If you want to understand history
and what’s happening in our world today, you need to understand Daniel
Only God can reveal what will happen in the future.
Isaiah records God asking "who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare
it. Yes, let him recount it to Me in order, from the time that I
established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things
that are coming and the events that are going to take place." (Isa
44:7)
In
Genesis 6-8 we see that God destroyed the world with a
flood because
of sin. A holy and righteous God must judge sin, whether that sin is national or
individual. After the flood, God commanded Noah and his sons (Shem,
Ham, and Japheth) to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."
(Ge9:1)
In
Genesis 11,
the people rebelled against God and instead of seeking to fill the
whole earth they settled in the land of Shinar and set about to build a tower,
saying "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top
will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be
scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." (Ge11:4)
As a result of their direct rebellion
to God's command "the LORD
scattered
them abroad
from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the
city. Therefore its name was called Babel, (which later became
Babylon) because there the LORD confused the language of
the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the
face of the whole earth. These are the records of the generations of
Shem..."
(Ge11:8-10)
Shem
became the ancestor of the Hebrews, through
Abram.
Moses records that "Terah
lived seventy years and became the father of
Abram, Nahor and Haran.
27 Now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the
father of
Abram,
Nahor and Haran; and Haran became the father of Lot..."
(Ge 11:26)
|
2000 BC*
GOD COVENANTS WITH ABRAHAM |
(*Editorial note: date
approximations are added and are taken from the International Inductive
Study Bible)
God then spoke to
Abram
declaring to him to
"Go forth from your country, and from
your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show
you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make
your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those
who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the
families of the earth shall be blessed."
(Ge 12:1-3)
God made a promise that salvation would
also be for the Gentiles ("all the families of the earth shall be
blessed"). Paul later explains that "the Scripture, foreseeing that
God would justify (declare righteous) the Gentiles by faith,
preached the gospel beforehand to
Abraham,
(his name having been changed from Abram to Abraham) saying, "ALL
THE NATIONS SHALL BE BLESSED IN YOU."
(Gal3:8)
In
Genesis 15 Abraham waited
for his promised descendant, but remained childless. So God "took him
outside and said "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you
are able to count them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants
be." Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as
righteousness." (Ge15:5-6)
In these passages we see that
Abraham believed God and was justified
or declared righteous by faith.
Paul adds that "the promises were
spoken to Abraham and to his
seed.
He does not say, "And to seeds," as referring to many, but rather to
one,
"And to your seed,"
that is, Christ."
(Gal3:16).
So we see that Christ (Messiah) would come from the line of Abraham.
In Genesis 15 God tells Abraham (still
called Abram) that he is to "Know for certain that your
descendants
will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be
enslaved and oppressed four hundred years...16 "Then in the fourth
generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not
yet complete." (Ge
15:13,16)
God
promised Abraham a seed , a land, and a nation but He also predicted that
the Hebrews would be enslaved for 400 years and that at the end of that
time they would return to the land of Canaan.
Abraham
eventually had two sons, Ishmael and
Isaac,
the latter begat two sons, Esau and
Jacob
(later named Israel). The covenant God had initially made with
Abraham in
Genesis 12:1-3 was passed to Isaac (not
Ishmael) and then to Jacob (not Esau). Jacob had 12 sons who gave rise to
the 12 tribes of Israel. f his 12 sons, Jacob "loved
Joseph
more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age; and he made
him a varicolored tunic." (Ge
37:3) To make matters worse, Joseph had two dreams (Ge37:5-9)
in which his father, mother and brothers were portrayed as bowing down to
him. As a result "his brothers were jealous of him" (Ge37:11)
and instead of killing him they "sold him (this was Judah's idea)
to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. Thus they brought
Joseph into Egypt." (Gen37:28)
In Egypt, "Potiphar, an Egyptian
officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the bodyguard, bought (Joseph)
from the Ishmaelites" (Ge39:1)
and "the LORD was with Joseph, so he became a successful man. And he
was in the house of his master, the Egyptian." (Ge39:2)
Joseph was tempted by "Mrs. Potiphar" ("lie with me") but resisted
her advances proclaiming "How then could I do this great evil, and sin
against God?" (Ge39:9)
Falsely accused by Mrs. Potiphar, "Joseph's master took him and put him
into the jail, the place where the king's prisoners were confined" (Ge39:20)
where he correctly interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh's chief cupbearer and
baker. After "two full years"
(Ge41:1) in jail, on the cupbearer's
recommendation, Joseph was summoned by Pharaoh to interpret his dreams.
Joseph explained that in Pharaoh's dreams "God has told to Pharaoh what
He is about to do" (Ge41:25),
predicting "seven years of great abundance" followed by "seven
years of famine" (Ge41:28-29).
Pharaoh believed Joseph's interpretation and set him "over all the land
of Egypt." (Ge41:41)
Why did Joseph
hang on? Because he held fast to the Word of God, believing God.
In time his brothers come to Egypt to
secure food in the famine and end up bowing to him as their master. Joseph
sums up his "mistreatment" declaring to his brothers "’As for you, you meant evil against
me but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result,
to preserve many people alive" (Ge 50:20)
|
1445 BC
EXODUS FROM BONDAGE |
Next we see God fulfilling His sure word of prophecy spoken to Abraham
when he made a covenant with him, promising that the Hebrews would be
enslaved for 430 years in Egypt
after which they would come out. In Exodus we see that "the sons of
Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry
for help because of their bondage rose up to God. So God heard their
groaning and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
(Ex2:23-24)
At that time God raised up
Moses
(a Levite) to be their deliverer. He was raised in the court of Pharaoh
and "when he was approaching the age of forty" (Acts
7:23) took the deliverance into his own hands, killing an
Egyptian (Ex2:12)
and being forced to flee to the land of Midian, where he pastured sheep
for 40 more years (Acts7:30) Moses
had tried to deliver the Jews in his own strength but it had not been the
LORD's timing (430 years).
In
Exodus 3:1-22 "I AM" (Ex
3:14) sends
Moses to
"Pharaoh" that he might "bring...the sons of Israel out of
Egypt." (Ex3:10).
On the night of the "LORD'S
Passover"
(Ex12:11)
(the Passover foreshadowing Christ the Lamb of God, cf
1Cor5:7) God brought the sons of Israel
out of Egypt in order to bring them into the promised land of Canaan.
However "when the LORD sent (the
sons of Israel) from Kadesh-barnea" telling them to "Go up and
possess the land which" He had given them to possess, instead of
obeying, they "rebelled against the command of the LORD" and they "neither
believed Him nor listened to His voice." (Deut9:23,
cf
Num 14)
As a result of their
unbelief,
the children of Israel wandered in the
wilderness
for forty years
(Num14:34)
After the forty years have passed and just before God brings them into the
promised land,
Moses instead of doing what God had commanded ("speak to the rock"
Nu20:8), "struck the rock twice with
his rod" (Nu20:11).
"But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you have not believed
Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you
shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them."
(Nu20:12)
Throughout the book of
Deuteronomy
God tells the Jews how they are to live when they enter Canaan,
instructing them to "utterly destroy" the idolatrous inhabitants,
to "make no covenant with them", to "show no favor to them"
and not to "intermarry with them" lest the pagan wives turn their "sons
away from following" God "to serve other gods." (
Deut 7:1-6)
|
1405-1381
BC
CONQUEST OF CANAAN UNDER JOSHUA |
Under the command of
Joshua
Israel enters into Canaan in a successful 3-pronged attack. As Joshua
approaches the end of his life, he challenges the Jews declaring "Fear
the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth and put away the gods which
your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD"
and "Choose for yourselves...whom you will serve: whether the
gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of
the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we
will serve the LORD." (Josh24:14-15)
|
1373-1051
BC
DARK DAYS OF JUDGES |
The conquest of Canaan is followed by a
three to four hundred year period of the
Judges
characterized by spiritual darkness, caused by apathy to the Word
of God, failure to drive out the idolatrous nations ("did not drive
them out" is the repetitive refrain in
Jdg1:19, 21, 28, 30, 31, 32,33) resulting
in apostasy (turning from God) and finally culminating in outright
anarchy, all summed up by the last verse in Judges which records
that "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was
right in his own eyes." (Jdg21:25)
The last judge
Samuel
was also a prophet (1Sa7:6,
Acts 13:20) followed by the period of
rule by kings. Luke records that "then they
asked for a king,
and God gave them
Saul
the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years." (Acts13:21)
Saul was not God’s first choice (see Jacob’s blessing on Judah in
Ge 49:8-10)
|
1011-971
BC
DAVID REIGNS AS KING |
Luke records that after reigning 40
years God removed Saul and "He raised up
David
(who in contrast to Saul was of the tribe of Judah) to be their
king, concerning whom He also testified and said, 'I have found David, the
son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who will do all My will.'" (Acts13:22)
adding that "from the offspring of (David), according to
promise, God has brought to Israel a
Savior,
Jesus,"
(Acts13:23)
David reigned 40 years and was
succeeded by his son,
Solomon,
who began well but who disobeyed God's warning and "loved many foreign
women" and these "turned his heart away after
other gods
(overt idolatry) and his
heart was not
wholly devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his
father had been." (1Ki11:1-4)
"So the LORD said to Solomon, "because you have done this, and you have
not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will
surely tear the kingdom from you..." (1Ki11:11)
and so the Kingdom was Divided.
The
southern kingdom,
with Jerusalem as the capital, consisted of two tribes, Judah and
Benjamin, the Temple of God, and was ruled by Solomon’s son Rheoboam
(and he was hard on the people)
The
northern kingdom,
with Samaria as its capital, was ruled by Jeroboam who made 2 golden calves for the
10 tribes to keep them from going to Temple in Jerusalem. Jeroboam’s sin of idolatry
preceded Judah’s so God judged this sin first.
Isaiah prophesied
from the time of Uzziah (790BC, king of southern kingdom) through the
reign of Hezekiah
(686BC). The three major world powers during Isaiah’s time were
Egypt to south,
Assyria to north, and
Babylon to east, the first two being the strongest at this
time in history.
Isaiah prophesied primarily to Judah
and to the
children of Israel who were looking to Egypt for help instead of relying
on their Lord. Isaiah records God's warning "Woe to the rebellious
children," declares the LORD, "Who execute a plan, but not Mine, and make
an alliance, but not of My Spirit, In order to add sin to sin; who proceed
down to Egypt, without consulting Me, to take refuge in the safety of
Pharaoh, and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!" (Isaiah
30:1-2)
The second giving of the Law in
Deuteronomy just before the children of Israel entered Canaan under the
command of Joshua should have been a clear warning of the dangers for a
human king (Ed note: God anticipated the inherent dangers some 400
years earlier!):
"When you enter the land which the
LORD your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say,
'I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,' you
shall surely set a
king
over you whom the LORD your God chooses, one from among your countrymen
you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over
yourselves who is not your countryman. "Moreover,
he shall not
multiply horses for himself [Solomon did], nor
shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since the
LORD has said to you, 'You shall never again return that way.' "Neither
shall he multiply wives for himself [Solomon did],
lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold
for himself [Solomon did]. Now it shall come about when he
sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of
this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. And it
shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he
may learn to fear the LORD his God, by carefully observing all the words
of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted up above
his countrymen and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, to the
right or the left; in order that he and his sons may continue long in his
kingdom in the midst of Israel." (Deut
17:14-20)
God instructed the king to write out a copy of
Genesis through Deuteronomy so that
he would know how he was to live before the people, so that he would
understand history, so that he would understand God and how God interacts
with man, so that he would know how man was to live before God, and
finally so that he might know the blessing God promised to those who would
choose to live in obedience to His Word.
David made a copy of the Pentateuch and
so did Solomon but he did exactly what he was told not
to do, especially in regard to multiplication of wives.
|
722 BC
NORTHERN KINGDOM EXILED TO ASSYRIA |
Because of Jeroboam's sin of idolatry
the Northern Kingdom was judged by the hand of Assyria in
722 BC .
|
God keeps His word...
There
is a day of judgment yet for Israel and the world |
God declares what will happen before it
takes place
We do well to take heed
God’s Word is a light that shines in a
dark place
If only the Children of Israel had
listened to the word of God
How important it is that you and I
listen and obey the word of God
Don’t let history bore you--it’s
His
Story
He is righteous and holy
The secret of the Lord is for
those who fear Him
and He will make them know His covenant.
