The Prophetic Significance of Cornwall
Saint Piran 'rediscovered' tin-smelting (tin had been smelted in Cornwall since before the Romans' arrival, but the methods had since been lost) when the tin in his black hearthstone, which was evidently a slab of tin-bearing ore, was smelted out of it and rose to the top in the form of a white cross (thus the image on the flag). This became the flag of Cornwall.
The tin route from Cornwall to Israel
St Just in Roseland Church. This is the creek where legend says that Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus landed in Cornwall.
Botallack Mine
Cornish Round Houses at Carn Euny
The Prophetic Significance of Cornwall Video
Cornwall is known as “The Land of the Saints” because of the great number of “Saints” associated with the county. In fact there are over sixty of these saints who have Cornish connections. Mostly they were from the branch of Christianity known as Celtic Christianity and came to Cornwall from Ireland or Wales. St Piran the patron saint of Cornwall was a 5th-century Cornish abbot and saint, probably of Irish origin. He is the patron saint of tin-miners. St Petroc was born in Wales, he primarily he is associated with a monastery at Padstow and is known as “the captain of the Cornish saints. The list of saints goes on and on with many Cornish towns and villages named after saints.
In folklore, Christianity came to Cornwall even before these saints. According to the Talmud, the primary source of Jewish teaching and theology, Joseph of Arimathea was an uncle of the Virgin mary and therefore the great-uncle of Jesus. This would explain why he was allowed, as a close relative, to bury the body of Jesus in his tomb. There are very persistent traditions in Cornwall that Joseph was involved in the trade of tin.The existence of a tin trade between Cornwall and Phoenicia is frequently referred to in Classical writers, and is described at considerable length by Diodorus Siculus.
In 2019 there were news reports that Ancient tin found in Israel has unexpected Cornish links. Researchers from Heidelberg University and the Curt Engelhorn Centre for Archaeometry, Mannheim studied 27 tin ingots – metal cast into bars, plates, or sheets – from sites in Israel, Turkey and Greece.
Using lead and tin isotope data and trace element analysis, the archeologists discovered that the metal ingots, which dated from the 13th and 12th centuries BC, did not originate from Central Asia as previously thought, but instead came from tin deposits in Europe. Perhaps most surprisingly, the team found that tin artifacts from Israel probably came from Cornwall and Devon in southwest England.
This is the firmest evidence we have of the ancient tin trade between Israel and Cornwall. We now move into the realm of folklore and there is plenty of folklore regarding Joseph of Arimathea visiting Cornwall with his great nephew, Jesus. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea visited Cornwall with the young Jesus, seeking tin, and the story is associated with places like Looe Island and the Roseland peninsula. The Rev’d C.C. Dobson recorded some of the local stories in his book “Did our Lord visit Britain, as they say in Cornwall and Somerset” published in 1936. Also the Rev’d H.A.Lewis recorded some of the local Cornish folklore in a pamphlet published in 1939 called “Christ in Cornwall”. At the time local people were loth to talk about the legends they had been brought up with for rear of ridicule. However some of them were willing to talk. For example the inhabitants of St Just in Roseland had a strong tradition of believing that Joseph and Jesus visited their creek.
“I have had it confirmed by past inhabitants of St Just that it was a common tradition of their childhood that Christ came there. One variant version was that “Joseph of Arimathea and Our Lord came in a boat, and anchored in St Just Creek.”
Traditionally the tin miners of Cornwall believed that Joseph of Arimathea was a “tin man”. This belief was reported by the clergyman Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, in his Book of Cornwall of 1899, where he says that Jesus taught Joseph “how to extract the tin and purge it of its wolfram”. When tin is flashed, then the tinner shouts, “Joseph was in the tin trade,” which is probably a corruption of “St. Joseph to the tinner’s aid!”
There is a wealth of folklore on this subject which is usually dismissed as fable but there is something special about Cornwall which many people feel as soon as they cross over the Tamar river from Devon. The miners themselves remembered Joseph in a song recorded in Glyn S. Lewis’ book “Did Jesus come to Britain”.
Here come three Josephs, three Josephs are here,
All for to bring ‘ee the luck of the year;
One he did stand at the Babe’s right hand,
One was a lord in Egypt’s land,
One was a sinner and sailed the sea.
God keep you merry, say we.
There are about forty Celtic courtyard-house villages on the Land’s End peninsula in Cornwall. These are roughly contemporaneous with the time of Jesus. The tin mining trade was thriving at this time. If Joseph and jesus did visit Cornwall these communities could have been among the first Christian communities in Britain.
I like to believe the old stories but there are some hard facts. The tin trade to Israel definitely did exist and Cornwall had a Christian community as far back as anyone can trace. Prophetically speaking God tends to bring things full circle. The bible start with the Tree of Life and finishes with the Tree of Life. I believe that Christianity found some of its earliest beginnings in Cornwall and in these last days I expect to see a revival of real Christianity in Cornwall again. There have been many revivals in Cornwall in the past but the last one will be the greatest and will spread throughout the whole of the British Isles.
The Prophetic Significance of Somerset and Glastonbury
Somerset locator map
Somerset Today
The Prophetic Significance of Somerset and Glastonbury Video
Somerset is a county in England which has great prophetic significance. If you have seen my website or watched the YouTube videos you will know that certain themes are important to me and many of them converge in Somerset. The fact that dinosaurs are the same thing as dinosaurs is an important prophetic theme because dragons are in the bible and help disprove the theory of evolution which is a theory sent by the devil to deceive us. Somerset has one of the richest histories of dragons of anywhere in Britain. The kings who helped create the nations of the British Isles (some people in Ireland don’t like this term so call the British Isles the Atlantic Isles if you prefer) are important because they demonstrate that God created these nations as Christian nations. King Alfred the Great hid in the bogs and marshes of Somerset when all seemed lost and he was being hunted by the Vikings. King Arthur is reputed to have found his final resting place at Avalon which is Glastonbury in Somerset.
I want to look at the folklore around Joseph of Arimathea’s visit to Britain and the stories related to him bringing Jesus to Somerset. In the previous video entitled “Cornwall. Its Prophetic Significance” we looked at the legend of Joseph of Arimathea being Jesus’ great uncle and visiting Cornwall with Jesus as part of his work as a tin trader. In Somerset the legend persists that Joseph and Jesus also visited Glastonbury. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, Joseph returned to Glastonbury and, with his companions constructed a mud and wattle church. The first in Britain. We actually have some historical references for this. In the year 600 AD, three years after his arrival in Britain St. Augustine wrote to Pope Gregory: -
Glastonbury Tor. The Isle of Avalon
Romantic image of Taliesin the Druid
The village of Priddy today
"In the Western confines of Britain, there is a certain royal island of large extent, surrounded by water, abounding in all the beauties of nature and necessities of life. In it the first neophytes of catholic law, God before hand acquainting them, found a church constructed by no human art, but by the hands of Christ Himself, for the salvation of His people."
The island which is referred to here is almost certainly Glastonbury, the Isle of Avalon. The neophytes would be Joseph and his companions. The church was constructed already when Joseph arrived and the inference is that is was constructed by Jesus Himself. Further documentary evidence comes from Gildas the Wise, the British historian, who wrote in AD. 550 in his De Exidio Brittany: -
"We certainly know that Christ, the true Son, afforded His light, the knowledge of His precepts to our Island in the last year of Tiberius Caesar."
Tiberius was contemporaneous with Jesus Himself and so we can see that this passage is evidence of Christianity being in Britain from the very earliest times. The druids, who were a priestly class in ancient Celtic cultures, believed that Jesus came to Britain. Taliesin, the druid and great British prince and bard of the 6th century claimed the following: -
“Christ was from the beginning our teacher, and we never lost His teaching”.
There are in fact a host of other ancient references to Christ being in Britain and in particular in Glastonbury. In fact the charter given to Glastonbury in 700 AD by King Ina records the belief that our Lord Himself had resided and ministered there. Glastonbury was traditionally known as Domus Dei or Home of God.
In Somerset itself folk traditions have always maintained that Jesus came to the area. The Rev’d C. C. Dobson in his booklet “Did our Lord visit Britain”, published in 1936, tells us of a Somerset tradition that Jesus and Joseph “came in a ship of Tarshish to Summerland, and sojourned in a place called Paradise”. The ship of Tarshish would refer to one of the tin trading ships that came from Israel. Summerland refers to Somerset and Paradise is the old name for the area around what is now Burnham-on-Sea. Near to Burnham is a port called Uphill which was used by merchants in ancient times. From here Joseph and Jesus could have made their way up the river Axe to Priddy, a small village in the Mendip hills. Priddy was at the centre of the ancient Mendip lead and copper mining area and there is an old proverb which says “as sure as our Lord was at Priddy”. Glyn S Lewis in his book Did Jesus Come to Britain? Quotes an old folk song about Jesus going to Priddy
O Joseph came a-sailing over the sea,
A-trading of metal, a-trading came he
And he made his way to Priddy
With our dear Lord.
O Joseph. Joseph!
Joseph was a tinner, was he.
A representation of a Glastonbury Lake Village landing stage by Amédée Forestier in 1911. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Joseph would have travelled from Priddy by log boat along the river Brue through the marshes of Somerset. They would have passed the village of Godney (God’s Isle) and eventually come to Glastonbury. The purpose of their going to Glastonbury was to trade for the lead and copper which were mined in the region. There is archeological evidence for bronze and iron being worked at Glastonbury. Glyn S. Lewis believes Joseph may have traded iron bars for copper and lead as the metal workers at Glastonbury could not have achieved the high temperatures requires for smelting iron on site. In Druidic folklore Jesus spent some time in Glastonbury preparing for his ministry. Legend has it that he built himself a wattle and thatch hut there. When Joseph returned to Glastonbury in later years he may have enclosed this hut in a church constructed of wood. This would explain what St Augustine was referring to in his letter to Pope Gregory which I quoted earlier “a church constructed by no human art, but by the hands of Christ Himself”
There are several other ancient manuscripts which refer to the church at Glastonbury as being divinely constructed. Glastonbury has long been thought of as the site of the earliest church in Britain. In the next video I will put together the stories from Cornwall and Somerset to give an overview of how the trip of Joseph and Jesus to Britain could actually have happened.
Joseph's Visit to Britain.
How it could have happened.
Joseph's Visit to Britain Video.
In these last days I believe that God is revealing more and more of his mysteries to the world so that people can see more of His wonders. Already as I write there have been new discoveries about what lies beneath the Egyptian pyramids. More information is coming out about ancient civilizations all over the world some of which may have existed before the flood. I also believe that we will soon have more concrete evidence of Noah’s ark. There will always be false claims about things but the genuine new discoveries that are coming forward will serve to reinforce the accuracy of the bible. Remember there was a time when old encyclopedias said that Babylon was a legend. There was a time when the Hittite people were mythical. Archaeology has now proven these things to be real. Only bible believers really thought Israel would become a nation again until it actually happened in 1948.
In this video I am putting together the information from the two previous videos, on Cornwall and Somerset and imagining what Joseph of Arimathea’s visit to Britain would have been like. This is of necessity something of a flight of fancy. However there are some facts. There was a tin trade between Israel and Britain. There was always a Christian community in Britain, way before the arrival of the Catholics. There is a large amount of folklore about the visit of Joseph and Jesus to Britain. Traditionally Joseph was Jesus’ great uncle and brought Him to Britain on a tin trading ship. It's worth noting that the legends of Joseph and Jesus were alive and well in the west of England up until the mid 20th century. Fortunately several Anglican clergymen recorded the old stories, in the 1930s, for posterity. I will put some references at the end of the video.
Joseph could have easily have got a ship to Britain because the tin trade from Israel to Britain had been established at least since the time of King David. On nearing Britain he could have stopped at the Scilly Isles also known as the Hesperides or Blessed Isles. In the ancient world these islands were known as the Cassiterides. A point on one of the islands, Tresco, is named Merchant’s Point because it is thought to be the place where the Phoenicians came to trade for tin brought over from the mainland. After this legend says that Joseph and Jesus went to Cornwall and landed in the creek at St Just in Roseland.
There are also legends connecting them with Looe Island and St Michael’s Mount. These are all places where Joseph could have traded for tin. Following this they could have sailed round the coast to North Cornwall. There are legends connecting them with the Camel estuary where there is an ancient well known as the Jesus Well. from here they could have continued on their journey to Somerset. Legend has it that they rested at a place called Paradise which is the old name for the area around Burnham-on Sea. North of Burnham is the small port of Uphill which was used in ancient times. From here they could have travelled by river to Priddy and then past Godney (God’s Isle) to Glastonbury. The purpose of this trip was to trade for the lead and copper that was mined in that region.
There are many other places in the West of England that have legends associated with Our Lord’s visit. The rev’d H.A.Lewis, who was a vicar in the Scilly Isles, lists them in his booklet The Child Christ at Lammana, published in 1934. Much of early Christianity is shrouded in mystery but there never seems to have been a period, since the time of Jesus, when Christianity was completely unknown in Britain. Glastonbury was always acknowledged by the church as the site of the earliest church in Britain. If you go there today it is full of paganism and shops selling New Age crystals and trinkets. It is a hub for all kinds of alternative spirituality. The ruins of Glastonbury Abbey still stand with a sign marking the burial place of King Arthur. The Tor still towers over the town and attracts a constant flow of visitors. There is little there to remind people of real Christianity. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea visited Glastonbury with the Holy Grail and thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill (a hill near the Tor), which then grew into the original Holy thorn tree.
The thorn flowers at Christmas time and a flowering sprig is sent to the British Monarch every Christmas. The original tree has been propagated several times, with one tree growing at Glastonbury Abbey and another in the churchyard of the Church of St John. The "original" Glastonbury thorn was cut down and burned as a relic of superstition during the English Civil War.
So the legend of Joseph of Arimathea lives on. William Blake’s hymn, Jerusalem, which refers to the legend is well known and is often touted as a possible national anthem for England. This story seems to be important to people and I believe that as the end nears there will be more revelations to come about it. Joseph was a real person and Jesus was a real person. Even if you don’t believe the stories Jesus himself is alive in the heart of every born again believer and the bible says he will never leave us or forsake us.
Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge. Thomas Cole, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Tin route fromCornwall to Israel
Cornwall
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Somerset
One of the Glastonbury Thorns on Wearyall Hill which was cut down by vandals in 2010
Glastonbury Tor
References: -
The Rev’d C.C.Dobson. Did Our Lord visit Britain as they say in Cornwall and Somerset. Avalon Press, Glastonbury 1936.
The Rev’d H.A.Lewis. The Child Christ at Lamorna. 1934.
The Rev’d Lionel Lewis, St Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury, Avalona Press, Glastonbury, 1922.
Quiller-Couch, M and L. Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall, London, 1894.
Glyn S. Lewis. Did Jesus come to Britain? Clairview Books, 2008.