Skip to content

USA & International Mailing Address

Oh that Canada / USA border closure! We have finally just received the past three months of mail from our Ferndale PO Box, which is now closed, in late January. So as a temporary measure, please direct all mail and correspondence to our Canadian address.

PO Box 31137 RPO Thunderbird
Langley, BC V1M 0A9
Canada

Important Message For Our American and International Readers

  • Links of Interest
  • We Believe
  • Our Contact Info
  • Privacy Policy
Facebook Twitter Instagram
The Association of the Covenant People The British Israel Truth
  • Home
  • Israel TruthExpand
    • Part 1 – Almighty God, The Great Gardener

      Part 2 – Marks of Identification

      Part 3 – Not Everyone’s Blind

      The Israel Truth

      What if you found out that you are an Israelite? Would it make a difference in your life? If you are of Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scottish or Scandinavian origin, then you are, you know! And you could be in for a real life changer.
      This may sound strange, even uncomfortable, but take the time to peruse this website beginning with this series of articles. It’ll be worth it.

      Part 4 – The Founding of ACP, August2, 1909

      Part 5 – Our Identity Becomes Blurred

      Part 6 – The Sowing Years

  • Our LibraryExpand
    • Article Library

      Current Writers
      Editorials
      Other Contributors
      Hall of Fame Writers
      Down Memory Lane
      Bits & Pieces
      From the Mailbox

      Monarchs of Destiny

      Monarchs of Destiny
      King Edward I
      King Henry VIII
      Queen Elizabeth I
      King James I
      King George III
      Queen Elizabeth II

      Multimedia

      Our 100 Year Anniversary
      Toronto 2012
      Special Events
      Audio Messages
      The Poetry Corner

  • Our MagazineExpand
    • 2022 Editions
      2021 Editions
      2020 Editions
      2019 Editions

      2018 Editions
      2017 Editions
      2016 Editions
      2015 Editions

      Front Cover Menu
      Current Edition Online
      Join Our Mailing List

      2014 Editions
      2013 Editions
      2012 Editions
      2011 Editions

      2010 Editions
      2009 Editions
      2008 Editions
      2007 Editions

The Association of the Covenant People The British Israel Truth

Pastor Jory Brooks

Current Writers

Current Writers

The Spiritual Side of Things

ByPastor Jory Brooks November 13, 2014January 15, 2016
Home / Current Writers / The Spiritual Side of Things

One of the greatest challenges we face in our witnessing is the “spiritualizing” of the Scriptures that is so prevalent today. It is one of the primary methods used to negate clear Biblical teaching and concepts. Quite obviously, however, they are not able to “spiritualize” everything, since much in the Bible is evidently literal and actual. Christ, His Apostles, and the land of Palestine are examples of subjects that cannot easily be eviscerated into a spiritual cloud! As such, it is applied irregularly, whenever its proponent wishes to evade Biblical facts and evidence.

As a good example of this, years ago I read an article about Israel in prophecy in a Christian denominational magazine, and wrote a letter to the editor questioning several statements made. In reply, I received a short note stating that some of the promises to Israel were literal for the Jews, others were spiritual for the Church, and it was up to their governing council to decide which promises belonged to each of them!

The word, spiritualize, itself is an unfortunate misnomer, since it has nothing to do with either the Holy Spirit or man’s spirit. A more accurate term for this might be “allegorizing” or “metaphorizing.” An allegory is defined by Wikipedia dictionary as “a rhetorical device in which characters or events in a literary, visual, or musical art form represent or symbolize ideas and concepts. …An allegory conveys its hidden message through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, and/or events. Allegory is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric; a rhetorical allegory is a demonstrative form of representation conveying meaning other than the words that are spoken.”

Therefore, an allegorical interpretation of Israel’s covenant promises could say that Abraham’s “many nations” of prophecy (Gen. 17:5-6) is really speaking instead of the Church, and the “nations” are not nations at all! They interpret it as a mere “form of representation” and that the true understanding of the passage requires a “meaning other than the words that are spoken.”

A serious problem with this system of interpretation is that actual words can be taken to mean virtually anything that the proponent wishes. As an example, the Christian Science denomination teaches that the “land of nod” where Cain migrated in Genesis 4:16 is simply an allegory for sleep, and not an actual place. After all, if it is really only an allegory, why not?

Another definition says that, “Allegory is a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy. Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.”

A true allegory or “extended metaphor” therefore has two actual meanings: literal and symbolic. The problem with many of our Christian allegorists is that they reject entirely the literal meaning and ascribe the symbolic meaning as exclusive. You will notice that when critics of British-Israel accuse us of “an ultra-literal interpretation of Scripture,” they are really saying that they completely reject the literal, actual meaning of the words used in the text. Throwing words such as “ultra” at us is simply obfuscation. It is not allegorical, but agnostical, an agnostic refusal to believe in the plain words of the text! In believing the words of Scripture, we are not being “ultra-literal” or “extreme literal,” we are simply being honest with God’s Word! Our critics’ argument is actually an “extreme denial” of the plain Words of Scripture.

Grammarian Richard Nordquist more precisely says that allegory is, “The rhetorical strategy of extending a metaphor through an entire narrative so that objects, persons, and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text. One of the most famous allegories in English is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), a tale of Christian salvation. Modern allegories include the films The Seventh Seal (1957) and Avatar (2009) as well as the novels Animal Farm (1945) and The Lord of the Flies (1954).”

Allegory is in fact a legitimate literary device. The Bible uses it in several places to teach a moral or historical lesson. For example, the parable of the trees of the field in Ezekiel 17:22-24 was an allegory with a historical fulfillment that occurred during the time of Israel’s king Zedekiah. However, a veiled allegorical depiction of the trees of the field is vastly different from God’s clear literal proclamation to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. There is no question that Biblical allegory is a much-misused subject today.

Another literary device is the metaphor, defined as “a figure of speech which makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two things or objects that are poles apart from each other but have some characteristics common between them.” A good example of this is the applying of Israel’s promises to the Church. No honest Bible reader would consider the patriarch Abraham as a mere Scripture metaphor, yet strangely, the promises he received are often considered just that.

While in England this past summer, I arranged to meet in London with a British-Israel believer’s Methodist minister. The parishioner had been trying to convince his cleric of the truth about what we teach, and earnestly gave him an apparently large amount of British-Israel literature in the attempt. The cleric, however, was convinced that the promises to Israel were all spiritual and belonged to the Church, and asked me what the “benefit” of my literal interpretation could possibly be. An obvious answer to that is Biblical accuracy! However, there are other benefits as well.

I explained how there have been many examples through the years of atheists that have been brought to Christian belief through the British-Israel message and its demonstration of the literal fulfillment of numerous prophecies in the European peoples of today. Conversely, people brought up in the faith have sometimes fallen away into agnosticism when realizing that the Jews have not fulfilled the bulk of the Abrahamic covenant promises. A good example was the late nineteenth century atheist, Robert Green Ingersoll, a man raised in a Christian home as the son of a Methodist minister, yet fell away and spent his entire adult life attacking the Christian faith.

However, none of this mattered to the spiritualized cleric. He stated that the proper way to demonstrate the truth of God’s Word is to look at creation itself in all of its myriad and varied forms. How could this have all happened without God, he asked? While I can certainly agree with his view of a Divine Creator instead of evolution, his argument was really based more on philosophy than provable fact. Yes, it would seem to require a Creator to account for the wonders of creation, but instead the faith of many today is regularly undermined by the secularists digging up bones supposedly millions of years older than Adam. The spiritualizers thus completely ignore, and in fact adamantly deny, a more sure proof of the accuracy of the Bible.

I pressed him further. If the Abrahamic promises are all spiritual, then who should own Palestine today? He gave a wide assured smile and said, “It doesn’t matter!” Herein perhaps is the greatest failure of the allegorizers and their system—they cannot face and answer the pressing problems of the day because their system is limited and bounded by the spiritual arena, not life and issues here on literal earth. In many ways, it is escapism, an escape from the reality of God’s Word and its true fulfillment on earth today.

You may find a more complete discussion of problems with the spiritual interpretation of Scripture in the article, “Did God Deceive Abraham?” on the research page of the CBIA website, www.israelite.ca. May we bring such spiritual escapists back to earthly reality!

Post navigation

Previous Previous
God’s Wrath
NextContinue
All Aboard, the Last Leg of the Trip

Pastor Jory Brooks

Pastor Jory Brooks is an American and pastor of the oldest Anglo-Israel church in North America, located in Detroit, Michigan. He is also Vice-President of the “The Servant People, Canadian British Israel Association” and together with President Mary Bennett, has been a driving force in that organization. With his keen interest in history and research, he has updated and written many fine publications for CBIA. When you read a Jory Brooks article, you know you are in touch with one of the foremost scholars of the Israel Truth. He is a speed reader so gets the most out of the hours per day he spends in research. His articles in our magazine are invariably fresh and informative and he also writes a quarterly article for a British publication. It is a tribute to his wisdom that his articles are very often picked up and reprinted in other Israel Truth magazines. Jory is also a sought after speaker and has delivered messages throughout the United States, Canada and the British Isles.

Read More Articles

The Association of the Covenant People

"So the House of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day and forward” (Ezekiel 39: 22)

Mailing Address

Canada
PO Box 31137 RPO Thunderbird
Langley, BC V1M 0A9
Canada

Contact Info

t. 604.524.1170
f. 604.524.9933

TKC Questions
General Questions

Mailing Address

Overseas and USA
PO Box 31137 RPO Thunderbird
Langley, BC V1M 0A9
Canada

© 2022 The Association of the Covenant People |  Designed by betonicah

  • Links of Interest
  • We Believe
  • Our Contact Info
  • Privacy Policy
ACP Thank You For Your Donations

For Your Support!

Our Association is over 110 years old and all during that time we have been spreading news of the Israel Truth and the Gospel of the Kingdom to our brethren around the world. We would not be able to do this if it wasn’t for the kindness of our readers because we are funded totally through donations and gifts.

We could not do this without your support! Click either of the buttons below to donate in the currency of your choice.

Canadian Donations
US Donations
Scroll to top
  • Home
  • Israel Truth
    • Part 1 – Almighty God, The Great Gardener
    • Part 2 – Marks of Identification
    • Part 3 – Not Everyone’s Blind
    • Part 4 – The Founding of ACP
    • Part 5 – Our Identity Becomes Blurred
    • Part 6 – The Sowing Years
  • Our Library
    • Current Writers
    • Editorials
    • Hall of Fame Writers
    • Other Contributors
    • Monarchs of Destiny
    • Multimedia
    • The Poetry Corner
    • Bits and Pieces
    • Down Memory Lane
    • From the Mailbox
  • Our Magazine
Search