News Letter 5848-045
22nd day of the 10th month?5848 years after the creation of Adam
The 10th Month in the Third year of the third Sabbatical Cycle
The Third Sabbatical Cycle of the 119th Jubilee Cycle
The Sabbatical Cycle of Earthquakes Famines, and Pestilences
This is also the end of the Thirty-Ninth week of this the Third Tithe Year for the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow?Deuteronomy 26:12
We are now just 4 years & 2 months from the Sabbatical year in 2016

January 5, 2013

Shabbat Shalom Brethren,

I have had a very interesting and disturbing number of emails this week. There are things going on around the world that should cause us to be on alert.

Reports continue to come in from South Africa about the coming slaughter of whites once Nelson Mandela dies and he is not very well at the moment.

I received another email from the Women in Green from Israel warning the Jews of North America to get out because of the growing anti-Semitic activity that is now going on and expected to grow with the collapse of the US economy. There are also increased attacks in Europe. I have had a hard time finding proof on their claims.
There was the gang rape of a girl in Pakistan and then a call from an Islamic leader for Muslims to go out and rape non-Muslims. There were the riots in Australia against, from what I am gathering, the Muslims in that country because of an attack on a beach.

Then there were others who are now seeing a persecution coming based on last weeks Torah portions and were inviting me to discuss what I have been saying about The Prophecies of Abraham which show us that in Abrahams deep sleep, that he had when Yehovah was walking through the pieces of sacrifices, was in fact a prophecy of the Terror of the things that would happen to his children. Abraham was terrified as he slept. This took place in the 5th year of the 3rd Sabbatical cycle. We are now at the end of the third Sabbatical year of the same third Sabbatical cycle.

And on top of this brethren we are suppose to be entering the 3 ½ years of tribulation according to those who believe in the Daniel Timeline. We do not! But many others do. So persecutions should begin.

If you have neglected your prayers, now would be a good time to begin your conversation with Yehovah and not wait until your being dragged down the street. It is time to pray.

I am pleased to share with you a teaching I have had for some time and just found again. I know some of you enjoyed last weeks News Letter on Joseph of Arimathea. This one is good one to go with it. May it be a blessing to you also.

Hope of Israel Ministries (Ecclesia of YEHOVAH):

Where Did the Twelve Apostles Go?

Why has the truth about the journeys of the twelve apostles been kept from public knowledge? We read plainly of Paul’s travels through Cyprus, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy. But the movements of the original twelve apostles are cloaked in mystery. Why?

Did it ever seem strange that most of the New Testament, following the book of Acts, was written by Paul, and not by Peter?
Why, after Peter initiated the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles at the house of Cornelius (Acts 10 and 11), did he and others of the twelve apostles suddenly vanish from view? And why only Peter and John reappear, for a fleeting moment, in Jerusalem at the inspired conference recorded in Acts 15?

We read, after Acts 15, only of Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles.

Why? What happened to the twelve apostles? Let’s understand!

There is a reason why the journeys of the twelve apostles have been cloaked in mystery — until now!
You probably have been told that Yeshua chose the twelve apostles, ordained them apostles, sent them, first to preach to the Jews. When the Jews, as a nation, rejected that message, you probably have supposed that they turned to the Gentiles. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was the apostle Paul, called years later as a special apostle, who was commissioned to bear the gospel to the Gentiles.

To Ananias, who was sent to baptize Paul, the Messiah gave this assurance: “Go thy way: for he” — Saul, later named Paul — “he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15).

It was Paul, not any of the twelve, who said: “From henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles” (Acts 18:6).
Yeshua would not have called Paul as a special apostle to carry the gospel to the Gentiles, if the original twelve had been commissioned to preach to the Gentiles.

Then to whom — and where — were the twelve apostles sent?

Yeshua’s Commission Tells

Notice the surprising answer — in Matthew 10:5-6: “these twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Yeshua meant what he said! He “commanded them.” The twelve were forbidden to spread the gospel among the Gentiles. It was Paul who was commissioned to that work. The twelve were to go, instead, to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” — the Lost Ten Tribes!

Granted, the Messiah did send Peter to the home of Cornelius (Acts 10 and 11) to open the gospel to the Gentiles, but Peter’s life mission was to carry the gospel to “the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Peter merely opened the door, as the chief apostle, for the Gentiles. It was Paul who went through the door and brought the gospel to the nations. Granted, Peter, in his capacity of chief apostle, made one trip to the gentile Samaritans. But it was not to bring the gospel to them. Philip had done that! Peter and John merely prayed for the Samaritans that they would receive the holy spirit. (See Acts 8, verses 5, and 14 through 17.)

Now we know to whom the twelve apostles were sent. They were not sent to the Gentiles, but to “the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” It was Paul who went to the Gentiles.

Now to discover where Peter and others of the twelve went after they left Palestine.

That has been one of the best-kept secrets of history! If the world had known the lands to which the twelve apostles journeyed, the House of Israel would never have been lost from view! But YEHOVAH God intended, for a special purpose, which few understand, that the identity of the House of Israel should not be revealed until this pulsating twentieth century!

“House of Israel” Identified

From the sons of Jacob — surnamed Israel — sprang twelve tribes. Under David they were united as one nation — Israel. After the death of Solomon, David’s son, the twelve tribes were divided into two nations. The tribe of Judah split off from the nation Israel in order to retain the king, whom Israel had rejected. Benjamin went with Judah. The new nation thus formed, with its capital at Jerusalem, was known as the “House of Judah.” Its people were called Jews.

The northern ten tribes, who rejected Solomon’s son, became known as the “House of Israel.” Its capital, later, was Samaria. Whole books of the Old Testament are devoted to the power struggles between the “House of Israel” and Judah. The first time the word “Jews” appears in the Bible you will discover the king of Israel, allied with Syria, driving the Jews from the Red Sea port of Elath (II Kings 16:6-7).

The northern ten tribes, the House of Israel, were overthrown in a three-year siege (721-718) by the mighty Assyrian Empire. Its people were led into captivity beyond the Tigris River and planted in Assyria and the cities of the Medes around lake Urmia, southwest of the Caspian Sea. In the now-desolate cities of the land of Samaria the Assyrians brought in Gentiles from Babylonia. These Gentiles (II Kings 17) had become known as Samaritans by the time of the Messiah.

The House of Israel never returned to Palestine. The nation became known in history as the “Lost Ten Tribes.” To them Yeshua sent the twelve apostles!
The House of Judah — the Jews — remained in Palestine until the Babylonian invasion, which commenced in 604 B.C. Judah was deported to Mesopotamia. Seventy years later they returned to Palestine. In history they now became commonly known as “Israel” because they were the only descendants of Jacob — or Israel — now living in Palestine. The ten tribes — the House of Israel — became lost in the land of their exile.

Yeshua “came to his own” — the House of Judah, the Jews — “and his own received him not” (John 1:11). Yeshua was of the lineage of David, of the House of Judah. When his own people — the Jews — rejected him, he did not turn to the Gentiles. It was Paul who did.
Instead, Yeshua said to the Gentile woman: “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel” (Mat. 15:24).

To fulfill, later, that divine mission — for Yeshua was soon slain on Golgotha to pay for the sins of the world — he commissioned his twelve disciples. They were commanded: “Go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.”

They did go, but history has lost sight of where they went! Their journeys have been shrouded in mystery — until now!
What New Testament Reveals

The history of the early New Testament church is preserved in the book of Acts. But have you ever noticed that Acts ends in the middle of the story? Luke doesn’t even finish the life of Paul after his two-years’ imprisonment in Rome ended!

Why?

You will find the answer in the Messiah’s commission to Paul. Even before Paul was baptized, the Messiah had planned the future work he was to accomplish. First, Paul was to teach the Gentiles — which he did in Cyprus, Asia Minor and Greece. Second, he was to appear before kings — an event brought about by a two-year imprisonment at Rome. At the end of that two-year period, during which no accusers had appeared, Paul would automatically have been released according to Roman law. It is at this point that Luke strangely breaks off the story of Paul’s life. See Acts 28:31.
But Paul’s third mission was not yet accomplished! The Messiah had chosen Paul for a threefold purpose — “to bear (his) name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15). There is the answer. He, too, was to end his work among the Lost Ten Tribes!

Luke was not permitted by the Messiah to include in Acts the final journeys of Paul’s life. It would have revealed the whereabouts of the children of Israel!
It was not then YEHOVAH God’s time to make that known. But the moment has now come, in this climactic “time of the end,” to pull back the shroud of history and reveal where the twelve apostles went.

Three MISSING Words

Now turn to the book of James. To whom is it addressed? Read it: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting” (first verse).

You probably never noticed that before. This book is not addressed to the Gentiles. It is not addressed exclusively to Judah — the Jews. It is addressed to all twelve tribes. To the House of Judah and to the House of Israel — the Lost Ten Tribes.

Have you ever noticed that the letter of James, like the book of Acts, ends abruptly, without the normal salutations? Read it — James 5:20.
Compare it with Paul’s epistles. In the original inspired Greek New Testament everyone of Paul’s letters ends with an “Amen.” Everyone of the four gospels ends with an “Amen.” The book of Revelation ends with an “Amen.”

This little word “Amen,” of Hebrew derivation, signifies completion. In the Authorized Version (most modern versions are incorrect, and in several instances carelessly leave off the proper ending found in the Greek) every one of the New Testament books ends with an “Amen” except three — Acts, James and II John. In these three, and these three only, the word “Amen” is not in the inspired original Greek. It is purposely missing. Why?
Each missing “Amen” is a special sign. It indicates YEHOVAH God wants us to understand that certain missing knowledge was not to be made known to the world — until now, when the gospel is being sent around the world as a final witness before the end of this age.

YEHOVAH purposely excluded from the book of Acts the final chapters in the history of the early true Church. If they had been included, the identity and whereabouts of Israel and the true Church would have been revealed! It is part of YEHOVAH’s plan that the House of Israel should lose its identity and think itself Gentile.

If the book of James had ended with the ordinary salutation, the nations of Israel would have been disclosed. Paul often ends his letters with names of places and people. See the last verses of Romans, Colossians, Hebrews, for example. This is the very part missing, purposely, from James!

And why was the short letter of III John missing an “Amen”? Let John himself tell us, “I had many things to write: but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee” (verse 13). John reveals, in the letter, a pagan conspiracy. It was a diabolical attempt by Simon Magus and his false apostles to seize the name of the Messiah, gain control of the true Church, and masquerade as “Christianity.” YEHOVAH God did not permit John to make known, in plain language, the names of the leaders of that conspiracy, and the city of their operation. That is why John cut his letter short. The missing “Amen” is to tell us to look elsewhere in the Bible for the answer. It is described, if you have eyes to see, in Revelation 17, Acts 8 and many other chapters of the Bible. the time to unmask that conspiracy is now (II Thessalonians 2), just before the return of the Messiah.

But to return, for a moment, to the letter of James.

Wars Reveal Where

From James 4:1 we learn that wars were being waged among the lost tribes of Israel. “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” asks James.
What wars were these? No wars existed among the Jews until the outbreak, several years later, of the revolt against the Romans.

These wars absolutely identify the lost House of Israel — the lands to which the twelve apostles journeyed. James wrote his book about A.D. 60 (he was martyred some years later according to Josephus). The world was temporarily at peace — cowed by the fear of Roman military might. Just prior to A.D. 60 only two areas of the world were torn by wars and civil fightings. When you discover which areas these were, you will have located where the Lost Ten Tribes, addressed by James, were then living! All one need do is search the records of military history for the period immediately before and up to the year A.D. 60! The results will shock you! Those two lands were the British Isles (with unrest and actual fighting breaking out in A.D. 60 when the Iceni under Boudicea revolted) and the Parthian Empire!

But these were not the only lands to which the exiled House of Israel journeyed. Turn, in your Bible, to I Peter.

To Whom Did Peter Write?

To whom did Peter address his letters?

Here it is. “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (I Peter 1:1).
These were not Gentiles. Peter was not the apostle to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:8). Paul was. Peter was chief apostle to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.

Notice the word “strangers.” It does not mean Gentiles. The original Greek is parepidemos. It means “a resident foreigner,” literally, “an alien alongside.” It refers not to Gentiles, but to non-Gentiles who dwelt among Gentiles, as foreigners and aliens. Abraham, for example, was a stranger, an alien, when he lived among the Canaanite Gentiles in Palestine.

Peter was addressing part of the lost ten tribes who dwelt among the Gentiles as aliens or strangers. He was not writing primarily to Jews. He would not have addressed them as “strangers,” for he himself was a Jew.

Now notice the regions to which Peter addressed his letter. You may have to look at a Bible map to locate them. They are all located in the northern half of Asia Minor, modern Turkey. These lands lay immediately west of the Parthian Empire!

Paul did not preach in these districts. Paul spent his years in Asia Minor in the southern, or Greek half. “Yea, so have I strived,” said Paul, “to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation” (Romans 15:20). Paul did not preach in the areas where Peter and others of the twelve apostles had carried the gospel.

Nowhere in your New Testament can you find Paul preaching in Pontus, or Cappadocia, or Bithynia. These regions were under the jurisdiction of Peter and certain of the twelve.

Paul did spread the gospel in the province of Asia — but only in the southern half, in the districts around Ephesus. Paul was expressly forbidden to preach in Mysia, the northern district of the Roman province of Asia. “After they” — Paul and his companions — “were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered (permitted) them not. And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas” (Acts 16:7,8). Those were the regions in which the lost sheep of the House of Israel dwelt as strangers among the Gentiles!

Paul did preach, on his first journey, in southern Galatia, in the cities of Iconium, Lystra, Derbe (Acts 14). But nowhere in the New Testament do you find Paul journeying into northern Galatia — the area to which Peter addresses his letter to the tribes of Israel!

Remnant of Ten Tribes on Shores of Black Sea

Notice the historical proof — confirming Peter’s letters — that a remnant of the House of Israel was settled on the shores of the Black Sea in northern Asia Minor in early New Testament times.

Greek writers, in the time of the Messiah, recognized that the regions of northern Asia Minor were non-Greek (except for a few Greek trading colonies in the port cities). New peoples, the Greeks tell us, were living in northern Asia Minor in New Testament times. Here is the surprising account of Diodorus of Sicily: “…many conquered peoples were removed to other homes, and two of these became very great colonies: the one was composed of Assyrians and was removed to the land between Paphlagonia and Pontus, and the other was drawn from Media and planted along the Tanais (the River Don in ancient Scythia — the modern Ukraine, north of the Black Sea, in southern Russia).” See book II, s. 43.

Notice the areas from which these colonies came — Assyria and Media. The very areas to which the House of Israel was taken captive! “So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day” (II Kings 17:23). “The king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes” (verse 6).

The House of Israel dwelt in captivity as aliens or strangers among the Assyrians. When the Assyrians were later removed from their homeland to northern Asia Minor, part of the House of Israel migrated with them!

Here’s the proof from Strabo, the geographer. Strabo named the colonists in northern Asia Minor “White Syrians” (12, 3, 9), instead of Assyrians. There were therefore, two peoples — Assyrians and White Syrians. Who were these so-called “White Syrians”? None other than the House of Israel which had been carried into Assyrian captivity.

“Syria” was the Greek name for the whole eastern Mediterranean coastal strip north of Judea. Because the House of Israel lived in Palestine — southern Syria in Greek terminology — the Greeks called them “White Syrians.” By contrast, the dark-complexioned Arameans remained in Syria and dwelt there to this day.

When the Assyrians were compelled to migrate to Northern Asia Minor, their former slaves — the “White Syrians” or ten-tribed House of Israel — migrated with them! We find them still there in New Testament times. To these people — the lost sheep of the House of Israel — the strangers among the Assyrians (I Peter 1:1) — the apostle Peter addresses his first letter! Could anything be plainer? The chief apostle to the House of Israel writing to a part of the ten lost tribes dwelling among the Assyrians who originally carried then captive!

We shall see later when and where these “lost sheep” migrated from Asia Minor to Northwest Europe.
Now to draw back the curtain of history and see where each of the twelve apostles preached. You’ll be amazed at the revelation.

What Greek Historians Report

Why is it that almost no one has thought of it before? If multitudes of Greeks in Southern Asia Minor were being converted to the Messiah by the ministry of Paul, and at the same time multitudes among the lost ten tribes of the House of Israel were being converted in northern Asia Minor, should not those Greeks have left the record of which of the twelve apostles carried the gospel there?
Consider this also. the Greeks have not lost the Greek New Testament. They have handed it down from generation to generation. Is it not just as likely that Greek scholars should have preserved the true account of the ministry of the twelve apostles?

They have done just that!

Yet almost no one has believed them!

What the Greeks report is not what most people expect to find! Some, who do not understand the difference between the House of Israel and the Jews, imagine the apostles went exclusively to Jews. Even some of those who know where the House of Israel is today often cannot believe that several of the tribes of Israel were not, in the apostles’ day, where they are today.

Scholars have long puzzled over the remarkable information which the Greeks have handed down. These historical reports of the apostles are altogether different from the spurious apocryphal literature of the early Roman Catholic Church. Greek historians, in the early Middle Ages, have left us information from original documents that apparently are no longer extant. They had firsthand sources of information not now available to the scholarly world. What do those Greek historians report?

One valuable source of information is the Greek and Latin Ecclesiasticae Historiae of Nicephorus Callistus. Another, in English, is Antiquitates Apostolicae by William Cave.

Universal Greek tradition declares that the apostles did not leave the Syro-Palestinian region until the end of twelve years’ ministry. The number 12 symbolizes an organized beginning. Before those twelve years were up one of the apostles was already dead — James, the brother of John. He had been beheaded by Herod (Acts 12). But where did the remaining apostles go?

Simon Peter in Britain!

Begin with Simon Peter. Peter was made by the Messiah the chief among the twelve apostles to coordinate their work. Of necessity Peter would be found traveling to many more regions than he would personally be ministering to. The question is where did he spend most of his time?
We know Peter was for a limited time at Babylon in Mesopotamia, from which he wrote the letters to the churches in Asia Minor (I Peter 5:13).
Babylon was the major city from which the apostles in the east worked. Similarly Paul and the evangelists under him used Antioch in Syria as their chief city (Acts 14:26). The order in which Peter, in verse one of his first epistle, named the provinces of Asia Minor — from east to west and back — clearly proves that the letter was sent from Babylon in the east, not Rome in the west. Rome did not become designated as “Modern Babylon” until the Messiah revealed it, much later, after Peter’s death, in the book of Revelation, chapter 17.

Where did Peter spend most of his time after those first twelve years in Palestine?

Metaphrastes, the Greek historian, reports “that Peter was not only in these Western parts” — the Western Mediterranean — “but particularly that he was a long time” — here we have Peter’s main life work to the Lost Ten Tribes — “…a long time in Britain, where he converted many nations to the faith.” (See marginal note, p. 45, in Cave’s Antiquitates Apostolicae.)

To Continue with this article go to Where Did the Apostles Go? Pt2