The Tragedy of Israel

The Tragedy of Israel A Nation Without a Country; Judah and Israel to Come into Their Own

By James E. Talmage of the Council of the Twelve

We believe in the literal gathering of Israel, and in the res- — toration of the Ten Tribes, etc. Articles of Faith, No. 10. The gathering of Israel is contingent upon the fact of that people's dispersion. Consideration of the scattering is a neces- sary preliminary to a study of the reassembling of Israel's hosts. God made covenant with Abraham that through him and his posterity should all nations of the earth be blessed. Arich fulfilment of the promise is found in the earthly birth of the Christ through the lineage of Abraham. Further and related fulfilment appears in the effect of the distribution of Israelites amongst other nations through enforced dispersion. Abraham's descendants through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob have been distinctively known since Jacob's time as Israel- ites, or the Children of Israel. As the Old Testament avouches they grew to be a mighty nation, distinguished in certain re- spects from all other peoples. They were particularly character- ized as "Jehovah worshipers", professing allegiance to the living God, whilst all the rest of the world was pagan and idolatrous. By their world-wide dispersion a knowledge of the true and living God has been diffused. So long as the Israelites were true to the Divine covenants made with Abraham, and reaffirmed severally with Isaac and Jacob, they prospered in material things as in spiritual power. So far as they became alienated through pagan practices and un- righteous affiliations, they suffered both individually and as a nation. The Lord set before them the alternative of blessed perpetu- ity incident to their faithfulness, or disruption and subjugation to alien powers as the sure result of disobedience to Divine re- quirement. Both sacred and secular history make plain that Israel chose the evil part, forfeiting the promised blessings, reaping the foretold curses. At the death of Solomon the nation was divided. Approxi- mately two of the twelve tribes became established as the King- dom of Judah, and came in time to be currently known as Jews; the rest of the tribes retained the title Kingdom of Israel, though known also by the name of Ephraim. The division led eventu- ally to the eclipse of both kingdoms as autonomous powers among the known nations of the earth.

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The Kingdom of Israel was subdued by the Assyrians about 721 B. C. ; the people were carried into captivity, and later dis- appeared so completely from history as to be designated the Lost Tribes. These are the ten tribes whose restoration is pre- dicted as an event of latter times. The Kingdom of Judah main- tained a precarious and partial independence for a little more than a century after the Assyrian captivity, and then fell a prey to the conquering hosts of Nebuchadnezzar. After seventy years of bondage, the period specified through prophecy by Jeremiah (25:11,12; 29:10), a considerable number of the people were permitted to return to Judea, where they rebuilt the temple, and vainly strove to re-establish themselves on the scale of their van- ished greatness. They were impoverished bv the aggressions of Syria and Egypt, and eventually became tributary to Rome, in which condition of avssalage they existed at the time of Christ's earthly ministry amongst them. From the numerous Biblical prophecies relating to Israel's dispersion the following are cited as particularly illustrative: "And the Lord shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the Lord shall lead you." (Deut. 4:27.) "For the Lord shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and he shall root up Israel out of this good land, which he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river, because they have made their groves, provoking the Lord to anger." (1 Kings 14:15.) "And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee." (Ezek. 22:15.) "For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." (Amos 9:9.) "And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trod- den down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be ful- filled" (Luke 21:24.) And so, in progressive stages, the covenant people of God have been scattered. The bringing of a body of Israelites to the Western Continent six centuries before the birth of Christ, of which the Book of Mormon bears record, was part of the general dispersion, and was so recognized by Nephite prophets. Since the destruction of Jerusalem and the final disruption of the Jewish nation by the Romans, A. D. 71, the Jews have been largely wanderers upon the face of the earth, outcasts among the nations, a people without a country, a nation without a home. Israel has been sifted "like as corn is sifted in a sieve" but, be it remembered, that coupled with the dread prediction

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was the assuring promise "Yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." The day of deliverance for Israel is near at hand; the res- toration of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, and of the remnants of all the tribes distributed throughout the earth, as well as bringing forth from their long exile the tribes that have been lost, are particularly specified as events of the current dispen- sation, directly precedent to the second advent of the Christ. As complete as was the scattering, so shall the gathering of Israel be. Great as has been the chastisement of the covenant though recreant people, all through their centuries of suffering they have been sustained by the Divine promise of recovery and rehabilitation. Though despised of men, a large part of them gone from the knowledge of the world, the people of Israel are not lost to their God, who knows whither they have been led or driven. Note the paternal affection, in which appears com- miseration for the plight into which they had brought them- selves through sin: "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." (Lev. 26:44; see also Deut. 4:26-31). Isaiah thus forcefully proclaims the purposes of God to be fulfilled in the last, the current, age: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left.

• • • And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." (Isa. 11:11-12.) So momentous shall be the assembling of the tribes in their respective places of gathering, that the event shall be held to sur- pass the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage, for thus hath the Lord spoken: "Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, the Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers. Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." (Jer. 16:14-16.) So complete shall be the restoration, and so genuine the reunion of the long dispersed peoples, that rivalry and mistrust shall be swallowed up in joy and cooperative effort: "The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall

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be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim." (Isa. 11:13.) To these Biblical citations let us add the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, given to His apostles just prior to His death and specified as one of the signs to precede His later coming: "And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Matt. 24:31.) Two gathering centers are distinctively mentioned, and the maintenance of a separate autonomy for the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel is repeatedly affirmed in scripture, with Jerusalem and Zion as the respective capitals. In the light of modern revelation by which many ancient passages are illumin- ed and made clear, we hold that the Jerusalem of Judea is to be rebuilt by the reassembled house of Judah, and that Zion is to be built up on the American continent by the gathered hosts other than the Jews. When such shall have been ac- *of Israel, complished, Christ shall personally rule in the earth, and then shall be realized the glad fulfilment: "For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Isa. 2:3; see also Joel 3:16; Zeph. 3:14.) Book of Mormon prophecies are plain in defining the extent and purpose of the latter-day gathering. Be it remembered that it was the people who once constituted the kingdom of Judah, the Jews, not the entire house of Israel, who rejected Jesus as the Son of God and the foreappointed Redeemer. By the Ne- phites who dwelt on the American continent, an Israelitish branch, He was received and worshiped as the Christ (see Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi 11); and the tenor of Book of Mormon scriptures warrants the inference that He was accepted by the Lost Tribes, to whom He went to minister in person after His several visitations in the resurrected state to the Nephites. (See 3 Nephi 15:15 and 16:1-3; compare 2 Nephi 29:12-13.) But the Jews are promised redemption, and the possession of the land given unto their fathers. Their return to Palestine has already been well begun; and one of the prospective results of the world war is to be the clearing of the way for their speedy gathering. The important part allotted to the Gentiles, those not of the lineage of Israel, is defined by Book of Mormon prophets. It is the privilege of the Gentiles to assist in the gathering of the Jews on the Eastern, and the other branches of Israel on the Western continent; and so far as they shall accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ they shall be numbered with the covenant people and share with them the plentitude of blessings, in their own right, for, verily, God is no respecter of persons.