BRITISH ISRAELISM
What are we to think of “British Israelism,” and what should be our attitude towards adherents of it?
The hypothesis is that “Anglo-Saxons are the lineal descendants of the Ten Tribes of Israel and inherit the wonderful promises made to them. These promises the Anglo-Saxons possess nationally.” This can hardly be “dignified” with the name of “heresy”; it is rather one of those “imaginations” which we are to seek to cast down in the Name of Christ. As far as truth is concerned, it is of “the stuff that dreams are made of;” a simile not so far-fetched, when we consider that the B.I. theory’s prime foundation stone is, as we shall see, confessedly, an invented dream.
Alas! how sad it is to see even pious Christians thus snared by the great fowler, as also numbers of wordlings, taking up as a sort of fashionable pastime the slogan, not “We are lost sinners,” but “We are the lost tribes.” It thus provides for the world another gospel, which captivates and hypnotises them with the thought of capturing great earthly blessings for themselves and the British Empire, apart from repentance and faith in Christ, as though He had never died and risen to procure us blessings, and we must needs make out a fancied identity with the lost tribes (bereft of blessings themselves) in order to get a few for ourselves and the British Empire. Certainly Christ did not die for the glory of the British Empire. If God has blessed our country so signally in the past, the reasons are not far to seek: (1) His Sovereignty; (2) the comparative good treatment England has bestowed on the Jews; (3) the fact that she has been a harbour of refuge for persecuted Continental Christians; (4) because, by His mercy, the Word of God was accepted at the Reformation, and became our national Book for centuries; (5) and because of His many people in our country and their prayers; though now she is on the way to forfeit all this by her national sins and apostacy. But not one blessing did Britain ever inherit for the “British-Israel” reason, because even if she were the lost tribes, she has not kept God’s laws and statutes, the very condition of blessing (see Deuteronomy 28:15)" TARGET="_blank">Deuteronomy 28:15) and would have put herself outside the covenant, if ever under it, by neglecting circumcision. British Israelism is no mere harmless delusion; its logical effect is virtually to exclude Christ (not He, but the British Empire looms at the centre of things), and to supersede the gospel to sinners with some fancied national position, with its naked abandonment of the heavenly calling of the church and a complete confusion between her and Israel. Even, if we were Israel, she is set on one side nationally for the present so far as earthly blessing goes, and j so should we be. If space allowed, I would gladly take up the general arguments for or against the much vaunted “identifications,” but before . examining the ornaments of a building, it is well to enquire as to the foundation. I believe no castle-in-the-air ever had a flimsier base than this theory. Is there any historic proof that the ten tribes migrated from the latitudes where the Assyrians placed them, to England or anywhere else? There is not a scintilla. No mention is made of their doings either in Scripture or secular history from about 720 B.C., when their Assyrian captors settled them in Assyria, etc., though we have promises in the Scripture of their future restoration, e.g. Isa. i i • iz, where Jehovah promises to gather back again to their only land of blessing the “outcasts of Israel,” along with “the dispersed of Judah,” from whom they are thus carefully distinguished. We may be sure the Assyrians, as long as they had the power, would not allow their captives to wander away at their own sweet will to some other land. Until we have some serious proof that the ten tribes ever started on their journey for the British Isles, it is futile to spend time in proving they never arrived there. On what then does the B.I. theory rest? On a passage in an Apocryphal book, the 2nd of Esdras, (Eadras, Greek form of Ezra. ) purporting to have been written by Ezra the scribe, but really forged 700 years after the captivity by some unscrupulous impersonator living in Egypt. The passage (see chap. 13. 1-12 39-46) purports to be the interpretation of a fictitious dream ascribed to Ezra, to the effect that the ten tribes took counsel to leave the heathen country where they were in captivity and go off into a land where no one dwelt; where they might keep God’s statutes. They crossed the Euphrates miraculously and after a year and a half arrived at some unknown region called Arsareth. “Then dwelt they there until the latter time.” The whole chapter reads like an unholy parody of Scripture, as indeed it is, naturally bereft of all spiritual power, and bristling with the wildest improbabilities. And yet this fake dream and its fictitious interpretation is admitted by the writers of “British Israel Truth” (chap. 7.) to be the “one only tradition of their fate (i.e., of the lost tribes) which past ages have handed on to us.” That a whole system should rest ultimately on a “tradition” would be bad enough, but when that “tradition” is a dream, that nobody really ever had, the edifice must be in a parlous state. As to how to deal with a Christian “in fellowship,” who becomes inoculated with this unscriptural, unhistoric theory; it may be said that as far as is apparent, it does not effect directly fundamental truth as to the Person of Christ, though what it may lead to is difficult to say. Any attempt to propagate it in an assembly, could not be tolerated and anyone persisting in such a course would bring himself or herself under the open rebuke of the elders. Certainly the theory “causes divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine, which we have learned” and we should “mark” and “avoid” those who are in active sympathy with this sad delusion. William Hoste
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