The Apocrypha Identifies End-Time Events

Apocrypha is a Greek word meaning hidden or secret; a similar word is used in the New Testament in Colossians 2:3, “In whom are [present tense] hid [apocryphos] all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” The Apocrypha includes 14 books, which were an integral part of the King James Bible until the 19th century.

The first Apocryphal book is First Esdras. The central story in chapter 3 to chapter 5:6 is a “tale of the three guardsmen,” a debate by the Persian king’s bodyguards. The king granted a wish to the winner. “Then said he unto the king, Remember thy vow, which thou hast vowed to build Jerusalem…Thou also hast vowed to build up the temple, which the Edomites burned when Judea was made desolate by the Chaldees…and that the Edomites should give over the villages of the Jews which then they held.” (1 Esdras 4:42-45, 50) Note some important points in the text. We learn that when Babylon conquered Judea in 586 B.C., it was the Edomites that burned the Temple of Jerusalem. (4:45) Furthermore, in verse 50, the Edomites had appropriated the villages of Judah whose inhabitants had nearly all been deported to Babylon. Is this a prophetic foretype? In Ezekiel 36:2, an end of this age prophecy, we learn that a non-Israel people is in control of the Holy Land, who boast, “Aha, the ancient High Places are ours in possession.” Ezekiel identified this nation as “Edom, who have given to themselves My land…” (36:5) Edom was to be in control of the Holy Land and its sacred places at the end of this age. The Edomites were conquered by John Hyrcanus in about 129 BC and forced to become Jews. The Jewish Encyclopedia says, “Edom is in modern Jewry.” World affairs are now in place for the final events at the end of this age. The next Apocryphal book, Second Esdras, begins with a denouncing of Israel for their many sins. God would scatter Israel into the world: “I will cast you out as the wind…” (1:33). He would bring a Gentilized people, “which not having heard of me yet shall believe me…they shall do that I have commanded them…they shall call their sins to remembrance and acknowledge them.” (1:35). Here truly is Ephraim’s return to the Father in faith during the Protestant Reformation of these latter days. The central part of Second Esdras, chapters 3 to 14, records a series of visions given to Ezra in Babylon. In the first vision (3:1 to 5:20), Ezra is in grief over Israel in exile and discusses the problem of evil. The angel Uriel replies, “But as concerning the things whereof thou askest me, I will tell thee; for the evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come. If therefore that which is sown be not turned upside down, and if the place where the evil is sown pass not away, then cannot it come that is sown with good.” (4:27-29) This was a quarter-century before that prophesied destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and similar language was used in 2 Kings 21:13, “I will scour Yerushalayim clean just as one scours a plate, scouring it and then turning it upside down.” (Complete Jewish Bible). Judea during the Persian era has been called by scholars, “a rump state,” a shadow of its former self. Where did the exiled Israelites go? Second Esdras provides this answer: “Salmanasar the king of Assyria…carried them over the waters [i.e. Euphrates River], and so came they into another land. But they took this council…[to] go forth into a further country where never mankind dwelt [uninhabited parts of Europe]…And they entered into Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river [i.e. northern branch in Aram/Armenia]…For through that country there was a great way to go, namely of a year and a half: and the same region is called Arsareth.” (13:40-45). There is a River Sareth in southeastern Europe to this day, indicating where these tribes migrated. In the second vision (5:21-6:34), we read, “Then answered I and said, What shall be the parting asunder of the times? Or when shall be the end of the first, and the beginning of it that followeth? And he said unto me…Esau is the end of the world, and Jacob is the beginning of it that followeth.” (6:7-9) The age-old struggle for the birthright between Esau-Edom and Jacob-Israel is here described as continuing right to the very end of this age, with Esau in control until Jacob triumphs in the coming age. In the Sixth Vision (13:1-58), a wondrous man rises from the sea. He gathers a peaceable multitude to himself (13:12-20). Ezra awakes and prays for an interpretation of the vision. He is told that the man is the Messiah; those who came to fight against him are the heathen nations; and the peaceable multitude are the Ten Tribes of Israel who were exiled from the land of Canaan by Assyrian King Shalmaneser and lost to recorded history (13:21-56). Shalmaneser IV, son of Tiglath-Pileser, (726-721 B.C.), conquered the House of Israel, exiling them to the remote northern Assyrian Empire, from which they continued further north through the Caucasus as “Caucasians” to Europe where they are found today. The “Letter of Jeremiah” follows. It is a sermon expounding a verse in Jeremiah 11:10, the only Aramaic text in Jeremiah, which reads, “They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, which refused to hear my words; and they went after other gods to serve them: the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers.”  It is important and overlooked that the two houses of Israel are listed as completely separate entities, which is noteworthy because scholars date the “Letter of Jeremiah” to sometime after 300 B.C., and possibly the Persian era. Therefore, the two houses of Israel did not rejoin at the time of the return from Babylon in 538 B.C. as is popularly taught, and at least for centuries afterward. According to Ezekiel 37:24-27 the reunion is predicated upon acceptance of the Messiah. The Book of Second Maccabees tells us that after the fall of Jerusalem, the Prophet Jeremiah “found an hollow cave, wherein he laid the tabernacle, and the ark, and the altar of incense, and so stopped the door.” (2:5) In the series of movies called “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the Judean exiles travelled to Tahpanhes, Egypt, with the famed Ark of the Covenant. Second Maccabees, in contrast, states it was on Mount Sinai (2:4) that Jeremiah hid the temple treasures. We are further told that its location would be made known when the Two Houses of Israel, Ephraim and Judah, are reunited; as the text puts it, “it shall be unknown until the time that God gather his people again together.” (2:7) The Ark of the Covenant should have already been found if the reunion of Ephraim and Judah has happened. It is obvious that according to this prophecy, the Two Houses, Israel and Judah, have not yet been reunited and the prophecy of the rejoining of the Two Sticks in Ezekiel 37:15-28 has not yet occurred. Much more can be said about prophecy in the Apocrypha referencing our own day, which I covered in a talk recently at Capac Bible Church and which can be viewed on their YouTube channel.