THE “LOST TRIBES” OF HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG
Catholic Answers Magazine
What Lost Tribes?” you might ask. Why, the Lost Tribes of Israel, of course. You remember them: taken away by their Assyrian conquerors, roaming from here to there, finally settling in . . .
Well, maybe we shouldn’t get ahead of the story. Come to think of it, maybe we have no choice, since the booklet under review, “The United States and Britain in Prophecy,” gives away the answer in its title. Yes, according to the author, Herbert W. Armstrong, the Lost Tribes of Israel are none other than the British and Americans of British descent.
Armstrong first published this booklet in 1954. It was reprinted in 1987, a year after Armstrong’s death, by the religious organization he founded, the Worldwide Church of God, which is making a comeback from a series of scandals that rocked it in the late seventies and early eighties.
You might recall the excommunication of Armstrong’s son and heir apparent, Garner Ted Armstrong, who was given the boot because of his philandering and who promptly went out and started his own church, the Church of God, International.
You might even recall that financial troubles forced the Worldwide Church of God to sell off many of its properties and that 35 dissident ministers broke off to form their own church, alleging financial irregularities by both Armstrongs.
But we’re not giving an overview of the Worldwide Church of God in this tract. We’re just looking at one of the chief doctrines of this church, what is commonly called British Israelism, the idea that the Lost Tribes of Israel are really the descendants of Anglo-Saxons, which is to say the British and Americans whose ethnic origins are found in Britain.
This beguiling doctrine had been around for decades before Herbert W. Armstrong founded his church in 1933, and it appeals, naturally enough, to those of British heritage. After all, who wouldn’t want to be a member of the chosen nation (assuming there is one)? And that, in Armstrongism, is precisely what the Anglo-Saxons are—God’s chosen nation, where can be found the direct descendant of David and, even today, David’s throne.
The United States and Britain in Prophecy opens with this epigraph: “The prophecies of the Bible have been grievously misunderstood. And no wonder! For the vital key, needed to unlock prophetic doors to understanding, had become lost. That key is a definite knowledge of the true identity of the American and British peoples in biblical prophecy.”
Only the first sentence of this epigraph is strictly correct, and a good share of the grievous misunderstanding is by people who swallow the writings of Herbert W. Armstrong.
We can do better than this:
1) Read Byker Bob’s article British Israelism Revisited;
2) Anna in the Temple was from the Tribe of Asher: Luke 2:6;
3) Paul claimed to be of the Tribe of Benjamin: Romans 11:1, Philippians 3:5;
4) And, duh, the Tribe of Levi — for the Levites: Hebrews 7:5;
5) Zebulon and Naphtali: Matthew 4:15;
6) and of course, the Jews, with too many references in the New Testament to recount specifically here.
Byker Bob’s article shows clearly that the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh were part of Israel post Assyrian captivity.
Yes, the Catholics know, but we know better.
This is just another prime example of Herbert Armstrong’s incompetence.
He should have finished high school, minimum… but if he wanted to be competent (why should he when he could make so much money without competency), he should have gone to college / university and even gotten advanced degrees — oh, say, in history, Archeology, linguistics, even theology.
When I did the research for the article, it amazed me that both the scriptures cited and the Babylonian and Assyrian historical records had apparently been completely missed or deliberately ignored by Herbert Armstrong and his history “expert”, Dr. Herman Hoeh. This means that even predating the mapping of the human genome, had certain scriptures been relied upon and properly interpreted, we could have had definitive proof that British Israelism was a totally false theory, with that proof coming right from the Bible! Here were our teachers who manipulated and cross-pollinated languages to obtain ridiculous names, like “berith-ish” and “Saac’s sons” to prove their points, yet failed to pick up on Babylonian surnames of Ephraimite leaders who had returned to their covenant lands from Babylon! It was as if they had deliberately fabricated their own proofs to counter the proofs that were already present in the Bible, the book which they claimed as the very source of their teachings.
It’s a classic tale as to how aspiring proponents pick something that they decide that they want to be truth, and then go about attempting to find and fabricate evidence to support that truth, and then teach it as “God’s Truth”, or the “key to understanding”. Science tests, and retests. These so-called theological experts did not do that. Worse yet, they set aside the really compelling evidence that would have tested and corrected their error!
BB
It’s called Fanagle’s Law: Draw the curve and pick the points to match.
But then the Armstrongists have never been particularly honest with themselves or others.