The Lost Tribes Of Israel
The Lost Tribes Of Israel
The unrest in the Middle-East continues to prompt preachers to
insist that Israel has a special place with God. In a previous study we
noticed the errors associated with that notion. God is no respector of
persons (Acts 10:34-35) and has fulfilled every promise he made to
Israel (Josh. 21:45). Associated with this erroneous view of Israel is
the false idea that somewhere in the far distant past after the kingdom
of Israel was divided, ten of the tribes of Israel were lost to wander
the earth and that before the end of time, they will be recovered and
returned to Palestine, the promised land of the ancient people of
Israel. This is another dangerous and blatant false doctrine associated
with speculative theories relative to the end of time. Today on this
program we will investigate and see just what the Bible has to say about
this particular idea.
The West End Church of Christ presents these fifteen minute lessons
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Bible study begins at 9 a.m. Sunday morning and our worship is at 10
a.m. and 6 p.m. Mid-week Bible study is each Wednesday night at 7 p.m.
Our meeting house is at 1609 Parkside Drive here in Bowling Green.
That’s just across from Lampkin Park and Tapp’s Drive-in restaurant.
The “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel” generally denotes the ten tribes
that rebelled against Rehoboam and became the northern kingdom.
Although the Bible never uses this description of the ten tribes,
nonetheless, many build false theories on it that make good fantasy but
that’s all. It is a cardinal doctrine to the World Wide Church of God,
or those who follow the late Herbert W. Armstrong. There is no truth in
their theories. Like many false doctrines it has a semblance of what
appears to be biblical.
In the Bible you will read of the northern kingdom being banished
by Shalmaneser and Sargon around 722-718 B.C. (2 Kings 17).
Dispensationalists and premillennialists claim these people have
allegedly been wandering throughout the earth ever since, and are nearly
complete as a nation. They supposedly have no real sense of their own
identity but one day will miraculously come forth and restore all the
promises God made through His prophets. These “Lost Tribes” have been,
according to the theorists, in an obscure tour of the world as a nation
of people. No one knows them; they have no government; no personal
identity -- they are supposedly just “lost.” This is one of those
little known facts of what some call millennial doctrine.
Passages in the Old Testament that refer to a restoration of Israel
are (mis)used to establish the visionary search for them as a people.
One of the scarce references to these lost tribes comes not from the
Bible, but from what is called “Apocrphal Literature.” If you ever
looked at a Catholic edition of the Bible, you probably saw a number of
what are called “apocrophal” books added to their Old Testament. One of
the books is the mystical book of II Esdras. The author of it wrote,
“And whereas thou sawest that he gathered another peaceable multitude
unto him; Those are the ten tribes, which were carried away prisoners
out of their own land in the time of Osea the king, whom Salmanasar the
king of Assyria led away captive, and he carried them over the waters,
and so came they into another land” (II Esdras 13;:39-40). Please keep
in mind that while this sounds like something from the Bible, it is not.
The Apocryphal books are no part of the Bible. They have been added by
men. And this is the only evidence which might even slightly support
this lost tribes theory.
Another reference to the ten tribes of Israel comes from the
historian Josephus. He was a Jew hired by the Roman Empire to write a
history of the Jewish nation. He wrote “Antiquities of the Jews” and
“Wars of the Jews.” They are both fairly standard works and are
available today. Josephus says the ten tribes remained together as “the
entire body of the people of Israel.” (Antiquities, XI, v. 2.) Josephus
is by no means a reliable historian. On this very question he once
reported that the ten tribes were taken out of Samaria (Antiquities, X,
ix. 7), and then latter reported that they were taken out of Judea
(Antiquities IX, xiv. 1). There is certainly no Bible evidence that
they became a lost nation of ten tribes after they were scattered,
remained that way, and are still wandering the earth somewhere.
Joseph Smith, Jr. (founder of Mormonism) claimed to have translated
some fictional golden plates into the Book of Mormon and made reference
to these “lost tribes.” On the title page of the Book of Mormon is the
explanation of the “revelation” which was “Written to the Lamanites, who
are a remnant of the house of Israel...” Smith’s alleged “revelation”
reported that “the more part of all the tribes have been led away; and
they are scattered to and fro upon the isles of the sea; and whither
they are none of us knoweth, save that we know that they have been led
away” (I Nephi 22:4).
Another Book of Mormon reference to them is found in III Nehpi 17:4
where Jesus allegedly interrupted a speech he was making to an audience
unable to understand Him, and went to show Himself to these “lost tribes
of Israel,” affirming that they were not “lost unto the Father, for He
knoweth whither He hath taken them.” Please note that I repeatedly use
the word “allegedly” because the Book of Mormon is no more the word of
God than are the apocryphal books of the Catholic Bible. Just because
it has a biblical ring (albeit very cumbersome to read) does not mean it
is truly a revelation from Almighty God.
Another Book of Mormon reference to this imaginary nation is found
in III Nehpi 28. In this chapter, Jesus is depicted as ready to return
to the Father but pausing to grant final requests to His disciples. He
turned to His disciples “one by one” and asked them to give their final
wish. All but three requested to come to heaven with Christ after they
completed their earthly missions. Three of them were heart broken,
apparently, unable to speak, but Jesus read their hearts and granted
them everlasting life in the flesh on earth. This is one of the famous
blunders of the Book of Mormon that every Mormon is obligated to
believe. It erroneously claims that the gift Christ gave the apostle
John (John 21:21-23) was everlasting life in the flesh on the earth.
These three imagined Nephites were commissioned to minister to these
lost tribes (III Nehpi 28:29) and Mormons have to believe they are still
alive somewhere on earth doing their work among the ten lost tribes of
Israel. These lost tribes became the basis for the Mormon view of the
American Indians and their ancestry. (Further study of this Mormon view
can be found in a speech by Orson Pratt called “Gathering of Israel,
Etc.”, Journal of Discourses, Volume 18, pages 16-29.) A series of
books called Journal of Discourses is a record of the speeches and
documents that come from official Mormon authorities and is recognized
as a source of valid information among Mormons.
It is fundamental to realize that all references to the lost tribes
of Israel as a nation of people are non-biblical, not scriptural, and
exist only in apocryphal and pseudo-revelations. There is no other
evidence anywhere to support the idea that the ten tribes constitute a
nation wandering semi-intact around the world somewhere.
One fairly interesting speculation about the lost tribes includes
Columbus, discoverer of the new world. Columbus was an avid reader of
Marco Polo's accounts of travel in the East. He also read Cardinal
Pierre d'Ailly's Image of the World but “owed most to 'the prophet'
Esdras.' On the mystical writings of Esdras he believed he had found
the lost ten tribes when he first encountered Indians on the North
American continent.” (Source Encyclopedia Britannica, 31st Edition,
Volume VI, page 111).
I confidently affirm the following proposition: The lost tribes do
not exist, never have existed as a nation, from the time they were
scattered and became a nonentity. The sense in which they are “lost” is
they lost their identity and ceased to exist as a nation.
The biblical background for the origin of the “lost tribes” idea is
II Kings 17. Due to repeated idolatrous practices God's anger burned
against Israel so fiercely that He put them out of His sight (verses 18,
20, and 23). Notice: “For the children of Israel walked in all the sins
of Jereboam which he did; they did not depart from them, until the Lord
removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by all His servants the
prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, as
it is to this day.” (Verses 22 and 23.) This is tantamount to saying
they ceased to exist as His people. While no longer a nation, they
remained ethnic Israelites. They simply were not God's nation as long
as they remained impenitent idolaters.
According to the false millennial and dispensational view their
theory require that these tribes disappear from our view, but not from
God's. The facts are that at the time of Christ, Israel continued to
exist as a nation formed by twelve tribes. When Jesus announced His
mission He sent His disciples to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”
and restricted them from going to any Gentile or Samaritan city (Matthew
10:5).
It is quite obvious that the house of Israel returned to God's
favor for a while and the whole nation of Israel ceased to be divided
and became one nation again. This is certainly the condition Israel was
in at the time Christ came and sent out His disciples to preach.
Matthew 10:5-6 reads, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any
city of the Samaritans enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of
the house of Israel.” Since they were restricted from preaching to
Gentiles and Samaritans, but required to preach to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel, obviously the house of Israel was neither Samaritan nor
Gentile. The disciples preached to the lost sheep of the “House of
Israel.” If the Israel had ten tribes off in obscurity they could not
have been preached to by the disciples of Christ.
The “House of Israel” was only lost in the spiritual sense. The
millennial theory argues the restoration of these ten lost tribes,
alleging that they are geographically lost. This is rank error. The
House of Israel was never geographically lost even during and after
captivity. They could always be located geographically.
When Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, he preached to people
“dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation under
heaven” (Acts 2:5). He addressed them as “men of Judea” (verse 14) and
“men of Israel” (verse 22). He called them the “children of Israel”
(Acts 10:36). The dispensationalists make an arbitrary distinction
between the supposed “Ten Lost Tribes” and the “House of Judah,” but on
Pentecost, no such distinction existed. After the destruction of
Jerusalem and the dispersion of all Israelites, the nation of Israel and
the nation of Judah, ceased to exist.
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were spiritually lost at the time of
Christ and those who obeyed His gospel became His disciples and were
saved. That is the only sense in which any of the tribes were ever
“lost.” The one thing all students of Scripture must remember is that
those who disobey God and rebel against Him will meet the same destiny
as the Jews. God makes no distinctions in people on ethnic or racial
bases. All who will be saved must come to Him on the terms of faith in
Christ that leads to complete submission in obedience. But it is
perennial folly to continue searching for some non-existent nation of
people just to bolster up a false theory.
If you have a question about any of these things that have been
said -- please contact us. By the way, should you want a printed copy
of this lesson, I can see you get if absolutely free. Just write and
ask for the lesson on the Lost Tribes of Israel. Our mailing address is
West End Church of Christ, 1609 Parkside Drive, Bowling Green, Ky.
42101. If you would like our free monthly paper, or any kind of Bible
study materials, we will try to help you. Thank you and God bless you -
- Good bye.
Radio Sermon, No. 27
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