Date Written March 24-25, 2008
To: My Beloved Family & Friends
From: Dad, Grandpa Pratt etc.
Re: Israel Scattered
Once upon a time we lived in our Celestial homes as the spirit children of our resurrected and glorified parents. Where is it? The only clue we have is it is next to the great planet Kolob, the first creation of our Eternal Father. We know that Kolob governs and controls all of his countless other creations and is so immense that it revolves once in one thousand years. Hence one day on Kolob is as long as one thousand years on our puny earth.
To illustrate, the size of one of the large stars in our galaxy named Betelgeuse
(Be’T’L-Jooz) which is two hundred eighty five millions of miles in diameter, compared to our earth it is about three and a half million times larger or to illustrate, our sun has 98 percent of all the matter contained in our solar system of nine planets moons and meteors. Yet if we placed our huge sun in the center of Betelgeuse, our three closest planets to the sun in their orbits around the sun, which are Mercury, Venus, and earth, earth would still be within the periphery of that immense body. BIG HUH?
Anyway in our Celestial home we grew to adulthood. Jesus was the first born and besides being the creator of all that the Father and Mother has which are too numerous for man to count, He is also our Savior and the creator of this beautiful earth that we were sent to, to acquire our body of flesh and bones and to prove ourselves. Then by the resurrection and judgement live eternally here in a Celestialized condition or have to be removed and forever live on a planet far inferior and as a single individual forever.
Even in that pre-mortal condition each of us was determining our character. The First Born, Jesus chose to always obey our Father, while Lucifer, born not long after the Savior, chose to be in total rebellion to the point that he and one third of our brothers and sisters were cast out losing forever the right to have a flesh and bone body for their spirit to dwell in. All the rest of us, went all the way, from being nearly like our eldest brother to just short of being like Lucifer.
Our Father, then divided the others into two groups, the valiant in that pre earth life were counted and known as “Israel.” all the rest would be known as “Gentiles”. “Israel” it also means “Prince or Princess” of God. “Gentile” means all the other people.
In that early life Israel was called and fore-ordained to rescue the gentiles as far as they would allow themselves to be rescued.
“And again, my brethern, I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord God gave these commandments unto his children; (before this earth) and I would that ye should remember that the Lord God ordained priests, after his holy order, which was after the order of His Son, to teach these things unto the people.
And those priests were ordained after the order of His Son, in a manner that thereby the people might know in what manner to look forward to his Son for redemption. And this is the manner after which they were ordained ~ being called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works; in the first place being left to choose good or evil; therefore they having chosen good, (Before the world was) and exercising exceedingly great faith are called with a holy calling which was prepared with, and according to a preparatory redemption for such.....thus this holy calling being prepared from the foundation of the world for such as would not harden their hearts, being in and thru the atonement of the Only Begotten Son, who was prepared. And thus being called by this holy calling, and ordained unto the high priesthood of the holy order of God to teach His commandments unto the children of men, that they also might enter into His rest. This high priesthood being after the order of His Son, Which order was from the foundation of the World; or in other words, being with out beginning of days or end of years, being prepared from eternity to all eternity according to His foreknowledge of all things”. Alma 13:2-7
From this scripture we learn at least five great truths. 1. Because of our great faith before this world was, 2. We were called and prepared to be the teachers to the rest of our siblings.
3. And it was because we did not harden our hearts as they did. 4. We were ordained to the priesthood (authority to act in the name of Deity) while yet spirits. 5. To teach the great gospel message of faith repentance and the gift of the Holy Ghost and the eternal life that comes to the obedient.
In that stage we were organized as spirits to come to earth and try to save all our Father’s children who had not followed Satan.
The first mention of the name “Israel” is Genesis 32:28 given to Jacob and came to apply to all his descendants with the promise that thru them all the nations of the earth would be blessed. His twelve sons became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. And the oldest son Rueben was to receive the birthright or authority to rule. He lost it thru sin and it then passed to Joseph who was sold into Egypt by his brothers and from Joseph the right to rule passed to his son Ephraim. Now remember this was all pre-planed before the foundation of the world by a loving Father who is trying to save all his children. And we must not forget that it started three generations earlier with Abraham who received the title, “Father of the Faithful.”
Joseph miraculously rose to the second highest in command of the leading nation in the world, Egypt, remember the flood happened only three hundred years earlier, and although Israel is not mentioned prior to this time the Lord still did the best for all his children that they would accept. The pre-flood children were blessed with the great prophet Enoch, seventh from Adam who rescued all who would listen and they were translated from the flood-doomed fate of this world to another sphere, from which they will return at the second coming or there about. Hopefully you are getting the picture, from my feeble writings, that our loving Father is doing the very best possible to save all his children, except the Satanic hosts.
Now a quick history of Israel down to the present time. The story of Joseph and his traitorous brothers, Joseph’s rise to fame and power, their reconciliation and Jacob and the other eleven brothers is given in detail in the closing chapters of Genesis (chapters 46-50.)
Israel - Jacobs total family to be rescued from the famine by the move including sisters and wives and children was only seventy souls added to Joseph plus his wife and two sons. Israel numbered seventy-four souls, the date was about 1800 B.C.
After enjoying peace and prosperity for a number of years there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph, and the new king was so frightened at the number of Israelites, for they had multiplied exceedingly fast that he enslaved them.
After 430 years they were led out of bondage by Moses to the land promised to Abraham for his children forever, that is his children descended from Isaac and Jacob.
Shortly after leaving Egypt Moses took a census and discovered that Israel could muster 603,550 men twenty years old and up who could be mustered into military service and this did not include males from the tribe of Levi. Add the women and children and it is easy to see that Israel had increased from 74 souls to well in excess of two million at the exodus four hundred and thirty years later.
What a colossal task Moses faced to bring this vast number of ex slaves into some semblance of order that they might become the Saviors of the rest of the world. And in fact the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ was to be a literal descendant from the tribe of Judah. At Moses’s translation it would still be over fourteen hundred years until the Savior’s birth. In fact chronology lists the translation of Moses in the year 1451 B.C.
Remember, these ex-slaves are our ancestors, chosen before the world was to be the Saviors of the world. Had they been obedient they would have become a great nation occupying the land given to Abraham and his descendants which would have been larger than the continental United States of America and would have included all the near and mid east countries of today.
They would have policed the rest of the world and most of the wars, famines and disasters that have plagued the earth would never of happened.
There were times of great righteousness but as a whole wickedness ruled. They reached the peak of their power under King David 1063 B.C. Held it precariously under his son King Solomon, but at Solomon’s death, the nation of Israel had a terrible civil war that divided the twelve tribes into two nations. Thousands were killed. What was the cause? The same thing that could cause a terrible conflict in our own nation today if it is not soon corrected, excessive taxation.
So-called wise King Solomon with his grandiose schemes which included palaces for one thousand wives and great public works and hand outs (sound familiar?) Solomon who in his early years had served the Lord and built the most costly temple ever built, the walls were papered with gold sheeting and most of the utensils more than twenty five hundred in number were pure gold. But the Lord accepted it and even appeared to Solomon twice.
At his death, ten tribes under the leadership of an Ephraimite named Jeroboam petitioned Solomon’s son, the new King Rehoboam, to reduce taxes or else.
Reoboam foolishly chose to raise taxes instead and a bloody civil war followed which resulted in the 12 tribes dividing in to two nations. The Southern Kingdom comprised of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin with Jerusalem (the Holy City) as their capital. And the ten Northern tribes led by Ephraimites with Samaria as their capital city. This happened about 975 B.C.
For the next two hundred fifty years the Northern Kingdom also called Israel had nothing but wicked kings. Which finally led to their demise in 721 B.C. Also several bitter wars with Judah. Finally the Assyrians came down against Israel. Israel appealed to Judah for help. Judah just laughed and cheered the Assyrians on. Result, the Assyrians after destroying Israel, killing a large percentage, carried the survivors back to Assyria as slaves. We have little record of them except for that found in the histories kept at the time by Flavius Josephus and the Apocrypha. These tell us that the ten tribes after a few years - 70 - as I recall, escaped Northward where never before man had been, (since the flood) that would be between the Black and Caspian seas then turned Westward crossing Southern Russia, hence crossing Europe going North in the Scandinavian countries and we know nothing more about them except as revealed by prophecy. They are soon to return and it will coincide with the coming of the Savior. (I Will treat it in some detail in a coming memo) Incidently the modern country named Denmark literally means “the land of Dan) Dan was one of the ten tribes. So apparently they went that-a-way. The total number of kings over Israel numbered 19 all were wicked.
Judah fared a little better. They had four good kings out of twenty-one and lasted until 587 B.C. another 134 years after Israel’s demise. They were then destroyed by Babylonia and the remnants carried into captivity. But the Great Father of us all still doing the best he could do or all that they would allow him to do was rescuing all that would listen such as father Lehi who led his family to safety in America and others that we do not yet have a record of but will have as they are revealed soon.
After serving in captivity for a number of years to Babylon a remnant of Judah was allowed to return to Jerusalem to prepare for the birth of the Savior.
After crucifying the Lord of us all, the Jews were destroyed and scattered 70 A.D. until the blood of the 12 tribes was literally scattered thru all nations. Now we come to the exciting part ~ The gathering of Israel. Don’t go away, it’s exciting because you are part of it. Look for this in next months memo!
I LOVE YOU,
Dad, grandpa Pratt etc.
Richard Marden Pratt
