Theodore Herzl, Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, and other thinkers and leaders who didn't consider themselves to be prophets nevertheless wrote amazingly predictive descriptions of the future, and we are fortunate to know the dates when they wrote.
On Shabbat Nachamu (the Shabbat after Tisha B'av) in the year 1920, the High Commissioner of the British Mandate in Palestine , Lord Samuel - a Jew and a Zionist - came to the Hurva synagogue in the Old City and was given the honor of reading the Haftara.**
"Comfort, comfort My people, says your God; Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and call to her." (Isaiah 40:1-2)
The congregants started crying, overcome by their emotions. After two thousand years of Exile, wandering and bleak periods, the Jewish leader of Jerusalem, appointed as a result of the Balfour Declaration and the decision of the League of Nations, stands among them - just like Zerubavel (and Nehemia) at the beginning of the Second Temple era. "You deaf ones, listen, and you blind ones, look to see" (Isaiah 42:18). This prophecy was not written in the Balfour Declaration, nor was it written in the Declaration of King Koresh (Cyrus) - prophecies are not written at the same moment that they are being fulfilled.
Philosophers and leaders who didn't consider themselves to be prophets nevertheless wrote amazingly predictive descriptions of the future, and we are fortunate to know the dates when they wrote.
In 1840, Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai wrote (Shalom Yerushalayim, The Writings of Rabbi Alkalai, Vol. 1, p. 34): "The words of the Zohar… about the year 5600 (1840) reckoned to be the year Mashiach will come) … did not refer just to this one year; Mashiach is not a one-year event … 5600 is a one-hundred year period starting from today until 5699, because after that the terrible year of 5700 will arrive, chas vashalom." The Holocaust began in 5700 (1940), one hundred years after Rabbi Alkalai's wrote.
In 1905, Yosef Chaim Brenner (Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 90) wrote "Six million (Jews) hanging by a burnt strand of hair, bring us a cave so that he can hide away in it."
On September 3rd 1897, Herzl wrote in his diary: "At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will know it."
Fifty years later, on November 29th 1947, the United Nations recognized the Jewish State in the Land of Israel.
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*Chapter 40 – 49 of Yeshayahu are one complete unit; there is no significance in the division into the chapters.
**I read this story when I was young.