The True Israel of God

While claiming to accept the Bible as the source of revelation, British-Israel ad­vocates also accept the Great Pyramid—a 5,000-year-old pa­gan  -  monument!—as "the Bi­ble in Stone," and as a positive Witness of the Truth of Divine Revelation as it is in Scripture. . . . That marvellous building gives undeniable testimony that it marked primevally the exact time of His First Coming, and now marks what is to be the finite period of the existence of that Christian dis­pensation which thence followed.¹

The theory is that the measurements of the passages, chambers, furniture, eleva­tion, measured in pyramid inches, contain the truth of God, whatever that may mean. The pyramid is made to predict on this basis: One thousand pyramid inches being equal to 1,001 British inches, one inch representing one year.' On this assumption a prophecy that the church would be in the great Tribulation by June, 1928, was made by a leading British-Israel author.' In 1910 the inch-year scale was changed to the inch-month scale. The inch-year reck­oning, it is said, would have predicted World War I to last forty-eight years!

For many incredible predictions based on the Great Pyramid with some help from the Bible, the reader should consult that strange book Miracles of History, by David Davidson (1947, Covenant Pub. Co., ⁶ Buckingham Gate, London, England).

The late Sir Flinders Petrie, renowned Egyptologist, as a young man believed the pyramid theory because his father did; but when he personally examined the pyramid at the request of the British Association, he completely rejected the theory and spent the last sixty years of his life opposing it.

Then Mr. Davidson has said that the message of the Great Pyramid is the mes­sage of Holy Scripture, and that it is iden­tical with the message of our Lord Jesus Christ.' We forbear enlargement upon an area of British-Israel teaching that has been changed again and again, because, as Sir William Flinders Petrie says,

It is useless to state the real truth of the matter, as it has no effect on those who are subject to this type of hallucination. They can but be left with the flat earth believers, and other such people, to whom a theory is dearer than a fact.'

What Is the Stone Kingdom?

In the stone kingdom of Daniel 2:44 our readers will see the Messianic kingdom of our Lord, which is to be established by God, and which shall never be destroyed, but shall destroy all other kingdoms, "and it shall stand for ever." But the Celto­British-Israel theory maintains that—the Stone Kingdom is the Kingdom of God, a literal and visible kingdom. It is the British Com­monwealth of nations.'

To make the theory fit that Britain as Israel is the fifth, or stone, kingdom, it is argued that the British Isles "was cut out without hands" (Dan. 2:34) because it was cut off by erosion from the Scandinavian range and perhaps from France.' It must tax the faith of some earnest believers in the Anglo-American-Israel theory to read some of the earlier statements insisting that Britain and America, as the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, will be­come a great mountain and fill the whole earth!

Jacob, the first Israelite, is brought into the picture because, on his deathbed, he mentioned "the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel). s The parenthetic words have been understood by some to refer to Jo­seph, the protector of his brethren.

But "from thence" answers in the parallelism to from the hands of. Fully it would be, from thence where dwells the Shepherd, etc., that is,—Joseph's triumph came from God, who is the Shepherd (or Ruler) and the Rock of Israel.'

British-Israel exponents, however, insist that this refers to Jacob's stone pillow at Bethel, which was taken to Egypt in the wagons Joseph sent for his family." It is said to have been in the Temple at the time of the Babylonian captivity, and to have been taken to Ireland by Jeremiah and Baruch, thence to Scotland, and finally to England where in Westminster Abbey, London, it rests under the throne on which English kings and queens have been crowned for many generations.'

So far as Jacob's stone pillow is con­cerned, the account in Genesis 28:10-22 mentions stones, from which Jacob presum­ably took one and anointed it with oil at Bethel. Evidently it was still there when Jacob was with Laban, but after his decep­tion of Laban he set up another stone. On returning to Bethel he set up still another pillar." If any of these stones had some local sanctity it is probable that the altar which Josiah destroyed to powder in 2 Kings 23:15 was built around or near it. Jacob lived at least 1,000 years before Jo­siah, and after this destruction there is not the slightest Biblical evidence to suggest that any sacred stone of Jacob existed. In­cidentally, Josiah lived some forty years be­fore Jeremiah and Baruch are supposed to have fled to Ireland with the stone!

When Dean Stanley, of Westminster Ab­bey, requested Prof. A. C. Ramsay of the Department of Geology, London Univer­sity, to examine the Stone of Scone, he re­ported that it was of calcareous sandstone, reddish brown or purplish in color, con­taining heterogenous pebbles, and that it was of Scottish origin. This is the uniform verdict of every independent examination by qualified, reputable geologists."

Other Supposed Identifying Factors

In their determination to identify Brit­ain and the United States as Ephraim and Manasseh, advocates of the Celto-British-American theory force many prophetic words into their pattern of:

1. An empire (not a republic, because "kings shall come out of thee!" ") that girdles the globe with its colonies. In Deu­teronomy 82:7-9, "lot" in verse 9 is said to mean "girdle," "outside circle," et cetera." "A nation and a company of nations" is also made to mean a nation with colonies." North America comes into the picture as one of the branches of Joseph (Manasseh) because Genesis 49:22 says, "Whose branches run over the wall"—another phrase associated with a colonizing people.

2. A conquering, invincible people be­cause: (a) "Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine ene­mies shall be cut off"; (b) "no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper." "

3. A seafaring naval power because: (a) "Ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein: the isles, and the inhabitants thereof"; (b) "His seed shall be in many waters, . . . and his kingdom shall be ex­alted."

4. A kingdom ruled by the line of David. In 2 Samuel 7:12-16 these words, spoken after Nathan told David that his seed and not he himself should build a temple of worship, are used: "He shall build an house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever." In 1 Kings 9:5 it is said to Solomon: "I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever." There is scarcely a more evident con­ditional prophecy in all Scripture than this passage in verses 4 to 7, as these words prove: "If thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, . . . to do accord­ing to all that I have commanded thee, . . . then will I establish the throne," et cetera. Again, "But if ye shall at all turn from fol­lowing me, .. . then will I cut off Israel out of the land . . . and Israel shall be a prov­erb and a byword among all people."

Despite these self-evident conditions, ex­ponents of the theory under consideration persist in calling 2 Samuel 7:12-17 and par­allel passages God's pledge that Israel's throne was to be the perpetual possession of David's literal lineal descendants. Peter in Acts 2:30-32 said: "Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. . . . This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses."

Of David's seed Paul said in Acts 13:23: "Of this man's seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus." Matthew 1:6-17 clearly traces the genealogical succession through some twenty-eight generations, in brief as fol­lows: David—Jechonias--"Joseph the hus­band of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ."

If yet more evidence is needed that Jesus was great David's greater Son, in whom all God's promises will yet be fulfilled, one has only to read Matthew 22:41, 42; Luke 1: 26-33; Acts 2:29, 34; Romans 1:3, et cetera.

All of this means that Matthew, Luke, Peter, Paul, and others did not believe that with Zedekiah the male line became ex­tinct, as is required by Anglo-Israelism.

If the reader would like to know more on how America comes into the picture, why modern Israel must be a wealthy Chris­tian Sabbathkeeping people, with the state church wedded to the Ten Command­ments, and much more, he can find it all in Hine's The British Nation Identified With Lost Israel, Poole's Fifty Reasons Why the Anglo-Saxons Are Israelites, and in other British-Israel publications. In fair­ness we should say that not all British-Is­raelites believe all these things, and since the British Empire's decline began, at­tempts have been made to change now embarrassing details of this vast theorizing and subjective thinking.

There are also many fantastic things in British-Israel literature on the argument from language, which their World Federa­tion has endeavored to repudiate because its unscholarly claims subjected the move­ment to ridicule. For example, they main­tain that since the tribe of Dan were "the great shipowners of Israel" they were most capable of escaping "to the isles afar off," and "there, to find the tribe of Dan is vir­tually the same as finding the whole tribes of Israel." " The reasoning then proceeds to connect Dan with the Danes and with the Irish Tuatha Danian. This went on to unbelievable lengths in an attempt to tie the languages of the British Isles to He­brew influence and thus to Israelitish tribal connections.

The Radio Church of God still teaches that if you drop the "I" from ISAAC, since Hebrew has no vowels, you get the modern name "SAAC'S SONS," or "SAXONS"! More of this can be found in The United States and the British Commonwealth in Prophecy, copyrighted in 1954 by the Ra­dio Church of God, and still widely circu­lated.

Concluding Observations

No keen observer of present world con­ditions could fail to see that, while the British-Israel theory may have assisted the resettlement of Jews in Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its emphasis on the establishment of Ameri­can-Celto-Saxon domination of the world, through wealth, political power, or war, has led to serious conflict with Christian teaching today.

The establishment of the kingdom of God will come by divine intervention at the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, "who shall judge the 'quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom." This kingdom of immortal beings shall be set up by the God of heaven (Dan. 2:44), not by man-created finite powers of earth. Its sub­jects are called "my saints . . . that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice," which refers to the Holy Spirit's inward wit­ness "that we are the children of God," and on this basis of spiritual new birth (not because of racial descent) they are selected from "every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people."

Jesus Christ is "the son of David" and also David's Lord, and, as such, will fulfill all predictions on the perpetuity of David's line and throne. This is what the Phari­sees would not acknowledge. This is where British-Israelism goes wrong.

British-Israel literature has freely used the names and opinions of prominent per­sons to prove its contentions. Great men are not the ultimate test of truth, but if we must have weighty opinions refuting British-Israelism, they are not hard to find, as the following two will suffice to show:

Anglo-Israelite Theory, the contention, histori­cally and etymologically unsound, that the English-speaking peoples are descendants of the "ten lost" tribes of Israel, deported by Sargon of Assyria in the fall of Samaria in 721 n.c.²³

The theory is untenable on any scientific grounds, for the tribes vanished through absorption in neighboring peoples subsequent to the conquest of Samaria in 721 B.C. by Sargon II, king of Assyria, and were not lost in any real sense.²⁴

We must remember that the suprana­tional church of the New Testament has many of the same names applied to it as were applied to the chosen people of old, such as "elect," "faithful," "beloved," "called." In Luke 23:35 Christ was chosen or elected by God to fulfill His redemptive purposes. The angels (1 Tim. 5:21), be­lieving Jews and Gentiles (Acts 5:7), Paul (Acts 9:15), the finally redeemed (Rev. 17:14), and many others are God's chosen, or elect ones, and we must conclude that "there is no justification for claiming that there is only one chosen or elect race as the agency of world redemption."

For Seventh-day Adventists the question of election has no racial basis, for we believe God wills the salvation of all men," but their eventual redemption is based on the acceptance of God's free grace:

The gifts of His grace through Christ are free to all. There is no election but one's own by which any may perish. God has set forth in His word the conditions upon which every soul will be elected to eternal life—obedience to His commandments, through faith in Christ.²⁷