Howard Rand

Howard Benjamin Rand was an American attorney, inventor, and three-time candidate for the Massachusetts state office for the Prohibition Party, the same party for which William D. Upshaw was affiliated and ran for President. Rand was also the founder of the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, an organization devoted to spreading British Israelism in the United States and Canada. Key figures in the Latter Rain were affiliated with Howard Rand and his version of British Israelism, including William Branham's campaign manager and founder of Christ for the Nations, Gordon Lindsay. Lindsay spoke at key events for the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America in multiple countries,[1] often as the featured speaker.[2] 

Preparations are in progress for an All-America Congress of the organization some time early in 1930 the place and date not yet being selected. Its claim is that descendants of the Israel nation, comprising the Ten Tribes of Israel who broke away from Rehoboam son of King Solomon, about 973 B. C. will be found among the American people, and that descendants of Manasseh, one of the Ten Tribes, will be found on the continents of America, North and South.[3]
- Anglo-Saxon-Israel Organization Forms; Plans Convention in 1930

The Anglo-Saxon Federation of America was officially organized in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on February 4, 1930.  At the time of its formation, it had a membership established in forty States.[4] It attracted membership by claiming that the architecture of the Great Pyramid of Giza corresponded to both Biblical and modern events and was essentially a key to unlocking the connection between the Bible and the twentieth century. During the Great Recession leading up to the Great Depression, Howard Rand began claiming that the event corresponded directly to the length of the tunnel in the pyramid leading to the King's Chamber.[5] This theme was used throughout the Latter Rain revivals, and the leader of the revival, William Branham, was instrumental in the adoption of pyramidology during the second wave of Pentecostalism. The Federation claimed to have converted "doubting atheists" to "confirmed religionists" via the pyramidology associated with British Israelism. At conventions of the Anglo-Saxion Federation, Egyptologists held lectures claiming to have opened the Pyramid and found it to "bear out the bible to the very letter," leaving them "no longer a doubting atheist but a confirmed religionist, utterly sold on the teachings which are those of the Anglo-Israelites of England and the Anglo-Saxon society of America."[6]

As I've often made this remark, and said, God made three Bibles. The first one, He put It in the sky, the zodiac. Did you ever see the zodiac? What is the first figure in the zodiac? The virgin. What's the last figure in the zodiac? Leo the lion. He come the first time to the virgin, He comes the second time as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. See? He made the next one in the pyramid, back in the days of Enoch, when they made the pyramid. And they measure them. I don't understand it. But to the wars, where they stoop and go on their knees for so long, and can measure the distance of the wars. You know where they measure to now? Plumb across the king's chamber.[7]
- William Branham

Howard Rand published a British Israelite magazine called the Kingdom Message and appointed Ford executive William J. Cameron as president of the organization. The union was strategic; Cameron had been an editor for Henry Ford's antisemitic Dearborn Independent and had close connections to several powerful businessmen and politicians.[8] The Dearborn Independent was the basis for Henry Ford's antisemitic book, The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem.[9] According to Michael Barkun, the two men working together "facilitated the first systematic attempt to link British-Israel religious ideas with the political right."[10] Others noted that the Anglo-Saxon Federation was actively distributing antisemitic propaganda and included Rand in the list of "Little Hitlers."[11] Cameron was also a large contributor to the "Capital News and Feature Service," a nazi propaganda agency organized by Gerald Burton Winrod upon Winrod's return from Nazi Germany.[12] Winrod was instrumental in spreading the pro-Nazi, antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion throughout the United States.[13] After resigning from Ford over controversy for republishing the Protocols of Zion, Cameron started distributing the Protocols through the Anglo-Saxon Federation.[14] 

Cameron soon found a source for his anti-Jewish articles in the form of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The Protocols was a work that purported to be a transcription of plans concocted at an 1897 Zionist conclave. At this secret meeting, high ranking Jewish officials, the "Elders of Zion," came up with 24 Protocols which were designed to enslave the Christian world through various sinister means. The Tenth Protocol represents a typical excerpt, proclaiming that it was the duty of Jews "to wear everyone out by dissentions, animosities, feuds, famines, inoculation of diseases, want, until the Gentiles see no other way of escape except to appeal to our money and power."[15]
- Power, Ignorance, and Anti-Semitism:Henry Ford and His War on Jews

From its inception, the Anglo-Saction Federation was deeply connected to American politics. Rand and the Anglo-Saxon Federation used political influence to bind British Israelism to United States policy and attempted to sway voters in directions aligned with that policy. Ford, Cameron, and Rand — and practically all adherents to British Israelism — violently opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt. After Roosevelt's election, Rand and the Anglo-Saxon Federation launched a political/religious campaign against the United States Government. Rand began claiming that the iniquity of Israel lasted until the exact year Roosevelt took office, 1933, and that God was about to bring his wrath upon the nation. This, according to Rand, was closely tied to the adoption of the Gold Standard.[16]. In December 1934, Rand began publishing over three hundred articles entitled "The Story the Bible Tells," spreading antisemitism, racism, and politics to sway Christian leaders towards his version of British Israelism.

Rand was instrumental in the transition between British Israelism and the Christian Identity doctrine, which Branham re-branded as "Serpent's Seed" and spread throughout the Latter Rain revivals.  Branham claimed to have received that doctrine by "divine revelation," though he later admitted that he first encountered it in a church ran by white supremacist leader, Roy E. Davis.[17] Rand is credited as having coined the term "Identity" in the Christian Identity movement.[18] He claimed to have been a direct descendant of King David and used this claim to further the notion that Anglo-Saxons were genealogically the descendants of the twelve tribes of Israel.[19] The Anglo-Saxon Federation was eventually branded as a white supremacist group.[20]