“We have to find out who we are” was the sentiment expressed most recently at a conference on the abiding issue of Great Britain’s future membership of the European Union. Undoubtedly this fact has been at the root of the national dilemma for the British people during the past half century. That the nation does not know its true identity in one sense is very apparent, yet in another it instinctively does know that it has a great cause to follow and that it is fundamentally unhappy when not truly engaged as a free agent in building Kingdom civilization. A re-writing of Old World history will come to our aid.
IT was the late Enoch Powell who stated that “nothing else matters except history.” In saying this he revealed a great truth. This is that only by an understanding of where we come from as a people can we even begin to contemplate our future as a nation in the midst of a very troubled world. Other very foolish people have prattled away saying that “all history is bunk.” In expressing this they display a total lack of wisdom that very quickly brings them to confusion.
Even in people’s individual life there is a great desire to retain knowledge of the family tree and to trace one’s ancestors over centuries of time and back to far and distant lands. Genealogy has become more and more popular in these days as family life has become increasingly dislocated. The right to know one’s parentage has become a subject of intense debate and rightly so, as the deep spiritual side of our being, whether we acknowledge it or not, always yearns for the answer as to our true origins.
However when it comes to understanding who the British people are as a nation – a nation with a long history and an emergent and powerful influence upon the world scene we lose direction, which is due to a failure of linking our history with the Bible and this in the full prophetic context. There have also been powerful deceptions at work to veil our past ancient history, deceptions that form a pattern of disinformation which has built up into a vast edifice of published history and theological error.
Firstly, there has been a log-jam that has formed around the dating system of the ancient historical world, centred on the dynasties of ancient Egypt and the Greek histories. This has taken the form of an expansion of the timeline by over six centuries, the effect of which has brought down a historical screen, so veiling the identity of the vast bulk of the Hebrew race moving west into Eurasia after their captivity in Assyria.
This extraordinary fact began to be opened up in 1991. In a published masterpiece of archaeological reasoning it was shown that Egypt was the seat of the chronological problem, having a knock-on effect for the dates of the Near East and the Mediterranean.
Peter James and five other professional archaeologists in their Centuries of Darkness,* challenged in great detail the conventional chronology of Old World archaeology. Professor Colin Renfrew in his Foreword said:
“This disquieting book draws attention, in a penetrating and original way, to a crucial period in world history, and to the very shaky nature of the dating . . . upon which our current interpretations rest. I feel that their critical analysis is right and that a chronological revolution is on its way.”
While Peter James was prepared to proffer that 300 years do not exist in the conventional Old World chronology, he was not prepared, perhaps for the sake of remaining credible, to reveal that in fact some 650 years do not exist in the dating system that forms the basis of current interpretations of history in the Old World. Even so, in the inside front and back covers of this book, a contrasting cross dating system demonstrates that under the conventional chronological system, civilization emerges out of Egypt and Africa, which is always used to support anti-biblical evolutionary theory. After the removal of the ‘ghost history,’ what is amazing, is that civilization emerges from Assyria and Greece, to confirm the accuracy of the biblical record, particularly in respect of Abraham coming from Ur of the Chaldees.
The so-called Dark Age until now has been described as an economic and cultural recession so devastating that it lasted for 400 years from 1200 to 800 B.C.. Or did it? The dates for the near East and the Mediterranean are derived from the chronology of ancient Egypt – which has remained sacrosanct, even forcing the calibration (or fudging) of carbon 14 dating – but if that itself has been miscalculated then everything else must become subject to massive revision. What we find is that once this ‘ghost history’ is eliminated, fresh perspective is thrown not only on the Dark Age, but also on the Trojan War, the foundation of Rome, the origin of the Greek alphabet and the Golden Age of Solomon.
In Greek history the Dark Age between 1200 and 750 B.C. is described as a period from which survived only scattered legends and some unrewarding artifacts. There has been incredible difficulty to fill in the historical record as to why nothing much happened or survived for 450-600 years in Greece, the reason being – and stunningly so for academia – is that as far as the historical timeline is concerned, it does not actually exist!
The publication of Centuries of Darkness did indeed mark a very powerful beginning to the revolution in chronology of archaeological reasoning which eventually will change completely our view of the ancient world, a revolution which must take place if the British people are to find out who they are. Secondly, there is now another incredibly important work shortly to be released which will complete the basis for the revolution in chronology. Moses in the Hieroglyphs** by its very title will startle academia for under the existing chronological timeline in Egypt Moses is not found in the Egyptian hieroglyphs. This has led the critics of the biblical record to doubt that Moses was ever in Egypt – or that he existed at all! Now for the first time there has come an opening up of the hieroglyphic record never before imagined.
The time has finally come for the unassailable evidence to be revealed that the Welsh language, known as the language of heaven, is the basis for the true and accurate decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Since 1822 when the young French Egyptologist, Jean Francois Champollion, is considered to have correctly deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics, the subject has remained locked in confusion without anyone realizing that fundamental error was present. There has been no advancement and no real understanding of what is contained in the hieroglyphic record.
It will take time for the implications of this realignment of the chronology of the Old World to filtrate through to the high and mighty of academia, but in due course the revolution will emerge which will affect all aspects of history and indeed of theological concepts as to the emerging Kingdom civilization in the Earth. Who then is to lead this return to the Faith?
Yet Comes a Voice out of Africa
Britain’s first black Archbishop, before his enthronement as the Church’s No. 2 at York Minster on 30th November, 2005, made a powerful attack on multiculturalism, urging English people to reclaim their national identity which promises to make the covenant people think deeply as to who they really are. His remarks were published in The Times, London, on 22nd November, 2005.
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said that too many people were embarrassed about being English. “Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly to me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains,” he said.
He said that the failure of England to rediscover its culture afresh would lead only to greater political extremism. He called for the English to rediscover their cultural identity by properly marking celebrations such as St George’s Day on 23rd April. “I speak as a foreigner really. The English are somehow embarrassed about some of the good things they have done. They have done some terrible things but not all the Empire was a bad idea. Because the Empire has gone there is almost the sense in which there is not a big idea that drives this nation.”
The Ugandan-born Archbishop who fled Idi-Amin’s regime in 1974, said he would not be where he was today were it not for the British Empire and English teachers and missionaries who worked in Africa. As a direct product himself of the British Empire, he intends to make mission and a passion for English culture, and the Christian roots of that culture, driving forces of the next decade or more that he will spend as primate of England’s northern province.
“What is it to be English? It is a very serious question,” he said. “I think we have not engaged with English culture as it has developed. When you ask a lot of people in this country, ‘What is English culture?’, they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it. It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out. It is a place that has allowed reason to be at the heart of all these things, that has allowed genuine dissent without the resort to violence; that has allowed all the fantastic music that we experience in our culture.”
Multiculturalism as a concept failed to convey the essence of what it meant to be English. “English is the culture I have lived in, I have loved . . . My teachers were English. As a boy growing up, that is the culture I knew.” He disliked the word “toleration” when used in reference, for example, to people of different cultures. “It seems to be the word tolerance is bad because it just means putting up with it,” he said. “I was raised in the spirit of magnanimity. That is a better word than tolerance. If you are magnanimous in your judgments on other people, there is a chance that I will recognize that you will help me in my struggle.”
Archbishop Sentamu described English culture as rooted in Christianity and, in spite of attempts by secularists to marginalize it, the Church still had a central role to play. “I think the Church in many ways has to be like a midwife, bringing to birth possibilities of what is authentically very good in the English mind.” The word sentamu means “firestoker” in Luganda, the Archbishop’s native tongue, and he will probably face the accusation of stoking the flames. Maybe he comes to the northern province at an appointed moment. Is it also significant that it is the region to where our Federation headquarters and The National Bible School has recently moved?
The Queen extols ‘unique’ power of Christianity
On 15th November, 2005, The Queen opened the Church of England’s General Synod to a packed hall in Church House, Westminster, with a ringing endorsement of the “uniqueness” of the Christian faith. It was likened to her radio broadcast in South Africa on her twenty-first birthday.
In a speech that reflected her personal beliefs as well as her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, she contrasted the enduring nature of Christianity with the rapid changes in society. “When so much is in flux . . . there is a renewed hunger for that which endures and gives meaning. The Christian Church can speak uniquely to that need,” she said. Truly the hunger is there to know who we are to give meaning to our nation and all that it seeks to do. The Church, as a called out separated body, is the British-Israel nation.
Indeed, we do have to find out who we are as a people that have an obvious calling and destiny among the nations. We stand today at a doorway of new understanding in this respect and it is by the Holy Spirit of Almighty God that truth and revelation in history and in our future national life will be revealed.
* Centuries of Darkness by Peter James, pub. 1991 by Jonathan Cape, London. ISBN 0-224 -02647 - X.
** Moses in the Hieroglyphs, by Grant Berkley, pub. February 2006 by Trafford. ISBN 1-4120-5600-4, 497pp. Special launch price £19.50 postpaid in U.K. (Overseas postage on application). Available from Covenant Books, 121 Low Etherley, Bishop Auckland, Co Durham DL14 0HA, England.
