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Long before Scofield: Three centuries of pre-dispensational Zionism

Critics often (wrongly) claim that Christian Zionism began with 19th-century dispensationalists like John Nelson Darby or the Scofield Reference Bible. History says otherwise. By the time Rev. William Blackstone in 1891 and Rev. C.I. Scofield in 1909 popularized the idea that the Jewish return to Palestine was biblically mandated, Christian Zionist fervor had already been flourishing for hundreds of years.

The 18th and 19th centuries abound with Christian theologians and leaders who pressed for a Jewish restoration well before modern dispensationalism made it fashionable. For example, the great American preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), though a Calvinist and postmillennialist (not a dispensational premillennialist), vigorously affirmed from Scripture that the Jews would one day “be reconciled to their divine Parent, regain their ancient homeland, [and] establish a polity there” in fulfillment of prophecy. Edwards even criticized his hero Calvin for “overlooking the plain meaning” of the Hebrew Scriptures regarding Israel.

Meanwhile in Britain, James Bicheno (1752-1831), a Baptist minister, published The Restoration of the Jews in 1800 urging the English government to actively promote the return of Jews to their land. Bicheno was perhaps the first to call for Britain’s foreign policy to include the restoration of Israel.

He was soon followed by Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1801-1885), one of the Victorian era’s most prominent evangelical statesmen. Shaftesbury, guided by his reading of prophecy, tirelessly advocated for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It was Shaftesbury who coined the slogan “A country without a nation for a nation without a country,” and his lobbying helped lay the groundwork for Britain’s pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration of 1917.

Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 pledged support for establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This historic policy statement did not arise in a vacuum – it crowned a long tradition of Christian advocacy for Jewish restoration.

Devout figures like Lord Shaftesbury had campaigned for such a declaration for decades, driven by their conviction that biblical prophecy and God’s covenant demanded the Jews’ return to Zion. The Balfour Declaration’s issuance during World War I marked the first time a major world power officially embraced Zionism, vindicating centuries of Christian anticipation and activism.

Crucially, many of these pre-20th-century Christian Zionists were not fringe extremists but respected thinkers of varied theological stripes – Anglicans, Baptists, Puritans, Lutherans, even Russian Orthodox priests and German pietists.

For instance, Charles Jerram in 1795 won a Cambridge University prize for an essay upholding the inalienable right of Jews to the Land of Israel based on God’s oath to Abraham. He argued that the promise to “give… all the land of Canaan” to Abraham’s seed “for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8) is “absolute and unlimited,” making the Jewish title to Palestine “inalienable.”

Such views, far from being novel, were the........

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