A British columnist who writes for The Times of London, recently wrote: “Why is so much of the political, cultural and business establishment meekly going along with the onslaught against normative western values and the repudiation of rationality itself? The answer lies in what’s been happening to the west over the past half century. The current culture wars reflect decades of cultural Marxist chickens coming home to roost. There’s been a revolutionary long march through the institutions aimed at subverting western nations and destroying their culture. Setting out to undermine the traditional family, the educational system and the concept of the nation-state itself, the signature motif of this ideology is the repudiation of reason itself.”
What we are experiencing has been a long time coming, much longer than a half century. I would like to apply the increasingly unrecognizable civilization, and the long march through the institutions more specifically, to God’s people, the nation of ancient Israel. These comments reference Western Civilization, much of which is built on the foundation of the tribes of Israel. I particularly note the descendants of the two sons of Joseph.
I’d like to look at why our civilization is becoming increasingly unrecognizable by bringing into focus where all of this is heading, picking up the flow in Deuteronomy 4: “Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I teach you to observe, that you may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you” (Deuteronomy 4:1). The context is when Israel was getting ready to inherit the land.
God said: “Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God which He made with you and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the Lord your God has forbidden you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. When you beget children and grandchildren and have grown old in the land, and act corruptly and make a carved image in the form of anything, and do evil in the sight of the Lord your God to provoke Him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess; you will not prolong your days in it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you”(Deuteronomy 4:23-27).
God’s intent was to have a special relationship with these people. His intent was to develop a nation representative of His heart and mind to all the other nations around. Yet, God stated that if they turned from the covenant of obedience that He would scatter them among other nations. History tells us that Israel did not reflect God’s nature, character and laws so God did scatter them (Ezekiel 20:21-24). First it was a promise that He would do it, then it became a statement of fact.
Israel became wanderers among the nations. They lost their identifying sign, the Sabbath. They lost their identity. They didn’t understand who they were. And as they wandered around from one end of the earth to the other, they have not known who they are and the significance of who they are. They became an increasingly unrecognizable civilization. And in particular, God was not recognizable through these people. But scattering does not equal disappearing. In Matthew 10:5-6, Matthew writes: “These twelve Jesus sent out and commanded them, saying: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” They were lost to the world in terms of their identity.
In being scattered Israel took on the identities of the nations into which they were scattered. Not knowing who they were themselves, they adopted various aspects of other civilizations. But Israel did not, has not and will not cease to exist: Christ knew who they were and their identity is relevant to us today.
The role of Israel is important to the validity of the Bible. God chose the nation of Israel from the time of Abraham to fulfill His plan of salvation. One can’t just take ancient Israel of old and say that’s just history. Prophecy is involved in the building of the nation of Israel and its physical descendants, into the current nations today and on into the millennial period. If we deny the knowledge of the existence of Israel today, what do we do with the prophets and the prophecies that God made through them?
We need to pay attention to two specific statements. In Matthew 5:17, Jesus Christ is sitting down with His disciples explaining important principles to them and makes a very direct statement: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” The second statement refers to the Church’s foundation: “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone,” (Ephesians 2:20).
The prophets are a part of the foundation of the Church of God. There is the historical aspect of prophecy. But there is a spiritual fulfillment of those prophecies that will come through the Church, in terms of the Church’s understanding of what God is doing at this time. The Church is being built into a temple and a dwelling place for God in the Spirit. The messages of the Prophets come alive for the Church today. There is history to learn from, but as Israel is not destroyed and exists today, so the prophets’ messages are alive and relevant for today.
A lesson to learn is that all the systems of man, while we don’t have a bunch of wooden and stone idols that we bow down and worship, man’s mind has put various other things in place of God.
God has this to say about idols in any era: “Set forth your case, says the LORD; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. Let them (your idols) bring them and tell us what is to happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come. Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods; do good, or do harm, that we may be dismayed and terrified. Behold, you are nothing, and your work is less than nothing; an abomination is he who chooses you” (Isaiah 24:21-24 ESV). This is directed at the gods. The point being, there is no other God (I Corinthians 8:6).
All the systems of man are from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They are derived in part, or in whole, from the system that is known as the Mystery Babylonian Religion. The Babylonian system is going to rise again. This system is an end-time system. It’s going to become an incredibly powerful world-dominating, world-ruling system.
But God says, “I am going to deal with it.” “So Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that would come upon Babylon, all these words that are written against Babylon. And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, ‘When you arrive in Babylon and see it, and read all these words, then you shall say, ‘O Lord, You have spoken against this place to cut it off, so that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but it shall be desolate forever.’ Now it shall be, when you have finished reading this book, that you shall tie a stone to it and throw it out into the Euphrates. Then you shall say, ‘Thus Babylon shall sink and not rise from the catastrophe that I will bring upon her. And they shall be weary.’ Thus far are the words of Jeremiah'” (Jeremiah 51:60–64).
How can we be sure that prophecies given thousands of years ago have actual relevance to this time today? We can find past fulfillments of these prophecies. In Jeremiah 51: 52-53, we are reading of a serious set of prophecies about Babylon: “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “That I will bring judgment on her carved images, (on anything that man has worshipped in place of God) and throughout all her land the wounded shall groan. Though Babylon were to mount up to heaven, and though she were to fortify the height of her strength, yet from Me plunderers would come to her,” says the Lord.”
We know the Babylonian kingdom as a world-ruling empire no longer exists. There is no King Nebuchadnezzar over a world-ruling system. That was just one. There were successive kingdoms after that: the Medio-Persian, Greco-Macedonian, and Roman empires. So, one part of this prophecy is historical – fulfilled; one part of it is future.
Another fulfillment of prophecy has to do with the birthright promises given to Joseph and its division between his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. Jacob places his hands upon the son’s head. Typically, the first born has the right hand placed on his head. This time, Jacob places his right hand on the younger brother: “Now when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him; so he took hold of his father’s hand to remove it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head. And Joseph said to his father, ‘Not so, my father, for this one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head.’ But his father refused and said, ‘I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations” (Genesis 48:17–19).
These prophecies were told to Jacob at the time his name was changed to Israel: “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'” (Genesis 35:10-11).
In Genesis 49, Jacob lined up his 12 sons to tell them things that would befall each of them “in the latter days.” In the latter days these prophecies would be identifying factors among these people, which helps us get some indication of where some of this drifting and wandering throughout the nations has taken place.
When we read of Joseph’s “latter days”, which is referencing Ephraim and Manasseh, there are wonderful blessings being described for them. We don’t begin to see this fulfillment until the Industrial Revolution which began in the late 1700’s to early 1800s. And it coincides with the rise of Britain, the great strength and power of the British Empire. Following Ephraim’s rise, came the rise of the great nation of Manasseh, the United States of America.
Christ’s statement that the Prophets would not be destroyed acknowledges the Old Testament prophecies concerning the tribes of Israel. That was post Christ’s first coming and it’s in anticipation of His second coming which comes into our time today. Christ was preparing His Church for that which would occur in the latter days. God has faithfully poured out His blessings on Joseph beginning at the starting point of 1800 AD. While we can see that the blessings were poured out, we need to remember that God also said: if you don’t respond to those blessings appropriately then curses will follow.
This helps us to understand what is happening with Ephraim and Manasseh’s descendants today. What we are seeing unfold is not pleasant. The current changes in Britain and America’s political, cultural, and moral practices are leading the nations farther from the blessings of God and what He defines as the Way to eternal Life. The attitude of pushing God out of the picture, is saying, in essence, “We have done this ourselves, by our strength, by our might.” Consequently, we are increasingly becoming an unrecognizable civilization filled with curses due to our rejection of our Creator.
Even so, with punishment there will also be deliverance for the descendants of Joseph: “Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Son of man, your brethren, your relatives, your countrymen, and all the house of Israel in its entirety, are those about whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘Get far away from the Lord; this land has been given to us as a possession.’ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Although I have cast them far off among the Gentiles, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet I shall be a little sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone”‘ (God never gives up on His plan and His purpose).
“Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “I will gather you from the peoples, assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.”‘ And they will go there, and they will take away all its detestable things and all its abominations from there. Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God’” (Ezekiel 11:14-20).
However, that has not happened yet. This is a prophecy for the future. It is the future of all of Israel’s sons. The punishment phase is only just beginning. Israel will no longer be ‘lost’. Not only will the world come to understand the identity of Israel, but it says here, “They shall be My people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:20). Through the punishment phase Israel will come to recognize its true identity.
Israel is going to be cleansed of her idolatry and all of the nations are going to see a civilization that represents God. “And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; For this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins” (Romans 11:26). Israel will become a totally recognizable civilization for the benefit of all mankind during Christ’s millennial reign.
Brian Orchard