GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 183

What Is Replacement Theology Part 1

Israel Is God’s Chosen People

I grew up being taught that Israel is God’s chosen people. I was also taught that Israel will play a major part in end times prophecy and then be the center of the Millennial reign of Jesus after the Tribulation. I never had a doubt in my mind about this. However, every so often someone would challenge these beliefs and say that all the promises given to the Jews were transferred to the church. When I taught a Sunday School class on cults I came across Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God and discovered that they believed this teaching. They called in Ánglo-Israelism and it essentially got to the same place as those who adhere to the replacement theology teaching, but they got to it differently. Here is how an article from gotquestions.org summarizes their teaching:

Armstongism refers to the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong, which became the teaching of the Worldwide Church of God. These teachings were often at odds with traditional Christian beliefs and at times were explicitly in contradiction to the Bible. The most well-known of Armstrong’s teachings is that of Anglo-Israelism. This is the belief that modern-day Jews are not the true physical descendants of Israel. Armstrong believed the lost tribes of Israel had migrated to Western Europe and that the present-day British and Americans were actually the heirs to God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Armstrong believed that this knowledge was the key factor in understanding the prophetic passages of Scripture and that it was his mission to proclaim this message in preparation for the end times.

Others hold the same view as Armstrong but called this bypassing of Israel in favor of the Church “British Israelism.” Under this teaching the 10 tribes of Israel were lost and somehow made their way to Europe and then specifically Britain. Then, they somehow made their way to America allowing those that follow this belief to transfer all the Bible promises made to Israel to America. Unfortunately, all this relies on some rather tangled history interpretations.

It's All About The Land

While it’s an interesting theory and makes for a tall tale, the Bible gets in the way as it always does with false teaching. You see Abraham was promised a specific land for his descendants: The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you …Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your descendants.” And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord, who had appeared to him. (Gen 12:1,7, NLT)

Abram, who would later be called Abraham, was promised the land for the great nation that would come out of him. The more God told him about this promised land, the more details He gave him:

So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River— 19 the land now occupied by the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.” (Gen 15:18-21, NLT)

We read in an article from curtlandry.com how these verses define the boundaries:

Within Genesis 15.18 we find the Lord had defined the northern and southern borders of Israel through a covenant promise—long before a Jewish nation ever existed. The area from the Nile River in the south, to the great river, Euphrates in the north, includes all of modern-day Lebanon and three-fourths of modern-day Syria.

The Lord goes on in Genesis 15.19-21 to ensure that we completely understand the exact boundaries by knowing them as being occupied by “…the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” These people lived in portions of what are now modern-day Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and all of modern-day Israel (including Gaza, the West Bank, and all of Jerusalem).

You can pull out a map yourself, much like the one I did and see that neither England or America is anywhere near this land. Unless the United States or Britain decide to annex this land, Israel gets it all one day.

Just How Did These Tribes Become Lost?

In case you want to know, these ten tribes are Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, and Joseph (whose tribe was divided into the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh). If you seem to recall your Bible, there are supposed to be 12 tribes so two aren’t listed. These would be Judah and Benjamin. It is true that many Jews dispersed throughout the world, but not as specific tribes as some teach. It was more generic. They simply decided as Jews overall to live where they could. But getting back to the original question of how these ten tribes become lost, lets explore how people think it happened. We turn to another article from gotquestions.org to explain this theory:

When people refer to the “lost tribes of Israel,” they usually have in mind the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom that fell to Assyria about 722 BC … Most of the people of the Northern Kingdom were deported to ancient Assyria (2 Kings 17:6). Many of the Jews who remained in the land intermarried with people from Cutha, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim who had been sent by the Assyrian king to inhabit Samaria (2 Kings 17:24; Ezra 4:2–11). Thus, the story goes, the ten northern tribes of Israel were “lost” to history and either wiped out or assimilated into other people groups. This narrative, however, is based on inference and assumption rather than on direct biblical teaching.

In another article from gotquestions.org we read that the tribes were not in fact ever lost:

2 Kings 17:18 states that Israel was deported to Assyria in 722 B.C. After this time, mention of the ten northern tribes (Israel) is rare in Scripture. However, other Scriptures (and historical records) indicate that some of the people of the northern ten tribes remained in the land. Second Chronicles 35:18 records Israel celebrating the Passover with Judah approximately 90 years after the Assyrian deportation. It is likely that many people of the northern ten tribes fled to Judah to escape the Assyrians, and even more fled to the safety of Judah after the Assyrians had ransacked Israel. Second Chronicles 15:9 records people from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon settling in Judah long before the Assyrian invasion. In the New Testament, the prophetess Anna is said to be from the tribe of Asher (Luke 2:36), one of the supposed ten lost tribes. So, yes, many people from the northern ten tribes were deported to Assyria, never to be mentioned again. At the same time, there is sufficient evidence in Scripture to prove that the ten tribes were not lost, but rather rejoined with Judah in the south. It is likely that when Judah was deported by the Babylonians, the people would have sought out the Israelites in Assyria (very near Babylon) and joined with them. In the returns to Israel recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah, the Scriptures nowhere limit the returnees as being entirely from the tribe of Judah.

If They were Lost, Why Move To England?

If you again pull out a map, you will see that anywhere in the Middle East would be closer to the Jewish homeland than Europe or England. Much closer. The same article referenced above also addresses this theory:

Is it possible that some of the deported Israelites emigrated to Europe, even England? Yes. Is it likely? No. A journey from Assyria to England would have been exceedingly difficult in ancient times, especially for a large number of people. Geographically speaking, Afghan-Israelism and even Japanese-Israelism have a greater possibility of truth. Further, why would Assyria, or later Babylon, or later Persia allow the Israelites to migrate outside of their territories? Further, if the Israelites had the ability to migrate, why would they travel to Europe / England instead of back to their ancestral homeland? So, while it is possible that some Israelites migrated to Europe / England, it is highly unlikely that this occurred to any significant degree.

And now we must lay to rest this rather strange way of getting America to now be the promised children of God taking the place of Israel:

The primary goal behind British Israelism is to claim that England and the United States have inherited the covenant promises God made to Israel. While England and the United States have been blessed by God in many ways, it is not because God’s promises to Israel have been transferred to those two nations. God’s covenants with Israel always involved the specific land of Israel. Abraham’s descendants would inherit the land. The blessings of God to Israel were always in connection with the specific land that was promised. These promises, therefore, cannot apply to England or the United States, as those two nations do not possess the promised land. Further, while a significant number of Americans have English heritage, there are far more American immigrants from other nations combined than from England.

British Israelism (and other forms of Israelism) should be rejected because it does not have a solid basis biblically or historically.