ISRAEL –

A History Of God's Chosen People
APTER FIFTEEN:

The people of Israel have had a remarkable history and their prophesied future is every bit as amazing. Let's take a look through the pages of the Bible and history and learn about their origins, their fascinating history and then discover what is ahead for these people as written in the pages of the Bible. The reader will be in for many surprises and exciting discoveries.

What is Israel's origin?

After Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, mankind filled the face of the earth and developed its own customs and civilization without God's guidance. Over the next 1600 years, not only had mankind multiplied rapidly on the face of the earth but so had man's evils.

“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, 'I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. 6:5-8).

God then brought the Flood on the whole world but spared Noah and his family who survived by building a giant ark which housed them and a great many of the land animals (Gen. 6-8). Their descendants once again began to be fruitful and multiplied over the face of the earth.

Noah had three sons – Shem, Ham and Japheth. Shem was the father of the white nations of the earth, Ham fathered the black peoples and Japheth fathered many of the Mediterranean, Oriental and Latin American peoples.

It was through the line of Shem that were born the ancestors of the people of Israel. Craig White writes the following in his paper “Israel – Descendants of Arphaxad”:


Shem fathered Arphaxad, the light-bringer. From Arphaxad we have Salah, followed by Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah and then Abram. This is the line that God has worked with both spiritually/religiously and physically/racially.

Protestant commentators in the mid-nineteenth century through to the early twentieth, wrote of a 'righteous line' from Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, down to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel). God chose to work through these people due to certain attributes instilled within them.


Arphaxad's brother, Asshur, was the father of the ancient Assyrian people from whom descend the modern German-speaking peoples today. As we will see there has always been a certain sibling rivalry and antagonism between the Israelites and the peoples descended from Asshur.

The United Church of God (UCG) booklet “The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy” states the following about the origins of Israel and why God chose them for service:


Why did God choose Abraham to be His servant and, through him, bring ancient Israel into existence as a nation? What did God have in mind, and why did He call Abraham into His service at that particular time in history?

After the Flood in the days of Noah [2305 BC], the earth's inhabitants once again began to turn their back on God. By Abraham's time all peoples had again grown corrupt. God then set in motion a major aspect of His plan to offer salvation to mankind. Selecting Abraham was a crucial step in God's long-term plan to turn all nations back to Him. The remainder of the Bible is woven around His plan to reconcile all humanity to Himself…

Then, shortly after the Flood, when humanity again began to oppose the ways of God, the Tower of Babel became the symbol of their rebellion (Genesis 11:1-9). In the context of this rebellion, and the founding of the city-state system of human governance accompanying it, God initiated a new phase in His plan to lead all nations to worship Him.

He decided to select one faithful man and develop his descendants into a group of influential nations chosen for the explicit purpose of teaching and illustrating His values and way of life.

A part of that plan involves God's desire that all nations recognize the stark difference between these two conflicting ways of life [The way of GIVE as opposed to the way of GET as Herbert Armstrong used to put it]. He wants every person to learn that His ways alone can consistently bring true and lasting blessings to all people…

The story of the Israelites is the story of a single family the Creator God chose for His service out of all the earth's peoples…God forged ancient Israel, under His careful guidance, from 12 related tribes, or extended families, whose ancestors were Abraham, his son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob…

Israel was another name for Jacob. When God began to work directly with Jacob He named him Israel, meaning "one who prevails with God" or "a prince with God" (Genesis 32:24-30). Israel's descendants were also to be known as "the seed of Abraham," "the House of Isaac," "the House of Jacob" or simply "Jacob" - and by their individual tribal names of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Benjamin and Joseph.

The patriarch Jacob later adopted Ephraim and Manasseh, his grandsons through his son Joseph, as his own sons in regard to his inheritance. As a result the nation of Israel has historically been said to consist of either 12 or 13 tribes, depending on whether the descendants of Joseph are counted as one tribe (Joseph) or as two (Ephraim and Manasseh) (p. 5-6).


Israel was the name that God gave to Abraham's grandson, Jacob, which means “Overcomer with God”. Jacob had 12 sons and from those sons descended the 12 tribes of Israel. Only one of those 12 tribes are the Jewish people or the Jews as they are called.

Jacob, or Israel as His name was changed to, had twelve sons (Gen. 49). His favourite was Joseph. His older brothers were envious of the special treatment that Jacob paid to Joseph. Their envy became so great that they sold him to slave traders and told Jacob that he was killed by a wild animal (Gen. 37).

Through an amazing set of circumstances Joseph eventually became vizier of Egypt. Through a famine which forced Jacob's family to have to go to Egypt to buy grain, Jacob was eventually re-united with Joseph and moved his whole family to the rich Nile delta area called Goshen in Egypt around 1662 BC (Gen. 46).

Exodus 12:40 appears to say that the Israelites were in slavery in Egypt for a total of 430 years yet Galatians 3:16-17 says that from Abraham leaving for the land of Canaan until the Exodus was also 430 years. The Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) corrects this misunderstanding. It properly translates Exodus 12:40 this way:

“The sojourning of the children and of their fathers, which they sojourned in the land of Canaan AND in the land of Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.”

There were 215 years between Abraham leaving for Canaan around 1877 BC to Jacob's family (the Israelites) moving down to Egypt and then exactly 215 years between Jacob (Israel) going to Egypt around 1662 BC and the Exodus around 1447 BC. Joseph lived another 71 years and then after his death a pharaoh who did not know Joseph dealt harshly with these “foreigners” living in Egypt. He made slaves of them. This period of slavery probably began about 100 years before God raised up Moses and delivered them from their slavery in Egypt.

ighty hand God brought ten devastating plagues on Egypt which eventually made Pharaoh let the Israelites leave Egypt. He then changed his mind after they had left and took his whole army with him to bring them back. The Israelites found themselves trapped between Pharaoh's army and the Red Sea. God then supernaturally parted the waters of the Red Sea and they were then able to flee Pharaoh's army (Exodus 14). The waters collapsed back on Pharaoh and his army after the Israelites finished crossing to the other side.

After this great miracle they journeyed to Mt Sinai where God gave them the Ten Commandments and offered to be their God and bless them physically if they would obey Him. This proposal by God and the acceptance by the nation of Israel became known as the Old Covenant.

Why did God call Israel?

In his book “Mystery of the Ages” Herbert W. Armstrong asks these important questions:


“Did it ever strike you as most unusual that the Great God should have raised up the ancient nation Israel to be His chosen people? Consider these seemingly paradoxical facts:

“God says He is not a respecter of persons. Is He, then, a respecter of nations? Does He have a favourite? Did you ever realize that God denied His chosen people salvation--save only their prophets? That the chosen nation was given only material and national promises--that God's Holy Spirit was inaccessible to them?

Did it ever occur to you that the Holy Bible is the book of and concerning only that one people Israel? And that other nations are mentioned only if and as they came into contact with Israel?” (p.132).


Those are very interesting questions. Let's now look at three reasons why God chose the nation of Israel and how this relationship between God and this chosen nation plays such an important part in God's plan to save mankind. So why did God choose Israel?

[1] To be a model nation that would encourage other nations to want to come under God's rule.

In Exodus 19:3-8 we read:

“And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel…if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.

And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation…So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him. Then all the people answered together and said, 'All that the Lord has spoken we will do.'”

It wasn't a matter of God playing favourites. He said that He didn't call them because they were more numerous or any greater in influence than other nations (Deut. 7:6-8). He said that they were the least of nations when He called them out of Egypt and that He was going to remain faithful to His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to make of them a group of influential nations. God called them not because they deserved it but for a service which would ultimately benefit all mankind.

In Deuteronomy 4:6-8 God told them:

“Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?”

God wanted a free, obedient and happy people free of the many burdens governments put on people. Other peoples would look at them thinking, “How can we be free from the burdens our governments put on us” and from that could spread the idea, “Hey, let's worship Israel's God. Let Israel's God be our king.” It was God's intent that the whole world be blessed through the descendants of Jacob. Craig White makes these comments about this point:


Following on from Arphaxad, racially and religiously, Israel was to be a special people before God and to thereby bring light, truth and righteousness to the world…Israel was also God's bride and wife and He the husband according to Ex 19; 20; Jer 3:14; Ex 16; Jer 31:32. For God to court and choose as wife one of the nations, tells us something about the people He chose (Israel – Descendants of Arphaxad).


[2] To prove that even with the knowledge of God's laws and every other advantage that man still needs the Holy Spirit to live by God's way of life.

Herbert W. Armstrong in the quote above said that the Israelites were denied the Holy Spirit [and spiritual salvation as a result] and that they were only offered physical, material blessings. Only a select few were given the Holy Spirit since the extra help of the Holy Spirit was needed for the jobs that God had in mind for them. What proof is there that Israel was denied access to the Holy Spirit with the exception of their prophets?

In Numbers 11:16-17, 29 we read:

“So the Lord said to Moses: 'Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may stand there with you. Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and will put the same upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it yourself alone'…

Then Moses said to him [Joshua], 'Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!'”

Moses wished that God would give His Holy Spirit to all of the people but he realized God had decreed that only a select few would be given the Holy Spirit to help them fulfill special jobs that God had in mind for them. The apostle Peter when he spoke of the Old Testament prophets said that “the Spirit of Christ…was in them.” (1 Pet.1:10-11) David also mentioned that he had the Holy Spirit (Psalm 51:11).

Why did God choose Israel and then deny them His Holy Spirit and spiritual salvation? Herbert W. Armstrong answers this question the following way:


Educated men and scientists today [say]…'Give us sufficient knowledge, and we will solve all problems and eradicate all evils -- we will create utopia!' Up to that time [the Exodus], mankind had been denied spiritual knowledge and fulfilment from God. God now decided to give them knowledge of his law -- his kind of government -- his way of life! He was going to prove to the world that without his Holy Spirit their minds were incapable of receiving and utilizing such knowledge of the TRUE WAY OF LIFE.

He was going to demonstrate to them that the mind of MAN, with its one spirit, and without the addition of God's Holy Spirit, could not have spiritual discernment -- could not solve human problems, could not cure the evils that were besetting humanity. The nation Israel would be his guinea pig to demonstrate that fact. Also they had the quality heredity of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel). God had chosen a nation of almost perfect original strain in its generations -- its ancestry. So God entered into a covenant with them, making them HIS NATION. It also represented a MARRIAGE covenant, with Israel the wife, promising obedience to her husband -- GOD. It was the physical type of the yet-to-come spiritual NEW COVENANT…

Here was a people of almost clear racial strain, and the God believing heredity of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. Two requisites make a human whatever he becomes in life: heredity and environment. Heredity involves what has been inherited by birth in such areas as health, intelligence and character tendencies. Environment includes all external influences and self-determined motivations -- whether good or evil.

Heredity -- if of good and high quality -- may start one off at an advantage. An inspiring environment, uplifting influences and right self-motivation may further improvement…God started his chosen nation off -- even though brought out of slavery -- with all the natural advantages of a [quality] heredity. God pulled them out of slavery and gave them a new and fresh start. One might say they had everything God-given going for them” (Mystery of the Ages, p.140-141).


Craig White adds to that with these comments:


God was using a nation which was small in number, yet with incredible qualities and abilities, to confound the other nations. There is nothing here to suggest that they were inferior which some speculate to be the case. Rather, they possessed attributes which gave them a capacity to rule, be inventive and be sober and law-abiding over and above others. Yet it was to little avail without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Israel - Descendants of Arphaxad).


The apostle Paul in Romans 8:7-9 wrote that “the carnal mind [the natural mind without God's spirit] is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.” Human nature tends to follow the path of least resistance. Often it takes more effort to do what is right than do what is wrong. Because of this extra effort needed to do what is right, we need the extra power that God provides through His Holy Spirit.

It is the Holy Spirit that helps us to even comprehend God's truth and His way of life. Paul wrote: ”For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11). God said that they lacked an ability to fully comprehend what He was doing with them and the way of life He instructed them in (Deut. 29:2-4).

Did God know that they would fail to live by His way of life and break their covenant without the help of His Holy Spirit?

In Deuteronomy 5:29 God said that he wished that “they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!” God however realized that they didn't have the heart to keep His laws and keep the covenant which they made with God because they lacked His Holy Spirit.

In Deuteronomy 31:20-21 God said:

“When I have brought them to the land flowing with milk and honey, of which I swore to their fathers, and they have eaten and filled themselves and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods and serve them; and they will provoke Me and break My covenant. Then it shall be, when many evils and troubles have come upon them, that this song will testify against them as a witness; for it will not be forgotten in the mouths of their descendants, for I know the inclination of their behavior today, even before I have brought them to the land of which I swore to give them.”

[3] To write through the painful lessons of experience that only living God's way leads to happiness and breaking God's laws only brings misery.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. That's why God has had the history of Israel recorded for us. Their lessons of experience showed time and time again that only living God's way leads to happiness and breaking God's laws will only bring misery.

The apostle Paul wrote the following in 1 Corinthians 10:1-11 to show how their examples have been recorded for our benefit so we don't repeat their mistakes:

“Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, 'The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.'

“Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell; nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.”

On this point Raymond McNair writes:


“They were divinely chosen to serve as an example for the rest of humanity of what happens to those who obey or disobey the Creator God. As one Jewish man painfully remarked in the aftermath of World War II, 'Why doesn't He choose someone else for a while?'” (America and Britain in Prophecy, p.4).


A Brief History of Ancient Israel

After freeing them from slavery in Egypt God finally brought them into the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua and after several years they conquered the land driving most of the Gentiles out of it (1406-1400 BC). For the next 400 years their spiritual condition waxed and waned during the period of the Judges who God raised up from time to time to deliver them out of the hands of various peoples around them.

Finally in the time of the prophet Samuel they rejected God as their king and asked for a human king. Samuel anointed Saul, a tall Benjamite, who was humble to begin with but had a weakness of not following God's instructions and was later rejected as king by God. He reign from 1051-1011 BC. David was then anointed and after the death of Saul he ruled Israel from 1011-971 BC. God helped David through his military efforts extend the Israelite kingdom by the death of his death from the Euphrates to the Sinai.

After David, who ruled righteously and was called by God “a man after my own heart”, his son Solomon reigned. Solomon asked God for wisdom to rule the people when God offered him anything, including riches. God gave him fantastic wisdom and great wealth. The Solomon era was the greatest era in the history of ancient Israel ruling from the Euphrates to the Sinai and a relatively peaceful era after the many wars during his father's time of expanding the area of the kingdom.

Solomon's weakness was taking wives of the peoples around him to the ridiculous point where he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. These foreign women turned his heart away from God to other pagan gods. There is strong indication that he did turn back to God at the end of his life. He wrote the book of Ecclesiastes towards the end of his life which covers many of the bitter lessons that he learned during his life.

Anciently they were at their best when Solomon ruled a mighty Israelite empire (971-931 BC) that briefly stretched from Egypt to the Euphrates River. Rick Sherrod makes the following comments on this period of Israel's history:


Solomon's reign brought a version of the very things which will come in earnest under Christ's beneficent worldwide rule: peace (I Kings 4:24-25, Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:4), happiness and prosperity (I Kings 4:20, 22-23, 10:14-23, 27, Amos 9:13, Micah 4:4), wisdom and the availability of spiritual knowledge and understanding (I Kings 4:29-34, 10:1, 4, 6-9, 2 Chronicles 1:12, the Book of Proverbs, most of which is of Solo uthorship, and Isaiah 11:9), world renown (I Kings 4:21, 10:1, 6, 23-24, Ps. 72:8-11, 19, Isaiah 2:3, Zechariah 9:10), and a massive program of building and construction (I Kings 6:1, 7:1-2, Isaiah 58:12, 61:4, Ezekiel 36:10, 33-36).

Students of the Solomonic period also describe it as an age of intellectual revival and learning (see Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament, p. 477; James Pritchard, Solomon and Sheba, p. 30; and Andre Lemaire's essay in Ancient Israel edited by Hershel Shanks, p. 106)--something which will also be a major feature of Christ's program to reeducate and elevate the newly subjugated populations of the world (Zechariah 8:23, 14:16-19, Revelation 2:27). 35. Indeed, the Solo ge of glory is a biblical forerunner of even greater fulfillments of the physical, material, and national promise made to the descendants of Abraham (Israel in Prophecy: Where are the Lost Ten Tribes?, p.28).


Stephen Collins in his book “The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel…Found!” has produced evidence that shows that like the British empire they also had colonies in many places around the world such as Carthage and even in North America. He writes:


Earlier Israelite nations and empires also fulfilled many of the birthright promises to Abraham. The Phoenician/Israelite Empire under King Solomon controlled Gibraltar, many land trade routes, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and much of the Indian Ocean. Carthage also controlled Gibraltar, the Western Mediterranean, and the Atlantic sea routes to North America.

The Parthians and Scythians [both peoples predominantly Israelite] were land powers, not naval powers, but their strategic location controlled the world's overland trade routes between the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, and Parthia controlled the strategic "Caspian Gates" which sat astride the invasion routes of ancient Asia (p. 390).


Evidence is coming forth to show the Israelite and Phoenician sailors may have visited distant places such as Australia (where hieroglyphics have been found – Egypt was allied to Israel in Solomon's day) and Hawaii (the Hebrew for priest, 'kohen', is almost identical to the Hawaiian word for priest – 'kuhuna').

The wealthy Solomon era came at a cost - heavy taxation on the people. They demanded the taxes be lightened by his son Rehoboam. Rehoboam got bad counsel and raised them higher resulting in a secession of ten tribes under the leadership of Jeroboam (1 Kings 12). The nation of Israel split into two nations, the northern Kingdom of Israel who's capital was in Sa and the southern Kingdom of Judah (from whom the Jews descend) who's capital was in Jerusalem.

Had Jeroboam trusted God, who offered His support if he would obey Him, the Kingdom of Israel would have flourished. Instead, controlled by leadership insecurity, he barred the peoples of the new ten-tribed kingdom from going up to Jerusalem for the Feast days and moved their Feast of Tabernacles to the eighth month in case they might be moved by emotion to want to reunite with the Kingdom of Judah.

The books of Kings records that not one of the Kingdom of Israel's kings ruled righteously but did evil instead and did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam. Could the sins of Jeroboam have been those changes to the religious calendar? As they no longer had the correct form of religion they had little chance of having the true substance of God's true religion. Judah, on the other hand, had fluctuations. Some kings did evil while other kings like Hezekiah, Jehoshaphat, Josiah and Asa were loyal to God. Those fluctuations in power and prosperity were in direct proportion to the degree with which they obeyed or disobeyed God's laws.

The northern Kingdom of Israel (Israelites but NOT Jews) were eventually conquered by Assyria around 722 BC and carried away to near the shores of the Caspian Sea and have never returned to Palestine, as a nation. They included the birthright tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh and eventually became known as the “Lost Tribes of Israel”. The southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered and taken into exile by the Babylonians around 585 BC. A remnant of the Jews returned to Palestine 70 years later. Jesus Christ was born amongst the Jews 500 years later. In 70 AD the Jewish people revolted against the Romans and were defeated and consequently scattered amongst the nations for nearly 2000 years until the Jewish state of Israel was created in 1948.

Where are the 'lost' tribes of Israel today?

The Jewish people, descended mainly from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi are fairly visible to the world today but where did the other tribes, known as the “lost” ten tribes of Israel, go to? Let's look at the evidence that points to where they migrated to.

The Jewish Encyclopedia states the following about the connection between the Nordic peoples of NW Europe and the House of Israel:


"The identification of the Sacae, or the Scythians [recognised by most historians as the ancestors of the British peoples] with the Ten Tribes because they appear in history at the SAME TIME and very nearly in the SAME PLACE, as the Israelites removed by Shalmaneser, is one of the chiefs supports of the theory which identifies the English people, and indeed the whole Teutonic race, with the Ten Tribes. Dan is identified sometimes with Denmark and sometimes with the Tuatha da Danaan of Irish Tradition" (p.250)


Whilst in Sa , the house of Israel became known as the "House of Omri"(1 Kings 16:23) or Beth-Omri and the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II, now in the British Museum, reveals the Assyrian equivalent of "Omri" as Khumri and the "House of Omri" as Bit-Khumri. This is the origin of the Babylonian title Gimiri.


"The description 'Son of Khumri' is thought merely to show that Jehu was an Israelite, because Israelite territory was called 'Bit-Khumri'" (The Ancient records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol.1, p46).


This is also confirmed in Hastings Dictionary of the Bible which says:


"The Assyrians first became acquainted with Israel in the time of Omri, and they called the country of the TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL 'the land of the house of Omri' even after the extinction of his dynasty"(Vol.1, Article, Omri, p.688).


“The Old Testament in the Light of Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia” states that:


"Omri was likewise pronounced in accordance with the older system, before the grain became ayim. Humri shows that they said at the time Ghomri" (3rd ed., p.339).


Raymond McNair in "Keys to North-West European Origins" says the following:


Here follows excerpts from a translation of the Behistun Rock Inscriptions by L.W.King and R.Thompson, "Thus sayeth Darius, the king, 'These are the provinces which are subject unto me, and by the grace of Auramanda became I king of them'"(The inscriptions of Darius the Great of Behistun). This translation translates all of the words on the Behistun Rock Inscriptions in three parallel columns. The first column contains the Persian, the second the Susian or the Elamite, the third contains the Babylonian translation.

These inscriptions mention twenty-two provinces. The nineteenth province listed by all three of these parallel columns is called in the Persian language "Scythia" (Phonetic: Saka), in the second column this same province is called in the Susian language "Scythia" (Phonetic: Sakka) and the third column in the Babylonian language is translated, "in the land of the Cimmerians" (Phonetic: Gi-mi-ri)(p.132).


Cimmerians is merely a corruption of Sa ns while Sacae or Sakka is derived from the patriarch Isaac. According to Gawler in his book "Our Scythian Ancestors":


"The word Saacae is fairly and without straining our imagination translatable as Isaacites"(p.6).


The name Saxons is also derived from Sacsons meaning Isaac's sons. Also the words Scythian and Scot are derived from the Hebrew Succoth which means a booth, tabernacle or temporary dwelling.


"Whether at the same time these Gimiri or Saka are really Cymric Celts we can not positively say...But...the Babylonian title of Gimiri, as applied to the Sacae, is not a vernacular but a foreign title, and may simply mean THE TRIBES"(History of Herodotus, Bk. IV., Appendix, Note 1).


No nation or people have been spoken for so long and so consistently by the words "the tribes" as the people of Israel.

According to the Behistun Rock Inscriptions the Gimiri (Ghomri) were the same people as the Cimmerians, the Sacae and the Scythians, who gave birth to the Cymri Celts, Saxons, Goths and other peoples of North-Western Europe. Turner states that:


"The Kimmerioi of the Greeks were the Kimbroi of the Greeks, and the Cimbri (Kimbri) of the Latin writers"(History of the Anglo-Saxons, p.28).


Robert Owen in his book “The Kymry” says:


"In leaving the far east, they, the Kimmerians or Kymry must have occupied a country south of the Caucasus, extending from the river Araxes to the Palus Habotia or Sea of Azof, where Herodotus remarks on the many places yet bearing the name of Kimmerian in his time"(The Kymry,p.11).


This is exactly where the Israelites were exiled to by the Assyrians! Grant says that:


"The Nordics also swept down through the Thrace into Greece and Asia Minor, while other large and important groups entered Asia partly through the Caucasus Mountains but in greater strength they migrated around the northern and eastern sides of the Caspian-Aral Sea"(The Passing of the Great Race, p.214).


Again we see that the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians migrated from exactly the same area that the Israelites were deported to after the Assyrians invaded Israel.

The Israelites after their exile became known as the Scythians around the northern shore of the Black Sea and the Sacae or Sakka in the area of Persia. They came via the Danube, Central Europe, Greece and the Baltic into Scandinavia, Britain and North-West Europe after numerous different migrations.

In History of the Anglo-Saxons Turner writes:


"The Anglo-Saxon, Lowland Scot, Normans, Danes have all sprung from that great fountain of the human race which we have distinguished by the term Skythian or Gothic… Sakai-Suna or the Sons of Sakai, abbreviated into Saksun, which is the same sound as Saxon, seems a reasonable etymology of the word 'Saxon'"(Vol.1, p.56, 87).


God prophesied in the Bible, "In Isaac your seed shall be called" (Gen.21:12) and the Saxons or Sacasons are, in fact, the sons of (I)saca. John Wilson in his Languages of Europe states that:


"The basis of the English language may, to a remarkable extent, be found in Hebrew. Many of our most common words, and names of familiar objects, are almost pure Hebrew."


The ancient Welsh language is very similar to the Hebrew and has the same characteristic of almost being vowel-less as is the Hebrew.

The Scythian language indicates that the Scyths were descendants of the Hebrew-speaking "Lost Ten Tribes". The Scyths spoke Scythiac which is classified this way:


"Scythiac...Scythian (language)...There is a strong similarity between Hebrew and the Scythian languages"(A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 1971 ed., Vol.VII, art.,"Scythiac").


The Scythians were nomads, dwelling mainly in tents from which the word Scythian is derived. They raised crops, but their main talent was in tending cattle, sheep, goats and especially horses. They were acknowledged to have been the best horseman of their day, and no cavalrymen could match their skill when it came to fighting on horseback.


"The graves of Scythian kings and nobles revealed many objects of gold and bronze, which bear witness to outstanding technical and artistic skill"(World History from Earliest Times to 1800, Vol.3, p.320).


Raymond McNair makes these comments about archaeological proof of the Israelite origins of the Scythians:


Authentic gravestones have been found in the region of the Crimea (or Krim--named after the Cimmerians), north of the Black Sea, bearing Hebrew inscriptions. Three of note were referred to by J.W. Bosanquet in his article, "Synchronous History," published in the 1873 Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, volume 2. One reads, "This is the tombstone of Buki, the son of Izchak, the priest; may his rest be in Eden, at the time of the salvation of Israel. In the year 702 of the years of our Exile." The second states, "Rabbi Moses Levi died in the year 726 of our Exile." And the third says, "Zadok, the Levite, son of Moses, died 4000 after the creation, 785 of our exile."

Counting from an eighth century B.C. captivity, the years just mentioned indicate that these people died around the beginning of the Christian Era. Bosanquet says that, according to Neubauer's History of the Crimean Tombs (p. 29), the Israelites there claimed "to be descended from the Ten Tribes." So, many descendants of those Israelites who were deported to Assyria still lived north of the Black Sea at this time.

How these people had gotten there is recorded in an amazing epigraph found on another tombstone in this same region. Here is C. Coffin's translation of A.E. Harkavy's German version (published in Academia Scientiarum Imperialis Memoires, St. Petersburg, vol. 24, no. 1, 1863, p. 9):
I Jehuda ben Mose ha-Nagolon of the East country, ben Jehuda ha-Gibbor of the tribe of Naphtali, of the generation Schillem, who went into the exile with the exiles, who were driven away with Hosea, the king of Israel, together with the tribes of Simeon and Dan and some of the generations of the other tribes of Israel, which (all) were led into exile by the enemy Shalmanesser from Schomron [Sa ] and their cities to Chalach [Halah], that is, Backack and to Chabar [Habor], that is, Chabul and to Hara, that is, Herat, and to Gosan [Gozan], the cities of the exiled tribes of Reuben, Gad and the half of Manasseh, which Pilneser [Tiglath-Pileser] drove into exile and settled there (and from there they scattered themselves over the whole land of the East as far as Sinim)--when I returned from wandering in the land of their exile and from journeying in the dwelling places of the descendants of their generations in their resting places of the Land of Krim [the Crimea] (America and Britain in Prophecy, p.42).


These powerful, nomadic tribes first appear in the very same area that the Israelites were taken captive and deported to 50 years earlier.


"The Scythians...apparently first appear in written history in the annals of Esarhaddon (the Assyrian king from 681-668 B.C.) and seem to be centred at that time in what is today Northwest Iran"(The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol.5, art.Scythians).


The Parthian empire ruled much of Mesopotamia and the area known today as Iran around the time of the Roman Empire. Stephen Collins writes the following on just how powerful an empire they were and who they were:


Parthia was a vast ancient empire which ruled over Asian territory at the same time that the Roman Empire ruled over the Mediterranean region. Although Rome launched many wars of aggression against Parthia, none succeeded in their aims of subjugating the Parthians. In fact, Parthia administered many crushing defeats to Roman armies as these two ancient "superpowers" oppose other for centuries. In spite of the fact that much is known about Parthia's history, it is almost totally ignored in history…

A famous nineteenth century historian, George Rawlinson, wrote books extensively documenting the history of the Parthian empire. They were entitled “Parthia” and “The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy”. The Greco-Roman classical writers recorded a voluminous amount of information about Parthia and Rawlinson extensively cites the classical writers in his histories of the Parthians. He introduces “The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy” with these words:

"...the picture of the world during the Roman period…put before students in “Histories of Rome,” was defective, not to say false, in its omission to recognise the real position of Parthia...as a counterpoise to the power of Rome, a second figure in the picture not much inferior to the first, a rival state dividing with Rome the attention of mankind and the sovereignty of the known earth. Writers of Roman history have been too much in the habit of representing Rome as…a Universal Monarchy, a Power unchecked…having no other limits than those of the civilised worId…the truth seems to be that…from the first to the last ...there was always in the world a Second Power, civilised or semi-civilised, which in a true sense balanced Rome, acted as a counterpoise and a check…This power for nearly three centuries (B.C. 64 - A.D. 225) was Parthia.”

The concept that Rome had equal rivals in the ancient world will come as a surprise to most readers...The lack of information on Parthia likely results from the fact that history has been taught almost exclusively from a Greco-Roman perspective. This pre-occupation with Greco-Roman history has led to major misunderstandings about the reality of the ancient world. In earlier chapters we learned that ignorance of Phoenician and Carthaginian history has led to modern man's unawareness of the role of North America in ancient history. This was due to the Phoenician / Carthaginian monopoly of Gibraltar which for centuries, denied the Greco-Romans any maritime access to lands beyond the Mediterranean Sea. As a result, Greece and Rome were far less advanced than the Phoenicians and Carthaginians in understanding world geography.

Rawlinson states, “there was a strong conviction on the part of those who came in contact with the Parthians, that they were Scyths” and adds "that the Scythic character of the Parthians is asserted in the strongest terms by the ancient writers. Rawlinson cites the classical historians Strobe, Justin and Arrian in stating:

"The manners of the Parthians had, they tell us, much that was Scythic in them. Their language was half-Scythic, half-Median. They armed themselves in the Scythic fashion. They were, in fact, Scyths in descent, in habits, in character.”

This Scythian origin of the Parthians is further confirmed by the fact that many times in their history, ousted Parthian kings sought refuge among the Sacae tribes of the Scythians or replenished their armies with soldiers from Scythian tribes. This recurrent Parthian reliance on the Sacae tribes of Scythia in times of trouble indicates that the Parthians and Scythians were natural allies (The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel!…Found, p.205-207).


As we have already seen the Scythians, who were the same race as the Parthians, were predominantly Israelites.

The Parthians and Scythians are the people written about by Josephus as the extremely numerous descendants of the ten tribes of Israel. Josephus, who lived in the first century A.D., wrote the following about the ten tribes of Israel


"The ten tribes are beyond the Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers" (Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI, Chapter V, Section 2, Emphasis added).

At the time that Josephus wrote the Euphrates River had long been the recognized border between the Roman and Parthian Empires. For Josephus to write (from his perspective within the Roman Empire) that the ten tribes were beyond the Euphrates River was another way of saying the ten tribes were “in Parthia”, even as many Americans would recognize the phrase “beyond the Rio Grande” as a euphemism for “in Mexico (The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel…Found!, p.220).


“Wise men from the east” (Matt. 2:1) came to visit Christ when He was born. According to Stephen Collins the Greek word for wise men is “magian” and literally means “Persian astronomer or priest” (The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel…Found!, p.268). Since Parthia ruled the area of Persia these Magi would have been from Parthia. As Christ was a descendant of David he may well have been related to the ruling class of the Parthians.

This connection with the Parthian ruling class may have been part of the reason for the reluctance that the Romans had to crucify Christ, only doing so when backed into it by the Jewish religious leaders. As “all Jerusalem” (Matt. 2:3) was troubled at the arrival of the Magi this was a very public event and it must have been a large caravan of officials with much treasure and military escorts to guarantee their protection. The Israelite Parthians were looking forward to the Messiah coming just as the Jews were at the time.

The historical term “barbarian” is very misleading for the Celtic and Scythian tribes as they migrated westward from the area around the Black and Caspian Seas. Though, to some degree nomadic, they had a highly developed culture. The pre-Roman British relics at the British Museum show a higher degree of technical skill than the Roman and Greek relics of the time. While Rome conquered most of its huge empire with its impressive war machine it never could conquer the Britons. It became a Roman dominion through a treaty in AD 120 in the days of Emperor Hadrian.

Israel has been a great blessing on the world (Gen.12:3) because of what they have contributed to civilisation in terms of culture, technical inventions and many other things. The descendants of ancient Israel from the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Scythians, Parthians, Barbarians, Celts and Anglo-Saxons truly have a most fascinating and profound history.

The Scottish Declaration of Independence, written in 1320 AD by King Robert the Bruce (who was popularized in the 1995 movie Braveheart) states:


"The nation of the Scots has been distinguished by many honours, which passing from greater Scythia through the Mediterranean Sea and through the Pillars of Hercules, and sojourning in Spain, amongst the most savage tribes through a long course of time, could nowhere be subjugated by any people, however barbarous, and coming thence 1200 years after the outgoings of THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL they, by their many victories and infinite toil, acquired for themselves the possessions in the west which they now hold."


Robert the Bruce was only one of a number of other prominent individuals who knew the English-speaking peoples descended from the tribes of Israel. In 1588 Sir Francis Drake, writing to his old friend, John Foxe, said:


"Wherefore I shall desire you to continue faithful remembrance of us in your prayers, that our purpose may take good effect, as God may be glorified, His church, our Queen and country preserved, and the enemies of truth utterly extinguished, that we may have continued peace IN ISRAEL."


Most of Scotland, Ireland and Wales were populated by the Celts who were a mixture of Judah (Scots) and Danites (Irish) while England was settled by the Britons (Ephramites) prior to the Roman occupation, many of who were evangelized by Joseph of Arimathea and some of the apostles who were charged by Christ to preach to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (Matt. 10:6). In the fifth and sixth centuries AD the Angles (Manassites) and the Saxons (Ephraimites) crossed the English Channel from western Germany.

The Angles settled in the eastern Anglia counties such as Norfolk and Suffolk. The Saxons settled the rest of England and pushed the original Britons further west in England. By far the heaviest concentration of people who migrated to America from England came from the Anglia counties where the Angles had settled. God was separating many people of the half-tribe of Manasseh from their Ephraimite brothers.

Oddly enough the Angles, whose descendants compromise much of America's population, gave their name to England which means “Angle-land”. The word Angle is probably derived from the Hebrew word “Eglah” meaning “Heifer of the wild ox or unicorn”, which is one of the animals on the British coat of arms (Today, Tomorrow and the Great Beyond, p.97).

Stephen Collins makes these comments on the similarities between the tribe of Manasseh, the Scythians and the Americans:


When Manasseh received its inheritance in ancient Palestine, it was given an unusually large area of land. It included two portions of land divided in the middle by the River Jordan. Even at the beginning, the tribe of Manasseh preferred "wide-open spaces"…When America was being settled, Manassehites were especially drawn to North America because of its promise of considerable living space. When Americans spread westward toward the Pacific Ocean, they migrated in wagon trains. In doing so, they carried on a tradition of the ancient Scythians. The Scythians also migrated via covered wagons, which are described in the following words:

“The wagons in which the women and children travelled had from four to six wheels. They were covered with felt roofs and the space inside was divided into two or three compartments. Little clay models of these prototypes of the modern caravan have been found in some... Scythian burials.”

Like the cowboys of the American "West," the Scythians also 'excelled at lassoing." With their horse riding, lassoing, and “wagon trains”, Scythian culture resembled the pioneer days of the American West (without the six-shooters). Perhaps the power of genetic influence is more potent than generally realized. As in ancient times, the modern Manassehites found their home in the "wide open spaces" of North America…

It is apparent that God drew Manassehites from Europe to North America to found the United States of America (the great single nation of Manasseh, that was prophesied in Genesis). God stated in Amos 9:9 that he “wouldn't lose a single grain [a person or family unit]” of the Israelites as they were “sifted” through the nations, showing that God kept track of all the families of the Israelite tribes in order to fulfil be prophecies about them.

While Manasseh loves wide-open spaces, Ephraim has a habit of sending out colonies from a cramped homeland. Although Ephraim, was the chief tribe of Israel, its inheritance in Palestine was very small. Since Ephraim, like Manasseh, was promised a huge population by God, where did their growing numbers go?…Israel colonized widely in North Africa, Europe and even North America. Because Ephraim's inheritance in Palestine remained small, it had to "export” its growing population to new colonies (The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel…Found!, p.390-392).


Raymond McNair makes these comments about how God kept track of the Israelites and guided other Manassites still in northern Germany to America:


[In the Encyclopedia Britannica we read]: "There have been great oscillations in the actual emigration by sea. It first exceeded 100,000 soon after the Franco-German War (1872, 126,000), and this occurred again in the years 1880 to 1892. Germany lost during these thirteen years more than 1,700,000 inhabitants by emigration. The total number of those who sailed for the United States from 1820 to 1900 may be estimated at more than 4,500,000....

"The greater number of the more recent emigrants [to the U.S.] was from the agricultural provinces of northern Germany--West Prussia, Posen, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, and sometimes the emigration reached 1% of the total population of these provinces. In subsequent years the emigration of native Germans greatly decreased" (11th ed., vol. 11).

What is so special about northern Germany? Notice this reference from Ripley's Races of Europe: "Northwestern Germany--Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Westphalia--is distinctly allied to the physical type of the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes. All the remainder of the Empire--no, not even excluding Prussia, east of the Elbe--is less Teutonic [long-headed] in type; until finally in the essentially Alpine broadheaded populations of Baden, Wurttemburg, and Bavaria in the south, the Teutonic race passes from view" (p. 214).

It is generally known that the northern "Low Germans" differ from the southern "High Germans." But there were differences even among the Low Germans.

Another source comments, "A separate study, in the case of Germany at least would seem to indicate that those [immigrants] who went to the U.S.A. in the 1800s were somehow different from those who stayed behind and German officials themselves remarked on such a difference. The claim for such a distinction is based on consideration of physical types, areas-of-origin within Germany, religious orientation and social outlook" (Yair Davidy, The Tribes, Russell-Davis Publishers, p. 430). It seems America's Puritan founders were indeed right in believing that God was sifting a whole nation! (America and Britain in Prophecy, p.33-34)


In Isaiah 11:13 we read about an interesting millennial prophecy that highlights another difference between the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh which has been fulfilled in modern times:

“And the envy of Ephraim shall depart, and the foes of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not vex Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim."

Stephen Collins makes these comments on this interesting prophecy:


Notice that while “Ephraim” is prophesied to have a “vexing” relationship with the tribe of Judah until the Messianic Kingdom (the 'kingdom of God') is established, "Manasseh" is not mentioned as having a vexing relationship with Judah. By omitting Manasseh, this prophecy indicates that Manasseh will not have a "vexing” relationship with Judah in the latter day period preceding the Messianic kingdom on earth. How has this been fulfilled in our modern times?

The British and Jews have had a difficult relationship in modern times. In fact, much "bad blood" between the two was caused during the time of the English Mandate over Palestine from 1945 till 1948. The Jews felt the English had a pro-Arab bias during this period of English rule which predated Jewish Independence, and the English regarded the Jews as "terrorists" who killed British troops, blew up the King David Hotel, etc. The British navy intercepted boatloads of Jewish refugees, preventing their arrival in "the Holy Land (the movie “Exodus" offers insights into this period of time). The British blockade (along with Jewish acts of sabotage and English executions of Jewish saboteurs) led to very hostile Jewish-British relations.

While the British (Ephraim) and Jews (Judah) were barely on speaking terms, the United States of America (Manasseh) was one of the Israelis' strongest advocates in the United Nations, and the United States officially recognized Jewish Independence as soon as it was proclaimed. In the various Jewish-Arab wars, the United States of America was Israel's great ally and protector, rushing arms and support to the Jewish state in its wars. Sometimes, the United States was the only friend Israel had at the United Nations. It was the United States which midwifed the famous “Camp David Accords" which united President Jimmy Carter with Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel in 1978 in a famous photo of reconciliation.

The prophecy of Isaiah 11:13 has been fulfilled in modern times. While Ephraim (the British) and Judah (the Israelis) have, indeed, “vexed” each other, Manasseh (the United States) has had a very favorable relationship with the Israelis (The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel…Found!, p.396-397).


Israel was to number at least in the tens of millions (Gen.24:60). They did not go east for Asia is inhabited by the Oriental, Indian, Arabic and Russian peoples. They did not go south into Africa or to Latin America. Bible prophecy shows they went west (Isa.49:12, Hos.11:10, 12:1). By the process of elimination they must be west of Central Europe because that is where the Beast power to punish Israel will come from.

We have only hit the tip of the iceberg with all of these powerful quotes on the origins of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. There are volumes of history and information that truly back up the fact that the NW Europeans and the English-speaking peoples have descended from the very same Israelites that came out from Egypt under Moses nearly 3500 years ago.

Is the Throne of David still with us today?

David was a man after God's own heart (1 Sam. 13:14). Because he was a man with a tender conscience toward his Creator, God made a separate and distinct covenant with him in addition to the one He had made with Israel. When David wanted to build a house for God, He sent a message to David through the prophet Nathan:

“When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father and he shall be My son. If he commits iniquity, I will chastise him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. YOUR THRONE SHALL BE ESTABLISHED FOREVER” (2 Samuel 7:12-16).

This promise is again repeated in Psalm 89:

“I have make a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, Your seed [dynasty – Moffatt] will I establish for ever and build up your throne to all generations” (verses 3-4).

So far as the world knows the last king to sit on the throne of David was Zedekiah of Judah when the Babylonians conquered Judah and took them off captive to the land of Babylon in the year 585 BC. The throne of David was never restored when the Jews returned to the land of Palestine after their captivity.

God promised to David that his throne would last to all generations or FOREVER. If God has not failed to keep His word we need to look for David's throne (described as the throne of the Eternal in 1 Chronicles 29:23) elsewhere than the land of Palestine where the Jewish state of Israel is today.

When Judah was taking by Babylon into captivity Nebuchadnezzar killed Zedekiah and all his sons (Jer. 37:1-9), seemingly destroying the royal dynasty. Former King Jeconiah (Jehoiachin) was at that time, in the dungeons of Babylon and he had sons to continue David's line. It was through his line of descendants that Jesus Christ was born (Matt. 1:12-16). God decreed the following about Jeconiah:

“Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, SITTING UPON THE THRONE OF DAVID, AND RULING ANY MORE IN JUDAH”! (Jer. 22:30).

As far as the throne of David was concerned he was childless. God had determined that none of his children would ever occupy the throne. God's commission to the prophet Jeremiah was to be:

“over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, and to destroy and to throw down, to build, and to plant” (Jer. 1:10).

God would use him to help keep the royal line alive and plant it in another land. Nebuchadnezzar did not kill the King Zedekiah's daughters who escaped with Jeremiah (Jer. 43:5-7, Isa. 37:32-33). It would be through one of the daughters of Zedekiah that God would keep the throne of David alive. What land did God lead them to? In Ezekiel 17 God says:

“I will also take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will set it; I will crop it from the top of his young twigs a tender one [a daughter] and will plant it upon a high mountain and eminent. In the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit (verses 22-23).

God directed them to NW Europe (Isa. 49:12) to where the House of Israel had migrated to. Herbert Armstrong relates these details about how the Throne of David was transplanted to the British Isles:


The real ancient history of Ireland is very extensive, though colored with some legend. But with the facts of biblical history and prophecy in mind, one can easily sift out the legend from the true history in studying ancient Irish annals. Throwing out that which is obviously legendary, we glean from various histories of Ireland the following: Long prior to 700 B.C. a strong colony called "Tuatha de Danaan" (tribe of Dan) arrived in ships, drove out other tribes, and settled there. Later, in the days of David, a colony of the line of Zarah arrived in Ireland from the Near East.

Then, in 569 B.C. (date of Jeremiah's transplanting), an elderly, white-haired patriarch, sometimes referred to as a "saint," came to Ireland. With him was the princess daughter of an eastern king and a companion called "Simon Brach," spelled in different histories as Breck, Berech, Brach, or Berach. The princess had a Hebrew name Tephi -- a pet name -- her full name being Tea-Tephi…

This royal party included the son of the king of Ireland who had been in Jerusalem at the time of the siege. There he had become acquainted with Tea-Tephi. He married her shortly after 585 -- when the city fell. Their young son, now about 12 years of age, accompanied them to Ireland. Besides the royal family, Jeremiah brought with them some remarkable things, including a harp, an ark, and a wonderful stone called "lia-fail," or "stone of destiny"… many kings in the history of Ireland, Scotland, and England have been coronated sitting over this stone -- including the present queen. The stone rests today in Westminster Abbey in London, and the coronation chair is built over and around it. A sign beside it labels it "Jacob's pillar-stone" (Gen. 28:18). [The stone of Scone was taken from Scotland to Westminster in 1296 by Edward I (the king of Edward during the time setting of the 1995 movie Braveheart) and was only in the last few years returned to Scotland.]

The royal husband of the Hebrew princess Tea was given the title Herremon upon ascending the throne of his father. This Herremon has usually been confused uch earlier Gede the Herremon in David's day -- who married his uncle Ith's daughter Tea. The son of this later king Herremon and Hebrew princess continued on the throne of Ireland and this same dynasty continued unbroken through all the kings of Ireland; was overturned and transplanted again in Scotland; again overturned and moved to London, England, where this same dynasty continues today in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.


Prince Michael of Albany, potential heir to the throne of Scotland in the event of Scottish independence, states in his book “The Forgotten Monarchy of Scotland” that the kings of Scotland are descendants from the line of the House of Judah.


“Scotland's royal heritage is the oldest in Europe, and it can be traced back well into the BC era. The legacy of the Scots kings was hewn on the Stone of Destiny, the venerated relic of the Beth-el Covenant (Genesis 28:18-22) …

“… the Royal House of Dalriada, through which all Kings of Scots traced their succession from the biblical Kings of Judah, from the Princes of Greater Scythia …many regarded the Stewarts as their Biblical kings. Prior to becoming High Stewards of Scotland, the Stewarts' maternal forebears were Seneschals in Brittany, and they were of the same ancestral stock as the earlier Merovingian Kings of the Franks, in descent from the ancient Royal House of Judah.” (p. 12, 70, 198-99).

When Christ returns He shall take over the throne of David that God has continued to preserve since the days of His promise David (Luke 1:32, Gen. 49:10).

Why have Britain and America become so prosperous
and successful in these last days?

The unprecedented rise of the English-speaking peoples of America and Britain to their dominant positions of power and influence over the modern world is an amazing story. Why has history been so benevolent and economically generous to Britain and the United States? Why have they been blessed so favourably over the nations that preceded them in history? Surprising as it may sound, both were destined according to Bible prophecy to become superpowers.

The descendants of Jacob's son, Joseph, were offered incredible birthright promises of national wealth and prosperity. These blessings were originally made by God to Abraham and passed on to Isaac, Jacob and then onto his son Joseph. The story of the blessings of Abraham or the birthright promises is yet another fascinating part of the story of the nation of Israel.

When God called Abraham He promised to multiply his descendants and make a great and powerful nation from them. We read of this in Genesis 12:1-3:

“Now the Lord had said to Abram [Abraham]: 'Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This promise was expanded in Genesis 17:5-6. Not only would a great nation come from Abraham but many nations. In Genesis 28:14 God said to Abraham:

“Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

There are two aspects to these blessings which have become known as the birthright blessing or blessings of Abraham. There are the national physical blessings of great prosperity and then there is the great spiritual blessing that God promised to him.

When God told Abraham “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 28:14), this promise was dual. God also had in mind the promise that Jesus Christ would be born from His descendants and that His death would make it possible to save mankind from the penalty of their sins (Gal. 3:16).

The national, physical blessings were the other part of the birthright promise to Abraham. Now why did God make these promises to Abraham's descendants? God wanted Israel was to be a model nation so that other nations would see the benefits of living by God's way so they might want to come under His rule and live by His way. With that in mind, what was the purpose for offering such prosperity to Abraham's descendants?


“God's grand purpose - anciently, today and tomorrow - for Abraham's descendants has never varied. He selected them to be a blessing to 'all the families of the earth' (Genesis 12:3). To make this possible He promised them every material advantage they would ever need” (The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy, p.34).


These material blessings would make it possible for them to help and benefit many other nations all around the world.

Abraham and his wife Sarah were quite old when God promised them a son. He was 75 when he left for the land of Canaan. God had promised them a son but God did not appear again for many years and so they took matters into their own hands.

As per an ancient custom when wives were barren, Sarah asked Abraham to beget a son for them with Sarah's servant girl, Hagar. She became pregnant and bore him a son named Ishmael. Ishmael became the father of the people who we call the Arabs (Gen. 17:20).

God told Abraham that the birthright promises would not go to Ishmael but instead would be passed on through a son that would come from Abraham's wife, Sarah (Gen. 17:15-21). What would have happened if Sarah and Abraham had simply waited for God to provide the solution and not taken matters into their own hands? Perhaps generations of strife could have been avoided. The geopolitical scene in the Middle East today might be very different, with the ever-present threat of war much diminished.

God promised that Ishmael would not go without any blessing. God promised that from him would come a great nation (Gen. 17:20, 21:18). This promise was fulfilled a few centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the hundred years that followed the death of Mohammed in 632 the Arabs, with their new religion of Islam conquered all of North Africa, Spain, the Middle East, Arabia, Persia, Armenia, Afghanistan and a third of India - an empire greater in size than that of the Roman Empire.

If Ishmael becoming a great nation meant an empire larger than the Roman Empire then how much greater are the birthright promises that God promised would come through Isaac's descendants?

Given that Sarah was already an old woman well beyond her childbearing years the birth of Isaac was truly a miracle from God. Isaac later had two sons, Esau and Jacob. As the oldest, Esau was entitled to the birthright but he did not value it and sold it to his brother Jacob. Esau's descendants in time became the Turks and the Palestinians.

These birthright promises were passed down through Isaac and Jacob. All of Jacob's 12 sons would share in the blessings promised to Abraham but the double portion of this birthright was passed onto Joseph sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. In Genesis 35:11 God said to Jacob:

“I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; A NATION AND A COMPANY [OR COMMONWEALTH] OF NATIONS shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.”

This part of the birthright promise was passed onto Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh in Genesis 48:19:

“He (Manasseh) also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother (Ephraim) shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.”

In Genesis 49 Jacob gave prophecies about what the descendants of each of his 12 sons would be like in the end-time before Christ's return. About Joseph he said:


"Joseph is like a grapevine that produces much fruit, a healthy vine watered by a spring, whose branches grow over the wall. Archers attack him violently and shoot at him angrily, but he aims his bow well. His arms are made strong. He gets his power from the Mighty God of Jacob and his strength from the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel. Your father's God helps you. God Almighty blesses you. He blesses you with rain from above, with water from springs below, with many babies born to your wives, and many young ones born to your animals. The blessings of your father are greater than the blessings of the oldest mountains, greater than the good things of the long-lasting hills. May these blessings rest on the head of Joseph..." (Genesis 49:22-26, New Century Version).

“This prophetic passage tells us that Joseph's descendants 'in the last days' will live in a productive, well-watered and fruitful land. They will be a people who have greatly expanded their territory and influence - politically, militarily, economically and culturally - a people 'whose branches grow over the wall,' or beyond their natural borders. They will be a people that, on occasion, will be attacked by other nations but will generally be victorious. Their triumphs will sometimes seem 'miraculous' or 'providential' because the Almighty God is their helper and source of blessings. They will be a people who live in an unusually favourable climate that easily supports their steadily expanding population. They will enjoy the blessing of good crops, vast herds of livestock and extensive natural resources such as fine stands of timber and valuable minerals mined from their soil” (The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy, p.10-11).


Of the twelve tribes of Israel, the two half-tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were the sons of Joseph, were to receive the fantastic birthright blessings of God which included promises of staggering national prosperity. They would receive “the dew of heaven, of the fat places of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine" (Gen. 27:28-29, Deut. 33:13-17).

How Did the British Empire Start?

The prophecies of the birthright promises have come to pass in the British Empire and the United States of America. The Americans, descended from Manasseh became the single great nation and the British, as the descendants of Ephraim, became a company or commonwealth of nations populating countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other countries.

British histori mes Morris in his book “Pax Britannica” says regarding the British Empire:


It was the largest empire in the history of the world, comprising nearly a quarter of the land mass of the earth, and a quarter of the population...In fact...it continued to grow until 1933 when its area was 13.9 million square miles and its population 493 million...The Roman Empire in its prime comprised perhaps 120 million people in an area of 2.5 million square miles…

The acquisition of it all had been a jerky process. Absence of mind it never was, but it happened so obscurely that to the ordinary Briton the rise of the Empire must have seemed more like some organic movement than the conscious result of national policies. There seemed no deliberation to it. One thing simply led to another (p21,27,42).


At its height the British Empire was over 5 times the size of the Roman Empire and ruled over 4 times as many people as the Roman Empire. Compared with the Roman Empire's bloody military conquests, British military forces shed very little blood and its empire was primarily established through trade and commerce.

How did it all come about? A number of factors laid the foundation for Britain's greatness. Raymond McNair makes these comments regarding one of those factors:


By the early 1500s, Spain had become the most powerful nation in Europe--enjoying almost total naval supremacy. England, on the other hand, was only an average power. But then came England's victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588. Amazingly, the Armada was defeated - not so much by English might as by stormy weather! Churchill later wrote that "the defeat of the Armada came as a MIRACLE.... One of the medals struck to commemorate the victory bears the inscription 'Afflavit Deus et dissipantur' - 'God blew and they were scattered'" (History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 2).

From that day forward, English sailors confidently believed they could more than hold their own against their Spanish counterparts. It was England's naval confidence on the high seas which gave her the courage to make permanent settlements around the world.

Chief among the world's colonizing nations were the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic peoples from the British Isles. Only Bible prophecy explains why, beginning in the early 1600s, the colonizing instinct became so strong in these peoples. God, remember, had promised Jacob, "Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south" (Gen. 28:14). So Jacob's descendants were destined to become the world's foremost colonizers! (America and Britain in Prophecy, p.45).


The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and royal dynastic union of England and Scotland under the religiously tolerant James I (1603-1625) helped to ensure that England would be free from Catholic domination.

Having seen her father, Henry VIII, mistreat his wives, Queen Elizabeth I wanted no man to rule over her and did not want to have children having seen two of her stepmothers die in childbirth so she remained unmarried for the rest of her life and became known as the Virgin Queen. She was very popular monarch who made the Church of England the established church. The Elizabethan age was characterized by an exuberant national spirit that she inspired.


Under Elizabeth's direction, the government began to regulate commerce and industry on a national scale. England grew to be a great maritime power with the exploits of such mariners as Sir Francis Drake…Foreign trade, encouraged by the government, became a great capitalistic enterprise. The Royal Exchange of London was opened in 1566, and the company of merchants that later became the English East India Company was chartered in 1600 (Encarta Encyclopedia 96, article – Elizabeth I).


The Rocky Road to Britain's Great Political Stability

Queen Elizabeth I appointed James VI, king of Scotland, as her heir who was descended from Henry VII by way of both his father and mother. This act helped bring Scotland and England together in union ever since. He became King James I of England and started the Stuart dynasty. He was also the king who commissioned the King James or Authorized Version of the Bible. It quickly gained the reputation of being the most accurate translation of the Bible ever attempted up to that time.

England had made its share of attempts to dominate a resistant Scotland and also had been troubled by Scotland and France allying together against her. This step towards union and the events of the 17th century would lead to a model of limited monarchy, parliamentary government and religious toleration that would build the kind of political stability that would allow for the development of the British Empire. The Heritage of World Civilizations, Volume II, describes the events of the 17th century this way:


The first of England's foreign monarchs was James VI of Scotland (the son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots), who in 1603 succeeded the childless Elizabeth as James I of England. This first Stuart king inherited not only the crown but also a significant royal debt, a fiercely divided Church, and a Parliament already restive over the extent of his predecessor's claims to royal authority. Under James, each of these problems worsened.

Royal debts, his own extravagance, and an inflation he could not control made it necessary for James I to be constantly in quest of new revenues. He sought these new funds without parliamentary approval primarily by levying - solely on the authority of ill-defined privileges claimed to be attached to the office of king - new custom duties known as impositions. Parliament resented such independent efforts to raise revenues as an affront to its power, and the result was a long and divisive struggle between the king and Parliament…

In October 1641, when a rebellion erupted in Ireland and Parliament was asked to raise funds for an army to suppress it, Puritan leaders argued that Charles could not be trusted with an army and that Parliament should become the commander-in-chief of English armed forces. Parliamentary conservatives, on the other hand, were appalled by such a bold departure from tradition.

Charles saw the division within Parliament as a chance to regain power. In January 1642, he invaded Parliament with his soldiers. Shocked by the king's action, a majority of the House of Commons passed the Militia Ordinance, a measure that gave Parliament control of the army. The die was now cast. For the next four years (1642-1646), civil war engulfed England. Two factors led finally to Parliament's victory. The first was its alliance with Scotland in 1643. The second was the reorganization of the parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), a middle-aged country squire of iron discipline and strong Independent religious sentiment…

Charles tried in subsequent years to regain power over Parliament, but it was not to be. On January 30, 1649, after trial by a special court, Parliament executed the king as a public criminal and thereafter abolished the monarchy, the House of Lords, and the Anglican Church.

From 1649 to 1660, England was officially a Puritan republic. During this period, Cromwell's army conquered Ireland and Scotland, creating the single political entity of Great Britain. Cromwell, however, was a military man and no politician. When in 1653 the House of Commons entertained a motion to disband the expensive army of fifty thousand men, Cromwell responded by marching in and disbanding Parliament. He ruled thereafter as Lord Protector.

But his military dictatorship proved no more effective than Charles's role had been and became just as harsh and hated. Cromwell's great army and foreign adventures inflated his budget to three times that of Charles. Trade and commerce suffered throughout England, as near chaos reigned in many places. Puritan prohibitions of such pastimes as theatergoing, dancing, and drunkenness were widely resented. Cromwell's treatment of Anglicans came to be just as intolerant as Charles's treatment of Puritans had been. In the name of religious liberty, political liberty had been lost. By the time of Cromwell's death in 1658, a majority of the English were ready to end the Puritan experiment and return to the traditional institutions of government.

The Stuart monarchy was restored in 1660 when Charles II (1660-1685), son of Charles I, returned to England amid great rejoicing. A man of considerable charm and political skills Charles set a refreshing new tone after eleven years of somber Puritanism. His restoration returned England to the status quo of 1642 with a hereditary monarch once again on the throne and the Anglican Church supreme in religion (p.627-631).


Most nations in Europe have had little political stability over the last few hundred years. Most of them have been either absolute monarchies or republics which have been overturned time and again. England's brief period of being a republic under Oliver Cromwell had been a disaster and no better than the dictator-like absolute monarchies in Europe at the time. The English never wanted to be a republic again. The English have always desire to be a monarchy ever since. In the years to come with the Bill of Rights there would come a very stable balance between a limited monarchy and parliament. This kind of political stability would allow for the development of the British Empire and be a great blessing to the colonies that Britain ruled.

The tension between Catholics and Protestants in Britain did not end though with the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II. Charles II's brother, James II became a devout Catholic and after he succeeded his brother as king he appointed Catholics to high positions in his court and the army and well as persecuted his Anglican opponents. The English had hoped that he would die without a male heir with the throne reverting back to his eldest daughter, Mary, who was a Protestant, but when James' second wife gave birth to a male Catholic heir, members of Parliament and the Anglican Church joined forces to have a Protestant heir put on the throne.

Mary was married to William III of Orange in the Netherlands. Whig and Tory nobles invited William of Orange to invade England and restore the traditional liberties of Parliament and the Anglican Church. His army arrived in November 1688 and was received without opposition. Facing sure defeat from the surprise advance of ' army across the English Channel, James II fled to France. This overthrow of James II became known as the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution. William and Mary were declared the new joint monarchs of England soon after. They recognized a Bill of Rights that limited the powers of the monarchy and would rule by consent of parliament and be subject to law.

William was followed on the throne in 1702 by Queen Anne, the second daughter of James II. Up to her reign England and Scotland still had separate parliaments and were still separate countries ruled by the same monarch as a dynastic union. On May 1, 1707 the Act of Union united the two countries under one parliament to create “The United Kingdom of Great Britain”.

The Union Jack flag was born combining the red cross on white background of England's cross of St. George with St. Andrew's white diagonal cross on a blue background, the flag of Scotland. The Welsh flag would later be combined to it to produce the current flag of the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom is also the term most historians use for ancient Israel in the time of Saul, David and Solomon before the division after Solomon's death. It is also interesting to note that most of the flags of nations that are descended from Israel have two or three of the tri-colours - red, white and blue.

Starting just before the death of William III and continuing for all of Anne's reign was the Spanish War of Succession which resulted in the acquisition of vital territories from France and Spain and the vitally important strategic sea gate of Gibraltar at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea.


God's promise to Abraham included another provision: "... Your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies" (Genesis 22:17). In this context gate means a strategic passageway controlling commerce or military access for a region…[The acquisition of Gibraltar came] as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714).

The Spanish king, Charles II (1661-1700), had no children. The absence of an heir led to a controversy over succession to the Spanish throne. For a time it appeared the matter could be peaceably resolved. However, when Charles designated Philippe d'Anjou, the grandson of French King Louis XIV, as his successor, he destabilized the European balance of power.

Charles' decision confirmed the worst fears of fellow European statesmen concerning French intentions. At Versailles the Spanish ambassador, kneeling before the new king - now Philip V of Spain - was heard to murmur, "Il n'y pas de Pyrenees" - there are no more Pyrenees. He implied that the king's ascension amounted to the union of France and Spain. But England's growing dominance prevented this from coming to pass.

In 1701 England, at war with France, was determined to restore a favorable balance of power in Europe. England succeeded, and the French bid to dominate the Continent failed. In fact, England emerged from the conflict with the largest European navy and her status as a major power confirmed.

As a result of the war England acquired Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, the Hudson Bay territory, Minorca and, most important, Gibraltar, an indispensable international sea gate. Her possession of Gibraltar meant that she controlled the entry and exit to the Mediterranean Sea. These acquisitions were part of the terms of settlement of the Peace of Utrecht, April 11, 1713 (The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy, p.40).


The issue of royal succession in Britain continued to be a matter of great concern at this time. Not wanting to have a Catholic monarch rule the nation Parliament passed the Act of Succession in 1701 which would ensure that only a Protestant could inherit the crown and barred from royal succession any member of the Royal Family who married a Catholic. The nearest heir was Anne's half-brother James Edward Stuart, who's birth had been the trigger for the overthrow of James II. The next closest Protestant heir was the Elector of Hanover, a state in western Germany. He became known as George I upon taking the throne in 1714. He was not exactly a popular king. He was a fat, dull German who showed little interest in Great Britain and spoke no English.

George II was succeeded by his son, George II, in 1727 who was, like his father, was also regarded as a foreign ruler. During his reign the great Jacobite rebellion occurred, the last armed conflict to be fought on land in Britain and the last dynastic struggle in British history. The Jacobites (from the Latin for James 'Jacobus') supported James Edward Stuart or James III to his followers. Though Catholic, he was Scottish and was favoured by the Highlanders of Scotland to George II who was a foreign ruler from Hanover.

The son of James Edward Stuart (“The Old Pretender”) was Charles Edward Stuart who was known popularly as Bonnie Prince Charles (“The Young Pretender”). The Highlanders led by Bonnie Prince Charles invaded England in 1745 and got as far south as Derby. The English showed no support for the Stuarts over George II. George II's British army, reinforced by forces returning from Europe, drove the Jacobites back to Scotland. In a thoroughly one-sided battle they killed all the Jacobites and devastated the Highlands to teach all concerned to revolt no more.

Prince Michael of Albany today is a descendant of this Stuart family and would be the heir of the Scottish throne if Scotland were to achieve independence in the future. The end of Elizabeth I's reign saw the dynastic union of Scotland and England putting an end to many of the problems of separation between the two. With the current wave of Scottish nationalism, the reign of Elizabeth II, may see the break-up of Scotland and England.

Britain starts developing colonies in North America

Between the reigns of James I and George II the English established a number of colonies in North America. As well as economic reasons, the promise of religious freedom attracted many to America at a time in England when Catholics and Protestants still vied for power. The Heritage of World Civilizations, Volume II, makes these comments on the establishment of English colonies in America during this time:


Beginning with the first successful settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and followed in 1620 with the landing of the Pilgrims and in 1630 with the founding of the Massachusetts Bay colony, and ending with the establishment of Georgia in 1733, the eastern seaboard of the United States became populated by a series of English colonies. Other nations, including the Dutch and Swedes had founded settlements, but all of them were eventually taken over during the seventeenth century by the English.

A wide variety of reasons led to the founding of the English colonies. Settlement for enrichment from farming and trade accounted for a number of the settlements, such as Virginia and New Amsterdam (after 1664, New York). Others, such as the Carolinas, were developed by favorites of the English king who were given vast land tracts. James Oglethorpe founded Georgia as a place where English debtors might settle. But the pursuit of religious liberty constituted the major driving force of the Pilgrim and Puritan founders of Massachusetts, the Baptist Roger in Rhode Island, the Quaker William Penn in Pennsylvania, and the Roman Catholic, Lord Baltimore, in Maryland. With the exception of Maryland, Protestantism characterized the religious life of these colonies. The Church of England dominated the southern colonies…

By the early eighteenth century, the British crown governe of the colonies directly. That is, the monarch appointed the Royal Governors, who in turn exercised extensive authority in the colonies. Each colony also had an elected legislative assembly and an upper house or Council appointed by the monarch or the governor. The colonial assemblies had to approve taxes. The actual apparatus of colonial government was quite small. Most of the best appointments came through the Crown. The election of the colonial assemblies, however, encouraged a free press and a lively political life reminiscent of that of England, The colonists commanded their own militias. During the early eighteenth century, the imperial connection was a relatively mild burden for the American colonists. The white colonists were prosperous, largely self governing, and politically freer than perhaps any other people of the time.

The largest economic activity throughout the English-speaking colonies was agriculture. In New England through the middle Atlantic states, mostly small farms predominated; from Virginia southward, it was the plantation economy, dependent on slavery. During the early eighteenth century, the chief products raised on these plantations were tobacco, indigo, rice, and sugar...The principal port cities along the seaboard - Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston - resembled small provincial English cities. They were primarily trading centers through which goods moved back and forth between the colonies and England and the West Indies.

Until the 1760's the political values of the Americans very much resembled those of their English counterparts. The colonials were thoroughly familiar with events in England. They sent many of their children to England to be educated. They were monarchists but, like their English counterparts, suspicious of monarchical power. The prosperity of the colonies might eventually have led them to a separation from England, but in 1750 few people thought that would occur during the eighteenth century (p.712-713).


The American Indian tribes who inhabited Canada and the United States were only given by God, short-term leases to inhabit the vast North American continent until the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic sons of Joseph came, much like the ancient Canaanite tribes were given temporary possession of the Promised Land until the Israelites came out during the Exodus. The Frenchman Alex de Tocqueville wrote the following in his Democracy in America:


"The Indians [of North America] occupied but did not possess the land. It is by agriculture that man wins the soil, and the first inhabitants of North America lived by hunting... Providence [God] when it placed them [the Indians] amid the riches of the New World, seems to have granted them a short lease only; they were there, in some sense, only waiting. Those coasts so well suited for trade and industry, those deep rivers, that inexhaustible valley of the Mississippi - in short, the whole continent - seemed the yet empty cradle of a GREAT NATION...

When the Creator handed the earth over to men, it was young and inexhaustible, but they were weak and ignorant; and by the time that they had learned to take advantage of the treasures it contained, they already covered its face, and soon they were having to fight for the right to an asylum where they could rest in freedom. It was then [1492] that North America was discovered as if God had held it in reserve [for Israel's descendants] and it had only just arisen above the waters of the flood"(p.24, 258).


French explorers had claimed all the land along the St Lawrence River and Great Lakes in eastern Canada for France as well as all of the Mississippi Basin and land west of the British colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. The British also owned the northern half of Canada around Hudson Bay and west of the Great Lakes in Canada.

The British and French fought for control of North America and the wealth of trade it brought to their countries and the French and Indian War (1754-1763) was a major turning point in the struggle. The French and Indian War was the North American part of a worldwide series of conflict (the first real world war) known as the Seven Years War (1756-1763). In Europe it involved most of the major powers of Europe, in particular Prussia, Great Britain, and Hanover on one side and Austria, Saxony, France, Russia, Sweden, and Spain on the other. In India the British fought the French with the British being the victors and then going on to take control of all India in the years that followed.

The decisive battle for the French and Indian War was the British capture of the "impregnable" city of Quebec where the fighting was centered on the aptly named Plains of Abraham. The British scaled the nearby steep cliffs under the cover of darkness, hauling guns up by ropes and surprised the French on the high plateau where the French fort was.

After their defeat the French, at the signing of the first Treaty of Paris in 1763, surrended all the French territory in eastern Canada plus all the American territory they owned east of the Mississippi River (with the exception of New Orleans). The British between 1763 and 1776 controlled all of Canada and all of America east of the Mississippi, including Florida which Spain surrended at the signing of the first Treaty of Paris in 1763.


The architect of victory was William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778). Although Pitt had previously criticized British involvement with the continent, once named secretary of state in charge of the war in 1757 he reversed himself and pumped huge financial subsidies to Frederick the Great. But North America was Pitt's real concern. Put simply, he wanted all of North America east of the Mississippi for Great Britain, and that was exactly what he won as he directed unprecedented resources into the overseas colonial conflict. The French government was unwilling and unable to direct similar resources against the English in America. In September 1759, at the Plains of Abraham overlooking the valley of the Saint Lawrence River at Quebec City, the British army under General James Wolfe defeated the French under Lieutenant General Louis Joseph Montcalm. The French empire in Canada was coming to an end.

Pitt's colonial vision, however, extended beyond the Saint Lawrence valley and the Great Lakes Basin. The major islands of the French West Indies fell to the British fleets. On the Indian subcontinent, the British forces under the command of Robert Clive defeated the French in 1757 at the battle of Plassey. This victory opened the way for the eventual conquest of Bengal and later of all India by the British East India Company. Never had any European power experienced such complete worldwide military victory (The Heritage of World Civilizations, Volume II, p.710-711).


The Encarta 96 Encyclopedia states that:


Pitt attacked the French Empire boldly, giving commands to able and ambitious young officers. In a series of remarkable victories the British conquered Canada, the area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, the French West Indies, and the French trading posts in West Africa. The British East India Company destroyed French power in India (Article – Pitt, William, 1st Earl of Chatham).


Britain establishes more colonies around the world

Not long after the Seven Years War, Captain James Cook, who was navigator on General Wolfe's ship during the capture of Quebec, made his famous voyages of discovery from 1769 to 1778. On his first voyage he visited Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Tonga, then circumnavigated the islands of New Zealand and claimed it for Britain. After New Zealand he sailed up the fertile east coast of Australia in 1770 claiming the east half of the continent for Britain and calling it New South Wales.

On his second voyage he discovered New Caledonia and chartered the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and Easter Island. On his third and last voyage he sailed up the west coast of Canada and Alaska and discovered the Hawaiian Islands, which he named the Sandwich Islands in honour of the Earl of Sandwich (who invented the snack of something between two slices of bread). Sadly Captain Cook lost his life at the hands of the Hawaiian natives when he returned there in 1779.

A convict colony would be established in Australia at Sydney cove in 1788 with the arrival of the First fleet which would later give way to free settlement and exploration of the Australian continent. Many settlers would come from the British Isles (primarily of English and Irish descent) and forge a new nation, rich in the production of wool, wheat and gold, that would later achieve independence through federation in 1901.

In Genesis 28:14 God said to Abraham:

“Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This prophecy even predicts the very geographical order in which Britain would establish her colonies around the world setting up her empire “upon which the sun never set”. They spread and settled to the west (America in 1607 and the West Indies), to the east (India in 1757), to the north (Canada in 1759) and to the south (Australia in 1788, New Zealand, South Africa and the South Pacific).

Britain's overseas trade boomed due to the growing demand for a wide range of goods such as timber, furs, tobacco, rice and fish (all from North America), sugar (from the West Indies), tea, cotton and silk (from India, Ceylon and Hong Kong) coffee and cocoa (from Java, Africa and the Americas).

The United States of America is born

After the stunning victories of the British that allowed them to take control of most of North America they would soon suffer their biggest setback as they built up the British Empire when they lost their American colonies. The American War of Independence (1775-1783) was, in a sense, round two of the English Civil War and was triggered off by the issue of taxation without parliamentary consent and representation from the colonies.

The Seven Years and French and Indian Wars left Great Britain with a considerable debt and expensive responsibilities to administer newly acquired territory in North America. As a result Britain felt the need to increase the share of taxes the colonists paid to help share the empire's defence costs. The matter of whether Britain or the local colonial assemblies had the right to collect taxes led to increased hostility and then a war for independence.

Just like the secession of the ten tribes of Israel in Rehoboam's day, this breakaway from Britain by the American colonists was triggered off by the issue of taxation, a similarity that was not lost on John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church. He wrote George III and told him: “For God's sake, remember Rehoboam!”

The American colonials declared themselves independent on July 4, 1776. In October 1781 with the support of the French, who sided with the Americans, George Washington's colonial army was able to defeat the British at Yorktown, Virginia.

The second Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783. In this treaty, Britain officially recognized the United States as a sovereign nation and ceded all of her North American territories south of the Great Lakes to the victorious rebels. Florida was given back to Spain as part of her support for the Americans and then eventually given back to the United States in 1819. With its independence and the all the land east of the Mississippi it could rightly be said that America was assured of becoming the GREAT NATION that God had promised. In Isaiah 49:20 we read:

The children you will have, after you have lost the others, will say again in your ears, 'The place is too small for me; Give me a place where I may dwell.'

This is a millennial prophecy that will be fulfilled when the modern-day descendants of Israel will return from captivity to Palestine and then colonize other places around the world. This interesting prophecy referring to colonizing after losing some of her children was also fulfilled in type when Britain continued to colonize after losing her American colonies.

Many Americans felt that colonial Canadians would, like they had done 40 years earlier, rise up and desire independence from Britain when they invaded British Canada during the War of 1812. Canadians have always been more loyal to Britain than the Americans and wanted to remain a part of the British empire. They achieved independence in 1930 and are still part of the Commonwealth of Nations. The following quote from Raymond McNair shows why Canada is descended from Ephraim and not Manasseh despite the similarity of its people to America:


This [God's providential help of the Americans in achieving independence from Britain], however, does NOT mean that God favored the Americans (Manassites) over the British (Ephraimites). He was simply working out His purpose. God gave the Americans victory when they fought in their own land - but NOT when they advanced into British Canadian territory:

"From the beginning, America's first campaign of territorial conquest [into Canada] seemed dogged with misfortune. Everything went wrong.... The annexation of Canada was clearly not in God's plan for the United States....It was as if God had a different plan for Canada...a plan separate and distinct from His plan for America" (Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory, pp. 292, 295-296).


And so He did. God, we now know, had reserved that area for Ephraim! Thus, God divided the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh politically and began to bless them in their separate courses - yet not so separate, for these sons of Joseph are close brothers. The Declaration of Independence even mentions "the ties of our common kindred"! (America and Britain in Prophecy, p.48).


Twenty years after the fledgling 13 colonies had broken off from the mother country, the new United States was able to, in 1803, buy from France, the fabulous Louisiana Territory for about $15 million. Initially the Americans only wanted to acquire the port city of New Orleans and were dumbfounded when the French offered them the whole Louisiana Territory. Napoleon was eager to sell the territory to fund his expansion wars in Europe.

The young nation of the United States acquired 828 000 square miles of the richest and best farmland in the world right through the middle of America for a paltry 5 cents per acre - the size of 1/4 of the current U.S. nation thereby increasing its size at the time by 140 percent.

Over the next 50 years through treaties and very little warfare at all, the U.S. doubled in size right across to the West Coast to acquire all the territory of the continental United States by 1853. For the unbelievably low price of $7 200 000 or 2 cents an acre the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867. It is interesting to note that the sale of Alaskan fish, petroleum, minerals and other products nets the U.S. tens of billions of dollars annually. In 1898 America annexed the Hawaiian Islands which became the 50th state of the United States.

Never before in history had any nation received land to remotely compare with those newly-acquired American territories - either in sheer size, richness of soil having such a favourable climate. Abraham Lincoln said in 1863:


"We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards fertility of soil, extent of territory, and salubrity of climate... We...find ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them."


In 1861 the United States split into two nations primarily over the impact any restrictions made by the northern states on the issue of slavery would have on the southern economy. The new Confederate constitution prohibited the African slave trade but, unlike the North, allowed interstate commerce in slaves. The southern states seceded and formed a new nation called the “Confederated States of America” under the presidency of Jefferson Davis. The new nation would only last four years.


In his inaugural address, Lincoln held that secession was illegal and stated that he intended to maintain federal possessions in the South. On April 12, 1861, when an attempt was made to resupply Fort Sumter, a federal installation in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, Southern artillery opened fire. Three days later, Lincoln called for troops to put down the rebellion (Encarta 96 Encyclopedia, Article – Civil War).


The Civil War would last four years between 1861 and 1865. Abraham Lincoln's North army would eventually defeat the South and bring the confederate states back into the federal union of the United States of America. God had promised that Manasseh would become a single great nation, not two. Despite the terrible loss of life and resources America would grow much stronger to become the single greatest nation the world has ever seen just as God had promised their ancestor, Manasseh, over 3 500 years earlier.

The Defeat of Napoleon and French Hegemony
leads to more expansion of the Empire

In 1760 George II was succeeded by his son, George III, who reigned for 60 years up until 1820. Unlike his father and grandfather, George III was thoroughly English and was a popular king. His reign would see Great Britain's worst success with the loss of the American colonies (which ended the first phase of the British empire) as well as the greatest success with the defeat of Napoleon which began the second and greater phase of the British empire.

Through the French support of the Americans in their War of Independence and the sale of the Louisiana Territory, France hoped to create a rival who would weaken England. They elevated one branch of the family of Joseph and then lost to the other branch on both sea and land when the British defeated them in the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo.

The naval battle of Trafalgar took place in October 1805 at Cape Trafalgar on the south coast of Spain pitting the British fleet of Admiral Horatio Nelson against a combined Spanish-French fleet. The surprise tactics of Nelson led to the British destroying or capturing 20 ships without losing a single ship. The overwhelming British victory destroyed Napoleon's plan to invade England and helped secure the supremacy of British naval forces for the rest of the 1800s.

The Battle of Waterloo was the final defeat of Napoleon. After expanding the French empire over much of Europe he was defeated in 1814 by Britain and an alliance of European powers and was sent into exile on the island of Elba. The next year he escaped from Elba and once again ascended to the throne.

One final great battle was fought between Napoleon's French forces and a combined army of Britain and a number of European powers on the fields of Waterloo in Belgium where Napoleon was finally defeated and sent into exile on the Atlantic island of St Helena until his death in 1821. Britain found herself free from the threats of other European powers like the French and in possession of the necessary political, economic and military power to build an empire that soon extended around the world.

The number 40 is a biblically significant number signifying a period of trial and testing. The critical 40 years between 1775 and 1815 saw the birth of the American nation and her expansion to the Mississippi Basin followed by the defeat of French hegemony that led to Britain's economic and military supremacy and allowed it to greatly expand its empire.

The next great expansionist move of the British Empire was in South Africa. Dutch settlers had settled in the area of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town) in 1652. The colonists, mostly farmers and cattle herders, became known as Boers, and soon developed their own distinctive culture and language (Afrikaans). In 1814, toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain purchased the Cape Colony from the Dutch for £6 million. Purchase of the Cape Colony enabled the British control of an important sea gate for ships on their way to India. After 1820 thousands of British colonists arrived in South Africa and settled the Cape Colony. The Boers then moved northwards and established two colonies in the Orange Free State and Transvaal.

In 1798 the British conquered the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the British East India company continued to make territorial gains in Asia and ruled much of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma. In 1819 Sir Thomas Raffles founded Singapore and by 1824 Britain acquired much of Malaysia from the Dutch.

In his video documentary series, “A History of Britain”, Simon Schama showed some of the faults of the British as they built their empire, such as the evils of the slave trade to the West Indies and America and the underhanded dealings of the British East India Company as they conquered much of India. In concluding the episode, “The Wrong Empire”, which covered the first half of the British Empire, Schama made the following comment: “The Almighty had led them, by crooked steps to be sure, toward their true destiny as the modern Romans.”

Britain gradually matured morally as it developed its empire. To be the blessing to the world that He wanted them to be God would lead moral conservatives into positions of power with the reign of Queen Victoria and a Protestant religious revival swept through Britain during the time that Britain's empire reached its zenith.

Up to then some two million African slaves were brought to North America on British ships (about 15 000 trips with 150 slaves on average). Sugar plantation farmers in the West Indies became very rich from the harvest reaped by these slaves and the abundant economic rewards this trade produced led to the mother country being very slow to the cruelty of the trade.

While Black African traders initiated this awful tragedy, kidnapping and selling off their own people, the British also bore a heavy responsibility in this matter. In a land where they preached about the liberties of being free from the absolute monarchies in Europe they ironically turned a blind eye to the slave trade for some time. Yet it would be the British in 1833, before the Americans would 30 years after, who would begin to outlaw this awful trade and proclaim liberty to any slaves in the Empire. British ships policed the African coast to prevent the trade continuing.

In India many of the abuses prevalent during the rule of the East India Company were eradicated after the British government assumed control of India in 1858. Britain's conscience was slow to kick in but by the ascension of Queen Victoria it would no longer be “the wrong empire” to quote Simon Schama but be an empire of liberty and trade.

The Reign of Queen Victoria and Pax Britannica

George III was succeeded by his brother, William IV (1830-1837), who, in turn was succeeded by his niece, Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria was a very popular queen and became the longest reigning monarch, ruling for over 64 years until 1901. Her reign became known as the Victorian era and the second phase of the British Empire grew tremendously during her glorious reign. The industrial revolution and the invention of the railway propelled Britain ahead to a new level of prosperity.


Several prime ministers served during the latter part of Victoria's reign, but only the Conservative party leader Benjamin Disraeli, who held office in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880, gained her confidence. He ingratiated himself with the queen by his cultivated personal approach and his gift for flattery. He also allowed her a free hand in the awarding of church, military, and some political appointments. She fully endorsed his policy of strengthening and extending the British Empire, and in 1876 Disraeli secured for her the title of empress of India…

Victoria's popularity among all classes in British society reached its height in the last two decades of her reign. Her golden jubilee in 1887 and her diamond jubilee in 1897 were occasions for great public rejoicing…

With her personal example of honesty, patriotism, and devotion to family life, Victoria became a living symbol of the solidity of the British Empire. The many years of her reign, often referred to as the Victorian age, witnessed the rise of the middle class and were marked by a deeply conservative morality and intense nationalism (Encarta 96 Encyclopedia, Article – Queen Victoria).


The 19th century is known as Pax Britannica – the British Peace. During this time they developed technology and industry well ahead of the rest of the world. The Crystal Palace was built to showcase the various machinery and wares of Britain and people came from around the world to admire British. The British built dams, roads, immense railways, postal services and communications all over the empire. In the UCG booklet “The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy” we read:


The British and American people have been the instruments used to spread God's Word to most of the known world. Although we often take the Bible for granted, and many U.S. and British homes now have several copies, it wasn't always this way.

For many centuries virtually the only copies available outside of the original languages were in Latin, with the Roman Catholic Church tightly controlling the common people's access to the Scriptures. "Yet it was in England, so long deprived of the living Word, where the battle was fought and won for the right of the common man to have his Bible in his own language" (Neil Lightfoot, How We Got the Bible, 1986, p. 76)…

The policies and resources of America and Britain have both encouraged and enabled the true gospel of the Kingdom of God to be proclaimed around the world in recent years. They have provided the climate of religious freedom, the financial resources and most of the laborers that were needed to disseminate biblical knowledge to all nations…

The builders of the British Empire aspired to weld together a peaceful, productive domain ruling over a quarter of the world's population. A great achievement of British administrators was the establishment and extension of law and order in Britain's colonial and imperial territories around the globe. This alone brought untold blessings to the people of these territories.

This Pax Britannica bequeathed peaceful conditions to many regions formerly plagued by war and long-term ethnic hostilities. The British presence also stimulated territorial economic development and introduced many areas to Western technological advances. British missionaries became the bearers of biblical literature and knowledge to people from one end of the globe to the other. Both physical and spiritual blessings were freely distributed around the globe…

Britain also experienced a population explosion beginning during that same period. Historian Colin Cross notes that "one of the unexplained mysteries of social history is the explosion in the size of the population of Great Britain between 1750 and 1850. For generations the British population had been static, or rising only very slightly. Then in the space of a century it almost trebled-from 7.7 million in 1750 to 20.7 million in 1850...Britain was a dynamic country and one of the marks of its dynamism was the population explosion" (Fall of the British Empire, 1969, p. 155). This window of time seems to be directly related to Joseph's exiled descendants receiving the promised birthright blessings (p.35-37).


Despite their faults the British did use their talents to be a blessing to the nations of the world (Gen.12:3) and help build the civil infrastructure and raise the standard of living amongst the Gentile nations who came under the Empire. Craig White in his paper “Israel – Descendants of Arphaxad” offers these parallels between the British Empire and the Kingdom of God:


1. Extension of law:

- For example in India wives of deceased husbands were placed on the funeral pile to be burned alive – the British abolished this.
- Thuggery & killing of travellers was pursued and outlawed.
- Slavery outlawed in 1833 (Africans sold their own people to white traders) (cp Is 61:1-2)
- Rod was used to beat criminals in India and Kenya, which was, after all, a lot more lenient than local custom. See Rev 2:27; 19:15 where Christ is said to use a rod on the non-Israelitish peoples which contrasts with the German cruelty when they dominated Tanzania etc and the rod of Is 10:5.
- Canadian Mounties ensured that law was delivered to remote, wild regions of Canada.

2. Prosperity because of peace:

- The 19th century is known as Pax Britannica – the British Peace. Similarly Christ is called the Prince of Peace (Is 9:6) because His reign will bring world peace.
- During this time they developed technology and industry well ahead of the rest of the world. Abraham Darby brought industrial iron production to Britain.
- Crystal Palace was built to showcase the various machinery and wares of Britain – people came from around the world to admire British genius(similarly nations will flow to Jerusalem – Is 2:2-4).
- In the millennium Israel will enjoy overwhelming prosperity (Amos 9:13).
- British built dams (eg Aswan), road, immense railways, postal services, communications.
- Kipling wrote about the British taking the blessings to other peoples and to uplift them – with a civilising mission.
- British brought advances in medical science to help the diseased etc (typological of the divine healings prophesied in Is 35:5-6).

3. Extension of Biblical teachings:

- The translation of the Bible in dozens of languages.
- Distribution of Bibles.
- Conservative fam