Straightforward

In the previous issue, we learned of the awesome promises God gave to Abraham because of his obedience and loyalty.

These promises of national greatness, unprecedented resources, immense wealth and unchallenged power were the birthright promises usurped by Jacob from his brother Esau.

Eventually, Jacob repented of his deceit. Because of a severe famine in Canaan, Jacob was relocated to Egypt by Joseph, his first–born son by Rachel. Joseph was a powerful ruler in that country, second only to Pharaoh (Gen. 41:40–44).

On his deathbed, Jacob passed on the birthright to Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh; and, adopted them as his own, giving them his name Israel.

After Jacob and his 12 sons died in Egypt, their children grew to about two to three million people. Under the rule of a different Pharaoh who considered their huge numbers a security threat to the country, the children of Israel became slaves in Egypt (Ex. 1:6–14).

God heard the anguished cries of His people and raised up Moses. It was Moses who led them out of Egypt and brought them to Sinai where God entered into a covenant with them. He gave them His law, the Ten Commandments.

It was Joshua, Moses’ successor, who took Israel into the promised land of Canaan. With the help of God, they drove out the inhabitants of that land and the 12 tribes settled into their allotted areas.

At the death of Joshua, a series of judges exercised and administered authority over the tribes. It was to the last judge Samuel that the people demanded a king rule over them (I Sam. 8:5). Under God’s guidance, Samuel anointed the Benjamite Saul as the first king of the nation of Israel.

Because he failed to obey, Saul was rejected by God. And David of the tribe of Judah assumed the throne, with his capital at Jerusalem.

Because of his stalwart devotion and unflinching loyalty, God promised David a continuous, unbroken dynasty ruling over the house of Israel through all generations (Ps. 89:3–4).

When David died, his son Solomon became ruler over the kingdom; and, when he died, the 10 tribes rejected the rule of his son Rehoboam. They installed Jeroboam, an Ephraimite, as their king in the northern kingdom of Israel with its capital in Samaria.

Jews are of Judah

The nation of Israel was now divided into two separate kingdoms: the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. In fact, the first occurrence of the word “Jew” is found in 2 Kings chapter 16 and verse 6. King Ahaz of Judah was at war against Pekah, king of Israel.

The Jews of today, whom the world recognizes as Israel, are Judah. They are not Israel. All Jews are Israelites, but not all Israelites are Jews. Through several generations, they remained two separate, distinct nations, having their own separate kings.

About 721–718 BC, Israel—not Judah—was conquered by Assyrian invaders, carried away from the northern kingdom and taken captive to Assyria never to return.

Over the centuries, they were dispersed and scattered throughout the continent of Europe and became what many refer to as the “lost tribes of Israel.” Their language, their customs, even their names were changed.

Around 586–584 BC, the southern kingdom of Judah, under its last king Zedekiah, fell to the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

Zedekiah was captured, saw his sons brutally executed, then he was taken to Babylon where he eventually died.

David’s continuing dynasty

Thus, historians and biblical scholars alike have concluded that the throne of David had now ceased to exist.

Did God then fail to keep His promise to David? God’s word cannot be broken. This promise had to be kept. And it has; for, right this very day, in our time, a descendant of David sits and reigns on that throne. Incredible and startling though it may seem, on the throne of England today reigns a descendant of the oldest ruling dynasty in the world—the royal house of David—Elizabeth II who was anointed and crowned “Queen of thy people Israel” on June 2nd 1953.

God had assigned Jeremiah a special commission “to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant” (Jer. 1:10).

Accompanied by his secretary Baruch and Zedekiah’s daughters (Jer. 41:10; 43:6) they set sail for Spain and ended up in what is Ireland today.

A colony of Israelites from the tribe of Dan, known as the “Tuatha de Danaan,” had migrated there long before King David’s time and had ruled in that land for centuries. The marriage of Tea Tephi, one of Zedekiah’s daughters, to the Irish prince re–established David’s throne in Ireland, completing Jeremiah’s mission and honoring God’s promise to David of a dynasty, a kingdom, a throne over all Israel that shall be established forever (2 Sam. 7:16; Jer. 33:17).

And so the throne of David was rooted out of the kingdom of Judah and re–planted in Ireland where the tribe of Dan had settled.

The great company of nations

Numerous scriptural references in the prophetic books of the Bible tell us that the Israelites taken captive by the Assyrians eventually migrated to and settled towards the north and the west.

Isaiah identifies Israel, living in the isles of the sea, as “a covenant of the people” (Isa. 49:8). The Hebrew word “covenant” is “bryth,” and “iysh” means “man.” Our English words “covenant man” would then be rendered as “bryth–iysh” or British. Thus, the men of the covenant, the people of the covenant are the British people.

The magnitude of documented evidence constrains us from going into a more detailed and elaborate explanation of the identity of Israel in this article.

(For additional information, please write for our free CDs—The Identity of Israel and The Lost Ten Tribes).

The historical and biblical proof, however, is indisputably compelling: Ephraim is Great Britain and the United States is Manasseh.

At the start of the 19th century, history testifies that both Great Britain and the United States of America emerged from obscurity to assume the power, prominence and immense national wealth as promised by God.

Great Britain overpowered France, Spain and Portugal to become the unrivalled and unchallenged naval superpower of that era.

While British ships ruled the seas, her armies stood guard over the vital, strategic sea gates of the world (Gen. 22:17). And her traders, merchants and bankers dominated the world’s commerce, establishing London as the center of global trade and international finance.

At the pinnacle of her power, Great Britain’s imperial rule held sway over 61 nations from such far–flung areas as India, Kenya, Jamaica, Singapore and South Africa, encompassing 11 million square miles and 372 million people—one quarter of the earth’s land and people.

Just as Jacob said, Ephraim became that great company of nations, that commonwealth of nations forming the mighty British Empire, the largest in history upon which the sun never set (Gen. 49:22).

The great nation

In 1783, after the war of independence, a defeated Great Britain surrendered to the United States all of the original 13 colonies as well as all of its land eastward from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1803, the United States acquired the vast Louisiana territory, known as the Louisiana Purchase, about 530 million acres of some of the richest farmland in the world, from France for $15 million or 3 cents an acre! This immense tract of land would become the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, parts of Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Wyoming.

Then in 1819, the United States purchased all of Florida, parts of what is now Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi from Spain for $10 million.

In 1845, the independent Republic of Texas voted for annexation and became America’s 28th state. A year later, the United States settled a territorial dispute with Britain and gained the territories of Oregon and Washington.

In 1848, the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican–American war. To the victorious United States, Mexico ceded over 525,000 sq. miles of land of what are now California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, western New Mexico and western Colorado for $15 million. A week before, in Sutter’s Mill, not far from San Francisco, James Marshall discovered gold, igniting the famous California gold rush of 1849.

In 1853, in what is known as the Gadsden Purchase, the United States paid Mexico $10 million for over 29,000 sq. miles of land that became southwestern Arizona and southern New Mexico—paving the way for a southern route of the transcontinental railroad.

The acquisition of the contiguous 48 states over a relatively short period of 70 years remains unprecedented in history. It catapulted the United States into the world stage, prompting French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville to write “The whole continent, in short, seemed prepared to be the abode of a great nation.”

The greatness of the United States is astonishing and incredible! In 2012, its economy produced the largest output of goods and services in the world—more than India, Japan, Germany and Russia combined.

The United States has been blessed with an abundance of natural resources: wheat, corn and other grains; cattle, poultry, dairy products; fish and deep–water ports; forest products. The Great Lakes is America’s reservoir, providing 95% of the nation’s fresh water supply. The land is rich and fertile, blessed with a favorable climate. Deep in the heart of the earth are precious stones and minerals: gold, silver, copper and nickel. It has the largest coal reserves in the entire world!

In a competitive world economy, where energy is a vital component for sustained growth, the United States can be energy sufficient with proven oil reserves of 30.53 billion barrels (est. January 2014, https://www.cia.gov) and 8.73 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves (est. January 2013).

The United States is the leading industrial power in the world, highly diversified and technologically advanced. According to the CIA World Factbook, “The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world...US firms are at or near the forefront in technological advances, especially in computers, pharmaceuticals and in medical, aerospace, and military equipment.”

No other nation has been the beneficiary of an unparalleled standard of living, freedoms and rights such as the United States of America. Truly, it has been blessed above all the nations on this earth.

With such a vast reservoir of wealth and power, Winston Churchill acknowledged that America had “arrived at the summit of the world.” Together, Great Britain and the United States acquired almost three–quarters of the world’s wealth and its natural resources.

No other company of nations, no other single nation has achieved such complete domination of the entire world in the political, economic and military spheres to the extent that Great Britain and the United States of America have attained.

Jacob today

Two thousand five hundred twenty years after the captivity of Israel by Assyria, God kept the promises He made to Abraham. The birthright promises of national prominence, abundant natural resources, military power and superiority were given to Great Britain and the United States of America—Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph’s two sons whom Jacob adopted, to whom he gave his name Israel (Gen. 32:28).

The identity of modern–day Jacob, who modern Israel is today, is the master key that unlocks understanding of the prophetic, earth–shaking, unprecedented events that are about to unfold dramatically in the next several years, in our time, this generation—that time the Bible refers to and describes as the “latter days” (Jer. 30:24).

A third of the entire Bible is prophecy, and 90% of those prophecies are for our time now, today. Without this master key, prophecy cannot be correctly understood.

What now lies ahead for Great Britain and the United States of America, the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh—the inheritors of the birthright —to whom Jacob gave his name Israel?

To be continued...