“In the desert of Sinai, Moses gathered the
children of Israel at the foot of a mountain. There the Lord declared that he
wanted to turn this group of recently liberated slaves into a mighty people.
“Ye shall be unto me”, He said, “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation”
(Exodus 19:6). He promised that they would flourish and prosper, even when
surrounded by larger, more powerful enemies.
“All this would happen not because the
Israelites were numerous or strong or skillful. It would happen, the Lord
explained, if they would “obey [His] voice indeed, and keep [His] covenant”
(Exodus 19:5). God’s power, not their own, would make them mighty.
“Yet the Israelites didn’t always obey God’s
voice, and over time they stopped keeping His covenant. Many worshipped other
gods and adopted the practices of the cultures around them. They rejected the
very thing that made them a distinct nation – their covenant relationship with
the Lord. Without God’s power protecting them, there was nothing to stop
their enemies (see 2 Kings 17:6-7; 2 Chronicles 36:12-20).” (Jesus Will Say
to All Israel, Come Home, Come Follow Me For Home and Church, LDS Gospel
Library, month of July)
Before Israelites entered the promised land Moses prophesied they shall turn away from the
worship of Jehovah and as a consequence be utterly destroyed and scattered among
all nations (Deuteronomy 4:25-31).
This prophecy was fulfilled with the first
dispersion of the Ten Tribes of the Southern Kingdom of Israel in 724 B.C. The
King of Assyria besieged Samaria and after 3 years of the siege he carried the
Ten Tribes into captivity. A repentant
portion of the Ten Tribes were led away by God into the north countries and
will return at an appointed time. They are called the Ten Lost Tribes and are
spoken of in the Apocrypha (2 Esdras 13:41-46; Jeremiah 3:18; 16:15; 31:8; 1
Nephi 22:4; 3 Nephi 17:4).
The Kingdom of Judah was led into Babylon by
King Nebuchadnezzar in three main waves of exile: 1. 605 B.C. – all skilled and
educated and less evil which included Daniel and his three friends; 2. 597 B.C.
– the second and largest wave included the royal court and thousands of skilled
craftsmen; 3. 586 B.C. – the third and most devastating wave, following the siege
and destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple.
The fourth and final wave was the most horrific
of all. In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus prophesied to his disciples of the
destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (see Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). This
prophecy was fulfilled in 70 A.D. when Roman Emperor Titus marched into
Jerusalem.
And this is the interesting part. I always
thought that the Romans were the aggressors and villains who destroyed
Jerusalem but it would seem that Titus didn’t have such a big job to do. When
he arrived, he discovered that different factions of the Jewish population were
at each other’s throats, destroying their food supplies and basically killing
each other.
Titus summed up the situation beautifully. A
trench was dug around Jerusalem to ensure isolation and make it difficult for
people to get out past the walls to search for food. Whoever escaped the city was
crucified. When the food supplies ran
out, a terrible famine struck the once opulent city and turned it into a scene
of carnage and plunder. Even Titus was sick at heart at the daily horrors he
witnessed or heard of. As the temple became a fort, Titus attacked it as such.
It wasn’t long before fire was set to it and not one stone upon another was
left, as Jesus foretold. Six thousand people perished in the flames of the
temple and more than a million and a half of Jews perished in this war. Many
were also sold into slavery and thus ‘scattered among all nations’ (see Smith
and Sjodahl, Commentary, pp 260-261)
The scattering of the 12 Tribes of Israel is
the greatest tragedy of this earth’s history. To be promised so much and to
reject it defies logic. The scattering is also the greatest witness, bar the
Atonement, of Jehovah’s mercy. He has promised He will never break His covenant
with Israel (Deut 4:31; Leviticus 26:44,46; Isaiah 49:15,16; 2 Kings 13:23).
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