Page:David Baron – The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes.djvu/48

 surrounding nations, and having given up the distinctive national rites and ordinances, such as circumcision, the observance of the Sabbath, etc., they have, like many "Jews" in modern times (who gradually assimilate with Gentile nations), cut themselves off from the hope of Israel, and are no longer in the line of the purpose which God has in and through that "peculiar" and separate people.

In conclusion let me very briefly call your attention to the remarkable prophecy in Amos ix., which will show you that the view which I have enunciated in my letter is the only one in keeping with the sure word of prophecy.

The prophet Amos, though himself a Judean, his native village, Tekoa, being about twelve miles south of Jerusalem, was commissioned by God to prophesy more particularly to the northern or Ten-Tribed kingdom; and for that purpose he went and took up his abode in Bethel, which was the centre of the idolatrous worship set up by Jeroboam in opposition to the worship and service of the divinely-appointed sanctuary in Jerusalem. There his duty was to announce the coming judgment of God on the Israel of the Ten Tribes, on account of their apostasy. The last paragraph of his book (chap. ix. 8–15), uttered not more than about seventy years before the final overthrow of Samaria in B.C. 721, is one of the most remarkable and comprehensive prophecies in the Old Testament, and this is the inspired forecast of the history of the Ten-Tribed