I wonder how many of you folks were aware of this history:
American missionaries and explorers continued to travel to the land of Israel and the Middle East, some with restorationist intent, others as explorers, like Edward Robinson, founder of biblical archeology, and others from curiosity.. Sarah Haight, of Long Island, a Middle East traveler of the 1830s wrote, "God's own peculiar people shall again be brought... to rebuild and worship in their own temple."
A rather explicit and modernistic thesis, with overtones of modern Zionism, appeared soon after. In 1844, a professor of Hebrew at New York University published a tract entitled, "The Valley of the Vision, or The Dry Bones of Israel Revived. He called for "elevating" the Jews "to a rank of honorable repute among the nations of the earth" by restoring them to the land of Israel. Like many American restorationists, he believed that this would have momentous repercussions for mankind, not necessarily associated in a literal sense with the "end of days." The author was George Bush, whose descendants include two presidents of the United States.
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