A Jewish family being taken by Nazis during the Holocaust.
(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.
Article originally posted here.