The Lost Tribes of Israel Claims by Herbert Armstrong

The disoriented Tribes of Israel Catholic. com Around 926 b. c. , the kingdom of Israel split in two. Up to that point, all(a) twelve tribes of Israel (plus the priestly tribe of Levi) had been united under the monarchies of Saul, David, and Solomon. But when Solomons son Rehoboam ascended to the thr wholeness, the ten Northern tribes rebelled and seceded from the union. This left only two tribesJudah and benjamin (plus much of Levi)under the control of the king in Jerusalem. From that time on, the tribes were carve up into two soils, which came to be called the planetary house of Israel (the Northern ten tribes) and the theater of Judah (the gray two tribes).This situation continued until around 723 B. C. , when the Assyrians conquered the Northern kingdom. To keep conquered nations in subjection, it was Assyrian policy to break them up by deporting their native populations to opposite atomic play 18as and resettling the gain with newcomers. When the House of Israel was conquered, most people belonging to the ten Northern tribes were deported and colonized elsew here in the Assyrian kingdom, including places near Nineveh, Haran, and on what is now the Iran-Iraq border.They were replaced by settlers from locations in or near Babylon and Syria. These settlers in marginarried, together with the remaining Israelites, and became the Samaritans mentioned in the New volition (a few hundred of whom muted survive today). The Israelites who had been deported alike intermarried with the peoples of the places where they had been resettled. They hithertotually preoccupied their distinct identity, disappe bed, and their culture was illogical to history. Some pay heed to them as the incapacitated tribes of Israel. A movement called British Israelism claims to grant found the ten helpless tribes, however, and in some very unlikely places. For some(prenominal) course of instructions, one of the leaders in the British Israelism movement was Herbert W. Ar mstrong, founder of the self-proclaimed oecumenical Church of God. especially for Americans, Armstrong was just about the only person they ever heard advocating British Israelism. With his own paid television program, Armstrong regularly advertised his book The unify States and Britain in Prophecy, which advocated the view. British Israelism was not Armstrongs only eccentric view.Among new(prenominal) issues, he believed in Saturday rather than Sunday worship and, most seriously, he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and claimed that individual humans could be added to the Godhead. later on Armstrongs death, the Worldwide Church of God did a serious critical review of the doctrines it had taught up to that point and moved to a more biblically and theologically Orthodox position. Today, the organization is basically another Evangelical Protestant church (they have even been admitted to the National Association of Evangelicals), though with a few classifiable practices.Many o f their congregations shut away worship on Saturdays, for example, yet they no longer project keeping the Jewish Sabbath and feasts as points of doctrine. They have embraced the doctrine of the Trinity, denied that created beings can give manner part of the Godhead, and acknowledged that other churches contain true Christians. They have also rejected the distinctive idea behind British Israelismthe claim that the lost tribes of Israel argon to be specially identified with the Anglo-Saxons.Unfortunately, there ar still advocates of British Israelism out there (including some groups that split off from the Worldwide Church of God when it underwent its doctrinal renewal), and, though the book is out of print, Herbert W. Armstrongs The unify States and Britain in Prophecy continues to circulate. The United States and Britain in Prophecy teaches the tactual sensation that the Lost Tribes of Israel are really the descendants of Anglo-Saxons, which is to say the British and America ns of British extraction. This exotic doctrine had been around for decades forward Herbert W.Armstrong founded his church in 1933, and it appeals, of course enough, to those of British heritage. After all, who wouldnt want to be a subdivision of the chosen race (assuming there is one)? And according to Armstrong, thats precisely what the Anglo-Saxons areGods chosen race, where can be found the deal descendants of King David and, even today, the true heirs to King Davids throne. The United States and Britain in Prophecy opens with this epigraph The prophecies of the Bible have been grievously misunderstood. And no investigateFor the vital key, needed to unlock portentous doors to understanding, had become lost. That key is a definite knowledge of the true identity of the American and British peoples in biblical prophecy. Only the first sentence of this epigraph is strictly correct, and a sizeable share of the grievous misunderstanding is by people who put religion in the wri tings of Herbert W. Armstrong. The Argument Begins We know Bible prophecies definitely refer to Russia, Italy, Ethiopia, Libya, and Egypt of today. Could they then ignore modern nations like Britain and America?Is it reasonable? This is how the telephone circuit begins, and notice what kind of tilt it is. If these lesser countries are mentioned in Scripture, would it be fair for God to ignore us, important as we are? (We wint examine here the highly dubious premise that Russia is mentioned in Scripture. ) You might call this an appeal to pride. Never fear, says Armstrong. The fact is, the British and Americans are mentioned more often than any other race sic. Yet their prophetic identity has remained hidden to the many. Why is that? you ask. Because the Bible doesnt refer to them by their modern names, but by an ancient name. And what is that name? None other than Israel. Hold it you say. The people who came from Israel are Jews. Britons and Americans, for the most part, arent Jewish. How can one claim otherwise? Easily. Armstrong assures us that, The house of Israel is not Jewish Those who exist it are not Jews, and never were That fact we shall now mind conclusively, beyond refute. Actually, there is something of a point here.The term Jew originated as a way of referring to the people of the gray kingdom of Judah, whether their own tribe was Judah, Benjamin, or Levi. The term appears late in Israels historyafter the division into northerly and southern kingdomsand it can be fairly claimed that the term does not nurse to the members of the ten northern tribes, who are properly known as Israelites since they belonged to the House of Israel rather than the House of Judah. Armstrong asserted Certainly this proves that the Jews are a unalike nation altogether from the House of Israel, claims Armstrong. The Jews of today are Judah They call their nation Israel today because they, too, descend from the patriarch Israel or Jacob. But remember that the Ho use of Israelthe ten tribes that separated from Judahdoes not mean Jew Whoever the lost ten tribes of Israel are today, they are not Jews By the year 721 B. C. , the House of Israel was conquered and its people were before long driven out of their own landout of their homes and citiesand carried captives to Assyria, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea So it was in 721 B.C. that the Lost Tribes got lost. The Year postcode Happened Had the tribes remained incorruptible to God, all would have been well, Armstrong explains. But, if they refused and rebelled, they were to be punished seven timesa duration of 2,520 yearsin slavery, servitude, and want. They did rebel, and Armstrong theorizes that their penalization extended from 721 B. C. to A. D. 1800. And what uncommon thing happened in 1800? Well, if we dont count the election of Thomas Jefferson to the giving medication of the United States, not a whole lot.In fact, 1800 was a pretty frighten away year for history. But Armstrong disagrees, saying that from that date, Britain and America became world powers the former (at that time) politically, and the last mentioned economically (and later, also politically). According to Armstrongs scheme, the figure of 2,520 years of punishment is arrived at by multiplying the seven years of punishment by 360the number of days in the year as it was reckoned by the ancientson the teaching that each day of punishment really stood for a whole year of punishment.If you think this is convoluted reasoning, just wait until you commemorate the remainder of the argument in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. Its enough to note here that Armstrong determines from Scripture that the Lost Tribes ended up on islands in the sea, and these islands are northwestern of Palestine. Were told, for example, that the forty-ninth chapter of Isaiah begins with, Listen, O isles, unto me. Do you see how this suggests the British Isles? Armstrong says, Take a map of Euro pe.Lay a name due northwest of Jerusalem across the continent of Europe, until you come to the sea, and then to the islands in the sea This line takes you direct to the British Isles The skeptic might note that the line first comes to the Aegean islands, which are also in the seathe Mediterranean Seabut this would mean the Greeks are the Lost Tribes, therefore, the theory would not play into the desires of some British or Americans to identify themselves with the lost tribes. linguistic Legerdemain You want more proof? Armstrong has it. The House of Israel, he explains, is the bargain people. The Hebraical formulate for covenant is brit brith. And the word for covenant man, or covenant people, would therefore sound, in side of meat word order, Brit-ish (the word ish inwardness man in Hebrew, and it is also an face suffix on nouns and adjectives). And so, is it holy coincidence that the true covenant people today are called the British? And they reside in the British Isles This reasoning whitethorn impress some, but no linguist would take this seriously.The word British is not derived from Hebrew but from the Celtic word Brettas. Its hallowificant that the Celtic Brettas referred to the Britons, who were inhabitants of England before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons that Armstrong claims were Israelites. One possible reason for Armstrongs linguistic confusions may be that in Websters Diction-ary (for example, in the 3,200-page unabridged edition publish in 1932an edition Armstrong may have had access to) the entry for brith (Hebrew covenant) appears sandwiched between the entries for Britannic and Briticism. Perhaps he simply didnt represent carefully enough and assumed, wrongly, that brith must somehow be etymologically connected with the other the words before and after pertaining to things British. Neither does the common English suffix -ish derive from the Hebrew word for man. Instead, it derives from the Greek diminutive suffix -iskos It was bad enough to suggest that the word British is Hebrew, but he also made another claim If you take the name Isaac, you see its easy for someone to drop the I when speaking apace and to end up with Saac as the name of the patriarch.He had descendants, of course, and these may be called Saacs sons, from which we get the word Saxons. Is it only coincidence, asks Armstrong, that Saxons sounds the same as Saacs sonssons of Isaac? This doesnt even qualify as a coincidence, since Armstrong had to make up the name of Saac in order for the coincidence to exist. In reality, the term Saxon is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word seax, which means knife or dagger, not the Hebrew word Isaac (Yitskhaq), which means laughter (cf.Gen. 171519, 18915). other Remarkable Coincidence? Armstrong found other coincidences. When the Lost Tribes were scattered, he says, they brought with them true remarkable things, including a harp and a wonderful stone called lia-fail, or stone of destiny. A peculiar co incidence is that Hebrew reads from right to left, dapple English reads from left to right. Read this name either wayand it still is lia-fail. Another strange coincidenceor is it just coincidence? is that many kings in the history of Ireland, Scotland, and England have been coronated sitting over a remarkable stoneincluding the present queen sic. The stone rests today in Westminster Abbey in London, and the coronation chair is built over and around it. A sign once beside it labeled it Jacobs pillar-stone. Here Armstrongs argument becomes even weaker. After all, one could note that Hebrew and English are not the only languages which, when contrasted, are read in different directions. For example, Arabic is read right to left, while Gaelic is read left to right.What does that prove? Nothing Just as Armstrongs muddled reasoning proves nothing at all about a connection between Hebrew and English. If it did, one could just as easily prove that the Lost Tribes were also responsible for (p) for bringing the Blarney Stone with them. And thats just plain blarney. Armstrongisms Appeal What makes Armstrongs notion so attractive to some family line? First, it appeals to their nationalistic vanity Im of English descent, and now I see that Im right in the thick of things, biblically speaking.Having English blood in my veins makes me special. It puts me above the rest of the crowd. It also perpetuates ethnic disadvantage Thank God Im not Italian I never liked Italians anyway, and now I see they arent descended from the Lost Tribes and so are only secondary players in the divine capersomething I always suspected. At first glance, Armstrongs argument seems to be based on a sophisticated understanding of Scripture Armstrong provides heaps of citations, and I cant find fault with his argument. Its so convoluted and technical it