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228

HISTORIC GROWTH OF MAN.

The Jews were carried captive to Babylon, 586 B. C. Seventy years later they were returned under the proclamation of Cyrus. Ezra and Nehimiah, their leaders, report only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin with the Levites as returning.

What became of the lost tribes? Many students of history believe that the Anglo-Saxons in England and America, with the Norse nations, are the direct descendants of these tribes. For they have the same characteristics, and answer the graphic descriptions of prophecy.

Two hundred verses of the prophets assert in the

most positive manner that PEOPLE FROM ALL THE

TWELVE TRIBES SHALL RETURN TO PALESTINE and

make that a central and model nation. Only onefourth part of the new nation will be Jews, if the prophecies are true. If the Jews become a nation there without the other tribes, then the prophecies are false. In the small plan of the city the places for Jews are left light and the department of the nine other tribes are shaded.   See page 203.

The Master of Nazareth chose twelve apostles "to sit upon twelve thrones and rule the twelve tribes of Israel. " For each tribe had a prince in ancient times. See Matthew, nineteenth chapter. These apostles stood for the "twelve foundations," of the home, arts, letters, science, culture, marriage, religion, familism, rulership, industry, wealth and commerce. In the New Testament it says that twelve thousand of each of the tribes will be sealed for the city. This " 144,000 stood with the Lamb on Mount Zion, " which is in Jerusalem.

Christ stood for all these basic things, these funda

mental truths ; else his kingdom and its magnificent

promises were only hollow mockeries. That kingdom

was to take the place of all others. And from that

remarkable prophecy in Isaiah Ninth we know that

the Messiah was to sit "upon the throne of his father,

David, to order it and to establish it with justice and

with judgment forever. " The kingdom of David

was a literal one; it included all the legal and political functions of any government. It was a serious mistake for Christians to imagine that the prophets foretold only a "spiritual " kingdom, with its rule only in the hearts of his followers. Truly the kingdom will be spiritual ; it will embody a greater number of spiritual laws than the Christian world has yet -recognized. But it will also be literal, external, material ; else the strong Hebrew language is incapable of expressing such an idea. The Bible salvation was to save men from all the great evils of this world.

The most wonderful of all Bible discoveries is this which shows us that when the plan of the New Jerusalem is laid on the head, every tribe comes over that group of brain faculties which formed its ruling traits of character. The tribes form a group of three for each of the four sides. The sciences of geometry and arithmetic prove that this exact placing of all the tribes over the faculties could not occur except as a result of an intelligent design; that those beings who gave the plan to the prophets must have known where all of these faculties were located in the brain, and that therefore the kingdom and its capital city were planned to represent the twelve kinds of wants which arise from these faculties. In the whole range of science there is no truth which is more definitely

RETURNING TRIBES.

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