The Beginnings of a New Nation

A Call for the Creation of Israel

The advent of great Messengers is like the coming of spring. It creates a spiritual environment that stimulates change. Their dawning releases new and mysterious powers that pervade the entire planet. New ideas begin
to germinate everywhere, even though we may be unaware of their original source. The spiritual springs always set in motion profound changes in human history, and little by little they lead to the birth of new civilizations. The story of the world's great religions confirms this.

As we noted earlier, the mid-1800's served as a pivotal point for the birth of new ideas and social transformations. As evidence of this, refer to the three-volume series entitled simply 1844, by Christian scholar Jerome Clarke, from Southern Missionary College.

An example of the social transformation in the new age is the gradual replacement of dictatorships by democracies, and an awareness of human rights and freedoms everywhere on our planet.

Of special interest to us in this chapter are the recognition of human rights in general and the efforts and reformations that culminated in the conception and birth of the State of Israel. The birth of Israel has a
long history. "Orthodox Jews had traditionally invoked the return to Zion in their daily prayers. In 1799 Napoleon had thought of establishing a Jewish state in the ancient lands of Israel."

The dawning of the 19th century stirred the idea of the birth of Israel as a nation in many minds and many places more intensely than ever before.
...

The interest in a return of the Jews to Palestine was kept alive in the first part of the 19th century more by Christian millenarians, especially in Great Britain, than by Jews themselves. Among the few Jews pleading then for a Jewish settlement or state was the American Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851), who in 1813 became U.S. consul in Tunis and later high sheriff and surveyor of the port of New York. In 1825 he acquired Grand Island in the Niagara River and invited the Jews of the whole world to create a Jewish state.. In 1844 he pleaded with the Christian world in Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews to help the Jews resettle in Palestine.[2]

The mid-l9th century marked a critical point in the shift of the Jewish destiny. Noah's call is a prime example of this shift. In his preface to his discourse delivered in 1844, he declared:

In the political, as well as the religious world, there are singular commotions which point to the East as the theatre of approaching revolutions of great and absorbing interests...

I confidently believe in the restoration of the Jews, and in the coming of the Messiah; and believing that political events are daily assuming a shape which may finaily lead to that great advent.[3]

For his great adventure, Noah had the moral support of such distinguished figures as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who had in earlier years served as United States presidents. In a letter to him, Adams wrote:

I wish your nation may be admitted to all the privileges of citizens in every part of the world. This country has done much; I wish it may do more... Let the wits joke, the philosophers sneer! What then? It has pleased the
Providence of the "first cause," the universal cause, that Abraham should give religion not only to the Hebrews, but to Christians and Mohammedans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world... I really wish the Jews
again in Judea, an independent nation... your Jehovah is our Jehovah, and your God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is our God.[4]

Here is a passage from Noah's appeal made before thousands of "the most distinguished [American] citizens and the highest dignitaries of the Church."[5] Note how skillfully he blends reason and emotion to touch the
hearts of his audience:

I have long desired, my friends and countrymen, for an opportunity to appear before you in behalf of a venerable people, whose history, whose sufferings, and whose extraordinary destiny have, for a period of 4000 years, filled
the world with awe and astonishment, a people at once the most favored and the most neglected, the most beloved, and yet the most persecuted; a people under whose salutary laws all the civilized nations of the earth
now repose; a people whose origin may date from the cradle of creation, and who are likely to be preserved to the last moment of recorded time.

I have been anxious to appeal to you, citizens and Christians, in behalf of the chosen and beloved people of Almighty God, to ask you to... feel for their sufferings and woes, to extend to them your powerful protection
and undivided support in accomplishing the fulfillment of their destiny, and... to restore them to the land of their forefathers and the possession of their ancient heritage. It is, I acknowledge, a novel... appeal... for the first time to Christians since the advent of Christianity; but the period I believe has arrived for this appeal: Extraordinary events shadow forth results long expected, long prophesied, long ordained... and the political events in Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and Russia indicate the approach of great and important revolutions which may facilitate the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and the organization of a powerful government in Judea, and [will] lead to that millennium which we all look for, all hope for, all pray for.[6]

After referring to America's support of several nations and peoples to gain independence, Noah concludes:

... If these nations were entitled to our sympathies, how much more powerful and irrepressible are the claims of that beloved people before whom the Almighty walked like a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night; who spoke to them words of comfort and salvation, of promise, of hope, of consolation, and protection; who swore they should be his people and he would be their God; who, for their special protection and final restoration, dispersed them among the nations of the earth...[7]

Noah shows his audience the first step toward an independent Israel:

The tree must be planted... The first step is to solicit from the Sultan of Turkey permission for the Jews to purchase and hold land, to build houses, and to follow any occupation they may desire, without molestation and in perfect security. There is no difficulty in securing this privilege for them. The moment the Christian powers feel an interest in behalf of the Jewish people, the Turkish government will secure and carry out their views, for it must always be remembered that the one hundred and twenty millions of Mussulmen [Muslims] are also the descendants of Abraham.[8]

Like William Miller, who stirred interest in the second advent, Noah's efforts awakened the dormant dreams of an independent Israel in many receptive minds...

Still another prominent figure who followed the example of Noah was:

Theodore Herzl, founder of the political form of Zionism, a movement to establish a Jewish homeland. His pamphlet The Jewish State (1896) proposed that the Jewish question was a political question to be settled by a
world council of nations. He organized a world congress of Zionists that met in Basel, Switz, in August 1897 and became first president of the World Zionist Organization, established by the congress... He negotiated unsuccessfully with the Sultan of Turkey to the grant of a charter that would allow Jewish mass settlement in Palestine on an autonomous basis. He then turned to Great Britain..."

The efforts put forth by Noah and his supporters in the mid-l9th century did not lead immediately to the birth of a nation, but they served their purpose. They created a momentum that culminated a century later in that
birth. They signaled a new beginning for the scattered and persecuted people of Israel. They symbolized the dawning of a new day in their destiny. As Anthony Robbins notes;

In pursuit of our goals, we often set in motion far-reaching consequences. Does the honeybee deliberate on how to propagate flowers? No, but in the process of seeking sweet nectar, the bee unknowingly gathers pollen
on its legs, flies to the next flower, and sets in motion a wondrous chain reaction that results in a hillside awash in color.[12]