Most modern evangelicals who believe that the United States has a divinely sanctioned mission to secure the state of Israel can trace their worldview to William E. Blackstone, a Chicago businessman turned preacher. Between the 1870s and 1890s, Blackstone became a key proponent of dispensationalism, the theological view that Israel will play a central role in the final events of Earth’s history.
In 1878, Blackstone published “Jesus Is Coming,” which built on previous iterations of dispensationalist ideology. He laid out a sweeping forecast of future events. First on the agenda was the return of the Jews to the land that was then Palestine. Once that was accomplished, the “rapture” would take place, meaning Christian believers physically would be taken to heaven while unbelievers and Jews would be left behind.
In his story, the Antichrist then emerges to take control of the Middle East and pretends to offer peace to Israel by allowing the Jews to rebuild their temple. But before long the Antichrist turns on the Jews, outlaws their religion, demands worship from them and leads a global military conglomerate against Israel.
Dispensationalists deem this phase “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” in which one-third of Jews convert to Christianity and are saved accordingly, while the majority are killed.
Jesus then returns from heaven with the previously raptured believers, defeats the Antichrist at the battle of Armageddon and establishes his kingdom on Earth.
Blackstone cared little about the details of how only a third of Jews would convert to Christianity, but what was certain to him was the “awful time of trouble awaiting” Israel.
The catalyst in the whole dispensationalist program was the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state.
Historian Matthew Sutton has shown how the publication of Blackstone’s book “signaled the beginning of a radical new religious movement that eventually transformed the faith of millions in the United States.” It sold more than 1 million copies and was printed in 48 languages, “making it one of the most influential religious books of the twentieth century.”
What set Blackstone apart from previous dispensationalists — and what still resonates — was his insistence that the United States was God’s appointed political agent to ensure that the prophetic scheme would be fulfilled. Before the rise of political Zionism and the work of Theodore Herzl, Blackstone petitioned successive presidents to establish a Jewish state of Israel.
A promising opportunity came during World War I when Britain’s Balfour Declaration pledged to create a national home for Jews. Britain’s leading political strategists were not dispensationalists; they were motivated more by political factors, including the hope that American Jews would influence the United States to join the Allies in the war. Notwithstanding their different motives, Blackstone urged President Woodrow Wilson to endorse the Balfour Declaration and emphasized that America was “God’s chosen instrument in these last days” to secure Palestine for the Jews.