Presents
Pamphlet #1062
Acts 26: 6-7
by John L. Steely
To the CHRISTIAN PREACHER
You
are standing in the door of your church
saying
goodbye to the folks after your Sunday sermon
when
a stranger shakes your hand,
gives
you a sealed envelope and walks on.
As soon as you can you go to your study to see what is in the envelope.
A
contribution?
He
would probably have put that in the collection plate.
A prayer request?
You open the envelope
It says.
"Pastor,
I
challenge you to prepare and preach a sermon on two verses of the Bible.
"Acts 26: 6-7."
"What?
Some
kind of nut?"
You’ve
preached dozens,
maybe
a hundred sermons from the book of Acts in your thirty years in the ministry.
Never
a problem there.
And you start to throw the note away.
But
you turn to the Book of Acts and read from the twenty-sixth chapter,
verses
six and seven,
where
the Apostle Paul is addressing King Agrippa.
Acts
26:6 "And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of
God to our fathers.
Acts
26:7 Unto which promise our twelve
tribes,
earnestly
serving God day and night, hope to come.
For
which hope’s sake, King Agrippa, I am accused by the
Jews."
"Ha!"
you
say.
"What
kind of sermon would that make?"
And
you begin to question the sanity of the stranger who gave you the note.
But
from force of habit you begin to analyze the verses.
First,
define and identify the terms - -
'St.
Paul.’ Easy enough.
‘King
Agrippa.’ King Herod
Agrippa
II, according to your Bible Dictionary;
son
of King Herod Agrippa I.
‘Our
twelve tribes.’
H’mm.
Wait
a minute.
Our
twelve tribes!
And little feelings—faint adumbration’s—tiny fingers of fear begin to form in your chest.
"OUR
TWELVE TRIBES."
These
were descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob,
who
was renamed Israel.
They
were Israelites!
Hebrews!
God’s
Chosen Race!
But
most of them disappeared 750 years ago following the Assyrian deportations!
The
lost Ten Tribes!
Yet,
Paul says they are still in existence! "What?"
And
the ‘Jews’ . . Panic now.
Full
blown fear.
THE
JEWS . . They are NOT part of the twelve tribes!
Which
means the members of the twelve tribes are NOT Jews. .
and
the Jews are NOT Israelites!
"Help
me, help me!
I
don’t want to know all this!
If
I preach this I’ll lose my job.
I’ll
be run out of the Church.
I’ve
taught for years that the Jews are the chosen race.
I
can’t admit this.
It
can’t be true."
"I’LL check it out!"
You
calm down somewhat,
and
begin a more careful exegesis,
hoping,
oh, hoping, to prove your discovery wrong,
and
hoping that the stranger was really a nut.
But
you think of the first epistle of James,
which
the brother of Christ addressed
‘to
the twelve tribes scattered abroad.
You
check the date.
It
was written before Titus sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D.,
and
so was Acts 26: 6-7.
No
help! No help!
You
remember that Christ rejected the Jews.
‘You
are of your father, the devil.’
And,
‘You
are not of my sheep.
My
sheep hear my voice and follow me.’
You
are getting sick.
You
recall that Jesus told his disciples to ‘go to the lost sheep of the House
of Israel.’
"Oh,
why didn’t they straighten this out in the seminary?’
So,
what was the House of Israel?
You
remember.
The
Northern Kingdom.
That’s
right.
After
King Solomon died,
his
son Rehoboam caused the nation of Israel—the
twelve tribes—to split into two nations.
The
tribes of Judah and Benjamin and some Levites became the ‘House of Judah,’
the
Southern Kingdom, with Jerusalem as its Capital.
And
the other tribes went North and formed the ‘House of Israel,’
with
Samaria as its Capital.
You
remember that there were actually thirteen tribes
because
the inheritance of Jacob’s son,
Joseph,
was divided between his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.
You
look at the clock.
You
have to go home for lunch and rest up for the evening service.
You
hope it isn’t UN-Christian to curse the stranger with the crazy note.
But
your mind won’t quit.
Somehow
you know that your whole life has changed—in the twinkling of an eye!
You
turn to the Old Testament.
What
happened to the tribes?
You
read again from Chapters 17, 18, and 19 of the Second Book of Kings
that
as the result of a series of assaults by Assyrian Kings.
Not
only the tribes of the Northern Kingdom were forcibly relocated
South
of the Caucasus Mountains
‘in
Halah and Habor by the river of Gozan and the cities of the Medes,’
but
members of the Southern tribes were taken also.
‘Sennacherib,
King of Assyria,
came
up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.’ (2 K 18:13)
..Only
Jerusalem, Judah’s capital was spared. (2 K 19: 32-34)
"But,
wait a minute.
Don’t
they say that 150 or so years later the Southern Kingdom
was
taken captive to Babylon and the remnant
that
returned to rebuild Jerusalem seventy years after that included all the
tribes?"
In
desperation you check.
No
luck. Ezra 1:5 and 4:1
specifically
mention that the tribes of Judah and Benjamin came back from Babylon.
The
Bible checks out.
You
are dead!
Members
of all twelve tribes were scattered abroad.
But
you look and look.
You
can’t give up.
"Wasn’t
Moses a Jew?
The
Bible doesn’t say so.
You
were sure it did.
"The
Book of Revelation-the 144,000?"
They
are all of tribes of Israel but the Bible doesn’t call them Jews.
It
was youwho
called them that.
You
find the word ‘Jew’
appears
for the first time in 2 K 16:6,
where
the Southern Kingdom are fighting the Israelites in the North.
You
look the word up in the Concordance.
It
should have been translated ‘Judean’ or ‘Judahite.’
It
meant a member of the tribe of Judah
or
a
citizen of the Kingdom of Judea.
The
word was never applied to the Northern Kingdom.
"Why
didn’t my professors tell me that?"
You
remember that the birthright promises of a great nation
and
a company of nations were transmitted by Jacob
to
Ephraim and Manasseh.
You
begin to think.
"How
could these promises
—the
very promises which Paul and the twelve tribes were hoping for—
possibly
be fulfilled if Ephraim and Manasseh,
who
were transported by the Assyrians,
become
extinct?
The
Jews never fulfilled these promises.
Why
did I never see that?"
You
are still sick.
You
are getting deeper.
By
now you know that your teachers were ignorant or deliberately lied.
You
read aloud the book of Hosea.
It
talks about the captured Israelites.
"I
will say to them who were not my people,
"Thou
art my people’; and they shall say, "Thou art my God,’
and
they shall no more be remembered by their name."
"Ah!
They
will have a new name.
Not
‘Jew,’ not Hebrew…, not Israelite. – Christian!"
You
read the 8th, 10th and 11th chapters of the book of Romans.
They
now make sense.
Paul
is talking about the cast off,
punished
tribes of the house of Israel!
"Thus
will all Israel be saved.’
"Of
course, of course."
You
see Hebrews 8:10.
The
New Covenant.
For
this is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after those days,
saith
the Lord.
I
will put my laws into their mind,
and
write them in their hearts;
and
I will be to them a God,
and
they shall be to me a people.
Christians!
Not
Jews, Christians.
Not
the Jews, who in two thousand years have not heard his Voice and followed
Him,
because
THEY ARE NOT HIS SHEEP!
But
who are these Christians—the true Israelites—the chosen Race of God?
Where
are they today?
You
know who they are.
You
are almost paralyzed from fear of the truth,
but
you know who they are.
You
go home,
eat
a few bites and try to sleep.
In
a few days you receive an anonymous gift.
It
is a book.
"Judah’s
Scepter and Joseph’s Birthright,"
by
Bishop James Allen (1906)
You
learn that God’s people migrated,
tribe
by tribe,
out
of the Caucasus where the Assyrians had placed them;
the
very people who are now called Caucasians.
You
learn that God’s people
—the
Israelites--
became
the progenitors of the White Christian nations of the world today.
You
understand that by Christ’s time the inhabitants of Judea
—the
Jews—
were
a mixed lot,
most
of whom Christ rejected.
You
learn that the Holy Bible is the story of one race,
that
it is Christian from beginning to end,
for
the first time in your life you are beginning to understand it.
You
pray.
A
voice in your mind says,
‘Do
not fear.
Put
on my armor.
Feed
my sheep.
Tell
my people the truth.’
And
slowly,
reluctantly,
but
with courageous resolve,
you
prepare a sermon on verses six and seven of the
twenty-sixth
chapter of the Book of Acts.