We begin with two quite well known verses from the book of Amos to set the scene, Chapter 9:8-9:

"Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the LORD. For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth."

This subject is unusual in our circles regarding the Kingdom message. I did a study a few weeks ago on the union of the two crowns, explaining how James VI of Scotland became James I of England. That, coupled, with my recent visit to Hanover, raised the subject that has always been of interest to me. However, it is a controversial subject in Kingdom circles. It is the question of a remnant of Judah being found in Germany.

Remember what the Scripture says; God said He would sift the House of Israel as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet He would not let those grains be lost. We know that the bulk of the grain was gathered into the appointed place, but we know that, as the exiled Israelites migrated across Europe, grains were left here and there and we should not be blind to that.

At the outset I will clarify something. I am not teaching you that all Germans are Judah, definitely not. Neither am I suggesting for one moment that Germany is an Israelite nation in the sense that Britain, Norway or Denmark or Holland would be classified. But I do hope to demonstrate to you that a sizeable number, now greatly reduced, of Judah came through Germany when the Tribes passed through that region on their way to the Isles North and West of Palestine.

We have always taught that to identify where the lost tribes of Israel were today, obtain a blank map of Europe and color in all the areas that accepted the Reformation and the Protestant Faith, and you would have located the dominant Israelite parts of Europe.

If they were colored in accurately you would have the British Isles, Holland, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland. However, there are three problematic areas, because there is a scattering of Israelites in Germany, as I will show, and at one time a sizeable number in France, certainly the Huguenot people who accepted the Reformed Faith. Therefore we may identify the remnant of Reuben as present in modem day France, also the Waldenses, who accepted reformation truth in Northern Italy. In fact they were pre-Reformation witnesses and were known as the Israel of the Alps. Belief in the concept of Israelites being found in Germany is not new. It is something we taught in our movement prior to World War I. In my library I have books that were written by a British Israel clergyman at that time, the Rev. Douglas, which identified the remnant of Israel who had come through Germany.

The Racial Mix of Germany

But of course, when World Wars I and II broke out, we know what happened. Every time, truth is the first casualty of wartime, and it was not too long before the Germans became the Huns. In fact, such was the wave of anti-German feeling, that it reached a point in 1917 that our own British Royal Family had to change their name to the House of Windsor. It is an historical fact that King George V went through a whole list of names before one of his advisors came up with the name Windsor. They dropped all reference to House of Hanover, House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and even the ancient German name of Guelph. All those names were dropped in favor of the House of Windsor. The Battenburgs, another branch of the Royal Family, changed their name to Mountbatten, an anglicized form of the name.

The teaching began to come to the fore that modern Germany was Assyria. That teaching did not just come to the fore in World War II, it completely took over in British Israel circles. All our preachers were preaching that Germany is Assyria. No less a preacher than our own A. J. Ferris wrote at least two books, Germany's Doom Foretold, and When Russia Bombs Germany which outline this belief. The teaching that Germany is Assyria has been perpetuated to this day by the various branches, splits or splinters of what was the Armstrong World Wide Church of God.

In this study, we are going to look at a part of Germany, at Judah, and the Royal links. We are going to look at the heraldry, and, more importantly, the spiritual links, the westward migrations of Judah, and the poison that finally destroyed and ruined Germany.

Germany itself was never a unified nation until 1871. It was only then that William I of Prussia, had within the space of 5 years conquered Denmark, Austria and France. In the Royal suite in the Versailles Palace in Paris he proclaimed the first German Empire or German Reich. The Germans don't call themselves Germans, they call themselves Deutsch, and the name German came about because the Romans named the people and the migrating tribes that were in central Europe in the days of the Roman Empire, "Germani". ("Germani" means genuine. This referred to the fact that they were genuine Celts, not members of the Asian tribes who were pushing them westward.)

There were centuries of turmoil. Tribes were passing through and migrating all the time. One tribe would start to move across central Europe and Germany, they had just begun to get settled and another tribe would get pushed by barbarians from the East. They were migrating and ebbing and flowing across what we call central Europe today. We know that the scattered Israelites (according to Revelation 7) "Were sealed by God for protection". The migrating tribes made their way up the Danube Valley into Germany, into Holland, and into Scandinavia and ultimately into the British Isles. With those Israelites, accompanying them or sometimes even pursuing them, came other peoples from the Middle East. Not all Germans are the same; they only have a common bond in language; a Bavarian has very little in common with a Prussian, an Austrian has little in common with a Hanoverian, a Sudeten little in common with some of the others. They are a very different people, but they all speak a common language.

When Hitler spoke of his Third Reich incorporating all Germans, he used racial terms, but those terms were totally incorrect. When he took over Austria, the only thing those people had in common with the other parts of Germany, Berlin or Hamburg or Frankfurt was that they all spoke German.

Language was the common bond rather than race or ethnicity. There certainly is a strong Assyrian element present in modern Germany. An ancient manuscript, called the Austrian Chronicle, suggests that, as early as 703 BC, Assyrians were present in Central Europe and they were pursuing fleeing Israelites along the Danube River valley.

The Romans claimed to have founded the ancient German city of Trier. But there is a German tradition much stronger than that, and there is a building in that city called the Red House. On that building is an inscription in Latin that states that Trier or Treves was founded at least 1300 years before ancient Rome and that it was founded by Trebada, a son of Semiramis, the consort of the wicked Nimrod. She was the woman responsible for the Babylonian mystery religion.

(We do not have the space to pursue this now but if you turn to Genesis 10:22, in the descendants of Shem you will find listed a man called Asshur. Asshur was the founder of the Assyrians, and the founder of ancient Nineveh the Assyrian capital). The Western Assyrians who lived in what was called in Bible days, Asia Minor, and we would call modern Turkey, were known in ancient history as Chatti or Hatti. If you look up the Encyclopaedia Britannica you will find that, among the earliest inhabitants of Germany were people called the Chatti or the Hatti which shows the Assyrian element. Further, the ancient Assyrian kings called themselves the Chattizars or the Kaisers of the Hatti, or the kings of the Hatti, and there are certain linguistic links between the Assyrian and old High German. So we are not saying that there is no Assyrian element. We can neither be dogmatic enough to say that Germany is all Assyria, or that Germany is all Israel, but that there are different and diverse elements present within the German population.

There are also elements of Gomer present. In Ezekiel 38 we read of Gomer and all his bands. Certainly there are elements of Gomer present in Germany, especially in those regions where in history the Teutonic Knights were moving eastward and seeking to conquer the lands eastward of Germany.

What of our teaching that there are German Israelites? Northern Germany, from modern Holland, right across in a block to the edge of modern Denmark, that whole area was the "racial seedbed" out of which poured tens of thousands of Angles, Saxons and Jutes (Judahites), who moved into Britain as the Romans moved out, and who poured across the North Sea, entered the British Isles and pushed the original Ancient British, or Celtic population westward.

Were those people Assyrians who suddenly changed into Israelites on the boats crossing the North Sea? No! Northern Germany was like a vast pool of dispersed Israelite seed, and out of that area they poured across to Britain, because they were going to the Appointed Place of prophecy.

Even the names Jutes and Jutland are derived from Judah. It is not as simple as saying all Germany is Assyria, or all Germany is Gomer. What we now call Germany continued on through the history of the Middle Ages right up until the 18th and 19th centuries. If you looked at an historical map, it was a vast patchwork quilt of little principalities and electorates and dukedoms and petty city states, some of which were bound together in what was the Hanseatic League. Most of this territory lay within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, which was controlled and dominated by the German speaking Austrians of the House of Hapsburg.

But the Reformation revolutionized that, and drew a line through Germany, from the days of Martin Luther, until 1648, when the peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War. The area was absolutely devastated. The horrors we see in Iraq or Ethiopia today, of starvation and disease and death by famine, war and blood-shed are no worse than those seen in Germany during the Thirty Years' War. Germany was tom apart by religious conflict and was the battleground for the armies of Europe, the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Swedes, everybody was involved in it for thirty years. They warred back and forth across Central Europe, across Germany. The area was devastated. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in that conflict, and it depleted in size, strength and number the Judahite, Israelite element in some parts of the country.

It also began the process of propelling many Israelite people out of Germany in a westward track, which led them to North America.

The Royal Tribe

We will leave Germany for the moment and look specifically at Judah. Judah is the Royal Tribe; remember God said to Abraham, in Genesis 17, "Kings shall come out of you". That was further augmented in Genesis 49. In the blessing of the tribes, we learn that Judah was to be the kingly tribe or the royal tribe, and we trace the bloodline of our own Royal Family right back through King David to Judah and to Abraham with our emblems of the Lion and other heraldic devices.

We know that Judah had two sons by Tamar -- Zarah and Pharez. The story of how the hand of Zarah came out first and was bound with the scarlet cord should be familiar to you. That Red Hand of Zarah/Judah is the Red Hand of Ulster. The Zarah/Judah people did not remain in Palestine but that a section of them migrated; there are new books coming out of America soon and they trace the Westward track of those Zarah/Judah people right round the Mediterranean, via Sardinia, into Spain. They named the river Ebro in honor of Heber. They named the city of Zaragosa (Saragossa) for their father Zarah. They came from Spain into Ireland and they called this land Hibernia. We know that they later went over into Scotland. We know that Robert the Bruce, in the Scottish Declaration of Independence, claimed that the Scottish people were of Judah.

We can say fairly confidently that the people of the North of Ireland and Scotland are predominantly Zarah/Judah, and we have a mixture of Dan as well. But what about the Pharez/Judahites who stayed behind in Palestine from which the Davidic line had come? The Bible says that they went into deportation first with ten-tribed Israel. Only a remnant ever went to Babylon. If you read II Kings 18:13 it says:

"Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah (that was the Royal King of the Davidic line in Judah, in Jerusalem) did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them".

What actually happened was that having taken ten-tribed Israel, and deported them to Halah and Habor by the rivers of Gozan, the cities of the Medes, the Assyrians deported the inhabitants of 46 fenced cities of Judah. (200,000 Judahites). That Bible account is borne out by the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser in the British Museum, in the Assyrian Galleries. You will find the Assyrian evidence corroborates that along with our forefathers of ten-tribed Israel, went 200,000 Judahites as well.

Those people migrated across the Crimea. They came through the land of Arsareth (modern Rumania) up the Danube Valley through Germany, through Scandinavia, to Britain. It wasn't just ten-tribed Israel, but also the descendants of 200,000 Judahites. Therefore a remnant of Judah was, and still is, present in Germany today, those who did not move on to the West. Not every Saxon, not every Jute, left Germany to come to the Isles.

Maybe that is revolutionary in some Kingdom circles, but do not forget that God spoke through Amos and He says, "I'll sift them but not one grain will go missing". They will all be located sooner or later.

Let us now look at the Royal links: "Kings shall come out of thee," -- Judah was to be the kingly tribe. When I went to visit Brunswick (or Braunschweig as the Germans call it) I saw a number of historical buildings and statues connected with a king, a German monarch called Henry the Lion, who was the Duke of Saxony. His family name was Guelph, and he ruled around 1139 AD. He took as his wife Princess Matilda of England, the daughter of King Henry II. She ultimately was known in history as the Empress Maud.

The line of descent from Henry the Lion and Empress Maud brings you to Ernst Augustus of Hanover, the father of our King George I. Not only did George I have a blood claim to the throne of David, through his Stuart line of descent, he could go right back into the Norman line of descent, and trace the blood line back to the Plantagenet kings and to the Norman kings.

King James I and VI came from Scotland to claim the crown of England. He had a daughter, Elizabeth, Princess Royal of Britain. She married a young German Prince, Frederick the Elector Palatine. He was chosen by the Protestants to become king of Bohemia. Bohemia was a part of what we would call Czechoslovakia today. He no sooner was crowned than the Roman church, and the Holy Roman Empire, made sure that a Protestant Prince should not sit on that throne too long. In 1618 there began one of the most vicious wars of religion in European history, the Thirty Years' War between the Protestant and Catholic factions in Europe. The first round went to the Roman Catholics, who completely routed the young king. He was defeated in 1618 at the battle of the White Mountain. He fled to his homeland again, taking with him his bride, who became known in history as the Winter Queen. She spent her later years in exile in Holland. That was the start of the Thirty Years' War.

That young couple had a daughter called Sophia and she married Emst Augustus, the Prince or Elector of Hanover. William of Orange drove the Stuarts from Britain's throne and he and his wife Mary the daughter of James II, died childless. They were succeeded by Mary's sister Anne who had numerous children, but none of them lived to maturity. So Britain was faced with a choice, would the Catholic Stuarts come back and resume the throne, or could anybody find a Protestant with a claim to the throne? The daughter and the grandson of the Winter Queen, Sophia and her son George, The Elector of Hanover, were the Protestant heirs.

Thus came about the Bill of Rights and the Revolution Settlement, that was to secure the Protestant succession and it was to pass from Anne to the House of Hanover unless the Stuarts returned to the Reformed Faith.

I don't know where you would find the Bill of Rights if you were looking for it in Britain, but it didn't take too long see it in Germany. On a Saturday morning I was taken to a big museum in the center of Hanover and there amongst many other objects of interest to us as Kingdom believers, under a glass covering, was the Bill of Rights exactly as it was delivered from Britain to Hanover. It was to advise the Hanoverians that the Crown was theirs if they upheld the Reformed Faith. It is hard to believe that all those people could be Assyrians. We know, of course, that they were not. We know that they were the remnant of Judah revealed in Germany.

Sophia died a few months before Anne, and her son George assumed the Throne as George I. He was known as "German George" because he couldn't speak a word of English and he never bothered to learn. He reigned from 1714 to 1727. He continued to speak German, continued to make trips to Hanover every so often. His only claim to that throne was that, in fact, he was the only Protestant in the line of descent.

So Britain had a Hanoverian Monarchy. George I was succeeded in turn by his son George II, the last English king to lead his armies into battle. He fought all these battles on the Continent of Europe in the 1740s. George II's Queen, was a German, Caroline of Ansbach. A grandson who succeeded George II as George III, had a German Queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz.

During the time of the American Revolutionary War or War of Independence, not only did King George's Red Coats, his British soldiers, fight the rebelling Americans, but his Hanoverian and Hessian soldiers, his German soldiers, went over to America and fought. Furthermore, in the Napoleonic Wars, the Hanoverian and Hessian German soldiers of the British Monarch fought with Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. There is a big column like Nelson's column, which survived the bombing of Hanover, and is the War Memorial column commemorating all the Germans who died fighting for the British Crown at the Battle of Waterloo, against the French.

George IV formerly the Prince Regent, came to the Throne of Britain. He also had a Queen, Caroline of Brunswick. He visited Hanover and there in the museum is the Golden Coach that he used on his visit, like the one our Queen uses to the State Opening of Parliament.

When George IV died, he was succeeded by his brother, William IV, known as the "sailor king"; he had a German bride, Adelaide of Saxe Meiningen. The big city of Adelaide in Australia was named in her honor. When William IV died, he was succeeded. by Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria's father, who had pre-deceased her, was William IV's brother, Edward, Duke of Kent and he was married to Louisa Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, another German. The only reason Queen Victoria did not rule Hanover as well was because they had a law that a woman could not succeed to the crown. So her uncle, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland assumed the kingdom or took the title of King of Hanover. But right up to Queen Victoria, Hanover and Britain were united. That had been from 1714 to 1837, unified through a monarchy with the same King ruling both places. Queen Victoria had as her husband and Prince Consort, Albert, a German of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Are we expected to believe that all those kings of German descent and all of their queen consorts and Prince Albert were Assyrians? It is not so.

The blood-line wasn't marred; THEY WERE ALL OF ROYAL JUDAH. The Royal line clearly demonstrates to us the remnant of Judah revealed in Germany. Queen Victoria's own large family intermarried into European and German royalty so that she became known as The Grandmother of Europe. Her daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal of England, became the mother of the German Kaiser. Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Alexandra of Hesse, married the ruler of Russia and was the last Tsarina, slain by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Queen Marie of Rumania, Queen Maud of Norway all were granddaughters of Queen Victoria.

The Greek Royal Family is not really Greek at all; they were from Denmark, the first King of Greece, George I, being a brother of Queen Alexandra, wife of our Edward VII. Prince Philip, the husband of our own Queen is of German/Danish extraction. The beloved Queen Mary of King George V was Princess Mary of Teck, the granddaughter of George III. She died in 1953. She had lived here for all her life, and still spoke with a German accent because her father was a minor German Prince. All these Royal personages reveal to us the remnant of Judah found in Germany.

Quoting again, Amos chapter 9:

"For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth" (Amos 9:9).

We are not claiming that Germany was an Israel nation, neither are we saying that all of Germany is Judah, but we are saying that present within Germany is a Judahite section. We found that there is also present an Assyrian group who trace their ancestry to Asshur, and there is a Gomer group. All three are present within Germany.

The Proof of Heraldry

We believe that one of the proofs of Identity may be found in heraldry. The heraldry of the nations identifies them either as Israel nations or whether they be of another origin. When we come to look at the heraldry of those parts of Germany -- in which we believe that Israel travelled and settled for a time, and had a strong influence -- we find the royal heraldry to be the same or similar to our own, and the royal heraldry of Judah is prominently displayed.

In the Royal Standard of the arms of Hanover we find the same heraldry as in our British coat-of-arms. The heraldry has the Scottish Red Lion rampant on the gold background, with the three passant lions red on the golden background of England, and also the harp of Ireland, on the blue ground.

Then in the center is the blue lion: two more passant lions and a white horse and crown. If one did not know that this was the heraldry of Hanover, it would perhaps be presumed to be from somewhere in Britain or of South Africa, Canada, or Australia.

The Lion and The Unicorn support the arms of Hanover as on our own Royal Standard. The heraldry is clearly displayed. The British coat-of-arms, the crown of David, Ireland's harp, the Red Lion of Scotland, the Golden Lions of England and the White Horse of Hanover, are all important.

In Mr. W. H. Bennett's book, The Symbols of Our Celto-Saxon Heritage, he tells us that the horse is a secondary emblem of the tribe of Dan. There is a horse in the heraldry of Hanover and that horse was also the emblem of Brutus and the Trojans. We know those Trojans were of Israelite extraction. If you have an earlier edition of The Covenant Voice of a few months ago, it traced the origins of the Trojans and showed that the white horse was their emblem.

Similarly, it was mentioned above, that when the Saxons left Saxony in Germany and came across into the British Isles, the emblem of the first two Saxon chieftains to land in Britain and be given a settlement here, were called Hengist and Horsa (their names meaning "horse"). Their emblem was the white horse, and that white horse is also in the heraldry of the county of Kent.

If you go to the book of Revelation 19:11:

''And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns; and He had a name written, that no man knew, but He Himself. And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and His name is called The Word of God."

The white horse is identified with the coming of God the Father, crowned with many crowns, returning soon to planet Earth to establish His literal Kingdom here as He promised.

In Genesis 49:8,9 in Jacob's blessing upon Judah, it says:

''Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?"

The lion is a symbol of Judah. The white horse is identified with the tribe of Dan and, in symbolism, with the coming of God the Father. It is all over the arms of Saxony and Hanover. There is the heraldry which proclaims the remnant of Judah revealed in Germany.

Those heraldic emblems are all over the city of Hanover. In spite of it being heavily bombed and badly destroyed in World War II, when I was on a trip there, they took me on a heritage trail; all over the town on arches and on buildings and on gates, the heraldry of the lion and the unicorn and all the heraldry of our Royal coat-of-arms is apparent. Even Hitler never erased that, and even today the parliament building for Lower Saxony, the provincial parliament in Hanover, has that royal coat-of-arms.

To continue: if Judah is the lion symbol in heraldry, why do the Germans have the double-headed eagle as their symbol? That was on the Kaiser's banner, the House of Hohenzollern and it was associated with the Third Reich.

Just as Judah's symbol is the lion, so the Assyrian symbol is the double-headed eagle, symbolizing the division of the Germans. Double-headed eagles are associated with the Assyrian originated peoples, and yet there are also the lions symbolizing the Judah peoples.

In Baden or Württemberg the coat of arms displays three black lions on a gold ground on the main shield and then there are six smaller shields for the six component parts of that province. Württemberg itself has another golden lion rampant of the House of Judah upon a black ground.

The modern coat-of-arms of Bavaria (which is not a predominantly Israelite part of Germany) incorporates the two golden lions for the Palatinate into its heraldry because Bavaria includes the territory once called the Palatine or Palatinate. This was the territory of the husband of the "Winter Queen", Elizabeth Stuart, whose story we learned above.

The city arms for Bremen are two golden lions and the State Coat-of-Arms for Bremen have a lion with a helmet and he is holding a key in his hand. Could it be that it is, as Revelation says, the Key of David?

The old Grand Duchy of Hesse has the symbol of a blue lion; he is crowned and carrying or drawing forth a sword. Out of the mouth of the lion of Judah, the conquering LORD of Hosts comes forth with what? A two edged sword, which is the Word of God. The heraldry is all there.

In Hamburg the heraldry depicts two golden lions upholding a castle upon a white shield. In Westphalia, the emblem is the white horse and in Mecklenburg it is the bull's head, the bull being the symbol of the Angles just as much as the white horse was that of the Saxons.

In all these people the evidence of heraldry indicates their Israelite identity and it shows that even though the Israel/Judah element is depleted and greatly reduced in number in Germany yet there is a remnant revealed even yet in that nation at this time.

What About the Protestant Reformation?

We will now look at some spiritual links. A question that many Kingdom believers tend to avoid, because it is contentious, is the teaching that all Germans are Assyria.

Who could possibly deny the presence of Judah in Germany when we know Germany to have been the land of the Protestant Reformation? Who among our Israel people, preachers and writers, would have the audacity to stand up and to say that Martin Luther or Melanchthon or any of the other great reformers that came out of Germany are Assyrians? These Lutherans who broke the chains of Rome, who would dare to say that they were Assyrians? God reveals His truth to Israel; these people were of true Israelite extraction.

We are well aware of our own John Wycliffe, we know how he translated the Bible into English and shook the power of Rome towards the end of the 1300s and that is why, ahead of time, he was called the Morning Star of the Reformation. We are well aware of the pre-reformation witnesses, like the Waldensians in Italy (the Israel of the Alps), or again, of John Huss and Jerome of Prague.

When the witnesses of Bible prophecy stood upon their feet in the person of Martin Luther in 1517 and he nailed the Thesis to the church door in Wittenberg, where did it happen? It happened in Germany. Why did it happen in Germany?

The witnesses of course were God's true Israel. In May 1514, the Pope of Rome sent a letter all over Rome, Europe, and what they called Christendom. He said that if anybody had a controversy with Rome, or did not agree with what the Holy Roman Catholic Church taught, let them come to the church of St. John Lateran in Rome, let them stand up and present their case.

Nobody in their right mind would have gone, because the Pope had given a safe conduct previously to Jerome of Prague and others and then burned them. So nobody went, no Hussites, no Waldenses, no Albigenses, nobody turned up. And the Pope of Rome had a great celebration. They said -- the Witnesses are dead! No one opposes us, it is on record that no one opposes us anymore.

Then a little Saxon monk called Martin Luther nailed a parchment to the church door on 31st October, Reformation Day, and the Protestant Reformation had begun!

Even the Pope said that the ancient witnesses, Huss and Jerome, had come alive again in the person of Martin Luther. Where did the work of reformation begin? It began in Germany. How can we label all those people Assyrians? God would have put the Assyrians in the outer court. But no, God sent the awakening there.

Somebody once asked me, "Why did He begin it in Germany?" I will tell you why; in Zechariah's prophecy 12:7, it says this:

"For the Lord shall save (or bring salvation) to the tents of Judah first"

and it was Martin Luther who first proclaimed, in Saxony, in Germany, some of the great truths suppressed by Rome for centuries. Germany was the first place in which Luther would publicly burn the Papal Bull, the letter of excommunication.

At Worms in Germany, Luther declared, "My conscience is captive to the Word of God, here I stand; I can do no other". At Wartburg Castle he would produce his copy of the Bible in German. It would be to Germany that Tyndale our own great reformer, who gave us the English Bible, the little book of the prophecy of Revelation 10, would flee from England persecuted by the Roman Church. He had to seek refuge in Germany to get his little book printed. It was from Germany that the Bibles were smuggled back into Britain in bales of cloth. The church of Rome was mocked, because they paid a huge amount of money to buy up a whole lot of the Bibles in order to burn them. With all the money received, the Reformers printed even more Bibles, of better condition and better quality -- this was all happening in Germany.

In 1529 in Germany -- at the diet of Spiers -- the word Protestant first came into being, and the famous Augsburg Confession of the Lutheran Church was framed and put into writing. So how dare we deny the existence of the Remnant of Judah revealed in Germany?

As well as the Lutherans, there were the Calvinistic groups also flourishing. Some of you will have heard of a group called the Moravians, and the Moravian church was in a part of old Bohemia, now Czechoslovakia, on the German frontier. They were really persecuted in the Thirty Years' War mentioned above. They fled and took refuge in Germany proper, in 1628. Then the Moravian church came under the protection and inspiration of the great German Christian, Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf, who developed the Moravian Church. The Moravians migrated out of Germany (in fact we have two Moravian churches in Belfast). The Moravian people also went to America, as missionaries to the West lndies and mostly to Georgia. It was in Georgia that John Wesley, who was still seeking the assurance of Salvation, came under the influence of the Moravians, and that was really his starting point to finding assurance of faith. The Moravians in America went on, in 1740, to develop a large settlement in a place called Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. So the Moravian Church originated in the remnant of Judah found in Germany.

There were also others of what we would call pietistic movements, such as Philip Jacob, Spener and August Francke and they were responsible for founding the great university at Halle.

The Two Wings of a Great Eagle

The Christians and the Protestants in Germany experienced great persecution. In Revelation 12:13-17 we read:

''And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ."

There are many applications of this text, but this is a picture of what happened during the terrible wars of religion. Germany was drenched in blood, right from Reformation days to 1648, when the peace treaty ended the Thirty Years' War. Tens of thousands of God's people were slaughtered by the rampaging armies of the Roman Catholic nations of Europe.

The Dragon was wroth with the woman Israel, the remnant of Israel's seed in Germany, just as the remnant in France, the Huguenots, suffered terribly by the wars of religion and the persecuting powers of Rome. And what was the result of that? The woman (Israel) was given the wings of an eagle to flee to a place of safety. The French Huguenots, a remnant of Reuben, fled to South Africa, where there is a memorial depicting that fact. The remnant of Judah in Germany began to move westward towards the United States of America from the 17th century onwards. So many of them migrated, in point of fact, that there are as many Americans today who can claim German descent as there are who can claim English descent. They were not Assyrians!

As that Judah/Israel element migrated out of Germany, the Assyrian/Gomer element did not, and so over the centuries they have come to predominate, whilst the Israelite element have become a minority or a remnant. When the United States was actually established it was only by a narrow majority vote of one in the Continental Congress, that the Americans chose English rather than German to be their national language. That is something that is not well known.

There was constant migration to the United States. The Church of the Brethren of the Baptists fled first from Westphalia to Holland because of persecution, and then they went from Holland and settled the area, around Germantown in Pennsylvania. Then a group of Lutherans moved into Georgia, and in 1839, under the leadership of a minister called Walther, they went to Missouri. Persecuted Lutherans, who were known as the Salzbergers, were driven into Prussia and from Prussia they fled to America.

Large numbers then sailed from Saxony and they arrived in New Orleans in 1839. They journeyed up the Mississippi to St. Louis and there Walther built Trinity Church and began the first Lutheran magazine. Another group went into Michigan, and eventually they were grouped together under what is called today the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. To this day they still adhere to the confession that the Pope of Rome is the Antichrist of prophecy.

Nobody's going to tell me that those were Assyrians -- they had to be the Israelite remnant.

The constant migration out of Germany into America, the move westward depleted the Israelite gene pool in Germany and let the Assyrian/Gomer element predominate.

The "Flood" of Water

Not only is the Dragon depicted as waging physical war on the Israelites in Germany but under the symbol of the Serpent, we are told that he would cast a flood of filthy water out of his mouth. We know that that flood of water can be applied in the racial dilution of the Israel peoples at this time, but that is not the thrust of it here. It has a double meaning. If the Word of God is the pure water of life, then the filthy water from the serpent's mouth is false doctrine.

Jesuits infiltrated the universities and the theological colleges of Germany, and they spewed forth filthy water They denied the infallibility of the Scriptures, they mutilated the Word of God. From Germany came the highly educated so-called theologians, the pioneers of Higher Criticism. Bible-denying Modernism is that flood of filthy water from the serpent's mouth and it is held up as the epitome of scholarship. Unfortunately clergy throughout the English speaking world mimicked it and adopted its false teaching. Furthermore at the same time, in Bavaria, Adam Weisshaupt, born a Jew, adopted Catholicism and became a Jesuit professor of theology. He is the man who founded the one world organization called the Illuminati in 1776.

There is a constant flood of filthy water coming from the serpent's mouth.

What does the Bible say? It says, the earth absorbed the flood of filthy water. What does that mean? It means that the nations of Continental Europe (for the most part) gave themselves over to infidelity, Modernism and Higher Criticism, atheism, Gnosticism etc. We find there is a secular godlessness in France, Holland and Germany today as a result of the European/Roman earth's absorbing the filthy water out of the serpent's mouth, that was meant to destroy the woman Israel.

At the beginning of the twentieth century there was an attempt to return to first-century Christianity in its faith, practices and government. We know that this was so in America, in the Topeka Bible College; and in Ireland, Monaghan, George Jeffries; in Kilsyth in Scotland; the Welsh Apostolics; in Sweden and Norway those places with Louise Pethrus and pastor Barratt and others.

While still lacking in much of God's truth, this movement also appeared in Germany where there was a different reaction, and this is most important. The established confessional church, the Lutherans, the Calvinists etc. in Germany en masse with their religious leaders; the Lutheran church under the Kaiser, reacted nationally and denounced the "Apostolic" revival as being of the devil. In the Berlin Declaration of 1909 Pentecostals were persecuted and hounded because of their faith.

I believe that fatal mistake paved the way for Germany's defeat and cruel humiliation in World War One and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles. That, with the flood of filthy water from the Serpent's mouth, laid the basis for the rise of Nazism and the devastation and destruction of World War Two that came upon Germany.

A nation or a people that fails to reject Satan's flood of filthy water will be given over to their own ways. That is what happened to Germany.

Today, there are those that believe the Truth (either in part or in full) in Germany, but they are a very small minority.

A "Praising" People

It is interesting to note that the name Judah means "praise". Judahites were a praising people, so it is not surprising, therefore, to find that the remnant of Israel found in Germany would also be a musical people. Out of the Reformation and Martin Luther's work not only came the Word of God, but many beautiful hymns. We all should be acquainted with the great Reformation hymn that Luther wrote, A Mighty Fortress is our God, the bulwark never failing, based on Psalm 46. If any of you are musically inclined, especially if you like Classical Music, think of Johann Sebastian Bach, a German, Beethoven, born in Bonn, a German, Brahms born in Hamburg, Handel, (Handel's "Messiah"!) -- Handel came from Saxony, Schumann, from Saxony. Wagner from Leipzig and so on.

Composer after composer proved to be of the German people, mostly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Judah means "praise", therefore they are a praising, musical people.

Germany Today

What about Germany today? At the end of World War Two Germany was divided under the Peace Treaties and from 1945 to 1989, Germany was divided into West Germany which was part of the free World, and East Germany was a Soviet puppet state. In microcosm of the nation, the city of Berlin was divided into regions or zones. East Berlin was controlled by the Communists and the West was divided under the jurisdiction of Britain, France and America. We all know the horror of the Berlin Wall, and the people trying to escape over it. Then one night, on the TV, we saw the people tearing down the wall, brick by brick and stone by stone. Not much later, the Russians pulled back, the Communist Regime disintegrated, and that was the start. Like a row of dominoes the Warsaw Pact nations lost the Soviet control, the old system was gone. Now, however, we are seeing a resurgence of Russian power under Vladimir Putin which is once again pushing against the Israelite nations of the world.

There is a powerful Roman Catholic influence at work in Germany today. That influence was at work on the Kaiser and it was powerfully at work within Nazism. Hitler had been raised in the Roman Catholic Church and also many of his close associates; in fact, it is said he adopted the swastika symbol because it had been over the monastery where he had attended church and school.

We do know that it was only by the vote of the Catholic Center Party that Hitler came to power in 1933, when he was given emergency powers. The Roman church put him there. Some of you may have read the book Hitler's Pope, in which it states that Hitler had a Concordat with the Vatican. The Vatican was working hand in glove with Hitler because they believed that he would destroy Communism and fulfill the lying visions of Fatima.

When Hitler was defeated, Rome jumped ship (as she always does) and in no time at all she launched a new party, the Christian Democrat Party. Dr Adenauer became the Chancellor of West Germany and he was one of the architects of the European Common Market, now known as the European Union. That is why Rome is going to canonize him, not because he was a churchman but because he was a politician who pursued Rome's goals for a united Europe.

Germany, over a period of time has become the backbone of the European Union, the driving force behind it. Together with the Vatican, Germany recognized independent Croatia early in 1990, and became the agency for the destruction of Yugoslavia. That was the first time German troops were operating outside Germany since the War, and through the European Union, Germany now has a powerful influence in the Balkans once again. They are rebuilding their military might and we have seen only recently their hostility to Britain and America over the whole issue of Iraq.

That, of course, is not surprising when you think that Turkey and others of the Moslem World were with the Central Powers, with the Kaiser in the First World War. Again, in World War Two, many Arabs and many Moslems were sympathetic to Germany, for instance the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who travelled to Berlin.

Even in Iraq there was the pro-German government and in Iran at that time. There has always been that link, and again they have manifested this at this present time. They are also in close alliance with the Vatican, they have their own goals and their own aims regarding the Middle East.

That is the modern position regarding Germany. But in spite of all that and in spite of how Germany has been used as an agency of war and destruction down the years because of a militant Assyrian element that is present, God has not left Himself without a people in Germany.

In Germany today there is a certain amount taken from taxes, and people have to register whether they are Lutheran, Calvinist, or Roman Catholic. A tithe is taken out of the pay packets to subsidize the main churches. Those who don't worship or claim membership in those churches, even groups like the Baptists or even larger Pentecostal or mainline Pentecostal groups, are looked on with great disfavor and great suspicion in Germany, even to this day; and are in danger of being labeled as cults. They are seen as being something not quite German, something outside the mainstream of religion.

God has not left Himself without a witness. Not only is there a remnant of Israel/Judah people in Germany but even within that remnant, God now has a remnant or an election, and has had for some years. There are those who believe the self-same message that we do, the Israel Identity Truth and the Acts 2:38 message of full salvation for Israel.

God has Israelites in Germany, in Holland where Zebulon is, a remnant of Reuben in France, and all the Scandinavian Nations, the Swedes and the Finns are Issachar, Benjamin is in Iceland, and so on.

The primary Israel grouping is in Britain and America (Ephraim and Manasseh) but there is that element found within those other nations and we need to have fellowship with them. We need to react with them, because we are all linked together in the racial Family of God -- but even more importantly, in the Spiritual Family of God -- Israelites by Race and Israelites by Grace. Israelites twice over!

So there you are, the Remnant of Israel found in Germany. I hope you will think about that and that you will be willing to accept what you have read. It will help you to understand more as you study and see things happening in the World.