One of the MANY benefits of reading through the ENTIRE Bible, especially in chronological order, is that it can correct overly simplistic views of the biblical narrative that we tend to pick up when we just pop in and read a text here and there. This is particularly true if you were raised in church and grew up going to Sunday School.

Of course a Sunday School teacher is not going to get into the granular details of the history and demographics of ancient Israel with a bunch of 8-10 year olds. Even if you were a little-miss-Sunday-school like me, it’s easy to reach adulthood with the impression that the break between the northern 10 tribes and the 2 southern tribes was a clean cut. It wasn’t any such thing.

There were people from tribes whose ancestral land was allotted in the north who lived in the territory of Judah and Benjamin and vice-versa. Just like, I was born in Missouri but I have lived in Texas and New Brunswick, Canada. I’ve travelled and visited many other states and countries. I have friends and family in various places. People move. For all kinds of reasons. It’s usually related to work.

I’ve seen nonsense spouted in print and on videos about “the lost tribes of Israel.” That is complete bunk. None of the tribes was ever “lost” as a whole unit.

Various Israelites assimilated over centuries into other people groups, both Jewish and Gentile. They moved around a lot within Israel. It wasn’t like living on a colored map.

It’s not like all the descendants of Issachar stayed only in that territory and when they got to the border of the land allotted to Zebulun there was a white border line on the ground and the dirt on Zebulun’s side of the line was blue while their’s was purple.

And I know we’re not that stupid, but I think that functionally, we kinda think that way.

And remember that the land of Simeon is surrounded by Judah, yet the southern kingdom is consistently referred to as “Judah and Benjamin” while we say “the northern 10 tribes” because there are 10. Count them. Simeon is number 13 and the Levites are 14. The “Twelve Tribes of Israel” ceased to be a thing after Jacob adopted Ephraim and Manasseh. It’s really, “The Fourteen Tribes of Israel.”

It’s far more nuanced than 2 in the south and 10 in the north and they all stay neatly in their borders and never leave them.

On the Day of Pentecost, LONG after the years of captivity and return and Greek and Roman rule, the Apostle Peter can refer to “all the house of Israel,” Acts 2:36. There is no end of content claiming to have “found a lost tribe of Israel” in Africa or among North American natives. And it’s very possible – likely even – that small (or even fairly large) groups of Israelites left the land and settled permanently elsewhere on the globe. But that’s different than an entire tribe being “lost.”

By the end of Solomon’s long, prosperous, peaceful reign, Israel was pretty deeply integrated. Were there still recognizable tribes? Yes. We know from the genealogies in Chronicles and Ezra that many had meticulously tracked their family trees. Perhaps they even married within their tribes. But there’s no way they all did.

Having said all that – let’s look at what happened with the Levites when Jeroboam reinvented the priesthood.

This map shows the 6 Levitical “cities of refuge.” Only 1 – Hebron – is within the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

“All the cities of the Levites among the property of the Israelites were forty-eight cities and their pasturelands.”
‭‭Joshua‬ ‭21‬:‭41‬ ‭LEB‬‬

“The allotment fell for the families of the Kohathites. The descendants of Aaron the priest, who were of the Levites, received by lot thirteen towns from the tribes of Judah, Simeon, and Benjamin.”
‭‭Joshua‬ ‭21‬:‭4‬ ‭LEB‬‬

Of all 48 cities designated for the Levites, 35 of them were in what became the northern kingdom and only 13 in the southern. Recall that the Levites would travel to Jerusalem on rotation to serve in and around the temple. They had stronger ties to Jerusalem than the average Israelite. The temple is also a significant piece of their livelihood and family identity. And because of the qualifications of ceremonial purification in order to access the temple and do their jobs – assisting in sacrifices, guarding the grounds, and musical worship – the Levites HAD to be more informed about the Law of Yahweh. If anyone in Israel was reading and doing the Law, it was the Levites.

So when Jeroboam sets up his phony priesthood, the Levites immediately recognize it as illegitimate.

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I’m gonna rabbit trail for a sec…

Let’s learn a couple $10 words, shall we?

Eschatology (es-cat-ology) and eschatological (es-cat-a-logical). See? That didn’t hurt at all.

The ology part you already know. Biology. Paleontology. Archeology. All the ologies… Ology comes from the Greek logos which is usually translated “word.” Jesus is the Logos of God. And logos is not just a word on a printed page or sounded out. It’s the thought, the ideas behind the word.

Bio-logos or biology means: the word, the thoughts and ideas about bios: which is Greek for “life.”

Eschatos is the Greek word for last.

Eschatology is the logos (word/ideas/thoughts) about eschatos: last things; things at the end.

Now – stay with me here…

The Levites – the true priesthood – recognized the phony priesthood and called it out. They were pushed out by the fake usurpers.

The New Covenant Community of those who are in Christ are called a “royal priesthood” and a “kingdom of priests” and “the temple of Holy Spirit.” And what warning does Jesus, the High Priest, give to His priesthood?

“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear, and will produce great signs and wonders in order to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭24‬:‭24‬ ‭LEB‬‬

Peter and John repeat this warning to the early saints. Beware of phony religious people – even ones who can pull off supernatural stuff. Don’t be tricked by it. And let’s look closely at what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians when they asked about the prophesied “man of sin,” the Antichrist.

“Do not let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and who exalts himself over every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits down in the temple of God, proclaiming that he himself is God.”
‭‭2 Thessalonians‬ ‭2‬:‭3‬-‭4‬ ‭LEB‬‬

The “day” he refers to is “the Day of the Lord” (v2); the return of Christ. I realize there are other views out there, but it seems to me (and many excellent scholars), that Paul is saying that the return of Christ does not occur until 2 things happen:

• A rebellion (of significant magnitude)
• The revealing of the Antichrist

The extent of this “revealing” is not exactly clear. It may be that his actions in establishing a phony system of worship cause the true priesthood of Jesus (the Church) to say, “Wait a minute. This is fake! We’re not going along with this.”

When Jeroboam the Antichrist sets up his phony priesthood, the Levites real Christians immediately recognize it as illegitimate.

And perhaps, like Jeroboam, the new priests of the new system will force the true priests out the ministry.

“and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”
‭‭1 John‬ ‭4‬:‭3‬ ‭LEB‬‬

John cautions the church several times in his epistles that the spirit of antichrist was even at that time, already masquerading as Christian. He teaches them to test the spirits and not to believe everything that comes down the pike that calls itself Christian.

Friend, there is a TON of absolute GARBAGE out there in the world that claims to be Christian and it is NOT. It is anti-Christ. Just because a person writes books or sings songs that mention God or Jesus DOES NOT MAKE THEM CHRISTIAN.

And I will DIE on that hill.

Doreen Virtue, ex-New-Age Guru, tells how she “believed in Jesus” and taught about the “Holy Spirit,” and thought of herself as basically Christian all the while engaging in actual witchcraft.

It’s time for the saints to adopt a little sacred skepticism. If it’s sound Christian teaching, it won’t mind waiting while you rip it apart and examine it inside and out. A healthy Bible teacher or preacher will rejoice in the hearers examining what is said.

And I don’t care whose mouth or pen it comes from. Don’t care what awards they’ve won or what degrees they have. Those things do not validate someone as loyal to Christ. They may show that a person has worked hard or studied a great deal and those things can have value. But PLEASE do not check your brain at the door or outsource your discernment or assume that because someone is being accepted and touted in “mainstream Christianity” (like – their books are in Christian bookstores or their songs are on K-love) that their ideas are sound and consistent with the Gospel. We have to do the work of examining the ideas and compare it with a sound interpretation of the Biblical text.

That means in reality – you probably won’t have time for some of the things currently filling your calendar. If you want this, you have to want it bad enough to sacrifice; to give up some precious things.

Ok. Rant over.

Back to possible eschatological implications of Jeraboam’s corruption of worship….

I’m not predicting anything here. It’s just that when I read this section about Jeroboam and his false priesthood, I get major church-facing-a-false-religious-system vibes.

“Then after them, [the Levites] from all the tribes of Israel, those who set their heart to seek Yahweh, the God of Israel, came to Jerusalem to offer to Yahweh, the God of their ancestors. And they strengthened the kingdom of Judah and made Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, secure for three years, for they walked in the way of David and Solomon for three years.”
‭‭2 Chronicles‬ ‭11‬:‭16‬-‭17‬ ‭LEB‬‬

So the Levites defied Jeroboam and his convenient calves and continued to travel to Jerusalem to worship the REAL Yahweh and others followed their lead.

It’s like when the Anabaptists defied the kings of Europe to translate and read the Bible themselves in their native tongues and worship Christ as the Bible said rather than how the state told them to. It was very risky. Many of them paid with their lives. It was probably risky for the Levites to defy Jeroboam too.

Also – did you notice the repetition of 3 years? That feels very end-timesy too. We have the famous 7-year Tribulation divided into two sets of 3 and a half years. The text is making sure we notice that things were good for 3 years. Hmm.

I want to be careful not to go looking for any little detail in OT narrative that might be construed as prophetic. But neither do I want to ignore moments that seem to parallel what we find in the NT. I’m going to mark it on my mental radar and keep an eye on the world stage and, in particular, what is happening broadly in Christianity. When prophecy comes to pass, it’s generally not easy to spot until well after the fact.

At the very least, I can commit today to be loyal to our Savior and prepare myself to worship Him according to scripture even if that means I have to defy a king.