Has God Abandoned the House of Israel?: Does God Ever Go Back on His Word?

By Eric L. Quinlan

My book covers the biblical account of the history of the nation of Israel, beginning with the birth of their patriarch Abraham and continuing through their four-century stay in Egypt to the Exodus from Egypt and their formation of a formidable nation in the Land of the Covenant. It will cover their expulsions from that land and what happened to them after. A large portion of these Israelites are believed to be lost or have been completely annihilated by God or they have been assimilated in other cultures. This book will provide many biblical references that completely contradict these claims and that these so-called lost Israelites exist today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796022704

Eric L. Quinlan

Eric Quinlan was born in a small coastal community in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. He was the eighth in a family of nine siblings. He was raised in a Christian home, attended the local Pentecostal church and school. At the age of twenty Eric moved to Ontario where he married his wife Lorna. They raised two children and are now the proud grandparents of three grandchildren. Eric and Lorna are retired and continue to reside in Ontario.

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Copyright © 2019 by Eric L. Quinlan.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019903298

ISBN:              Hardcover                           978-1-7960-2248-3

                        Softcover                             978-1-7960-2249-0

                        eBook                                   978-1-7960-2270-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

KJV

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Rev. date: 03/30/2019

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1     Israel’s Beginnings

The Patriarchs

Chapter 2     The Road To Nationhood

Chapter 3     The Forming Of A Nation

Chapter 4     A Nation Divided

Chapter 5     A Nation Exiled

Chapter 6     God’s Covenant

Chapter 7     Jacob-Israel’s Latter-Days Blessings

Chapter 8     The Israelites

Post-Exile

Chapter 9     The Latter Days

Chapter 10   Israel And Judah – Modern Era

Chapter 11   Ezekiel’s Temple

Chapter 12   The Wise Men Of Christmas

Chapter 13   The Woman, The Child, And The Dragon

Chapter 14   Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

S OMETIME IN THE distant past, God chose a group of people for Himself to be His Holy People, set apart from other nations. He wanted this people to be a model nation for the world, because they would be benefiting from His blessings in health, prosperity, large populations, power, peace, and happiness. Not because they were more in number than any other group, but because He loved them and because of His oath He had sworn to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-Israel (Deut. 7:1–11). This chosen group of people were, and are, the Israelites, descendants of the twelve sons of Abraham’s grandson Jacob-Israel.

Under the leadership of Moses and Joshua, the Israelites became a formidable people shortly after they escaped from their state of bondage in Egypt in the fifteenth century BC. To keep this formidable and prosperous status, all the Israelites had to do was keep the commandments and statutes that God had commanded them to keep. Over the centuries, after settling in the Holy Land, they failed at this miserably. And God was obligated to bring His judgments on them, only to have the judgments lifted when they repented of their disobedience. This scenario of judgment, repentance, and rescue occurred numerous times during the ensuing biblical era.

In spite of Israel’s sins, God has not rejected His People, as far too many Christians believe. The Israelites are still in His future plans. And it is in the future when they will completely fulfill the original plan that God had for them. As this book will attest, the Bible is very clear in this declaration.

In the tenth century BC, the twelve-tribe nation of Israel experienced a massive split. By this time, the Israelites had been living in their land of promise for almost five hundred years. During the previous eighty or so years, the nation had reached its biblical-era pinnacle in terms of power and prosperity. But that came to an abrupt end with the death of King Solomon, the second king of the Davidic lineage. Ten of the northern tribes of Israel revolted against Rehoboam, David’s grandson, who was in line to become their king. These northern tribes separated from the two southern tribes and formed their own nation. That new northern nation—comprising of descendants of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, Ephraim, and some descendants of the priestly tribe, the Levites—kept the name Israel for themselves, and from then on was almost always referred to in Scripture as Israel or the House of Israel.

The two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the southern area remained loyal to King Solomon’s son and formed the nation of Judah, which was generally referred to in Scripture as Judah or the House of Judah. The only tribe that aligned themselves with Judah during this split were descendants of Benjamin, the youngest son of their patriarch, Jacob-Israel. The Benjamites lived in their own territory adjacent to the land occupied by the Judahites. Also living within these two territories were some descendants of the priestly tribe of Levi. The Judahites became the dominant group in this southern nation; and later in its history, these two tribes, along with the Levites, became known as Jews, a derivative of the name of the patriarch Judah. That name remains and is used to this very day to identify descendants of that southern nation of the House of Judah. (Note: Levi was the third eldest son of Jacob-Israel. His descendants were not given a specific allotment of land in the Holy Land; instead they were spread throughout the whole land as priests and were tasked to give godly and moral leadership to the rest of the Israelites.)

In thirteen of the fourteen chapters of this book, I will cover many of God’s warnings of judgments and promises of blessings to these Israelites. Some were addressed specifically to Israel, while others were directed at Judah. Why does it matter who God was speaking to? Today’s church leaders generally have a tendency to take all these promised judgments and blessings and apply them to the Jews. But does this blanket application agree with what the Bible really says? This book will cover many of these warnings of judgments and promises of blessings and who God was speaking to. Who is God referring to when He speaks to Israel? Or to Judah? Aren’t these names interchangeable? Weren’t they one and the same in the biblical era? Aren’t they one and the same today? As we will see, God promised Israel and Judah that they would become one again. Has that event happened already? If so, when did it happen? If it hasn’t happened yet, when should we expect this event to occur? As we will see, the Bible answers all these questions.

Because of sin against the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the descendants of the ten-tribe nation of the House of Israel were ousted from their homeland just over two hundred years after separating and forming their own nation. They never returned home; neither did any of their descendants. The Jews, on the other hand, were themselves evicted from their homeland – twice. The first around 586 BC, and the second in the first century AD. Some Jews were not evicted by the Romans in AD 70 when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem; they were allowed to remain in the land under Roman rule. Those remaining Jews, however, rose up against the Roman Empire in the second century AD, and they too were evicted. Twice, God permitted the Jews to return and live in their homeland: in 538 BC and finally in AD 1948. The Jews are dwelling in that very land today.

Sometime in the past, someone came up with the theory that the descendants of the ten northern tribes of Israel were lost, and the only remaining Israelites living today are found within the Jewish community, namely, those Jews living in the State of Israel, along with those who are living in many of the other nations of the world. The other ten tribes of the northern nation of Israel are regarded as lost because it is argued that God must have allowed them to be completely assimilated within other cultures, or in His anger, He annihilated them. This belief that the Almighty God has, in fact, permanently destroyed or lost almost 80 percent of His Covenant People has permeated far too much within the Christian community to this day. As we will see throughout this book, neither scenario is biblical. For example, in Leviticus 26:44, God is speaking through Moses to the entire community of Israelites when He states, "And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God." The Christian community readily links this promise to the Jews but fails to apply the same promise to the so-called lost Israelites of the nation of the House of Israel.

As Christians, we are taught that God’s end-time promises and prophecies for Israel are directed solely at the world’s Jewish community, and in particular, at those who have settled and live in the Holy Land. While this is somewhat true to the extent that some of these promises and prophecies are directed solely at the Jews and the land of Israel, this teaching does not take into consideration the many promises and prophecies in scripture that are not directed at the Jewish community. They are instead directed at the Israelites of the northern House of Israel and their descendants. Unfortunately, we are led to believe that these descendants of the House of Israel no longer exist today as Israelites, and today’s Jews are the only remaining living covenant Israelites. I hope to lay out in this book irrefutable biblical proof that this teaching is in error.

This belief that there are no distinct Israelites from the northern nation living today has risen from the fact that the Israelites of the northern nation of Israel were soundly defeated in 722 BC by the powerful ancient Assyrian Empire and those northern Israelites were forcibly exiled from the Holy Land to Assyria. There is no historical or biblical evidence to suggest that any of these Israelites ever returned to reclaim their homeland. Neither is there any evidence to indicate any of their descendants returned to the Holy Land. And seemingly, from historical records, they completely disappeared off the world map. The consensus among many Christians is that these Israelites of the House of Israel were either destroyed or were assimilated into the Assyrian culture, thereby forever losing their identity as Israelites. Some argue that God, in His anger, completely decimated those Israelites. Thus, with the disappearance and loss of these ten tribes, God was now obliged to direct His attention and the terms of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-Israel to the only remaining Israelites—the Jews—who had not lost their identity.

The argument given by many Christian scholars, authors, and pastors is that a small remnant of the other ten tribes are today imbedded in the Jewish community. The argument for this belief is covered in this book, and why it too is in error. By adhering to the teaching that the northern Israelites no longer exist, Christians have to ignore or gloss over far too many of God’s prophecies for the future that do not apply to the Jewish community. And as we will see, nor can they be fulfilled by the Jewish community. And of course, there are some within the Church who believe that they (meaning the Church) have replaced the entire twelve tribes of Israel, including today’s Jews. Their argument is that sometime within the past two millennia, God actually transferred the Abrahamic covenant from the Jews and Israel to the Church. This too is false teaching and has no biblical support whatsoever.

As we will see, many of these covenant promises and biblical prophecies for the latter days can only be fulfilled through the descendants of the Jews and the very Israelites who have been deemed to be lost or annihilated. Consequently, if God’s Word can be trusted, then those so-called lost or annihilated Israelites must exist today. And if we don’t know who they are and where they are, we can be assured that God does! If not, then God has broken His many promises to the northern Israelites, and many of His prophecies directed at these very same people cannot and will not be fulfilled in what we call the latter days. This book will cover many references from Scripture that prove that the northern Israelites must exist today

There are many references in the Bible indicating a future reunification of these two peoples, referred to in Scripture as the House of Israel and the House of Judah. And they, a remnant of the descendants of the twelve tribes, will once again occupy the land in the Middle East that God gave to their forefathers as a heritage. We know that a remnant of the House of Judah is already there. But there is no biblical or secular evidence to indicate that any descendants of the exiled House of Israel have joined them. In spite of this, Scripture declares, "In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers" (Jer. 3:18). In another instance, God declared, "The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim" (Isa. 11:13). In Scripture, the terms House of Israel and Ephraim were synonymous, and generally referred to the northern Israelite nation. Still another declaration by God says, "I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all" (Ezek. 37:22). There are many other references confirming that the people of Judah and the people of Israel shall be gathered together. As we will cover in the pages of this book, these references to the existence today of two specific peoples or communities of Israelite descendants are but a small sample taken from Scripture.

As mentioned earlier, Abraham is regarded as the father of the Israelites through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob. He is also regarded as father of many within the Arab/Muslim world through his eldest son. Although Abraham was born in a pagan family in a pagan nation, the God of heaven selected him to be the forefather of a group of people who would become His chosen people, the apple of His eye, and His heritage. This group—the Israelites—would become a blessing to the entire world. It is common knowledge that the Jews, a group within the Israelite community, have blessed the entire world through the preservation of their Holy Scriptures, the birth of Christianity, and their many inventions and progress in all aspects of our everyday life. Could it be possible that many of the other inventions and advancements not credited to the Jewish community could, in fact, be attributed to descendants of the so-called lost Israelites? All Christians can agree that the most important Jewish blessing is the birth of the only begotten Son of God. This Jewish Messiah, or Anointed One, would freely and lovingly offer Himself up, through crucifixion, as a human sacrifice to redeem all human beings from their sinful state. He would be resurrected and return to His Father in Heaven. At the end of this age, this very same Messiah will return to earth a second time, this time crowned as the King of kings and Lord of lords, and He will rule over His people, Israel—the entire twelve tribes—forever.

The twelve-tribe kingdom of Israel, under the leadership of Kings David and Solomon in the tenth century BC, reached its pinnacle in terms of prosperity and power. Yet, as we will see, the Israelites have been promised an even greater future of prominence, prosperity, and power.

This book will cover the biblical history of the Israelites from their forefather Abraham, to their four-century sojourn in Egypt, the conquering of the covenant Holy Land, their eventual removal from that land, and what happened to them after they were evicted from their homeland.

The questions posed above, and more, will be addressed and, hopefully, answered within the pages of this book. My foundation for the answers to these questions will be drawn mostly from the Bible, with some references from historical and other sources.

Chapter 1 will cover Israel’s beginnings, commencing with Abraham, from his birth in Ur of the Chaldees to his death in the land of Canaan. It will also cover the lives of his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob, whom God eventually renamed Israel. It will also include Jacob-Israel’s descendants’ four-generation sojourn in Egypt.

The next four chapters will cover the biblical account of the Israelites’ departure from Egypt to the land of Canaan, their promised land; the subsequent events that led up to the forming of a prosperous and powerful nation under kings David and Solomon; their eventual splitting into two nations; and their expulsions from the very land that God had given them.

Chapter 6 will cover the covenant that Yahweh God made with Abraham—how details of this covenant were repeated and expanded on during Abraham’s lifetime, and how it was then passed down to Abraham’s son Isaac, and then to Isaac’s son Jacob-Israel.

Chapter 7 will cover the detailed latter-day covenant blessings that Jacob-Israel passed down to his twelve sons and their descendants prior to his death in Egypt. These blessings are covered in Genesis 48 and 49 and are probably two of the most ignored or glossed-over chapters in the entire Bible. Namely, because there are verses in these two chapters that are difficult to understand and other verses that do not correspond with the common narrative that most of the descendants of Israel no longer exist.

Chapter 8 will highlight some of the many references in Scripture specifically identifying the Houses of Israel and Judah as two separate and distinct entities, before and after their expulsion from the Holy Land.

Chapter 9 will cover many of the latter-day promises that refer to Israel and Judah as two separate peoples in both the Old and New Testaments.

Chapter 10 will cover a brief history of a powerful empire that emerged in the west Asian region shortly after the northern Israelites were exiled there and that empire’s possible connection to the House of Israel. Also, the chapter will briefly cover the names of other powerful peoples who emerged around the same time in that region. Could these peoples be Israelites? This chapter will briefly explore that possibility and what happened to these peoples.

Chapter 11 will offer a different interpretation of Ezekiel’s Temple. In the Christian community, it is most often referred to as the temple to be built in the coming millennium period. Many of the instructions given by Ezekiel pertaining to this structure defy what we Christians believe the thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ will be like. So could this temple be for another completely different era? This chapter explores that alternative.

Chapter 12 will cover the popular Christmas story of the wise men’s visit to Judea seeking the King of the Jews. I will offer up a possible explanation on who these wise men were, where they may have come from, and why they may have been interested in this baby.

Chapter 13 will review the apostle John’s vision depicted in Revelation 12. While the Christian community agrees on parts of this vision, on other parts their beliefs vary widely. I will provide a fresh look at this vision based on the viewpoint of a separate Israel and Judah.

In reading this book, it will help if you place all preconceived beliefs pertaining to Israel and the Jews on the proverbial shelf and keep your heart, mind, and Bible open as we examine what God’s Word really says of His People, the Israelites of the House of Israel and the Jews of the House of Judah, particularly in relation to the biblical era as well as in the days to come.

CHAPTER 1

ISRAEL’S BEGINNINGS

THE PATRIARCHS

Abram/Abraham

A ROUND FOUR THOUSAND years ago, a little baby boy was born to a man named Terah and his wife, Amthelo. (The Bible does not give the name of Terah’s wife; Amthelo is the name recorded in the Book of Jasher.) They named this little baby Abram, and he would become the first of three biblical patriarchs of the Hebrew nation of Israel. (God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, but that didn’t happen until he was almost one hundred years old and is recorded in Genesis 17:5. Until we reach that period in Abram’s life, this book will use his birth name of Abram.)

We are first introduced to Abram in Genesis 11:26 where the genealogy of Noah’s son Shem is given. It should be noted that after the Flood, the life span of Noah’s descendants dropped rapidly. For example, Noah lived 950 years; his son Shem lived only 600 years; and Abraham’s father, Terah, died at the age of 205 years. Abram died at the age of 175.

Abram is listed as one of three sons of Terah, and ten generations from Noah. Noah was Abram’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Noah was still alive when Abram was born, as was Noah’s son, Shem. In fact, Noah was alive during much of Abram’s life, although there is no biblical evidence that the two ever met. Neither is there any biblical evidence that Abram ever met Noah’s son Shem, who outlived Abram by over thirty years. However, considering the long lives of Abram’s grandfathers and their close proximity, it’s extremely likely that there was contact between them and Abram. In fact, as we will see, the Book of Jasher claims that Abram actually lived with both Noah and Shem.

It is understood that Abram was born in Ur Kaśdim, whose name is translated as Ur of the Chaldees (Gen. 11:28). The exact location of the city of Ur is not known, but it is generally agreed that it was located somewhere in the area occupied by modern-day Iran and Iraq. However, the most likely agreed-upon location is in Iraq. Another location suggested is Turkey.

Other than Abram’s birth and his marriage to his wife, Sarai, the Bible is silent on his life until he is introduced again at the age of seventy-five. He and Sarai have now moved from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran, which was located in the area of modern-day western Iraq, or eastern Syria. When Abram left Haran for the land of Canaan, the Bible states that he was seventy-five years old.

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The Book of Jasher

For information on the early life of Abram between his birth and the age of seventy-five, we have to visit the Book of Jasher. The Book of Jasher is mentioned twice in the Bible: Joshua 10:12–13 and 2 Samuel 1:18–27. However, the authenticity of the Book of Jasher in circulation today is controversial. Many people believe it may not be the book referenced in Joshua and 2 Samuel. There are a number of these books in print today, but none can claim to be an accurate replica of the original, because no original manuscript is known to exist. Consequently, today’s Book of Jasher may or may not be the book that is referred to in the books of Joshua and Samuel.

According to Wikipedia, the 1625 version of the Book of Jasher claims that its original source came from the ruins of Jerusalem in AD 70, when the Roman army sacked Jerusalem and exiled the Jews throughout the Roman Empire. The claim is that a Roman officer discovered a Jewish scholar in a library, and the officer took the scholar and all the books back to his home in Spain. The version further claims that when Islam ruled Spain, the manuscript was either transferred or sold to a Jewish college in Cordoba, Spain; and scholars preserved the original manuscript until its first printing in Naples in 1552 and subsequently in Venice in 1625. However, the problem is that this original manuscript of the Hebrew version of the Book of Jasher, claimed to have been rescued in AD 70, has never resurfaced.

In spite of this, the story of Abram and his father and his siblings in the Book of Jasher does contain some plausible explanations that are missing from the pages of Scripture. For what it’s worth, here is a brief version of the story of Terah, Abram, and his brothers Haran and Nahor while living in Ur of the Chaldees as provided in the Book of Jasher.

Terah was a very influential man; in fact, Nimrod, the king, elevated Terah above all his princes. The night Abram was born, his father, Terah, held a huge party that was attended by all the king’s wise men and conjurors. When these wise men and conjurors left the party, they saw a large star that came from the east and swallowed up four other stars in the heavens. These men believed that this strange event meant that this baby was special and, if allowed to live, would eventually kill King Nimrod, take over their land, and thus their status and livelihood. They told the king what they had seen in the sky, what they thought this scene represented, and advised the king that this child, Abram, should not be allowed to grow into manhood. Their suggestion to the king was that he should kill the newborn baby immediately.

The king agreed and summoned Terah and demanded that he hand over his son to be killed. And in return the king would reward Terah with a house full of silver and gold. However, Terah disobeyed the king’s order and hid Abram in a cave and instead took to the king a newborn child that one of his servants delivered that same day. Assuming that the king’s promise of silver and gold was fulfilled, we must also assume that Terah became even richer at this point.

For ten years, Abram stayed in that cave, along with his mother and a nurse. At the end of the ten years, Abram left the cave and lived with Noah and Noah’s son Shem for thirty-nine years. During this period, Abram was taught the ways of the Lord.

Having been taught in the ways of the Lord, Abram then returned to his father’s home and was horrified to see that his father worshipped false gods. In fact, Terah had twelve gods in his temple, one for each month of the year.

Abram asked his mother to prepare him a meal to present to the idols in his father’s temple. He did this twice, and when the idols did not make an attempt to eat the meals, Abram took a hatchet and smashed eleven of the idols and placed the hatchet in the hands of the twelfth (and largest) idol. When his father came to investigate (he suspected his son), Abram told Terah that the largest idol became angry with the other eleven because they tried to grab the food before the largest idol had a chance to taste it.

Terah was so angry with Abram that he went to the king and confessed to what he had done about fifty years earlier. Terah also suggested that the king summon Abram and that Abram be judged according to the law of the land for the demolition of the idols, and that we may be delivered from this evil.

Abram was arrested and put in prison, where he remained for ten days. The king was advised by his subordinates that the punishment for this crime was to be burned to death.

The king was also angry with Terah because he had now learned that Terah deceived him fifty years earlier by not delivering his son Abram to be killed. In an attempt to save himself, Terah told the king that his eldest son, Haran, had advised him to deceive the king. Thus, Abram and Haran were both thrown into a furnace. However, only Haran died; Abram was delivered by God, similar to what happened in the story of the three Hebrew men in the book of Daniel.

The king was terrified, and he set Abram free and gave him two head servants and many presents. It was at this point that Abram married Sarai, and his other brother Nahor married Milcah.

It was also around this time that the king had a frightening dream. His wise men and magicians, when the dream was given to them, advised the king that the dream meant that Abram and his descendants would bring evil upon him and his kingdom. (Chapter 27 relates the story of Nimrod’s death at the age of 215 years. He was killed by Abram’s grandson Esau. It should be noted that this incident between Esau and Nimrod is not recorded in scripture.) Nimrod’s wise men and magicians further suggested that the king should kill Abram immediately. One of Abram’s new servants, Eliezer, heard of this death sentence and hurried to warn Abram. Abram again escaped to the house of Noah and Shem until the threat was over. Terah then visited his son at the house of Noah and Shem, and Abram convinced his father that it would be advisable if the entire family leave Ur of the Chaldees and move to the land of Canaan.

The series of events depicted in the Book of Jasher may explain what happened to Haran, the eldest son of Terah. The Bible simply says, Haran died in the land of his birth. It could also explain why the entire family may have felt the need to leave Ur of the Chaldees. Remember, King Nimrod still believed that Abram posed a serious threat to him and his kingdom. And it’s very unlikely that he had forgotten that Terah deceived him some fifty years earlier when Abram was born. Consequently, Terah’s life may have also been in jeopardy, along with his entire family. Terah heeded the warning provided by his son Abram that they should move to another land. It’s in the land of Haran, in the vicinity of modern-day Syria, where we find this family in chapters 11 and 12 of the book of Genesis.

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Abram/Abraham’s New Land

God appeared to Abram and told him, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee." This command is found in Genesis 12:1 while Abram was living in Haran. If the events of chapters 11 and 12 are in sequence, then it appears that God appeared to Abram in Haran, not in his original homeland of Ur