Jeremiah Builds a Kingdom

I recently came to understand something more fully about what God did through the Prophet Jeremiah that I want to share with you.

The Bible focuses on how God is working out His plan for all human beings by using the nation of Israel. That nation was a good example to the world during the time of King David and King Solomon, but it later divided into two; the people in both kingdoms turned away from God, and ultimately both kingdoms fell. As the second kingdom was heading toward collapse, God raised up Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was one of only a very few people in the Bible whom God chose while still in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). God had a crucial role for him to fulfill.

God used Jeremiah to warn Judah that if the people did not repent toward God, the nation would be destroyed! God always warns Israel—even the modern nations of Israel—through His servants. Jeremiah delivered a great warning, but he also did much more.

Here is the commission God gave this man: “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant” (verse 10).

As Herbert W. Armstrong showed in detail in The United States and Britain in Prophecy, God’s plan for Israel did not fail with the fall of Jerusalem, as even many Christians assume. God saved the dynasty of King David and continued His plan for Israel and all mankind through Jeremiah. He transplanted David’s throne from the kingdom of Judah to another kingdom of Israelites: Ireland.

We have known this for years, but there is more to it that God wants us to understand. What I recently came to see more fully is that Jeremiah really did plant and build in the context of nations and kingdoms.

Verse 10 says Jeremiah would plant nations and kingdoms, directly or indirectly. He planted the throne of David in Ireland, but he also had to build a kingdom there! And history shows that is what he did.

Building a Kingdom

Jeremiah dedicated his life to God and suffered a great deal to get His message out. In the process, he learned how to stay loyal to God, how to have faith, and how to teach God’s truth. Then at a critical juncture in God’s plan, he arrived in Ireland.

What happened then? Jeremiah was no vagabond or refugee. He was received as a man of God and given high honor and authority to virtually rule over the whole nation! God used him and his authority in this new land to establish His truth. Historians say Jeremiah lived in Ireland for 40 years and has his gravestone there.

This man of God built a kingdom.

This shows us that if you heed God’s message and turn to Him, He will lead you! The descendants of Israel still existed in Jeremiah’s lifetime, and they still exist today. And if they turned to God, He would immediately begin diminishing and solving their personal and national problems!

This is very relevant history because the book of Jeremiah is for us today. It is especially for the modern descendants of the Israelites, which include not only the Irish but chiefly the British and the Americans. God told Jeremiah to write His message in a book for all Israel (Jeremiah 30:1-3). Jeremiah delivered that message to Judah before Jerusalem fell, but the rest of Israel had already been scattered. God is delivering Jeremiah’s message today.

“The ancient records and chronicles of the kingdom were ordered to be written and carefully preserved at Tara by Ollav Fola, and these formed the basis of the ancient history of Ireland called the Psalter of Tara” (Annals of the Four Masters). Who commanded them to do that and motivated them to do it so accurately?

Irish historian and minister Frederick Glover and other historians recognize that Ollav Fola, the man who had such enormous influence on Ireland, was Jeremiah the prophet!

Through physical Israel and then through the true Church of God, spiritual Israel, God has given all mankind an example of how to live the right way. That is why Bible history is about the nation of Israel. God called these people and worked with them for many generations to be an example to the world. Sadly, they routinely rebelled, so God let the kingdom of Israel and then the kingdom of Judah be destroyed. But then He used Jeremiah and Ireland to build a spectacular national example to the world.

This is also why God’s true Church is not just a spiritual idea or a social group. It is actually a civilization, a new world God is preparing! He seeks to use that example and His righteous authority to solve the problems plaguing our nations.

Planted in Ireland

In Ireland is a burial place called the Great Mergech. The person buried there is a princess, Tea-Tephi. This is a Hebrew name. Why is a Hebrew princess buried in a prominent, honorable place 2,500 miles from Jerusalem?

As Mr. Armstrong showed in The United States and Britain in Prophecy, Tea-Tephi was the key to Jeremiah saving David’s dynasty and transplanting that throne to Ireland. God had promised that David’s descendants would always rule over Israel, and even though King Zedekiah was conquered, his sons were all executed, and his kingdom fell, God saved his daughter. It was this Jewish princess, carrying the royal dynasty, who married an Irish prince shortly before the fall. Two Israelite dynasties, which had been very much in opposition before, were united, and this royal couple accompanied Jeremiah to Ireland in 569 b.c.

With them they took a harp, a stone and an ark. The harp was the harp of David, which you can still see in the national symbols of Ireland. The stone was the stone of destiny, a symbol of the very origin of the nation from its patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham. And the ark was the ark of the covenant, the symbol of God’s throne, at which He had been present among the ancient Israelites. Inside the ark were the Ten Commandments, written on stone by the finger of God, the fundamental law to solve problems and to build a life and a kingdom that thrives!

British historians have written that Ireland’s famous Hill of Tara is where the ark of the covenant was placed, and that it is still there, buried with Tea-Tephi.

Tea-Tephi and her husband, under Jeremiah, were part of a unique kingdom-building process! Jeremiah taught the Ten Commandments. God’s law was the law of the land. Known as Ollav Fola in Irish history, he also founded the ollums, an order of priests and saviors. According to Annals of the Four Masters, he erected and established the building Mur-Ollamhan, which can be translated House of Ollam, School of Ollam or House of the Learned. It was a liberal arts college to educate people in God’s laws.

Annals of the Four Masters also records that he ordained the Feis Teamhrach, or the convention of Tara (feis signifies a convention or assembly). It was attended by the island’s leaders including the provincial kings, princes, judges or Brehons, and bards and a great many other people. These conventions were also legislative assemblies, and Ollav Fola ordered the ancient records and chronicles of the kingdom to be written and carefully preserved at Tara. The education and culture that spread throughout Ireland emanated from that area.

What was happening? A Hebrew princess and a Hebrew prophet were shaping Ireland!

Fola is a Celtic word that means “revealing, a revealer.” It refers to a prophet! Ephesians 3:5 states that God gives revelation only to an apostle or a prophet to declare to the Church and to the world. Jeremiah came and revealed to the people of Ireland all these wonderful truths that God had revealed to him.

People have tried to excavate in Ireland to learn more about this amazing history. British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, who supervised Jerusalem, asked Parliament to grant permission to search the Hill of Tara for the ark of the covenant. This was rejected. People who have tried to excavate there have been opposed, run off, even shot at. The mystery surrounding Tara remains.

Jeremiah arriving with the ark of God on an island populated by Israelites made quite an impression on them. They were from the tribe of Dan, and God had somehow prepared them somewhat for the coming of Jeremiah, Tea-Tephi and her husband, who became king. These people knew from their Hebrew Bibles that God spoke to Israel from that ark.

The Lion of Judah

One symbol used in the British Isles to this day is the red lion on a yellow field. It is the royal banner of Scotland, and it has other uses as well. Our Great Heritage With Its Responsibilities author W. T. F. Jarrold described it as a golden-colored flag, or banner, having emblazoned upon it a red lion rampant. Why? Obviously, there are no lions in those isles.

Frederick Glover wrote of that lion symbol, “It was evidently an importation to that country from the east” (England, the Remnant of Judah and the Israel of Ephraim). That is a beast indigenous to Judah and is prominent in the Hebrew Bible. David killed a lion and a bear to protect his sheep.

There is a good reason for featuring the lion of Judah on that flag. It was introduced by Jeremiah. Glover referenced Edmund Campion’s A Historie of Ireland to show how the symbol was introduced to Scotland from Ireland. As the descendants of David reigned in Ireland, then Scotland, then England, they continued to use it in their heraldry. Glover noted how the lion rampant was the standard of Ireland or of its reigning family, until it was replaced by the harp during the reign of King Henry viii in the 1500s.

The World’s Greatest Education

Consider the educational impact that Jeremiah had on Ireland, and all his supporters there had on the world! It was spectacular.

British historian Geoffrey Keating wrote in his History of Ireland about the outstanding education the Irish people had: “The early literary history of Ireland stands out in proud distinction from that of any other country in Europe.” During the time of Rome’s fall, it was known by scholars that they could find “shelter, sustainment, and inexhaustible sources of information in Ireland,” Keating wrote. He quotes the eighth-century British historian Bede, who asserted that long before his time, “such was the fame of the Irish schools, that when a person of note was missed from Great Britain or the continent, it was concluded, as a matter of course, that he had ‘gone to Ireland in search of learning.’” Teachers there were held in the highest esteem—treated like royalty—because Ireland realized the value of great teachers.

“It mattered not whence they came or whither they were bent. The college hall and college hospitality were open to all comers,” Michael Doheny wrote in “Memoir of Dr. Keating.” The schools flourished and were nationalized. It was all about family—a family work. “France, Spain, Italy and Germany either opened and endowed colleges or allowed them to be founded on their territories by Irish princes for the Irish ecclesiastical student …” (ibid).

Keating was sent to one of these foreign colleges in 1586, Doheny wrote. He wrote that this was education in Britain after the British Empire began. That would be over 2,000 years after Jeremiah’s time, yet this education was still powerfully impacting the British Empire, especially at the beginning.

The British are descendants of Israel, who, along with the Americans, received the “birthright” promise God had given to Abraham. They are the “company of nations” God prophesied of in Genesis 35:11. This powerful education helped Britain build the greatest empire in world history! God wanted the British to understand where all their wealth and power came from—not from their ingenuity but from God blessing Abraham for his faith and obedience toward God!

“Even though the long and desolating period of persecution then begun, the Irish schools survived.” As late as the end of the reign of George iii in 1820, “there were famous classical schools in which the English tongue was never heard” (ibid). In other words, they were speaking the Gaelic language in Britain. They were teaching the education from Ireland. That also spread to Germany, Spain and other European countries. I believe the fact that this top-notch Irish education continued for so long after Jeremiah showed God had a hand in it.

Jeremiah left an example for the whole world to see! This is what God had been trying to get ancient Israel to do: to be an example to the world of how to live in harmony, prosperity, beauty and excitement! This connects mankind to his Creator! What a witness Jeremiah left us—a wonderful example for us to see and be inspired by.

The Reformation period wiped out much of the Irish education. Yet still they moved to another country, Scotland, and then to England. And with them they brought this lion of Judah banner. Why? Because the education and the royal dynasty traced straight back to King David! The rulers of Ireland, then Scotland, then England were ruling from the throne of David!

The ark, the lion banner and the stone pointed Ireland, Britain, Europe and the world to Israel, to the God of Israel, to the God of the Bible!

Stone of Destiny

The stone—also called lia-fail, the stone of Israel, or the stone of destiny—has existed through all of Israel’s history back through the British Isles, back through the kings of Judah and of Israel, back through the wandering in the wilderness, back to the very night it was miraculously created under the man whose name God changed to Israel. It has also been called the Shepherd Stone, in reference to Jesus Christ, who watches over His people if they heed His message and do what He says, just as David watched over his sheep.

That stone was a symbol of the kings of Israel, and it was used in the coronations of the kings and queens of Ireland, then Scotland, then England. King Edward i called that stone “the one primeval monument which binds together the whole Empire.” It went back ages and ages, and it united them.

But it is no longer the stone of destiny. All the education and royalty and hope that was connected to that stone is no longer linked with England’s royal family as it was before. There is a new stone and a new throne of David. (I explain this thoroughly in my book The New Throne of David.) Where is the new stone? This stone today links right back to the kingdom-building work Jeremiah did in Ireland at Tara. God says that in this end time, the stone would be in God’s own true Church. The new stone of destiny links you back to Jeremiah and Ireland, to all of those thrones of David, to Jerusalem, and to God Himself. It is a wonderful gift from God.

The British used to love the old stone of destiny and fight for it. But their late Queen made the terrible mistake of giving it back to Scotland. They no longer have the rich meaning that God gave through that stone. They no longer have an empire. And they are no longer bound together! Britain is divided, America is divided, and the Jewish nation in the Middle East is also divided. That is what happens when you turn your back on God and His royal education!

Much of godly education revolves around government: men submitting to their Creator and to those He puts in authority. Much of the Bible revolves around the coming of Jesus Christ to build a Kingdom.

Before Jesus was born, an angel prophesied to the woman who would give birth to Him: “And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:31-33).

The “Son of the Highest” became a human being for the sake of not just Judah or Israel but all mankind. He is going to govern a glorious Kingdom that will rule the Earth!

This is what the throne, the stone, the ark and the kingdom God built through Jeremiah point to! This isn’t something like a kingdom. It is a literal Kingdom, with a literal government, territory, laws, subjects and Ruler: the Kingdom of God.

The throne that God began with David is going to be assumed by Christ Himself! Under the direction of His Father, He will rule from that throne in Jerusalem forever!