Judah has been defeated and enslaved. King Zedekiah and his sons have been killed. The surviving Jews have been carried off to Babylon as slaves. The Scepter-holding Davidic monarchy has ended. The throne of David has been destroyed. God’s promise to Abraham that the monarchy and the Scepter would last forever has been proven untrue. Or has it?

Here are some things to consider relative to the above statement. In Luke 1:31,32 we are told that upon His return to Earth Jesus Christ will sit upon King David’s throne and will be in possession of the Scepter of royal rulership over the children of Israel. Genesis 49:10 tells us that David’s throne/Scepter of royal power will endure until the coming of Jesus Christ: “The Scepter shall not depart from Judah (the monarchy), nor a lawgiver from between his (the tribe of Judah’s) feet until Shiloh (the Messiah) comes Who will gather God’s people (Israel) unto Himself.” In Jeremiah 33:20,21,24-26 we find God saying that His eternal Scepter/throne/monarchy covenant is as sure as his law of daylight and dark. If these statements are true, as Jesus declared them to be (Jn. 17:17), then the throne/Scepter and the monarchy must exist somewhere on earth today. But where? And why did they become “lost” from the world’s view? How did Israel, the most powerful and successful nation on earth, become a meaningless non-entity in the eyes of mankind, including Israel herself?

We answer those questions by returning to the days immediately following the death of King David in 971 B.C. His son Solomon has ascended to the throne and bears the Scepter of rulership. The House of Israel is the talk of the known world. People come from great distances to experience her splendor. But there is trouble brewing within the world’s most glorious nation. Her king has a problem. The world’s wisest man cannot control his fleshly desires. When he sees a beautiful women he marries her. His hundreds of wives are the daughters of the heathen kings and princes with whom he makes covenants. Their daughters are also heathen. Soon Solomon is building places of worship for their gods and leading the Israelite people in the worship of them. The heathen leaven has leavened the Israelite loaf. God has given the people and their king ample time to repent and return to Him. But they refuse to do so.

Solomon has yet another problem–pride. In order to keep his nation riding high on the world scene he has taxed the people to their limit. The combination of heathenism and pride causes God to lose His patience with the king. Solomon had to go. Following Solomon’s death in 931 B.C. his son Rehoboam became king of Judah and immediately raised the people’s taxes. The ten northern tribes rebelled and separated themselves from the southern tribes (Judah, Benjamin and Levi) which the King James translators nicknamed “Jews.” The northern tribes chose a man named Jeroboam to be their king. They could not have made a worse choice. Judah–the monarchy–retained Jerusalem as her capital. The northern tribes, called “Israel,” chose Samaria as their capital. The Birthright tribes–Ephraim and Manasseh–were part of the northern group. Some 200 years after Solomon’s death the sin-ladened northern kingdom had become so evil that the Lord had to destroy her. To do this He stirred up the most heathenistic nation on earth at the time–the Assyrians–to come against her, conquer her and take her survivors to Assyria. The tribes of Israel bade farewell to their homeland in 720 B.C.

Eventually Assyria and her captive Israelites would flee before the invading Babylonians. On the run, they spread throughout Europe where they became citizens of the nations in which they settled. The Israelites quickly embraced the religions, languages and social customs of those Gentile (heathen) nations. After a few generations the Israelites became “lost”–unknown to the world AND TO THEMSELVES. As far as the people around them and the Israelites were concerned, they were Gentiles. Numbering in the hundreds of millions, their descendants continue to believe that they are Gentiles to this day. For this reason they do not recognize their birthright and have rejected the God Who gave it to them, His Son and His religion. They have chosen instead a two-headed, multi-bodied, heathen religion known as Catholicism/Protestantism which leads them to worship a sun god named Tammuz. L.J.