Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/509



THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION 493

either under the suzerainty of one of the Great Powers, or under international protection.

The nucleus of this politically independent Jewish state is already to be seen in the 120,000 Jews who have wandered back from all regions of the earth to the land of their fathers.

Already Jerusalem before the war was almost a Jewish city, while the thirty and more Jewish colonies which dotted the land were described by a prominent English Jew as " so many milestones marking the advance which Israel is making towards national rehabilitation." And in no other country in the world do the Jews, to the same extent, represent the nation. In Jerusalem and in the other Jewish settlements in Palestine I have personally, in the course of my seven different visits to the land since 1890, met Jews from all parts from the east and the west ; from India and the burning plains of Southern Arabia, and from the extreme north of Siberia and the Caucasus ; and have heard them speaking in nearly all languages under heaven.

Around this nucleus a large number more from all parts of the world will in all probability soon be gathered ; but we shall only be able to speak of a restoration of the Jews as an accomplished fact when Palestine becomes by international consent (to quote from the Zionist programme) the " openly recognised and legally assured home " of the Jews, i.e., when the Jews are once more acknowledged as a nation with a land of their own to which they might go. 1

But what follows ? After a brief interval of prosperity there comes a night of anguish. What occasions the darkest hour in the night of Israel s sad history since their rejection of Christ is the gathering of the nations and the siege predicted in this chapter.

1 How rapidly things have developed on the lines here forecast since the above was originally written four or five years ago.

The " Declaration " of the British Government recognises the Jews as once more a nation, and promises to facilitate their re-establishment in Palestine ; while Jerusalem has been captured by the victorious British Army!