Acts 26: 6-7

by John L. Steely

To the CHRISTIAN PREACHER

You are standing in the door of your church
saying goodbye to the folks after your Sunday sermon
when a stranger shakes your hand,
gives you a sealed envelope and walks on.

As soon as you can you go to your study to see what is in the envelope.

A contribution?
He would probably have put that in the collection plate.

A prayer request?

You open the envelope

It says.

"Pastor,
I challenge you to prepare and preach a sermon on two verses of the Bible.

"Acts 26: 6-7."

"What?
Some kind of nut?"

You have preached dozens,
maybe a hundred sermons from the book of Acts in your thirty years in the ministry.
Never a problem there.

And you start to throw the note away.

But you turn to the Book of Acts and read from the twenty-sixth chapter,
verses six and seven,
where the Apostle Paul is addressing King Agrippa.

Acts 26:6 "And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God to our fathers.
Acts 26:7 Unto which promise our twelve tribes,
earnestly serving God day and night, hope to come.
For which hope’s sake, King Agrippa, I am accused by the Jews."

"Ha!"
you say.
"What kind of sermon would that make?"
And you begin to question the sanity of the stranger who gave you the note.

But from force of habit you begin to analyze the verses.
First, define and identify the terms - -
'St. Paul.’ Easy enough.
‘King Agrippa.’ King Herod
Agrippa II, according to your Bible Dictionary;
son of King Herod Agrippa I.
‘Our twelve tribes.’
H’mm.
Wait a minute.
Our twelve tribes!

And little feelings—faint adumbration’s—tiny fingers of fear begin to form in your chest.

"OUR TWELVE TRIBES."
These were descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob,
who was renamed Israel.
They were Israelites!
Hebrews!
God’s Chosen Race!

But most of them disappeared more than over 2700 years ago
following the Assyrian deportations in 721 B.C.!
The lost Ten Tribes! 

Over 750 years before Paul made this statement to King Agrippa,
Yet, Paul says they are still in existence!
"What?"

And the ‘Jews’ . . Panic now.
Full blown fear.
THE JEWS . . They are NOT part of the twelve tribes!
Which means the members of the twelve tribes are NOT Jews. .
and the Jews are NOT Israelites!

"Help me, help me!
I don’t want to know all this!
If I preach this I’ll lose my job.
I’ll be run out of the Church.
I’ve taught for years that the Jews are the chosen race.
I can’t admit this.
It can’t be true."

"I’LL check it out!"

You calm down somewhat,
and begin a more careful exegesis,
hoping, oh, hoping, to prove your discovery wrong,
and hoping that the stranger was really a nut.

But you think of the first epistle of James,
which the brother of Christ addressed
‘to the twelve tribes scattered abroad.
You check the date.
It was written before Titus sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D.,
and so was Acts 26: 6-7.
No help! No help!

You remember that Christ rejected the Jews.
‘You are of your father, the devil.’
And,
‘You are not of my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice and follow me.’

You are getting sick.
You recall that Jesus told his disciples to ‘go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.’
"Oh, why didn’t they straighten this out in the seminary?’

So, what was the House of Israel?
You remember.
The Northern Kingdom.
That’s right.
After King Solomon died,
his son Rehoboam caused the nation of Israel—the twelve tribes—to split into two nations.
The tribes of Judah and Benjamin and some Levites became the ‘House of Judah,’
the Southern Kingdom, with Jerusalem as its Capital.
And the other tribes went North and formed the ‘House of Israel,’
with Samaria as its Capital.
You remember that there were actually thirteen tribes
because the inheritance of Jacob’s son,
Joseph, was divided between his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.

You look at the clock.
You have to go home for lunch and rest up for the evening service.
You hope it isn’t UN-Christian to curse the stranger with the crazy note.

But your mind won’t quit.
Somehow you know that your whole life has changed—in the twinkling of an eye!

You turn to the Old Testament.
What happened to the tribes?
You read again from Chapters 17, 18, and 19 of the Second Book of Kings
that as the result of a series of assaults by Assyrian Kings.
Not only the tribes of the Northern Kingdom were forcibly relocated
South of the Caucasus Mountains
‘in Halah and Habor by the river of Gozan and the cities of the Medes,’
but members of the Southern tribes were taken also.

‘Sennacherib, King of Assyria,
came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.’ (2 K 18:13)
..Only Jerusalem, Judah’s capital was spared. (2 K 19: 32-34)

"But, wait a minute.
Don’t they say that 150 or so years later the Southern Kingdom
was taken captive to Babylon and the remnant
that returned to rebuild Jerusalem seventy years after that included all the tribes?"
In desperation you check.

No luck. Ezra 1:5 and 4:1
specifically mention that the tribes of Judah and Benjamin came back from Babylon.
The Bible checks out.
You are dead!
Members of all twelve tribes were scattered abroad.

But you look and look.
You can’t give up.
"Wasn’t Moses a Jew?
The Bible doesn’t say so.
You were sure it did.
"The Book of Revelation-the 144,000?"
They are all of tribes of Israel but the Bible doesn’t call them Jews.
It was you who called them that.

You find the word ‘Jew’
appears for the first time in 2 K 16:6,
where the Southern Kingdom are fighting the Israelites in the North.

You look the word up in the Concordance.
It should have been translated ‘Judean’ or ‘Judahite.’
It meant a member of the tribe of Judah
or
a citizen of the Kingdom of Judea.

The word was never applied to the Northern Kingdom.
"Why didn’t my professors tell me that?"

You remember that the birthright promises of a great nation
and a company of nations were transmitted by Jacob
to Ephraim and Manasseh.

You begin to think.
"How could these promises
—the very promises which Paul and the twelve tribes were hoping for—
possibly be fulfilled if Ephraim and Manasseh,
who were transported by the Assyrians,
become extinct?
The Jews never fulfilled these promises.
Why did I never see that?"

You are still sick.
You are getting deeper.

You read aloud the book of Hosea.
It talks about the captured Israelites.
"I will say to them who were not my people,
"Thou art my people’; and they shall say, "Thou art my God,’
and they shall no more be remembered by their name."

"Ah!
They will have a new name.
Not ‘Jew,’ not Hebrew…, not Israelite. – Christian!"
You read the 8th, 10th and 11th chapters of the book of Romans.
They now make sense.
Paul is talking about the cast off,
punished tribes of the house of Israel!
"Thus will all Israel be saved.’
"Of course, of course."

You see Hebrews 8:10.
The New Covenant.
For this is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after those days,
saith the Lord.
I will put my laws into their mind,
and write them in their hearts;
and I will be to them a God,
and they shall be to me a people.
Christians!
Not Jews, Christians.

Not the Jews, who in two thousand years have not heard his Voice and followed Him,
because THEY ARE NOT HIS SHEEP!

But who are these Christians—the true Israelites—the chosen Race of God?
Where are they today?
You know who they are.
You are almost paralyzed from fear of the truth,
but you know who they are.

You go home,
eat a few bites and try to sleep.

In a few days you receive an anonymous gift.
It is a book.
"Judah’s Scepter and Joseph’s Birthright,"
by Bishop James Allen (1906)

You learn that God’s people migrated,
tribe by tribe,
out of the Caucasus where the Assyrians had placed them;
the very people who are now called Caucasians.

You learn that God’s people
—the Israelites--
became the progenitors of the White Christian nations of the world today.

You understand that by Christ’s time the inhabitants of Judea
—the Jews—
were a mixed lot,
most of whom Christ rejected.

You learn that the Holy Bible is the story of one race,
that it is Christian from beginning to end,
for the first time in your life you are beginning to understand it.

You pray.
A voice in your mind says,
‘Do not fear.
Put on my armor.
Feed my sheep.
Tell my people the truth.’

And slowly,
reluctantly,
but with courageous resolve,
you prepare a sermon on verses six and seven of the
twenty-sixth chapter of the Book of Acts.

see bolow

The northern kingdom, "House of Israel", along with many from the southern kingdom, "House of Judah" were taken by Assyria, in 721 BC well over eight hundred thousand Israelite men  2 Samuel 24:1 - 9 and their families from ten different tribes (2 Kings 17, 18, and 19.)  In 2 Kings 19:32-34 we learn that only Jerusalem was spared.

(All total approximately 1,300,000 men plus their wives and children were carried away)

Live Link to-  "Do you know who you really are?"
Are you a Israelite?
Be thoughtful before you answer.
(Maybe you only think you're a Gentile!)

"In the days" of the Branch, the Savior. This day is the day of His second coming. The word "our" is very special because it is a gift from God to ourselves. This is the only righteousness that you will ever have, because our deeds to him are as filthy rags. In the Hebrew tongue it is; "Yehovah Zidkenu".

Jeremiah 23:7 "Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that they shall no more say, The LORD liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;"

In that day they will not be talking about the delivery from the bondage from Egypt.

Jeremiah 23:8 "But, The LORD liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land."

Notice that that the two houses are separate here, the House of Israel, which were the ten tribes to the north of the House of Judah. The House of Judah comprised the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Today some of Judah has returned to Jerusalem, and the tiny nation called Israel. However the House of Israel has not returned to Palestine, nor will they until Christ has come and we have changed from our flesh bodies to our spiritual incorruptible bodies.

This delivery is new and to this day it shall not come to pass until the Millennium age. In that time all evil rudiments will be removed from us, and the nations and peoples will dwell in their own lands. Today part of the remnant of the House of Judah has returned and we refer to this time as the generation of the fig tree.

Read  all of Jeremiah 23

The Jews in that little country in middle east call themselves Israelis; They are a mixed lot. Some are indeed descendant of Judah, many are Kenites (Jesus addresses them in John chapter 8 verse 44).

Jesus is now going to identify exactly who these Kenite Pharisees are.

John 8:44 "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him, When he spaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

Do you know who the devil is? The devil is Satan, and he goes by many names. In Revelation12:9; "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world;" In the Garden of Eden Satan was called the "old serpent, and the tree of good and evil"

Jesus is telling these Kenites that there father is the devil, who is also called Satan, the dragon, or any of his other names that Satan has because of the roles he has played. Jesus is telling these Kenites that the lust, and murder in your heart is inborn from your father Satan, and you are driven in your spirit to do murder because Satan is your father.

This is how we know Jesus could not be speaking to the brethren of the house of Judah, for their lineage is not of Satan, this is what the plan of God is all about. Keeping the lineage pure that the coming Messiah would be born from. That is why Noah was saved from the flood, as we are told in Genesis 6:9 "THESE ARE THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH; Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations,..." In the Hebrew text the word for "perfect" is "tamim", which means "without blemish, as to breed or pedigree". Noah's blood line was pure.

Jesus is making it simple, now who was the murderer from the beginning? Most small children could answer that, it was Cain. Genesis 4:8; "And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, And slew him." Cain was a murderer from, or in the beginning.

Jesus is telling it just as it is, The "Kenites" are the children [offspring by lineage] of the devil, through Cain. Jesus identified both Satan, and Cain as being their father. So why is it any secret that they would try to murder Christ, they are just like their fathers Cain and Satan.

I Chronicles 2:55; "And the families of the scribes which dwelt at Jabez [Jerusalem]; the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, and Suchathites. These are the Kenites that came of Hemath,the father of the house of Rechab.

The lineage of Rechab is not of Israel, and those men (Pharisees) standing before Jesus here are the offspring of the Rechab not Jacob or Judah. The duties of the scribes and the priests had been taken over in Babylon, some five centuries prior to Christ's birth.

This then gets into what happened in the Garden of Eden between Eve and Satan. For what came out of that sexual relationship union was a child, and not apple seeds and apples. The leaves were fig leaves, and not apple tree leaves, and Eve covered her private parts, and not a mask to cover her mouth. As Paul said, Satan wholly seduced Eve in the garden, and from that union came Cain.

Genesis 3:15 "And I [God] will put enmity between thee [Satan] and the woman [Eve]. and between thy seed [the Kenites] and her Seed [Jesus Christ]; It [Christ] shall bruise thy [Satan's] head, and thou [Satan] shalt bruise His [Christ's] heel."

Most learned "men of God" acknowledge that Genesis 3:15 is talking about the death of Jesus Christ, when He was nailed to the cross for our sins. They recognize that "seed" is referring to the children of the woman "Eve", yet somehow they just want to spiritualize everything else that happened in the Garden of Eden between Eve and the two men [Satan and Adam]. The"seed" in the Hebrew is called "Zirmah", and in the Greek it is "sperma". In the English we call it "sperm", and Strong's Hebrew Dictionary # 2233; "Posterity, carnally, child, fruitful". Friend, it simply can not be any clearer. The seed of Satan's "posterity" are the Kenites through Cain, while Adam's posterity is in Christ who is of the pure bloodline through Seth.

In Strong's Hebrew dictionary, numbered to the King James Bible; # 7014, and the word is"Kenite": "Qayan, Kah'-yin; The name of the first child, of an oriental tribe:-Cain, Kenite." Now lets take the name "Kenites" [the family], # 7017, "Qeyniy, kay-nee', a Kenite or member of the tribe of Kajin:-Kenite."

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah detail how the duties of the Levitical priests had been taken over by these Kenites [Nethinims-foreigners] from top to bottom, and their plot existed then to kill Nemehiah. It was not sucessful, for Nemehiah finally figured out who was setting the trap for Him.

When Jesus was warning our Generation of what to look out for in the end times, He compelled us to "learn the parable of the fig tree", so we would not be deceived in the later days [Matthew 24:32]. The roots of the parable are in the Garden of Eden, and they deal with the sexual affair between Eve and Satan, and out of it came a son named Cain. Cain's offspring have tried to attach themselves to the lineage of Adam, and Abraham all through the years. When you understand who these people of Hamath are, and that they are not of Abraham, Jacob, Judah or any part of Israel, then you are starting to understand the "parable of the fig tree".

If this disturbs you too much, then put this study down, for you are not intended to understand, and just go back to Buddha, Ishtar, or where ever you were that makes you feel good or gives you an emotional high. However if you desire to study deeper into this, Matthew 13 gives several parables relating to the parable of the fig tree, or [tares] and then from verses 36 to 43 Jesus explains the parables to His disciples. This is the key to understanding much of the Scriptures.

Jesus disciples came to him in private and asked Jesus to explain the parables to them, for they just didn't understand them. Lets start here with Matthew 13:35; "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, saying, "I will open my mouth in parable; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world." These parables reveal things that are secrets that have been kept from the very foundation of the world. The explaining of the parables starts in verse 36. It is explaining the meaning of each part of His parables, that will apply to all of the parables here.

Matthew 13:36: "Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto Him, saying, "Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field."

Live Link to- The Parables of the Sower and The Tares 

Jesus declared that to us; remember that truth is what sets you free.

Matthew 13:37; "He answered and said unto them, "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man:"

This is not a parable, but Jesus is explaining one to the disciples. 

Matthew 13:38; "The field is the world; and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;"

Jesus is talking about this world age of the flesh. Don't spiritualize this away. We are talking about people here, the children of God's kingdom, and the children of the wicked one [Satan]. The tares are the Kenites, the children of the wicked one.

Matthew 13:39; "The enemy that soweth them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels."

When you check out what the devil soweth in Strong's Greek dictionary, it is "sperma"; the devil who is Satan deposited male sperma into mother Eve. If this is hard to take and understand that an angel, which Satan is, had sperm; go back in Genesis 6 where many angels violated God's orders and these angels [sons of God] "came to earth to take the daughters of men to be their wives." From those marriages came some form of life that the translators called "children" [Nephilim]. How do you think that those women became pregnant if the sperm was not there?

The first two sons of Eve, Cain and Abel were twins, but not of the same father. Genesis 4:2 "And she again bare his brother Abel,..." "Again" in the Hebrew text is "yacaph", in the Strong's Hebrew Dictionary, # 3254; "(to continue to do a thing)". If Eve just gave birth to Cain, and she continues on giving birth, then she is having twins. Jesus told it rightly in John 8:44 where the lust and murder in the hearts of these Kenites came from.

Matthew 13:40 "As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world."

Matthew 13:41 "The son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things the offend, and them which do iniquity:"

Matthew 13:42 "And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."

Matthew 13:43 "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear."

This chapter of John is the only place in God's Word that Christ taught us of these Kenites, and made it this simple. So as we discussed above, Cain was the offspring of Satan, not Adam, and Cain's offspring are called "Kenites", and we are warned to be aware of them throughout the word of God.

Are we to destroy them? Definitely not, but they are part of all the Parables, especially dealing with the end times. Truth will set you free, and you are to become wiser then the serpent, and his people. Then you will not have the problems that you would otherwise have, because you have power over them. The spiritual battle is real, and we have the victory. The Kenites are part of God's overall plan, and we are to leave them alone, until the end when He will send angels to gather them up.

Not only had the Kenites mixed with Judah when Jesus walked this earth in the flesh; But their has been some further mixing going on since then.

See Live Link to->>>>  The Good Figs and the Bad Figs of  that Little Country in the Middle East that we call Israel Today.

They say they are Jew but are not.

 Rev 2:9 ...which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. & Rev 3:9...they are Jews, and are not, but do lie

 Therefore; To the end time church of Smyrna, The Lord says, Rev. 2:9  I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

is

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