So who can this power be? Consider whatever possibilities come into your mind and then check them out against the identikit picture.
For example; what about NATO or the European Union? Do they fit? Whenever did they favour the return of the Jews to their homeland? Those entities weren’t even formed until after the State of Israel was created! You have to eliminate Germany for the obvious reasons of the Holocaust. Russia? When has that been a maritime island power?—never mind its persecution of the Jews. France?
Maybe at times it has favoured the Jews, but in what sense has it ever been as island? What about Tunisia? Now that is a good guess because it is true to say that, following the collapse of the ancient market place of Tyre where the traders of Tarshish did their business, Carthage in Tunisia took over some of its economic power. But what has Tunisia done to assist the return of the Jews to their land? Nothing! And how can it offer opposition to Russia when it invades the Middle East? It can’t.
And so we could go on, eliminating all possibilities until we are left with the English speaking people of Britain, its former empire and its descendants e.g. America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others. In a book by former Times writer, Simon Winchester, called Outposts, he describes how even today 80 years after the political term “British Empire” was abandoned, the Commonwealth still includes some 16 dependent territories from the Caribbean Anguilla through to the Pacific Ocean’s Pitcairn Islands, comprising some 200 separate island communities with over 130,000 inhabitants owing allegiance to the British Crown. See our “Young Lions” and Modern Versions of the Bible sub-article below.
True, there is one other possibility, Spain which we consider in the article below entitled WHAT ABOUT SPAIN?
But at this stage we must return to the Biblical references to Tarshish and note the various contexts in which we find them. As we do so it becomes obvious that whilst there has been a specific location for Tarshish, it is also important that we should see that it has a “role” to be fulfilled in God’s purpose with the Jewish people (Isaiah 60:9).
In addition, when we reconsider Jeremiah 31:10 (already referred to) it is obvious that this island power has to be able to take the word of the Lord worldwide.
Isaiah adds the description “On mine arm shall they trust” (Isaiah 51:5). No one is suggesting that Britain has ever been a truly Bible based nation but it has done more than any other nation on earth to promote Bible reading and taking its message to the ends of the earth.
Consider for a moment the Bible translation work of Wycliffe in the 13th century and Tyndale— burnt at the stake at the behest of European powers in the 16th century. It was Britain which, in 1611, brought into existence the King James Authorised version of the Bible. Only a few years after, 1697 saw the creation of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), followed in 1804 by the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and in 1816 by a similar organisation in America. Then the YMCA in 1844. Recall the pioneering work of such Missionaries as Livingstone, Moffat, Chalmers, and Carey. It is truly remarkable and unique, that among other nations of the country. Reformation times it was only the imperialist British merchant venturers that were followed so soon afterwards by the English Bible being taken worldwide.
Indeed, as Christadelphian writer Graham Pearce put it in the 1970’s, the English language became a conduit for the word of God to the ends of the earth.
So let us now return to the key identikit THE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE: THE IDENTIKIT at the top of this article which summarises the descriptions of Tarshish. Ask yourself, in all honesty, what other nation has ever conformed to these requirements of the Bible. The answer is, quite simply none.
There can be no alternative explanation other than Britain, if Scripture alone is to be our guide.