"Brit-Am Now"-901
Contents:
1. Deleted at Request of Correspondent.
2. Cynthia Fitchlee: Irish Means Israelite!
3. Linda Bedwell: Symbolic Significance of Coat of Many Colors?
4. Melvin Rhodes: How One of Today's 'Bad Guys' Ended the Scourge of Slavery
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1.Deleted at Request of Correspondent.
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2. Cynthia Fitchlee: Irish Means Israelite!
Shalom Yair,
I am descended from mostly Irish/Scot ancestors with names of Cleary/O'Cleary/Regan/Moore/Morrow, etc. and my husband's family was O'Neill/Crenshaw.... as you can see we are very much of Celtic lineage (along with some other things thrown in). About 4 or 5 years ago the Father began to put upon our hearts who we really are although we had never heard of Ephraim before that....

When we first began this "Walk" a friend told me that the reason it was on our hearts to do so is because we are part of Israel and Judah is our brother. My initial response in my ignorance was to laugh and say, "I don't think so... we're Irish!" So little did I know!!!!!! I've since learned one can't hardly BE Irish and not be one of the lost sheep of Israel. Baruch haShem for His loving kindness and tender mercies.

Cynthia Fitchlee

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3. Linda Bedwell: Symbolic Significance of Coat of Many Colors?
Subject: RE: "Brit-Am Now"-899
#4. Kevin Opp: Different Tribal and Other Appearances

Concerning Kevin's comment: Different Tribal and Other Appearances

Let's all remember that Joseph had a coat of many colors, perhaps symbolizing the many colors of his offspring.
Just a thought...

Linda

Brit-Am Comment: I have also sometimes thought that there may be significance
to the sheep of mixed colors that Jacob chose for his own portion as opposed to
Laban (whose name literally means "white") who received the "pure" colors.

http://britam.org/Genesis/Gen28to32VaYatzei.html

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4. Melvin Rhodes: How One of Today's 'Bad Guys' Ended the Scourge of Slavery

It was The British who Ended Slavery!
Extracts
From: surfer11 <surfer11@iprimus.com.au>
Subject: [origin of nations] How the British abolished slavery - the youth
should read this and put their teachers and lecturers to shame ...
List-Id: <origin.yahoogroups.com>

<http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn70/slavery.htm>
http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn70/slavery.htm

How One of Today's 'Bad Guys' Ended the Scourge of Slavery

Two hundred years ago, Great Britain became the first major nation to
abolish the slave trade. By the end of the century slavery had been
abolished around the world. Here is the remarkable story of the abolition of
the slave trade-and of its tragic return to plague the world.

by Melvin Rhodes

There is no doubt about it-the slave trade was abhorrent. Millions of people
were transported across the Atlantic in the most horrific of conditions,
taken against their will and sold like cattle. Indeed, cattle were treated
better than the victims of this despicable trade.

March 25 was the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade
throughout the British Empire-marked throughout the month with commemorative
events. One such event was held in Elmina Castle, Ghana, a castle built by
the Portuguese in the late 15th century and used for the holding of slaves
before transit to the New World.

The following day a service of thanksgiving was held in London, attended by
Queen Elizabeth and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The service was
interrupted at one point by a man of African descent demanding the British
monarch apologize for slavery.

Today it's popular to bash the West, and the major English-speaking nations
in particular, and to blame them for many of the world's problems. In line
with this, demands for an apology for slavery and reparations have been
increasing in recent years.

Such demands overlook a crucial point.

Before the British parliamentary vote to abolish the slave trade, slavery
was a fairly universal practice, as it had been throughout history. What
Great Britain did, at a time when the slave trade was highly lucrative for
all participants, was a totally radical, progressive and bold step. We can
be thankful for the foresight shown by men like William Wilberforce, the
leader of the antislavery movement.

Wilberforce's fight to end slavery is portrayed in the recent movie Amazing
Grace. His friend John Newton, a former slave trader, wrote the famous hymn
of that name following his repentance. He devoted the remainder of his life
to serving others in an attempt to atone for his contribution to the slave
trade.

In reviewing the 2005 book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight
to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild, African-American columnist
Thomas Sowell wrote: "To me the most staggering thing about the long history
of slavery-which encompassed the entire world and every race in it-is that
nowhere before the 18th century was there any serious question raised about
whether slavery was right or wrong. In the late 18th century, that question
arose in Western civilization, but nowhere else."

The book, Sowell notes, "traces the history of the world's first
anti-slavery movement, which began with a meeting of 12 'deeply religious'
men in London in 1787."

It took 20 years for these men to achieve their goal of ending the slave
trade. Sowell continues: "Even more remarkable, Britain [then] took it upon
itself, as the leading naval power of the world, to police the ban on slave
trading against other nations. Intercepting and boarding other countries'
ships on the high seas to look for slaves, the British became and remained
for more than a century the world's policeman when it came to stopping the
slave trade" ("Today's 'Bad Guys' Ended Slavery," Lansing State Journal,
Feb. 12, 2006.)

Noted French historian Alexis de Tocqueville described the decision of the
British parliament to end the slave trade as "absolutely without precedent .
. . If you pore over the histories of all peoples, I doubt that you will
find anything more extraordinary" (quoted by Hochschild, p. 1).

Freedom, "a peculiar institution"

With this historic perspective, we can be thankful that, at last, after
thousands of years of human history, a nation had the moral conscience to do
something about it-to end the trade in human beings.

What was the magnitude of Britain's undertaking? "At the end of the
eighteenth century, well over three quarters of all people alive were in
bondage of one kind or another, not the captivity of striped prison
uniforms, but of various systems of slavery or serfdom. The age was a high
point in the trade in which close to eighty thousand chained and shackled
Africans were loaded onto slave ships and transported to the New World each
year. In parts of the Americas, slaves far outnumbered free persons.

"The same was true in parts of Africa, and it was from these millions of
indigenous slaves that African chiefs and slave dealers drew most of the men
and women they sold to Europeans and Arabs sailing their ships along the
continent's coasts.

"African slaves were spread throughout the Islamic world, and the Ottoman
[Turkish] Empire enslaved other peoples as well. In India and other parts of
Asia, tens of millions of farmworkers were in outright slavery, and others
were peasants in debt bondage that tied them and their labor to a particular
landlord as harshly as any slave was bound to a plan-tation owner in South
Carolina or Georgia.

"Native Americans turned prisoners of war into slaves and sold them . . . In
Russia, the majority of the population were serfs, often bought, sold,
whipped, or sent to the army at the will of their owners. The era was one
when, as the historian Seymour Drescher puts it, 'freedom, not slavery, was
the peculiar institution'" (Hochschild, p. 2.)

Britain and the African slave trade

Slavery existed in Africa well before the arrival of the Europeans. "The
Atlantic slave trade depended on the fact that most of the societies of
Africa-chiefdoms and kingdoms large and small, even groups of nomads-had
their own systems of slavery. People were enslaved as punishment for crimes,
as payment for a debt, or, most commonly of all, as prisoners of war . . .

"Once European ships started cruising the African coast offering all kinds
of tempting goods for slaves, kings and chiefs began selling their human
property to African dealers who roamed far into the interior. Groups of
captives, ranging from a few dozen to six or eight hundred, were
force-marched to the coast, the prisoners' hands bound behind their backs,
their necks connected by wooden yokes. Along the coast itself, a scattering
of whites, blacks and mulattos worked as middlemen for the Atlantic trade"
(Hochschild, p. 16).

And then William Wilberforce and his compatriots entered the picture. Driven
by a resolute Christian morality, within a generation they persuaded the
British government to outlaw slavery in 1807, when the slave trade was still
enormously profitable. Playing a hugely important role, the British Royal
Navy also served the cause, patrolling the coast of Africa for slave ships
and freeing slaves wherever they encountered them. By the end of the
century, slavery was outlawed nearly everywhere.

Britain's enthusiasm for ending the slave trade "led it to much greater
involvement in African affairs. Additional colonies were acquired (Sierra
Leone, 1808; Gambia, 1816; Gold Coast, 1821) to serve as bases for
suppressing the slave trade and for stimulating substitute commerce." This
"contributed to the expansion of both its commercial and colonial empire"
(The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Macropedia, "Colonialism," p.
892).

Certainly, many British people profited from the slave trade before its
abolition, but the British Empire became much wealthier after the trade was
ended. The abolition of the slave trade advanced the growth of the Empire as
the British people, descendants of biblical Ephraim, were receiving the
birthright promise of becoming "a multitude of nations" (Genesis 48:19; and
see our free booklet <http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/US/> The United
States and Britain in Bible Prophecy). Many of the peoples of the new
colonies would later serve alongside Britain in both world wars.

After the abolition of the slave trade, it took another 26 years to end
slavery itself throughout the British Empire. The end of the four-year
transition period coincided with Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne,
giving the new queen a prestigious boost at the beginning of her 64-year
reign.

One runaway slave fleeing the United States settled just outside of Windsor,
Ontario, and founded an institute for others who followed. Josiah Henson's
headstone bears a replica of Victoria's crown, in appreciation of the
freedom he found within the British Empire, whose head was Victoria, whom he
later met while on a visit to London. His autobiography was the inspiration
for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

America follows Britain's lead

A quarter-century later, America would also overturn its history of slavery.
Some 365,000 mostly white males of British descent died fighting for the
Union side in the American Civil War, enabling peoples of African descent to
be free. No other nation sacrificed so many people for such a noble cause.

The United States, descended from the biblical Manasseh (again, see our free
booklet), was to follow Great Britain as the world's dominant power. A
history of both nations, written by historian Angus Calder, is appropriately
titled Revolutionary Empire. The two branches of the Anglo-Saxon "empire,"
the British Empire and the United States, were a fulfillment of the promises
made to the patriarch Joseph's sons, by his father Israel (Genesis
48:15-19). They were to be a blessing to the world, as promised to their
ancestor Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3).

It wasn't only on the high seas that the British were stamping out slavery.
Toward the end of the 19th century the British high commissioner for
Northern Nigeria, Frederick (later Lord) Lugard, made it a priority when
administering the 300,000 square miles of his territory.

"In the south were pagan tribes and in the north, historic Muslim
city-states with large walled cities whose emirs raided the tribal
territories to the south for slaves . . . His policy was to support the
native states and chieftainships, their laws and their courts, forbidding
slave raiding and cruel punishments . . ." Lugard was "following the
explorer David Livingstone's lead in fighting Arab slave raiders in eastern
Africa" (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Macropedia, "Lord Lugard,"
p. 176).

Slavery returns to Africa

Sadly the story doesn't end there. Once again, five decades after Britain
gave its colonies independence, slavery is back in every single African
nation, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"The trafficking of human beings is a problem in every African country, says
UNICEF", states an April 23, 2004, BBC News article. "The report, which
covers 53 African nations, says children are the biggest victims in what is
a very complex phenomenon. It describes how they are forced into slavery,
recruited as child soldiers or sold into prostitution. In Africa, children
are twice as likely to be trafficked as women."

The report "found that 89% of the countries had trafficking to and from
neighbouring countries, but 34% also had a human trade to Europe . . . Of
the countries surveyed, 26% said trafficking was taking place to the Middle
East." Sadly, few voices are being raised in Africa calling for an end to
this despicable trade.

The trade in human beings, which includes the sex trade, is now estimated to
be the biggest business in the world, accounting for a full 10 percent of
the world's total commerce.

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