The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel will Definitely Return! (ch.11 of Akiva and Ephraim by Alexander Zephyr)
“You are My servant. I have chosen you, and not cast you away. Thou art My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee” (Isaiah 41:9; 49:3, 15). Amos 9:9, “For, Lo, I will command and I will sift the House of Israel among all nations like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth”.
To us, this situation is very upsetting. Most of the rabbis and scholars believe that there is no such thing as hundreds of millions of Israelites from the Ten Tribes still in exile. They use a form of “Replacement Theory” which basically holds that the concept of the Ten Tribes is a myth and fairy story; that back in history the Ten Tribes had already returned to the Promised Land (in the time of the Prophets Jeremiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah), and that the Jewish People, Judah, is Biblical Israel representing all the Twelve Tribes; and all future prophecies of re-unification and redemption in the End Days pertain to them. These statements are very far from the Biblical truth!
Let our great Sage R. Nachmanides answer on this nonsense:
”They are referred in a general sense as from Israel (2 Chronicles 35:18) and not by their specific tribes since they represented only a small portion of their tribe. These are they who returned under Ezra with the Jews from Babylon. They were not expressly mentioned by their tribes since they were attached to Judah. They all settled in the cities of Judah. There was no Redemption for the Ten Tribes who remained in exile” (Sefer HaGeulah, The Book of Redemption). That is why in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah only families of Judah, Benjamin, and Levy were listed. R. Nachmanides gave a strict clear answer to those who deny the existence of the Ten Tribes in exile: “There was no Redemption for the Ten Tribes who remained in exile”!
Here are some more quotes on this subject.
Malbim (1809-1879): "In the future God will ingather the Ten Tribes who were in faraway lands and did not return in the time of the Second Temple".
Abarbanel (1435-1509): "The Ten Tribes will return to Samaria and its daughter-regions and so will the scattered dispersion of Judah be gathered in from the four corners of the earth. There is no doubt that this promised ingathering will occur in the Times of the Messiah. Until now it has never been fulfilled".
The question before these great Rabbis was whether the Ten Tribes will ever return to the Promised Land, not whether they had ever returned. “Mine eyes are upon all their ways; they are not hid from My face” (Jeremiah 16:17). This is God speaking of the Ten Tribes!
And here too: “I will say to them which were not My people, you are My people; and they shall say, You are my God” (Hosea2:23).
"Judah must seek to bring the Lost Ten Tribes back. God makes the participation of Judah in the process of returning the Lost Ten Tribes a prior condition for the rehabilitation of Judah herself", says the creator and editor-in-Chief of the Brit-Am/Hebrew Nations Movement of the Ten Tribes, Yair Davidiy, from Jerusalem, who has devoted his life to find, identify, and make the “˜Lost” Ten Tribes (and Judah) aware of their ancestry.
The idea that the Jewish People are obliged by the Almighty to teach these Israelites Torah and bring their lost brothers and sisters of the Ten Tribes back to the Promised Land finds its full support in the Tanakh, Talmud, and Rabbinical literature.
Regarding the future redemption, the Midrash (Yalkut Shimeoni on Song of Solomon 1:16) states: “The Ten Tribes who were exiled beyond the Sambation River are they whom the exiled of Judah and Benjamin are destined to go unto and to bring them back in order to merit with them the days of the Messiah and life in the World-to-Come, as it says. “˜In those days the House of Judah shall go unto the House of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land I have given for an inheritance unto their fathers” (Jeremiah 3:18).
To all deniers of the existence of the Ten Tribes still in Exile and their future return, commencing from “˜the citizens of Jerusalem” of old in Ezekiel 12:15 who were saying, “Get you far from the LORD: unto us is this land given in possession”; including R. Akiva, to rabbis, scholars, and many other skeptics and scoffers, to all of them Almighty God of Israel responds:
“Although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come. I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:15-20)!!
The Divine presence of God and His Glory, the Shekhinah, always follows the Ten Tribes in Exile and “˜hovers over Israel like a mother over her children”. "Wheresoever they were exiled, the Shekhinah went with them" (Megillah 29a). The Twelve Tribes of Israel will be restored and redeemed and become again one nation and there will be one King, the Messiah, Son of David. The House of Israel will be no more divided into two nations. Together, they will become one nation of Priests, a Light to the World. Together, they will merit life in the Messianic Kingdom and in the wonderful, everlasting Heavenly World-to-Come, the purpose of all Creation, the ultimate destination for a spiritually regenerated Humanity. The Hebrew Bible has plenty of passages which go in accordance with this statement. All skeptics ought to know the truth and change their position about The Ten Tribes of Israel in Exile and their future return to the Almighty God of Israel and to the Promised Land. "It is forbidden to be amongst those who deny the Redemption of the Ten Tribes"!
And one last thing for thought: "He who announces the Messianic time based on calculation forfeits his own share in the future" (R. Jose, in Derek Erez Rabbah xi.).
Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher (1788-1860) rightfully noted, “All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident”.
Alexander Zephyr