| Day 4 God creates the sun, moon and stars. | Day 11 David, king of Israel, unites the tribes to become a powerful nation. |
| How are day-4 and day-11 the same? The star of David being like the sun and Israel; "A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head." The descendents of Abraham are as numerous as the stars in the heavens. | |
The Last Judge Over Israel
Uncle Sam: the police force of the world; in the pattern of last judges.
Before Saul (Israel’s first king), Israel was ruled by judges. These judges were not how we would picture a judge today. Nevertheless the LORD raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. (Judges 2:16) A judge during this period was a deliverer. And when the LORD raised them up judges, then the LORD was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the LORD because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. (Judges 2:18) God used a judge as a representative of His Word. When Israel would forget their God and go astray into idol worship, they became victims of their enemies. Then in their hardships and oppression, they remembered their God and cried out to Him. The God of Israel, with His merciful heart, had compassion on His children and raised up a deliverer; a judge. Through the judge, as long as he lived, the Lord kept Israel safe from their enemies. When the judge died, so did their faith and the cycle into idol worship started all over again.
What do you think the Lord is trying to tell us here? This was a theocratic society. There were no politics here, no bureaucracies to feed. No government to tell the people what was politically correct. People were free to do as they pleased as long as they trusted in the Lord and obeyed Him. Was this separation of church and state? Israel had no government to control the people. There was no hierarchy of controlling authorities they had to answer to. The only authority they had to give an account to was the Lord Almighty and He waited for them to call Him... which they did only as a last resort. The point here is that God does not put any burdens on people, people put burdens on people. The Lord wanted the people to put their trust in Him. He would take care of all their needs, but these proud people continually put their trust in self and paid the consequences.
This theocratic society wasn’t good enough. Israel was like a child asking the mother for something knowing that the Father would disapprove. They wanted a king other than the God of their fathers Whom they kept forgetting. With a king comes government and to maintain government comes taxes and a loss of certain freedoms. With a king, the people had someone to blame for the misfortunes that they brought upon themselves by their own choices. Not only that, but they would also be subject to the whims of the king; whether he be righteous or evil.
As The King Over Israel
Notice the pattern of God picking the smallest.
At first, God chose Saul to be the king of Israel. If we look at Israel as symbolic of the children of heaven in the first world, Saul seems to fit a pattern similar to Lucifer. He was an impressive young man without equal among the Israelites; a head taller than any of the others. (1Samuel 9:2) Saul was a Benjamite, the smallest tribe of Israel and his clan was the smallest among the Benjamites. But the Lord said, I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions. (1Samuel 15:11)
God lets Samuel know that He’s going to pick another king to replace Saul. Samuel is told to go to the house of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah. There among the sons of Jesse will Samuel find the man to replace Saul. Shortly after Samuel’s arrival, Jesse has his seven oldest sons walk by Samuel.... But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. (1Samuel 16:7) When Samuel came by, David, the youngest of Jesse’s eight boys was out tending to the sheep. If Saul fits the pattern of Lucifer in the first heaven, then David would be in many ways in a pattern parallel to the Archangel Michael.
God does not choose people to be leaders as people choose people. Saul was from the smallest clan of the smallest tribe but he was a big guy. David on the other hand was a little guy; the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons. As a child, David grew to love, obey and trust in the Lord. Verily I say unto you, Except you be converted, and become as little children, ye will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3) David knew that God is in control and that nothing was impossible for someone who is protected and led by God. As a boy, he knew he had a special destiny when he slew a bear and a lion while protecting his sheep. He also knew in the same way that the Lord would protect him against Goliath. He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for you: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2Corinthians 12:9) It’s not by our strength which make us overcomers, it’s by trusting in the Lord and His strength coming through us.
Just to throw in a little trivia, David’s name in Hebrew gematria equals fourteen. It was basically spelled in the Hebrew as D-V-D; 4 + 6 + 4 = 14.
Israel: Scattered Throughout The World
Why is Israel God’s chosen people? These are the people God has chosen to evangelize the world; to spread out and fill the earth; to prepare the world for the kingdom to come; to assist in the preparation of bringing the world under the One Kingdom of God; the reign of the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ. The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him. (Exodus 15:2) In order to do this, Israel needs to become a multitude of strong, influential and peaceful nations around the world.
The basic point of this section is to show that not all descendants of Israel are Jews and that it was the tribes of non-Jews that became the lost tribes and a multitude of nations.
From the Exodus of the Israelites in Egypt, to the time of King David’s reign, approximately 400 years had passed; the same number of years they had spent in Egypt up to the Exodus. For forty years they had wandered in the desert before they entered the land promised by God to Abraham. Then, after the death of Moses, Israel was ruled by judges.
After the death of King Solomon, who reigned forty years and was David’s son to the throne, Israel had become divided. The southern half of Israel became Judah or Judea, consisting of the three tribes; Judah, Benjamin and many from the tribe of Levi. The rest of the tribes who occupied the northern half, represented by the tribe of Ephraim, kept the name Israel. The Bible distinguishes between the two by referring to one as Judah or the House of Judah, and the other as the House of Ephraim, the House of Israel, or the House of Joseph. Together as a whole, they are still Israel. ...because I am Israel’s Father, and Ephraim is My firstborn son. (Jeremiah 31:9)
I believe people today do not realize nor take the time to consider the extent of the blessings God gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. J.H. Allen, in his book called Judah’s Sceptre And Joseph’s Birthright, really pinpoints the distinctions between the House of Judah and the House of Israel.
The royal tribe of Judah is given the blessing: The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the rulers staff from between his feet, until He comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is His. (Genesis 49:10). Does God take back His Word? This not only means that through the tribe of Judah will come the Savior Jesus Christ but also that I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father when I said, You shall never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel (1Kings 9:5). This means that until Jesus returns as King of kings and Lord of lords, someone from Judah’s tribe, more specifically someone from David’s lineage will be leading a nation (or nations) as a king or queen.
Joseph’s birthright blessing which Jacob (a.k.a. Israel) gave to Joseph’s two sons Ephraim and Manasseh said, May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly upon the earth. (Genesis 48:16).
J.H. Allen points out that Abraham inherited the blessings from God saying, I am the God Almighty, be fruitful and increase in number, A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body. (Genesis 35:11) Abraham passes the blessings on to his son Isaac, who then passes them on to his son Jacob. Jacob takes the blessings and divvies them between his twelve sons and his two grandsons from Joseph. He gives the ‘kings’ blessing to Judah and the ‘multitudes’ blessing to Ephraim. This according to Mr. Allen is Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright.
Where is this multitude of nations prophesied by the prophets of God that eventually Israel would become? Are we to think that the little country surrounded by hostility in the Middle-East is it? This phrase didn’t mean that they would dwell in a multitude of nations. They (Israel) were to become a multitude of nations. God’s Word is never wrong, only the spiritually short-sighted people who interpret His Word.
King Solomon, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines of different spiritual beliefs and ethnicities, was influenced by their worship and their gods. Sometimes he ignored the voice of God when God called for him. For the Lord, this was a good time to start scattering and multiplying the nation of Israel. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. (1Kings:11:5)
Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant. (1Kings:11:11) Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one tribe to thy son for David my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake which I have chosen (1Kings:11:13) And Jeroboam the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite (Ephraim’s tribe) of Zereda, Solomon's servant, whose mother's name was Zeruah, a widow woman, even he lifted up his hand against the king. (1Kings:11:26) The man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph. (1Kings:11:28)
Rehoboam succeeded Solomon and reigned over the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Many from the tribe of Levi soon joined these two tribes after the division because of Jeroboam. The new king over the ten tribes set up golden calves to worship. He did this in fear he would lose his people to Rehoboam, since everyone had to go outside of Israel to Jerusalem in Judea for their burnt offerings and sacrifices.
The reason Israel split up was not entirely because of what Solomon was doing, it was God’s will for the destiny of His chosen; through them all people of the world would be blessed.
Speak to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, King of Judah, and to all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the remnant of the people, saying, The Lord says, You will not go up, nor fight against your brothers the children of Israel: return every man to his house; for this thing is from Me. They hearkened therefore to the word of the Lord, and returned to depart, according to the word of the Lord. (1Kings:12:23-24)
In the same respects, I see that it’s not because of the sin in the Garden of Eden that the world is the way it is. Oh sure, if Adam and Eve had not disobeyed God people would be living a lot longer and there wouldn’t be any chaos in the world. We would plainly see the reality of the spiritual realms around us. However, the fact is that everything happens according to God’s will; it’s all going as He planned it to be. Yet, The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Everything’s going to happen just as it once happened in the prior world; in our prior existence. I mention Adam and Eve because I see another pattern.
In the beginning of this second earth, civilized man started with Adam, then Eve, and then Cain. In comparing the beginnings of civilized man with the beginnings of Israel, first, I would say that while Israel was under the ruling of Judges, it was in a pattern of the ‘sixth-day’ people and also of the children from the first earth. In a ‘deep’ way of thinking, I’ve already mentioned a parallel between David and the Archangel Michael. Perhaps going ‘deeper,’ comparing the start of civilized mankind to Israel’s kings, David could also be in a pattern parallel to Adam. David’s son Solomon, like Eve, gave into temptation. With Cain, the eighth-day people are divided and Jeroboam, like Cain, is associated with sacrifices that are not pleasing to the Lord.
In the year 722 B.C., the Assyrians conquered the northern half, the house of Israel. The ten tribes had then become scattered and the Assyrian people moved in to take the land. This is the point where most people are lost as to where these ten tribes went. It was not the house of Israel who were called the Jews nor did many of them hang around long enough to be absorbed into the Samaritan people.
E. Raymond Capt says in his booklet with commentary on The Lost Chapter Of Acts Of The Apostles, pertaining to the relocation of Israel: Generally overlooked by Bible scholars is the fact that Israel was "appointed" a place outside of Palestine. In the Second Book of Samuel, Chapter 7, we read how God would establish David’s house, kingdom and throne forever in safety, but not in the Holy Land, which had once been occupied by others who now surrounded them as enemies. for he says in verse 10: "Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more, beforetime." Since they were then in Palestine it follows that the appointed place had to be somewhere else.
Just to give food for thought, it was in the reign of the fourteenth king of Britain, King Rivalo (760 B.C.), when Rome was founded around the year 753 B.C. This was very close to the time when the people of Israel began to venture out westward from their country. I believe one of the reasons why Israel was eventually defeated and scattered was because many of them had already started relocating as far as the British Isles.
The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. (Genesis 48:16)
Around the time that the Assyrians conquered the house of Israel, many Israelites had already started making the trek across the European continent in hopes of finding more peaceful regions to inhabit.
Here’s a little quiz... What do the following names have in common? Saxons, Saxones, Sachsen, Sakasani, Sacae, Saki, BethSak, Saghs, Sakyas, Scyths, Skuth, Sakai, Skoloti, and Sakasuni. These are all names in different languages referring to the Sons of Isaac.
The previous illustration shows the progression of names the lost tribes had acquired as they migrated Northward and Westward across Europe. In E. Raymond Capt’s book, Missing Links Discovered In Assyrian Tablets, he finds the names the Assyrians and the Persians used to identify the lost tribes after the Israelite’s Assyrian captivity. On one of the tablets, Sargon II (722-705 B.C.) refers to himself as the conqueror of ‘Bit-Khumri,’ i.e. Beth-Omri - the House of Omri. A later king of Assyria, King Tiglath-plieser III, also refers to the Israelites as Khumri.
While in Assyrian captivity the Israelites where placed in a region partly occupied by the Medes and Mannai called Gamir. The Israelites in Gamir became known to the Assyrians as the Cimmerians. About the same time in history another group of Israelites became known as the ‘Iskuza’ warriors. The Iskuza were the earliest of the Scythian people. E. Raymond Capt writes: It is universally accepted by modern historians that the Iskuza were called "Shuthae" by the Greeks and "Sacae" (also "Saka" and "Sakka") by the Persians. Herodotus further tells us the Persians called the Sacae, "Scythians." A giant mountain-side inscription called the Behistun Rock, made by the order of Darius the Great around 515 B.C., is written in three languages. All three languages are written in cuneiform and all three writings are identical in content. Imagine the Rosetta Stone on a scale almost as big as Mount Rushmore. Babylonian (Accadian), Elamite (Susian) and Persian are the three languages. Where the Persians and the Elamites wrote ‘Sakka’ in their version, the Babylonians wrote ‘Gimiri.’ These writings are the missing links to the identity of the lost tribes. They show us Israel’s identity as viewed by foreigners calling them Scythian and Cimmerian.
Kings of Israel |
The Royal family is still kickin’.
Judah, the southern half of Israel, was conquered in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians.
Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel. (1Kings 9:5)
The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the rulers staff from between his feet, until He comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is His. (Genesis 49:10)
Don’t you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt. (2Chronicles 13:5)
It’s very important to remember that the lost ten tribes are the house of Israel and the biggest tribe, Ephraim, was the head tribe and representative of the ten tribes. These people are called differently than those who are called Jews as you can see from the previous sample of names, many of them kept the name of Isaac.
For the next seven paragraphs I would like to quote Frederick Haberman from his book Tracing Our Ancestors to explain the transplanting of Judah’s scepter:
Jeremiah the prophet had warned Zedekiah, his own relative, of the coming Judgment (refer to Chapters 36-39 of Jeremiah), but his warnings were not heeded. To get rid of such a pessimist the prophet was thrown into a filthy pit; and he was only set free by the command of Nebuchadnezzar after Zedekiah’s capture. The captain of the guard even invited him to come with them to Babylon, but Jeremiah’s mission lay in another direction, to replant the seed of David in another land. Although Zedekiah’s sons were slain the diadem and the scepter were overturned into the female line, Zedekiah’s daughters, and these Jeremiah took to Tahpanhes in Egypt, accompanied by Baruch the scribe, as told in the 34th chapter in Jeremiah.
Let us now turn to the riddle that the prophet Ezekiel presents in his seventeenth chapter: Thus saith the Lord God; A great eagle with great wings, long winged, full of feathers, which had diverse colors, came unto Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the cedar: he cropped off the top of his young twigs, and carried it into a land of traffick; he set it in a city of merchants. He took also of the seed of the land, and as a willow tree. And it grew, and became a spreading vine of low stature, whose branches turned toward him, and the roots thereof were under him: so it became a vine, and brought forth branches, and shot forth sprigs.
The word eagle is, no doubt, used to represent a means of transportation, for it came and took and carried something into another land. That something was his young twigs (young members) of the highest branch of the cedar of Lebanon (symbols of the royalty of Palestine). Also the seed of the land (the people of Israel) was placed in another land by the great waters (not the Mediterranean), was planted in a fruitful field, set it as a willow tree. No other tree will take root as easily and quickly as a willow. It increased and became a vine, this vine of low stature, and turned its branches toward him This him must necessarily be above the branches, i.e., be acknowledged as a ruler; but the inference is that this ruler is also not very high, i.e., low, because the vine is of low stature. This personage referred to as him is the low one to whom the diadem was to be turned over. Previously, we have related the wanderings of many of the people of Israel to Ireland by the great waters.
Quoting the seventh and eighth verses we continue the riddle: There was also another great eagle with great wings and many feathers; and, behold, this vine did bend her roots toward him, and shot forth her branches toward him, that he might water it by the furrows of her plantation. It was planted in a good soil by great waters, that it might bring forth branches and that it might bear fruit, that it might be a goodly vine.
Another great eagle means a different means of transportation than the one before used. And this vine bent her roots toward him, that is, a female twig joining a male twig, by the furrows of her plantation. This last phrase helps us greatly to identify the place by the great waters, where the replanting was to take place - in Ulster, Ireland; for in olden time, Ulster is spoken of as the plantation of Ulster. I the Lord have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish: I the Lord have spoken and have done it. (Ezekiel 17:24)
For further elucidation of this subject the reader is referred to the Rev. J.H. Allen’s book, Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright, and J.D. Massey’s interesting work, Tamar Tephi. As Scripture tells us that Jeremiah took the king’s daughters into Egypt and we lose sight of them there; by analogy we apply Ezekiel’s riddle of the tender twig to the transplanting of the royal line into Ulster, and, therefore, let us take up the thread from there, and follow it.
Irish historians are unanimous that about 580 B.C. there arrived in Ulster a notable man, a patriarch or saint, accompanied by an Eastern princess, and a lesser person by the name of Simon Brach, or Barech. This party brought with them several remarkable things about which Ireland’s songs and legends cluster; those things were a harp (David’s harp), and a wonderful stone - the Stone of Destiny - the Lia Phail. According to many traditions, Jeremiah took the princesses to Spain, where one of them married a prince of Zaragossa. With the other princess he married the princess Tamar Tephi to Eochaidh, the Heremon, or head king of Ireland, after the latter had embraced the worship of the Jehovah.