By Dr. Jürgen Bühler, ICEJ President

“You Christians were Zionists before we Jews were. It is important to recognise that.” 
These were the words of former Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he addressed the delegates of the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast meeting in the Knesset in June. 

Indeed, it was mainly Protestant and Evangelical theologians and ministers who arose after the Reformation who first publicly advocated for a national restoration for Israel. Whether the Puritans, Moravians, Methodists, Pietists or the emerging Pentecostal and Renewalist movements, they all believed in a future destiny of the Jewish people back in their ancient homeland. For the first time in centuries, the Reformation gave even ordinary Christians access to the Scriptures in their common languages, and thus foundational biblical truths were re-discovered – including the promised Jewish ingathering to their ancestral land…