Hope of Israel Ministries (Ecclesia of YEHOVAH):

The Dishonesty of Those Who Deny the Israelite Identity of Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Peoples

by Sheldon Emry

I have a 40-page book here titled, Anglo-Israelism: Refuse The Refuse, written by an opponent of the teaching that the Anglo-Saxon people are Israel, and I am going to read some things from it, and then we will answer them in relation to the Bible and history.

The book begins by saying the teaching that the Anglo-Saxon people are Israel is actually “refuse,” and he does that by quoting part of verses of from the third chapter of Philippians. He writes,

"Refuse is the most fitting term Paul could find for all his undoubted physical advantages. We, he said, 'are the circumcision, offering divine service, God in spirit, and are glorying in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.' He goes on, 'And even I have confidence in the flesh also. The other one assuming to have confidence in the flesh, I rather. Circumcised of the eighth day, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, but what things were gained to me, which I have deemed forfeit because of Christ? And I am deeming it to be refuse that I may be gaining Christ.'"

That’s the end of his quote, but you can see that he skipped quite a bit, and part of what he skipped is in verse 8. He quoted the last part, but he didn’t quote all of it. Here it is in the King James:

8 "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ."

In other words, what Paul is actually calling “dung” is not his Israelite ancestry but rather the things he has lost. What did Paul lose? He did not lose his Benjamite forefathers. He did not lose the knowledge that he was of the Israel race. What he lost was his position and standing in the apostate anti-Christ synagogue church of his day.

This writer has very cleverly quoted Paul talking about his ancestry and saying, “If I wanted to glory in the flesh, I could.” Then Paul refers to having lost some things. This man skips that part of the verse that says, “for whom I have suffered the loss of all things.”

If you read this in its full context, Paul is talking about the things he lost of the world which he was glad to lose -- they were refuse. To say that Paul counted Israelite ancestry as nothing is saying this of a man who wrote to the Hebrews an entire letter to tell them how Christ has taken on himself the seed of Abraham to make reconciliation for the Israel people. Paul is the same man who wrote to the Romans saying the same things about the Israelites, while this man spends several pages saying that any knowledge of ancestry of any people in Israel is “dung” and “refuse” and is not to be considered. This is the same Paul who wrote in Romans 9, speaking of his brethren, verse 3:

3 "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: 4 Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises."

All these great and glorious things in scripture -- Paul says they belong to the Israelites. Yet this man claims anyone who says they are an Israelite, well, that’s “refuse” and that’s “dung”. Paul goes on:

5 "Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen."

Paul said Christ came to the Israelites. Jesus Christ said that twice according to the gospels. He said, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” And yet this man says that those of us who preach the Anglo-Saxons have some special place in the plan of God because they are Israel, we are preaching “refuse” and “dung”.

The writer of this article continues and says he was interested in this Israelite identity doctrine and read many things on Anglo-Israelism, devoured all the books he could find, but he says, he read the Bible and, quote, “I saw no advantage in being an Israelite for I had lost all standing in the flesh by crucifixion with Christ, and now my all was in him. I no longer desired an earthly citizenship for I had found a celestial.”

Then he goes on and claimed that one of the reasons Anglo-Israelism is wrong -- he says this -- essentially Anglo-Israel has three features of the apostasy: that it is terrestrial -- that it is an enemy of the cross -- and it has confidence in the flesh. And then he says one of the marks of apostasy is the teaching of “earthly things”.

John must have been an apostate when he wrote the Book of Revelation then because John wrote that the four and twenty elders who sang praises to God in John’s vision in the fifth chapter, saying this to the great God Almighty,

10 "And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth."

This man says that to have anything to do with the earth or earthly things is apostasy. He says being terrestrial is being part of the great apostasy. The teaching of the Bible is that Jesus Christ is going to return to earth and set up a kingdom here on the earth -- and this man calls this “dung” and an apostasy.

Using that same interpretation, Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Sarah must have all been apostates for Paul wrote of them in Hebrews 11:

13 "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

And the next verse tells what they looked forward to:

14 "For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country."

What did Abraham look for? A country, and in Romans 4:13, Paul calls Abraham “heir of the world”:

"For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith."

Yet here our opponents of Israelite identity -- they say because we teach so much about the world that we are apostates. That we are minding fleshly and earthly things -- and our teaching is “dung”.

Following his “reasoning” -- the Lord Jesus Christ must have also been an apostate because he taught of the earth -- in Matthew 13, the parable of the tares and the wheat where Jesus Christ said,

24 "Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field."

Then he gave the parable and interpreted it, including verse 38:

38 "The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; 39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels."

The “field is the world.” How anyone can read Christ’s parables and not understand that the kingdom of which he spoke is on the earth is beyond me. And how any man can read that and say that those of us who preach the kingdom of God upon the earth is apostate and we are teaching “dung” is far beyond the bounds of reason.

He says this of Anglo-Israelism, “It opposes the great truth of the crucifixion, and not only was Christ crucified on Golgotha, but that the world that crucified him is utterly at enmity with God. It gives the Israelite a superior position on no other ground than his physical descent.” In other words, he is saying that we, in effect, who teach that the Anglo-Saxons are Israel are teaching salvation by race.

I defy you to show me or give me the writings of any man who teaches that the Anglo-Saxon people are Israel but that that same man recognizes that the prophecies and the fulfillment of the prophecies to Israel are coming to pass only because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. We -- of all people -- are those who teach the full gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul spoke of this in Romans 15, when he wrote,

8 "Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers."

In the Old Testament, Jesus Christ is spoken of as the minister of the covenant. Malachi writes of him that way, as does Daniel. To whom did Christ come? He came for Israel to confirm the promises made the fathers. And what were those promises? Those promises were that God would redeem Israel to Himself and set up a kingdom of justice and righteousness upon the earth. And those of us that teach that and believe that -- this man has the audacity to call us apostates, claiming we are teaching “earthly” things.

The apostles had only one question -- after Jesus Christ taught them for forty days. Acts 1 is the story of what Jesus Christ did after his resurrection and before his ascension:

3 "To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."

Then as he was preparing to go, we read,

6 "When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?"

According to the rationalizing of this man, these Israelite disciples must have been preaching “dung” and believing in “refuse” because they believed that Christ was going to restore the kingdom to the House of Israel. Christ did not rebuke them for believing the wrong thing -- all that Christ said was:

7 "…It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power."

Any rational man would assume Christ was saying “What you ask is correct, but I cannot tell you the time when it will be done.” Yet these opponents of our Israelite identity imply that we are apostates -- we teach that kingdom of God upon the earth and Israel will have a special place in the kingdom.

And then he goes on, “It is no advantage whatever to be an Israelite today. In practical effect, it is an immense hindrance for it breeds fleshly pride and national hypocrisy and distorts the scriptures to drag God’s grace in the dust. It is earthly, foolish, and counter to the cross so that they glory in their fame.”

I know hundreds of good Christian people who know they are the Israel of God by birth, and I defy you to find a better, more humble group of Christians in the world today. And that we are Israel, and Christ died for us, was resurrected from the dead to fulfill the prophecies given to our fathers -- to Abraham, Issac, and Jacob -- is one of the most humbling pieces of information you can have taught to you. And yet these fools tell us that all this teaches “fleshly pride”. No, if you want to know a humble Christian, talk to one who knows he is a true son of the House of Israel and the redeemed of the great God Almighty through the blood of Jesus Christ.

This writer goes on,

“Those who contend for Anglo-Israelism are not all agreed. Indeed, there are irreconcilable differences between what many call the evangelicals and the others….It is enough to know that even if the nations of Europe, America, and their connected colonies are the Lost Ten Tribes, that this is no advantage in this era of God’s grace and can be held and heralded only if we forfeit our place in Christ.”

In other words, he is saying that even if it’s true, we can only tell it if we forfeit our place in Christ. What nonsense. Are you telling me that if someone has a biblical truth -- and he preaches it -- that he’ll lose his place in Christ?

This is a strange statement for this man to make -- because later in his book after spending twenty pages claiming that the Anglo-Saxons are not Israel but that the Jews are, then he tells what a tremendous, wonderful, glorious place the Jews will have in the kingdom. In effect, he has implied that to teach that the Anglo-Saxons are Israel is apostasy, that’s “dung”, that’s false, and even if it were true, in order to teach it, you’d have to give up Christ -- and then he turns right around and tells how the Jews have a special place in the kingdom!

At the end of the booklet, after teaching that the Anglo-Saxons are not Israel, he says this, “It will be a great advantage to be an Israelite in the millennium. They will not only rule all the rest, but will be a channel of blessings to all nations because they are physical descendants of Abraham’s grandson.”

He teaches about the Jews exactly the same way he says we should not teach about the Israel people.

About Israel and the Northern Tribes in the Assyrian captivity, he summarizes --

“...the main argument may be stated thus -- Israel, the ten-tribed nation in contrast to Judah, was carried away captive by the Assyrians and later appears as the Scythians by the Black Sea and gradually worked their way northwest until they now are confined to Scandinavia, Denmark, France, the British Isles, including those colonies and states in other parts of the world with them.”

That’s briefly part of what we teach. This man has implied that he’s a “scholar” but then he says, “As the scripture tell us so little of the Scythians that we can conclude that their identity with Israel is quite imaginary.”

See the book, Tracing Our Ancestors, which lists 175 other books from which the author, Frederick Haberman gleaned information proving the Anglo-Saxon people were descendants from the lost, dispersed tribes of Israel.

He continues, “It is not easy to see how in this short interval the Israelites could have been transformed from the handful of captives into a powerful war-like nation which would be able or desirous to attacking Assyria without any attempts to return to their land of promise.”

His main argument that the Scythians were not Israelites is grounded upon this phrase, “a handful of captives.” All opponents to Anglo-Israelism claim that the Israelites who went into captivity were very few in number, and could not possibly be the great numbers of people that later showed up in southern and Eastern Europe.

At the time of David -- 500 years before the time of the Assyrian captivity, David had 1,570,000 men at arms alone in Israel, and the probability is that instead of a “handful” of captives, there may have been upwards of 20 million Israelites taken into captivity by the Assyrians.

Practically every preacher in America ignores -- or actively opposes -- those of us who teach that the Anglo-Saxons and kindred peoples are Israel.

Preachers ignore the Assyrian captivity in two ways -- by not talking about it at all, and talking only about the Babylonian captivity of the city of Jerusalem that came 120 years later -- and by talking about the “dispersion of the Jews” that took place when Titus drove the Jews out Jerusalem in 70AD -- and they talk about that as the sole dispersion of the Israelites.

This is not honest since the dispersion of the vast majority of Israelites had taken place over 700 years before the birth of Christ. And most ministers are taught in the seminaries not to discuss that captivity -- because any rational discussion of the captivity of the Israelites by the Assyrians would lead one to ask the question, “What happened to those millions of people?” And “Where are their descendants today?”

So there is a conspiracy in the midst of us -- in our churches -- not to talk about the Assyrian captivity.

In the Bible we find some figures of the numbers of Israelite in Old Canaan land over 300 years before the Assyrian captivity. 1 Chronicles 21:

5 "And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand men that drew sword: and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword."

We have a total of 1,100,000 soldiers of Israel, and 470,000 out of Judah, and if we include Levi and Benjamin, all of which could mean a total population of about 16,000,000 -- or upwards of 32,000,000 Israelites at 1,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

These figures alone should make any sincere Christian today question the idea that Jews constitute the entire residue of the children of Israel. Any reading of Genesis would apprise you of the promises repeated to Abraham, Issac and Jacob that God would multiply them, and make them exceeding fruitful. The covenant that begins the Bible was that Abraham’s descendants would be as the “sand of the sea” and as the “stars of heaven”. And here we have 3,000 years ago the Israelites had 1,570,000 men at arms in old Canaan land.

Today, all deceitful and lying minsters would have you believe that God is fulfilling some sort of Israel prophecy by taking back to old Jerusalem only a million and a half Jews. David had that many soldiers in Palestine 3,000 years ago. Where are the promises of God if you believe the false teaching that 20,000,000 Jews in the world today constitute all of Israel?

The very teaching that today’s “Jews” are Israel is a denial of every truth and promise and revelation in the word of God.