Jacob 3

Jacob 3:4 And the time speedily cometh, that except ye repent they shall possess the land of your inheritance, and the Lord God will lead away the righteous out from among you. this concept of leading the righteous out from among the wicked is something that feels common in ancient times but disappeared at some point after Christ. Even though Peter says, But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, God no longer tells people to isolate themselves by way of physical location. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, Chris makes it clear that in the last days, the righteous would grow up in the midst of the tares, and not be separated until the end. For some reason, the righteous are too tender to be separated from the tares, and I wonder if that is because we lack a tradition of the proper religion due to our amazing proseletyizing program. In biblical times, it was easy to say, you all are Jews, because you've been marrying each other for 400 years, and we're Egyptians, because, even though we've been living in the same country as you, we generally don't marry you, and you generally don't marry us, and we live isolated from each other, to help that continue. Oh, and by the way, you have a different religion. As long as you can maintain that kind of physical and spiritual separation, you can lead away the righteous out from among another group. As soon as those barriers dissolve, you lose distinct groups, as seen in the scattering of the 10 tribes. They had given up on the spiritual separation prior to being taken captive into Babylon, so that when they were settled among the Gentiles, they did not have any cohesion tying them either together or to Jehovah. In the case of modern Jewry, those who successfully maintain their Jewishness are those who cling to the Law of Moses. That way, they are able to exist in a geography separate from Israel and yet remain the children of Israel.