CULTS CRITIQUE by Betty Bruechert
Smith, an eminent Scottish as tronomer, added confusion to con fusion with his volume on Our Inheritance in the Great Pyra mid, which sought to prove that not only did the early Britons build the Great Pyramid, but also that a chronological history of the past and future of Israel and Ju dah was revealed by its measure ments and passages! Later on, an Anglo-Israelite went so fa r as to say that Great Britain’s entrance into World War I was foretold by this “stone Bible” ; that Au gust 4, 1914 was the beginning of the “Great Tribulation!” However, Anglo-Israelism did not secure many followers until in 1871 Edward Hine put out his book, U7 Identifications of the British Nation with Lost Israel. From London, he propagated the teachings through two magazines, The Nation’s Leader, and Life from the Dead; 250,000 copies of this book were sold. The cult crossed the ocean, and here the writers were as prolific as they were in Britain. Green wood with his magazine, Heir of the World, and W. H. Poole of Detroit, Mich, with his book, An- glo-Israel or the Saxon Race Proved to be the Lost Tribes of Israel aroused an interest in Americans of British descent. Their appeal was based upon “evi dence” that actually Great Brit ain was Ephraim and the United States Manasseh. In 1920 Howard B. Rand, manager of a construc tion company in Haverhill, Mass., began to preach the “Kingdom Message” to a small group. True to the pattern, he too published a magazine first entitled The Bul letin, then The Message of the Covenant, now known as Destiny, an attractive, slick journal. He also wrote a theology, The Pat tern of History, which is a kind of textbook for the sect as he be came its titular head. All kinds of personalities and groups have combined with An- glo-Israelites. Some cults have simply added “the kingdom mes sage” to their heresies as in case of the Armstrongs of Pasadena, THE KING'S BUSINESS
privileges and obligations (as British-Israelites) of the eternal commission given us of the Fa ther and His Son, is our only hope." The Bible teaches us that our hope of eternal salvation is in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us; in His death, resurrection and coming again; in personal — not national or racial—salvation through faith in Him as the one and only Sav iour “who died for all, that they should not live henceforth unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again” (II Cor. 5:15). This system originated in the imagination of an eccentric Brit on named Richard Brothers who bestowed upon himself the high- sounding title of “Nephew of the Almighty.” In 1794 he wrote a book entitled, Revealed Knowl edge, in which he claimed to be a descendant of King David. He predicted that on Nov. 19, 1795 he would be revealed as the “Prince of the Hebrews.” When this event did not take place, he produced another book with the lengthy title, Correct Account of the Invasion of England by the Saxons, showing the English Na tion to be Descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes. This volume con tained the basic views held by Anglo-Israelites today. Unfortun ately, when he died in a madhouse in 1824, his wild, unscriptural no tions did not perish with him, but were developed and elaborated upon by others and are still prop agated. He is disowned by many Anglo-Israelites who say of their origin: “Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah and Jeremiah were the earliest apostles of this truth, and the Apostle Paul was one of its keenest thinkers, and the place of its origin was Palestine, instead of England!” Brothers was followed by J. Wilson, who like all the sect, be lieved in the printed word. In 1845 he published Our Israelitish Origin, followed by W. Carpenter, with Israelites Found and F. R. A. Glover who wrote England, the Remnant of Judah. C. Piazzi
W h a t ’ s w r o n g w ith A N G L O - I S R A E L I S M by Louis T. Talbot, D.D. S IX TH IN A SERIES O NE OF th e most fantastic in terpretations of the Word of God ever imposed upon the minds of Christian people is that of Anglo-or-British-Israelism. It fits well into the description of II Peter 1:16 as one of the “cun ningly devised fables” which has no basis in the Scriptures or in fact. The sect has borne various names over the years, such as Celto-Saxons, Destiny of Ameri ca, Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, Kingdom Message, Brit- ish-Israel, etc. but ever has been built around a central theme of the supposed identification of the supposedly “lost ten tribes” of the nation of Israel with the An glo-Saxon peoples of Britain and the United States. In an endeavor to achieve this, the leaders have included everything, from the throne of David to the Great Pyramid of Egypt; from the prophet Jeremiah to the Ameri can flag; from the British corona tion stone to the “harp that hung in Tara’s hall.” In order to fabri cate their “identifications,” the writers have violated every ac cepted rule of geography, history, philology, psyiology, anthropolo gy and ethnology and have aban doned the literal, common-sense, conservative, evangelical i n t e r pretation of the Word of God. The cult could be dismissed as a harm less group of fanatics were it not for the fact that as D. M. Panton said many years ago, “British-Is- raelism is an unconscious betrayal of the Gospel.” I once read this statement in an Anglo-Israel pub lication : “Acknowledgment of Is rael’s identity, of our sublime 28
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