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70 The House of Israel

-- Wake Up! December 1978. vis-a-vis the Arabs. Some of the Israelis are Judaists.
Many of them are of no religion. They are at present
The Jewish Enigma Has Been Solved! “sitting tight” on a powder-keg which may explode at
any moment.
O ne of the wonders of the age is the almost complete
inability of the knowledgeable individual -- even This leaves the terms “Jew” and “Hebrew” as verbal
the Christian -- to discuss the origin of the Jewish weapons wherewith to destroy the Scriptural concept
people, their history and their continuing existence. So in- of the people Israel, who were formed and called by
explicable is this enigma that the seeker of Truth is com- YEHOVAH God to convey His benevolence to man-
pelled to ask, “Why?” kind.

Looking at it from the viewpoint of the informed Chris- The Jews of Yeshua’s day were the tiny section of peo-
tian, one is surprised to realize that the confusion -- and ple, Israel, then living in Palestine. They were de-
confusion it is -- is by no means confined to the scended in the main from a remnant of the original,
rank-and-file followers of the Messiah. Their pastors, southern kingdom of Judah which had split away from
quite often ignorant of the topic themselves, are in no posi- the mass of Israel to form a separate kingdom. Most of
tion to help. In fact, they are almost totally confused by these Judahites never returned from the captivity into
their tacit acceptance of inculcated usages which are im- which they had been taken. Their descendants made
plicit in their religious training. their way westwards, over the centuries, as did their
exiled kinsfolk of the kingdom of Israel, as part of the
The whole subject has been swept under the carpet by westward-surging hordes moving out from eastern Bi-
theological mentors who have found the subject irritating ble lands. Today’s Jews contain a small proportion of
in that any concept of a continuing, viable Israel nation is the descendants of the small nation into which the
incompatible with the carefully nurtured doctrine that the Messiah was born. It is beyond question that the great
existence of such a people is no longer a tenet of Christian majority of today’s Jewish folk do not stem from an-
theology -- indeed, that to attach any importance to the cient Israel at all. They are descended from proselytes
idea is contrary to the Faith. In their misguided view, it has to the Jewish faith who, as a nation, adopted that faith
become necessary to eliminate YEHOVAH God’s Ser- a thousand years ago.
vant-people from all religious consideration.
As to the term Hebrews, there is no excuse whatsoever
To do this, many theologians of the 20th century have as- for its misuse as an expedient to further obliterate
siduously set themselves out to “lose” YEHOVAH’s an- knowledge of the Israelites from whom the
cient people in a welter of names, so that YEHOVAH’s Celto-Saxon peoples of today are descended. The He-
concept of a restored Israel nation may be buried for ever. brews were the progeny of Eber, great-grandson of
These names are: “Hebrews,” “Jews,” “Judaists” and, in Shem and ancestor of Abraham, who himself was a
more modern parlance, “Israelis.” Hebrew. There were various other branches of this
parent stock, obviously all of the same ethnic group.
The Judaists are Jews, of almost every nationality under Thus the Israelites were all Hebrews, but only a small
the sun, who accept the Old Testament faith of Judaism. portion of the Hebrews were Israelites.
These are today’s Orthodox Jews.
In view of the foregoing, it is not honest for theolo-
The Israelis are, of course, the small community of Jewish gians to cloud the issue of where the descendants of an-
folk who have sought sanctuary in the ancient land of Is- cient Israel are in the world today.
rael during the period of the past generation. They have
provided the western world with an unsolvable problem -- Wake Up! September 1978

The Berean Voice March-April 2003