The Fall and Rise of Israel, Part 2 - The Ottoman Decline, The Return of the People

 The land.

The physical land of Israel was one of the three parts of the everlasting Abrahamic Covenant, which is outlined in Genesis 12, 15, and 17.  These parts are intertwined and inseparable:

• The Land - the physical land of Israel
• The Seed - the promised Seed of the woman, the coming Messiah Yeshua
• The Blessing - Salvation offered to the entire world

My last post examined two passages of scripture that were fulfilled in order to initiate the return of the land to their rightful owners - the Jews.  The first was the foreigner who declared the devastation of the land, and the second was the surveyor who measured the land.

This post looks at the circumstances regarding control of the land.

The last time the Jews had control of the land was around the time of the Maccabbees, starting in about 165 BC and lasting until they were overtaken by the Roman Empire in 63 BC.  In 70 AD (and again in 135 AD), Jewish uprisings against Rome took place that caused the Romans to expel the Jews from the land and destroy their temple.

Since that time, many foreign entities had taken control of the Holy Land, but the last great power to have that control was the Ottoman Empire.  The Ottoman conquest of the land happened around the time of Christopher Columbus, in the midst of worldwide exploration.  In a battle with the Egyptian Mamluks, the Ottomans seized control of the land - in the year 1517.

Let's pause for a moment and recall the jubilee cycle that I mentioned in the first post.  A biblical jubilee is 50 years.  It calls for the release of debts.   A reset button, so to speak.  It kicks off the next cycle.

Another very significant number used in scripture is the number 7, which signifies completeness.  So, did something noteworthy take place take place in the Holy Land after seven jubilee cycles?

Yes.

First, a brief history lesson, which shows that God's hand is all over history (I like to call it His Story).

In the mid 1800s, two entities were having a skirmish in the Holy Land - the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church - over who should have control of the holy places in the land.  The triggering factor was a missing star from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The fighting escalated, ultimately leading to war between the Russians and the Turkish Ottomans.

The Crimean War.

The Crimean War was a turning point for the declining Ottoman Empire. After the war, the devastated empire entered into massive loans with its European creditors - leading to financial disaster and bankruptcy.   

The Ottomans needed money.  

To raise this money, the Ottoman sultan enacted the Ottoman Land Code.  The law stipulated that no land could be sold to foreigners - those outside their empire.  So this first land code was enacted to raise taxes in order to pay debts.

The first land code did not solve the Ottomans' financial woes.  So nine years later, they enacted a new Ottoman Land Code.  The land could now be purchased by foreigners.

Guess who jumped on this opportunity?  

Jewish people began buying up land in what was then called Palestine.  One of the major buyers was the European banking family, the Rothchilds.  Historically, this family has been subject to vast conspiracy theories that center on the Jews taking over the world.  But in reality, the Jews were not allowed memberships in the trade guilds of the late Middle Ages, so they turned to banking.  And God used that historical reality to create a wealthy European Jewish family who would become key investors in the land of Israel.  

When the Ottomans realized that Jews were buying up the land, they tried to put a stop to it.  But one cannot stop God's prophecy from moving forward.

Jeremiah 32:44 says,
Fields shall be bought for money, and deeds shall be signed and sealed and witnessed, in the land of Benjamin, in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, in the cities of the hill country, in the cities of the Shephelah, and in the cities of the Negeb; for I will restore their fortunes, declares the Lord.”

Are you ready for the kicker?

The second Ottoman Land Code was signed into law on June 10, 1867, two days after Mark Twain began his epic journey toward the Holy Land, and during the same time that Warren was surveying the land. 

This official land release took place exactly 350 years after the Ottomans overtook the Holy Land in 1517.  

Seven jubilee cycles.

The stage was now set for what was to come.

When Twain and Warren were doing their work in Jerusalem and the surrounding land, the population of the Jewish people there constituted a minority. But within just a few years they became the majority.  

The prophecy-fulfilling work of the foreigner and the surveyor kicked off waves of Jews making aliyah - returning to the land.  That first decade saw the first Jewish agricultural settlements established since ancient times, as well as a school whose purpose was to teach Jewish people how to farm the land.  Additionally, massive persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire at that time caused Jewish people to seek refuge in the Promised Land (history at work again).  

These massive waves of returning exiles continued into the twentieth century.  These agricultural settlements (known as kibbutzes) would transform the land.  If you would like more detail on how these kibbutzes functioned and were organized, I recommend the book Exodus by Leon Uris. 

The next part of the story kicks off with a providential meeting in the city of Paris in 1894.  Two men converged in the city, met, and became good friends.

One of the two men was Mark Twain.  The other man was named Theodor Herzl.  That very year, Herzl was transformed from a playwright and European journalist into a visionary with a mission to see his people return to their land.  He became known as the founder of Zionism and the Father of the Jewish State.  I will come back to Herzl and his work later on.

Theodor Herzl, the Father of the Jewish State

In the meantime, there was a dark cloud forming on the horizon of history.  That cloud was World War 1.

My next post will look at that war's historical significance to Israel's return.  Click here if you'd like to read it.