TRACING OUR ANCESTORS #16
COMING OF THE AMGLO-SAXONS
Continued from previous page:
LOST CHAPTER OF ACTS ... MAYBE
A copy of the Acts of the Apostles in the Turkish Archives
at Constantinople contains twenty-nine chapters, one more than
the Book of Acts in our Bible. This twenty-ninth chapter states,
Verses 1-10:
"And Paul, full of the blessings of Christ, and abounding in the
spirit, departed out of Rome, determining to go into Spain; for
he had a long time purposed to journey thitherwards, and he was
minded to go from thence into Britain. For he had heard in
Phoenicia that certain of the children of Israel, about the time
of the Assyrian Captivity, had escaped by sea to the 'isles afar
off' as spoken by the prophet, and called by the Roman's
'Britain.' And the Lord has commanded the Gospel to be preached
far hence to the Gentiles, and to the lost sheep of the House of
Israel. And no man hindered Paul, for he had testified boldly of
Jesus before the tribunes, and among the people, and he took with
him certain of the brethren which abode with him at Rome; and
they took shipping at Ostium, and having the winds fair, were
brought safely into an haven of Spain. And much people were
gathered together from the towns and villages and the hill
country; for they had heard of the conversion of the Apostle, and
the many miracles which he had wrought. And Paul preached
mightily in Spain, and great multitudes believed and were
converted, for they perceived he was an apostle sent from
God.
And they departed out of Spain, and Paul and his company finding
a ship in Armorica sailing into Britain, they went therein, and
passing along the South coast, they reached a port called
Raphinus. Now when it was noised abroad that the Apostle had
landed on their coast, great multitudes of the inhabitants met
him, and they treated Paul courteously, and he entered in at the
East Gate of their city, and lodged in the house of an Hebrew,
and one of his own nation. And on the morrow he came and stood
upon Mount Lud; and the people thronged at the gate, and
assembled in the Broadway, and he preached Christ unto them, and
many believed the word and the testimony of Jesus Christ. And at
even the Holy Ghost fell upon Paul, and he prophesied, saying:
'Behold in the last days the God of peace shall dwell in the
cities, and the inhabitants thereof shall be numbered; and in the
seventh numbering of the people, their eyes shall be opened, and
the glory of their inheritance shine forth before them. And
nations shall come up to worship on the mount that testifieth of
the patience and long-suffering of a servant of the Lord.'"
BRITISH FIRST CENTURY CHURCH
It is strange how our scholars and theologians can ignore
all those evidences, from so many different sources, and have
managed to keep them from the people. Various writers have listed
the authorities that testify to the establishment of the Church
in Britain in the first century A.D., such as Col. McKendrick in
his "God's Commonwealths," the Lionel Lewis, vicar of
Glastonbury, in his "Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury," and the
Morgan already quoted. Archbishop Ussher quotes twenty
authorities on the same question.
Despite the Roman occupation of the land, Christianity
spread rapidly over England; hundreds of churches and several
bishoprics were established. At the Council of Arles in 314 A.D.
three bishops from Britain attended. Constantine, the Roman
Christian emperor was born in Britain of a Godly mother, Helena.
I have already quoted in the IXth chapter the inscription in
the church of St. Peter-Upon-Cornhill in London, which tells us
that the church was founded in the year of Our Lord 179. From the
annals of the Cathedral of Winchester we learn that in "A.D.169
There stood on a portion of the site of the present Minster an
early British Church." "226 A.D. - This British Church was
transformed into a pagan temple during the Roman occupation."
"293 A.D. - A second Christian Church was erected during the
reign of Emperor Constantine, whose son was for a time a monk in
the adjoining monastery." "825--60.--This Church was enlarged by
St.Swithin; and was restored by King Alfred the Great and by St.
Ethelwolf after raids by the Danes."
All the evidences testify that a large portion of the
Britons were Christian people, and even J.R.Green in his "History
of England" tells us of the destruction of British Churches from
the North Sea to the Severn valley by the Angles; yet modern
historians willfully overlook early British Christianity and
tells us that St.Augustine was the first to preach the Gospel in
England. In this they are only partially right: Augustine was the
first to convert the invading Angles to Christianity, after the
invaders had massacred most of the Christian Britons, except in
Wales, where the Angles never entered.
WHY CHRISTIANITY DIED IN ENGLAND
FROM ABOUT 450 A.D.
We may wonder why that early flame of Christianity was
almost extinguished in England, but there was a reason for it.
The main body of the tribe of Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh), the
holders of the birthright blessings given in Genesis 49:22-26 had
not yet arrived - the Angles - the people of the bull that gave
England her name. When in the fourth century the Roman garrisons
were withdrawn from Britain, the savage Picts from Scotland
invaded the land and plundered it. The Christian Britons asked
two Saxon warriors, Hengist and Horsa, and their men to help them
in evicting the Picts; but those Saxons or Angle warriors
outstayed their welcome, finding that England was a pleasant land
with fields and green pastures, and turned on their British
hosts and invited their kinsmen in north Germany to come and help
themselves, which they did. For a century, from 449 to 557 A.D.,
the conquest of Britain and its people continued with savage
fury. The inivaders, the mighty Asa or Angles, launched
themselves upon the Britons and their peaceful homes and
churches, and when the Briton had almost been exterminated or
driven into Wales and the surrounding isles, as for instance ,
Iona, Britain had become England, the land of the Angles.
ANGLES NOT SAXONS
INVADED BRITAIN
"The race that came to Britain was the race of the Angles; not
the Anglo-Saxons, a term only introduced from the Continent after
the Norman Conquest. The name given to the country was England,
i.e. AngleLand. The Church was Anglican. There were subdivisions
named East Saxons, West Saxons, etc., but these were merely
territorial designations brought by the Angles from their German
localities. An inhabitant of Wessex would call himself
indifferently either a West Saxon or an Angle; but none of the
Angle kingdom called himself a Saxon," writes Major B. de Weldon
in his "Origin of the English."
There are very few names in England connected with the Saxon
name; most of the Saxons remained in Germany, Northern France,
Switzerland, and Scandinavia, where their descendants still are.
The term of Saxon belongs to the whole house of Israel, for "in
Isaac shall thy seed be called (or named)," Scripture tells us in
Genesis 21:12 and Romans 9:7. They were to be called the "sons of
Isaac," and have been so through the centuries, the Beth-Sak,
Saki, Sacae, Sakasani, Saxones, Sachsen, and Saxons. All the
Angles were Saxons and so were the Danites, Catti, Getai or
Goths, and even the Brits; but it was the Angles who gave England
her name, in the same way that the Covenant race, the Barats or
Brits previously gave Britain her name. England became the
mother, and we all speak English.
GOSPEL TAKEN FROM JUDAH
AND GIVEN TO ISREAL
In Exodus 19:5 we read: "If ye will obey my voice indeed,
and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto
me above all people: for all the earth is mine." And in the 31st
chapter of Jeremiah, verse 9, Jehovah declares: "Ephraim is my
firstborn." In the parables of the kingdom presented in the
thirteenth chapter of Matthew Our Lord declares in the 44th
verse: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in
a field ..." The 38th verse declares that the field is the
world. To this the Scofield Bible makes the following
explanation: 'Our Lord is the buyer at the awful cost of His
blood (1 Peter 1:19), and Israel, especially Ephraim (Jeremiah
31:5-12,18-20), the lost tribes hidden in 'the field,' the
world (verse 38), is the treasure (Exodus 19:5; Psalms 125:
4).' Israel, especially Ephraim, was the treasure hid in the
field and was the nation to whom the kingdom was given when it
was taken from the Jews, and from England the kingdom has spread
and the Gospel has been preached, particularly since the time of
the Great Reformation. Wherever the Anglo-Saxons have gone
Christianity has gone with them. 28,000 of the 30,000 foreign
missionaries that were in "the field" a few years ago spoke the
English tongue; the rest spoke German and Scandinavian. The
British and Foreign Bible Society has printed the Word in over
seven hundred languages; that society and the American and German
Bible societies are the ones that have spread the Scriptures.
THE TRIBE OF BENJAMIN
So far we have spoken only of the lost tribes of Israel, but
there is another tribe that belongs to Israel also, that of
Benjamin, who was loaned to Judah as a "light bearer," as seen
from I Kings 11:36 and 12:21. Benjamin went with Judah into the
Babylonian captivity in 590-85. About sixty years later, after
the capture of Babylon by Cyrus and the army of the Guti, the
people of Judah and Benjamin were set free; but very few of them
returned to Jerusalem, only 42,000 of them, as given by Ezra.
Josephus says that "only the lowest of the low, the poor in
health, in knowledge, and in ancestry, the very outcasts, and
refuse of the nation" went back to Palestine. These people were
the Jews, which word is derived from Yehudim, meaning, according
to Josephus, "the remnant of Judah." Neither are these Jews pure
Israelites, for during their stay in Palestine they intermarried
with the masters of Palestine, the Edomites, the Idumeans, and
Syrians, and took on the dark complexion and features of those
people. Generally, the Israelites were tall and fair, the cream
of the Aryan race, as we find them in the Irish Scots, the pure
English, and the Norwegians; while the Jews the "shew of their
countenance doth witness against them," as Isaiah said. The Jews
were to be "a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all
places whither I shall drive them," according to Jeremiah. So
they have been.
Nevertheless, our Doctors of Divinity have given them a
halo which the Bible does not give them.
(Let me say, it depends on what "halo" you want to look at, for
the "Jews" have produced very gifted persons down through the
centuries, yet indeed they have been a reproach and proverb to
many people - Keith Hunt).
GALATIANS AND BENJAMINITES
The mass of the people of Judah and Benjamin remained in
Media. The descendants of Judah we have already identified with
the Yute or jutes of Jutland. H.B.Hannay shows good reasons to
believe that the Galations of Asia Minor were the people of
Benjamin, who had escaped from Babylon and Media, the word
Galatia being derived from 'Galutha,' Babylonian for "prisoners."
It is also known that the Galileans of Christ's time were
Benjaminites, and must have been later immigrants into Palestine,
for the Jews would have little to do with them. They also spoke a
different dialect from the Jews, and among the Galileans Our Lord
spent most of his time; eleven of his disciples were Galilean
fishermen and only one was a Jew-Judas. At Christ's Ascension an
angel addressed His disciples, and called them "Ye Men of
Galilee."
An examination of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians shows that
they were Israelites. Professor Max Mueller in his "Lecture on
the Science of Language" said: "The Goths made a raid from Europe
to Asia, Galatia, and Cappadocia, and the Christian captives whom
they carried back to the Danube were the first to spread the
light of the Gospel among the Goths."
It is certain that when the Ostrogoths left the Baltic in
the third century A.D. for the Balkans, they were pagans; and it
appears therefore that Wulfilla, the bishop of the Goths and
translator of the Bible into Gothic, was one of the captives from
Cappadocia and as such a Benjaminite. Prof. Waddell states that
he came from Cappadocia.
BENJAMINE AND THE VIKINGS
Now, it has already been told in Chapter VI that the legend
of St.George had its origin in Cappadocia. Prof. Hannay in his
"European Race Origins" tells us that a group of those
Benjaminites left Pontus in Cappadocia about 300 A.D. in boats
and started on a long voyage through the Mediterranean and along
the western coast of Europe and landed finally in the fjords of
Norway, where they appear as the Vikings. Their emblem was a
wolf, which was also the emblem of Benjamin, to whom his dying
father Jacob said in Genesis 49:29: "Benjamin shall raven as the
wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he
shall divide the spoil." If those Benjaminites ever heard of the
Gospel, then they certainly must have "slid from grace," for as
Vikings they soon became the terror of northern Europe, living by
piracy for centuries. In the ninth century the Vikings invaded
northwestern France under Rolf the First, Duke of Normandy, and
rapidly mixed with the population, accepted Christianity, adopted
the French language, and became the Normans.
BENJAMIN VIKINGS BECOME NORMANS
WHO BECOME ENGLISH
When those Normans under William the Conquerer invaded
England and defeated the English in the battle of Hastings 1066
A.D., all the tribes of Israel were regathered in the Covenant
land.
The Normans brought the French language with them. It,
together with the Gothic and early English tongues made our
English as it is today. In the so-called Saxon conquest by the
Angles in the fifth century A.D. most of the Britons were
exterminated or made slaves by the invaders, (speaking of England
only) but the Norman invasion was not as barbarous. It therefore
required almost two centuries before the Angles became
reconciled to the Norman conquerors, but by the end of the
thirteenth century all the different tribal elements had been
welded into one people.
PHROPHECY OF 3 DAYS
There is a prophecy in the sixth chapter of Hosea, verses 1
and 2, which reads: "Come and let us return unto the Lord: for he
hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind
us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will
raise us up, and we shall live in his sight." As "a day is with
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,"
says the Good Book and gives us thereby the time scale for those
three "days" in Hosea. For two "days" Israel is presented as
"torn" and "smitten," and so indeed they were during their
captivities and wanderings; but with the beginning of the "third
day" the Lord will raise them up. If we date two thousand years
from the Fall of Samaria in 717 B.C., we arrive at 1284 A.D.,
which marks the beginning of the "third day." In that very year
Prince David of Wales was executed and the Welsh resistance
broken; Wales became a part of England with English institutions
and laws. A few years later a Scottish rebellion took place;
Edward I of England marched northward and invaded Scotland as far
north as Aberdeen, taking most of the great castles of the
Scottish chieftians, and at Montrose accepted Baliol's surrender
of the crown of Scotland. When Edward came home to England he
brought with him the famous Coronation Stone from Scone, upon
which the kings of Scotland and Ireland had been crowned for 1500
years. Thus we see that under Edward's reign Wales and Scotland
and England became one, although the Scots kept rebelling for
several centuries. (See next Chapter.)
Then indeed was fulfilled that other prophecy of Hosea
3:4-5: "In the same way the Children shall stay for a long time,
without a King; and without a leader; and without a sacrifice;
and without a Capital; and without an Ephod or Teraphim! At last
the Children of Israel will return, and seek the Lord their God,
and David their King, and reverence the Lord and His beneficence,
in the future ages!" - Fenton, Bible in Modern English.
From that time onward the House of Israel has had a king,
and a capital again, when the Stone of Jacob was transferred into
Westminster, as centuries ago it had been in the East-Minster-in
Solomon's Temple at Jerusalem.
The thirteenth century marked indeed the restoration of
Israel's national unity. At its opening the English barons
demanded from King John a recognition of all freemen's rights,
and a restoration of the ancient laws of Britons and Saxons was
drawn up in the "Magna Charta" on the 15th of June, 1215, which
has been the foundation of British liberty, law, and justice ever
since.
However, those laws were nothing new, for we had their
original in the Mosiac Law of Israel. Edward in his reign
followed a policy of domestic consolidation and financial as well
as legal reforms that has shed much lustre upon his reign, and
which made his time almost the most important epoch in the
constitutional history of England.
Two thousand years before in Palestine Israel had been one
nation; then they were torn, smitten, and scattered; but now they
were united again. Celt, Saxon, Angle, and Norman have made Great
Britain what she is today, and that race has made the United
States of America.
(Prophecy can indeed have more than one application, sometimes
two or three - there is also an endtime fulfilment of the above
prophecies - Keith Hunt)
.........................
To be continued
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