BRITISH ISRAELISM [REFUTED], BY D.M PANTON (1927)

“Very holy people can hold very serious error; therefore it behooves us to be cautious in our judgments of persons: but also, error can be disastrous to life and character; therefore it behooves us to be equally cautious of our creed…British Israelism is historically impossible and a myth. No migration of a vast horde has ever occurred without carrying with it language, customs, physiognomy; synagogues and circumcision (for example) mark today every city to which the Jew has wandered: yet British Israelism supposes that two or three million Israelites poured into these islands, and somehow dropped everything – language, physiognomy, records, customs, even their names, their very memory; so that for two thousand years no one in the world even suspected this stupendous fact. The entire lack of evidence simply means that the event alleged never occurred. That a race which once wrote FROM RIGHT TO LEFT should (without government compulsion), with no conceivable motive, and leaving not a single trace of the process behind – that an entire race should thus revolutionize its penmanship by now writing FROM LEFT TO RIGHT is one of the most extraordinary fantasies that can ever have entered the mind of man…British Israelism is irreconcilable with explicit Scriptures…British Israelism is an unconscious betrayal of the Gospel….British Israelism is a profound overthrow of Dispensational Truth…British Israelism is, fundamentally, an abandonment of Grace for Law. National blessing, it is true, still follows national obedience; but to found that blessing, not on obedience but on blood, is something the Law itself never did, and is profoundly hostile to grace…British Israelism presents to the world a pitiful travesty of the Kingdom of God. ‘The Prince of Wales – Prince David, as he is known at home – is the hundredth generation from Israel’s King David.’ (“British-Israel Truth”, p,189) For the surrounding nations to hold that the British Empire is the Divine Kingdom on earth, and the British throne the Throne of David to which all nations must ultimately bow, is too utterly tragic, and (to the nations) ludicrous, if it were not also so politically dangerous…British Israelism, by denying that the coming wrath is upon all nations, robs the world of its most urgent warning. The most High has said, again and again, that he will ‘punish the WORLD for their evil’ (Isa.xiii.11); that the hour of trial will fall ‘upon ALL the world’ (Rev.iii.10)…British-Israelism, on the contrary, affirms that…Anglo-Saxondom ‘now embodies in itself the Church of Christ’…”

[This Christian Identity movement originated in Great Britain. It grew out of the root of some Seventh Day Adventist churches into a historical society called the British-Israel World Federation. It is becoming increasingly popular among many groups today.]