How Christian Zionism Shaped Jewish Zionism
The Jewish Zionists Got the Idea of Zionism From the Christians
Below we preent the Twitter work of two top scholars: An old thread by Rabbi @yaakov_shapiro, and a brand new video of the history from @_ZachFoster.
For a full treatment, see Rabbi Shapiro's book, The Empty Wagon:
https://zbermanbooks.com/the-empty-wagon
Thread From X (Twitter)
URL: https://x.com/yaakov_shapiro/status/1972841509415501882
Copied on: 8/18/2026, 8:11:44 PM
Author: Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro
Time: 9/29/2025, 9:50:43 PM
A History of Christian Zionism and Its Influence on Jewish Zionism
Christian Zionism didn’t begin in 1948. It’s a 400-year story: from Reformation radicals, to Puritans, to 19th-century prophecy teachers, to Rev. William Hechler meeting Herzl in Vienna.
Francis Kett (1580s) – English reformer, executed for heresy in 1589. He taught that the Jews would return to their land before the end of days.
Thomas Brightman (1607) – Puritan scholar. Read Isaiah & Ezekiel literally: Jews would go back to Palestine.
In the 1600s–1700s, Puritans in England & New England carried this torch. Millenarian groups believed Jewish restoration was necessary for Christ’s kingdom.
This was the seedbed of later evangelical prophecy culture.
By the 1800s, Christian Zionism Matured
Premillennialists like John Nelson Darby systematized prophecy (Dispensationalism).
British evangelicals formed “London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews.”
The idea of Jews returning to Palestine became mainstream in revivalist circles.
Enter Rev. William Hechler (1845–1931)
An Anglican clergyman, steeped in prophecy.
In 1884 he published The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine According to Prophecy.
For him, the Bible left no doubt: Jews must return to their land.
When Herzl published Der Judenstaat in 1896, Hechler rushed to meet him in Vienna.
Herzl wrote in his diary:
“I owe it to him that I was introduced to the German Kaiser.”
Hechler’s faith gave Herzl confidence that history was on his side.
ore than encouragement, Hechler delivered access.
In April 1896 he introduced Herzl to the Grand Duke of Baden (uncle of Kaiser Wilhelm II).
This opened the door for Herzl’s later audience with the Kaiser himself.
Here’s the Paradox
Hechler supported Zionism for religious reasons.
Herzl pursued it for political and anti-religious reasons (to change the Jews into a secular nationality instead of a religion that would result in Jews no longer being subject to anti-Semitism).
Two different worldviews converged on the same outcome: a Jewish state in Palestine.
The Line Continues
1500s: Kett predicts return.
1600s: Puritans preach return.
1800s: Dispensationalists codify return.
1890s: Hechler enables Herzl.
1900s–2000s: Evangelicals embrace Israel as fulfillment of prophecy.
Since then, many Jewish Zionists have adopted Evangelical Biblical interpretations over the traditional Jewish ones. For example: In 2010, at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Benjamin Netanyahu repeated the interpretation of the "dry bones" prophecy in Yechezkel 37 - that the dry bones coming to life prophecy the oppressed Jews "coming to life again" by the founding of the state of Israel. This interpretation is not from Jewish sources, but Christian Zionist ones:
This interpretation of Yechezkel is not of Jewish origin. It is a popular Christian interpretation that Netanyahu adopted and is found in Christian commentaries from the nineteenth century down to contemporary Evangelical writings. For example: Iain Duguid’s Christian commentary on Ezekiel, and in the speeches of the famous Evangelical Zionist John Hagee.
The first instance I know of it is from 1864, decades before Herzl published Der Judenstaat — by the Reverend Charles Haddon Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, for the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews.
In his sermon, Spurgeon also mentioned that:
"we look forward, then, for these two things. I am not going to theorize upon which of them will come first — whether [the Jews] shall be restored [to the Holy Land] first, and converted afterwards — or converted first and then
Not Only Biblically, but Politically as Well, Many Ideas Attributed to Jewish Zionists Actually Originated With Christian Zionists
Examples:
The argument that a Jewish state in Palestine would “allow European culture into the Middle East” was made in 1851 by Benedetto Musolino in his Gerusalemme e il Popolo Ebreo.
Musolino also suggested then that the national language of the Jewish state should be Hebrew (Herzl, in his The Jews' State, was against Israel's language being Hebrew).
The slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land,” attributed to Israel Zangwill and common among Zionists at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century was already used by Christian Zionists such as Lord Shaftesbury and Alexander Keith in the
The argument that the Jews in Europe are going to be slaughtered and therefore they need a safe haven in Palestine was publicized by the German Lutheran, C. F. Zimpel in the mid 1800's.
oday, millions of evangelicals see Israel through the lens first drawn by Kett & Brightman, energized by Hechler, and politically realized by Herzl.
Christian Zionism and Jewish Zionism, once separate, fused into an alliance both politically and often theologically.
And yes, of course, the Scofield Reference Bible was what made all this popular. I am talking about its origins and evolution, not its dissemination.
Related Video by Zach Foster
The Land They Never Left
