Abraham's Family

by Pastor Don Elmore

April 21, 2013

Scripture Reading: Romans 9:6-8

Romans 9:6-8 “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect.  For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children:  but, IN ISAAC SHALL THY SEED BE CALLED. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God:  but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.”

Series of newspaper articles on six million Jews

To properly understand today's Scripture reading, one has to be able to understand the family of Abraham.  Who was it who eventually became the wife of Almighty God?  

Which one of the eight seeds of Abraham are his children?  Does it say that “In Ishmael shall thy seed be called;” or is it “In Zimram shall thy seed be called;” or is it “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” The covenant made with father Abraham and Sarah was confirmed with only the seed of Isaac; only the seed of the promise.  Isaac was a miracle birth, a birth of promise.

But the Bible tells the story of other choices that God made in regards to His covenant.  Some people became disqualified, while others are given the birthright, the inheritance of the promises and the kingship of the covenant made with father Abraham.

Jacob/Israel had twelve sons, but with four different women; who was the one to receive the birthright and the blessing?  The Bible tells us:  1 Chronicles 5:1 “Now the sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel, (for he was the firstborn; but, forasmuch as he DEFILED HIS FATHER’S BED, his birthright was given unto the sons of Joseph the son of Israel:  and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright.”

Reuben was the one who first held the birthright, but because that he committed a terrible sexual sin, he lost the birthright.  It was given to the grandchildren of Israel; the two sons of Joseph:  Manasseh and Ephraim.  In Genesis 48 the story is carefully told how on his death bed, Israel was blind.  He asked that the two sons of Joseph be brought to him at his bed.  Then Israel did something that Joseph tried to correct. 

Israel placed his RIGHT hand of the head of Ephraim and his LEFT hand of the head of Manasseh, Joseph’s first-born.  Israel made a cross as he crossed-hands onto their two heads.  Remember that Israel was blind.  The RIGHT hand gave the greater blessing; the LEFT hand the lesser.  Notice what Joseph, the father said (Genesis 48:18):  “And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father:  for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his [Manasseh] head.”

What did Israel say to Joseph’s request?  Genesis 48:19 “And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it:  he [Manasseh] also shall become a people, and he also shall be great:  but truly his younger brother [Ephraim] shall be greater than he, and HIS SEED shall become a multitude of nations.” 

The history of the two sons of Joseph:  Manasseh shall be a great nation; but Ephraim shall be greater than Manasseh, for HIS SEED shall become a multitude of nations.  Ask a judeo-Christian who is the multitude of nations that descended from the seed of Ephraim—they probably cannot give you an answer.  You can also ask them who became the great nation of Manasseh; because they believe that the seed of Joseph are jews!

The priests were limited to the descendants from the tribe of Levi.  The high priests were to come from the sons of Aaron, of the House of Levi. 

1 Chronicles 5:2 “For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief ruler; but the birthright was Joseph’s:” 

Genesis 49:10a “The scepter shall not depart from Judah,…”

At the time of the birth of our Savior, who held the kingship?  The tribe of Judah was the holder of this promise of the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants.   They ruled over descendants of the House of Israel, as well as the descendants of the house of Judah.  The house of David was given a covenant that they would be the rulers:  the divine right of kings.

Listen to what Pastor Blanchard received on an email from a man who quoted what a professor at Yale University had written:

“I can never be too thankful to the Almighty that in my youth He used the late professor Wilson, to show me the difference between the two houses.  The very understanding of the difference is the key, by which almost the entire Bible became intelligible.

 And I cannot state too strongly that the man who has not yet seen that Israel of the Scripture is totally distinct from the Jewish people is yet in the very infancy the very alphabet of Biblical studies and that to this day the meaning of 7/8 of the Holy Scriptures is shut to his understanding.”

This email is the truth.  Anyone who does not understand the difference between the two Houses of Israel and who also misunderstands that the words “Jew” and “Israel” are not interchangeable terms; are lacking in 7/8 of the understanding of the Bible. 

Who held the covenant promise of the birthright?  Ephraim of the House of Israel held this promise.  But Ephraim was divorced by our God along with the other tribes of the House of Israel.  The Apostle Paul described them as being:             

1. “Gentiles [nations] in the flesh
2. Uncircumcised
3. Without the anointed ones
4. Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel
5. Strangers from the covenants of promise
6. Having no hope and
7. Without God in the world”

       ---(Ephesians 2:11-12.)

The Apostle Paul was preaching to a people who had been cut off from the covenant that was made with their father Abraham; they were divorced for over 700 years.  Do you think that the Judeo-Christians ever think about who these “gentiles” really were?   Do they just think that they are non-Israelites?  But they are not—they are the lost ten tribes of the House of Israel! 

The bride takes on the last name of her groom when she marries.  She keeps that name for as long as they are married.  But when they are divorced, she no longer goes by that name.  What name did the 10 lost tribes of the house of Israel go by?  They went by many names, but the King James Version Bible mainly calls them “gentiles.”  History calls many of them “sons of Isaac” or “Isaac’s son” which became shortened to “Saxons.”In Isaac shall your seed be called!

Genesis 38 tells the story of Judah and his wife and children.  Judah married into the forbidden seed of Canaan.  He married a Canaanite.  He had three children by her; Er, Onan and Shelah.  When Er was of age, Judah got an Israelite wife for him to marry, Tamar.  But God said that He slew Er because he was so wicked.  According to Israelite law, Tamar was given to Er’s brother:  Onan.  But Onan did want to have seed that would be counted as his brother’s, so he committed an evil act and the LORD executed him also.  Two sons of Judah were killed by his God!

Shelah was still a youth, so Judah instructed Tamar to go home and he would call her again when Shelah was of age.  Shelah became of age and Judah did not tell Tamar and he married a Canaanite wife.  Judah’s wife also died.  So what was Tamar to do? 

She found out where Judah would be, and she disguised herself as a prostitute, by covering her face.  When Judah saw her, he made his proposition and she accepted it.  She took his signet, bracelet and staff as collateral until he sent a kid from the flock.  Tamar made Judah; since he was now a widower, to play the role that Shelah should have done for her. 

Judah sent a friend with the kid to pay the harlot.  But when the man came to where she was, no one was there.  Three months later, the people told Judah that his daughter-in-law had played the harlot and was pregnant.  He said that they should bring her to him and that he would judge that she would be burnt.

But when she came, she put before him the signet, bracelet and staff and said that these belonged to the man who was the father of his child!  It was Judah who had made her pregnant!

Judah repented of his evil ways.  He admitted that it was he who was guilty of her pregnancy.  He had failed to give his son Shelah to her.  She had been more righteous than he; and he had no more sexual relations with her.

Tamar had saved the seed of Judah.  She gave birth to his two pure twin sons, but it was an unusual birth.  The first son’s hand came out of the womb and the midwife bound his hand with a scarlet thread, so they would know which son came out first; but he put his hand back in the womb, and his brother came out first.  This was a breach that would take many years to eventually fix.  The first twin was called Pharez and the one who had the scarlet thread on his hand was called Zarah.  These two became the fathers of many kings, in Greece, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Russia, etc.  There is much heraldry that has the scarlet thread.

Judah had three sons who had children; Pharez, Zarah and his hybrid; Israelite-Canannite son Shelah.  Which seed was the pure, unadulterated line of the covenant?  Which seed was not of the covenant? 

The Bible tells us that Simeon also intermarried with the Canaanites and that part of his lineage was cut-off from the covenant (Genesis 46:10).  All throughout history, there have been multitudes of Israelites who have ruined their lineage by marrying strangers [racial foreigners]. 

Judges 3:5-7 “And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites and Perizzites and Hivites,and Jebusites:  And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and SERVED THEIR GODS.  And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgat the LORD their God, and served Baalim and the groves.” 

Many in the House of Israel committed miscegenation as did the House of Judah, especially when they returned from Babylon.

Ezra 10:10-11 “And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange [racially, foreign] wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.  Now therefore make confession unto the LORD God of your fathers, and do his pleasure:  and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives.”

Where these hybrid seeds, who had descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as their fathers, counted as being a part of the blessings and birthright of the covenant or were they not?  They were considered as not being a part of the covenant, for they were impure seed.  Not all Israel are Israel!

Who are the Gentiles?

Let us answer this question first, “Who are the jews”.  It is a very confusing question, for the first place in the Bible that the words “jews” is used, the Jews are at war with Israel (2Kings 16:6)!  If one reads many of the definitions he would find that “Toward the end of the Old Testament period, all of the…inhabitants of the land of Judah came to be called Jews.”   As was written by an ancient jew:  “It is wrong to call an ancient Israelite a jew, and it is wrong to call a modern jew an Israelite.”

This is because the religion of the jews did not come into being until near the end of the Old Testament.  The Apocrypha tells about what happened, but the Bible is silent.  Israel conquered the land of Edom and told them to either submit to the religion of Hebraism or be killed.  That gave Edom the chance that they had been waiting for—the chance to overturn God’s judgment that they were to be slaves. 

Soon, they had taken the political, economic, educational, and social life away from the Israelites.  They made up most of the members of the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees; and they had taken control of the priesthood and the kingship, by the time of Jesus’ birth.  There were very few of the faithful covenant people left on the earth—most were either divorced or deceived.

Jesus, Himself, did not live where the jews mainly lived, in Judea, for he lived most of the time in Galilee and in England.  In Galilee, He lived with many who were descended from the tribe of Benjamin. 

This all happened many years after the House of Israel and most of the House of Judah had been taken away into captivity by the Assyrians.  The House of Israel was in a divorced state.  No true jew will say that he is descended from the ten tribes of Israel, they will say that they are descended from the tribe of Judah.  But that is part of the deception, for that is a lie also.  They are not descended from the covenant people of God, Israel, the sheep of God, for as He said to them:  John 10:26a “But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep,….”

The jews came into Israel near the time they first celebrated the event of Chanukah.  Have you ever wondered why Israel does not celebrate what the jews’ celebrate? 

The House of Israel rejected the priesthood and kingship of Almighty God.  They had the birthright; but they rejected everything else.  They set up their kingdom and it became bad and it got worse and worse as time went on. 

What did they believe and what practices and rituals did they perform? 

The House of Israel did:

1. Secretly those things that were not right against the LORD their God.
2. They build them high places in all their cities.
3. They set up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree.
4. They burnt incense in all the high places.
5. They served idols.
6. They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire.
7. They used divination and enchantments.
8. They sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.
9. The celebrated the pagan holiday which is now called “Christ’s mass” or “Christmas.”
10. They ate pig meat and many of the other unclean foods that were forbidden by God for us to eat.
11. They tolerated sodomites to be in their land.
12. They drank the blood of animals.
13. They used enchantments.
14. They observed times.
15. The make tattoos on their flesh for the dead.
16. They printed marks upon themselves.
17. They regarded them that had familiar spirits.
18. They sought after wizards, to be defiled by them.
19. They did unrighteousness in judgment, in weights and measures. 
20. They failed to have just balances and just weights.
21.  The put to death the prophets of the LORD God.
22.  They made for themselves their own priesthood.
23. They committed miscegenation.
24. They forgot the true identity of the covenant people of God.

They acted and believed very much like the “Judeo-Christians” do today.  They were very much like the Baptist Church that I grew up in as a little boy.  It taught that the Law of God was nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ!  They married people of all races, including miscegenation. They believed that Jesus Christ died for all the races of all people.  They, like the Roman Catholics, were Universalists.

Hosea tells us in a prophecy about the House of Israel that they would be:

1. Scattered.
2. Would be given no mercy.
3. Would no longer be the people of God.
4. The LORD would no longer be their God.

Their kingdom would cease and be no more; for their God would divorce them. 

Many years after this, the LORD Jesus Christ was born of an Israelite woman.  He never committed a sin, yet he was sacrificed for the sins of His people in a horrible crucifixion.  He was buried and on the third day He rose from the dead. 

After forty days, he ascended up into heaven.  He told His apostles and disciples to go into all the world and teach them what had happened.  Where did they go; to the House of Judah or to the House of Israel or to the whole entire world? 

The faithful house of Judah was very small; the House of Israel had been for over 700 years cut-off from the covenant of blessings and birthright.  But many of them heard the covenant message; their Savior had died in their place.  He redeemed them and caused them to be put back in the covenant with all of its promises. 

Who would those of Judah be jealous of; the entire world?  Why?  It was the House of Israel that they were jealous of; for it was them that received the gospel in great numbers.  After 700 years, the tribes of Gad, Dan, Naphtali, Asher, Zebulon, Issachar, Manasseh, Ephraim, Reuben and Simeon; the former lost ten tribes of Israel—never referred to as jews--were once again in the covenant.  

Who were these people?  Jews.  No. They were never called by that name anywhere, especially in the Bible.  The gospel went to the House of Judah first, and then to the House of Israel.  The birthright is still alive.

After the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, the gospel spread to the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” which for 700 years had been without hope!  They (England and France) became the missionary center of the European world in the first century AD.  They became the continent of Christians and Christian beliefs.  In the valleys of the Alps, churches were started by the Apostles of Jesus Christ.  They “…separated from the Heresies and abominations of the Church of Rome.  However the Inhabitants of the Valleys have preserved the entire memory of the great benefit bestowed on them by God himself from the beginning, and which they and their Predecessors have enjoyed from generation to generation ever since the days of the apostles.” 

 In one of their Confessions of Faith, made in the year 1120 AD, four hundred years before either Calvin or Luther, it says that:

“Article 10.

Item, we have always accounted as an unspeakable abomination before God, all those Inventions of men, namely, the Feasts and Vigils of Saints, the Water which they call holy, As likewise to abstain from Flesh upon certain Days, and the like; but especially their Masses.”

The New Testament tells of the apostles going to the people who God made the covenant with, in the Old Testament—the offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The seed of Jacob/Israel were the elect of God; chosen by Him to inherit the promises that God made to their fathers.  They went to the “gentiles”; the House of Israel, and the “jews” the House of Judah.  Both Houses were now reconciled. 

Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.