Further, while many conservatively minded people acknowledge that all of the nations of the earth, the Anglo-Saxon people are the main target of a conspiratorial attack, they appear reluctant to accept a Bible-based explanation for this. The usual response, in one form or another, is: ‘If we, the White Anglo-Saxon people are Israel, what good is it?’ By way of answer and in terms of priorities, such an identification meets a great, almost desperate need today in that it frees God from the theology of man. This theology projects God as a religious Deity much in the same vein as did the priests of ancient times - a Deity Who is amenable to and reconcilable with all that man today does under the pretended discipline of the human conscience. Acceptance of Anglo-Saxon identity with Israel of the Bible - based on the historical development of these people plus the contemporary scene in relationship with the Covenant Promises plus the ‘sure word of prophecy’ - transposes man’s concept of God from nebulous religious philosophy into practical reality and political certainty. This, of course, immediately creates a stir among religionists who refuse to equate the God of the Bible with politics in any form and pronounce their judgment upon such an equation as heresy. Fair enough! This article - indeed the whole series of ‘No Liberty Without Law’ - is not written to appease those who follow what men have said, those who refuse to leave the cloisters of modern theology, it is written against the background of the need of Anglo-Saxondom to re-discover its God and His Directives for His People, and for those people who believe in the God of Bible revelation and who believe He is concerned - seven days a week, for all His creation. Thus, in terms of first things first, the identification of the Anglo-Saxon peoples with Israel, the Covenant People of God’s world-wide purpose, re-establishes that God is central to the nations existence and projects His Omnipotence into the every-day politics of life by historically proving that He said what He meant and meant what He said. Further, it reveals a God of Love and Life at work in a tangible and politically discernible manner. In a secondary sense, the ‘good’ derived from the acceptance of Israel’s identity with Anglo-Saxondom today hits right at the heart of a problem which is causing increasing concern. Everyone within Anglo-Saxondom is affected by the ill-health of the nation plus the escalating health costs which today (written 20 years ago), stand at 9.4 per cent of the gross national product. Individual and national health is surely a ‘good’ worthy of consideration! In the United States, the February ‘Social Security Bulletin’ reported that average health expenditures had increased on an average of 12 per cent per year between 1965 and 1973 and by 14 per cent in the next two years to be followed by 16.35 per cent in 1977. In Britain, the National Health Service is finding it increasingly difficult to meet the requirements of the people - not only because of the skyrocketing costs of hospitalization, but also because of the many new factors introduced into national health because of immigration from areas where disease still dominates the scene. The American Hospital Association has announced tighter controls in hospitals and has reduced the average length of a patients stay by a minimum of one day. Finance is indeed becoming a major consideration and while it is not suggested that a patient would be discharged not fully recovered, the possibility does exist that this could happen because of finance. Statistics indicate that in 1963 and in Community Hospitals, the cost per patient per day was $35 whereas in 1976, the cost had risen to slightly above $150 per day. It has been calculated that by reducing the patients stay in hospitable by one day - at $150 per day - the 35 million hospitalized patients in 1976 saved approximately five billion dollars. If the saving is astronomical, what incredible figure is being paid annually throughout all Anglo-Saxon lands for the ill health of the nation? Frantic government action to curb State spending on health services is reaching panic levels for in conjunction with inflation and the hundred and one other ills, governments in Anglo-Saxon countries are finding themselves in a vice which is tightening every year. The cost in research attendant on the diseases so prevalent in these countries is escalating almost monthly with that into cancer now in excess of the eight hundred million dollar a year bracket. Statistics provided by the American Cancer Society and quoted in the CBS News Almanac for 1978, indicates that in 1977, 543,000 new cases of cancer of all types were reported. Other problems too are adding their contribution to the causes for concern. IN 1976, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had confidently proclaimed that smallpox had been eradicated and that the attention of authorities could now be directed in other directions. However, smallpox has not been terminated. New outbreaks have been reported - admittedly in north-east Africa, but by reason of travel facilities now available, this could and has spread into the West. Thus despite the WHO pronouncement concerning this disease, the resources of Anglo-Saxon countries are once again thrown into the battle to combat not only smallpox, but also other diseases such as Laasa fever and Marburg disease. Disease and ill-health are taking their toll in both people and resources with politicians now faced with the unenviable task of coping with a mounting expenditure in health services. It need not be so. At just such a time as this, the ‘watchmen’ in Israel should be ‘Crying aloud and shewing God’s people where they have sinned’ (Isa. 58:1). The Lord God of Israel has decreed:
The “Diseases of Egypt” To the supercilious, any suggestion that God’s Holy Laws should be invoked as the remedy for today’s ills is untenable, for to them, anaesthetized by the social gospel of anti-nomianism (lawlessness), God’s Law was abolished at Calvary from which point in time - so they contend - human conscience became the only discipline for human behavior. If this is so, why, in the name of sanity are the Anglo-Saxon people suffering the ‘diseases of Egypt’ and why are they on the receiving end of the judgments which God has proscribed for His people alone if they failed to obey His Law? Is it not time that this modern generation on true Israelites (Anglo-Saxons) began to utilise its undoubted intellect and to realise what God is providing by way of an incentive against the total erosion of nationhood today? He has used the hot, dry climate of Egypt to preserve papyri which bears its testimony to the authenticity of His Word and to provide an insight - for those who are truly searching for truth - into the vocabulary used at the time of the First Advent. He has also used that same land - Egypt - and has stirred up the curiosity of men of science so that His people today may know something of the diseases of Egypt which He had warned would be the recurring sickness for Law transgression. One should be in no error here. Though the work of such men as Dr. Armand Ruffer, W.A. Smith, A.B. Shaw, J.K. Mitchell, F.A. Boyle, A.T. Sandison and a host of others, today’s generation of Israelites is in a position to know precisely why they are such a sick company of nations and what the Lord meant by His phrase ‘the Diseases of Egypt’. These men, through exhaustive examinations of the mummies of ancient Egypt, have provided a graphic illustration of life as it was lived in those far-off days, plus the amazing picture of the ancient disease which took their toll of the population. For instance, there is photographic evidence of a femur of a high-born Egyptian who lived during the period referred to as the time of the Old Kingdom. The picture clearly indicates malformations such as can result from chronic rheumatism. Similar misshapen bones have been found on thousands upon thousands of mummy skeletons suggesting that chronic rheumatism afflicted an extraordinary large number of persons through the course of Egyptian history. Is it purely coincidental that this disease of ancient Egypt is becoming increasingly prevalent in the Anglo-Saxon people today? Is this merely one of the environmental factors with which God’s people have to deal in the pursuit of their occupations - or is a call from the Lord to remember the cost of disobedience to His Law? Rheumatic disease - a collective term which connotes pain and disability of the musculoskeletal system - was estimated to be one of the leading causes of crippling the United States in 1976. Over 22 million Americans, or at least 10 per cent of the population were affected by this in one form or another. So serious is this disease that the National Arthritis Act of 1974 was initiated, the implementation and financing of which cost the Federal Government an estimated 39.2 million dollars in 1975. Would it not be a ‘good’ of inestimable value if rheumatic disease could be a thing of the past? It could be - if the people accepted their identity and the Constitution which the Lord God provided for them. In 1903, Elliot Smith, whose investigations of the mummies of Egypt had provided so much incentive for further medical examination of the dead of Egypt past, intimated that his research on the upper and lower jaws of men who lived when the pyramids of Giza were built, indicated symptoms of paradentosis which men today consider the by-product of modern times. After examining some five hundred skulls from the graves of Giza and noting the social progress toward an affluent society, Smith concluded that the middle and upper classes in Egypt suffered from dental caries as much as modern man and that this resulted from the increasing refinement of food. While one would hesitate to equate dental caries with the disease of Egypt, the presence of this condition, together with the fact of refined food found in the burial jars accompanying the dead bodies certainly coincides fairly well with modern notions of the relationship between caries and food today. Comment has already been made of the fact of the increase in the incidence of smallpox and although this is predominantly in Africa, cases have been reported in both Britain and the United States. In an existing photograph of King Rameses 5th (circa 1200 - 1085 B.C.), one may see that which Armand Ruffer recognised as the typical lesions of smallpox - a disease which ravaged Europe until the discovery of vaccination which, while it certainly contained the disease, has not by any means eradicated it. It is, of course, a fact that vaccination of children against this disease is mandatory in most Anglo-Saxon countries and while this has served to cut down the known incidence of the disease, the vast moving populations from other lands today is helping to revive the horror of this disease of ancient Egypt. Another of the disease of Egypt discovered by Armand Ruffer was announced in 1910 when he made known the results of microscopic analysis of the preserved kidneys of two mummies of the 20th Dynasty. In these he found the calcified eggs of an intestinal worm that was the terror of the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and which affected two out of every five persons. What Ruffer discovered was the bilharzia worm. While bilharzia is a disease found predominantly in Africa, South America and the East, the migration of people from these countries into the Western Anglo-Saxon lands has meant they have brought this disease with them and any full medical check-up performed today invariably takes in the possibility of bilharzia being present. As this was undoubtedly one of the disease of Egypt and as the Lord warned that modern Israel would be afflicted with these, it would serve to set out the life cycle of this worm. Bilharzia, a fluke, Schistosoma haematobium, is picked up by a person either bathing, drinking or simply wading in infected water. The parasites enter the bloodstream - it is thought through the skin - and travel to the portal vein which carries the blood from the intestines to the liver where they stay for approximately six weeks and become mature adults. The male and female copulate in the portal vein - the female then moving off to lay her eggs in the mucous membrane of the bladder, rectum or lower colon. The eggs leave the body in the urine or faeces and if one drops into water - it may be a placid pond, a slow moving river or lake - the egg changes into a miracidium, in which form it can swim. The miracidia search out a water snail which becomes the host for its next development - the cercaria. The cercariae live in the water until the next unwary person comes along and the cycle starts all over again. The effect of this disease on a person is indeed most serious. The eggs in the bladder or rectum cause irritation and bleeding while chronic inflammation in the bladder could lead to stones and possibly cancer. While men are still seeking an adequate treatment for this disease, according to ‘Pear’s Medical Encylopaedia’, the drugs used ‘produce side effects ranging from abdominal pain and nausea to heart failure or temporary madness’. Bilharzia is one of the diseases of Egypt and it is taking its toll in Anglo-Saxon lands today simply because people will not heed the Law of the Lord which controls the presence of the alien in their midst and also the resistance to disease in the dietary laws. Another of the disease of ancient Egypt - and this despite the dry air of the country - was tuberculosis - a conclusion arrived at by Ruffer and Elliot Smith after the exhaustive examinations of the mummy of a priest of Amon which showed unmistakable signs of the typical curvature of Pott’s disease which is an accumulation of tubercular pus beneath the lumber muscle. Couples with their families, all victims of spinal tuberculosis, were found buried side by side in the common grave attesting to the toll taken by this disease. There is very little need for comment on this for its existence in Anglo-Saxondom today is yet another evidence of the people’s departure from God’s Law. Other diseases in Egypt - all substantiated by an in-depth examination of the mummified organs - the liver, stomach and intestines - of Egypt’s ancient dead reveal that chronic gall-bladder infections took their toll as did appendicitis and cirrhosis of the liver - a condition frequently caused by chronic alcoholism. Ruffer found bacteria which indicated the presence of bubonic plague while the Ebers Papyrus (of which more presently) indicates that amoebic dysentery, typhoid fever and cholera were constant menaces to the people. Atrophied kidneys, that fatal consequence of chronic renal inflammation and abscesses were frequently found in canopic jars thus indicating yet another modern illness as obtaining in ancient Egypt. Venereal diseases too were rife in Egypt - an attestation to the loose morality of the people engendered by the affluence of society at that time. Today’s situation is almost the same with identical immorality attending this. According to the American Social Health Association, over eight million persons in the United States experienced some form of venereal disease in 1977. During this year, a new form of gonorrhea made its appearance which was resistant to penicillin and while combinations of antibiotics have been used against this, results have been far from satisfactory. Poliomyelitis, a paralysing disease of the nervous system caused by a virus infection of the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord and the nuclei of the moor cranial nerves, while being under control at the moment is by no means totally eradicated. In existing photographs of a memorial stele which show a doorkeeper making offerings to the goddess, one may see the shortened leg which, after extensive research by J.K. Mitchell and W.R. Dawson and other specialists, was pronounced as indicating poliomyelitis. While there was some resistance to the diagnosis in this particular case, the prevalence of this disease a few years ago would certainly support both Mitchell and Dawson’s conclusion. Yet another of the diseases of Egypt has taken its toll in modern Israel. With regard to the modern scourge of cancer - research into which cost an estimated eight hundred million dollars in 1977 - nothing of a positive nature has been produced concerning this in ancient Egypt. It is perfectly true that A.B. Granville had, in 1825 diagnosed an ovarian tumour found in a mummy as malignant, but this appeared to be an isolated case. Smith and Dawson found a number of tumours of the bone in the skeletons of three mummies said to belong to people living between 2563 and 2433 B.C. in which one tumour had affected the femur and two the humerus. While both men concluded that these tumours were evidence of malignant cancer of the bone, other specialists were more reticent in supporting the contention. One further inference to the existence of cancer in Egypt is to be found in a papyrus discovered by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1898 during the course of excavation at Kahun - a city which was destroyed in 2100 B.C. As far as is known, the papyrus is the earliest known textbook of gynaecology for it deals exclusively with women’s disease and other physiological changes which take place. In the midst of descriptions of maladies of the legs, possibly phlebitis, there is a description of a disease which had interested modern medical men in that, in conjunction with a terse account of an abdominal malady, there is mention of a 'smell of roast' as a typical symptom. Modern specialists, because of this statement and their own modern experience, were led to believe that this was an ancient report of abdominal cancer. Early Pharmacopoeia While men today generally refer to the Greeks, Hippocrates and Herophilus and the Greco-Roman Clarrisimus Galen as the fathers of modern medicine, the papyri of ancient Egypt have another story to tell. Georg Ebers, a nineteenth century German professor, was offered a sixty-five foot scroll by an Arab who claimed to have found it between the legs of a well-preserved mummy. Not particularly impressed by the Arab’s story, the professor was reluctant to purchase the scroll. Glancing through what appeared to be a text full of unintelligible words, Ebers turned to the introductory lines which stated: “Here begins the book on the preparation of medicines for all parts of the human body . . .” The translation of the full text appeared in 1937 and was completed by the Danish Egyptologist, Bendix Ebbell who pronounced that the Eber’s Papyrus was merely a copy of a far older textbook of surgery as well as internal medicine. The Edwin Smith Papyrus - a fifteen and a half foot long work which was found in a tomb at Thebes - was purchased by the American Edwin Smith who, having made his purchase, made no attempt to decipher the text. It remained for the noted James Henry Breasted, the theologian-cum-Egyptologist to translate the work which proved that some three thousand years before the noted William Harvey propounded his thesis on blood circulation, Egyptian doctors - for one must call them as such - were conversant with the circulation of blood through the body. The Edwin Smith Papyrus clearly indicates that the Egyptians not only observed the heart-beat in a patient, but related the pulse rate to the heart. Without apologising for what might appear to be a dry recapitulation of the ill-health of a people long since dead, it should be noted that the pharmacopoeia in existence since then, plus the work of doctors and the record of their endeavours - all this indicates a society which suffered diseases, and disease required action and cost money. The situation today is no different and the Anglo-Saxon people are passing through exactly the same circumstances as did those people in ancient Egypt. Is this not precisely what the Lord said would happen if His people did not obey His Laws? The parallel is too striking for any to miss. Would it not be a ‘good’ of immeasurable dimension if the plague of ill-health and disease could be removed and the people freed from the ever present worry of both the effect of sickness and its cost. It can be done - what is more, it will be done. |