Who is a Zionist - Indeed!

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Sep 3, 2009 at 19:04

Who are the Zionists, indeed, and who are not? The use of the term in the modern context has been so badly misused one can only wonder in this day and age who really is one and who is merely taking on the identification for some purpose other than originally intended. In this observation, we shall ask the question, who was the first Zionist? From there, one might be able to proceed to understand what really being a Zionist should mean.

The Hebrew Holy Bible tells us in no uncertain terms, who the first Zionist is….the LORD Almighty God Himself. Psalms 2:6; 9:11, 14; to start a couple of the more than 150 references to the term; but this one, declares it quite succinctly, Psalm 87:2 - The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. This could go on, but it is thought this should be sufficient for this dissertation.

Back to the modern context, we have read that in the movement of some of the diaspora in the late eighteen hundreds to return to what was then still part of the Ottoman Empire, their motivation was less of a religious one, and more of political one, if one reads the works of Hertzl. After the elimination of the Turks as the ruling entity, we then began to see a resurgence of the desire to return on a greater scale, causing the now indigent Muslim population to resist, as in the 1923 uprising, and later in the efforts to repel the returnee with the help of the Nationalist Socialists from Germany.

As the movement gained impetus, there was an understanding from other groups, some conspicuously from an Evangelical Christian perspective, that saw Biblical influences in certain verses that pointed to the disaffected Jewish people being recalled to the historical homeland, especially in Ezekiel, and in the Brit Hadassah words of Yeshua HaMashiach found in Matthew and elsewhere. They are the words that are the call to Zion, and how could one not make the mistake of misreading them when they tell it so plain; that the Jewish people are to return in preparation for the completion of their destiny, to be the Children of Almighty God when He returns to Zion.

When the nation of Israel was called again into existence, the last of any real argument of this business of trying to keep the Jewish people out of the land, or to try and expel them once they were reestablished, became an argument against the WORD of the LORD. Therein lies the real futility; of any effort to contradict the WORD of the LORD. Zion is His place of rest in Israel, and the focus of any who would understand the truth of His WORD. In this does the label of Zionist apply in truth, and in His Truth shall any who calls upon His name for salvation is a true Zionist.

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