British Israelism (and Zionism):
a serpent's tale?
(Part I of a three-part series in which I assemble a small fraction of my thoughts and research on British-Israelism.)
Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
--Galatians 4:16
AS HERBERT ARMSTRONG OFTEN SAID, people hate to admit when they're wrong. I probably hate it as much as anyone. But what I hate even more is the thought of continuing in my wrongness!
That unwillingness to continue in error has led me to reject one of Armstrong's signature doctrines: that Britain, the United States and northwestern Europe are Israel, and are therefore the true heirs to the Abrahamic promises.
After The Plain Truth, the first Worldwide Church of God publication I ever read was The United States and Britain in Prophecy. I read it between the ages of 10 and 11. Some of its arguments just didn't make sense to me, but since I had already learned many fascinating biblical truths via the WCG, I just chalked my confusion up to my young age. I ignored the mental red flags and placed my belief in the overall scheme of British Israelism. I came to trust Armstrong's claim that British Israelism was, in his words, the "all-important master key" to understanding the Bible and world events. (Note that both British Israelism and its sister doctrine, Jewish Zionism, rest on the same key arguments.)
In more recent years, events have prompted me to review the evidence for the doctrine. I went to the key sources: not only Armstrong's US & BP, but also Allen’s Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright, upon which Armstrong relied heavily. (In fact, one could call Armstrong’s book a rewriting of Allen’s; some have called it a plagiarism.) I also reviewed Garner Ted Armstrong’s Europe and America in Prophecy, which restates much of his father's work. And of course, I compared all against The Book.
THE VERSION OF BRITISH ISRAELISM I address here, of course, is that set forth by Allen and Armstrong. It can be summed up as follows: Almighty Yahweh made promises to Abraham and his descendants, particularly to Isaac and Jacob. He promised them national prosperity and power, among other blessings. And those promises were absolutely unconditional. Those modern-day descendants are the white British Commonwealth and Northwestern European nations. The military, economic and financial dominance of these nations -- no matter how history shows they may have obtained them -- is cited in part as proof of the theory.
The more "comprehensive" version of the theory, as promulgated by Allen and Armstrong, makes the following arguments:
* Yahweh Elohim made a covenant with Abraham which included several promises:
* BI proponents also fold other later blessings into what they call the Abrahamic “birthright”:
* Crucial to the claims of BI are two assertions about the nature of these promises:
* BI also holds that the sceptre itself was later split in a so-called "breach" between the twin sons of Judah, Perez and Zerah. Perez gave rise to David and his lineage, which culminated in the birth of Yahshua the Messiah in Bethlehem, Judea.
Descendants of Zerah, however, allegedly found their way to Ireland in the days of King David. Later, in the eighth century B.C., the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered and taken captive by Assyria. Eventually they ten northern tribes began their wandering, which brought them to northwestern Europe.
Somewhat confusingly, BI also asserts that the tribe of Dan and the “birthright” tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (i.e., Joseph), also ended up the British Isles.
* Later, still, in the seventh century B.C., Babylon took the southern kingdom of Judah. At this time the prophet Jeremiah allegedly spirited a princess of the Judah/Perez line to Ireland to marry a prince of Judah/Zerah, thus "healing" the “mysterious breach" between the two lineages. More importantly, this removed the sceptre from the land of Judah to the British Isles, to preside over Ephraim/Manasseh. This throne or seat of power was later removed to Scotland and then finally to England.
* Eventually, beginning in the 16th century AD, the tribe of Manasseh ended up migrating en masse to North America, leaving their Ephraimite brethren in Britain.
* For over 2,500 years the birthright promises of these two Israelite nations had lay dormant as punishment for their great sins.
* However, beginning around 1800, the punishment expired and the promises kicked in, catapulting Britain and later the U.S. into national greatness, as promised to Abraham some 3,800 years earlier. Virtually every aspect of British and American power (economic, military, cultural) is thus attributed to divine promises and implicitly carries the seal of divine approval.
AGAINST THE ULTIMATE standard of truth, the Allen & Armstrong British-Israelist manifestos failed miserably. Twenty years after my initial encounter with the doctrine, I now know that the arguments for British-Israelism didn't make sense because --
The arguments flatly contradict the Bible. They ignore crucial history set forth in scripture and they turn biblical theology upside down. In this article I will attempt to set forth, as clearly and cogently as I can, why I have come to this conclusion.
The cover of Allen's Judah’s Sceptre lauds it as “more thrilling than Western fiction.” Sadly, the comparison is fitting. A careful study of his book suggests that – to borrow Allen's own words -- he possessed a rather “vivid imagination” which he let “run unchecked through the verdant and fruitful fields of speculation ...”
In fact, it gets worse than simple speculation. An honest study of Allen and Armstrong quickly becomes infuriating. One of the first things one learns is: never take the statements of the authors at face value, and always double-check their scripture references!
This is because Allen, as well as his disciples, Herbert and Garner Ted Armstrong, all shared a strange habit of selectively quoting Bible verses carefully and surgically excised from their context. Sometimes the verses are even cut off halfway through; the effect is to mislead -- in some cases, to make the verse seem to say the exact opposite of what it actually says! It is a surreal example of putting "bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter" (Isa. 5:20). Meanwhile, these promoters of B-I tend to ignore the many scriptures which jeopardize or altogether refute their theory.
When attempting to catalogue Allen's many errors, it's easy to get bogged down in the extreme complexity and deviousness of his arguments. In their respective books, the two Armstrongs follow suit -- lurching willy-nilly between topics and lines of argumentation, deftly avoiding the obvious questions that arise in the mind of the careful reader. Since they rely so heavily on Allen they inevitably repeat many of his errors, distortions, and omissions. The resulting Gordian knot of error requires a Herculean effort to unravel and refute exhaustively and coherently -- that is, if one intends to refute each assertion or assumption thrown out. This morning, after wading through the first couple of chapters of Judah's Sceptre for the third or fourth time and filling the margins with notes, I simply threw up my hands. No wonder the book’s so damn long, I thought, in exasperation. I guess it takes 300 pages to twist a handful of scriptures into saying something they don’t say!
This made me recall my first reading of US & BP at age 10; how I was thoroughly confused by large segments of it, yet assumed that HWA was smarter than me and had it all figured out. I began to trust the reasonings of a man more than the word of the Eternal.
Later in the day, I randomly picked up a sermon tape lying on my dresser. The sermon, by Jeff Osborne of Terre Haute, Indiana, carried the title “The Traditions of Men.” Since I had never listened to it, I decided to put it on. A few seconds in, Osborn said:
FORTUNATELY, DESPITE THE confused and complicated "reasonings of men" that comprise BI, refuting it does not require that one refute every single assertion made by Allen or Armstrong. The purported scriptural evidence they cite is actually quite simple, and boils down to two main assertions: one about physical-historical lineage, the other about what exactly Yahweh promised, and to whom. the following assertions:
1) The promises made to Israel were unconditional, inalienable and applicable only to bloodline descendants of Jacob.
2) The U.S., Britain, et al. are, in fact, those fleshly descendants.
Note that pro-BI authors usually tend to focus on proving 2), while neglecting 1). Truckloads of ink have been committed to attempts to find historical, geneaological and even genetic clues to trace the Lost Tribes throughout the centuries of slavery, the rise and fall of empires, and many waves of migration, and to connect them to the Northwestern Europeans. (Curiously ignored is the strong evidence that certain of the Tribes actually found their way not to Europe, but to Africa and India!)
Yet even if we granted that 2) were actually true -- that the genealogical-historical connection between Israel and the Anglo-Saxons et al. were proven -- that does nothing to answer the more important Question 1).
If we accept the key BI contention that the promises were 1) unconditional, 2) strictly fleshly and 3) were never fulfilled anciently, then we are virtually forced to accept BI.
However, if the promises given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not actually unconditional -- or if they were not exclusive to physical blood descendants, but might find fulfillment in other children (such as adopted children) -- then all the speculation about where the Lost Tribes did or didn't go; all the attempts to trace clues through names of places, tribes, rivers or towns, while historically interesting, are not relevant at all to the question of who has inherited the Abrahamic promises today.
The real questions in this matter are:
1) How did YHWH fulfill his promises to Abraham's people anciently?
2) Who are Abraham's seed today?
3) Who will comprise Abraham's seed in the future?
If we base our conclusions on the Old Testament alone, on a narrowest possible definition of "Abraham's seed," BI certainly can appear to have a point. It appears as though Yahweh did not keep his promises in the ancient nation of Israel. For those ancient nations indeed did not possess the land of Canaan forever, but were "cut off" -- driven out of the land in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C., their kingdoms destroyed. Therefore, say British-Israel proponents, "either our theory is correct -- that is, the kingdom and national blessings of Israel must have been transferred to Britain and Europe -- or God is a liar! God's word has failed!" On the surface, it certainly seems a powerful argument.
However, to refute these suppositions and answer the question "is the Eternal a liar, or does he keep his promises?" we only need to go to a section of the Bible which British Israelism carefully avoids.
That would be the New Testament.
On to part two
PHOTOS BORROWED FROM Silver Bear Cafe, HISTORICWINGS.COM
Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
--Galatians 4:16
AS HERBERT ARMSTRONG OFTEN SAID, people hate to admit when they're wrong. I probably hate it as much as anyone. But what I hate even more is the thought of continuing in my wrongness!
That unwillingness to continue in error has led me to reject one of Armstrong's signature doctrines: that Britain, the United States and northwestern Europe are Israel, and are therefore the true heirs to the Abrahamic promises.
After The Plain Truth, the first Worldwide Church of God publication I ever read was The United States and Britain in Prophecy. I read it between the ages of 10 and 11. Some of its arguments just didn't make sense to me, but since I had already learned many fascinating biblical truths via the WCG, I just chalked my confusion up to my young age. I ignored the mental red flags and placed my belief in the overall scheme of British Israelism. I came to trust Armstrong's claim that British Israelism was, in his words, the "all-important master key" to understanding the Bible and world events. (Note that both British Israelism and its sister doctrine, Jewish Zionism, rest on the same key arguments.)
In more recent years, events have prompted me to review the evidence for the doctrine. I went to the key sources: not only Armstrong's US & BP, but also Allen’s Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright, upon which Armstrong relied heavily. (In fact, one could call Armstrong’s book a rewriting of Allen’s; some have called it a plagiarism.) I also reviewed Garner Ted Armstrong’s Europe and America in Prophecy, which restates much of his father's work. And of course, I compared all against The Book.
THE VERSION OF BRITISH ISRAELISM I address here, of course, is that set forth by Allen and Armstrong. It can be summed up as follows: Almighty Yahweh made promises to Abraham and his descendants, particularly to Isaac and Jacob. He promised them national prosperity and power, among other blessings. And those promises were absolutely unconditional. Those modern-day descendants are the white British Commonwealth and Northwestern European nations. The military, economic and financial dominance of these nations -- no matter how history shows they may have obtained them -- is cited in part as proof of the theory.
The more "comprehensive" version of the theory, as promulgated by Allen and Armstrong, makes the following arguments:
* Yahweh Elohim made a covenant with Abraham which included several promises:
a) Abraham’s seed would become a great nation and a “company” of nations
b) This seed would bless the world, and
c) The seed would possess the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.
* BI proponents also fold other later blessings into what they call the Abrahamic “birthright”:
a) prophetic blessings from Isaac and Jacob to their respective children
b) Yahweh's promises to the Israelites at Sinai, over 400 years later, and
c) the still later covenant between Yahweh and King David.
* Crucial to the claims of BI are two assertions about the nature of these promises:
a) The promises were absolutely unconditional and inalienable; under no circumstance could they be forfeited, revoked or even voluntarily renounced by the people of Israel. To put it another way, these promises rendered Israel permanently "bulletproof" and required that they be blessed -- even against their will!* The Abrahamic promises eventually were divided into those dealing with "race" and others concerning "grace." This occured when Abraham's grandson Jacob blessed his twelve sons. In so doing, he conferred upon Judah the "sceptre." The sceptre is interpreted as including a future royal lineage, a promised Savior, and personal salvation --hence the term "grace." These promises went to Jews or the tribes of Judah (and also Benjamin, by virtue of their alliance with Judah). Joseph, on the other hand, received the "birthright," characterized in BI theory as national, material blessings which may only be inherited by blood descent ("race"). Primarily, it is with these promises of national greatness that British Israelism concerns itself. (The other ten sons received lesser blessings.)
b) The promises were never fulfilled in ancient times. The Bible never records the Israelites blessing the world; becoming a great nation or a company of nations, growing to number as the stars of the sky or the sands of the sea, or fulfilling the many other subsidiary prophecies or promises made regarding them
c) Nor have the promises been fulfilled by the Jews, by Messiah, or by the church.
* BI also holds that the sceptre itself was later split in a so-called "breach" between the twin sons of Judah, Perez and Zerah. Perez gave rise to David and his lineage, which culminated in the birth of Yahshua the Messiah in Bethlehem, Judea.
Descendants of Zerah, however, allegedly found their way to Ireland in the days of King David. Later, in the eighth century B.C., the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered and taken captive by Assyria. Eventually they ten northern tribes began their wandering, which brought them to northwestern Europe.
Somewhat confusingly, BI also asserts that the tribe of Dan and the “birthright” tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (i.e., Joseph), also ended up the British Isles.
* Later, still, in the seventh century B.C., Babylon took the southern kingdom of Judah. At this time the prophet Jeremiah allegedly spirited a princess of the Judah/Perez line to Ireland to marry a prince of Judah/Zerah, thus "healing" the “mysterious breach" between the two lineages. More importantly, this removed the sceptre from the land of Judah to the British Isles, to preside over Ephraim/Manasseh. This throne or seat of power was later removed to Scotland and then finally to England.
* Eventually, beginning in the 16th century AD, the tribe of Manasseh ended up migrating en masse to North America, leaving their Ephraimite brethren in Britain.
* For over 2,500 years the birthright promises of these two Israelite nations had lay dormant as punishment for their great sins.
* However, beginning around 1800, the punishment expired and the promises kicked in, catapulting Britain and later the U.S. into national greatness, as promised to Abraham some 3,800 years earlier. Virtually every aspect of British and American power (economic, military, cultural) is thus attributed to divine promises and implicitly carries the seal of divine approval.
AGAINST THE ULTIMATE standard of truth, the Allen & Armstrong British-Israelist manifestos failed miserably. Twenty years after my initial encounter with the doctrine, I now know that the arguments for British-Israelism didn't make sense because --
They were false.
The arguments flatly contradict the Bible. They ignore crucial history set forth in scripture and they turn biblical theology upside down. In this article I will attempt to set forth, as clearly and cogently as I can, why I have come to this conclusion.
The cover of Allen's Judah’s Sceptre lauds it as “more thrilling than Western fiction.” Sadly, the comparison is fitting. A careful study of his book suggests that – to borrow Allen's own words -- he possessed a rather “vivid imagination” which he let “run unchecked through the verdant and fruitful fields of speculation ...”
In fact, it gets worse than simple speculation. An honest study of Allen and Armstrong quickly becomes infuriating. One of the first things one learns is: never take the statements of the authors at face value, and always double-check their scripture references!
This is because Allen, as well as his disciples, Herbert and Garner Ted Armstrong, all shared a strange habit of selectively quoting Bible verses carefully and surgically excised from their context. Sometimes the verses are even cut off halfway through; the effect is to mislead -- in some cases, to make the verse seem to say the exact opposite of what it actually says! It is a surreal example of putting "bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter" (Isa. 5:20). Meanwhile, these promoters of B-I tend to ignore the many scriptures which jeopardize or altogether refute their theory.
When attempting to catalogue Allen's many errors, it's easy to get bogged down in the extreme complexity and deviousness of his arguments. In their respective books, the two Armstrongs follow suit -- lurching willy-nilly between topics and lines of argumentation, deftly avoiding the obvious questions that arise in the mind of the careful reader. Since they rely so heavily on Allen they inevitably repeat many of his errors, distortions, and omissions. The resulting Gordian knot of error requires a Herculean effort to unravel and refute exhaustively and coherently -- that is, if one intends to refute each assertion or assumption thrown out. This morning, after wading through the first couple of chapters of Judah's Sceptre for the third or fourth time and filling the margins with notes, I simply threw up my hands. No wonder the book’s so damn long, I thought, in exasperation. I guess it takes 300 pages to twist a handful of scriptures into saying something they don’t say!
This made me recall my first reading of US & BP at age 10; how I was thoroughly confused by large segments of it, yet assumed that HWA was smarter than me and had it all figured out. I began to trust the reasonings of a man more than the word of the Eternal.
Later in the day, I randomly picked up a sermon tape lying on my dresser. The sermon, by Jeff Osborne of Terre Haute, Indiana, carried the title “The Traditions of Men.” Since I had never listened to it, I decided to put it on. A few seconds in, Osborn said:
The bottom line is, Jesus Christ is not complicated ... a good litmus test with regard to doctrinal arguments is that if it takes more pages of somebody explaining their point than there are simple scriptures to back those pages up, then chances are somebody’s headed off the deep end. Usually these persuasive arguments become complicated very fast. And then when you can’t fully follow them and understand them you just assume somebody else is smarter than you and has figured this out, and you begin to trust the reasonings of man.While I do not know what doctrine or doctrines Osborn had in mind when he said the above, I do know that his words applied directly to the British Israelism study in which I was engaged at that very moment.
FORTUNATELY, DESPITE THE confused and complicated "reasonings of men" that comprise BI, refuting it does not require that one refute every single assertion made by Allen or Armstrong. The purported scriptural evidence they cite is actually quite simple, and boils down to two main assertions: one about physical-historical lineage, the other about what exactly Yahweh promised, and to whom. the following assertions:
1) The promises made to Israel were unconditional, inalienable and applicable only to bloodline descendants of Jacob.
2) The U.S., Britain, et al. are, in fact, those fleshly descendants.
Note that pro-BI authors usually tend to focus on proving 2), while neglecting 1). Truckloads of ink have been committed to attempts to find historical, geneaological and even genetic clues to trace the Lost Tribes throughout the centuries of slavery, the rise and fall of empires, and many waves of migration, and to connect them to the Northwestern Europeans. (Curiously ignored is the strong evidence that certain of the Tribes actually found their way not to Europe, but to Africa and India!)
Yet even if we granted that 2) were actually true -- that the genealogical-historical connection between Israel and the Anglo-Saxons et al. were proven -- that does nothing to answer the more important Question 1).
If we accept the key BI contention that the promises were 1) unconditional, 2) strictly fleshly and 3) were never fulfilled anciently, then we are virtually forced to accept BI.
However, if the promises given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not actually unconditional -- or if they were not exclusive to physical blood descendants, but might find fulfillment in other children (such as adopted children) -- then all the speculation about where the Lost Tribes did or didn't go; all the attempts to trace clues through names of places, tribes, rivers or towns, while historically interesting, are not relevant at all to the question of who has inherited the Abrahamic promises today.
The real questions in this matter are:
1) How did YHWH fulfill his promises to Abraham's people anciently?
2) Who are Abraham's seed today?
3) Who will comprise Abraham's seed in the future?
If we base our conclusions on the Old Testament alone, on a narrowest possible definition of "Abraham's seed," BI certainly can appear to have a point. It appears as though Yahweh did not keep his promises in the ancient nation of Israel. For those ancient nations indeed did not possess the land of Canaan forever, but were "cut off" -- driven out of the land in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C., their kingdoms destroyed. Therefore, say British-Israel proponents, "either our theory is correct -- that is, the kingdom and national blessings of Israel must have been transferred to Britain and Europe -- or God is a liar! God's word has failed!" On the surface, it certainly seems a powerful argument.
However, to refute these suppositions and answer the question "is the Eternal a liar, or does he keep his promises?" we only need to go to a section of the Bible which British Israelism carefully avoids.
That would be the New Testament.
On to part two
PHOTOS BORROWED FROM Silver Bear Cafe, HISTORICWINGS.COM
posted by Church Trek at 8:22 PM
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