An excerpt from, "Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East" by Jonathan Parry, Princeton University Press, 2022, Pg. 219 - 220:
One additional complexity of Jerusalem was that between five and seven thousand Jews lived there. Many had travelled from Russia or Poland to die in Palestine, either in Jerusalem or in other favoured settlements such as Safed or Tiberias. The presence of Jews was a major part of Jerusalem's appeal to missionaries. In 1809, a separate society had been founded for Protestant mission work among the Jews, the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, usually known as the London Jews' Society. It relied on the enthusiasm of former Jews, mostly from northern continental Europe, who had converted to Christianity and wished to persuade others to accept the New Testament and the divinity of Jesus; eleven of the first fifteen LJS missionaries were Germans. In the 1820s, the movement's profile was helped by the publicity generated by the former Jewish (and former Catholic) Anglican missionary Joseph Wolff, another German. He travelled extensively, flamboyantly, and foolhardy in the Middle East and Asia, keen to argue theologically with anyone who rose to his bait. Wolff was an eclectic eccentric who was drawn to the Middle East for many reasons: to prove the accuracy of the Bible, to find the scattered tribes of Abraham, to challenge the grip of the papacy and the mosques, and to encourage local Christians to commune with the Anglican Church.
. . .In the 1820s, the LJS benefited from financial support from a few very wealthy Englishmen, such as Henry Drummond, Sir Thomas Baring, and Lewis Way. Such men read biblical prophecy literally, as forecasting the return of the children of Israel to their homeland, leading the way for the Second Coming of Christ. Their influence focused LJS activities on Jerusalem---rather than, say, Damascus, where there were at least as many Jews. Biblical literature was on the rise in the early nineteenth century, and expectations of Ottoman collapse after 1821 fed apocalyptic hopes for the sudden, dramatic fall of Islam in the Holy Land. Nonetheless, their hopes for the return of the Jews to Palestine and their conversion to Christianity were always a minority enthusiasm in Britain---the biblical references to Jews returning to their homeland were more generally assumed to be allegorical allusions to Christians. Most of those who toyed with such hopes did not emphasise them much in public, appreciating that they appeared far-fetched and were easily satirised.
Video Title: David Lutzweiler — Edward Irving on Napoleon, Zionism and the Restoration of the Church. Source: The Forerunner. Date Published: September 22, 2025.
