(photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
LTRP Note: As our editors and authors have expressed clearly for 18 years, Lighthouse Trails loves the Jewish people and believes that the nation of Israel has significance in Bible prophecy. We are grateful for The Berean Call’s answer below. Over the last six years, four different sets of people (Lighthouse Trails Readers) have shown up at the Lighthouse Trails facility (from various regions of North America) who shared with us a disturbing “theory” (which is discussed below). We knew from the things they were saying it was an anti-Semitic view. One of the parties expressed outright hate for the Jews. It is hard to fathom how professing Christians would believe something that is so contrary to Scripture. We are thankful that most of the readers who contact Lighthouse Trails love the Jews and believe what the Bible says about the nation of Israel and her significance in Bible prophecy. For those who would like to know more about what Lighthouse Trails believes on this matter, read our article, “What Lighthouse Trails Believes About Israel and the Jews.”
Question Put to The Berean Call:
There seems to be an increasing belief among many Christians that the Jews in Israel and most of those around the world today are not real Jews descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but descendants of the Khazars who adopted the Jewish religion. Is this true? And also, didn’t most of Israel disappear when the ten tribes were lost, and weren’t the rest of the Jews lost through intermarriage?
Answer From The Berean Call:
No. It is true that the Khaganor ruler of the Khazars adopted Judaism for himself and his people in the eighth century, but these “Jews” by conversion were never confused with the ethnic Jews living among them. Furthermore, when the Khazar state was overthrown in 965, the Khazars fled and soon disappeared as a people through intermarriage. The last vestiges of the Khazars in the Crimea were wiped out in about 1016 by the Greeks and Russians. There is no evidence that the Khazars intermarried with the Jews to such an extent that Jews were lost as a people. Such a theory is unreasonable because only a small fraction of world Jewry was living among the Khazars.It is the Khazars who disappeared, and to suggest that all of the Jews all over the world were somehow absorbed by them or that they became known as Jews is neither logical nor supported by history. It is a myth that the Ashkenazim Jews of Russia and Europe are not real Jews but Khazars who migrated there when their country was overrun by invaders.As for the so-called “ten lost tribes,” that is another myth. They were not lost. We dealt with this question in the November 1992 newsletter . Both of these ideas are a form of anti-Semitism. Rather than putting the Jews in the ovens, they are exterminated by simply denying that those known as Jews are the descendants of Jacob.
No historic research is needed to recognize that all theories are false which deny that the Jews in Israel and around the world are real Jews from all twelve tribes. The Bible promises that Israel shall not cease from being a nation forever (Jer:31:35-36) and that Israel’s scattered survivors will return to their promised land where the Messiah will reign over His chosen people from the throne of His father David. We have the choice of believing the promises in God’s Word or these anti-Semitic theories.
Related Resources on the Jews and Israel from Lighthouse Trails
I wonder how/whether the “Berean Bible Church” – a misnomer if ever there were one – may be used by the forces of evil during the Tribulation…?
If you haven’t heard of them already, I wonder if you’d check them out now? Purportedly “Christian”, they are preterists; far more worryingly – although, perhaps, logically – they deny the historicity of the Holocaust and seem to hate the Jews and the nation of Israel.
Thanks for what you are doing.
God bless you… and God bless Israel!
All anti-Semitic theories come straight out of Hell. Satan hates Gods earthly people and he hates Gods Heavenly people. Satans plan is to exterminate both of them. Satan will not win. The Bible is clear about this. God’s watch-full care over a number of His ancient covenant people Israel, still “beloved for the fathers’ sakes (Romans 11:28), who are sealed for preservation amid the coming tribulation, in which they are to be faithful witnesses for God in the midst of unparalleled trial and suffering. This is the first vision of Revelation Chapter 7. The second vision in Chapter 7 tells of a vast unnumbered multitude of Gentiles, out of all nations are seen, who come out of the Great Tribulation, to stand before the Throne of God, and share millennial-blessing under Christ and His co-heirs who are in heaven. The Rapture of the Church has already taken place in Chapter 4. Before the tribulation sets in God here secures His own, and knows their number, so that not one of them will perish, for their names are in the Book of the life of the Lamb slain, inscribed there from the foundation of the world, as the heavenly people were before the world began(Eph. 1:4 /2Tim. 1:9). I just touched the surface of Gods plan in his Holy Word. Some people say the NWO has some rich Jews That are involved. I would call them Apostate fake Jews who have nothing but hatred towards God and His Son The Lord Jesus Christ. Study and Read your Bibles. How close is the Rapture?
I believe there are geneological blood tests that can determine which tribes a Jew is descended from. There were rabbis on my mother’s side many yrs. ago, so I think they were descended from the tribe of Levi. Some say that the Sephardic Jews from Spain were from the tribe of Judah. Mark Twain said in 1898, All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces passed, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?