What Happened to the Lost Tribes, by Brian Williams - British Israel foundations

Dec 09, 2021

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOST TRIBES? Part One

by Brian Williams (1967)

A Sermon preached by BRIAN WILLIAMS at the Civic Theatre, Chelmsford Saturday, 24th June, 1967

"Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight there was none left but the tribe of Judah only ... So was Israel carried away out of their own land into Assyria unto this day." - 2 Kings 17 :18, 23. "Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto slum, Ye are not my people, there it a hall be said unto them, Ye are the sans of the living God:" - Hoses 1:10 "I say then, hath God cast away His people? God forbid ... God hath not east away His people which He foreknew." - Romans 11 :1,2. THE seventeenth chapter of the Second Book of Kings is one of the saddest in the whole of God's Word because it tells of the way in which first Israel and then Judah departed from the Lord. You will recall that the plan of God as revealed to us in the Bible was to bring a nation into existence to whom He could teach His laws and His commandments, so that by the keeping of those commandments and the keeping of God's laws that nation would be blessed above all the nations out the world. It would be a servant nation, it would be a model nation; and as a result of their obedience and their blessedness, all the other nations of the world would glorify the Lord God of Israel. The Bible says, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord; and the people whom He lath chosen for His own inheritance." So to understand the revelation of the Bible at all, we must understand this fact of God's purpose in bringing the Israel nation into existence. We remember that God had made many wonderful promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, concerning the nation that was to spring from their loins, this nation whose destiny ultimately was to rule with God. The very name itself, Is-ra-el, means ruling with God or prince with God. We know also that when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, He shall reign as King of kings and Lord of lords, and this nation of Israel which He created in the first place shall also reign with Him. What I want us to see is that God has not changed boats midstream, that He has never gone back upon His Word, that He has not failed to keep His promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Rather, the Lord Jesus Christ came to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and the only reason that there are so many different interpretations of the prophetic Word is that people have failed rightly to divide the Word of truth: they have failed to make the necessary distinction between Israel and the Jews.

(1) The JEWS ARE NOT ISRAEL.

Anyone who is not certain as to this fundamental difference between Israel and the Jews will find in one book "Britain in Prophecy" all the information he needs, and there are scriptures which show that Israel and the Jews are still two entirely separate people when Christ returns. (This book in its entirety is on this Website under this section devoted to the prophecies of the Bible - Keith Hunt). God's Word interprets itself, and all we have to do is to learn rightly to divide the Word of truth, and learn also to humble our-selves and be willing to be corrected by God's Word, and not just read it according to our own preconceived nations and ideas. In the First and Second Book of Kings and the First and Second Book of Chronicles we have related for us the history of these two nations or kingdoms, the one kingdom of Israel, and the other kingdom of Judah who ultimately became known as the Jews. You will recall that when the Israel people came out of Egypt in the exodus led by Moses, there were twelve tribes of Israel. If you have maps in the back of your Bible you will almost certainly have a map showing the division of Cannon - the promised land - amongst the twelve tribes. You will see the portion of land that was allotted to each one. Then you will find that in the first two verses of Psalm 114 God says, "When Israel - that is to say, the twelve tribes - went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion." so, in the mind of God, long before there was any division of the twelve tribes into Israel and Judah, the division already existed; and it existed for a very good purpose inasmuch as it would ultimately affect the destiny, the salvation, of every human being that has ever lived. That may sound an astonishing statement to make, but if you will bear that in mind and remember those important verses m Psalm 114, you will see that that is true! The Bible speaks in Jeremiah 33, verse 24, of "The two families which the Lord bath chosen," that is to say, Judah and Israel. Elsewhere we read of two houses, or two kingdoms, or two nations, or - in Ezekiel - of two sisters that were married to the Lord, In the "Illustrated Bible Geography and Atlas," it contains coloured maps clearly showing the division of Canaan, among the Twelve Tribes, and the later Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, you may find most helpful. Now, bear in mind that Kings and Chronicles, these four books of the Bible, tell us the history of the two people which the Lord had chosen, and the way in which they cam, to be divided up into two nations was simply this. For some five hundred years the twelve tribes were more or less united, but in the time of Rehoboam [938-921 B.C.], who was the son of Solomon, there was a revolt amongst the twelve tribes - civil war if you like - and the result was that ten tribes broke away and called themselves Israel, the leading tribe of which was Joseph; while the other two tribes that remained were Judah and Benjamin and they called themselves Judah. In Kings and Chronicles we have the history of these two nations. Unfortunately, a lot of people say that Israel is the Jews, and that is one of the biggest lies that the devil has ever told. It is one of the biggest deceptions that has ever taken in expositors of God's Word. In fact, the very first time that the word 'Jew' is used in scripture is in 2 Kings, chapter 16 and verse six, where you will find that Israel were fighting the Jews, so how can they be the same people? And the Bible says that in the last days the house of Judah shall walk to the house of Israel and they shall come together into the land. So if you look at that very carefully you will find that Israel and the Jews were entirely two separate people.

(2) HOW THE TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL CAME TO BE LOST.

Now here in Second Kings, chapter seventeen, the Bible says, "In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years." The Northern kingdom of Israel had broken away from Judah and had established as their capital the city of Samaria, while Judah who were ultimately known as the Jews had as their capital Jerusalem. The King of Israel reigned in Samaria, the King of Judah reigned in Jerusalem. So Ahaz king of Judah had been already reigning in Judah for twelve years when Hoshea the son of Elah came to the throne and reigned over Israel from Samaria.

"And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents."

How delightful are some of the verses in the Bible; what volumes we can read into them! Here we find that Hoshea king of Israel has become a vassal of Shalmaneser king of Assyria, and so he gives him a present from time to time just to keep on the right side of him! "And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison." Hoshea had sent messengers to King So who was the king of Egypt, and had not sent a present that year to the king of Assyria. This upset the king of Assyria very much and was just the provocation that he needed to go against Israel and take them all away captive. You see the wonderful human element in what some people might think awfully dull history!

"The king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hashes [722 B.C.], the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria," - all the Israelites, all the people of the ten tribes of Israel, were carried away by this great Assyrian army - "and placed them in Halah and in Haber by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes."

Now the Bible tells us quite clearly why God permitted this:

"For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. And the children of Israel did secretly these things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree: and there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: for they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing."

Now in Deuteronomy, chapter 26, verse 16, we find what God said to Israel, that is to say the twelve tribes, before they went into the promised land:

"This day the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments: thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thine heart, and with all thy soul. Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and to walk in His ways, and to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments, and to harken unto His voice: and the Lord bath avouched thee, this day to be His peculiar people, as He bath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all His commandments; and to make thee high above all nations which He bath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God, as He bath spoken."

You understand the principle. God revealed Himself to Israel. He did not for the time being reveal Himself to any of the other nations of mankind, but He revealed Himself peculiarly to Israel, and when He gave to them the ten commandments they understood something of the character and righteousness of God. By those ten commandments they knew that God was holy and righteous and just and perfect. And the commandments of God are not grievous; they were not intended to produce bondage, but they are a mirror, if you like, so that when we look into the mirror of God's Law we see whether we are clean or ditty. And so it is God's commandments which establish the fact of sin, because sin is the transgression of the law. Every one of us have broken God's Commandments and therefore the Bible says that we are sinners.

And just as for every law there must be a penalty for breaking that law, so the Bible says that "the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." So God said to Israel, "I will make you the greatest nation if you will keep my commandments," which we know that they were not able to do, as we shall see later on. God knew full well that no nation in the world could ever attain unto true righteousness and holiness by mere external formal obedience to God's commandments. Man can only keep God's commandments as he has the grace of God in his heart, as he is redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus, and as he has a new nature and a new character; then the commandments are written on his heart, and he is able to walk before God as God desire. The Lord said to Israel, "If you will keep my commandments, I will be your God and you shall be my people, and I will make you the greatest people in the world, so that all other nations shall see how blessed you are by keeping my commandments." And so, of course, all the other nations would have to acknowledge the God that made Israel great. I am sure you can see the principle of that! Now if you look in Deuteronomy, chapter 28, you will see that the Lord left Israel in no doubt as to where they stood:

"And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt harken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments which I command the, this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: and all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee if thou halt harken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kin, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against the, one way, and flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and He shall bless thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto Himself, as He hath sworn unto thee, if thou shall keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in His ways. And all people of the earth" - please notice this, for this was the purpose of God in bringing Israel into existence as a nation - "shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they, shall be afraid of thee. And the Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The Lord shall open unto thee His good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the Work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou harken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them: and thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them."

What a marvellous destiny God promised to the children of Israel if only they would walk in obedience to His commandments! God said, "I Will make you the greatest nation in the world; you will enjoy peace, health, prosperity, true happiness in every sense of the word," and God's ways are sell the same today, and the reason why this world is so full of frustration, misery, despair, sin, hatred and wickedness, is because it has turned its back upon God's laws; because man in his wisdom which he thinks is superior to God's, has turned his back upon everything that God has said and gone his own way. The Bible says, "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." "The way of peace they know not." God promised marvellous blessings to Israel if only they would walk in obedience to His laws, keep His commandments and obey His Word. God said, "I will bless you above all the nations of the world." "But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not harken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake the: cursed shalt thou he in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kin,, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when then go est out. The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me. The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until He have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it. The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish. And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed. The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them : and shalt he removed into all the kingdoms of the earth."

(3) THE TEN TRIBES WENT INTO CAPTIVITY AND NEVER RETURNED.

Everything that God said came to pass. Thus we read in the Second Book of Kings, chapter 17 and verse 13: "Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. Not-withstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that they did not believe in the Lord their God. And they rejected His statutes, and His covenant that He made with their fathers, and His testimonies which He testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only."

The Israelites never went back to the promised land! They never went back! The Lord removed them out of His sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only. And as if to emphasize the importance of what is being said, verse 23 says again, "The Lord removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by all His servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day." That is to say, when this particular book of the Bible was written, the Israelites were still in captivity, they were still there in Assyria, and never at any time in Bible days or since have the Israelites ever returned to Palestine. If anyone is dis-inclined to believe the Word of God, let him go to any library and consult any standard work of reference, any book on the history of the peoples of the east, and let him read what happened in the eighth century B.C. Any and every history book you care to examine will tell you that between 735 and 670 millions of Israelites were carried captive by the Assyrians, and every one of those history books will tell you that nobody to this day knows what happened to all those Israelites. Except a few Holy Ghost Christians! Glory to God!

I want to let you into a secret! Turn to Romans, chapter 11, and the first two. There Paul asks the question, "I say then, hath God cast away His people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away His people which He foreknew." How strange it is that most of our churches are preaching diametrically the opposite to what Christ taught! They say that God finished with Israel because they did not keep His commandments, that He cast them off, finished with them, and then had to start something else called the Church of God to make up for the awful mistake that He made when He chose Israel. But Jesus Christ came to confirm the promises made unto the fathers! "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the Son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or has He spoken, and shall He not make it good?" Did not Jesus say that He had chosen Israel, and that they should be a holy nation unto Himself? Well then, let us believe the Word of God, and not the tradition of some of the churches! Let us believe what God says. "Let God be true, but every man a liar."

Let us go back then to Second Kings, chapter 17, and we shall see the continuation of the story. Remember, the ten tribes of Israel have been carried captive into Assyria because of their great wickedness: "The Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only. Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel," - that means He rejected all twelve tribes. He had already rejected the ten tribes that went into Assyria and now 130 years afterwards He rejected the two tribes - "and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight. For He rent Israel from the house of David;" - this is recapitulating on what has gone before "and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin. For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them; until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by all His servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day."

As we have already said, they never returned to Palestine.

"And the king of Assyria brought men front Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof. And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them. Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore He hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land. Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land."

Remember, these people that now came to live in Samaria were not Israelites, nor were they ever converted to the Lord God of Israel..."Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord. Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt ... So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for then, in the houses of the high places. They feared the Lord, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, Whom He named Israel; with whom the Lord had made covenant, and charged them, saying Ye shall not fear other gods, or bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them: but the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, Him shall ye fear, and Him shall ye worship, and to Him shall ye do sacrifice. And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the law, and the commandment, which He wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore; and ye shall not fear other gods. And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget; neither shall ye fear other gods. But the Lord your God ye shall fear; and He shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. Howbeit they did not harken, but they did after their former manner. So these nations feared the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children's children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day."

What a tragic story, and what an apparently ignominious end to God's people! Ten tribes carried into captivity; millions of Israelites carried captive into Assyria never to return to their own land, leaving behind two tribes of Judah that kept God's commandments a little better than their Israelite fellows had done and enjoyed intermittent revival, until they too apostatised so badly that God had to write them off, or so it seemed. By this time the Assyrian power had fallen and the great empire which took its place was Babylon. The king of Babylon came and took Judah captive, and carried them all away into Babylon, leaving no one behind save a few stragglers, just a tiny remnant of the people ...

(4) THE JEWS RETURNED TO PALESTINE BUT ISRAEL DID NOT.

You might have thought that that was the end of the story and that God had slipped up somehow, because He had had such high hopes and expectations of these twelve tribes of His Israel people, and now they had failed Him so miserably and God had apparently finished with them and sent them all away, just like He promised, just like He warned through His prophets.

But now we are to look at another key chapter in the Bible, Hosea chapter one. Hosea prophesied before Israel was carried into Assyria and before Judah was carried into Babylon. He prophesied about 785 B.C., that is to say, rather more than sixty years before the fall of Samaria [722 B.C.] and the final capitulation of Israel to the invading Assyrian armies.

"The word of the Lord that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Bud Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. The beginning of the word of the Lord by HosEA. And the Lord said to Hosea, "Go, take unto the, a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord." Now the Bible says that when God made His covenant, the old covenant, with His Israel people, He was married to them. But the Bible talks about Him divorcing Israel, putting away His wife, because Israel had gone after other lovers. Israel had committed whoredom by going after false gods; she had committed adultery, and so the Bible says that the Lord Jesus wrote them a bill of divorce, although He was married to Israel and had been good to His wife. So here, Hosea is commanded of God to take certain steps which would enact the fate of the people of God. He was to marry an unfaithful woman. "So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son. And the Lord said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel."

This was before it happened ! More than sixty years before Israel was taken captive to Assyria and lost, God said through His prophet that it was going to happen! "And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Lo-ruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take then, away."

The name 'Ruhamah' means mercy, and 'Lo' means 'not;' so God said, "I want you to call your little girl Lo-ruhamah - no mercy - because I will not have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away. But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen."

We have seen already that the ten tribes of Israel were carried captive into Assyria, and 130 years later the two tribes of Judah, having also forsaken, their God, were carried captive into Babylon.

God would give them light by Brian Williams (a sermon given in 1967)

We have seen already that the ten tribes of Israel were carried captive into Assyria, and 130 years later the two tribes of Judah, having also forsaken their God, were carried captive into Babylon. But after seventy years, under Cyrus king of Persia, the Jews were permitted to leave Babylon and come all the way back to Palestine, and their descendants were there in Jesus' day. How did they come back? They did not have to fight their way back! They were given permission to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and to rebuild the temple, exactly fulfilling what God had said through His prophet Hosea "Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?" How can you know a tree prophet?

When he says a thing is going to happen and it comes to pass, just like he said! "But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen." How marvellously that was fulfilled! Read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and you will find that 42,360 Jews took the opportunity to return, together with some seven thousand other people, making just about fifty thousand people that undertook the long trek from Babylon to Jerusalem, and to rebuild the city and to rebuild the house of God. And the descendent, of this mixed multitude were there in Jesus' day, the only surviving recognisable remnant of God's people, because the ten tribes had gone into Assyria and were apparently lost. Nobody would now recognize them as being God's people. And of all the Jews that had gone into Babylon, only fifty thousand returned and the others were dispersed. It was the descendants of that remnant of the Jews that returned to Palestine that was there in Jesus' day. Now the Bible says, "Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son. Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye am not my people, and I will not be your God." The name 'Ammi' means 'My people,' the word 'Lo' means 'Not,' so when He said, Call your little boy Lo-ammi, it means 'Not my people' or 'No people'. So Hosea has three children by his unfaithful wife. The first one is called 'I will have my revenge,' the second is called 'No mercy,' and the third is called 'No people,' revealing picturesquely the forthcoming fate of the ten tribes of Israel.

(5) SURE PROOF OF ISRAEL'S IDENTITY.

Now here is one of the key verses in all the Bible, Hosea chapter one, verse ten. If you cannot understand this verse then I guarantee that you cannot understand the Bible! "Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye am not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God." Remember what we have seen in 2 Kings 17. Israel gone into captivity in Assyria never to return, the Jews gone into captivity in Babylon and permitted to return after seventy years. Gad says to Israel, I will have my revenge. You who are no longer obtaining mercy, you who are no longer am people, I am no longer your God. Yet in spite of all that, "the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered." God says He will make this Israel people so great in number, who shall be able to number the fourth part of them? They are the thousands of Manasseh and the ten thousands of Ephraim! God says that in spite of the fact of His not having mercy on Israel, of finishing with them, and sending them into captivity never to return, He will make them as the sand of the sea for number, "and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God."

What does that mean, sons of the living God? The Bible says, "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name." It means Christians. The Bible says, "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." Hath God cast away His people which He foreknew? Paul says, with all the power at his command, "God forbid." How could God cast off the people to whom He had made such glorious and exceed- ing great and precious promises, that they should be a people after His own heart? How could God do away with this people and so nullify the promise made to Abraham when He said, "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice", and, when He promised "In Isaac shall thy seed be called"; when He said, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated"; and when He said, "I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall came out of thy loins," all of which promises were to be fulfilled "in the last days"

Praise the Lord! Everywhere in the Bible we find that the last days are shown to be this Christian dispensation. Look at Hebrews, chapter one, and the first two verses: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son." So the last days are the days of the Christian dispensation when the good news of the gospel is sounding forth throughout the ends of the earth, and God said that in the last days, Joseph's descendants would be "a nation and a company of nations". From his elder son Manasseh would come a great people, and from his younger son Ephraim would come a multitude, or fullness, of nations that would be as the dust of the earth, spreading abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south, inhabiting the waste places of the earth; a people blessed with blessings of heaven above and the earth beneath and the deep that lieth under; a people blessed above all the nations of the world; a people that would take the gospel throughout the ends of the earth, because they would be the sons of the living God.

What happened? O glory to God! God did not break one of His promises. Oh how I wish could proclaim this to Billy Graham's congregation at Earl's Court Arena tonight! I wish I could shout it from every rooftop and proclaim it from every pulpit: "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He bath visited and redeemed His people." How did He do it? We have read it so many times this week: let us look again at Isaiah, chapter 53. God sent His prophet to speak to Israel, and he said, "Who hath believed our report?"; and who will believe the message that we bring? It is almost too fantastic for words! "Who bath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a mot out of a dry ground: He bath no form or comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our Sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we am healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord bath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His month: He is brought as a Iamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His month. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? for He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was He stricken. And He made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; because He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He bath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail out His soul, he shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall my righteous Servant justify many; for He shall hear their iniquities Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He bath poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

What happened? Israel was carried away captive. God said I will have my revenge, you will no longer be my people and I will not be your God, and I will utterly take you away. But in spite of that, that the promises made to Abraham and the fathers might stand, and that all the World might wonder at the grace, the love, the compassion, the mercy, the incomparable Wisdom of Almighty God, God says He will make His Israel people so great in number that it is impossible to count them, and in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, it will he said of them, You are Christians, sons of the living God. In the last days of this Christian dispensation, the ten tribes of Israel are to have became a Christian nation.

How could it come about? By redemption. To redeem means to buy back something that belonged to you in the first place. The Bible says, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath visited and redeemed His people." "Thou shalt call His name JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins." O glory to God!

"Paschal Lamb, by God appointed, All our sins on Thee were laid; By almighty love anointed, Thou hast full atonement made: All Thy people are forgiven Through the virtue of Thy blood; Opened is the gate of heaven; Peace is made 'twixt men and God."

May we close with Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 31, to round off what we have said:

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lard: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is His name: If those Ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me far ever. Thus saith the Lord, If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lard."

O that we might understand the matchless grace of God! How would the new covenant be established with the house of Israel? How could God have mercy upon this people whom He had cast off for breaking the very commandments, the keeping of which would make them to be the greatest people in the world? Read Matthew 26, verse 26: "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."

The Lord said, "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel", and Jesus, the night He was betrayed, said, "This cup is the new testament - the new covenant - in my blood." Hallelujah!

His Israel people, cast away, never returning to Palestine, is in the last days, in the economy of God, to be frond a people that as a nation has begun to come under the new covenant, that has embraced - at least nominally - the glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and is known throughout all the ends of the earth as a Christian nation and commonwealth of nations.

The apostle Paul sums it all up in Romans, chapter 11, reading from verse 29: "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." God called Israel in the first place, and "God hath not cast away His people which He foreknew." "For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained merry, through their unbelief: even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain merry. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all."

God purposed for His Israel people to be lost, to become an obscure people, that in the fullness of time they might receive the Gospel of His dear Son the Lord Jesus Christ, in ignorance of their true identity, that through them the nations of the world might also come under the blessings of this new covenant.

And so Paul throws his arms up in the air, words almost failing him at this point to express the great and marvellous thing that God has done, and he says: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways passed finding out! For who bath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hash been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen."

You know what happened to the Lost Tribes, and you know who they are.

"Ye seed of Israel's chosen race, Ye ransomed from The fall, Hail Him who saves you by His grace, And crown Him Lord of all"