Are You an Israelite? Chapter 2

Chapter 2

One of the many "proofs" which are confidently brought forward to demonstrate that the British are Israelites is that God promised to them "the wealth of the world, the greatest amount of territory, rain in season, health, fruitfulness, and His love." Some of Edward Hine's "Heads of Identity" read as follows: "Israel must be above all other Nations" ; "Israel must be a Christian people"; "Israel conquers against all odds." Other chapters deal with "The Glory of Exemption from War"; "The Glory of Saving Millions a Year"; "The Glory of Righteous Taxation." Writing about the year l873,just after the Franco-German War, he foresaw "the fast approaching Gentile struggles that must shortly convulse the entire Continent from one end to the other." That War would be "the most gigantic, terrible, and costly, that had ever yet been known to history."
National Debts would increase enormously and the Nations would decay. But, "the English people, being identical with Israel, will become entirely exempt from these warlike operations." Only the "Gentile" nations were to be punished, because during that terrible time of trouble, God's people, Israel, were to "hide themselves," withdraw from all part in the conflict, and be neutral.

No wonder Hine's specious promises led astray so many gullible people by offering them what looked. like a very near Millennium. If Britain would only accept his programme, it would "annihilate infidelity, secure the outpouring of the Spirit upon all the British people, purify the Church of Britain, give us Christian Union, Godly legislation, equitable taxation, a long rest from warfare. . .." "It will secure for us ABOUNDING PROSPERITY." And so on.

The Lord once said to His disciples (Matt. 24:9) "You shall be (people) hated by all the Gentiles because of My name." One would think that if the British people want to be hated by all other nations, the best thing to do would be to press the above extravagant claims to possess the wealth and territory of the world. Nothing could provoke huge wars so easily.

Sixty years ago John Beddoe, in "The Anthropological History of Europe," wrote that the Jews "are gradually attracting to themselves the whole moveable wealth of the earth, and wealth is power, and the world must move or halt as wealth bids it." Many others have said the same thing. There is no doubt that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion told the truth.

Far from Britain being "hidden" in time of Wars, she had twice in the present century rushed into a war against a much bigger foe, almost" naked and unarmed." Far from accumulating the wealth of the world, Britain now has a national debt of £26,000 millions, with the highest rate of taxation in the world, which is slowly crippling trade and commerce and industry. Far from extending her territories, she has been parting with them. Far from "abounding prosperity," Britain must "export or die," and keep up exports and increase them. Articles which do not come up to the standard for export are left for the natives.

British-Israelites are honest enough to admit that the shortcomings of the British are serious. But they claim this does not matter. All of God's true saints have serious shortcomings, but are aware of them and loathe them. Yet Britain is little concerned about an annual expenditure of about £2,000 millions on Tobacco, Drink, and Gambling. The Government seizes a large part of all this, which justifies the extravagance and the wastage, and encourages "Israel" to go on squandering its wealth.

In spite of all the confessed shortcomings of Britain, Edward Hine had the temerity to say that Britain was "literally the only Christian Nation upon the earth." Another writer much more recently writes "The majority of Christians in the world to-day are Anglo-Saxons."
And so Paul is thrust aside—Paul who states that to him was it granted to evangelize to the GENTILES the untraceable riches of the Christ (Eph. 3:8). Paul, who proclaimed this secret among the GENTILES—"Christ among you, the expectation of the glory" (Col. 1:27).

Indeed, these spurious "Israelites" repose far more faith in the Great Pyramid than in the sacred Scriptures and Paul. Says Hine, "The Great Pyramid is therefore now perfectly unique as a visible material monument of Divine Inspiration." Had this been true, we may be sure the Lord would have said something about the Pyramid. But there are many people who shew themselves very much wiser than the Lord.

Actually there are no "Anglo-Saxons" now on earth. What the above mentioned writer meant was that the majority of Christians are English-speaking. If his remarks were confined to Britain, there are many people there who would never think of calling themselves "Anglo-Saxons." The word in any case is entirely a misnomer. The primitive English, living in what is now North West Germany, called themselves the Angle or Engle, but never knew themselves as Saxons. They were known as Saxons by the foreign peoples around them, broad-headed peoples, who spoke other tongues. In the same way till this day the Welsh call the Englishman Sais, and the Scottish Gael calls him Sassenach. Many nations call themselves by a name which foreigners do not use. The Germans call themselves Deutsch, while the British call the people of Holland the Dutch. The early English or Angles and the peoples with whom they were associated in ancient times in North West Germany called any foreigner the wealh or stranger. The word Welsh is an English term meaning stranger. The Welsh people call themselves Cymry, meaning either "borderers" or "allies." One German name for Italy is Welschland. The Valais districts of Switzerland are those occupied by the Welsh, i.e. non-Germans. Wallachia is the land of the strangers.

This brings us to one of the strongest "proofs" that the British or the English are "Israelites." We are told that the word "Saxons" is only a contraction of Isaac-sons. In nothing do the British-Israelites fail so ignominiously as in their derivations of words. Not one of them seems to have a competent knowledge of the Hebrew language and its structure. The most absurd statements are greedily swallowed by gullible people who are quite unable to check them.

In the first place, it seems extraordinary that outside nations called the primitive English "Saxons" or Isaac-sons, while these English did not know what this referred to. And. these surrounding peoples used not their own Keltic, or Frankish, or Slavonic terms, but the English word "sons." This makes one very suspicious. So does the fact that surnames did not use the ending-sons until perhaps five or six hundred years ago. Therefore the word Saxons, if an old. word, cannot contain the word "sons."

But there is a reason very much stronger for rejecting the derivation given. There is no Hebrew name equivalent to "Isaac." The Hebrew name is Yitzkhaq, sounded very differently from "Isaac," and meaning "he will laugh or make merry." If, however, the word Saxons is only a contraction from Isaac-sons, it could never lose the. stressed first syllable. When words become boiled down by constant usage, they retain the stressed syllable always.

Another very clever derivation is that of the word. "British." Most cunning was the person who first discovered this meant "Man of the Covenant." This is said to be derived from Brith, "Covenant," and Ish or Aish, "Man." But in Hebrew these words would mean "covenant of man," not "man of the Covenant." What is more, Hebrew possesses no compound common nouns, of this nature. As for the ending -ish, by the same method we should need to call the Irish "the man of fear." The ancient Britons never called themselves "British." The ending -ish is purely Germanic. The Britons are thought to have come from Gaul, where their language was spoken.
Linked up with the origin of the British people is the very much bigger matter of their relatives on the continent of Europe. If these ancient British folk, whether Britons in Gaul, or Angles in North West Germany, were really Israelites, the surprising fact emerges that they had relatives among the surrounding nations, some of whom were closely related, while others more distantly related. This applies not only to speech, but also to physical characteristics. In the shape of a rough circle the more important European languages still stand as they did perhaps 2500 years ago, occupying the same relative positions to each other as they did then. The Keltic group in the extreme West, then the Germanic, then the Baltie-Slavonic, then the Armenian, then the Greek, then the Italic, which in turn borders upon the Keltic. And bordering upon the Baltic-Slavonic; Armenian, and Greek, there is the member that wandered far off into India, the Sanscritic group. Among the European groups there is a broad unity in the general fabric of language, most notable in the names for trees, animals, and agriculture. Whitney's opinion was that, for prehistoric times, correspondence of language gives the strongest presumption of correspondence of descent, and that the unity of Indo-European speech implies under-lying unity of stock present among the early peoples who used it. While that would be true in the early days of the European family, at the present time there must be few areas in which the language spoken is the same as was spoken two thousand years ago. Friesland is one.

Among all these peoples of Europe we shall look in vain for One which for two or it may be three thousand years, has lived as a separate people, with, as Conder says, "pride of race; and pride in faith." We look in vain for a single and isolated people who hold fast to the Hebrew Bible and its observances; who know in their hearts, that after all that has happened in their long past history, they are still in some way a peculiar people for Jehovah; a people who carefully shun the eating of "unclean" animals and foods. No European nation answers to this description, or ever has. No single European nation produces that combination of marked physical characteristics in all times ascribed to the Hebrews, consisting of, in the words of A. H. Keane ("Man—Past and Present"), "large hooked nose, prominent watery eyes, thick pendulous and almost everted under lip, rough frizzly lustreless hair."

There has been, however, one particularly prominent and dominant type in Europe from the very earliest times, a type which has also spread all over the world, thus notably betraying its Japhetic origin. The tall, blue-eyed, narrow headed Nordic type is found all through European history, everywhere. It is even depicted on the ancient Egyptian monuments. The earliest European historians have much to say about these people. From the very dawn of history they are found streaming all over Europe. Some of them went off afar into India, and in time mingled with the dark natives there, thus producing the caste system, which was intended as a hedge to keep the invading race pure. From the countries bordering the Baltic Sea and the North Sea these Nordics moved South, East and West, over a long period subjugating or at least dominating the nations they encountered, but alas, gradually becoming absorbed in course of time by the indigenous peoples, and dying out as a .race themselves. Nordic blood cannot maintain itself for long in southern lands. It is said that even in the southern half of England it is slowly disappearing, just as it disappeared out of Italy, Greece, Spain, and other lands. Many of the great leaders in ancient Greece and Italy were Nordics, under whom these countries reached the height of their power. Early chroniclers trace these Nordics to Scandinavia and North Germany. But in conquering other nations they always succumbed. Even the Nordic people known as the "Goths," who spread into Serbia and Bulgaria from the third to the fifth centuries, among whom Ulfilas produced the famous and most useful Gothic version of the New Testament, did not long survive. Even their language disappeared completely, except for manuscripts of bits of the New Testament.

No other race can claim in Europe such ubiquity or expansion, and such continuity of development. But the capacity of the Nordic peoples for successful acclimatisation is not great. For example, a British family living in India will become quite sterile in the third generation.
Pictures by old masters shew that this type was more common in southern Europe even five hundred years ago than now. Races thrive best in their own natural habitat. The truth of this principle has vast importance for emigrants from Europe to foreign lands.

So far as Bible prophecy concerning the end of the present age is involved, it may be foreseen that any gradual dying out of the Nordic type goes hand in hand with the gradual weakening of Protestantism, with the consequent increase of power of the Roman Church. Two great wars have told very heavily upon the Nordic elements in Europe, which are always the stoutest in any contest.

What has this digression to do with Israelites? Everything! The British capacity for becoming acclimatised in warmer climes is immeasurably inferior to that of the Hebrew people. When God ordained that the Israelites should wander all over the earth, He did not intend them to die out, as in time their descendants must return to their own Land. Therefore they were adapted for their age-long wanderings, just as in the Thousand Years, they will be well adapted to go forth to all nations with the Divine message.

The fact that the British people, if transferred to Palestine, could not long survive there is abundant proof that they are NOT Israelites.

An important corollary to the above arguments is that if the British are Israelites, it would not be fair to their close relatives on the Continent to deny the same right to them. In the first century A.D. Caesar and Tacitus wrote about the ancient Britons and their close relatives the Belgae in Gaul, who spoke the same language and had the same general features. These were Kelts. They also wrote about the peoples of Germany, which was at that time a small area comparatively, about the size of modern Scotland, peopled by various independent tribes, living East and North of the Rhine from the sea to Frankfurt, but no farther East than Hanover and Hessen; also in the Western side of what is now Denmark. To the East of these Angles and Friesians dwelt Slavs and Lithuanians, who in later centuries were gradually pushed eastwards or absorbed. That is why Dr. R. G. Latham, one of the humblest yet cleverest of English ethnologists, estimated the present German people to be one-third Slavonic.

One of the Angle tribes was the important family of the Chauci, that is, Hawke, Hawkins, Hocking, to give them their modern name.

While it seems possible that all the Angles or most of them emigrated to Britain between 300 and 500 A.D., some of the neighbouring and closely related Friesians did so also. Dr. Latham visited these people about a hundred years ago, and found them very like Englishmen; yet there was a difference. Their language is like no other language so much as English, and specially Scottish. Even their gait was found to be like that of the English. They are much more like the Nordic people found in Britain than they are to the rest of the Germans.

Four miles from my home stands a huge monolith in a field, marking the resting place of the earliest known AngloFriesian to be buried in all Britain. There is a brief in scription roughly carved in Latin stating that "In this tumulus lies Vetta son of Victa." The period is about 350 A.D. The famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, compiled over a period of about 400 years from 650 onwards, by monks, gives these two names in the same order, shewing that Victa or Wight was the son of the famous Woden or Odin, while Vetta Dr Wett was grandfather of the famous Hengist and Horsa brothers. The surname Wight is still fairly common in the locality.

Logically, then, we must bring the entire Friesian people now in Germany into the "Israelite" fold. And logically we must bring into the fold the Norse people, as many Norsemen entered various parts of England and Scotland in strong force about a thousand years ago. In appearance there is little general difference between the Norse and the British.

We should also require to bring in any surviving relatives of these Danes who invaded East England a thousand years ago, whose language must have been extremely close to the English of that day, as we have no evidence that it was different.

And what of the 158,448,000 inhabitants of the United States of America? Are these all "Israelites"? If not, how many? Are we to include about 14 million Negroes? Sons of Ham! Will there be room some day for all these people in the Holy Land? Must it come to be that the only people in all U.S.A. who are not part of what is called "Manasseh-Joseph" are the Jews?
"The American Colonists sincerely believed that they were the beginning of a new order of democracy, and their descendants to-day are more than ever convinced that the Anglo-Saxon world is destined soon to usher in the new order of future ages, the KINGDOM OF GOD UPON THE EARTH."

Surely here we have one of the doctrines of demons; sheer, utter impudent blasphemy; a subtle negation of God and His Truth.

A Negro in Jamaica was asked what race he belonged to. Very proudly he replied, "I am an Englishman." His speech made him that. So it seems that all who speak English, of whatever race or colour; must be taken as Israelites.

David Baron finishes his book on the Lost Ten Tribes as follows:—"To esteem external national prosperity as God's special mark of favour, is to carnalise all the prophets, and to degrade, not only the glory of the latter day, but present privileges in Christ; for what a poor thing these privileges and the glory must be if this sinful nation of ours; that seems ripe for judgment and rejection, be the exhibition of these, the fulfilment of Jehovah's promises to the beloved people."
He says that all arguments, and as an Israelite he knew the arguments much better than a Gentile, are ignored by British Israelites, and that is true. And not only ignored, but, diametrically opposed. "The very fact that the British and American races are so numerous and powerful among the nations precludes the possibility. of their being Israel, for when out of Palestine and in dispersion Israel was to become 'few in number,' and oppressed and downtrodden. among the nations" (Deut. 28:62).

Alexander Thomson