A Teenager’s Prophetic Dream

Known for his vivid imagination and unusual dreams, the teenaged Joseph assured his brothers that he was destined for greatness. His father, Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel, favored Joseph above the rest of his children. To signify Joseph’s most-favored status, Israel adorned him with a bright, multi-colored tunic.

Yet, as much as he loved his second-youngest son, Jacob was troubled by Joseph’s prophetic musings. On one occasion, he rebuked Joseph for interpreting one particular dream to mean the whole family would one day bow down before him.

Joseph’s brothers, seething with jealous rage, bided their time, intending to violently lash out at their pampered sibling once he ventured out from underneath his father’s protective shell.

One day, after the 10 older sons had been tending to their flocks for several days, Jacob summoned Joseph and told him to find his brothers to make sure they were okay. Joseph grabbed his coat of many colors and excitedly rushed out the door in search of his siblings.

Days later, upon spotting his brothers from a hilltop, Joseph excitedly shouted their names as he raced down the hill toward their flocks, completely unaware of the grave danger he was in. For when the brothers saw that he was alone, they plotted his murder! Judah, though, pleaded for his brothers to spare Joseph’s life and they instead sold him into slavery.

Joseph, however, had survived the tragedy and soon prospered greatly, rising from captivity to the second-highest position in Egypt. As prime minister under the king and head of the department of agriculture, Joseph responsibly planned ahead during the years of Egyptian prosperity, storing huge quantities of grain and other foodstuffs in preparation for the years of drought God had prophesied. During the famine, his brothers journeyed to Egypt, where they unknowingly encountered Joseph and humbly kneeled before him in hopes that he would provide them with food.

It happened exactly the way Joseph remembered it from his dream.

Twofold Promises to Abraham

God began His ancient nation of Israel with one man—the great patriarch Abraham. It was to this man and his seed that God made all of His unbreakable promises. In Genesis 12:1-3, God told Abraham He would make his descendents a great nation and bless all the families of the Earth if he obeyed God’s commandments. The nature of these promises was twofold. If Abraham obeyed, God promised to make his descendants into many powerful nations (see Genesis 17:5, where God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, meaning father of many nations). So the first promise had to do with national greatness.

Additionally, God promised to bless all the families of the Earth through Abraham’s seed. Bible commentators unanimously agree that this refers to the spiritual promise of the coming Messiah. They know that Jesus Christ was prophesied to appear as a direct descendant of Abraham through the tribe of Judah.

But nearly all of those same commentators carelessly assume that the birthright promise of national greatness was made to the Jewish people.

Now consider what your Bible says! Before it was divided in two and repositioned in front of other writings, the book of Chronicles was situated last in the Old Testament canon. It was written during the Persian period, after the Jewish exile and the Jews’ return to rebuild the temple in the 6th century b.c. Unlike the book of Kings, which covers the history of Israel and Judah equally, Chronicles focuses primarily on the kingdom of Judah from the reign of King David to Zedekiah, who ruled just before the Jewish state was conquered and its survivors taken captive into Babylon (2 Chronicles 36:20-23).

Yet, despite the narrower focus of Chronicles, the author clearly grasped the significance of Israel’s early history and of the promises God had made to Abraham and his descendants. The first nine chapters of Chronicles are devoted exclusively to Israel’s genealogy. In chapter 1, Abraham is mentioned, as well as his sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac, in turn, begot Esau and Israel. Chapter 2 begins with a list of the 12 sons of Israel, including Reuben, Judah and Joseph. From there, the author tracks the genealogies of each of the 12 tribes.

Now notice what is interjected in 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 Israel’s firstborn son—heir to the birthright blessings. But because of his sexual sin, God withdrew that privilege and instead gifted it to the two sons of Joseph—Ephraim and Manasseh—and their descendants. (To read about the transfer of Israel’s name to Joseph’s two sons, study Genesis 48.)

Verse 2 continues the parenthetical thought: “For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief ruler; but the birthright was Joseph’s).” Here again, all commentaries agree that the “chief ruler” refers to the Messiah—the promise of grace to spring forth from the tribe of Judah. But the birthright blessings, the author of Chronicles wrote some 1,500 years after God initially made the twofold promises to Abraham, belonged to Joseph’s sons!

These birthright promises of developing into “many nations,” becoming the dominant world power and receiving massive amounts of wealth and prosperity were not made to the kingdom of Judah—or any of the other 10 tribes, for that matter. Their position in the world, though blessed with a significant amount of prosperity and power, would nevertheless be subordinate to Joseph’s—in yet another fulfillment of the dream Joseph had at the age of 17.

The “Last Days”

Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33 describe the unique strengths and weaknesses of Israel’s 12 sons, as well as the blessings to befall each tribe. The scepter promise of grace, God said, “shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (verse 10). Shiloh refers to Christ, who was a Jew (of the tribe of Judah). Even the most superficial Bible students can understand this.

Why, then, can they not understand the altogether different blessing of the birthright promise—made not to the Jewish nation, but to Joseph? Because they don’t understand the twofold nature of the promises God made to Abraham.

God said Joseph’s blessings—to be distributed jointly to the descendants of his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh—would be like a fruitful vine with branches springing forth all over a wall. God would strengthen Ephraim and Manasseh with forceful might and valor, thanks to Abraham’s uncompromising obedience (Genesis 49:22).

Deuteronomy 33 says Joseph’s descendants would receive the “precious things” from heaven and from the earth. “The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren” (Genesis 49:26). In other words, the blessings re-promised to Israel were enlarged and expanded upon the ones made to his progenitors—Isaac and Abraham. These would be placed on the head of Joseph—raising him above the stature of his brothers, nationally speaking.

Some will say these blessings were bestowed upon the Jewish people, even though the Jews have never comprised more than one nation and the Bible clearly says the birthright was Joseph’s—not Judah’s. Others will maintain that the birthright promise was somehow fulfilled anciently in Israel. And while it is true that God allowed the Israelites to enter into the Promised Land during the days of Joshua, even at the height of their power, during the reign of Solomon, their blessings never rose to the level God had promised to their forefathers. Not even close! In fact, other prophecies reveal that God actually denied them the birthright blessings.

Last week, we saw how the people of Israel’s sins first led to their division as a nation and later captivity for both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah after they rejected repeated warnings from God’s prophets to repent of their sins and to return to God.

Seventy years after Judah’s captivity, God paved the way for about 50,000 Jews to return to Jerusalem in order to rebuild the temple. But those who were to be the recipients of the birthright blessings—Ephraim and Manasseh—never returned to Palestine. They had been taken into Assyrian captivity 130 years before Judah’s fall.

Besides these plain historical facts—all taken from the pages of your Bible—we can also hang our hats on the sure word of biblical prophecy! In the very first book of the Bible, when Israel assembled his 12 sons together in order to tell them about phenomenal blessings God had promised for their descendents, he said the blessings would come upon them “in the last days” (Genesis 49:1).

What a wonderful revelation! The twofold promise God made to Abraham 4,000 years ago actually relates to the times we are living in right now!

The Reliability of God’s Word

In his masterful work The United States and Britain in Prophecy, Herbert W. Armstrong challenged multiple millions of readers with the question, Could the Bible, when one third of it is prophecy for the latter days, actually ignore the Anglo-American peoples—those who, by the mid-1900s, had acquired nearly three fourths of the world’s cultivated physical resources and wealth?

As much as we might want to ignore God, He hasn’t ignored us! Mr. Armstrong wrote, “The most remarkable fulfillment of biblical prophecy in modern times was the sudden sprouting forth of the two mightiest world powers—one, a commonwealth of nations forming the greatest world empire of all time; the other, the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth today. … This sensational spurt from virtual obscurity in so short a time gives incontrovertible proof of divine inspiration. Never, in all history, did anything like it occur.”

Yes, indeed! Well above the rest of mankind—even beyond his own flesh-and-blood siblings—the “head of Joseph” was the recipient of the choicest blessings from God—not because of his own strength and ingenuity, but because God promised these blessings unconditionally to Abraham because of his obedience.

God has kept His word. And what that also means is that He is no longer obligated to bestow upon us the prosperity and power our grandparents’ generation once enjoyed. We need only examine the history of ancient Israel to understand where we are headed today, now that we have taken these blessings for granted and forsaken our God. God, after all, denied our forefathers these birthright blessings for refusing to abide by His laws. He told them they would be “the head, and not the tail” if they obeyed His commands. But if they continued in their sins, “strangers” would rise above them and they would “come down very low” (Deuteronomy 28:13, 43).

Are we so arrogant and self-righteous as to assume that it will be any different in our day? “Across the millennia,” it was said in the lead-up to the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem this past week, “the echoes of the biblical prophets have been heard, repeated, and often gone unheeded.”

Indeed. Those echoes from God’s prophets, still reverberating across the millennia of mankind’s existence—whether promising blessings for obedience or curses for disobedience—offer irrefutable proof of the veracity and consistency of God’s inspired Word.

You can stake your life on the reliability of God’s promises!