LOST JEWS COMING HOME TO ISRAEL

It was reported this week that a large group from one of the "lost tribes" of Israel will soon be allowed to emigrate to Israel. There are more than 7,200 remaining members of the Bnei Menashe community. Their name means "children of Menasseh." They live in two of India's northeast states. The Jerusalem Post wrote this week that the Ministerial Committee on Immigration and Absorption has approved the bringing to Israel these remaining members.

The Bnei Menashe community claims that they are the descendents from the tribe of Menasseh, one of the ten tribes of Israel, often called the lost tribes, who were exiled the the Assyrians invaded Israel's northern kingdom in the 8th Century B.C. The tribe probably traveled through Persia, Tibet and China before arriving in India where they have existed relatively unknown until recently.

Why am I reporting this? As I have been writing my study on the prophet Zechariah for my new book, The God Who Remembers, I have found a key teaching there that is directly connected with this story. That is, God says very clearly that in the end time He will bring back His people from the far reaches of the earth to dwell in Israel. "I will signal for them and gather them in. Surely I will redeem them; they will be as numerous as before. Though I scatter them among the peoples, yet in distant lands they will remember me. They and their children will survive, and they will return" (Zechariah 10: 8f).

It can't be much clearer than that. These supposedly lost tribes have not been lost to God. He has known where every one of them has been through all these nearly 3,000 years. Now, He is sending out the signal to come back to the land of Israel. Surely, He is about to do something very significant in the near future. It is amazing and encouraging to our faith to see these evidences of prophecy come to fulfillment in our days.