ezekiel 37, a prophecy that begins with the “noise of rattling and shaking” (Ezekiel 37:7).

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