Rev. William E. Blackstone, a premillenial dispensational Christian evangelist and missionary, was the author of the hugely successful, Jesus is Coming, in 1878. His book, the veritable reference source of American dispensationalist thought, selling millions copies and translated into 48 languages, strongly advocated the return of the Jews and the reestablishment of the Jewish state as a pre-condition of the second coming of Jesus. In 1891 he gathered 413 signatures of major American leaders, such as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Cyrus Mccormick, Senators, Congressmen, religious leaders of all faiths, newspaper editors, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and others, to a petition to President Harrision calling for American support of Jewish restoration to Palestine. His petition presaged and paralleled the later ideas of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the State of Israel, whose establishment of modern Zionism was outlined in his book, Der Judenstaadt, five years later. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis rediscovered the Blackstone Memorial in 1916. Brandeis sought out and formed an alliance with Blackstone to present it to President Wilson. Brandeis understood the need for grassroots American Christian and American political support. Brandeis clearly understood the support that Blackstone would raise for the Memorial would enable President Wilson to accept and endorse American Zionism and the later British Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 set the course for the establishment of the State of Israel. Justice Brandeis characterized Rev. Blackstone as the "Father of Zionism" as his efforts predated those of Theodor Herzl by five years. Blackstone remained committed to Jewish restoration for his entire life. As a believing Evangelical Christian, he witnessed the seeming fulfillment of biblical prophecy as the Jewish state came back to life after 1900 years. Blackstone died thirteen years before the Jewish state of Israel was reborn in 1948. Without Rev. Blackstone's lifelong efforts to build American political support and American prophetic understanding of dispensationalism and restorationism, American support for Zionism and the State of Israel might have been very different. Famous during his life, he slipped into historical obscurity that only now is, once again, regaining awareness and significance.