A Peculiar People – Israel in the Last Days

Wonderful were and are the material promises made to Israel, of whom we read, “Thou art a peculiar people above all the peoples upon the earth.”

This strange people of the olden times were to be scattered and diminished and then gathered and made populous beyond number. They were to be chastised and sent to and among all nations, and yet, nationally they were to be transplanted from Palestine to a “place prepared for them,” an island home in the west, in the north and beyond the “Great Sea,” the Mediterranean.

Concerning these people who were to have the blessings of the deep and of the everlasting hills, we quote the following extracts, only a tithe of the extracts we might use if space permitted:

Deut. xxxii, 8.9: “When the Most High divided unto the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people (or nations) according to the number of the children of Israel.”

“For the Lord’s portion is His people: Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.”

Read this two or three times and catch God’s intent concerning Israel, His national inheritance. John Richard Green says of Britain: “Warlike and imperious as is her national temper, Britain has never been able to free herself from a sense that her business in the world is to seek peace alike for herself and for the nations about her.”

Sharon Turner says: “The Scythians, formerly inconsiderable and few, possessed a narrow region on the Araxes; but by degrees they extended their boundaries on all sides, till at last they raised their nation to great empire and glory. . . . The migrating Scythians crossed the Araxes, passed out of Asia, and suddenly appeared in Europe in the sixth century B.C.

Esdras, the prophet, tells us that the Ten Tribes left their exile and moved away westward across the Euphrates, beyond Armenia, to a place called Ar-sareth (city or hill, of Sareth). To the northwest of the Black Sea is a river called Sareth, to be seen on the maps to this day.

Herodotus says the Persians called the Scythians by the name Sakai, and Sharon Turner identifies these very people as the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons. The old Greek writers spoke often of the valour, the prowess and the undaunted spirit of these Scythians. They say: “No nation on earth could match them. They were unconquerable.”

Sharon Turner says: “Of the so-called Scythian nations which have been recorded, the Sakai, or Sacae, are the people from whom the descent of the Saxons may be inferred with the least violation of probability. They seized Bactriana and the most fertile fields of Armenia, which from them derived the name Sakasina.

“That some of the divisions of this people were really called Sakasuna is obvious from Pliny, for he says that the Sakai who settled in Armenia were named Saccasani, which is but Sacasuna, and, the name which they gave to that part of Armenia which they occupied is nearly the same sound as Saxonia. It is also important to remark that Ptolemy mentions a Scythian people, sprung from the Sakai, by the name of Saxons.”

Niebuhr shows that Pliny, Mela and other ancients were surprised at the influence and numbers of the Scythians, and were puzzled to give an adequate explanation of their origin. Herodotus and Hippocrates set forth that they were a distinct people and nation.

Niebuhr says that the Iberians as well as the Scythians were Hebrews. It is remarkable that the word Scythian means a wanderer. The Scriptures says; “Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people. Israel is swallowed up; now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein is no pleasure. My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto Him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations.”

Diodorus says: “The Sacae sprung from a people in Media who obtained a vast and glorious empire.” Ptolemy finds the Saxons in a race of Scythians called Sakai, who came from Media. Surely these old writers knew what they were writing about. Pliny says: “The Sakai were among the most distinguished people of Scythia, who settled in Armenia, and were called Sacae-Sani.”

Albinus says: “The Saxons were descended from the ancient Sacae in Asia.” Prideaux finds that the Cimbrians (Kumrii) came from between the Black and Caspian seas, and that with them came the Angli.

Sharon Turner, the most painstaking Saxon historian, says “The Saxons were a Scythian nation and were called Saca, Sacki, Sachsen.”

Gawler, in Our Scythian Ancestors, says: “The word Sacae is fairly and without straining or imagination translatable as Israelites.”