By: Matthew Dyer
The Anglo-Israel truth, what is it? Well, in a nutshell the Anglo-Israel message is the belief that the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian and kindred peoples are descendants of the Israelites of the Bible, and heirs of the promises of the Abrahamic covenant, instead of the common held belief that the modern day Jewish people are Israel.
This is because the identification marks in the Bible for true Israel do not match with the modern day Jews, so there must be another option if the Bible is true. This tract is not meant to lay out the reasons the Anglo-Saxon people are Israel, but rather give some history of people who have believed this to show you this isn’t some new doctrine just now raising it’s head, but been around for some time and believed by many.
In the 6th century A.D. the early British historian Gildas (The Wise) wrote in his records now known as On the Ruin & Conquest of Britain during the era when the pagan Saxons were invading Christian Celtic Britain said this:
“After this, sometimes our countrymen, sometimes the enemy, won the field, to the end that our Lord might in this land try after his accustomed manner these his Israelites, whether they loved him or not, until the year of the siege of Mount Badon.”
· In the 8th century A.D. King Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, England declared in what is known as The Law Code of King Alfred the Great, which is the largest and best preserved piece of Anglo-Saxon legal documentation said this referring to the English:
“Be ye kind to the stranger within thy gates, for ye [English people] were strangers in the land of the Egyptians.”
· In 1320 A.D. the Scottish noblemen and King Robert the Bruce wrote up what is known as the Scottish Declaration of Independence (or Declaration of Arbroath) and said this concerning the Scots ancestry:
“We know, Most Holy Father and Lord, and from the chronicles and books of the ancients gather, that among other illustrious nations, ours, to wit the nation of the Scots has been distinguished by many honours; which passing from the greater Scythia through the Mediterranean Sea and Pillars of Hercules, and sojourning in Spain among the most savage tribes through a long course of time, could nowhere be subjugated by any people however barbarous and coming thence one thousand two hundred years after the outgoing of the people of Israel, they, by many victories and infinite toil, acquired for themselves the possessions in the West, which they now hold in their kingdom one hundred thirteen kings of their own royal stock, no stranger intervening, have reigned.”
· In 1590 A.D. French Huguenot Counsellor Le Loyer wrote in his The Ten Lost Tribes Found this:
“The Israelites came to and founded the English Isles.”
· Sir France Drake, who lived between 1540 & 1596 wrote to Rev. John Foxe and made this comment concerning England:
“God may be glorified, His church, our Queen and country preserved, the enemies of truth vanquished; that we might have continued peace in Israel. Our enemies are many but our protector commandeth the whole earth.”
· In 1614 A.D. Adriaan van der Schrieck wrote this concerning the Gauls and Germans:
“..the Netherlanders with the Gauls and Germans together in the earliest times were called Celts who are come out of the Hebrews.”
In 1630 A.D. Pastor John Cotton, a Puritan Clergyman, preached a farewell sermon to his Puritan brethren leaving for the New World from 2nd Samuel 7:10, which was a prophecy about Israel having a new land, and given while they were still in Palestine, and in that sermon by Cotton he said this:
“Go forth with a publick spirit, have a tender care to your children, that they doe not degenerate as the Israelites did.”
· In 1682 A.D. John Saddler in his book Rights of the Kingdom or Customs of our Kings and Parliaments advocated the Israelitish origins of the English.
· In 1723 A.D. Dr. Jacques Abaddie said this in his book Le Triomphe de la Providence et de la Religion:
“Unless the Ten Tribes of Israel are flown into the air, or sunk into the earth; they must be those ten Gothic Tribes that entered Europe…
· In 1761 A.D. famous Bible Concordance Compiler Alexander Cruden said this on the dedication to the English King :
“May the great God be the guide of your life, and direct and prosper you, that it may be said by the present and future ages, that King George the Third hath been an Hezekiah to our British Israel.”
·In 1775 A.D. a sermon preached by Pastor William Smith, first provost of the College of Philadelphia, referred to the British & American people as “British Israel” indicating that he believed the British & Anglo-Saxon and kindred people were Israel.
· In 1783 A.D. Pastor Ezra Stiles, 7th president of Yale University, preached a sermon and pointed out the similarities of the people who formed the United States and the Israel people and nation of the Bible. In that sermon he called the country “God’s American Israel”.
Christian America Ministries 