A great point is made by all Anglo-Israel writers of the promises which God made to the fathers of a multitudinous seed. The argument is, that since the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were to be a great and mighty and very numerous nation—yea, "a company of nations"—these promises cannot apply to the "Jews," who are comparatively few in number. There must exist, therefore, a people somewhere great and mighty and numerous who are the seed of Abraham, in whom these promises are realised.
Now look at the British Empire, how great and mighty it is in the earth, and what vast numbers it includes, ergo, the British, including the United States of America (which by some wonderful process of divination Anglo-Israelites are able to distinguish and identify as "Manasseh," in spite of the fact that their progenitors, who emigrated from England, were, according to them "Ephraimites," and that those original emigrants have since been mixed up with a flood of emigrants from all other races under heaven), are the descendants of Abraham, and particularly of the "lost" Ten Tribes!
Now the following are the Scriptures on the subject:
(1) "And I will make of thee (Abraham) a great nation" (Gen. xii. 2).
(2) "And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered" (Gen. xiii. 16).
(3) "And He brought him (Abraham) forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the number of the stars, if thou be able to tell them: and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be" (Gen. xv. 5).
(4) "And God talked with him (Abraham), saying: As for Me, My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations; neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for the father of a multitude of nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee" (Gen. xvii. 4-6).
(5) "Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him" (Gen. xviii. 18).
(6) "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies" (a Hebrew idiom for "shall be victorious over his foes") (Gen. xxii. 17).
(7) "And God said unto him (Jacob), I am God Almighty, be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins" (Gen. xxxv. 11).
To these passages have to be added Isaac's blessing to Jacob: "God Almighty bless thee and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a company—literally, 'a congregation' קְהַל עַמִּים of peoples" (Gen. xxviii. 3); and Jacob's forecast of Ephraim in his blessing of Joseph's sons, that his seed shall become "a multitude (or literally, 'a fulness,' מְלֹא הַגּוֹיִם ) of the nations."
Now in reference to all these particular promises and forecasts, I would beg your attention to the following observations:—
I. There are expressions in them which must not be pressed to the extreme of literalness according to our Western ideas. We speak of "nations," and think of them as embracing populations of whole countries, and of "kings" as being sovereigns of States, but in the earlier books of the Bible we are introduced to many "nations" and "peoples" as comprised in one little country of Canaan, and of many "kings" who were no more than chiefs, or rulers of "cities," which in our modern times we would only class as "villages." As a matter of fact, the term גּוֹיִם , goim, generally standing for "nations," and usually for the Gentile nations, is actually used for the tribes or families of the Jewish people. Here is the Scripture: "And He said unto me, Son of Man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to nations ( גּוֹיִם, (goim—the word is in the plural) that are rebellious, which have rebelled against Me" (Ezek. ii. 3).
The "Jews," or "Israel," as they are properly called are being spoken of as "nations," because they comprised different families or tribes.
Already Moses could say of the Israel of his time: "Jehovah your God hath multiplied you, and behold, ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude" (Deut. i. 10; x. 22); and Solomon, in his prayer for wisdom, says: "Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people which Thou hast chosen, a great people that cannot be counted for multitude" (1 Kings iii. 8).
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews knew nothing of a supposed identification of the millions in Britain and America with the "lost" Ten Tribes, but speaking of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, he could say that because Abraham believed God, and Sarah herself, in spite of natural impossibilities, judged Him faithful who had promised: "Wherefore also there sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of heaven for multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable" (Hebrews xi. 12); so that even if we view only the past it is not true to assert that the promises of God that the seed of Abraham should be a multitude which cannot be numbered, and constitute "a company of nations," has not been fulfilled in the "Jews" or "Israel," which has never been "lost."