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ISRAEL, GOD'S ORACLE PEOPLE

CHAPTER 4
THE MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING THE PROMISES TO ABRAHAM; JESUS, THE JEW, AND THE CHURCH; THE FIRST CROSSROADS OF PROPHETIC FULLFILLMENT

Brother John G. Gassaway

At this point, I need to do some summary and redefining of the subject. Some of this is repetition of previous statements. God selected Abraham to be His witness on earth and after training him, promised him a son in his old age. That son Isaac will be VERY important in future articles to identify the so-called lost tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel as they would LOSE their old name, Israel [Hosea 1:9]. Isaac's son, Jacob would receive the many blessings passed on by tradition to the eldest son from Abraham to Isaac, including the promised Messiah but also numerous national promises to a people who would number like the numbers of stars in the heavens and the sand of the sea. The following paragraphs contain a bunch of rhetorical questions, meaning I don't question the answer. I just want you to think about them.

Jesus Christ is the focus and center of Christian belief and anything outside that has no bearing on the eternal life of a Christian. Therefore, it is easy to allow that mindset to interpret all scripture as being of spiritual concern only and to totally ignore, even disparage, any historical significance of anything that the Bible states concerning prophecy and promises to God's people through prophetic revelation unless it pertains to Jesus Christ, the Church or the Jew. After all, what else does the scriptures speak of other than Jesus Christ, the Church, or the Jew?

If this were the case then one should have some questions about how God has worked over the centuries to carry out the promise to Eve in the Garden of Eden concerning the salvation, regeneration and gathering of a people fit for heaven and eternal life with God. If consequences of man's feeble attempts to rule himself are of no consequence to God and the plan for eternity, then why should the Old Testament spend so much space telling of the failures to do so including the stories of the flood, Abraham and his generations in the Holy Land before Christ was born. There are many instances where certain promises to these various men or people in the Old Testament that are NOT spiritual in nature.

For that matter what is the reason of the "great tribulation" of John's Revelation? Beginning with chapter four, Revelation up to chapter 19 is written to and about the Jew, no doubt about it. It is also written to Christians to tell them of the time of "Jacob's troubles" ahead of time and to answer the questions of the ages, "How will this world come to an end?" It is also to show maybe even more importantly that God had planned all along to give carnal man the opportunity to rule himself through many empires that would fail, one after the other, and in all cases disregard God. The end of this age will be so corrupted by the rule of men (the four horsemen) that God finally turns loose His terrible destruction of the whole mess and institutes for one thousand years, the perfect rule of God through Christ, and the rule of the "rod of iron."

Why should those national promises to Abraham be of any concern whatsoever to the Christian and even less concern to God once He has satisfied the law by the death of Jesus Christ? If the answer to that is that the proof of God's faithfulness to His promise of the Saviour is important in the development of faith in the life of the believer, then we must ask, "Do all of these promises and prophecies only apply to Jesus Christ, the Church, or to the Jew?"

If one goes through the Old Testament with this mindset, he finds an awful lot of writing that has absolutely no bearing at all on those promises if they are only to Jesus Christ, the Church or the Jew, particularly if one's mindset is also founded on the principal of salvation by Grace and not of works. There would be little reason to include historical records of Genesis such as the patriarchs before the flood, Noah, and Abraham. Nor would there be a reason for chapter 10 of Genesis to lay out precisely the genealogy of the sons of Noah. Why should we need all the details of genealogies in chapter 11 and the state of the world in those days and how Abraham's ancestors came to be in the land of Ur? Does God want us to know these details for some reason?

All of the details of Genesis 12 through 50 concerning God's dealing with Abraham and his descendants could be shortened considerably if they only applied to Jesus Christ, the Church or the Jew. Why should we care about the details of how Jacob happened to "steal the birthright from Esau" if it only mattered that the birthright pointed to the genealogy of Jesus Christ? Everyone who grows up in a Christian society knows about the preference of God for Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, but that child of God likely has no concern over how the promises given to Abraham were divided for the FIRST time by Jacob between Judah and Joseph by placing his name (Israel) on the sons of Joseph and then separate out Judah especially for the scepter and lawgiving in chapter 49. In case it is not clear that that is what happened then read 1st Chronicles 5:1, 2 a record written to the Jews just to remind them twice of their position in regard to God and the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The "birthright was Joseph's"; the chief ruler was to be Judah's. "So the genealogy (of Judah) is not to be reckoned after the birthright."

Why does it take the entire chapters 48 and 49 to describe how Jacob transferred both his name (Israel) and the promise of multitudes of people (one of the promises to Abraham 48:16) if that promise was only to Jesus Christ, the Church or the Jew? And if so, was such a promise carried out? Jesus Christ was one man. The Jew is such a minority of the population of the world that one can number them easily in tens of millions, certainly not with the difficulty of numbering the sand of the sea and stars of the heaven. The same goes for the Church, particularly if the Church is made of those who enter the straight and narrow pathway that Jesus spoke of and stated, "Few there be that find it."

If Jesus Christ is the only focus of the Old Testament, why should we be at all concerned with the generations of Ephraim and why should God give us an entire book of the Bible about Ephraim in the book of Hosea? It WAS NOT WRITTEN TO SHOW THE COMPASSION OF GOD FOR A PROSTITUTE! If the Northern Kingdom of Israel is lost and has no bearing on Jesus Christ, the Church or the Jew, why does God spend any time in His Bible telling us of how He dealt with the Northern Kingdom in the Book of Kings and Chronicles, the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, Zechariah, and Micah, is ALL instances pointing out that He was speaking to the Northern Kingdom established first by Jeroboam? Why should we even care about how God dealt with the descendants of Esau? Why should we be given an entire book of condemnation of those descendants in Obadiah?

The answer to all of these rhetorical questions is quite obvious. God did care and is carrying out His promises; and because of the disobedience of Israel, God had to hide it from the world and even from Israel. He has thus far hidden His hatred of the enemies of the Jew, the descendents of Esau, Ishmael, and Amalek. He did not hide it from someone who approaches the subject with an open mind and dogged determination to find the truth. It requires resources in the Bible and outside; that includes ancient historians and archaeology just to mention a few sources. As important as Jesus Christ, the Jew and the Church are in God's plan, His plan for an oracle people to always represent His promises to Abraham involving actual land, borders, laws, ways and culture was to prove that Deuteronomy 32:8 has real meaning during a real time even if the recipients of the promises are totally ignorant of them. I have this scripture taped to my computer in front of me at all times to remind me of the truth in this project. I do not take it lightly.

Deuteronomy 32:8: When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam; he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

Before we embark on answering these questions, I recognize the position that is taken by some who state that all the tribes of Israel were represented in the Southern Kingdom of Judah once the Northern Kingdom was carried away in bondage. It is stated clearly that that setting was done that those who God cared for moved southward to Judea in order to remain with "God's people." If that is the case then what is the need for the Book of Hosea, particularly the middle to later chapters which tell of God's plan to forgive Ephraim and his fellows and to save them in spite of themselves - even make them "sons of God?" Why do we need all of those references to God's two wives and the description of one being divorced by God because of idol worship that God viewed as equaling adultery? You say, "That is just one of those similitudes." If so, then these "migrants" from the Northern Kingdom are the divorced wife and what is God doing cohabitating with a divorced wife even in a similitude? His own law disallows that.

Remarrying of the divorced wife requires that God die, which He did through Jesus Christ but long after the prophet's times by six to eighth centuries. That will not work. You say, "Well Judah adopted the children of the divorced wife." If that is the case then Deuteronomy 32:8 can not be fulfilled because the Jew, alone, has not set the bounds of Adam's sons and God stated by more than Judah alone. The WHOLE number of the children of Israel (Jacob) had to do that. True, the Jew was dispersed widely throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, but they have never been seen as anything but a nuisance, even an adversary to be persecuted and many times killed wherever they have settled and Judah is only one son of Israel, not "sons." But most of all that perspective is against scripture.

Ezekiel 11:15: Son of man, thy brethren, even thy brethren, the men of thy kindred, and all the house of Israel wholly, are they unto whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, Get you far from the LORD: unto us is this land given in possession.

The Jews now left with their own land, primarily just Jerusalem are telling any others of the House of Israel to scram and get away from them. Isaiah 54 is written to that divorced wife "of youth", forsaken for a short time and God makes some promises that were never carried out through Jesus Christ, the Church or the Jew. One such promise was that "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper." It can not possibly be applied to the Church for She is the virgin bride of Christ. The Church was never divorced and it has been the experience of the Church that persecution and death is almost the way in some lands such as Sudan today. Jeremiah spends a lot of words in condemning Judah and comparing Judah to a sister who was put away or divorced. We are told that God divorced Israel but not the Jew. Both Judah and Israel worshipped idols and Jeremiah stated that Judah was even worse. So why did God divorce Israel and not Judah? If that divorced sister is living in Judah at that time, how can we possibly interpret those warnings to Judah in Jeremiah and ignore Israel if she is now represented by a few refugees from the Assyrian onslaught that fled into Judea?

Why should we care about Jeremiah's distress in having to uproot the kingdom that had perpetuated the throne of David, notwithstanding that God had promised in Psalms 89:37,38 that it would last as long as there was a moon and stars in the heavens? The last time I looked, the moon and sun are still out there. Why should we even care whether Jeremiah carried out the rest of build that uprooted kingdom as it was clearly stated in Jeremiah 1:10. He had a commission to plant and build the nations (notice the plural, Judah was only one nation.), both Judah which was about to be uprooted and Israel, and the northern kingdom which had already been uprooted. Those were the only nations (plural) that Jeremiah had any connection with through these prophecies. Where did he plant them and should we even care if these promises to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the prophecies concerning Israel are only to Jesus Christ, the Jew and the Church?

The Jews as a nation went to Babylon and Jeremiah did not even go with them. He stayed with a miserable little group in Judea who disobeyed God (the bad figs), went to Egypt and were destroyed there. Jeremiah certainly did not plant them unless that refers to burying them! The Church was several centuries away, long after Jeremiah's death, before it could be planted. There must be another answer to these questions.

There are four great crossroads in Old Testament prophecy which must be recognized in order to sift through these promises and find the ones that do not apply to Jesus Christ (alone), the Church or the Jew. The first crossroad that is known by all is God's preference for Isaac instead of Ishmael, Jacob instead of Esau and is at the forefront of religious thought concerning nowadays Israel and their constant foes, the descendents of Ishmael and Esau. Most Bible readers do not notice and are not taught about the other most important crossroads in prophecy. The second crossroad is found in Genesis 48, 49 and comes with earliest prophecies supplied through the blessings passed on by Jacob to his children before his death. We already stated the universal understanding of how God did not divide the blessings between Isaac and Ishmael or between Jacob and Esau. But Jacob DIVIDED the birthright blessings that he had received from his father Isaac who had received them from Abraham who had received them from God. Jacob gave the right to kingship and lawmaking to Judah which WAS fulfilled through the Jew in the kings of Judah, the Levitical system and Jesus Christ. The rest of the many promises made to Abraham were given to Joseph and his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh with Ephraim being preeminent. 1st Chronicles 5 makes it clear that that is what happened there.

1st Chronicles 5:1: Now the sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel, (for he was the firstborn; but, forasmuch as he defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given unto the sons of Joseph the son of Israel: and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright. 2 For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief ruler; but the birthright was Joseph's:)

Ephraim would become the head tribe and leader of the Northern Kingdom. That much is clear from scripture. When Israel left Egypt they left as a new nation, but two peoples as God saw them. That is clear from scripture in Ezekiel 23:2. When the 12 tribes were ruled under David and Solomon, they had one king but they soon were re-divided as result of Solomon's sin of idolatry and Jeroboam was given the ten tribes in the north and ruled from Shiloh. He too, failed and introduced idol worship with images at Dan and Bethel. The sixth king, Imrie, moved the capitol of the Northern Kingdom from Shiloh to Samaria. In Biblical writings they would be known then as Samaria as well as Israel and the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The worst of all kings, Ahab and his evil foreign wife brought back the most atrocious acts of heathen god worship, sending his children through the fires of Molech, a terrible reminder of today's descendents of Ahab's wife of the Sidonians. They regularly sacrifice their children with bombs strapped to them for Allah.

When the Bible speaks of Israel we must always look at the context. Both Judah and the northern kingdom's ten tribes were Israelites, being descendants of Israel (Jacob). The Bible speaks of "My people" and "My people Israel" at times. That includes Judah at times and at times it doesn't, all depending on the context. When the context is speaking of those taken captive by the Assyrians, it is speaking of the ten tribes PLUS the Jews who were taken at the same time, a considerable number, as all of the outer cities and countryside beyond the walls of Jerusalem fell to Senacherib's last invasion, chronicled by Isaiah during the reign of Hezekiah. God makes it clear often that Israel is quite different from Judah when He is speaking of both or comparing one to the other such as in 2nd Kings 23:27:

And Jehovah said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and I will cast off this city which I have chosen, even Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

Or in Jeremiah 3:8: And I saw, when, for this very cause that backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a bill of divorcement, yet treacherous Judah her sister feared not; but she also went and played the harlot.

You say that is not the case once the Northern Kingdom ceased and was taken away to Assyrian-Medo-Persia and all those allusions by the Book of Kings or by Jeremiah became of no effect after the Jews came back to the land. You say, they became Israel and all these other people were NOT Israel anymore. Well we can go to a later writer who wrote AFTER the Babylonian captivity. Zechariah saw them distinctly different, that is, there was a difference between Israel and Judah.

Zechariah 1:19: And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.

Zechariah 8:13: And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing: fear not, but let your hands be strong.

Zechariah 9:1: The burden of the word of the LORD is the land of Hadrach, and Damascus shall be the rest thereof: when the eyes of man, as of all the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the LORD.

Zechariah 11:14: Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

God even used this analogy of breaking a staff in Ezekiel to promise the rejoining of Joseph and Judah in the future by rejoining the broken staff.

Ezekiel 37:16: Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions: 17 And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.

He is obviously alluding to latter days here as the previous Midrash about the dry bones concerns the House of Israel that was no longer present in the Promised Land in Ezekiel's day. The people who came back to the land from Babylon called their land "Judah." They had no misconceptions about who they were. They were Jews. Anyone else was a Gentile including those those Israelites who were taken away into Assyrian bondage were also Gentiles and sometimes called the nations or ethnos. God will refer to them in this book of Zechariah and He will even say that He plans to kin Himself to these nations (ethnos) [Zechariah 2:11]. The Jew would no longer be the one and only nation that God would consider special to Him. I doubt many Jews have read that verse seriously.

When the Bible speaks of those in Babylon, it is speaking of the Jews of Jerusalem who were takken captive by Nebuchadnezzar but even there it is important to notice that Ezekiel spends a lot of time speaking of Israel at a time when Israel in the context of 2nd Kings 23:27 had been removed from land by the Assyrians over 100 years before. Yet the "lost tribes" of Israel were only a few hundred miles away from Ezekiel when he was with the Jewish captives on the river Chebar and spoke of the House of Israel dozens of times and at one time the "elders of Israel" came to speak to him concerning the will of God. It was abundantly clear that the elders of Jerusalem had NO interest in what a prophet had to say other than the ones who prophesied good things to them. Neither Jeremiah nor Ezekiel gave them good tidings. Jeremiah was very much alone among those of Jerusalem in those days.

With these things in mind, letus look at Ezekiel's experiences as written by him while he was being held captive just outside Babylon in a place known as the River Chebar. There were maybe 3000 captives with him there and were the artisans, craftsmen and top of the culture from Jerusalem. Daniel had been taken to Babylon even earlier by the first siege of Nebuchadnezzar [Daniel 1:1-6]. Daniel remained in the King's palace. Ezekiel remained among the people.

To be continued: The prophecies of Ezekiel and his fascinating flying machine; the third crossroad in prophecy.