again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. . . . Ye are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying unto Abraham, 'And in thy seed shall the nations of the earth be blessed.'"
From Acts xiii. onward we find Paul among the "Jews" in the Dispersion; and how does he address them? By the same name as Peter addressed their brethren in Palestine: "Men of Israel, . . . the God of this people Israel chose our fathers, and exhorted the people when they sojourned in the land of Egypt" (Acts xiii. 16, 17); and when he was at last brought to Rome "and gathered the chief of the Jews" in that city to him, he assured them that he had neither done anything "against the people, or the customs of our fathers," nor did he come to Rome "to accuse my nation," but "because of the hope of Israel am I bound by this chain"—namely, "the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers; as he had previously explained before Festus and Agrippa—unto which our Twelve Tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to attain" (Acts xxviii. 17–20; xxvi. 6, 7).
Paul knew of no "lost Ten Tribes," but on his testimony the "Jews" in Palestine and in the Dispersion were the "Israel" of all the Twelve Tribes, to whom the "hope of the promise made of God unto the fathers" belonged.
(c) And, as it is in the Gospels, and in the Acts of the Apostles, so also in the Epistles. It would be easy to multiply passages, but one more must suffice.
The ix., x., and xi. of Romans form the prophetic, or "dispensational," section of that great epistle, and was written for the special instruction of Gentle believers in the "mystery" of God with Israel. Now I cannot, of course, stop here to give an analysis of that wonderful
