QUESTION: @Priest Isaiah White I wish to put a biblical question to you that would require a personal biblical analysis mixed with present day analysis.
In the Bible, the Israelites were taken into exile by the Babylonian authority and God through his prophets promised they would only spend 70 years in exile which turned out to be true however the second bit of his promise is yet to be fulfilled. He promised that Israel would reunite, and prosper to the level that all nation’s would fear in my opinion that seems to still be in process.
Now my questions are:
- With Jews still scattered across the world today, do you think there complete unification is yet to come or it happened long ago?
- If Israel is not yet the world superpower could it be that we are still running on some prophecies of the old testament?
- Or does this whole biblical context have an indirect meaning that was already fulfilled?
RESPONSE: Shaka, thank you for your question. According to the Bible, Jacob was given the name Israel because he fathered twelve sons from whom the twelve tribes of Israel descended. So after Jacob battled with the angel, he was given the name Israel in order to change his name Jacob, which means THIEF.
Then there are the JEWS, who were divided between North and South during the monarchy period. The southern kingdom was made up of two tribes (Judah and Benjamin), whereas the northern kingdom was made up of the ten tribes of the twelve tribes (1Kings chapters 12-16).
Prior to Jacob, there existed a people known as Habirus, who were Heber’s descendants (Genesis 10:21-25; 11:14-26). These were herders and nomads, and the term habiru is best translated as ABALALO, which is really a sociological identification rather than an ethnic one.
These Habirus were also exploited as slaves, mercenary warriors, rebels, and marauders, and their public image was that of a marginalised and morally lawless society in Mesopotamia. This moral historical context shaped the Judaism cult’s retribution theology (obey and live or disobey and die) in the Bible (Books of Exodus to Deuteronomy theology)
These are the ones we call HEBREWS today since their language was labelled as such in the post-Exilic period (Nehemiah 13:24, 2Kings 18:26), and it is through them that Israel and Jews as we know them today emerged. Habirus were neither Israelites nor Jews, but both Israelites and Jews sprang from Habirus, which explains why all twelve tribes spoke Hebrew. It’s also worth noting that all Israelites and Jews descended from Habirus, the father of Abraham, the first patriarch (Genesis 12). (Genesis 14:13).
I believed it was necessary to point out that many people use the terms Israel, Jews, and Hebrew interchangeably without understanding what they mean or how they relate, so I thought it was important to do so before I moved on to the three questions you posed.
- Anyone who believes in the complete union of Israel’s tribes must begin with the history of the united and later divided kingdoms (1Kings 11:31). When the kingdom was divided into the Northern Kingdom (10 tribes) and the Southern Kingdom (2 tribes), the northern kingdom fell first, and all ten tribes never recovered, despite promises from prophets like Isaiah, Amos, and Jeremiah (Isaiah 27:13, Amos 9:9; Jeremiah 31:7-8). The problem with this prophecy is that if these tribes are scattered, how can we track them down today? The answer is negative, because, according to the discipline of anthropology, these ten tribes are considered lost tribes that will never be recreated. According to what I’ve heard, Book of Mormon believers still pursue and believe this, but it will never be true (1Kings 17:5-23).
In 722 BC, Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom, which never recovered; 136 years later, in 586 BC, the Babylonians conquered the Southern Kingdom, but we see people from the Southern Kingdom return in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. This leads me to believe that Israel lost ten tribes and that they will never reappear.
2. Israel’s (12 tribes) superpower status will never be achieved. If there are individuals from the ten tribes who joined them during the Jeroboam Temple worship controversy (1Kings 12:20-33) then they do not constitute any of the ten tribes as a whole. So the state of Israel that was established in 1948 consisted primarily of people from the tribes of Judah (Jews) and Benjamin…as well as those from the previous ten tribes.
3. The emphasis that we (modern Christians) have placed on the nation of Israel is excessive and has devolved into cult worship, according to this entire Biblical context. People worship Israel, and Christians visit the country on pilgrimages. Churches preach that if we want to be blessed, we should pray for Israel and bless Israel…etc.
-I know there are verses in the Bible that teach Israel’s supremacy, but these are verses that remind us that the Israelites were the first to receive God’s revelation, and that Israel’s greatest theological contribution to the world was to present MONOTHEISM (worship of one GOD) to a world that worshipped gods or God in plurality (Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism).
The Israelites thought that God would use Israel to benefit or curse the entire world. We understand that the miracle of incarnation was to happen through these people in messianic theology, but it does not mean that all races should pray through a particular race or that all races should adore a certain race. Israel was the CONTAINER, not the CONTENT…the content was the God they preached, not them as they wished to present themselves through the Judaism religion.
I will pause here for now.
Priest Isaiah White (+256775822833)
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 