BRITISH—ISRAEL

Southland Times, Issue 22508, 16 February 1935, Page 10

BRITISH—ISRAEL

EXPOSITORY COLUMN, (By Historicus.) CHRONOLOGICAL PROPHECY. (Continued.) One further date forecast by Dr Grattan Guinness was of great interest —1923. That year being now past, we are in a position to check the accuracy of his forecast. The Sanctuary Cycle. He arrived at the year 1923 as being the end of what he called the “Sanctuary Cycle.” This cycle is a period of 2300 years, and is mentioned in Dan. X as being the long period which had to elapse before the sanctuary (meaning Jerusalem and the Holy Land) would be cleansed. The dates selected by him to start from were the same as for the great 70-weeks prophecy of Dan. ix. The final date in the series of terminal events was to be 1923. Guinness died in 1895. He forecast in 1893 that something definite in the downfall of Turkey should take place, and also something definite in the corresponding uplift of the Jewish people in the Holy Land. The End of the Ottoman Empire. We who have seen the year 1923 pass are now in a position to certify that Guinness was uncannily accurate in his forecast. That year saw the definite disappearance from history of the Ottoman Empire. The Great War saw Palestine freed from the Turk, and that great year of liberation for Palestine and Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia too is part of the full Promised Land given to the seed of Abraham in Gen. xv. 18) was anticipated in 1878 by Guinness as I have previously shown. The Turkish Empire, however, still existed in name until 1923. In that year Kemal Pasha abandoned Constantinople, which since 1453 had been the capital of the Turkish Empire, and transferred the seat of government to Angora. That great Turkish power which for some centuries made Europe tremble with fear, came suddenly to an end in 1923. The capital was retired to Asia, European ways of printing and writing were adopted, and the national dress and social customs were modernized. Henceforth Turkey is a republic. The Palestine Mandate. For the House of Judah, on the other hand, the year 1923 was epoch-making, as the League of Nations’ mandate to Britain was finalized in that year. Since then, file mandate has worked wonderfully for the betterment of the national home for the House of Judah. So much, then, for 1923 and the accuracy of Guinness’s forecasts under the yearday system of interpreting the dateprophecies of the Bible. The dates he forecast have proved momentous years for the Turks and for Judah. His work as an expositor has therefore been amply vindicated. Ono More Striking Coincidence. As is well known, Dr Guinness was not a British-Israel believer. As far as the evidence of his books shows, .he seems to have thought Israel was hidden somewhere. He appears to have applied his chronology only to the House of Judah. Had he worked on the captivity dates of Israel, he would have come to such important dates in Anglo-Saxon history as the American Treaty of Independence and the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. One further epoch he might have come to also —the era of the Reformation. Let us see. Moses had told Israel, as recorded in Leviticus xxvii, that if they deliberately forsook God and His law, they would be punished “seven times.” I have already urged that this cannot reasonably be understood to mean “seven occasions of chastisement” for Israel. Actually Israel transgressed far more often than that in Bible times. Dr Guinness shows that “seven times” means a period of 2520 years, and his astronomical verification of this has never been overthrown. It is accepted by all serious Bible students as being axiomatic. Separation of Israel and Judah. Now the earliest time we can reasonably select as the commencement of this age-long period is the epoch of the division of the 12 tribes into the two Houses of Israel and Judah. This happened early in the reign of Rehoboam. This young king took over that legacy of unrest caused by Solomon’s idolatry and extravagance, and thought to quell the popular discontent, not by righting abuses and reverting to the laws of Moses, but by tyrannous threats to make the burden of taxation and of enforced service still heavier. The 10 tribes revolted from the rule of Rehoboam. Their leader was Jeroboam, who had been their captain under Solomon. The revolt was a necessary part of God’s plan, and the movement had His complete blessing. Nothing could well be more gracious than the prophet’s message to Jereboam: “And I will take thee, and thou shalt reign according to all that thy soul desireth, and shalt be king over Israel. And it shall be that if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in My ways, and do that is right in My Sight . . . that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure House . . .” (1 Kings xi. 37/9). Up to the separation, therefore, there was nothing nationally reprehensible in the conduct of Israel under Jereboam. It is later that Israel’s iniquity begins. “Who Made Israel to Sin.”

Jereboam was afraid that if his subjects continued to go as usual to Jerusalem for worship, that the breach with Judah might soon be healed and the House of David again rule over his 10 tribes. He therefore set up calves in Dan and Bethel, saying, “These be thy gods O Israel!” The whole 10-tribed nation at once lapsed into idolatry, and no Reformation ever took place in Israel in Bible times. Jereboam is always spoken of by Bible chroniclers as the king “who made Israel to sin.” This seems to fix the epoch of the revolt as the commencement of the judgment-period on Israel. She was henceforth permanently idolatrous, and under Omri and Ahab she forsook the laws of Moses completely and worshipped Baal. When did the national sin of Israel commence? Well, Archbishop Ussher dates the separation in 975 B.C. Suppose we allow a year for the decision to set up the calves to be made, and for their erection, we reach 974 A.D. Go on 2520 years, and we come to the year 1547 A.D. That year should see the very beginning of Israel’s emergence from the cloud of national punishment for their sins.

The Reformation in England.

Now if Britain be Israel, something should have happened in England in 1547, from which can be reckoned the rise of England as a world Power. And something did, for it was in that year that Henry VIII ordered the Bible to be set up in every church of the realm, so that parishioners might read it for themselves. He had fiercely persecuted Protestants, only for reading Wyclif’s Bible; he had had Tyndall burned, only for translating the Bible into English and selling it; and the noble Tyndall’s last words at the stake were “O Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” And somehow they were suddenly opened. He shortly ordered a new version to be made—it was virtually Tyndall’s—and commanded it to be set up in every church. You may see some of these chained Bibles still in England. The Bible reading that resulted was what fairly set the Reform movement

going in England. From that year comes England’s greatness. Forty years later she defeated the attempted invasion of the mightiest nation of Europe—or rather, God did it for her—and she is now the greatest Empire the world has so far seen. And according to Victoria, the secret of it all was the English Bible. Thus we see how “seven times after idolatry was established in 10-tribed Israel, the idols of the mediaeval Church in England were disestablished. The intelligent and reverent Bible student sees in all this the hand of God. The various initial and terminal dates I have used in these last few articles work out so exactly—they start in Israel and are fulfilled in AngloSaxondom with such uncanny precision—that they cannot be lightly set aside. They are a very strong evidence that we Anglo-Saxons are indeed God’s ancient elect people. “It is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.”