The Third Testament

Continuing the theme from yesterday, there is evidence that the when the ten tribes were lost they did indeed go north from the area of Palestine.  We know that around 722 BC, the Assyrians came and captured the land of Israel (i.e. the northern kingdom where the 10 tribes were): “In the ninth year of Hoshea 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.”  We read that “the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria” (2 Kings 17:6, 23).  Sargon II, the king of Assyria, apparently claimed to have taken 27,290 captives from the city of Samaria alone, and one writer suggested that “it may be that those taken captive by the Assyrians numbered in the hundreds of thousands.”  He continued, “These members of the Lord’s Other Tribes were taken away as colonists to the area of northwestern Mesopotamia, toward the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, there to await the time of their escape.” 

                That “escape” it appears was indeed to the land of the north.  They had to go north in order to come back from the north as Jeremiah prophesied: “In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers” (Jeremiah 3:18).  The greatest evidence for this is found in the book of Esdras from the Apocrypha where we read, “But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a further country, where never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep their statutes, which they never kept in their own land. And they entered into Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river. For the most High then shewed signs for them, and held still the flood, till they were passed over. For through that country there was a great way to go, namely, of a year and a half: and the same region is called Arsareth. Then dwelt they there until the latter time” (2 Esdras 13:41–46).  An early leader of the Church, Elder George Reynolds, said this about these travels of the lost tribes: “They determined to go to a country ‘where never man dwelt,’ that they might be free from all contaminating influences. That country could only be found in the north.  Southern Asia was already the seat of a comparatively ancient civilization; Egypt flourished in northern Africa; and southern Europe was rapidly filling with the future rulers of the world.  They had therefore no choice but to turn their faces northward.  The first portion of their journey was not however north; according to the account of Esdras, they appear to have at first moved in the direction of their old home; and it is possible that they originally started with the intention of returning thereto; or probably, in order to deceive the Assyrians, they started as if to return to Canaan, and when they crossed the Euphrates and were out of danger from the hosts of Medes and Persians, then they turned their journeying feet toward the polar star.”  And while Israel was ultimately scattered to be among all nations—Amos gave us these words of the Lord: “For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve”—there was some body which stayed together and went north (Amos 9:9).  They will one day return to Zion—i.e. the New Jerusalem—and the student institute manual referenced above suggests that part of the “rich treasures” that they will bring with them “will be the records, which they have kept all these centuries.  In them will be found the account of their miraculous escape from Assyria, their journey into the land to the north, their history, their prophets, and the appearance to them of the Savior after His Resurrection” (D&C 133:30).  What a great day that will be when we get that record—a third testament we might say—of the Savior and His Resurrection!