LOST TRIBES by Robert Ellis Thompson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1897

LOST TRIBES.

By Robert Ellis Thompson

THE day of Pentecost brings into view the Jewish dispersion (or diaspora), out of which the apostles were to gather the church of the first generation. It embraced the people of all “the twelve tribes which are of the dispersion” (James 1:1) and not two only. The figment of the loss of ten from the number never was heard of until the middle ages. It is true that the parties which returned from captivity under Ezra and Nehemiah were of the Judean tribes, but a multitude of the Israelitic tribes had remained in the land of their fathers (Eze. 33:24) after it had been laid waste by the Assyrian, and those who had been taken captive for the most part neither lost their identity as Israelites nor wandered beyond the geographical area known to their brethren. This is everywhere assumed in the New Testament (Matt. 19:28; Acts 26:7; James 1:1; Rev. 7:4) and is indicated in the number of the apostles and in their commission (Matt. 10:5) and in the symbolical numbers of the Apocalypse (Rev. 12:1; 21:12, 14, 21; 22:2). There is not a solitary reference to this supposed loss of the ten tribes, altho the fact would have had a pathetic interest for our Lord and his disciples.—Robert Ellis Thompson, S. T. D., in S. S. Times.