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BRITISH - ISRAELISIM By WM. C. IRVINE
World Federation's Advertisement.
ON THE fourteenth of July, 1930, the British-Israel World Federation
inserted a whole page advertisement in The
Times of India outlining their teaching, appealing, amongst others,
to Indians for their support.
It closes with these words:
"This appeal is also to you, O Brethren, who are yourselves Indians,
but are verily also the sons of Jacob," etc.*
Such an appeal, at that juncture (1930), was certain to fall on deaf
ears! One might as well today (1935) appeal to the Germans!
Amongst many other statements of the kind, the following was printed
in capitals:
"THE ANGLO-SAXON NATION AND COMPANY OF NATIONS, AND THE UNITED STATES
BRANCH OF THE SAME PEOPLE, CONSTITUTE THE NATIONAL BASIS OF THE KINGDOM
OF GOD IN THE EARTH."
Now surely such an advertisement, advising that an agent was expected
to be sent out to tour India, strongly emphasized the fact that these British
Israelites were very much alive and very much in earnest. In a trenchant
article on British-Israelism, #
Pastor D. M. Panton, Editor of The Dawn, commenced by saying:
Very holy people can hold very serious error; therefore it behooves
us to be cautious in our judgments of persons; but
----------------------------------------
*Is Mr. A. H. Forbes responsible for this Appeal? In his pamphlet,
"British Israel underNew Serchlights", in which he criticizes
"British Israel Truth" after exposing their line of argument (see later
in the article),
Mr. Forbes says: "Before taking leave of the book, let me make an alternative
suggestion: May not the Hindus of India be the `lost tribes?" If agreed,
Mr. Forbes must smile!
# The Indian Christian, Oct., 127.
-----------------------------------------
p.35.
also, error can be disastrous to life and character; therefore, it
behoves us to be equally cautious of our creed It follows that the servant
of God is sometimes forced to the almost impossible task of analyzing error
without cruelty to the loving and lovable hearts that hold it. British-Israelism
is a signal example. It is held by earnest and devout souls who would die
for their Lord. It is honestly supposed to prove afresh the inerrancy of
the infallible Book. It numbers some honored evangelical names among its
adherents. Happily, however, this is a controversy over doctrines, not
persons; and we decline as strongly to condemn the man as to mask the error.
For British-Israelism is a much more dangerous error than the Church of
Christ has yet realized. In a jungle of bewildering verbiage over obscure
prophecies concerning Israel, a fundamental overthrow of New Testament
revelation (not observable at the first glance) has too long been veiled
from sight, in which the truths critically needed for a world on the eve
of judgment are cleverly neutralized or denied.
A Superficial Remembrance
British Israel writers endeavor to make a great deal Out of the similitude
between the present position of Great Britain among the nations, and that
which is prophesied should be that of Israel - as understood by most
other teachers during the Millennium. That there are such resemblances
we do not contest, but what is often overlooked is that such resemblances,
in the nature of the case, must inevitably be there. In a lesser or greater
degree such could be traced at the time of the zenith of Rome's power,
and also that of Greece or Spain - why then should these resemblances be
thought to be a proof that the Anglo-Saxon race is the lost ten tribes
of Israel? But where failure comes in is, that in order to sustain this
superficial and artificial likeness, certain prophecies have to be dropped!
As one example out of many, take Rom. 11: 13-25. This passage declares
Israel (not Judah only!) to be "broken off" during this dispensation, and
that "blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the
Gentiles be come in." This entirely, in our judgment, disproves the whole
theory of Anglo-Israelism. Also see Hosea 1:4-6. Other Scriptures have
to be misplaced, from their dispensational point of view,
prophecies regarding the Tribulation and the Millennium have to be
applied to the Anglo-Saxons now! All the
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prophecies connected with Israel's restoration to the land are ignored,
misplaced or evaded, as well as the fact that their greatness, multiplication,
dominion and wealth are to follow their reconciliation and restoration
to Palestine.
Dispensationally Untenable
As a confirmation of our statement that dispensationally British-Israelism
is untenable
we again quote D. M. Panton:
"Anglo-Saxons, even if they be Israelites, are either saints or
sinners: if saints, then they are Israelites no longer, but belong to the
"holy nation," the Church, in which there is neither Jew nor Greek; if
sinners, then they are doubly under broken law-both the Law of Eden and
the Law of Sinai-and therefore doubly under curse. Nationalism -all favored-nation
claims before Jehovah-within the Church and under grace, is a complete
subversion of Church truth for it re-erects the barriers of the flesh which
the Cross has thrown down: it makes national prosperity and worldly greatness
instead of righteousness and truth, the hallmarks of God's spiritual favor-an
error negatived even by the Law itself: it ignores, and so implicitly denies,
the individual regeneration and sanctity without which no man shall see
the Lord: and it concentrates the blessing of God on the British Empire
becoming the mistress of the world. No spiritual truth is more radical,
more elementary, than that "the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6: 63) ;
and therefore no error could be more radical, more fundamental, than to
attribute to blood, not grace, to the flesh, not the Spirit, any standing
whatsoever before God."
Inflated Racial Pride.
These are weighty words, and expose one of the greatest dangers
of this system.
The late David Baron, a profound Hebrew and Biblical scholar and
teacher, clearly recognized this.
He wrote:
"It fosters national pride and nationalizes God's blessings in this
dispensation, which is individual and elective in its character. It diverts
man's attention from the one thing needful, and from the only means by
which he can find acceptance with God. This it does by teaching that a
nation composed of millions of practical unbelievers in Christ, and ripe
for apostasy, in virtue of a certain fanciful identity between the mixed
race composing that nation and a people carried into captivity two thousand
five hundred years ago, is in the enjoyment of God's special blessing and
will
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enjoy it on the same grounds for ever, thus laying another foundation
for acceptance with God beside that which He has laid, even Christ Jesus."
As an exhibition of this national pride, we select another passage from
the advertisement in "The Times of India":
"After the French Revolution, when the thinking of the world had
been stabilized by the faith of Britain, and the peace of the world had
been re-established by the arms of Britain, the stream of atheistic propaganda
ran underground for a while but emerged again in Marxian philosophy in
Germany!"
Further, British-Israelism seeks to trace the line of British monarchs
back to David.
In their advertisement in "The Times of India", they state:
"During this time, specially in the reigns of David-the founder
of the reigning House of Britain-and of Solomon, his son and successor,
Israel dominated the world situation.
Also: In the next and ultimate stage all nations will constitute
the Kingdom of God. To this Kingdom ultimately, and many of us believe,
soon, the Lord Jesus Christ will come. There He will find the British Royal
House directly descended from the throne of David operating in accordance
with the oath to that effect of the Lord Almighty."
Scripture Mis-interpreted.
With regard to misapplied prophecy take the following culled from a
leaflet entitled "Proved!" issued by their North of England Council, and
sold by the Covenant Publishing Co., Ltd., Book Depot, which
publishes and sells so much of their literature:
"Israel had to colonize barren lands and "establish the earth,"
causing the desert to blossom as the rose (Isa. 27:6; 35:1). This is an
achievement which the AngloSaxons have accomplished with signal success."
Isaiah 27 is a distinctly millennial chapter. The phrase, "In that day" - which either relates to the Tribulation, or to Christ's Coming as Israel's Deliverer - is found in vers. 1, 2,12, 13. In ver. 12 it says: "And ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel." When was that true of the
p.38
British? It will be of Israel, as Scripture proclaims (Jer. 3: 14;
31: 8).
Isaiah 35: 1 tells us that the land of Palestine will be rejuvenated when the Jewish nation is converted at the coming of Christ (Ezek. 34: 4-35). Why separate verse 1 from the rest of Isaiah 35? It is also a typically millennial chapter (see vers. 5, 6, 8, 9, 10). Wherein has any of this been fulfilled as far as Britain is concerned? Do Anglo-Israelites believe the British Nation will ever live in Palestine?
The same pamphlet tells us:
"Israel had to be exceedingly wealthy, and "lend unto many nations,"
but borrow from none (Deut. 8:18; 28:12). The Anglo-Saxons are the richest
community in the world. They lend to all and borrow from none."
"The Anglo-Saxons borrow from none!" Is their tremendous War debt yet owing, forgotten? Did the writer also forget to read Deuteronomy 8: 19, 20? Are not the Anglo-Saxons forgetting God? Are the British-Israelites so deaf that they cannot hear the "bleating of the sheep" and "the lowing of the cattle?" And do not Britishers (apart from Government, which is not indicated in these Scriptures) owe vast sums all over the world? How extravagant and contrary to fact to say they "borrow from none!"
Such are some of their clumsy attempts in conjuring with the Word of God and History in a vain endeavor to reconcile them with their theories concerning the "lost ten tribes" and Great Britain. Their misapplication and misinterpretation of the Scriptures has become a byword. Mr. David Baron characterized some of the interpretations of this school of teachers as "bordering on blasphemy."
We give a few extracts from his article published in the sixth edition
of his book:
"1. The glorious Messianic prophecy of the stone cut without hands
which smote the image of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2) is applied to the British
people; and the British Empire, which
is one of the Gentile world-kingdoms, is made to be identical with
the Kingdom of God.
2. Messiah's Throne of Righteousness and Peace is made out to be identical
with the throne of England, and the Eng-
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lish peoples are "saints of the Most High," to whom all the kingdoms
of the world shall be given.*
3. The smoke which ascends from the "blazing furnaces and steam engines"
of London is identified with the Shechinah Glory, the visible symbol of
God's presence with His people.#
4. Edward Hine, author of the forty-seven "Identifications," is the
promised Deliverer who should come out of Zion.&
The New Covenant.
The British-Israel people make much of the New Covenant. The fallacy
of this teaching, as applied by them, is laid bare by Mr. G. Goodman in
the following words:
"The whole British-Israel theory, if Dr. Mountain is its true
exponent, hangs upon this, that the British people have accepted the Christian
Faith, and come under the New Covenant, which would mean that they are
born again. Alas, it is impossible to think it.
To enter, by personal surrender to Christ, into the blessings of
the New Covenant is not the privilege of Israel only, it is tree to all
men (Eph. 3:6).
To suggest that while nationally (hardened and veiled) and individually
(as lawbreakers) under the curse, Israel is now enjoying the Covenant blessings
of Abraham nationally, would be contradictory. To allege that Israel has
accepted the Christian Faith is falsehood.
Why, then, all this stir to show that we Anglo-Saxons are Israel?
It can only bring us under the curse of a broken law and a disobedient
people.
Why go about advocating in England that which can only encourage
men to hope in the flesh? Let us rather warn of the wrath due to sin, and
point to Christ the Lamb of God and call to faith in Him.
British-Israelitm is a false and dangerous theory, that can only
lead men to hope in the flesh, to expect "national" blessing, while they
continue in personal rejection of Christ and disobedience to God."
-------------------------------
*The Lost Ten Tribes, by Rev. Joseph Wild, D.D. A book containing twenty
discourses, which abounds in statements and interpretations as wild and
unscriptural as this taken from Discourse XVIII.
# From an article in The Banner of Israel.
& When preparing to re-write my little book I was told by s friend
that I need not take much notice of the works of Edward Hine. On enquiry,
however, I found that his writings are still largely advertised and circulated,
and many of the more modern Anglo-Israelite writers profess to draw instruction
and inspiration from them (David Baron).
--------------------------------
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Lost Ten Tribes.
So much has been written regarding the exodus from the Ten-tribe Kingdom
to Judah, showing how probably many more had joined themselves to Judah
than were taken into captivity; and also how after the Captivity
the former distinction of Ephraim and Judah, or Israel and Judah, was dropped,
that we hardly think it necessary more than to refer to this important
line of evidence against the British-Israelite theory.
Mr. Baron says:
"The names "Jew" and "Israelite" became synonymous terms from about
the time of the Captivity. It is one of the absurd fallacies of Anglo-Israelism
to presuppose that the term "Jew"
stands for a bodily descendant of "Judah." It stands for all those
from among the sons of Jacob who acknowledged themselves, or were considered,
subjects of the theocratic kingdom of Judah, which they expected to be
established by the promised "Son of David." Anglo-Israelism teaches that
members of the Ten Tribes are never called "Jews," and that "Jews" are
not "Israelites;" but both assertions are false. In the New Testament
the same people who are called "Jews" one hundred and seventy-four times
are also called "Israel" no fewer than seventy-five times (cf. such statements
as given in Acts 21: 39; 22: 3; Rom. 11: 1; 2 Cor. 11: 22; Phil. 3: 5;
Rom. 9:4, 5).
From the time of the return of the first remnant after the Babylonian
exile, sacred historians, prophets, apostles, and the Lord Himself, regarded
the "Jews" whether in the land or in "Dispersion," as representatives of
"all Israel," and the only people in the line of the covenants and the
promises which God made with the fathers. (Cf. the use of "Judah" and "Israel"
in the following: Ezra 6:17; 8: 35; Zech. 1: 19; 10:6; 8: 13, etc.)."
Mr. C. E. Putnam writes:
"Notice that Paul says, "mine own nation at Jerusalem,' aour religion,"
"the promise made of God unto our fathers," and "our twelve tribes instantly
serving God day and night."
The lost tribes could not be thus spoken of, and it is very evident
indeed that St. Paul taught and believed that the Jews of "mine own nation
at Jerusalem" constituted "our twelve tribes" of whom it is said, "the
promise was made of God unto our fathers." "
Shall we accept man's theories, or shall we believe God's inspired Word? Which? Oh, which?
p. 41
The above is also finely answered in Mr. Goodman's booklet:
"If we are the ten tribes, our kings are not those to whom the promises
were made. The royal tribe was Judah, which is not one of the ten tribes.
British-Israelites have talked a great deal about the genealogy of our
present royal house. If our kings are to fulfil the national promises,
none of the ten tribes can produce such a king. To see the ten tribes with
a king from another tribe, would be an anomaly and untrue to history.
History Falsifies.
Perhaps among the many vulnerable parts in the BritishIsrael armor,
the historical to some will prove most convincing. Facts are dead against
them. Their misreading of history has been exposed most convincingly in
a booklet entitled British-Israel Under New Searchlights, by Avery H. Forbes,
M.A., which The Christian (London) termed "unanswerable."
In his preface of the second edition he says:
"One well-known British-Israel author told me that, when asked by
the "Covenant" publishing people to tackle my pamphlet, he refused,
saying, "Mr. Forbes is right in his history,
and you are wrong." He informed me, however, where my mistake lay;
namely, in not recognizing that the British were Ephraim - which tribe
was promised blessings and privileges above the others. How he ascertained
that we were Ephraim, he did not say. I replied that, if we are Ephraim,
so also are those Scandinavians who are descended from the same ancestors
(unless he held that a man's grandfathers were not descended from his forefathers!)
To this reply I have received no answer."
The great historical difficulty the British-Israel people are up against is to bridge over a gap of more than 1,000 years roughly from 700 B. C., when the ten tribes were in captivity in Assyria, to the fifth century A. D., when the Jutes and Angles first appeared in history. This yawning gulf is precariously bridged by British-Israelism with the aid of the Scythians, whom they assert to be identical with the "lost ten tribes." Herodotus, writing about 400 B. C., says the Scythians were then located in Southern Russia.
We will now let Mr. Forbes speak:
"There is thus not a scrap of definite evidence to connect the Scythians
with the ten tribes, or the Scandinavians with
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the Scythians.. . . Of the Scythian nation, placed by Herodotus
northwest of the Black Sea, it is asked in B. I. Truth, "Could this be
the Israelites which had been lost to sight in Asia?" (p. 116). Two pages
further on we read: "The emphatic point is this, that the particular Scythian
people, whose prowess is set forth by the Greek historian, Herodotus, entered
Europe at the very epoch, by the self-same route, and from the identical
district of Asia, at, by, and from which journeyed the Israelites of Esdras"
(p. 118). On the next page we read: "The difficulty is not to trace any
possible connection between the Scythians and the Israelites but to conceive
how the two people could be anything but one and the same" (p. 119). Therefore
Herodotus' description of the Scythian nation "is a picture of lost Israel"
(p. 119) "Scythia then . . was the home of the ancestors of the English"
(p. 123). "So the chain stands complete" (p. 124). "If Scripture then
suggests that Israel is in Britain, history emphatically supports this
suggestion" (p.128).
What is at first a bare possibility, is turned into a surmise;
a surmise soon becomes a likelihood; the likelihood becomes an extreme
probability and ends by becoming a dogmatic certainty!! This is not exactly
the way in which responsible historians write authentic history!"
Mr. Forbes traces the history of the British nation, writing of
the ancient Britons, the Huns, the Danes and Saxons, proving that the British-Israel
theory is here up against what he calls "a stone wall."
And here is the stone wall:
"Here we are up against a stone wall. That the Normans did not all
come to England with the Conqueror-or after the conquest either-is patent
to everyone who opens an English or a French history. Now the present people
of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and a large section of Germans, Sicilians,
Italians, Russians, Icelanders and Greenlanders are descended from those
same Danes, Norsemen, Angles and Saxons, as certainly as we are descended
from the Anglo-Saxons, etc. Are the modern Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Saxon-Germans,
etc., etc., therefore to be included amongst the British-Israelites? And
if not, where are we to draw the line?"
Such are some of the claims, teachings, fallacies and fables of British-Israelism. Let the reader beware lest patriotism should blind his or her eyes by the teaching of this School, whose persuasive and eloquent words have beguiled so many. Well has the late, beloved Dr. F. B. Meyer said:
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"British-Israelism is not capable of argument, it is a kind of infatuation."
"Nowhere!" A Scholar's Answer.
Professor Neubauer, librarian of the Bodleian Library and Reader in
Rabbinic Literature at Oxford till 1900, sums
up his studies in a series of illuminating articles on the subject
in the first volume of "The Jewish Quarterly Review" with the words,
"Where are the ten tribes? We can only answer, Nowhere. Neither
in Africa, nor in India,
China, Persia, Kurdistan, the Caucasus, or Bokhara. We have said
that a great part of them reImagesed in Palestine, partly mixing with Samaritans,
and partly amalgamating with those who returned from the captivity of Babylon.
With them many came also from the cities of the Medes, and many, no doubt,
adhered to the Jewish religion which was continued in Mesopotamia during
the period of the Second Temple."