One of my favorite films, the musical classic “Fiddler on the Roof,” depicts the joys and sorrows of a small community of Jews living around the year 1905 in the fictional Ukrainian village of Anatevka. From sunrise to sunset, the endearing protagonist Tevye lives, with his kith and kin, like a fiddler on the roof, “trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck.”
The film powerfully depicts the longing of these Jewish “strangers in a strange land,” exiled from the Promised Land for centuries and still seeking the promised Messiah. In the end, the Jews of Anatevka are cast out of their homes – a result of the antisemitic pogroms that sadly took place in Imperial Russia.
“We’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives,” Tevye’s son-in-law asks his elderly Rabbi on hearing the news of their forced exile. “Wouldn’t this be a good time for Him to come?”
“We’ll have to wait for Him somewhere else,” the Rabbi responds. As it turns out, one woman in the film – the town gossip and matchmaker – announces with glee that she is going to wait for Him in the Holy Land itself.
In reality, tens of thousands of Jews like this woman immigrated to the Holy Land by the beginning of the first World War. But hundreds of thousands more Jews entered the Holy Land in the late 1940s and 1950s – and not without reason.
After all, 75 years ago, on May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion – Israel’s first prime minister – read a declaration establishing a Jewish nation within the land of Israel for the first time in thousands of years.
On the same day, Missouri-born President Harry S. Truman led the United States to become the first nation to recognize the modern State of Israel.
Since that time, many Americans – not least, Southern Baptists – have likewise recognized modern Israel’s legitimacy. According to Craig Blaising, senior professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, many Christians today also see the 1948 establishment of modern Israel as “an act of God.”
“The reemergence of Israel as a nation after almost 2,000 years is truly remarkable,” Blaising wrote several years ago in the book, The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land (InterVarsity Press). “Not only did Israel become a nation recognized by other nations in 1948, but she has survived threats and wars to become a significant national power in the Middle East.”
Blaising believes that, at Christ’s return, God will fulfill His promise to redeem ethnic Israel and restore them to the Promised Land.
“The consummation is still future,” Blaising wrote, and we haven’t yet seen the “restoration of all things spoken by the prophets.” But God was indeed at work in 1948, and His action “obligates Israel and all nations to know the Lord.” Even now, He calls the Jewish people to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus as their only Savior and true Messiah.
Nearly a century prior to the Jewish nation’s establishment in 1948, British Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon looked forward with longing to the ultimate restoration of Israel.
“Not long shall it be ere they shall come – shall come from distant lands, where’er they rest or roam,” Spurgeon proclaimed. “And she who has been the off-scouring of all things, whose name has been a proverb and a bye-word, shall become the glory of all lands. Dejected Zion shall raise her head, shaking herself from dust and darkness and the dead. Then shall the Lord feed His people ….
“May that happy day soon come! For when the Jews are restored,” Spurgeon added, “then the fullness of the Gentiles shall be gathered in; and as soon as they return, then Jesus will come upon Mount Zion to reign with His ancients gloriously.”
Indeed, the return of Jesus, Israel’s true Lord and Messiah, won’t be announced by the scratching of a fiddle, but by the blast of a trumpet. And, until that day comes, may we repeat the words of the Psalmist in our hearts and with our tongues:
“Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Psalm 130:7-8).