Jesus Is Coming

William Eugene Blackstone was an American evangelist and Christian Zionist. Blackstone was born in Adams, New York and became an evangelical Christian when he was 11 during revival meetings at a local Methodist church. He enlisted for military service during the American Civil War but was not accepted due to "frailness of body". Instead he joined the United States Christian Commission (similar to the modern Red Cross) and was stationed much of the time at General Ulysses S. Grant's headquarters as coordinator of medical services for injured combatants.In 1878, he wrote, "Jesus is Coming". His book became the veritable reference source of American dispensationalist thought. Over the next 50 years, Jesus is Coming sold multi-millions of copies worldwide and was translated into 48 languages.He initially focused on the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land as a prelude to their conversion to Christianity, out of a pious wish to hasten the coming of the Messiah; but he increasingly became concerned with the deadly, Russian, government-instigated pogroms and believed that it was necessary to create a Jewish homeland in Israel. He was, furthermore, persuaded that neither the European nations nor the United States would accept as many Jews as needed to escape from Europe.Blackstone and his daughter traveled to the Holy Land in 1888. He returned convinced that a return of the Jewish people to its ancient homeland was the only possible solution to the persecution Jews suffered elsewhere. On November 24-25, 1890, Blackstone organized the Conference on the Past, Present and Future of Israel at the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago where participants included leaders of both Jewish and Christian communities, albeit not leaders of the Reform movement.The conference issued a call urging the great powers, including the Ottoman Empire, to return Israel to the Jews. Resolutions of sympathy for the oppressed Jews living in Russia were passed, but Blackstone was convinced that such resolutions - even though passed by prominent men - were insufficient. He advocated strongly for the voluntary resettlement of the Jewish people, suffering under virulent anti-Semitism, in Israel.