Without Any doubt, the strongest sign that we have of the nearness of the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ must be the fact of the Jewish people established in their own land once again. How many more must return before their Messiah, and ours, comes to establish his rule over them and the world, we do not know. Our very familiarity with this basic tenet of prophecy is such that we are not readily moved to excitement over the many column-inches in the press devoted to the various facets of the State of Israel, whether social, economic or military. It is quite heart-warming, however, when the name of Christadelphians is associated with such things, and Pragai’s book refers to us on two occasions in connection with sects who have beliefs relating to the return of the Jewish people.
It seems that about the middle of the seventeenth century there was a stirring in Puritan England when Bible students began to see in the Scriptures the place of the Jewish people in history. A petition was sent to Parliament by Joanna and Ebenezer Cartwright in 1649 which ended,
” . . . and that this Nation of England, with the inhabitants of the Nether-lands (sic), shall be the first and readiest to transport Izraells sons and daughters in their ships to the land promised to their fore-fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for an everlasting Inheritance”.
Two more centuries were to pass before Herzl, a Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse, was stung into action over the false accusations of treason against a Jewish officer in the French army—Captain Dreyfus—which caused him to become the founder and leader of a movement to establish the First Zionist Congress in Basle in During those 200 years many theologians and politicians wrote and talked about the return, having studied the prophets and having drawn their conclusions.
Pragai devotes several paragraphs to the early history of the Christadelphians (p. 21), and then has this to say about our views, and especially those of Brother Thomas, on the Jews and the Land of Israel:
“Thomas presented his views in his major work, Elpis Israel, published in London in 1849. This was a revolutionary era in Europe, and there were many visions of an entirely new epoch in history that was about to unfold. The subject matter, Thomas declared, was national, not sectarian. It treated ‘of a nation and of its civil and ecclesiastical institutions in a past and a future age’.
“Elpis Israel was a colossal treatise, containing a wealth of Biblical quotations, exegesis and observations on contemporary social, political and psychological issues. Its principal theme, however, was the Restoration of the Jewish Nation to the ancestral land—to be realized with the political and practical aid of Great Britain. Elpis Israel was rejected by some of Thomas’ followers; nevertheless, his ideas made headway. Gradually he developed a growing circle of friends and believers who then formed into regional and national groups which partially survive to this day.
“From the outset, the Christadelphians were ardent supporters of the idea of the Return of the Jews to the land of Israel, which was essential to fulfilment of the End of Time. Long before the rise of Jewish Zionism as a political movement at the end of the century, the Christadelphians offered practical assistance to Jews who looked to the Land of Israel as a haven of refuge. They supported such pre Zionist groups as the Hibbat-Zion movement in Tzarist Russia_ As late as the 1940s, when the Nazi destruction of European Jewry was underway, they actively aided attempts to rescue Jews from Europe.
“Thomas correctly predicted the decisive role Great Britain was to play some seventy years later when, after World War I, the League of Nations conferred on her the Mandate of Palestine, a focal provision of which was the establishment of a National Home for the Jewish people. Had Thomas lived to see that day, no doubt he would have rejoiced, and for good reason!”.
In a later comment on our beliefs, Pragai ( himself a Jew), makes the following observations also: “The presentation of the group’s beliefs is tied to the traditional assumption of the Second Coming. Jews take exception to such assumptions, but that does not alter the fact that the Christadelphians continue their more than onehundred-year-old tradition of espousing the foretold Jewish Return” ( p. 237).
The book, of some 300 pages, is a mine of information on the way so many people have helped the Jews—to the extent that some are remembered in “The Avenue of Righteous Gentiles”, or have forests named after them in appreciation of the work done.
“God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform” ; and here we see the fulfilling of prophecy with the help and sympathy of many people, some of whom see the need only of a political settlement, others of a religious necessity, though not seeing as far as we do. It is a great privilege for us to know the Truth; and we pray that the world’s diversions may not distract us from the greatest sign in the political heavens.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)