![]() The Message “Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth say ye, The LORD hath redeemed his servant Jacob.” – Isaiah 48:20Īs he later recounted in Amsterdam, Montezinos had come across the alleged remnants of the Reubenites quite by accident and apparently without any inkling that they might still exist. The coming of the end times demanded serious geopolitical action, especially in the places where the lost tribes had finally been found. These preparations could not be limited to the merely spiritual. If these long-awaited days were finally at hand, then everyone would need to begin preparations for the tremendous changes that would shortly be upon them all. Montezinos’s claim was taken up by minds across confessional boundaries, European borders, and even the Atlantic ocean. Jews and Christians alike believed that the lost tribes had not only survived that cataclysmic event but would reveal themselves in the run-up to the Messianic age–understood by Jews as the initial appearance of the Messiah and by Christians as the Second Coming of Jesus. The tribe of Reuben was one of the 10 tribes of Israel that had been deported by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE, never to be seen or heard from again. High up in the mountains of what is now Ecuador, Antonio Montezinos had encountered the descendants of the tribe of Reuben, who sent him back to Europe with a message of hope for the world’s Jews: “They say that the Prophecies do come to passe.” What could have happened to this stranger, who had once lived reasonably well among his people’s oppressors? Why would he cast off the prosperity and privilege of that life and make such a clear statement of his Jewishness in a testimony that he knew would circulate throughout Europe? Indeed, his story was tremendous. We can imagine how he would appear to the Amsterdam Jewish community. He had returned to Europe a changed man, endowed with new wisdom. Nevertheless, when he arrived before the Amsterdam Jewish community’s high council he used his Hebrew name, Aharon Levi, and spoke to them openly of his travels through the New World. Montezinos’ Jewish identity had to be well hidden to the point of suppression. As such, his presence in Spanish South America was a subversion of the colonial regime’s strict Catholicism-Spanish law banned non-Catholic Europeans from its colonies, and this ban was strictly policed by the Inquisition. Montezinos was a crypto-Jew-one of many Jewish people living as Catholics while secretly practicing some Jewish rites after the Spanish Inquisition-who had lived in Spanish-occupied South America for many years as a conquistador. In 1649, a man named Antonio Montezinos arrived in Amsterdam from South America with an amazing story to tell. “He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” – Isaiah 11:12 ![]() Whore of Babylon and Le Pape by Ravi Zupa. ![]()
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