“TELL ME, PLEASE” – BRITISH-ISRAEL IDENTITY FOUNDATION TRUTHS – (2)
Part One of this article in the April-June issue ended with the question: Now, if the House of Israel did not return to Palestine (Canaan), WHERE DID THEY GO? The following quotations will help us in our quest
Apocrypha (R.V.) 2 Esdras 13: 40-45:
“These are the Ten Tribes, which were led away out of their own land in the time of Osea the king, whom Salmanasar the king of the Assyrians led away captive, (2 Kings 17) and he carried them beyond the River, and they were carried into another land. But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a further country, where never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep their statutes which they had not kept in their own land. And they, entered by, the narrow passages of the River Euphrates. For the Most High then wrought signs for them, and stayed the springs of the River, till they were passed over. For through that country there was a great way to go, namely of a year and a half, and the same region is called Arzareth” (that is, ‘another land’ – see Deuteronomy 29:28).
Flavius Josephus, learned Jewish historian, A.D.38-100, in his Book XI, chapter 5, states:
“Wherefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the Ten Tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers”.
The Jewish Prayer Book (The Authorized Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire):
“As for our brethren, the whole House of Israel, such of them as are given over to trouble or captivity’, whether they abide on sea or on dry land, may the All – Present have mercy upon them and bring them forth from trouble to enlargement, from darkness to light, and from subjection to redemption now, speedily and at a near time, and let us say, Amen.”
(Note: that statement/prayer by official Jewry is an open acknowledgment of the fact that the House of Israel, i.e., the Ten Tribes, are not found in Jewry today).
Dr Alfred Edersheim:
“In what has been said, no notice has been taken of those wanderers of the Ten Tribes, whose trackless footsteps seem as mysterious as their after fate … Still the great mass of the Ten Tribes was, in the days of Christ, as in our own, lost to the Hebrew nation”.
Dr Neubauer, in The Jewish Quarterly Review:
“The hope of the return of the Ten Tribes has never ceased amongst the Jews of the exile”.
C. & A.D.Rothschild, in The History and Literature of the Israelites, vol. 1, page 489:
“The Ten Tribes of Israel were irretrievably lost, and a deep and impenetrable silence clings round their dispersion. The thick folds of the veil have never been lifted.”
Isaac Leiser, inThe Jewish Religion, vol. I, page 256:
“By, this return of captives – from Babylon – the lsraelitish nation was not restored, since the Ten Tribes were yet left in banishment, and to this day the research of travelers and wise men have not been able to trace their fate”.
Israel Zangwill, well-known writer, referring, to Jewish persecution, at a conference in 1903 said:
“To live and not to live is worse than to die. That is our position. I had rather we died and were done with. I thank heaven that Ten Tribes at least were lost”. (The Voice of Jerusalem, page 85).
And from a letter from the Chief Jewish Rabbi, dated November 18th, 1918 (5679) to the Revd. Merton Smith:
“The people known at present as Jews are descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin with a certain number of descendants of the tribe of Levi. As far as is known, there is not any further admixture of other tribes. The Ten Tribes have been absorbed among the nations of the world. We look forward to the gathering of all the tribes at some future day”.
And in June 1950 a further letter from the Chief Rabbi stated:
“The Jews of today, do not represent the whole of the twelve tribes. What happened to the Ten Tribes who occupied Northern Palestine in Bible times is not definitely, known. Modem Jewry is considered as being descended from the ancient tribe of Judah, and to a lesser extent, the tribe of Benjamin”.
Kitto states:
”After the captivity, we hear very little of the territories of the Tribes, for ten of them never returned”.
In the year 1131 A.D. the famous Rabbi Moses Maimonides, called by the Jews their Second Moses, wrote:
“I believe the Ten Tribes to be in various parts of Europe”.
Sharon Turner, the famous historian, states:
“The Anglo-Saxons, Lowland Scots, Normans and Danes have all sprung from that great fountain of the human race which we have distinguished by the terms Scythian and Gothic. The first appearance of the Scythian. Tribes in Europe may be placed in the seventh century before the Christian era … The migrating Scythians crossed the Araxes, passed out of Asia, and suddenly appeared in Europe in the sixth century BC”
(Note: This was the exact time of the release of the Ten Tribes from their captivity in Assyria).
Dr George Moore says:
“The name of Goth, as already surmised, was probably transferred from Palestine to the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, where the Getae, and the Sacae, the Goths and the Saxons, are historically found together”.
Du Chaillu, in his work The Viking Age declares:
”A careful perusal of the sagas will enable us, with the help of the ancient Greek and Latin writers, and without any serious break in the chain of events, to make out a fairly continuous history which throws considerable light on the progenitors of the English-speaking peoples; their migrations northward from their old home on the shores of the Black Sea; their religion; and their settlement of Scandinavia and of England”.
Prideaux finds that the Cimbrians (Kumri) came from between the Black and Caspian Seas, and that with them came the Angli. The famous John Milton, writing in his History of Britain (1670), says of the Saxons:
“They were a people thought by good writers to be descended of the Sacae, a kind of Scythians in the north of Asia, thence called Sacasons, or sons of Sacae …” (pp 506-7, 1835 edition).
(Sacae was derived from Saac, another name from the same people. The name came from Isaac, the “I” being unpronounceable in Hebrew, as they had no letter “I”. Hence also Saac-sons).
Professor Freeman, in his Origin of the English Nation, has the following passage:
“Tribe after tribe, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, poured across the sea to make new homes in the Isles of Britain. Thus, grew up the English nation – a nation formed by the union of various tribes of the same stock. The Dane hardly needed assimilation; he was another kindred tribe, coming later than the others. Even the Norman was a kinsman”.
Sir Francis Palgrave in his English Commonwealth, says:
“Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Normans were all relations, however hostile, they were all kinsmen, shedding kindred blood”.
In 1590, A.D., M le Loyer, a French magistrate, said:
“The expectations of the Hebrew prophets are being fulfilled in England and her people”.
Counsellor le Loyer issued a large volume, The Lost Ten Tribes Found, and from an account published in the Petit Parisien of June 24th, 1913:
“Le Loyer says he has found the Israelites, and that today they form the English people”.
The Revd. Dr Dean Jean Jacques Abbadie, the greatest scholar in Europe of his day, 1654-1727, and of an old Huguenot family, in his Le Triomphe de la Providence et de la Religion, published in Amsterdam in 1723, stated:
“Unless the Ten Tribes have flown into the air, or have been plunged to the centres of the earth, they must be sought for in the north and west, and in the British Isles”.
The writer of this Bible and secular study feels very special affinity with Dr Abbadie, as his own family ancestors too were French Huguenots, Protestant Christians who had to flee from France to England several centuries ago to escape dreadful persecution or death because they believed the Bible as the Word of God, and not the Papal (Roman Catholic) doctrines. Remarkably enough, Dr Abbadie applied for English denizenship in 1687, as did some of the writer’s own Huguenot ancestors (the Seguins) in the same year, (obtaining naturalisation subsequently): Dr Abbadie soon afterwards became the pastor of the London French Protestant Church known as The Savoy, with some of the Seguins as members of his church congregation. Hence the feeling of close affinity. I find it very remarkable to know that three hundred years ago a French Huguenot “B.I” taught my ancestors, and now in my own generation I likewise teach these precious truths. The reference in Dr Abbadie’s statement to the Ten Tribes being in the north and west, and in the British Isles, is quite simply due to the fact that as a scholar, he knew that, e.g., the prophecies of Isaiah which are addressed to Israel ‘in the isles’ pertained to the British Isles, for, as Hebrew scholars have noted, those isles are clearly identified in the Hebrew language of Scripture. One small example relating to Israel being in isles north-west of Palestine is at Isaiah 49:12; it should be understood that the Hebrew language has no equivalent for ‘north-west’, but would be ‘north AND west’. Ferrar Fenton renders the verse
“Look! these came from afar! these from the north-west!”
The whole chapter is a wonderful example of the LORD’s unfailing faithfulness to His covenants with Israel, here shown to be in isles north-west of Palestine.
Professor Odlum, formerly of Tokyo University, says:
“The proof that the Anglo-Saxon people are the House of Israel in a national and official sense is as clear to my mind as the noonday sun is to the eyes of mortals”.
King George VI, broadcasting to the nation on the eve of ‘D-Day’, June 6th, 1944, said:
“We dare to believe that God has used our nation and Empire as an instrument for fulfilling His High purpose”.
And the Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, British Prime Minister, speaking to the United States Congress in 1942, said:
“He must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below of which we have the honour to be faithful servants”.
In the Times newspaper of 7th May 1919, the late Lord Fisher, Admiral of our Fleet, stated:
“Why we win, in spite of incredible blunders, is that we are the ‘lost’ Ten Tribes of Israel”.
Professor Piazzi Smyth, late Astronomer Royal for Scotland, said:
“The effect of the discovery of the identity of the Anglo-Saxons with Israel is two-fold. First, it causes us to behold and acknowledge therein the accomplishment of a true miracle, and of the mightiest kind through the ages, consummated in our own days. Second, it causes the Bible to become for us, as it was for the tribes of Israel of old, an infallible Book for national guidance in politics, as well as a collection of inspired instruction for each individual soul in religion”.
William Tyndale, the Protestant martyr, and translator of our English Bible, stated:
“The properties of the Hebrew tongue agree a thousand times more with the English than with Latin”
Canon Lyson compiled a list of four thousand Hebrew words from English dictionaries and stated:
“The Hebrew is the structure on which the English language was built”.
Professor Max Muller of Oxford University stated that English contained eight hundred Hebrew roots.
The Revd. Jacob Torillin, in his Comparative Vocabulary of Forty-Eight Languages, states:
”About one fourth of the words in our own Saxon tongue bear an affinity with the Hebrew in primary or secondary degree. Not only in words does this affinity exist … but in the arrangement of ideas and in the single structure of the sentences it also has a near agreement”.
The Revd. Eliezer Williams, Vicar of Lampeter (1784) states:
“The roots of the ancient British, or real Welsh, words, may be regularly traced in the Hebrew (language) … Scarcely a Hebrew root can be discovered that has not its corresponding derivative in the ancient British language”.
Alex Geddes, LL.D., says:
“Luckily for an English translator of the Bible, he will not be often under any great necessity of departing much from the arrangement of the Hebrew, especially in the poetical parts of Scripture, where the two idioms are so congenial as to appear almost like twin brothers”.
Many years ago, the distinguished antiquary, the late Sir William Betham, Ulster King-at-Arms, said to the Revd. A. King, who had intelligently consulted him respecting a family crest:
“I see you are interested in this: I am an old man, you are young; if you take my advice, you will follow up the study of heraldry, and if you go far enough it will lead you into the camp of Israel’.
The writer’s own experience confirms this marvelous fact. For some considerable years now he has researched his own family tree, and possesses photocopies of authoritative statements pertaining to his own surname and its origin. I have already intimated that the family name in France was Seguin (or, De Seguin), having become anglicised when the family moved to England. According to Dr. P.H. Reaney, A Dictionary of British Surnames (1976) …(Seekins: Identical with French Seguin which Albert Dauzat (Librairie Larousse, Paris) derives from OG (visigothic) Sigwin‘Victory Friend’, etc. etc. Well informed British-Israel Christians will not need to be told that the Visi Goths were a major part of the House of Israel who moved across Europe circa 100-500A.D., exactly as we have already shown in our numerous scholarly quotations. To which I would add this further fact. My own photocopies taken from Armorial General (Tome II) by Johannes Baptiste Rietstap, showing some of the numerous Arms of the various branches of the French Seguin’s down the centuries, illustrate amongst these branches the twelve-stoned breastplate, the eagle, and the serpent, the latter two being of course connected with the tribe of Dan. And (if I may be forgiven) just one more confirmatory statement pertaining to one’s own personal ancestry, to show yet again the original descent from Israel. In Dictionnaire De La Noblesse, by Francois Alexander Aubert De La Chenave Desbois Et Badier, (Paris 1873), for example, the author gives much detail regarding a number of the Seguin’s nobility,e.g .Aldebert De Seguin De Borne, Seigneur and Baronde Prades, Rochevalier, and autres Terres, Gentilhomme ordinaire de la Chambre du Roi LOUIS XIII, serving in this capacity in 1624. The word ‘Gentilhomme’ is particularly significant, as is explained by Charles E. Lart in his Huguenot Pedigrees, and I quote:
“Neither was gentilhomme the equivalent of ‘Gentleman’, which usually signifies a person of education, manners or social position; the French term being strictly applied to those of ancient race, whose origin was lost in the night of time. It was the one title which even the king could not create, for he could not make a ‘gentilhomme’, who was the product of race and time: nor could he unmake him, for ‘once a gentilhomme always a gentilhomme’.”
The same book by Lart describes the (De) Seguin’s as an ‘ancienne Famille noble’, i.e., an ancient noble family. The writer of this particular Bible and secular study is greatly humbled as he meditates on the unfailing faithfulness of our covenant-keeping God, Who has preserved His people Israel, of which I am proven to be one, down through millenniums of time.
Herbert Bruce Hannay, in European and Other Race Origins, says:
“The hypothesis that the British are the modern representatives of the ancient Beth Sak (i.e. House of Isaac) is one that is hardly open to doubt; except by minds that deliberately refuse to accord just weight to the facts, inferences, and probabilities upon which that hypothesis is based”.
Charles Hulbert, in his Religions of Britain (1825) states:
“So near is the resemblance between the Druidical religion of Britain and the Patriarchal religion of the Hebrews, that we hesitate not to pronounce their origin the same”.
Cassell’s History of England states:
“The Druidical rites and ceremonies in Britain were almost identical with the Mosaic ritual”.
Sir William Temple (Chambers’s Encyclopaedia 1628-99), British Diplomatist and Essayist, Ambassador in Netherlands, Moderate, Protestant Statesman) states (of the early Britons)
“In their system of jurisprudence; in the administration of law by twelve judges; in their social order; in the rights of property; in the provision made for ministers of religion; in the institutions of chivalry; in the science of heraldry, or symbols; in architecture, carving, gilding, in the use of metals, in needlework, poetry and music, we trace our lsraelitish origin”.
Sir Edward Creasy, in his History of England, states:
“The British tin mines mainly supplied the glorious adornment of Solomon’s temple, and thence also came the chief material of the armour of the kings and chieftains of heroic Greece”.
As is well known, there was regular trade between the Middle East and Britain in Solomon’s day, and the writer had thrilling evidence of this when my wife and I had a holiday break at Mount Avalon, Glastonbury, a good many years ago. Visiting nearby Somerton, in conversation with a local lady newspaper reporter, she asked me if we had ever been to see ‘King Solomon’s Alabaster Mines’ nearby! Needless to say, this was a very thrilling suggestion, knowing as we do our Israel heritage. Suffice it to say that we very quickly motored to the place indicated, obtained permission from the farmer on whose land we had to investigate, (he showed to us a bowl carved from a piece of such alabaster) and brought home some pieces of alabaster, which we possess to this day. A very remarkable link with our Israelite ancestors, after some three thousand years.
To conclude our list of evidences of our national descent from Israel, just a few more witnesses add their testimonies to our by no means exhaustive study. The great painter artist, Holman Hunt, who studied the Hebrew physiognomy in Palestine, made the noteworthy declaration that, after careful observation, he believed that the ancient type of the Hebrew nation approached nearer to the Anglo-Saxon than to any other. The Revd. Elieser Bassin, C.M. Ph.B., born in Russia of both wealthy and pious Jewish parents, tells us in his book British and Jewish Fraternity:
“The Hebrew Scriptures point to the British Isles as the home of God’s first-born”. (i.e., Ephraim, the collective name for the Ten Tribes, see Jeremiah 31:9);
He has also stated;
“It is my conviction that Britain is the nation with whom God has from first to last identified Himself. I, an Israelite of the House of Judah claim you as Israelites of the House of Ephraim (i.e., the House of Israel). As believers in the faithfulness of our covenant-keeping God, I call you to awake from your sleep”.
Professor Totten, of Yale University, said:
“I cannot state too strongly that the man who has not seen that Israel of the Scriptures is totally different from the Jewish people is yet in the very infancy, the mere alphabet – of Biblical study”.
Sir Charles Marston, F.S.A., the famous archaeologist, author of The Bible is True, The Bible Comes Alive etc., speaking at a meeting of lay churchmen at the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on Saturday, 2nd February 1929, said:
“Great Britain was the first of all nations to adopt Christianity. Bible study and the results of the Great War are forcing me to the certain conclusion that today, we, as a nation, represent the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel… “
A statement from The Jewish Chronicle of 2nd May 1890 is very much to the point regarding the House of Israel, i.e., the ten so-called ‘lost’ tribes:
“The problem, then, is reduced to its simplest form. The Ten Tribes are certainly in existence. All that has to be done is to discover which people represent them”.
And, from The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1925 edition, vol. 12, page 249:
“If the Ten Tribes have disappeared, the literal fulfilment of the (Bible) prophecies would be impossible. If they have not disappeared, obviously they must exist under a different name”.
Which is, of course, the exact truth of the matter, and we could add to our testimonies to this effect, many times over. There are many ‘facets’ to this great ‘British-Israel’ Truth, each one of which would be a further long and detailed study in its own right; perhaps just one or two facets might be very briefly touched upon. Throughout the centuries, time and time again, the LORD has answered prayers and delivered our nation from its enemies, e.g., the Spanish Armada, Napoleon, from defeat in the 1914-18 Great War, and a generation later, from Hitler etc.
Psalm 124 is very much to the point:
“If it had not been the LORD Who was on our side, (despite our many sins as a nation, we would add, and because of His covenant with Abraham), now may Israel say; if it had not been the LORD Who was on our side, when men rose up against us: Then they had swallowed us up quick…”
Then, too, there are many Bible prophecies that tell us that the purpose of God for the House of Israel would be an on-going one, throughout centuries of time and this present age also, until eventually Israel and Judah are re-united at the time of the Return of the Lord Jesus Christ, when He will govern this world in righteousness, ruling on the Throne of David. Ezekiel 37:22 is very clear:
”And I will make them one nation… and One King shall be King to them all, and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all’.
Jesus told the Jewish leaders (Matthew 21:43):-
” Therefore say I unto you, the Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, (from the Jews) and given to a nation (not the church) bringing forth the fruits thereof”.
History records that, despite our many imperfections etc. the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic House of Israel peoples have led the world in producing such ‘fruits’; taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ‘four corners’ of the world, and ever at the forefront in humanitarian action. And all this despite our national blindness to our Identity as the House of Israel. Finally, what then is the major significance of the proof that we, the Anglo Saxon-Celtic peoples, are the House of Israel?
Following the failure of all twelve tribes to keep their promises to God, as detailed under the old Mosaic Covenant, God promised that He would provide a New Covenant, an everlasting Covenant, with the Houses of Israel and Judah, (Jeremiah 31:31-37; Jeremiah 32:40 etc.). That New Covenant (Hebrews 8 etc.) was ratified by the Blood of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross at Golgotha, and the way is now open for all Israel to return to the LORD in sincere repentance. This they will most certainly do, in God’s Own good time, for as the hymn has it: ‘God is working His purpose out, as year succeeds to year’, and He has sworn that He will have His way with His people. So then, as all Christians well know, there is a Living God, and as Christians who have had their hearts and minds opened to ‘B.I. Identity Truths’ will also understand, God’s great plan includes the present and future welfare of our own British nation. All who love the LORD, the Ever-Faithful Covenant God of Israel, must watch and pray to see what He would have us do, in these last days. We who have consistently sought the LORD down the years are convinced that a great move by the Holy Spirit is imminent in our land, and we echo the words of Isaiah of old:
“Here am I, send me”.
Amen and Amen
