|
Chapter
1-- |
America & Britain in Prophecy:
The Rise
and Fall of Ancient Israel
|
T |
o truly understand the
subject of America and Britain in prophecy, it is first imperative that we
understand what God reveals about His chosen people of Israel. Have the modern
Israelites experienced the fulfillment of prophecies regarding them?
To learn who the modern people of
Israel are, we must examine the fascinating facts concerning the history of the
ancient people of Israel. In doing so, we need to realize that, of all
nations on earth, God Almighty plainly says He has only "known" one
nation--Israel! "Hear this word that the LORD has spoken [concerning]...
the whole family [of Israel] which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying,
'You only have I known of all the families of the earth'" (Amos
3:1-2).
This does not mean that God does not
love all peoples of all nations (John 3:16), but there is only one people, on
the national level, with whom God has ever had a close, hands-on,
engaged relationship. God told Israel, "For you are a holy people to the
LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a
special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth" (Deut.
7:6).
But notice what He says next: "The LORD
did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than
any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORD
loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your
fathers" (vv. 7-8). Who were these "fathers"?
What was so special about them?
National Roots
Mankind has basically rejected God and His
way since the Garden of Eden. Almost 2,000 years from that time, only three men
had accepted God's way of life, according to the biblical record--Abel, Enoch
and Noah (Heb. 11). The rest of mankind lived in rebellion against God. His
solution was to bring a Great Flood upon the earth and start over with just
eight people--Noah, his wife and their three sons with their wives (Gen. 6).
Noah's three sons became the fathers of the
three great families or "races" of mankind. After the Deluge, God
instructed these three families to disperse into those regions of the earth to
which He had previously assigned them (Gen. 10-11). Yet, within a few
generations, men were once again not looking to God, but to their own
devices--striving against God to build the huge Tower of Babel (Babylon) and a
world-class city to prevent themselves from being scattered abroad over the
face of the earth (Gen. 11:1-9).
For that rebellion at the Tower of Babel,
the Almighty rebuked them sharply and confused their languages, forcing the
peoples to separate and migrate out into the areas which He had assigned each
of them as their inheritance (Deut. 32:8; Jer. 27:5; Acts 17:26).
The Family of Abraham
In the course of time, God Almighty would
choose a unique man named Abram (later renamed "Abraham" by God) and
his "seed" to form a new nation by which He would preserve the true
religion and carry out certain aspects of His divine plan upon this earth.
Abraham's illustrious ancestors are listed
in Genesis 11:10-32. Nine generations before Abraham was Noah's son Shem, who,
generally speaking, was father of the white or Caucasian race. Thus Abraham's
descendants are predominantly white. The term "Semite" is derived
from Shem's name. The Hebrew language is classified as "Semitic," and
racial hatred of Jews is called "anti-Semitism."
Next in this lineage was Shem's son,
Arphaxad. He was father of the Chaldeans--which makes Abraham and his
descendants part of them. This makes sense since Abraham came from "Ur of
the Chaldeans" (v. 31). Next in line was Salah and then Eber (or
Heber), whose descendants are called Hebrews. So Abraham was a
"Hebrew." But, because all of Eber's descendants didn't come through
Abraham, there are more "Hebrews" than just his family!
Next in Abraham's lineage was Eber's son
Peleg. It was in his lifetime that the Tower of Babel incident occurred--when
God assigned portions of the earth (Gen. 10:25). After Peleg was Reu and then
Abraham's great-grandfather Serug. Next came his grandfather Nahor and,
finally, his father Terah.
And "Terah begot Abram [later named
Abraham], Nahor, and Haran" (11:27). "And Terah took his son Abram
and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai [later
named Sarah], his son Abram's wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the
Chaldeans [in Lower Mesopotamia] to go to the land of Canaan; and they
came to Haran and dwelt there.... and Terah died in Haran" (vv. 31-32).
The city of Haran was located between the Tigris and Euphrates in Upper
Mesopotamia.
Why were Terah, his son Abram and their clan
trekking their way to the "land of Canaan"? Genesis 12 explains:
"Now the LORD had said to Abram [while his family was still in Ur]: 'Get
out of your country, from your kindred and from your father's house, to a land
that I will show you. I will make you a great nation.... and in you all
the families of the earth shall be blessed'" (vv. 1-3).
Here was a tremendous promise of
God--conditional upon Abram's obedience. This was a real test! Ur was a
prosperous city. Abram was asked by God to leave it and go to a backward land
far, far from civilization. Could his descendants really become a "great
nation" there?
Moreover, by this time, the world had again
strayed a long way from God. Society was so deeply entrenched in paganism that
the true religion was almost unheard of anymore. Yet what was Abram's response
to God's command? "So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to
him" (v. 4). There was no grumbling or arguing. Abram simply obeyed
God. That's the unique character he had.
Promises of Ethnic Lineage
and Grace
It is fascinating to realize the nature of
the promises God made to Abraham. Many have missed the fact that God's promises
were dual. To reconcile the fact that the Jews have never become a
"great nation" in the world, some claim that this reference is to the
Church only. It is true that to inherit the spiritual promises of God,
everyone must become a descendant of Abraham spiritually (Gal. 3:29).
It is also true that the Church is called a
"royal priesthood, a holy nation" (1 Pet. 2:9). However, as we will
see, this promise of a "great nation" was later expanded to include
"many nations." That certainly cannot refer to the Church. This is
speaking of Abraham's physical descendants--ETHNIC LINEAGE!
Many have recognized that when God said,
"In you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed," this was
primarily a spiritual promise (although there is a physical
application even to this, as succeeding chapters will reveal). God later told
Abraham: "In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed"
(Gen. 22:18). The singular "seed" here refers to Jesus Christ--the
Son of God who would come in the flesh as a descendant of Abraham to offer
spiritual salvation to the entire world--GRACE!
Through Abram's descendants would come these
tremendous dual blessings. God told Abram, "'Look now toward
heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.' And He said to
him, 'So shall your descendants be.' And he believed in the LORD, and He
accounted it to him for righteousness" (vv. 5-6).
At Sarai's prompting, Abram soon had a son,
Ishmael, by Sarai's Egyptian handmaid Hagar. But this is not how God intended
to bless Abram.
When Abram was 99 years old, God appeared to
him and said, "I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. And I
will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you
exceedingly.... and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall
your name be called Abram [Heb. "Exalted Father"], but your name
shall be Abraham [Heb. "Father of a Multitude"]; for I have made
you a father of many nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I
will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you" (Gen.
17:1-2, 4-6).
Numerous prophecies reveal that Abraham's
descendants would become "many nations"! Those prophecies could never
have been fulfilled in the Church or in the two small kingdoms of Israel
and Judah, which we will examine later. "Many" can't possibly be
interpreted to mean only two! So was all of this to be through Ishmael
then?
Notice what God did next. He changed Sarai's
name to Sarah (Heb. "Princess") and said, "And I will bless her
and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be
a mother of nations; kings of peoples [plural!] shall be from her"
(v. 16).
The main promises of their descendants
becoming many nations were not to go through Ishmael. Abraham was happy
about Sarah, but he still hoped that his firstborn son Ishmael--now 13 years
old--would be his heir: "And Abraham said to God, 'Oh, that Ishmael might
live before You!'" (v. 18).
But God answered, "No, Sarah your wife
shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My
covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after
him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will
make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve
princes, and I will make him a great nation [see box: "Isaac and Ishmael"]. But My covenant I will establish with Isaac,
whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year" (vv. 19-21).
The tremendous promises of national
blessings to Abraham were, at first, conditioned upon his complete obedience to
God. Would Abraham persevere in obeying God's commands?
When Abraham later proved his total
obedience to God, the Lord rewarded him by making the conditional promises to
him UNconditional! "By Myself I HAVE SWORN, says the LORD, because you
have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, in
blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your
descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the
seashore; and your descendants ["race" Fenton translation] shall
possess the gate of their enemies [promise of ETHNIC LINEAGE]. In
your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed [promise of GRACE],
because you have obeyed My voice" (Gen. 22:16-18).
|
Isaac and Ishmael |
|
|
The Arabs readily acknowledge Abraham's son Ishmael to be their
father-as any one of them will tell you! God promised to make them "a
great nation" (Gen. 17:20; 21:18). People might look at the Arab
countries today and balk at this because--even though some of them are quite
rich from oil exports--they are not a "great nation" now.
They are fragmented. This isn't what God meant when He made this promise to
Abraham. So is God unreliable? No! Arab greatness has already passed. But in
its heyday, it was truly remarkable to behold. Louis
L'Amour, the famous American author, described this period well. In his
number one bestseller, The Walking Drum, set in 12th century Eurasia,
he wrote, "In the space of one hundred years following the death of
Mohammed in 632, the Arabs had carried the sword of Islam from the Atlantic
to the Indian Ocean, holding at one time most of Spain, part of southern
France, the isle of Sicily, all of North Africa and Egypt, all of Arabia, the
Holy Land, Armenia, Persia, Afghanistan, and almost a third of India. The
empire of the Arabs was larger than that of Alexander the Great or of
Rome.... Under the FLUSH OF GREATNESS... for more than five hundred
years the Arabs carried the torch of civilization" (Bantam Books,
1984, pp. 171-172). Now consider
what this means for Isaac! If this is what God meant by Ishmael becoming a
GREAT NATION--a vast empire, larger than Rome's, which preserved civilization
through Europe's Dark Ages--then just think what must have been in store for Isaac's
descendants, who were to inherit FAR GREATER blessings and become MANY
NATIONS! Certainly, no one can argue that this has been fulfilled by the
Jewish people-ever! Nor was it fulfilled anciently by Israel in the Holy
Land. It's hard to even imagine that. So, then, was it ever fulfilled?
The truth will astound you! |
|
God had now SWORN--it would happen no matter
what! Abraham's physical descendants would be innumerable--compared to counting
stars in the sky or grains of sand on the seashore. And the singular
"seed," Jesus Christ, would come through his lineage. What is a
"gate"? Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.)
defines a gate as "a means of entrance or exit" or as a strategic
"gateway."
The word "gate" in the national
blessing means a strategic geographic passageway which controls the movement of
trade and military forces for a certain region--such as an important mountain
pass or sea passage. Modern examples of land and sea gates would be the Khyber
Pass, the Panama Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar.
Promises to Isaac's Seed
After Abraham's death, the unconditional
promises of his descendants becoming "many nations" passed to his son
Isaac. These incredible promises would devolve upon Isaac's descendants--not
Ishmael's. Isaac later married Rebekah. Notice the blessing her family gave her
as she left her homeland to go and marry Isaac: "Our sister, may you
become the mother of thousands of ten thousands ["many millions!"
Living Bible]; and may your descendants possess the gates of those who
hate them" (Gen. 24:60).
Here, again, this was prophetic. Isaac's
descendants would become many millions and possess the strategic gateways of
their enemies. The Jews have NEVER fulfilled this--and it certainly can't refer
to the Church.
Neither can these verses refer to the Jews
in the coming Millennium of Christ's rule--because, after their regathering in
the Promised Land, it would take until well into that future age for them to
overspread the world and take possession of such gates. And, by that time,
there will be NO enemy nations (Is. 2:2-4). So this prophecy can ONLY be
fulfilled in this present evil age of strife and war which will soon come to an
end. Therefore, we must look for a group of nations--all descended from
Abraham--that has possessed the vital land and sea gates of the world. We
must do this or reject the Bible as fraudulent. There is simply no way
around it.
The Birthright for a Bowl
of Stew!
Let's look again at the dual nature of the
promises to Abraham. The promises of ethnic lineage and the future
availability of God's grace were unconditional. However, as the New
Testament makes clear, actually receiving God's grace by an individual was conditional
upon repentance--turning away from breaking God's law. The promise of ethnic
lineage, however, required nothing from Abraham's descendants. Their
behavior might have affected the TIMING that God chose for giving them the
promised national blessings--but God had bound Himself to give those
blessings no matter what. Thus, the promises of lineage now belonged to
the descendants of Isaac by RIGHT. Such a right is termed a birthright.
The 1992 American Heritage Dictionary
defines birthright as "a right, possession, or privilege that is one's due
by birth." It can also mean "a special privilege accorded a
first-born." Notice this note in The New Open Bible (NKJV) from
Thomas Nelson Publishers: "The term birthright appears several
times in the Bible. The word refers to the inheritance rights of the firstborn
son in a Hebrew family in Old Testament times. The property of a father was
normally divided among his sons at his death. But a larger amount, usually a
double portion, went to the oldest son (Deut. 21:17), who assumed care of his
mother and unmarried sisters" (p. 35).
Normally, the birthright was continued
through the firstborn son. But there are instances where God intervened
and dictated otherwise. This happened with Isaac. Ishmael had been Abraham's
firstborn son. Yet God saw this son as the product of a lack of faith--an
attempt to bring about God's promises through human effort. Abraham's firstborn
lawful son, in God's eyes, was Isaac. "And Abraham gave all that he
had to Isaac" (Gen. 25:5).
God later told Isaac, "I will perform
the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. And I will make your descendants
multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these
lands ["countries" KJV--not just Canaan!]; and in your seed all
the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed My voice and
kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws" (Gen. 26:3-5).
We must always bear in mind that Abraham's descendants were NOT blessed because
of racial superiority, but because of Abraham's obedience.
The birthright blessings were to be passed
on to the descendants of Isaac. He and Rebekah had twin boys. At their birth,
"the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over; so they
called his name Esau [Heb. "Hairy"]. Afterward his brother
came out, and his hand took hold of Esau's heel; so his name was called Jacob
[Heb. "Supplanter" or "Heel-Grabber"]" (Gen.
25:25-26). God had prophesied that the birthright wouldn't go to the firstborn,
Esau, in this case--but to the younger son Jacob (v. 23).
But Jacob would live up to his name by
trying to supplant Esau prematurely. One day Esau came in tired and hungry,
desiring some stew Jacob was eating. Jacob sold him the stew in exchange for
Esau's birthright (vv. 27-34).
God's Promises to Jacob
Years later, Jacob even deceived his own
father, Isaac, to get the blessings that accompanied the birthright. So
Isaac mistakenly blessed Jacob: "See, the smell of my son is as the smell
of a field which the LORD hath blessed. So God give thee of the dew
of heaven, and of the fat places ["rich soil" Moffatt translation] of
the earth, and plenty of corn ["grain" NKJV] and wine. Let peoples
serve thee, and nations bow down to thee. Be lord over thy brethren,
and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee. Cursed be everyone that curseth
thee, and blessed be everyone that blesseth thee" (Gen. 27:27-29 Holy
Scriptures, Jewish Publication Society).
These are purely physical promises of
national prosperity. Nothing stated here concerns spiritual salvation.
Yet what incredible promises these are: ideal rainfall on the choicest
agricultural lands on earth to yield an overabundance of produce;
administrating over the affairs of other nations; enemies brought low and
allies prospering. Jacob was promised all this for his descendants!
Jacob, despite his character problems,
prized and valued the awesome divine blessings promised to Abraham. Esau did
not (25:34; Heb. 12:16-17).
God later confirmed the birthright promises
to Jacob in a dream: "I am the LORD God of Abraham your father and the God
of Isaac; the land on which you lie [Canaan] I will give to you and your
descendants. Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you
shall spread abroad [colonize] to the west and the east, to the north and the
south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be
blessed" (Gen. 28:13-14). Jacob's descendants would be great
colonizers--spreading themselves around the whole world!
Jacob married two sisters, Leah and Rachel,
and by them and their two handmaids, fathered 12 sons and a daughter. And,
after he repented of his deceit, God changed his name: "Your name shall
no longer be called Jacob, but ISRAEL [Heb. "Prevailer with God"];
for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed" (Gen.
32:28).
So here is the origin of the name
"Israel"! Through Israel's 12 sons, God would build His chosen
nation. Each of Israel's sons would be the progenitor of an individual tribe
of people. For instance, Jacob's son Judah was the father of the tribe
of Judah. His descendants, as we will see in more detail later, were called
"Jews." You need to make sure you understand this because many are
confused about it. Ethnic Jews are only one tribe of Israel. And there
are 11 other tribes of Israel besides them. This, then, is
the origin of the TWELVE TRIBES OF ISRAEL.
Later, God confirmed Jacob's new name and
the fantastic promises: "And God said to him, 'Your name is Jacob; your
name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name.'
So He called his name Israel. Also God said to him: 'I am God Almighty. Be
fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from
you, and kings shall come from your body'" (Gen. 35:10-11). Here again
is the promise of a line of "kings," but there is something else here
we haven't seen before--the promise of "a [single] nation and a company
["group" Moffatt] of nations"!
The Ferrar Fenton translation says, "a
Nation and an Assembly of Nations." The New International Version renders
it, "a nation and a community of nations." A "company,"
"group," "assembly" or "community" of nations.
This could not be something like the United Nations because its member
nations are not all of the same family. No, this would have to be something
similar to the Arab League or the British-descended Commonwealth nations. When
did such a "company of nations" ever form in ancient Israel? Never.
When has it happened among the Jewish people? It has not. We must, then, look
elsewhere.
"The Birthright
Belonged to Joseph"
The birthright would next have gone to
Jacob's firstborn son by Leah--Reuben. But Reuben committed incest with Bilhah,
his own father's concubine (Gen. 35:22; 49:3-4). Therefore, the birthright fell
to the firstborn of Rachel--Jacob's 11th son, Joseph. First Chronicles 5:1-2
explains: "The sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel. (He was the
firstborn, but because he defiled his father's bed his birthright was given
to the sons of Joseph son of Israel, so that he [Reuben] is not enrolled in
the genealogy according to the birthright; though Judah became prominent
among his brothers and a ruler ["the chief ruler" KJV] came from
him, yet the birthright belonged to Joseph)" (NRSV).
Something remarkable happened here! God
decided to split the promises of ethnic lineage and grace between
two different tribes. Judah would receive the kingly line, referred to
as "the SCEPTER" (Gen. 49:10). A scepter is defined as "a staff
held by a sovereign as an emblem of authority" or "ruling power or
authority; sovereignty" (American Heritage Dictionary). King David
would come from this line and from him would descend the "one seed,"
Jesus Christ, offering salvation to the world.
|
By Leah |
By Bilhah |
By Zilpah |
By Rachel |
|
Reuben |
Dan |
Gad |
Joseph |
|
*Each son fathered one of the |
|||
No wonder Jesus later said, "Salvation
is of the Jews" (John 4:22), and Paul wrote of "salvation for
everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek"
(Rom. 1:16). The promise of GRACE was to come down through JUDAH. But the birthright
promises of national blessings--ETHNICLINEAGE--would come through JOSEPH! Get
this fixed in your mind. It is an extremely important key to understanding your
Bible!
Joseph was Jacob's favorite son. Joseph's
brothers saw this favoritism--displayed in such ways as the famous "coat
of many colours" (Gen. 37:3 KJV)--and hated him. One day Joseph told them
of a powerful dream he had: "'There we were, binding sheaves in the field.
Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves
stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf.' And his brothers said to him, 'Shall
you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us?' So
they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words" (vv. 7-8).
He then had a second dream: "'This time,
the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to me.' So he told it to his
father and his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, 'What is
this dream that you have dreamed? Shall your mother and I and your brothers
indeed come to bow down to the earth before you?' And his brothers envied
him, but his father kept the matter in mind" (vv. 9-11). As time would
prove, these dreams were prophetic--not only foretelling what would happen to
Joseph himself, but also what would happen to his descendants far into the
future.
What did happen to Joseph himself is
amazing. His brothers sold him into slavery and convinced their father Jacob
that he'd been killed and eaten by a wild animal. Jacob, of course, was
devastated. Joseph was sold into Egypt and spent years in slavery and then in
prison. Yet God miraculously worked it out so that the Egyptian Pharaoh made
Joseph the prime minister of all Egypt! "You shall be over my house, and
all my people shall be ruled according to your word; only in regard to the
throne will I be greater than you" (Gen. 41:40).
Joseph, a gifted administrator over this
great Gentile nation--as his future descendants would also be--directed the
project of storing food through "seven years of great plenty" (v. 29)
to make it through "seven years of famine" (v. 30). During this
famine, Joseph's brothers came to Egypt to buy food but did not recognize him.
However, after Joseph put them through a test, he finally revealed his
identity. Then there was weeping with tears of joy.
How prophetic! The identity of the
descendants of Joseph is generally hidden right now. But it will not be that
way for long! Also, notice what Joseph told his brothers: "But now, do not
therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God
sent me before you to preserve life.... to preserve a posterity for you in the
earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance" (Gen. 45:5,
7). How true this would be, also, of Joseph's descendants in the dark days of
Nazi Germany--as we will later see!
Joseph asked his brothers to go and get
their father and bring him down to Egypt. The Pharaoh was going to give them
the choicest lands to dwell in. So the other sons of Israel returned to Canaan
to get him. "'Joseph is alive,' they shouted to him. 'And he is
ruler over all the land of Egypt!' But Jacob's heart was like a stone; he
couldn't take it in. But when they had given him Joseph's messages, and when he
saw the wagons filled with food that Joseph had sent him, his spirit revived. And
he said, 'It must be true! Joseph my son is alive! I will go and see him
before I die'" (vv. 26-28 Living Bible). When Jacob and Joseph at last
met, "they fell into each other's arms and wept a long while" (46:29
Living Bible). What a deeply emotional experience this was for the family of
Israel--just as it will be again in the very near future when the identity of
Joseph's descendants is revealed!
Why Jacob Crossed His Arms
Pharaoh had given an Egyptian woman,
Asenath--daughter of Poti-Pherah priest of On--as a wife to Joseph (Gen.
41:45). She had borne him two sons, Manasseh (Heb.
"Forgetting" his previous troubles) and Ephraim (Heb.
"Fruitful"). Thus the two boys were half-Egyptian.
When Joseph heard that Jacob was sick, he
took his two sons and hurried to his /tr> the utmost bound of the
everlasting hills." Genesis 27:28 says they would be given the "fat
places of the earth" (JPS). Fulfillment of some of these blessings can be
seen in the words of the song, "America the Beautiful," by Katherine
Lee Bates: "O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for
purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!"
By itself, the cozy island of Britain is an
incredibly beautiful and productive land. Yet remember that, according to
prophecy, the people there would someday say, "The place is TOO SMALL
for me; give me a place where I may dwell" (Is. 49:20). So, from this
small homeland, Britons went forth and colonized nine-tenths of the North
American continent, the whole continent of Australia, the beautiful, rich lands
of New Zealand, parts of South Africa and numerous other islands and
territories.
There is no other instance in the entire
history of the world where such a small, seemingly insignificant people spread
out around the globe, successfully colonizing such enormous, rich tracts of
land--thereby becoming many nations!
How did Britain become "too
small"--creating the need to colonize? Historians reveal that various
factors (war, famine, disease) kept the population of Britain from increasing
very rapidly until the Industrial Revolution (1750-1850). Then, suddenly, a
population explosion occurred. British historian, Colin Cross, observes that "one
of the unexplained mysteries of social history is the explosion in the size of
the population of Great Britain between 1750 and 1850. For generations the
British population had been static, or rising only slightly. Then in the space
of a century it almost trebled-from 7.7 million in 1750 to 20.7 million in
1850. Why it happened is unknown.... It must just be recorded that human
reproduction and vitality follows unpredictable patterns.... Britain was a
dynamic country and one of the marks of its dynamism was the population
explosion" (Fall of the British Empire, p. 155).
Very striking here is the time element! As
we saw earlier, Israel had to wait 2,520 years from the time of her Assyrian
oppression and captivity before receiving the actual fulfillment of the
birthright promises. This coincides exactly with Britain's population explosion,
which gave the British the impetus to spread abroad.
Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1907,
expressed the belief that God had put in the Englishmen a divine impulse
to establish colonies around the globe: "I would describe the [British]
Empire... as the result, not of an accident or a series of accidents, but of an
instinct-that ineradicable and divinely implanted impulse, which has
sent the Englishman forth into the uttermost parts of the earth, and made
him there the parent of new societies and the architect of unpremeditated
creations" (The British Empire, BBC TV and Time-Life Books, p.
2,466).
A Nation and a Company of
Nations
As Creator, Possessor and Ruler of
this earth, it is within God's prerogative to give any nation or individual
whatever portion of this earth He chooses (Gen. 14:19; Acts 17:23-26). The
French assemblyman Alexis de Tocqueville made these incisive comments in his
famous 1835 work, Democracy in America: "The Indians occupied
but did not possess the land. It is by agriculture that man wins the soil,
and the first inhabitants of North America lived by hunting.... Providence
[God] when it placed them amid the riches of the New World, seems to have
granted them a short lease only; they were there, in some sense, only
waiting. Those coasts so well suited for trade and industry, those deep rivers,
that inexhaustible valley of the Mississippi-in short, the whole
continent-seemed the yet empty cradle of a GREAT NATION" (p. 24).
De Tocqueville further stated, "When
the Creator handed the earth over to men, it was young and inexhaustible, but
they were weak and ignorant; and by the time that they had learned to take
advantage of the treasures it contained, they already covered its face, and
soon they were having to fight for the right to an asylum where they
could rest in freedom. It was then that North America was discovered, as if
God had held it in reserve and it had only just arisen above the waters of
the flood" (p. 258).
North America was indeed held "in
reserve" by God for the descendants of Israel. As God had inspired Moses
to write, "When the Most High divided their inheritance to the
nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of
the peoples [all other nations] according to the number of the children of
Israel [whose population size He foresaw and planned for]" (Deut.
32:8)!
Great Britain established its first
permanent colony in North America at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. In 1620, the
Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock with its Pilgrim settlers. The Puritans
arrived soon afterward to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony. By the early
1700s, a string of 13 thriving British colonies were firmly established along
the eastern seaboard of North America. In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France
ceded to Britain her Canadian colonies, as well as all the Louisiana Territory
east of the Mississippi River-excluding the city of New Orleans. Thus the die
had been cast toward making the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic peoples the dominant ethnic
group in North America.
Remember, Joseph's descendants were to
become a "great nation" and a "company of nations." Only 12
years after the first Treaty of Paris in 1763, the 13 British colonies in North
America rebelled against the Mother Country. During their War of Independence
(1775-1783), the upstart Americans threw off the Old World's yoke.
Subsequently, the second Treaty of
Paris was signed on September 3, 1783-this time by British and American
diplomats. In this treaty, Britain officially recognized the United States as a
sovereign nation and ceded all of her North American territories south of the
Great Lakes to the victorious rebels. Spain's Florida Territory then formed the
southern boundary of the new Republic, and the Mississippi River formed its
western boundary. Now it could rightly be said that America was assured of
becoming the GREAT NATION God had promised.
|
Again, the time period for all of this is
extremely significant, as we saw in chapter two. If we begin counting the seven
prophetic times (2,520 years) of Leviticus 26 from the initial Assyrian
incursions into Israel around the mid-740s to early 730s B.C., we would end our
count around A.D. 1776 (the signing of the Declaration of Independence) or 1783
(the Treaty of Paris recognizing American independence). If we begin
counting from Israel's first Assyrian deportation (c. 734-732 B.C.), we
arrive at 1787-1789. The U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787, ratified in 1788
and put into force in 1789. Thus was estabe. To your tents, O Israel! Now, see
to your own house, O David!' So Israel [the northern Ten Tribes] departed to
their tents" (v. 16). Some have mistakenly thought that King Rehoboam and
the Jews seceded from Israel. But that is not so. Rather the Ten
Tribes seceded from the dynasty of David, determined to establish their own
dynasty of kings: "So Israel has been in rebellion against the
house of David to this day" (v. 19).
Rehoboam's hard-nosed reply stirred the Ten
Tribes to install Jeroboam as their king (v. 20). From that day onward, the
Northern Kingdom would be called the "house of Israel," while the
Southern Kingdom would be known as the "house of Judah," which
included the tribes of Judah and Benjamin as well as some of the Levites (v.
21).
"Modern Jews thus consider themselves
to be descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin or are
classed as Levites" ("Benjamin," Encyclopaedia
Britannica, vol. 2, 1991). This is a vital point that many fail to grasp
today! Jews and Israelites are not necessarily synonymous terms. As time went
on, there would be intermittent, bitter rivalry and outright warfare between
the two rival kingdoms of Judah and Israel: "And there were wars
between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days" (2 Chron. 12:15).
An Apostate Nation
The Prophet Ahijah had explained that Solomon's
blatant idolatry was the reason Jeroboam was now ruling over the northern
Ten Tribes. Ahijah told Jeroboam that God would build him an everlasting
dynasty if he would obey the Lord's laws and follow in His ways (1 Kings
11:38). God's promise was remarkably similar to what He had said to David. But
despite Jeroboam's knowledge of the dire consequences of Solomon's apostasy, as
soon as he was made king over the Ten Tribes of Israel, he immediately set up two
golden calves, one in Dan and another in Bethel (12:28-29).
He instituted this system of false worship
to prevent the Israelites from going to Jerusalem to worship--where they might
realign with Judah and the Davidic line (vv. 26-27). The Kingdom of Israel
would never recover from the infectious idolatry which Jeroboam started.
The Northern Kingdom of Israel lasted only
209 years, from around 930 B.C. to 721 B.C. During that 209-year period,
the Ten Tribes were ruled by 19 kings representing nine different dynasties!
The kings of the Ten Tribes reigned, on average, just 11 years! Of the Northern
Kingdom's 19 kings--none of whom returned to truly worship God--eight were
assassinated, usually by the next king. One even committed suicide.
A later king, Omri, proved to be one of the
Northern Kingdom of Israel's most capable kings. Though he reigned only 12
years (c. 885-873 B.C.), Omri exercised political savvy. He moved Israel's
capital from Tirzah to a far more defensible position, the "hill of
Samaria," where he proceeded to build his new capital. (Samaria would
remain Israel's proud, unconquered capital city until its utter destruction by
the Assyrians in 72l B.C.)
Omri became widely known throughout the
ancient Near East during his lifetime. Numerous cuneiform inscriptions reveal
that the Assyrians were well acquainted with him and his dynasty, and called
the Kingdom of Israel "mat-bit-Humria" (the land of the
house of Omri). Israel was still referred to as such by the Assyrians in their
cuneiform inscriptions more than 100 years after he reigned. The famous Moabite
Stone mentions that "Omri, king of Israel" oppressed the Moabites
during his reign.
After Omri's death, his son Ahab reigned in
his place (c. 873-853 B.C.) along with his wicked queen Jezebel. This evil
couple promoted even greater idolatry in Israel. During their reign, the
menacing cloud of Assyria's rising power began to appear on the horizon.
Unfortunately for Israel and Judah, they were situated on the strategic land
bridge of the Middle East's Fertile Crescent, separating rival powers located
in Mesopotamia and in Egypt.
King Ahab was destined to do battle with the
Assyrians. One of the well-known inscriptions of Assyria's King Shalmaneser III
(c. 859-824 B.C.) describes the famous battle of Qarqar--which occurred in 853
B.C. between his army and a coalition of western nations allied against him,
led by Israel's King Ahab. Shalmaneser's inscription says, "I
crossed the Euphrates; at Qarqar I destroyed... 100,000 men of Ahab, the
Israelite." Contrary to the Assyrian's boasting, that crucial battle was
Ahab's greatest military achievement and it momentarily checked the power of
the "Colossus of the North." However, the Assyrians would come back
again and again during the next 150 years until the fall of their empire in 612
B.C.
Jehu's Bloody Revolution
King Jehu, who had been anointed by God to
overthrow the house of Omri, was a revolutionary firebrand who reigned over
Israel for 28 years (c. 841-813 B.C.). During Jehu's reign, Israel began to pay
tribute to Assyria in a partly successful effort to buy Assyrian protection (as
a vassal state) from the Aramaeans (Syrians). Another famous inscription of
Shalmaneser III recorded, "The tribute of Jehu, son [royal
successor] of Omri, silver, gold, bowls of gold, chalices of gold, cups of
gold, vases of gold, lead, scepter for the king, and spear shafts, I have
received."
Jeroboam II (c. 793-753 B.C.), the fourth
king of the Jehu dynasty, was one of Israel's most illustrious kings because He
enlarged the Northern Kingdom of Israel to its greatest territorial
extent! But "Israelite society, in spite of its healthy appearance, was in
an advanced state of decay, socially, morally and religiously" (Bright, p.
256).
Prophetic Warnings and
Assyrian Inroads
Through the voices of the prophets Amos and
Hosea, Jeroboam's contemporaries, we can still feel the intensity of God's
abhorrence at these backsliding, apostate people. The wealthy gained their
money at the expense of the poor and deprived the needy of justice.
"'Therefore I will send you into captivity beyond Damascus,' says the
LORD, whose name is the God of hosts" (Amos 5:27).
Though the Israelites maintained a form of
religion and gave lip service to God, they had forsaken all of His teachings
and would reap bitter fruit: "My people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you...
because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your
children" (Hos. 4:6). God foretold their society's collapse. As a
result of its social, moral and religious decay, it would be too weak to resist
invading armies and ultimate captivity.
During King Menahem's reign (c. 752-741
B.C.), the Assyrians, under Tiglath-Pileser (Pul), began to seriously menace
the nation. The Assyrians issued a demand that Menahem ("Menihummu of
Samerina" in Assyrian annals) pay them tribute--to which the
Israelite king quickly acceded. Menahem's reign was overlapped by that of
Israel's next-to-last king, Pekah (c. 752-732 B.C.), who would experience the
heavy yoke of the rapidly rising Assyrian Empire. He was a shrewd
military officer who ruled for 20 years (2 Kings 15:27-31).
During King Pekah's reign, he allied the
Kingdom of Israel with Aram (Syria), and they together attacked Judah (2 Kings
16:5-6). NOTE: Here is the first use of the term "Jews" in the
King James Bible and they are at war against "Israel"!
Ahaz, king of Judah, sent an urgent appeal
to the Assyrians for immediate assistance against his foes--Israel and
Syria (v. 7)along with a large present. "So the king of Assyria heeded
him" (v. 9).
Israel's Two Assyrian
Captivities
Time had run out for Israel! God's patience
with this part of His "covenant people" was at an end. God had warned
them repeatedly of the consequences their sins would bring. Through Amos, He
had threatened, "Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are on the sinful
kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth" (Amos 9:8). But
they ignored God. They simply would not heed. So He delivered them over to the
cruelty of Assyrian captivity: "In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath-Pileser
[III] king of Assyria [745-727 B.C.] came and took Ijon, Abel Beth
Maachah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali;
and he carried them [the Israelites] captive to Assyria" (2
Kings 15:29)!
The Israelites were deported in two
separate captivities. The one just mentioned was the first (c.
734-732 B.C.). Based on the locations just given, this first deportation was
also known as the "Galilean Captivity." It included all the
Israelites living throughout Galilee and the Plain of Sharon, plus the
territories east of the Jordan (Reuben, Gad and the eastern half-tribe of
Manasseh--cf. 1 Chron. 5:26).
Yet some have subscribed to the notion that
the Assyrians took only a few thousand Israelites into captivity, leaving
the bulk of them still living in the land of Israel. One author even tries
to convince his readers that only about two percent of the Israelites
were actually removed to the land of Assyria. This is plainly wrong. The areas
just mentioned represented about three-fourths of all the territory of
the Kingdom of Israel!
After the Galilean Captivity, only a rather
small "rump state" situated around Samaria, Israel's capital city,
remained intact. Regarding this same captivity, Tiglath-Pileser III himself
said, "Bet Omri [House of Omri = Israel] all of whose cities I had added
to my territories on my former campaigns, and had left out only the city of
Samaria.... The whole of Naphtali I took for Assyria. I put my officials
over them as governors. The land of Bet Omri, all its people and their
possessions I took away to Assyria" (Western Campaign and Gala/Damascus
Campaign). Obviously, the vast majority of Israel's population was carried
away.
After becoming a vassal to the Assyrians,
Israel's new king, Hoshea, tried to enlist Egyptian aid to free Israel from
that yoke (2 Kings 17:1-4). This rebellion by Samaria's last monarch, and the
stubborn resistance of a small portion of the Israelites, convinced the
Assyrians they would have to completely break both the power and will
of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Their answer? Israel's second
Assyrian captivity!
The inspired biblical historian says,
"Now the king of Assyria [Shalmaneser V] went throughout all the land [of
Israel], and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years [c.
724-721 B.C.]. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria [a new
king, Sargon II, as Shalmaneser had died] took Samaria and carried
Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of
Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (vv. 5-6).
Did the Assyrians take all the people
of Israel out of their land? Or did they only deport a few of them? The
inspired Word of God unequivocally answers, "There was none left but
the tribe [Heb. sebet] of Judah alone" (v. 18)! Sebet
can mean an entire nation with more than one tribe (cf. Jer. 51:19 NRSV, NIV).
So only the peoples of the Southern Kingdom of JUDAH were left!
Notice this too: "Then the king of
Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath and from Sepharvaim,
and placed them in the cities of Samaria INSTEAD of the children of Israel; and
they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities" (v. 24). These
Gentile peoples from Babylonia, who totally displaced the Israelites, became
known as the Samaritans--as they were still called in Christ's day.
Both the Bible and the Assyrian state
records agree: all the inhabitants of the Ten Tribes were removed from the land
of Israel! Apparently, some stragglers were left behind, and a few even moved
south to Judah. This explains all biblical references to people from the
northern Ten Tribes in the Holy Land following the Assyrian captivity
(Hezekiah's Passover of 2 Chronicles 30 was undoubtedly before Samaria's fall--cf.
2 Kings 18:9-10). So all the Ten Tribes, as tribes, were removed--not
one single tribe remained!
Finally, after 200 years of rank idolatry
and debased morality, God's patience had worn thin. Israel's day of reckoning
came at the hands of the cruelest of all the heathen conquerors--the Assyrian
Empire, the rod of God's anger (Is. 10:5-6). The ancient Kingdom of Israel was
destroyed--without ever realizing the tremendous blessings God had promised!
In all the days from Joseph until the
Assyrian captivity, the Israelites never colonized around the entire
globe, inheriting its best agricultural regions. They never came into
possession of the most important land and sea gates of the world. They never
became a "multitude of nations"--much less the prophesied
"nation and a company of nations." And by no stretch of the
imagination did they ever become the greatest military superpower nations on
the planet!
So these blessings had to wait until the
Israelites returned to the Promised Land from captivity--right? NO! For--and
here's the astonishing part--the Ten Tribes of Israel never came back, even
to this day! To many historians, they simply disappeared from history and
are now known as the "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel." What happened to
them? Does anyone know? Were they destroyed from the face of the earth? If they
were, then what about all of God's promises?
We can't answer this apparent dilemma by
looking at what happened to the people of Judah and their modern
descendants, the Jews. The Southern Kingdom of Judah, the TWO TRIBES of
Benjamin and Judah, continued as a viable kingdom from 930 B.C. until its
downfall in 586 B.C. (a period of 344 years), at which time the Babylonians
took the peoples of Judah captive to Babylon.
Shortly after the fall of Babylon, in 539
B.C., some of the Jews returned to their former land of Judah and, under Ezra
and Nehemiah, reestablished themselves as the nation of Judah. However,
only a small portion of the Jews returned to the Promised Land at that
time--and not one of the TEN TRIBES returned with those Jews who did!
For the most part, the Jews remained a
subject people of the great empires of the Middle East except for a very brief
period of independence under the Hasmonean dynasty of the Maccabees. At the
time of Christ, the kingdom of Judea had become directly subject to Rome (from
47 B.C.). And, almost 40 years after Christ's death, the Romans, in
putting down Jewish insurrection, razed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. After putting down
a later revolt (132-135) led by Simon Bar Kokhba, the Romans wiped out
the Jewish state completely, changing the name of the province to Syria
Palaestina (after Israel's ancient enemy, the Philistines)--out of spite.
In following
centuries, the Jews were always scattered and persecuted yet, amazingly, their
identity was somehow preserved. They never had any real homeland up until the
creation of the modern Jewish state of "Israel" in 1948. Yet even it
contains only a small fraction of the world's ethnic Jews. And it is a far cry
from the national greatness promised Israel's descendants. IS there an answer
to this quandary? There certainly is--as following chapters will reveal--and it
is one of the most astounding revelations in your Bible!