A SERVANT PEOPLE – NOT A SUPERIOR PEOPLE, BUT A SERVANT NATION
NOW according to the Bible, the Almighty has a servant people, a witness to the fact that He is God, and that beside Him there is no other (Isaiah 43). Some of the things said of them are, that they are a blind people with eyes seeing many things but observing not. They are an honourable people, loved of God with an everlasting love, His first-born and the objects of His protective mercies in fiery trials.
A redeemed people charged with the responsibility of unloosing the heavy burdens and letting the oppressed go free. They are a separated people, dwelling alone, evidently in islands north-west of Palestine (Isaiah 49:12). Ruled by one of the Davidic line, they are to be a nation, before God, as long as the sun, moon and stars remain (Jeremiah 33:19-26). No weapon formed is to prosper against them (Isaiah 54:17). They are the destined human instruments for the establishment of righteousness, justice, peace and goodwill. In short, their divine mission is to set the evil in this world right. The natural question then is, If the Bible is true, where are they? One of the best clues outside the Bible pointing to this people is the Book of Common Prayer. We are well aware that this is disputed. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to learn why the national church declares the things it does, if there is no foundation for them.
But so notable is the evidence, that the celebrated Theosophist, Annie Besant, in her book My Path to Atheism attacks the national prayer book. She took the beautiful prayers in close order and said that “we English make assertions and advance claims that have nothing to do with our race unless those people are right who assert that the English nation has descended from the lost tribes of Israel.”
With the fact accepted that we are indeed His people and the sheep of His pasture, as the prayer book asks us to believe, we have the answer to the world’s greatest racial mystery, a mystery that has engaged the attention of many of the world’s best scholars, namely the whereabouts of the lost tribes of Israel. The common belief that they are represented by Jewry stands shattered by the fact that top-ranking Jewish authorities flatly deny this. Thus Solomon Feingold, editor of Truth published in Jerusalem, tells us that he knew personally of some twenty-five attempts, on the part of Jewry, to discover them.
The very learned Rabbi Gershom said, “We are longing to find our lost brethren who for two thousand years have baffled all our efforts to discover their whereabouts. If they have disappeared, then the literal fulfilment of the prophecies would be impossible.” So states the Jewish Encyclopaedia, Volume 12, Page 249.
Ex-Chief Rabbi Dr. V. Herman Adler of the Jewish church in England, having been questioned on this point, wrote, “You are quite right in your surmise that the ten tribes did not return to the holy land.” The chief Rabbi, Dr. Hertz says: “The people known at present as Jews are the descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. So far as is known, there is not any further admixture of other tribes. The Jews look forward to the gathering of all the tribes at some future date.” And so as we look around the world, we are driven to believe with Bishop Gobat, former Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, “that a solid ground exists for the Anglo-Israel hypothesis since nowhere else can Ephraim be found, fulfilling the required conditions of Scripture.”
The Jewish Year Book, 1903, stands behind the bishop in stating that from the “standpoint of literal prophecy, Moses and the prophets are fulfilled in Great Britain, the other great Anglo-Saxon people in the United States, the Jews, and in no other.” The importance of the question under discussion cannot be overestimated or underestimated. The promises made to the fathers (Romans 15:8), which our Lord came to confirm, are British history; therefore, since God is declared to be the Changeless One, watching over His Word to perform it, only the prejudiced and wilful can escape concluding that we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. As we see it, if the Bible is indeed the infallible Word of an infallible God, then upon the ground of His faithfulness some people must be found exercising the functions and fulfilling the role allotted to Israel for the advancement and betterment of the families of the earth.
The religious world needs to be prodded into seeing that in our history, and ours alone, Ephraim-Israel is found fulfilling the prophecies made to them. Possession is said to be nine points of the law, therefore, as the people in possession, we stand demonstrated as His servant Israel. In this regard it seems to be disastrously overlooked by Bible students that the inspiration of Scripture must stand or fall by the discovery of Ephraim, (the ten-tribed house of Israel) as a company of non-Palestine nations, restored to the covenant of God in the last days, that is, the Christian dispensation (Bishop Titcomb).
With the fact acknowledged that we are the people of the Book, the natural question is, If this be true, why is it not more generally known?
How long has it been believed?
Since some of our opponents assert that it was a mentally unbalanced lieutenant of the British Navy, Richard Brothers, who discovered British-Israel Truth, we propose to give evidence that proves it was known at least 1500 years before he was born. Therefore, to make him the founder of British-Israel beliefs is about as sensible as making Halley the creator of the comet that bears his name.
In Brothers’ day we find such intellectual giants as Alexander Cruden, Revd John Wilson, and Dr Abbadie of Amsterdam, who firmly believed in our lsraelitish origin.
Cruden, in his famous Concordance in the earliest editions of his work, 1736, addressed a letter to King George the Third, drawing his attention to the pious life of King Hezekiah of Judah. He closed this letter expressing the hope that King George III might prove to be a Hezekiah to our British-Israel. This is not in the later editions – why?
In 1723, Dr Abbadie, said to be the greatest scholar of his day, (some say in one hundred years) wrote four volumes setting forth his beliefs that the ten Gothic tribes that entered Europe were the ten tribes of Israel. He said unless the ten tribes had flown into the air, or plunged into the depths of the earth, they must be sought for and found in the Northwest, in Great Britain. The Pilgrim Fathers firmly believed we were Israel and said so. From sermons and prayers by Quakers 1688-1694, the following is taken. On page 2, Robert Barclay speaks of his day as “Thy day wherein thou art setting up the tabernacle of David.”
John Bowater prays. “Thou hast not said to the seed of Jacob, seek ye my face in vain. Where thy people hath been gathered, there thy presence hath been.”
Samuel Waddenfield petitions, “Powerful Father of life, increase thy little flock, gather the scattered, and bring home the lost sheep of the House of Israel, so that the numberless numbers may be gathered from the four winds. Let thy Jerusalem be made a praise in the whole earth, an eternal excellency.”
Richard Asby declares, “The trumpet of the Lord hath been blown in Zion. Lift up thy voice like a trumpet and tell the House of Judah of their transgressions and the House of Israel of their sins.”
In 1671 a pamphlet was issued in Nether Dutch setting forth that the English-speaking people were Israel. In 1672 it was translated into English. Among the politico-religious sects that fought under Cromwell were the Levellers (1647). A prominent Leveller was one Everhard. On one occasion he had to make a discourse before the Protector. He began by saying that he “belonged to the race of the Jews, as the Anglo-Saxons are called.” In this regard it will be of interest to note that in an old work, The Vetus Chronicum Holsatiae, it is recorded that the Jutes were Jews, that they spake Hebrew, and that the Angles and Saxons were kindred tribes.
Since Cromwell has been mentioned, we direct your attention to the novel by Sir Walter Scott, “Woodstock”. Here Cromwell repeatedly refers to the British people as Israel. For example, in chapter 30: “Now as my soul liveth, and as he liveth who hath made me ruler in Israel.” And again in chapter 34: “For surely as he who hath been to our British Israel, as a shield of help and a sword of excellency making her enemies to be found liars.”
In 1612, according to the Yachting Monthly of November 1920, in Leigh’s Accedence of Armory, reference is made to our origin by one Treuisa. Here he calls us “the people of God”, and the land he calleth “God’s land.”
In 1609 a great champion arose in the person of John Sadler. He was an accomplished Hebrew scholar, a master of Magdalene College, a town clerk for London, an M.P. for Cambridge, and a master in chancery. He was the author of a number of works including the Rights of the Kingdom; or the Customs of our Kings and Parliaments. He brought the matter of our origin to the nation’s legislators, with what results we do not know.
