The Middle East in Bible Prophecy (Continues) The Rise and Fall of Ancient Israel One of God’s most remarkable claims is found in Isaiah 46:9-10: “For I am God, and there is no other; I am God and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand …’” (emphasis added throughout). Here God not only says that He can reveal the future; He also claims the power to bring it to pass! Nowhere is this more evident than in the remarkable prophecies of what would happen to Abraham’s descendants through Jacob’s offspring, the 12 tribes of Israel. God’s promises to Abraham, while astounding in their magnitude, nevertheless started small—with the promise of a son, Isaac, to be born to him and Sarah (Genesis 17:19-21; 21:1-3). Isaac, in turn, had two sons, Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:19-26). Jacob had 12 sons, from whom the 12 tribes of Israel are descended. Prophesied birth of a nation But long before this, before Abraham even had a son at all, God revealed to Abraham the fact that his descendants would go through one of the most remarkable “birth processes” a people could go through— they would be enslaved in a foreign land before emerging as a nation. We find this prophesied in Genesis 15:13-14: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.” This is referring, of course, to the Exodus. The remarkable chain of circumstances leading to the fulfillment of this prophecy is spelled out in Genesis 37-50 and Exodus 1-14. While the Exodus itself is one of the Bible’s best-known stories, the events that led up to it aren’t so well understood. In brief, Jacob’s favorite of his 12 sons, Joseph, was sold as a slave by his jealous brothers and ended up in Egypt (Genesis 37). There, through a series of events and God’s blessings, Joseph thrived and amazingly rose to the highest position in the Egyptian government under the pharaoh (chapters 39-41). When a famine struck the region, Joseph’s family migrated to Egypt, which, thanks to Joseph’s foresight, had stored enough grain to survive the famine (chapters 42-47). Joseph recognized that God had been behind all these events and that things had worked out this way so that his family would be spared and God’s prophecies fulfilled (Genesis 50:19-20). The 12 sons of Jacob—progenitors of the tribes of Israel—thrived in Egypt (Exodus 1:1-7). But then “there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (verse 8). The new pharaoh, feeling threatened by the growing number of Israelites, enslaved them and “made their lives bitter with hard bondage” (verse 14). Amen
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 02:27:52 +0000
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