Download Tag: Scripture

What is a “Co-incidence”? How many ‘co-incidences’ have to occur before you can cease to write them off as such, and begin to realise that each of these so-called co-incidences is adding its weight to support a particular premise? We believe that the Anglo-Celtic-Saxon Peoples, and Britain in particular, are the literal present day descendants of God’s Servant Nation Israel. We base this belief on the Word and Authority of Almighty God, given to us in the Bible. We believe that under Divine guidance our forefathers migrated— over a long period — from the Bible area of the Middle East to a place appointed for them by God in fulfilment of His Covenant with David: (H SAM.7:1 0) i.e. the British Isles and the North Sea fringe. We also believe that God has faithfully kept His solemn promise that David’s throne (which IS the Throne of the Lord*) and his royal line should ‘endure forever’ and would have a descendant of David’s line reigning on that Throne from generation to generation — holding that very Throne in trust until He comes whose right it is — Our Lord Jesus Christ, to take it for Himself and rule in glory, as promised in Luke I v32. We know that blindness in part was to come upon Israel, as part of their punishment, and that God’s servant nation was destined to be totally ignorant of their origins, their name and their real identity: and this is so— absolutely today!

Nevertheless, if we look around us, we may perceive a considerable number of instances and indications in our national and religious life, in our history, our ceremonial, our national languages and especially in everything that concerns our Royal Throne; ALL linking our indigenous British People with their Biblical Israelite origins. Some of these items are listed here at random. Separately they may appear to be mere co-incidences and of little significance — but TOGETHER their combined weight MUST be considerable, and they all point in the same direction, confirming our belief.

A TALENTED AUTHORESS HAS LATELY PUBLISHED A BOOKLET, in which she sets out to disprove most of the holy legends of Glastonbury and Cornwall, and in particular that of the visit of Our Lord to this land. She has entitled it “Glastonbury, Truth and Fiction.” The title alone shows the prejudiced attitude of the writer and her fellow sceptics. Since when has legend or oral tradition become identified with fiction? Or truth confined to facts attested by documents of unimpeachable reliability? The utmost that the writer has proved is that many of these holy legends have not the documentary support which she and her kind require in order that they should be classified as “truth,” or at any rate be removed from the realm of “fiction.” I wonder in which category the writer would place the following, to mention only three generally accepted traditions:

The martyrdom of most of the Apostles. The episcopacy of St. Peter at Rome. The residence of St. John at Ephesus.

If documentary proof is the only requisite of truth, and all legend is fiction, then surely these, too are fiction.

The view taken by the present writer has always been that legends often, perhaps generally, contain a germ of truth, and that the probable degree of truth can be fairly gauged by such considerations as the source of origin; the localities where the legends had vogue; the likelihood or otherwise of the influence of careless legend-mongers; and finally the result of applying to the legends the acid test of history and archaeology.

I claim that the legendary visit of Our Lord to Britain, and to Cornwall in particular, comes through all these tests remarkably unscathed, leaving all reasonable people with the conviction that it may have been, and many of us who have given years of study to the subject, the growing faith that it is probably true.

I shall presently record the various versions of the legend, mostly in the very words in which they were given me by my informants, the majority of whom are simple folk with no pretension to much “book learning.” It will be seen at once that it is almost exclusively associated in Cornwall with the tin trade, in the mining districts and the adjacent ports from which British tin was exported before and during the first century A.D. It is not usually found in parts where monastic influence was most pronounced. Even at Glastonbury the legend perpetuated and embellished by the monks of the middle ages was about Joseph of Arimathea, rather than about Our Lord, as the holy visitor.