LOST TRIBES
RADIO SERIES
THE BOOK
OF HOSEA
Stay tuned for straight you can to about God with Jack.
Well, it seems like it’s time for X-rated Bible again, as if last week wasn’t enough. Have you ever read the book of Hosea, the whole book of Hosea, that incredible story where the God of the Bible tells Hosea to go marry a whore and have kids by her? Whatever does it mean? World history can provide the answer. And while I make an announcement or two you might want to get a Bible. We’ll be looking up some verses and so forth today.
Care to listen while you read?
(Announcements)
Okay. In the past weeks we’ve looked at prophecies and promises to certain of Abraham’s descendants. These are very broad based promises in a lot of cases. Most of them are unconditional promises. Unconditional promises mean that no matter what the descendants are doing or whether Abraham did after the promise was made – it doesn’t make any difference; God has said that he would do this unconditionally and he supposedly keeps his word. What happens when we look at history is that most of all, mostly, in traditional history we don’t find the fulfillment of these promises and prophecies to these certain descendants of Abraham. They are not fulfilled by the Jews. They are not fulfilled in Christ, and they are not fulfilled in the church, the Christian church. For instance, a little bit later on we’re going to get into the book of Hosea and in the book of Hosea, it says these certain people the house Israel, not the Jews, will eventually be known as “not my people.” They will not be identified with the God of the Bible. And as we all know, the Jews have always been identified with the God of the Bible. There’s never been a break in history where for a couple of hundred years or a thousand years that the Jews did not have this identity linked to the God of the Bible and yet in Hosea, a specific prophecy says that they will be known as “not my people.” There will be no connection between these people and the God of the Bible, no apparent connection.
And the confusion all lies as we started a couple weeks ago in not understanding the crossroads of the Bible that are in Genesis 48 and 49. Where the birthright is split in half, not in half, excuse me, I shouldn’t say half. Jacob, when passing his blessings along to the sons, the twelve sons who made up the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel – when he passed his blessings along to them along with all the prophecies and promises that went to Abraham and to Isaac, all of those went along, he passed them all to Joseph, his 11th born son with the exception of two very small things, important but small.
The fourth born son Judah was to only get the right to rule the family and the right to make up the rules for the family. In other words, he could be the king and make up the laws, but Joseph got all the land, all the cattle, all the money, all the possessions, all the blessings and all the promises to come – where to come through Joseph’s line and therefore the ten tribes of Israel fulfilled a lot of those promises through Joseph because Joseph’s blessed son Ephraim took that birthright and those promises from Joseph and he was the, the main headquarters tribe of the ten tribes of Israel, the northern kingdom of Israel, that was the tribe of Ephraim. He ran the place. The same as Judah ran the southern kingdom of Judah, which only contained two tribes and a smattering of other people, but if you don’t understand and keep in mind that crossroads, that split of the birthright then historically, it’s impossible to find where some of these promises and prophecies have been fulfilled. So now, it’s time, we talked about the southern kingdom and the northern kingdom enough, so it’s time to leave the southern kingdom except as a reference point and start to build from historical background on the kingdom of Israel, the house of Israel, the house of Joseph, Ephraim, Samaria, all those names apply to the same group of people, the northern ten tribes of Israel.
Now, I really feel the need to review a whole lot of thing, every time we get started we get started on this thing, but I’m just gonna forge right ahead.
Israel’s history. We’re gonna take it up --last week we talked almost exclusively about the split in the kingdoms and the Jeroboam was the first king over the northern kingdom of Israel. After the kingdom split, Jeroboam was the first king. Well the sixth king down the line is where we want to start. The sixth king was named Omri,-O-M-R-I. However, there’s a little double dot over the O. And makes it an aspirant sound, like your coughing it out, like Komeni or Khoumeni. See, it could be spelled with a K- H-, but it’s Khumri.
Okay. Well, he took over and as we out lined last week, Jeroboam started the whole ball of idol worship rolling and by the time it got to the sixth king Omri, he enhanced that. He took over the kingship and then started writing new laws. He made up brand-new set of laws to govern the northern kingdom. He also moved the capital to Samaria and then later on, it became known, the northern kingdom became known as Samaria, a synonym for the house of Israel or the kingdom of Israel was Samaria because that’s when the capital had been moved. Well, the ten tribes still called themselves by names that we would know and we would understand and recognize. But the Assyrians because of this king Omri, they were known as Bit Khumri, -B-I-T K-H-U-M-R-I. That’s what the Assyrians called them. They didn’t call them the house of Israel. Sometimes they could have called them the house of Khumri, which would be Beth, B-E-T-H. Beth Khumri or Bit Khumri, sons of Khumri. It’s almost as if some historian was writing a hundred years ago in France and called the United States the land of Lincoln, the house of Lincoln, or some Chinese historian writing briefly about the Norse kings and the history of the Vikings might call them the sons of Odin. Sons of Odin or the house of Odin. Well, that wasn’t what they were at all you know. They were Danes, whatever. Okay.
So that there’s a little understanding of what was happening in Assyria. Tigleth-Pileser it’s a hyphenated name. And it’s not only Tigleth-Pileser; it’s Tigleth-Pileser the third. He was the first king of Assyria who started making war and trying to conquer the nation of Israel. Actually the northern kingdom of Israel. Assyria is located directly north of the Promised Land, the Palestinian area. So Tigleth-Pileser was building an empire and started to come down between say 750, all dates being approximate, 750 and 735 or 40 somewhere in there. He started coming down and conquering the northernmost tribes of the ten tribed kingdom. After he died his successor changed his name to Shalmanizer and he was making war. He had a very short reign however and the king who took over from him was called Sargon the second. Sargon the great was the first king of Assyria. And he was pretty hot stuff, but this was Sargon the second and they all, all three of them fought against the Israelites, the northern kingdom again, and carried away a whole bunch of people.
I have a book here called, “The Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets.” “The Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets” and it’s a study by E. Raymond Capt whose one of my favorite men, archaeologist-scientist-theologian-type guy. And in his book here, there’s a little paragraph I want you to hear about all right. Tigleth-Pileser. “The policy of deportation of rebellious subjects and importation of foreign subjects to take their place was inaugurated by Tigleth-Pileser, the third. This was compensate for the deportation of the people in captured territories and the depletion of land values. The vacated lands were not left to grow wild, to be the haunts of wild beasts. They were to be worked to provide continuing tribute from the Assyrian king. As motivation, the subjugated people were given a certain degree of freedom which enabled them to cultivate the country according to the experience which they had acquired in their own land.” So this king, Tigleth-Pileser, was the first one to do this, this buffer state thing. He picked up all the captives that he took in the war against the northern kingdom and deported them in mass north of were they were and east of the Assyrian territory between the Assyrians and the Medes. Media. Media and Persia is just below media.
Well the Medes were enemies of the Assyrians and just to kind of put a little buffer like I said between them, they stuck the Israelites right in there. Now, these weren’t just a couple of thousand people okay. We’re gonna wind up by the time the whole northern kingdom of Israel is taken away we’re gonna wind up with more that 5 million people in successive waves. All right.
So Tigleth-Pileser deports all those people and Shalmaneser comes along and does some of the same thing. And now, I am gonna read you an inscription of Sargon the second. Sargon the second relates in his annals that he took Samaria and here’s a the quote “I surrounded and deported as prisoners 27,290 of it’s inhabitants.” This is just one city now. This you know “ together with their chariots and the gods in whom they trusted. From them--” notice he says “in the gods in whom they trusted.” You see, they weren’t worshiping the God of the Bible. They were heavy into idol worship. And they had all these idols. And Tigleth-Pileser Comes down – I mean Sargon II comes down, captures Samaria and takes away all the golden and silver idols. Okay. “And the gods they entrusted. From them I equipped 200 chariots for my army units while the rest I made to take up their lot within Assyria. I restored the city of Samaria and made it more habitable than before. I brought into it people from the countries conquered by my hands.” See. Other nations that have been conquered, he took them and transported them down in the kingdom of Israel’s geographical area. Switched them around. Just played, played switch. “My official I set over them as governor and reckoned them as people of Assyria itself.
And this is also one of the main facts that clears up a misunderstanding. The Samaritans, if you read the Bible, you will find that there’s this hatred at least intense dislike and avoidance of all contact with the people called the Samaritans. There’s a story about Jesus going for a drink of water at a well in that geographical area and a woman sitting at the well said “what do you have anything to do with me. I mean I’m a Samaritan and you’re a Jew.” You know and you get the idea that they hate each other or at least the Jews hate Samaritans. That’s because they weren’t the northern kingdom any more. They were gone. All those people were gone and these people that came in were foreigners. And the Israelites have this history of not dealing with foreigners. They don’t even mix and mingle originally at least. Okay. That was Sargon the seconds’ story.
Now, we also find in the historian Josephus who wrote in the first century, one of the great historians of the first century A. D., Josephus also records Israel as having been placed in Media-Persia. Writing of the 721 conquest of Samaria, he says, “This conquest proved wholly destructive to the kingdom of Israel. Hoshea, H O S H E A, being made prisoner and his subjects being transported media in Persia and replaced by people who Shalmaneser caused to remove from the borders of Cuthah, a country in Persia for the purpose of settling the land of Samaria.” So there you got some secular history as a cross-reference of that.
You might get your Bible together there and go to II Kings 17:5 and 6 describes, is one of the descriptions of the fall of Samaria. II Kings 17:5 and 6. It’s on page 457 in my Bible. And if you got a Bible that’s numbered from 1 on upward in the Old Testament and the New Testament, your page numbers shouldn’t be too far off from mine, maybe within a hundred at least. I’ll give you an idea where to look. Okay. Verse 5. “Then the king of Assyria came up throughout the land, throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria, took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria and placed them in Halah and Habor by the river Gozan and in the cities of the Medes.”
The next thing we have to remember and keep in mind and mention is that again these people didn’t look like the people we usually think of in the Bible. They weren’t worshiping God. They weren’t keeping any of their feast days, any of their regular festivals like the Passover, for instance, and Pentecost and those usual feasts that they did. It was two hundred plus years after the split, after the two kingdoms split as we all learned last week and immediately upon the split, they went into idol worship. Seventeen kings went and before the Assyrians came down and conquered the northern tribes. There were a few times through those 17 kings where they cleaned up their act and did right in the sight of the Lord as it says in the Bible but mainly they were idol worshipers and they had 200 years of history behind all this. Okay. They didn’t no more look like “God’s people” than the Eskimos do. They didn’t look like ‘em. They didn’t act like what we think of as those people. Okay. And this moderate freedom that they had – – let’s see I skipped something, that’s all right – this moderate freedom that they had let them join with the Medes to fight with Assyria. Not only join with the Medes, they did that and then later on, they even fought against the Medes because one of the other things that we’re gonna study just a little bit in a another lesson is the Behistun rock. The Behistun rock was discovered over there in the Middle East and it has a long story of how Darius the king of the Medes conquered or fought with and beat some of the people of that area, the area between them and Assyria. Well, some of the languages concerned call them the Gimmera. Remember I said there were three different languages involved. Gimmera is one name that came out of this Behistun rock. In one language they’re called Gimmera. In another language on the same place, the same story the same people are called Sakka, S-A-K-K-A. Okay. But like I said, they stayed in that area, they stayed in that area and fought with not only the Assyrians but the Medes too and eventually, the Assyrian bondage was broken. Assyria had fought so long and lost so many men that they weren’t strong enough any more to keep the wide you know the peripheral parts of their land under bondage and have them pay tribute and so forth.,
Well, what happened then when the, when the pressure eased up, that allowed the northern tribes to move west and north to the below and above the Black Sea. They moved straight north and then west above the Black Sea and some of them moved straight west. Now, this didn’t happen all at one moment. It happened throughout many years of history. We’ll get into some of that as we go along this whole long study. But basically that happened starting within 50 years of the fall of Samaria, this migration thing started to happen. Well, what happens when the power of Assyria is weakened, the Medes would have moved into the area and would have taken over but by that time, Cyrus of Persia was starting to nip at their heels down below in the south and they had to turn away from Assyria and try to do something with Cyrus who was becoming more powerful by the day. Well, eventually, he conquers the Medes and welds together the Medo-Persian empire which existed for quite a while and was a very strong empire, as strong as Alexander’s empire of Greece.
Well, what happens then is that while the Medes and the Persians are going at it and getting an empire together -- Cyrus getting an empire together – – Nebuchadnezzer comes to power, drops over to Jerusalem and takes away the southern kingdom of Judah in somewhere between 590 and 60n0 B. C., takes them away, gains more power from that then goes up and conquers Assyria while the Medes and the Persians are still at each other’s throats. He reigns over the Babylonia, the second Babylonian empire for a number of years, not a very long number of years either. And then Cyrus finally like I said welds this Medo-Persian empire together and conquers Babylon, takes over and they reign for a good number of years in Babylon. In fact, the southern kingdom of Judah was carried away and it was prophesied – by the way that prophecy was fulfilled – they were prophesied that they would be in bondage to the Babylonians for 70 years. A long period of time. Seventy years wasn’t Babylonian captivity, it was Medo-Persian captivity. Now, they stayed there for, stayed there for a long time.
When the Medo-Persians took over, the Babylonian empire shortly after that, Cyrus sent out an edict that anybody who wanted to go back to Jerusalem could. Well, 50 thousand of them got together and did go back but there were over 600 thousand left that didn’t go back. Didn’t want to go back. I mean they were doing real well over in Babylon, see. They weren’t slaves in chains and all that. You know these were the artisans, the poets, the statesmen, all that kind of thing. And they were doing well enough over there so they – “We don’t want to go back there and work hard and build the temple all over again and rebuild the city and.” We’re just gonna sit here where it’s nice.” It’s one of my favorite expressions. “I just want to sit here where it’s nice.” Well, so, they go back.
Well at that particular time, when they go back, we find one of the main people involved in the story of the rebuilding of the temple and the city is a guy named Ezra. He has a short book in the Bible, Ezra, one of the “ minor” prophets. Also Nehemiah. Why you should not call Ezra a prophet really. He was a high priest. And Nehemiah was a priest in a governor-type. And together they spurred the people on to finally get the temple and the city of Jerusalem rebuilt and started up again. This guy named Ezra has one book in the Bible, depending on which Bible you look at. If you look at the original King James Bible you’ll find that Ezra has two books in there. Well, he’s not quite Ezra in the original King James, he’s called Esdras. E-S-D-R-A-S. Esdras, which is just Ezra by a different spelling. Okay. Same guy, different name. As we’ve come across as many times with all these different names of different people and geographical areas and kingdoms, they have a million different names and it’s hard to keep it straight.
So Esdras has two books in the original King James. Why? Because the original King James included, and for a long time afterwards, included a group of writings called the Apocrypha. Apocrypha means hidden. Okay. Apocrypha. If you look in the Apocrypha, you’ll find that the first book of Esdras is almost identical to the book of Ezra that we have in the present day Bible, the King James Version. Most of the versions do. But the second book has a whole let of different information in it and thing we never hear about. I want to read a little bit to you about that. Second Esdras chapter 2 verse 33 says, “I, Ezra,” – he even uses the regular spelling in here. “I, Ezra, received a command from the Lord on Mount Horeb to go to Israel”. Well, maybe I should refresh your memory. Israel. He’s talking about go to Israel. Well, either he’s in Israel already if we count Israel as the Jews. Either they’re back in Jerusalem already after Cyrus let them go back and rebuild the temple or they haven’t gone back yet. Whatever the case, wherever he is, he can’t be talking about go to Israel. He’s with Israel if you’re talking about the Jews. But we’re not talking about the Jews, remember we’re talking about the house of Israel, the people of the northern ten tribed kingdom that are called Israel.
“I, Ezra received the command from the Lord on the Mount Horeb to go to Israel but when I went to them, they refused me and rejected the Lord.“ So Ezra even writes down that he was commanded to go and talk to these people and say, we’re all coming back and we’ll rebuild the temple. Why don’t you come, too. But they refused him.
Now, let’s go to another passage and find out what happened to him. Second passage I want to read is second Esdras 13 versus 40 to 46. It has to do with a vision and he’s being told who these people in the vision are and what they were doing. “These are the ten tribes that in the days of king Hoshea were carried away from their own land-- into captivity-- who Shalmaneser king of Assyria made captives and carried beyond the river. They were carried off to another country, but they formed this plan among themselves. To leave the heathen population and go to a more distant region where the human race had never lived. So that there they might keep their statutes which they had not kept in their own country.” Sounds like a repentance to me. “And they went”– here’s the important part “and they went in by the (into this land) in by the narrow passages of the Euphrates River.” In other words, up at the headwaters of the Euphrates River they went through the Caucasus Mountains north; these particular people. And around the top of the Black Sea. “For the most high” reading again “for the most high then did wonders for them and held the sources of the river until they had passed over but it was a long journey of a year and a half to that country.” That country is called Arsareth which just means ‘rest”‘ There were so many people, in other words, going through this Caucasus mountain pass at the headwaters of the Euphrates River that it took them a year and a half to get there. A whole year and a half.
A really good example of this multiple name stuff is found when we go to Hosea. And that’s where I want you to go right now. It’s on page 977 in my Bible. Book of Hosea. And here’s where we get to the X-rated part. It’s another example of God, the God of the Bible working out the message in human terms. He does that a lot. There’s an awful lot of sex in the Bible. I don’t know whether you read a lot of the Bible or not, but there’s not a whole lot of stories that are told in the context of a sexual relationship, a marriage, a husband and wife, lovers, brides and husbands and that kind of thing. Hosea, he’s no exception. Look what it says in verse 2 of chapter 1 right at the very beginning after he tells who Hosea is. “The beginning of the Word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, ‘go and take thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms for the land hath committed a great whoredom departing from the Lord.” Man. In other words, the God of the Bible comes to Hosea, “I want you to marry a whore and have kids by her”.
Well, before we get too far in into this, let me give you the types involved in here if you haven’t guessed already. Hosea is a type of God. He places God’s role in this story. The wife that he’s supposed to marry, the whore is the house of Israel. Takes the role of the house of Israel. And God always talks about idol worship in the context of a prostitute, a Harlot because the unfaithful wife goes from one husband to another man. Well, if you go from God to idol worship that’s what the analogy is. So he tells him to go marry a whore and have kids by her. Versus 3 through 6, I want to read here. Actually 3 through 6 and 8 and 9, tells about the kids that were born to Hosea and this whore that he married. And they play out in symbolism the house of Israel. It’s defined a little bit more in detail. “So he went forth and he took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, which conceived and bear him a son. And the Lord said unto him, call his name Jezreel for yet a little while, and I will envy the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu and will cause this to cease, the kingdom of the house of Israel.“ Well, the word Jezreel means scattered. Scattered. Okay. The Assyrians sure did that. They uprooted them and took them away from their own land. Let’s jump down to verse 8. No. Let’s go on.
“And it shall come to pass” at verse 5 “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 bear a daughter. And God said to him, ‘Call her name Loruhama. Loruhamah. For I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel.” Notice he didn’t say, house of Judah. He said the house of Israel. I will no longer have mercy upon the house of Israel. But I will only take them away.” This describes the Assyrian bondage. The name, Loruhamah means “not having obtained mercy.”
Almost skipped a verse 8 and find out what happened to the third kid. “Now, when she had weaned, Loruhamah, she conceived and bear a son. Then said God, ‘Call his name Loami. Loami for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.’” Okay. Loami means “not my people.” So now we got three kids that were born to the prostitute and Hosea. One kid describes the fact that the house of Israel, the ten tribed kingdom will be scattered. The second kid says that they won’t have God’s mercy any more. The third kid is named Loami and says that he won’t be known as my people, as God’s people. We mentioned that earlier on in the beginning of the show, the fact that this prophecy of Hosea – – well, let me stop here and tell you when Hosea was writing.
Hosea was writing somewhere – well, he lived somewhere between 780 and 680 B.C. Now, if you remember the northern ten-tribed kingdom was taken away and finally the end of it happened in around 720, 721 B. C. Hosea wrote most of the stuff before they were taken away. Before they were taken away and they got these three, these three characteristics of being scattered, not being thought of as God’s people, and not having obtained mercy.
Let me take a look at verse 10, and it says – now, this is the prophecy that we tack on and try to find in history as being fulfilled. “Yet the number of the children of the of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea.” Remember that one. That’s one of the main promises to Abraham, that he’s going to have the descendants so many that you can’t number them.” Which cannot be measured or numbered.” And additionally, “it shall come to pass that in the place where it is said unto them, yea are not my people remember that, that’s Loami, not my people. “In the place where the said unto them, they are not my people. There it shall be said unto them, yes are the sons of the living God.”
Now, how’s that for what seems to be a contradiction. These people are going to this place wherever it is and they’re never gonna have this identity that they had before of being linked to the God of the Bible the way the Jews have been and will be and are linked to the God of the Bible. In that place, they’re not gonna be known as the people of the God of the Bible, but they’ll be known as the sons of the living God. Well, that’s kind of confusing. But, not so. Because sons of the living God – it’s the same God now we’re talking about. You know we don’t have three or four different gods listed in the Bible. Hosea is a talking about the same God as the Jewish people are connected to. Well I only know one population group in the world, besides the Jews, who are connected to the God of the Bible and those are people who call themselves Christians. The Christian nations of the world are connected to the to that same God of the Bible, although there are a lot of people who spout of doctrine that the God of the Old Testament isn’t the same as the God of the New Testament. That’s inappropriate study, improper study on their part. Doesn’t make it true. It’s all the same God. There’s only one God of the whole Bible. And that’s very clear if you really get into studying it.
And so Hosea is prophesying before the captivity, before the conquering of the northern, ten tribed of Israel, that they would be scattered, they would not have God’s mercy, they would not be known any more as God’s people and yet in the place that they’d be scattered to they’d be known as the sons of the living God. Well, there’s only one population group that fills that bill. The Celts. The Celts are the ones who are the Christian nations of the world and are connected to that God of the Bible. The same as the Jews are connected to that God of the Bible.
Now, I need to jump back to verse 7. We gonna take 7 and 11, which outlines or clarifies a little bit stronger the distinction from the kingdom of Judah because it’s mentioned here. See. You go through and you just kind of read along, and you get trapped into thinking this is all one trip here. And yet in verse 7, it says, “But I will have mercy on the house of Judah.” It’s obviously talking about two different groups of people. “I’m not going to have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will have mercy on the mouse of house-of-Judah and will save them by the Lord their God and will not save them by the bow nor the stone nor the battle by horses nor by horsemen.” The house of Judah.
And in verse 11 it says the same thing. “Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel” –- you see, two very separate and distinct groups of people. Now, this is a prophecy about the end, you know, way down the line. “Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and appoint themselves one head and they shall come up out of the land, and great shall be the day of Jezreel.” Okay. That’s way, way down the line. That hasn’t even happened yet. Okay. So Hosea very definitely--, when he talks about Israel, he’s the prophet to the northern tribes of Israel. He’s their prophet, specifically. So when he talks about Israel, the children of Israel, the children of Jacob, a couple of these other names, he’s always talking about the ten-tribed kingdom. When there has to be a reference to the southern tribe, two tribed kingdom of Judah, he says the house of Judah. That’s very clear. Very clear.
Okay. By way of just a synopsis, chapters two and three talk about the lost of the characteristics. There’s a lot talk about the lost of the characteristics of the house of Israel. , the feasts. They won’t keep their Sabbath anymore. They go to sun worship, pagan idol sun worship. Their place will be a wilderness. They’ll never have a king. They won’t do sacrifices anymore. They won’t have an image or any of that kind of thing. That’s mainly In chapter 2 and 3. Chapter 4 and 5 outlines Israel’s sins in more detail and really reiterates the punishment that they’re going to get. Let’s define that punishment. That’s something that’s very important to this study of the lost tribes.
Now, what we have to do is go to page 155 in the Old Testament, which is Leviticus 26:18. It doesn’t say how long this is going to happen, this punishment that falls on the house of Israel and yet in the Leviticus God outlines what’s gonna happen if they don’t keep his statutes and his laws. Okay. The God of the Bible has told the nation of Israel – they get out of the bondage from Egypt and the Exodus happens and they go on out into wilderness and he sets down his Ten Commandments and his laws and Moses presents them to the people and they go say, “Oh yeah, we’ll do all of this.” So God says “hear my laws. Here are my statutes. Do all this stuff and I’ll bless you.” Everybody in the world will see how you’re blessed if you do this. If you don’t, you’re in trouble.” Now, three times in this same passage he outlines what’s going to happen, the length of time, what’s going to happen. Verse 18 says “and if you will not for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for you your sins.“ Jump down to verse 24, “then will I also walk contrary to you and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.”
Skip over to verse 28. “Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury and I will, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.” Well, now all we have to do is figure out what seven times is. Seven times well. Could be seven days. I don’t think hours would be reasonable. How about seven days? Where they in captive to Assyria for seven days? Uh-huh. Seven days is out. How about seven weeks? No. How about seven years? No. We know that from the history of Assyria and Behistun rock itself. The northern tribes were taken away and they never came back in the first place to the Promised Land and they were under the Assyrian and Median power and influence for some hundred years. So seven years is out. Well, those are the only units of measure we’ve got. We got a day, a week and a year. So, if we go to the traditional number of days in a year, that gives us one more unite of study, unit of time that we can use is a guide. The number of days in the old year was 360. 360. Well, how about 360 times seven? Maybe one time is 360 years! Now, that starts to make some expense sense I can do something with that. I can’t do anything with seven years for a week, one year or a day. Can’t do any of that. How much is you math students 360 times 7? Got the answer yet?? 2500 and 20 years. 2500 years, in other words. Well, okay. If that’s true then, if the God of the Bible says that if you don’t do what I say and you worship idles and you do all this bad stuff, I’m gonna punish you for 2500 years. Now, that makes some sense. Okay. I can apply that to history. Okay. That’s the time of the punishment. 2500 and 20 years.
If you want a little cross-reference on that: II Peter in the New Testament. II Peter 3:8 says, “Don’t forget a day to the Lord is like a thousand years.” Well, a day to the Lord is like a thousand years? Well, let’s cross reference that right away in Hosea again. Hosea has just a slight little reference going through that doesn’t look like much, and yet in this context, it does mean quite a bit. Verse 2 of chapter 6 says, – well, I’ll start with verse 1 for more of a context, “Come and let us return unto the Lord for he has torn, and he will heal us. He has smitten and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us, in the third day, he will raise us up. And we shall live in his sight.” uh-huh. After two days – – now, if the day to the Lord is a thousand years, that’s says after 2,000 years, he will revive us. In the third day, some place in the third thousand years, he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight. Does that sound familiar? We shall live in his sight. That just refers to what it says in verse ten of the first chapter, ye shall be known as the sons of the living God, in the third day. 2500 years so this punishment time carries through into the book of Hosea as we see.
Chapters 7, 8, 9, ten and 11 are a whole lot more about the sins of Israel delineated, the punishment that’s going to happen, but it also says that they won’t be abandoned and there’s another just a little easily passed over reference in verse 12. I mean chapter 12 verse 1. And it says “Ephraim” another name for Israel, another name for the kingdom of Israel, another name for the house of Israel, Samaria, house of Joseph, all those ten tribe people, “Ephraim feedeth upon the wind and followeth after the east wind.“ Followed after the east wind. What does that mean? When the wind blows, we call the wind by the name of the direction it blows from, not the direction it’s going to. So an east wind blows from the east to the west. In other words, they’re going to follow the east wind to the west. And that’s when what Israel did. When they became the Celts, they moved west. They kept on moving west. Now, there were a small portion of them. , a very small portion of them did go to the east somewhat. But the main group of them, the main bulk of the lost tribes of Israel went west. Some north. Some west, right away and all of them west. The book ends with more sins and more exhortation to repent.
Now, your not gonna find any sermons or teaching on the book of Hosea, except maybe a verse or two, possibly on the, probably I should say on sinning okay. “Don’t do this”, because a lot of sins are listed in here. And legalistic traditional Christianity likes to preach sins. The God of guilt and punishment. Okay. But the whole book doesn’t make hardly any sense at all unless as we said before, that the crossroads of the birthright and the split of the kingdom is remembered. Once you remember that, then it’s easy to see. You can follow almost the whole Old Testament and especially the prophecies, Isaiah, Ezekiel, all the people. You can find Israel, house of Israel and when you remember that it’s the northern ten tribe kingdom, all of a sudden you understand. It’s, its wonderful. Not only the Old Testament though, you see. It’s really clear if the Celts are the house of Israel because that’s what happens to the Celts. If the house of Israel moved up between the Assyria and the Medes and then dispersed from there, they were scattered from their original place. They were scattered way, way around the globe. They were not having God’s mercy. God wasn’t protecting them. They were fighting it out all the time with people you know. They were marauding bands. Terrorists came over and conquered them. It was such a big war but he built this big, big monument to himself and the story of the war on the Behistun rock. This three-language inscription on the Behistun rock is 150 feet long and 100 feet high.
Another thing about this house of Israel that’s really great is that if you look in the New Testament you’ll find a lot of reference to house of Israel. For instance, this is amazing, in Matthew 15:24 Jesus is talking and he says, “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He did not say Israel alone, He said the house of Israel. Very, very defined. Again in Matthew 10:6, he says to his disciples – He’s sending out disciples -- he says, “Don’t go to Samaria. Don’t go to the Gentiles. Go on first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The house of Israel.
At straight talk, we’re going to be studying a lot more about these subjects in detail starting Monday night at 7 P. M. Why don’t you come and study with us, find out more a little bit more about this.
Now that we’ve traced this Israel back to the, up north to the Black Sea, we’ll be able to take a closer look at the origins of the Celts. That’s what we’ll try to do next week. And how the dominance of the Greco Roman history frame has really obscured the high culture of these nomads. Just because they didn’t write a lot of things down, keep a lot of history and all that stuff doesn’t mean they were highly cultured. They were extremely highly cultured. Some of their artwork and stuff their metal work, gold and bracelets and things like that are just exquisite stuff that they dug up. History readily says that the Celtics are the Scythians, which just means nomads anyway. The name Scythian means nomad. But who were the Scythians?
Well, you can find out if you tune in next week and stretch with Jack on history and philosophy of the Bible.
Lost Tribes series index page.
I love mail. 
Come Home