Anglo-Israel Theology: Scripture Support

The Mystery Nation and Its Unveiling

In the book, “A Rebirth for Christianity” (2005), Alvin Boyd Kuhn stated, “The ‘children of Israel’ were of ‘illustrious ancestry’, as the grammarian Gesenius phrased it...”(p. 121) This is a marvelous and Scriptural statement! Yet there is no nation or tribe on earth that remains more of a mystery than the people of Israel. A review of modern scholarship shows many different and contradictory opinions on the meaning of “Israel,” “Spiritual Israel,” “the two houses of Israel,” and similar terms. It seems such a distinct irony that this most celebrated nation on earth is also the most veiled from view.

Isaiah the prophet knew of this when he wrote long ago, “And he [the Lord] will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations.” (Isa. 25:7) A veil was something worn to hide the identity of the wearer; here it is a veil upon nations. Isaiah made it clear that this veiling concerned Israel: “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people [Israel] shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.” (Isa. 25:8) Here at the time of national unveiling the heathen’s rebuke of Israel is removed when her identity is revealed.

That this time of the unveiling concerned events at the end of this age and the establishment of Christ’s millennial kingdom may be seen from the Apostle Paul’s reference to these verses from Isaiah: “So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (I Cor. 15:54-57)

The Apostle John in the Book of Revelation also referred to Isaiah’s prophesied time of the unveiling of nations: “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” (Rev. 21:2-4)

Author Alvin Boyd Kuhn wrote concerning Christ’s return, the time of removal of the veil, when the heathen’s rebuke is lifted and Israel is exalted: “The Messiah, therefore, was not mere man, but the world-radiance of the Israelite destiny, the people chosen by God to lead the nations of the world to the universal apotheosis. He [Christ] would be the ruler of the world, to be sure, but only as the embodiment of world hegemony promised by Jehovah to Abraham and his progeny of Israel.” (ibid., p. 120)

The word, “apotheosis” is used here in the sense of a time of glorification or exaltation of Israel, when God’s people form the foundation of the Divine eternal kingdom, as prophesied by the Apostle John: “And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.” (Rev. 21:10-12)

Israel, unveiled and revealed, will be exalted as the foundation and “gateway” to the millennial kingdom; yet Isaiah made it evident that during the present church age the true identity of Israel was to be veiled, or hidden. If so, then we must look beyond the Jewish people to find this veiled Israel of which Isaiah spoke.

The mystery and confusion among the various Christian denominations concerning Israel may be seen, for example, in the writings of Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah’s Witness sect. In his work, “Studies In The Scriptures,” he had this to say: “...all that the Christian Church actually experiences and accomplishes, the Jewish Church [i.e., Old Testament Biblical Israel] prefigured. And many of these features of correspondency are parallel not only in character, but also in their relative time of occurrence.” (p. 204)

Could there be a physical, literal relationship behind this “correspondency” between Biblical Old Testament Israel and the modern Gentile nations of Christendom? Could the “Gentiles,” in fact, be descendants of the lost House of Israel? To avoid this possibility, theologians have invented a different, non-Israel, “Spiritual Israel,” a term never once used in Scripture.

Charles Russell continued, “Paul designates the Jewish Church ‘Israel after the flesh’, and the Christian Church ‘The Israel of God.’ (I Cor. 10:18; Gal. 6:16) We may therefore properly designate them Fleshly Israel and Spiritual Israel.” (p. 204) Other reputable scholars, including dispensationalist John F. Walvoord, have pointed out that there is no basis for supposing that “the Israel of God” is non-Israelite! (see: “The Millennial Kingdom,” pp. 169-170)

Russell again: “Some are blinded to important truths by the supposition that the expression, ‘both the houses of Israel’, refers to the two divisions of Fleshly Israel, after the split in the days of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. Such need only be reminded that after the captivity in Babylon, upon their restoration to Palestine, all Israelites of all the tribes then captives in all the universal domain of Medo-Persia, including the land of Syria or Babylonia, were given liberty to return to their own land if they chose. (Ezra 1:1-4) Many of the faithful Israelites of all the tribes, who had respect to the promises of God associated with the holy land and the holy city, returned to the various cities of Palestine.” (p.206)

“Many”? Not all? Where did the rest go, and are they not important in God’s eyes? Scripture tells us that only 42,360 Jews returned after the Babylonian captivity, or less than one percent! (See Nehemiah 7:66 and the evidence presented in the wonderful book, “The Story Of Celto-Saxon Israel,” by W.H. Bennett.)
Russell continued, “Paul met and preached to Israelites in nearly every city which he visited in Asia Minor and Italy, but they were always recognized as one nation, spiritual Israel being the only other Israel. God has made special covenants or promises to both these houses of Israel. The promises to the fleshly house were all earthly, while those to the spiritual house were (and still are) grand and precious...” (p. 207) Here is the curious belief that the two houses of Israel consisted of “physical and spiritual” Jews, rather than the literal Houses of Israel and Judah that we read about in Scripture! (2 Sam. 5:5; 11:11; Ezk. 9:9, etc.) The great ignorance of the Bible shown by most Christians, especially concerning the Old Testament, allows such a specious remark to go largely unchallenged today.

The great Anglo-Israel scholar and expositor, Dr. William Henry Poole, penned these words in 1889:  
“I hear another objection from a dear friend of mine, who grows warm and noisy about what he calls, ‘spiritual Israel,’ and he says that, ‘We, in claiming a literal fulfillment of certain promises made to Abraham and his seed, do dishonor to spiritual Israel.’ I have, however, never been able to persuade him to point out a single passage in the Word of God, where his favorite term is used. He might as well fret and fume about spiritual Jacob, or spiritual Esau, or spiritual Joseph. The fact is, the term has no place in the Scriptures. It is a piece of foreign metal. We read of ‘children of Abraham,’ ‘believers in Christ’, ‘sons of God’, the ‘faithful’, ‘children of God’, ‘righteous’, of ‘children of the light’, ‘citizens of God’, of the ‘family of God’, but spiritual Israel we don’t find in the book.” (“Anglo-Israel,” p. 248)

R. Kendall Soulen in his book, “The God of Israel and Christian Theology” (p. 35), tells us that the source of the term “spiritual Israel” was the theologian Justin Martyr (A.D. 100-165). Soulen writes: “Justin integrates the foreground and background dimensions of salvation history by means of his conception of the Christian church as the ‘true spiritual Israel’, a term that he was the first to apply to the Christian church (Dial. 11).”

Israel has indeed been a mystery nation throughout this age, and still is today, but the time approaches when that veil will finally be lifted for all to see.