CHAPTER V
ISRAEL IN THE
ISLES
We must keep
in mind the fact that the Lord cast Israel afar
off to the isles of the sea, and then, through the prophet Isaiah,
commanded silence for a certain period, or until the people should have renewed
their strength. This same prophet, in the first verse of the forty-ninth
chapter, again addresses the people who dwell in the isles as follows:
"LISTEN, O isles, unto me: and hearken, ye people from afar"; and then makes the
declaration: "Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be
glorified."
Israel, as we
know, was cast out of her land for idolatry, and Baal-ism was one of her chief
idolatries. Before she was cast out she seems to have acquired the habit of
attaching the name of the god Baal to places and cities, for on the ancient
maps of Palestine we find Baal-meon,
Baal-gad, Baal-ath, Baal-shalisha, Baal-Tamar,
Baal-peor, Baal-hazor, Baal-zephon,
Mt. Baalah, and others.
But surely
these people carried that same proclivity with them to the islands, for in
Ireland this name of the god Baal is found just as frequently, if not more
frequently, a circumstance which shows that this idol was honored and
worshipped by her eastern colonists. The Rev. T. R. Howlett furnishes us with
the following list of Baal-it-ish names found in Ireland: Baa-y-Bai, Baal-y-gowan, Baal-y-Nahinsh, Baal-y-Castell,
Baal-y-Moni, Baal-y-ner, Baal-y-Garai, Baal-y-nah, Baal-y-Con-El, Baal-y-Hy, Baal-y-Hull-Ish, Baal-NahBrach,
Baal-Athi, Baal-Dagon.
Regarding the
evidence given by these names, Howlett says: "These certainly are
memorials of the Baal worship once prevailing in Ireland. In them we have not
only the name of Baal, but its conjunction also with other Hebrew names. How
can this be accounted for, except as they were so called by emigrants from
Phoenicia and Palestine?
One thing that
particularly marks the Hebrew origin of these names is their attachment to places but not to persons. The Canaanites and
Phoenicians, attached the names of their gods, Baal, Bal, Bel to persons, as
Eth-Baal, Itho-bal, Asdru-bal
and Han-i-bal. These were family
names among the heathen nations surrounding Israel. In like manner, we find among the chosen people the names of
their God associated with and forming a part of family and personal names; as
"El" and "Jah," in Isra-el, Ishma-el, Lemu-el, Samu-el,
Ezeki-el, El-isha El-ijah. Baal never found favor among the Hebrews as
a personal name, though used freely for localities. They gave it to their
towns, but not to their children. Its use in Ireland is proof of the
Israelitish origin of the earliest settlers -- philological evidence of racial
unity."
But this custom of thus using the name of Baal has
long since passed away from the descendents of those who settled in "INNIS
PHAIL" -- an Island Wonderful -- and her sister isles. These islands need
no longer keep silent, for their people have renewed their strength and thus
the isles are yielding up their secrets. Hence, we should not be surprised that
the name of Baal is no longer in the mouth of their people. By the mouth of the
prophet Hosea, whom the Lord used to declare that he would hedge up the way of
Ephraim Israel, so that she could not find her paths, he also says: "I
will take away the names of Baal-im (plural of Baal) out of her mouth, and they
shall no more be remembered by their name," (Hosea 2:17).
But just prior to this saying the Lord has given a
prophecy, of which this is but a part, the sequence of that which precedes it,
and which reads as follows: "Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into
the wilderness [the hitherto uninhabited country], and speak comfortably to her heart [Margin]. And I will give
her vineyards from thence [there], and the valley of Achor [sorrow] for a
door of hope; and she shall sing as in the days of her youth, and as in the day
when she came out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be at that day, saith the
Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi [my husband]; and shalt call me no more
Baali. For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth."
All idolatrous
names were taken from the mouth of Israel, not so much because they had reached
that God-appointed place where they were to be moved no more, and where the
children of wickedness were not to waste them as at the first, but because they had passed out from their former
sorrow through the door of hope, which was caused by the fact that their Lord
had spoken comforting words to their hearts, and because she could look up in
love to him and say, "Ishi -- my husband." The reason for this
heart-experienced hope will become clearer as we proceed with the prophetic
history of this people, whose centralization of racial life and power is in
those islands which are northwest of Palestine.
But in this
same forty-ninth chapter of Isaiah, after letting us know that Israel is located
in the isles, the prophet foretells some events in the future history of that
island nation. Among these predicted events we find the following: "Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One: In
the time of favour [grace] have I heard thee, and in the day of salvation [the
Christian era] have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and I will appoint
thee, as a people of the covenant, to
establish the earth, to cause [thee] to inherit the desolate heritages."
In this
quotation we have, for the sake of clearness, followed in part both the King
James and the Isaac Leeser translations.
The italicized phrase is from Leeser, and is remarkable for its
clearness, especially in its use of the article a before people, because Ephraim-Israel,
although not all the people, is
distinctly a people, of the covenant;
and as a people of the covenant she
is appointed to establish, people, or cause to be inhabited, the desolate,
uninhabited places of the earth. These desolate localities are given to Israel
as an inheritance, and she has needed them in fulfilling the destiny of the
Birthright Kingdom of Israel -- that of becoming many nations, or a company of
nations.
But we must
now notice the word covenant, since it is used in the phrase as a people
of the covenant. The Hebrew word for covenant is Beriyth, which in Judges
8:33 and 9:4 is used as a proper name, and, for that reason, it is simply
transferred into the English text without being translated. It is given there
as the name of one of the idols of Israel, namely: Baal-beriyth, and
means Baal of (the) covenant. Also the Hebrew words Ben-iysh Yemiyniy are translated
"Son of a man of Jemini. Thus Ben means
"a son" lysh, "a
man," and Yemiyniy, Jemini.
The anglicized form of these words are Ben, ish and jamin, and, taken together,
they mean "A man of Benjamin, or a Benjamite."
We have
brought you through this group of words to show that ish in Hebrew means a man. Now take the Hebrew word which is
translated covenant, which in its original form has no vowel, but which in its
Anglicized form retains the vowel i to
preserve the y sound, and we have Brith, which
joined with ish is Brith-ish, and
means "A covenant man." Today
the BRITISH people, or men of the covenant, are called Britons, and are
dwelling in the British Isles!!!
We are told
that the people of Waels call
themselves, in ancient Welsh, "Bryth
y Brithan," or Briths of Briton," which means "The
Covenanters" of "the land of the Covenant." The first form of this phrase is almost
vernacular Hebrew.
It is also
unmistakably recorded in British history that the earliest settlers in Wales
and southern England were called Simonii.
They came by the way of the sea in the year 720 B. C. At this time there
was the greatest influx of the Tuatha de
Daanan to Ireland, and this synchronizes with the deportation of the
Israelites of the commonwealth of Ephraim to Assyria, and the flight of Dan and
Simeon from the seaports and coast country of Palestine. That Simonii
is the plural of Simeon we need
scarcely mention.
But all
evidences of the fulfillment of this prophecy are not philological, for Isaiah,
still addressing the Israelites who dwell in the islands, predicts the following:
"For thy waste and desolate places, and the land of thy destruction [the
destruction of their identity], shall even now be too narrow [pressed,
straightened] by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up
[the Assyrians] shall be far away.
The children
which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine
ears: The place is too straight [small, crowded, cramped] for me; give a place
to me that I may dwell," (Isa. 49:19-20).
Here are a
people called Israel who are living in the isles of the sea. They have lost one
company of people, and yet their children say that the place is still too
small, cramped and crowded, because there are too many inhabitants for such a
small country. Consequently they ask
the Mother Country to give them a
place also. Or, according to Leeser's translation, they say, "Make room
for me to dwell," and the Mother Country must do it, because it is she to
whom the Lord has given the desolate heritages of the earth.
Mark this! It
is also said of the mother country, or Mother Israel, that she "lost" her first children
before other of her children asked for territory in which to dwell.
England is the
only country on the face of the earth where these conditions obtain. Her first child was called New England, but
she LOST it, and now it -- together with that which, for various reasons, has
been annexed -- is called The United
States of America.
But, after
losing her American colonies, her work of colonizing non-populated portions of
the world kept right on; until today through the power of these colonies she
holds possession of Prince Edward's Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, British
Columbia, Vancouver's Island, New Foundland and Canada. All of these are
unitedly called the Dominion of Canada, and to these are added the six States
of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, British India, the Fiji Islands and parts
of Africa, Egypt and China. So that now the sun never sets on the realm of the
United Kingdom.
But we should
expect this, and even more, for according to Jer. 31:9-10, the Israel which is
located in the Isles is none other than Ephraim, the Abrahamic Birthright
People, of whom the Lord says: "I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my
first born."
Ephraim, as we
have shown, was the second son of Joseph.
But when the birthright blessing was given to Joseph in his sons,
Ephraim, the younger, was set before Manasseh, the elder. They were to remain together, however, until
they grew into a multitude in the midst of the earth. After that they were to
separate; then Manasseh was to become a "great"
people, or nation, and Ephraim was to become "a multitude, or company
of nations."
The people in
the British Isles did certainly grow together until they became a multitude of
people in the earth, and then they separated. The separated people has become a
great nation, and those who were left in the isles have become a multitude of
nations. The government of the separated people is democratic, the people in
the isles still live, as they ever must, under a monarchy, but the two peoples
are, as Joseph's two sons were, brothers; and they even call each other "Brother John" and "Brother Jonathan." There are
no other nations on earth who thus brother each other.
The facts
recorded above are also in fulfillment of another prophecy given by dying Jacob
concerning Joseph, which reads as follows: "Joseph is a fruitful bough,
even a fruitful bough by a well [water], whose branches run over the
wall," (Gen. 49:22).
An objector
has said: "But I believe the words 'a multitude of nations' means a
multitude of different nationalities."
If this be the true meaning of these words, then surely England, with
her sixteen nations in British India, her Indians and Esquimaux of British
America, her Fiji Islanders and New Zealanders, and her subjects of still other
nationalities, which are absolutely too numerous to mention -- surely England
is a multiplicity of nationalities.
Still we do not believe this to be the meaning of the words under
discussion, but we do believe that this fact of England's thus ruling so many
nationalities, and of America's holding dominion over the Sandwich Isles, Cuba,
Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Philippines is the fulfillment of a promise that
Israel shall inherit the lands and labor of the heathen, which is given as
follows:
"He
brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness: and gave them
the lands of the heathen; and they inherited the labour of the people; that
they might observe his statutes, and keep his laws. Praise ye the
Lord," (Psa. 105:43-45). The Bible follows Anglo-Saxon conquests, and
some of the people in all these nations both receive and keep the law of God.
We must
remember that Ephraim and Manasseh, as the representatives of the house of
Joseph, both together received the birthright blessing under the hands of the
dying patriarch, and that since they thus jointly hold the birthright blessing,
even though Ephraim was set before Manasseh, we may expect that they shall
hold many of its blessings in common. Take, for instance, the blessing
pronounced upon the land of Joseph, as given by Moses on the day of his death,
which is only an enlarged edition of that which was given by Jacob on the day
of his death, and which is as follows: "And of Joseph he said, Blessed of
the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven [rain], for the dew,
and for the deep [ocean] that croucheth beneath [his vessels], and for the
precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and the precious things put forth
from moon to moon, and through the chief [best] things of the ancient
mountains, and for the precious things of the everlasting hills, and the precious
things of the earth and the fullness thereof, and for the good will of him that
dwelt in the bush: let this blessing come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the
top of the head of him that was separated from his brethren. His glory is like
the firstling [firstborn] of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of
an unicorn [the unicorn is in the national seal of England] with them he
[Joseph] shall push the people together to the ends of the earth; and they are
the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh,"
(Deut. 33:13-17).
This promise
of wealth on land and sea, of abundant harvests, of rare gems and precious
stones, of the richest and the greatest mining interests in the world, is
fulfilled in England and America. It is
also true that these nations, not only push
the aborigines of their possessions into the ends, or corners, of their
countries, but they also push the people
of other nations with whom they war into corners. Concerning America and
her aborigines, we need only say, "Lo, the poor Indian," and ask,
Where is he? And then ask the same question concerning the aborigines of the
countries which fall into the hands of England. Just here the alien testimony
of the Russian Vernadsky is pertinent.
He says, "Britain is a spider whose web encompasses the whole
world within her own dominions. She has all the resources of all the
continents. Her empire is stronger and vaster than any coalition of other
states. She is a standing menace to all other powers, and her increasing
strength is destructive to the balance of power. Nevertheless, unsatisfied and insatiable, she is grasping for
more territory. Yesterday she seized
Fiji; the day before she took the Diamond fields; today she annexed Transvaal,
and tomorrow she will clutch Egypt. It
is only too clear that the power of Britain is too great to be compatible with
the general safety, and that the aggressive empire, unless speedily checked,
will establish a universal dominion over all the people of the earth."
Our reply to
this expressed fear concerning Britain is "universal dominion," is
that England alone will not gain this, but that England and America will yet
form an alliance and that then they shall
push the people to the ends of the earth, for it is foretold that they,
Ephraim and Manasseh, "together"
shall do this, and also that, "Israel
shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the whole WORLD with fruit," (Isa. 27:6).
The
fulfillment of these promised blessings, which were pronounced upon the land of
Joseph, by the people in the isles and their "separated" brother, is the cause of the fulfillment of
another prophecy given by Isaiah concerning this same people, which is as follows:
"Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon [Palestinean
seaport], that pass over the sea have replenished. And by great waters [same place as in Ezekiel's riddle] the seed
of Sihor, the harvest of the river is her revenue; and she is the mart of nations."
The Sihor is a
river in Egypt. Israel dwelt in Egypt
for four hundred and thirty years, hence they were formerly from Egypt,
latterly from Palestine, now in the isles of the Great Waters!!! Moreover,
the birthright holders were born Egyptians.
Thus the Lord says, "When Israel was a child, then I loved him and
called my son out of Egypt." It is for these reasons that, in the Bible,
the Ephraim Israelites are in two places called Egyptians.
This fact of
calling Israel out of Egypt is doubly true in the case of Israel; first in the
fact that when Israel was a child (a young nation), the Lord called her out of
Egypt; second in the fact that the Lord's son, Ephraim his first born was
called out of Egypt. This was also true again, after the flight of Joseph and
Mary into Egypt with the babe under the protection of an angel, for it is again
written, "Out of Egypt have I called my son."
But there is
another prophecy in Isaiah which has been most wonderfully fulfilled in the
history of Ephraim and his brother Manasseh, i.e., England and America, the
long lost house of Joseph. It is the
following: "The Lord sent a word
into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know,
even Ephraim, and the inhabitants of Samaria," (Isa. 9:8-9).
Here we have
the names of Samaria-Ephraim-Israel, the birthright kingdom, used
prophetically. In connection with
these names is the fact that the Lord sent a word to Jacob, and that it lighted
not upon Judah, but upon Israel, and that all the people of Ephraim "shall
know" this.
Hear this!
"Ye chosen seed of
Israel's race –
Ye ransomed from the
fall!"
Again we say,
hear this! "In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and
the WORD was God. The same was in the
beginning with God. All things were
made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of
men. And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. He came to his own [Judah] and his own [the Jews] received
him not." So he said to his disciples, "Go to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel." Christ, the
Divine WORD was "SENT" "into Jacob," bringing life, light,
grace, and truth, but Judah rejected the
word sent from God, so it lighted upon Israel. Thus, the Apostle Paul, who
was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and who was raised a Pharisee of the strictest sort, understood himself
perfectly, when he said, "Israel [as a whole] bath not obtained that which
he seeketh for; but the election [Ephraim-Israel] hath obtained it, and the
rest [Jewish-Israel] were blinded."
Who, "as concerning the gospel are enemies; but as touching the
election [racial] are beloved for the fathers' sakes." Hence, "blindness in part [or blindness
to a part] is happened to Israel, until the fullness
of the Gentiles be come in."
But of that part of the elect race which is appointed
to be the recipients of the word which God sent.
Paul says, "There is a remnant according to the election of
grace," and it is the people who belong to the election of grace, that
follow the colonies of that elect race, and plant the standard of the gospel of
the grace of the Son of God among the nations of the earth. Thus the Messianic
promise, which the Lord made to Abraham, that in his seed all the nations of
the earth should be blessed, has received a double fulfillment, in that those
who carry the message of the One Seed, are
also the seed of Abraham. This is true either nationally or spiritually, for
all who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, are Abraham's seed
and heirs according to the promise. And
it is also true that the Anglo-Saxons are pre-eminently the evangelists of the
world.