To Whom Did Peter Write?
To whom did Peter address his letters?
Here it is. "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" (I Peter 1:1).
These were not Gentiles. Peter was not the apostle to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:8). Paul was. Peter was chief apostle to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.
Notice the word "strangers." It does not mean Gentiles. The original Greek is parepidemos. It means "a resident foreigner," literally, "an alien alongside." It refers not to Gentiles, but to non-Gentiles who dwelt among Gentiles, as foreigners and aliens. Abraham, for example, was a stranger, an alien, when he lived among Gentiles in the land of ancient Canaan.
Peter was addressing part of the lost ten tribes who dwelt among the Gentiles as aliens or strangers. He was not writing primarily to the Jewish people. He would not have addressed them as "strangers," for he was himself a Jew.
Now notice the regions to which Peter addressed his letter. You may have to look at a Bible map to locate them. They are all located in the northern half of Asia Minor, modern Turkey. These lands lay immediately west of the Parthian Empire.
Paul did not preach in these districts. Paul spent his years in Asia Minor in the southern, or Greek half. "Yea, so have I strived," said Paul, "to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation" (Rom. 15:20). Paul did not preach in the areas where Peter and others of the twelve apostles had carried the gospel.
Nowhere in your New Testament can you find Paul preaching in Pontus, or Cappadocia, or Bithynia. These regions were under the jurisdiction of Peter and certain of the twelve.
Paul did spread the gospel in the province of Asia — but only in the southern half, in the districts around Ephesus. Paul was expressly forbidden to preach in Mysia, the northern district of the Roman province of Asia. "After they" — Paul and his companions — "were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered [permitted] them not. And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas" (Acts 16:7, 8). Those were the regions in which the lost sheep of the House of Israel dwelt as strangers among the Gentiles!
Paul did preach, on his first journey, in southern Galatia, in the cities of Iconium, Lystra, Derbe (Acts 14). But nowhere in the New Testament do you find Paul journeying into northern Galatia — the area to which Peter addresses his letter to the tribes of Israel.
Remnant of Ten Tribes on Shores of Black Sea
Notice the historic proof — confirming Peter's letters — that a remnant of the House of Israel was settled on the shores of the Black Sea in northern Asia Minor in early New Testament times.
Greek writers, in the time of Christ, recognized that the regions of northern Asia Minor were non-Greek (except for a few Greek trading colonies in the port cities). New peoples, the Greeks tell us, were living in northern Asia Minor in New Testament times. Here is the surprising account of Diodorus of Sicily: ". . . Many conquered peoples were removed to other homes, and two of these became very great colonies: the one was composed of Assyrians and was removed to the land between Paphlagonia and Pontus, and the other was drawn from Media and planted along the Tanais [the River Don in ancient Scythia — the modern Ukraine, north of the Black Sea, in southern Russia]" (Book II, § 43).
Notice the areas from which these colonies came — Assyria and Media. The very areas to which the House of Israel was taken captive! "So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day" (II Kings 17:23). "The king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (verse 6).
The House of Israel dwelt in captivity as aliens or strangers among the Assyrians. When the Assyrians were later removed from their homeland to northern Asia Minor, part of the House of Israel migrated with them.
Here's proof from Strabo, the geographer. Strabo named the colonists in northern Asia Minor "White Syrians" (12, 3, 9), instead of Assyrians. There were therefore, two peoples — Assyrians and White Syrians. Who were these so-called "White Syrians"? None other than the House of Israel which had been carried into Assyrian captivity.
"Syria" was the Greek name for the whole eastern Mediterranean coastal strip north of Judea. Because the House of Israel lived in Palestine —southern Syria in Greek terminology — the Greeks called them "White Syrians." By contrast, the dark-complexioned Arameans remained in Syria and dwell there to this day.
When the Assyrians were compelled to migrate to Northern Asia Minor, their former slaves — the "White Syrians" or ten-tribed House of Israel —migrated with them. We find them still there in New Testament times. To these people — the lost sheep of the House of Israel — the strangers among the Assyrians (I Peter 1:1) — the apostle Peter addresses his first letter. Could anything be plainer? The chief apostle to the House of Israel writing to a part of the ten lost tribes dwelling among the Assyrians who originally carried them captive.
We shall see later when and where these "lost sheep" migrated from Asia Minor to Northwest Europe.
Now to draw back the curtain of history. See where each of the twelve apostles preached. You'll be amazed at the revelation.
What Greek Historians Report
Why is it that almost no one has thought of it before? If multitudes of Greeks in southern Asia Minor were being converted to Christ by the ministry of Paul, and at the same time multitudes among the lost ten tribes of the House of Israel were being converted in northern Asia Minor, should not those Greeks have left the record of which of the twelve apostles carried the gospel there?
Consider this also. The Greeks have not lost the Greek New Testament. They have handed it down from generation to generation. Is it not just as likely that Greek scholars should have preserved the true account of the ministry of the twelve apostles?
They have done just that!
Yet almost no one has believed them.
What the Greeks report is not what most people expect to find. Some, who do not understand the difference between the House of Israel and the Jews, imagine the apostles went exclusively to Jews. Even some of those who know where the House of Israel is today often cannot believe that several of the tribes of Israel were not, in the apostles' day, where they are today.
Scholars have long puzzled over the remarkable information which the Greeks have handed down. These historical reports of the apostles are altogether different from the spurious apocryphal literature of the early Roman Catholic Church. Greek historians, in the early Middle Ages, have left us information from original documents that apparently are no longer extant. They had firsthand sources of information not now available to the scholarly world. What do those Greek historians report?
One valuable source of information is the Greek and Latin Ecclesiasticae Historiae of Nicephorus Callistus. Another, in English, is Antiquitates Apostolicae by William Cave.
Universal Greek tradition declares that the apostles did not leave the Syro Palestinian region until the end of twelve years' ministry. The number 12 symbolizes a new organized beginning. Before those twelve years were up one of the apostles was already dead —James, the brother of John. He had been beheaded by Herod (Acts 12). But where did the remaining apostles go?
Simon Peter in Britain
Begin with Simon Peter. Peter was made by Christ the chief among the twelve apostles to coordinate their work. Of necessity Peter would be found traveling to many more regions than he would personally be ministering to. The question is where did he spend most of his time?
We know Peter was for a limited time at Babylon in Mesopotamia, from which he wrote the letters to the churches in Asia Minor (I Peter 5:13).
Babylon was the major city from which the apostles in the east worked. Similarly Paul and the evangelists under him used Antioch in Syria as their chief city (Acts 14:26). The order in which Peter, in verse one of his first epistle, named the provinces of Asia Minor — from east to west and back — clearly proves that the letter was sent from Babylon in the east, not Rome in the west. Rome did not become designated as "Modern Babylon" until Christ revealed it, much later, after Peter's death, in the book of Revelation, chapter 17.
Where did Peter spend most of his time after those first twelve years in the Holy Land?
Metaphrastes, the Greek historian, reports "that Peter was not only in these Western parts" — the Western Mediterranean — "but particularly that he was a long time" — here we have Peter's main life work to the Lost Ten Tribes — ". . . a long time in Britain, where he converted many nations to the faith." (See maiginal note, p. 45, in Cave's Antiquitates Apostolicae)
Peter preached the gospel in Great Britain, not in Rome, the capital of the Gentile world. Paul, not Peter, preached in Rome. The true gospel had not been publicly preached in Rome before Paul arrived in A.D. 59. Paul never once mentions Peter in his epistle to the brethren in Rome, most of whom had been converted on Pentecost in 31 A.D.
Not even the Jews at Rome had heard the gospel preached before Paul arrived.
Here is Luke's inspired account of Paul's arrival in Rome: "And it came to pass, that after three days Paul called the chief of the Jews together . . ." (Acts 28:17). Continuing, Acts 28:21. "And they" — the Jews at Rome —"said unto him, We neither received letters out of Judaea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came shewed or spake any harm of thee. But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against. And when they had appointed
him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening" (verses 21-23).
Here is absolute proof that the Jewish people at Rome had never heard the apostle Peter preach.
Oh, yes, there had been a "Peter" in Rome — ever since the days of Claudius Caesar. That Peter was in a high office. He was chief of the Babylonian Mysteries. His office was that of a "Peter" — meaning an Interpreter or Opener of Secrets. The word peter, in Babylonian and Hebrew, means "opener" — hence it is used in the original Hebrew of the Old Testament for "firstling" — one that first opens the womb.
That Peter of Rome was named Simon, too. Simon Magus (Acts 8). He was the leading conspirator in the plot hatched by the priests of the pagan Babylonian-Samaritan mysteries.
These plotters sought to seize upon the name of Christ as a cloak for their diabolical religion. These conspirators became the founders of what today masquerades in the world as the "Christian religion." (See III John)
But Simon Peter, Christ's apostle, was in Britain, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The very fact that Peter preached in Britain is proof in itself that part of the Lost House of Israel was already there. Peter was commissioned to go to the lost tribes.
And significantly, about A.D. 60 great wars overtook Britain — just as James warned (in the fourth chapter, verse 1) the twelve tribes of Israel. Could history be any clearer? For the full proof of the identity of Great Britain as chief tribe in Israel write for the book The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy. It makes history and the Bible plain.
Where Are Peter and Paul Buried?
For centuries the Christian world has taken for granted that Peter and Paul are buried in Rome. No one, it seems, has thought to question the tradition.
Granted, Paul was brought to Rome about A.D. 67. He was beheaded, then buried on the Ostian Way. But are his remains still there?
Granted, too, that universal tradition declared the apostle Peter was also brought to Rome in Nero's reign and martyred about the same time.
Many pieces of ancient literature — some spurious, some factual — confirm that both Simon Magus, the false apostle who masqueraded as Peter, and Simon Peter himself died at Rome. The question is — which Simon is buried today under the Vatican? Is there proof that the bones of the apostles Peter and Paul were moved from Rome, and are not there now?
Yes!
There is a reason the Vatican has been hesitant to claim the apostle Peter's tomb has been found. They know that it is Simon Magus, the false Peter, who is buried there, not Simon Peter the apostle. Here is what happened. In the year 656 Pope Vitalian decided the Catholic Church was not interested in the remains of the apostles Peter and Paul. The Pope therefore ordered them sent to Oswy, King of Britain! Here is part of his letter to the British king:
"However, we have ordered the blessed gifts of the holy martyrs, that is, the relics of the blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, and of the holy martyrs Laurentius, John, and Paul, and Gregory, and Pancratius, to be delivered to the bearers of these our letters, to be by them delivered to you" (Bede's Ecclesiastical History, bk. III, ch. 29).
Could anything be more astounding? The bones of Peter and Paul (termed "relics" in the Pope's letter) sent by the Pope from Rome to Britain — to the land of Israel!
About a century and a half earlier Constantius of Lyons took the relics of all the apostles and martyrs from Gaul and buried them in a special tomb at St. Albans in Britain. (Life of St. Germanus) Is it significant that the Work of God and God's College in Britain are in St. Albans? Think that over!