I want to lay down some foundation and as I pointed out on Festival (that is the program that I do where you see me seated), the problem so often is we have what I've called this glorious one-room schoolhouse; I've got some folks here who've got forty years of Bible teaching under their belt from this very building pretty much. I've got other folks that are just in the last year or two, sitting and listing to me and just discovering a whole universe of actual biblical teaching that plays on the network and the Sunday morning services here. So it's a delicate balance, but if a person takes the time to actually read this book and study it, you have a jaw dropping, it's staggering, the amount of evidence that makes for such a strong case for the faith, just, just the faith. Forget about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is why we're Christians, but if an individual was looking at this book and as many time as I've referred to, we see the front, we see the beautiful needlework, the finished product. If you were to step around back and look at the tapestry you can see all of the strings that are left hanging and this is very much like the Bible. So somebody who picks up and reads one book, one verse, may get trapped into thinking, “Well, maybe one book is historical or maybe one book has validity,” but they fail to realize how these things are so woven together that the statistical improbability or the possibility of somebody making up something somewhere and saying, “Well, I'll just insert this in here,” they'd have to be right on so many other accounts. And what I hope to do today is introduce that type of probing into the Scriptures as we are trying to lay a foundation to properly understand passages in the book of Revelation. And you can't just jump in there without studying the Prophets, the Major and the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament. And the problem with saying, “Now I'm just going to go and jump in and start studying those Major and Minor Prophets,” is without properly distinguishing between two groups of people that are chronicled throughout this book, you will not properly interpret what the Major and Minor Prophets were saying. You will end up with error, which is what happened if you buy commentaries if you read what other people say, boy the internet is a chockfull of nuts right there. So, you know you might have somebody who has one piece of truth over here and then they start weaving in whatever and you end up with something that doesn't even look like a right interpretation. For the Bible, for us to say we have sound doctrine, you've got to look in the Bible and you've got to find conformation. And it's not just, as Dr. Scott used to quote F. B. Meyer, “measuring on God's repeatables,” it is also looking at, forgive this very childish analogy, but it's also like looking at a puzzle. If you've ever taken a jigsaw puzzle and thrown the pieces on the ground, you just see a heap of pieces and you might look at the box and the box has what it should look like and you're looking at the pieces. If you didn't have the box, first of all you wouldn't know what it's supposed to look like, you might try to start assemble, assembling and putting it together. I think people get into the Bible and they look at the Bible like this stack of puzzle pieces and they cannot see the bigger picture, that taking one piece over here and saying, “I accept this but I reject that” is like saying, “I take the pile and this one piece that looks right to me and the rest of it I just kind of kick away.” This is the type of stuff that just, for someone who's in search of truth, you must park the traditional ideas; you must park every preconceived idea that you have. And a smart person will let the information be put out, even if it's pieces you've heard before, the information will be put out and placed before you, before you make a value judgment on what is being said. It's the ignorant people that rush to judgment and say, “Oh, no, no, no, that can't be because thus and so.” And on that same note it's the over-stimulated listeners, who as I'm talking will not keep their brain in check, block out the stimulated thoughts and listen to what I'm saying because I'm finding this, something that Dr. Scott used to say based on something that he brought to you, to your attention about listening, I'm finding that there are a lot of over-stimulated listeners. And my only discrepancy between what he said and the study that was done by that great professor at the University of Minneapolis on listening, Dr. Ralph Nichols, my only assessment is that, where I differ from maybe these two giant thinkers is that we tend to think that over-stimulated listening is a sign of intelligence. I'm thinking not so much anymore. Let━we'll come back to that one later. It takes real intelligence to harness the brain and to listen and to really focus on what's being said. Now back to the subject, it makes no sense for me to try and teach out of the book of Revelation if certain foundational principles out of the Major and Minor Prophets are not clear. I started on a pathway now for the last two weeks talking about how we can distinguish what happened. Essentially God gave a promise to Abram: high father, to become father of many and promised through his seed, and his seed is not Ishmael and it's not some other children that he had with the second wife, but through Isaac that descends down through Jacob and Jacob's name eventually gets changed to Israel and we call, the, all of the product of the house of Jacob: the house of Israel, the children of Israel. And at some point there is a bifurcation between what is known then as the house of Israel, sometimes known as Samaria and Ephraim in the Bible, ten tribes to the north, and the southern kingdom, which is Judah. And as these things bifurcate, we begin to see that for the first time, I've quoted this now the last, or referred to it the last couple of weeks, the first use of the word Jew is after the death of Solomon, there were no Jews before that and the word Jew itself comes from, Yahudah, from the kingdom of Judah. They were called Yahudahi, Yahudahites, Judah, which actually means “praise” and we carried it into an English cognate that has a very, it carries with it at times a very pejorative or a very negative connotation, but the actual root in its Semitic state, in its true derivative means “praise.” So we have a splitting of the house of Judah and the house of Israel. And why this is important is because when people touch on prophecy, the tendency is to say that either spiritually the church has become spiritual Israel or the church has become spiritual something and they begin to spiritualize and what, really is what's happening is God has given such great detail that failure to grab hold of the detail again brings error. So I'm going to start with something that seems rather simplistic, maybe a more basic path to explain this, but we know out of the children that are born to Jacob; remember Jacob and his two wives, the beautiful one and the ugly one and their handmaids essentially produced what is referred to commonly as the children of Israel. And in these children is born Joseph who is the preferred son, favored son, and you've got in Genesis the record of the famous coat that is made for Joseph and his brothers hated him. And I'm hoping that I'm speaking to most people who have read through the passages in Genesis, whereby his brothers who hate him so much, essentially sell him off to these folks that are coming through as a train, sold into bondage into Egypt's bondage as a prisoner, where he is there for a time, manages to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh and rises to prominence and essentially because of the wisdom that God had given him, because of his godly ways and very much as a type of Christ, while he is in Egypt he ascends to be essentially the highest ranking right under Pharaoh; Pharaoh takes off his ring, gives him the second chariot, provides for him a wife of Egyptian origin who we believe to be a daughter of a priest, possibly a princess, and to Joseph in Egypt are born two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. These sons play an important part of, as we look at the, the descending line, how things will be dispersed, they play an important part in what we're going to call the dispersal of the blessings, which most people have, most of the time, looked at in error. It's people like Ingersoll, there are people who studied and said, “You see these promises were never fulfilled by God,” therefore they fell away from the faith. It just could not be that these things have happened because they were looking at the Jew to fulfill these things, when in fact a right understanding shows the bifurcation of these people and what we're calling the ten tribes to the north are people who essentially were never part of Judah. They were never referred to as Jews, they may have practiced some form of custom amongst these people similar or the same, but as these people are deported, we'll call it, I'm just guessing right now, I'm, at the top of my head, 120, or whatever years before these people are carried into bondage, these people are carried away by the Assyrians, placed in a land of the Medes essentially. Some interesting things happen, but these people essentially become a scattered and dispersed people and they begin to appear all over the planet. We'll chronicle a little bit of this today. And these folks down here, belonging to the southern kingdom, Judah, they will essentially be banded into this group being called the Jews. So when we understand what promises were given to who when Jacob is dispersing the promises and I just jumped over a lot of information━let me go back for a second, because I skipped a very important part. Joseph is now a high-ranking official in Egypt, he's moved up the ladder because he essentially by the interpretation of his dreams, by interpreting Pharaoh's dreams, he essentially saved the land of Egypt. There is now a famine in the land and it is Jacob who is Israel, who sends his sons who do not know that his other son Joseph is still alive in Egypt, to essentially go and get food, to buy food, to buy provision. When Joseph realizes these are his brothers and essentially makes himself known, there's, we'll call it a family━I gave you a real short, short version of that, you could read it in a couple of chapters, it'll take you a while, the reunification of the family. Jacob now knows that his son Joseph is not actually dead, and they all it says, these seventy souls essentially go now into Egypt. They are treated with, essentially the greatest esteem because they are the family of Joseph, so all of the house, all of these children that were produced here, plus Joseph's children Ephraim and Manasseh, will receive a blessing from Jacob who is Israel, before he dies. In those chapters we find promises that are given, and we should take a look at them so they're, it's easier to do this one way or another here. First, let's look at what happens to the children that Joseph has had in Egypt and has raised up now, and I'll begin in the 48th chapter. See, sometimes you plan one thing and you end up going in another direction, thank you, or thanks! “It came to pass after these things,” Genesis 48, “that one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick: and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee: and Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed. And Jacob said unto Joseph,” so let's not get confused for those people who are not sure. Jacob is Israel, “Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and I will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. Now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine.” You've got to go back and read in past chapters and in the next chapter coming of why Reuben, who essentially should've had all the blessings as the firstborn bestowed on him, forfeited them by defiling his father's bed by some incestuous act that was committed; forfeited the birthright, the blessings that he should have inherited. So now these two half-Egyptian children, it says, “They're going to be mine, just as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. And they issue, which thou begettest after them, shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance&. And Israel”" verse 8, “And Israel beheld Joseph's sons, and said, Who are these? And Joseph said unto his father, They are my sons, whom God hath given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, that he could not see.” And this whole passage tells how between what Joseph would have seen as right in his eyes for the eldest son to receive the blessing first, old Israel switches the hands because he knows whom he is going to bless and will not be the order that the father would have seen as the firstborn, but rather, as this passage tells us, it says, “Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face: and, lo, God has shewed me also thy seed. Joseph brought them from between his knees, he bowed himself with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand towards Israel's right hand, and brought them near unto him. And Israel stretched out his right hand, laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly; for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; let my name be on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. And when Joseph saw that his father lay his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him: for he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head. And Joseph said unto his father, Not so my father, for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head. But his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he also shall become a people and also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations,” a commonwealth of nations. “And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh. And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers.” Now why I read this passage is to make something clear. That when people talk about the blessings, these half sons are now taken as exactly as if they would have been essentially━ they're adopted, they're taken as though they were directly part of this house, they are grafted in. Bible interpreters, including Dr. Scott, put Ephraim, that Commonwealth of Nations, their descendents as Great Britain, the United Kingdom. And if we're talking about peoples who are going to trace what is called the lost tribes, who are not lost, Manasseh as the United States. Now we'll talk about these, I'm just introducing some things, but we'll talk about these things, some of them will be extremely relevant and important to Revelation and to the understanding, the proper understanding of Revelation and some of the prophets that help us understand. Here we're tracing two dynamics: the blessing that has just been given to Ephraim and Manasseh, and then what will come as the blessing that is given to the rest of the children, which begins in chapter 49. I'm just going to, just jump in there and just do this. You almost have to follow a little bit of a series of events that culminate obviously in the death of Jacob and the end of this book, culminating in the death of Joseph, and the opening passage that talks about, or one of the opening verses in Exodus that talks about a pharaoh being raised up that knew not Joseph, that's always perplexed me. I've had more trouble with that verse in Exodus than any other verse because it would seem to me that if Joseph was such a national hero, and did so much, how could there be a pharaoh that didn't know who Joseph was? I've also said, unless that pharaoh was a child. Hold that thought, we'll come back to that another time. Yes, I, I like to dangle too, so. Now what do we have here? We have the blessing that will be given, chapter 49, Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.” So you've got to kind of see the birthright that should have gone to Reuben, forfeited here, number one. “Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.” And that's important for some, again something else. Each one of these gives us an idea now of a greater definition of promises given that will bifurcate and will divide a people down the road. Now, let me just stop right here. You're reading Jacob blessing his children, including these two adopted children. These do not know that they are going to go into bondage. They may have read or they may have had some━but these did not know that they would end up in bondage. Right now, Joseph is the supreme ruler right under Pharaoh controlling everything, but way back when Abram was hearing from God, God said, “This is what's going to happen. From your seed, from the one seed that I promise you; not the one seed that you make or you decide to do, but the one that I'm going to promise you in Isaac. This people, which essentially will lead you here, these will go into bondage, into Egypt's bondage. And after 400 years, they will come out a great people, richer than when they went in, but a great people will come out.” Now if you're one of these people that says, “Well, you know, I think some parts of the Bible are fable or fabricated,” this is where it becomes difficult for me to understand how anybody could approach the Bible like that. You're reading such incredible detail, unless you want to take the whole book, and I'm talking about the whole Bible, and just toss it out the window, because here's a word given to Abram: 400 years later this is going to happen, and 400 years, 430, I believe, to be precise, this, “This will come to pass.” It has not yet happened; they are not in Egypt's bondage. In fact, for most people who do not know the record, these folks, when they came under Joseph, Joseph now says, “It's okay for you to be here in Egypt.” There's a passage that says that they were despised because they were shepherds, considered an abomination by the Egyptians. And most people who read secular history know that there is a record of a people being, not deported, but expulsed out of Egypt prior to the exodus led by Moses; two waves of people, one led by Moses and one at an earlier time by people they described as the Hyksos, shepherd kings; not shepherd slaves, shepherd kings. There's all these pieces of information that as you begin to put together the secular and the biblical, you almost have to stand back and go, “Whoa!” But you'll always find the people who haven't taken the time to examine all this information and put it together like that whole pile of pieces I talked about, puzzle pieces, will be the one; take one piece and say, “Well, you know what? Get rid of all that, because I just can't deal with it, or it's just whatever they want to call that pile. Do whatever you want with that. So here we have the blessing, and here is what's very important, beginning at verse 8, “Judah, thou art whom, he whom thy brethren shall praise,” if you were reading this in Hebrew, it would be “Praise, thou art he whom they brethren shall praise,” because Judah means “praise,” “thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.” Right in there is a foretelling, speaking of Christ. You can, you can spin this and you can say whatever you want to say. There are people who will say, “It can't be, it's not possible.” Those are the same people who say, “God cannot reveal what appears to be riddle-like,” like a riddle, some something cryptic. Failure to understand that God was already talking about the coming of Christ in Genesis 3:15, right after the fall. And I could give you probably close to, I think it's 300 prophecies in the Old Testament that are all pointing to Christ, describing perfectly what manner of person this might be when He comes. This is why it's the insanity of people who say they are people of the book, of the Old Testament, and they refuse to acknowledge that this person, Jesus Christ, could fulfill every single jot and tittle, spoken of━pointing to Him. “It has to be somebody else.” Well, you're going to be━can we go back in that puzzle pile for a minute? So we have here very clearly something given to Judah. Now what did I just say at the beginning here? Judah, which is not yet separated, we're, we're talking about a kind of a united body, but they're being separated out right here. Judah, sceptre, that is the, the right to rule and lawgiving “from between his feet until Shiloh come; and unto him shall be the gathering, shall the gathering of the people be. Binding his foal unto the vine, his ass's colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garment in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes: his eyes shall be red with wine, his teeth white with milk. Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall have for an haven of ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon. Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens.” Let me read to verse 16, “Dan shall judge his people,” Dan in Hebrew is “judge.” “Judge shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel.” Now I just have to ask you this, you who have read this before and you who have never read this before. Don't you think that's a strange thing: “Dan shall judge his people,” it's the last part of this that's bizarre: “as one of the tribes of Israel”? As ONE of the tribes of Israel, but isn't he part of the tribes? Another message, all right. “Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.” Let me ask you what; we know what a serpent does, it veers all over the place. And if you are familiar, if you've even been out, in any one of these━especially here, we have in Southern California, we have the pleasure of having snakes. If you live where there is sand or sandy areas, you can always see where snakes have gone. They leave their path. So there's lots being said right here. “Gad, a troop shall overcome him.” The rest of these, by the way, are given promises, including something very interesting. I'm skipping over Joseph and I'm skipping over Naphtali, and I'm skipping over because I want to read these in time piece by piece. But then it gets to Benjamin, “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil. These are the twelve tribes of Israel.” Now why did I just take you through that? Because right here in this chapter, there is dividing, there is a separating out of Judah for kingship, for lawmaking, and this is what's interesting. If you follow Joseph, Joseph ruled in Egypt and when he━he ruled, he was ruling in Egypt, so when he died, there had to be another leader. There should have been a leader, think about this, there should have been a leader, house of Judah, should have been, there should have been a leader out of this group here to replace him essentially as a ruler. And what's interesting is we don't really have a clear record unless you go back and find out why we missed a piece of this. And obviously they're going to go into bondage, and a rule, if you will, some rule; ruler and rule, will come to an end. You can only understand this if you go back a couple of chapters to a passage that, other than Dr. Scott, I have not heard anybody read in church because, God forbid, anybody should utter these words in church, which is in Genesis 38, which is all about Judah and Tamar. Oh! Now listen, for some of you out there listening, especially you who listen on radio that don't have a Bible, after this, you might actually want to get one. See, when Joseph died, a son of Judah should have ruled. And what we have here is this, Genesis 38, and if I don't finish today, you know, you'll just have to come back next week to hear what I have to say, because I spend most of my time rushing to do something and I end up butchering half of the things I'm saying to try and squeeze it into an hour and UGH! You know, you go to most churches and if you get a ten or a twenty minute homily on something that's completely irrelevant━ I want thirty seconds for a sidebar that they can always cut out. Why do you need to go to church to find out what the pastor thinks about homosexuality or abortion or politics or anything else? And I've said my comments once in a while, but why does it have to be a weekly agenda in the church? Or what color shoes women should wear or how men should look; tell me why? Is God going to fall over? Is there any, is there anything that God, if you're studying His word, by the way, if you stay in this book long enough, some of those questions are answered. They become axiomatic, they become self-evident because it's essentially saying, “First let Me work on your heart and turn”" as I've said, “the soil of the soul first. Let Me open your eyes and if you're able to receive the truth, all these other things will take shape,” because Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and there's only one Perfect One, Jesus Christ. Everybody else is imperfect and falls short of that standard, so why did we have to hear another homily about the guy that's sitting over there that's doing X, Y and Z, when everybody else has some issue that if we should stand and be judged immediately there'd be nobody left? This is why I teach the Bible, right? Yeah. That was said, that was said for the benefit of somebody that might be saying, “Well, she's been talking for forty minutes already.” Don't worry, if you hang, if you hang around me long enough I can go for a couple of hours. All right, Genesis 38, “It came to pass that at that time, Judah”━what did we just learn about Judah? Although the promise was not given, but Judah, we should see kingship come out of these loins. It came to pass when “Judah went down from his brethren, turned into a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was Shuah; and he took her, and he went in unto her.” And if you don't know what that means I will not explain it to you. Are you going somewhere? I'm sure there'll be a lot of biblical quotations later on. “She conceived,” that tells you what they did, “bare a son; called his name Er.” You know, it's pretty bad when you call your kid Er. “She conceived again, and bare a son; called his name Onan. She yet again conceived,” very fertile people here, “called, bare a son; called his name Shelah: and he was at Chezib, when she bare him. And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar. And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.” He killed him. Surprise. “Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, marry her, raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; it came to pass that when he went in to his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.” And believe me, there have been all kinds of doctrines made from this particular passage, which I still have trouble trying to figure out how━. It's called wresting the Scriptures. We'll━I'm not touching that one. “Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown: for he said, Lest peradventure he die also, and his brethren, as his brethren did. Tamar went, and dwelt in her father's house. And in the process of time the daughter of Shuah Judah's wife died; and Judah was comforted, went up to his sheepshearers in Timnath, and his friend Hirah the Adullamite; he and his friend the Adullamite. And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth up to Timnath to shear sheep. She put her widow's garment off from her, covered her with a veil, wrapped herself, sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife. When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a harlot; because she had covered her face.” I still don't understand that one either. “He turned unto her by the way, and said, Go, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What will you give me, that thou mayest come in unto me? And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give a pledge, till thou sendest”━smart, smart woman, “He said, What pledge should I give thee? And she said, Thy signet,” the ring on your finger there, some “thy bracelets and thy staff which is in thine hand. And he gave it to her, came in unto her, and she conceived by him.” Now some of you new folks may be sitting somewhere and blushing a little bit. Don't blush; it's in the Bible. Come on, now. “And she arose, and went away, laid by her” took off the veil, “put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judah sent the kid to the, by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman's hand: but he found her not.” He asked around, basically, “Did anybody see a harlot in the way here?” It's just, you know, that's just a random question, right? There was no harlot. “They said, There was no harlot in this place. And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place. And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be ashamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months after, it was told to Judah, saying, Your daughter in law, she's played the harlot, she's with child,” she's pregnant, “Let her be burnt.” Some of you folks are worried about a sermon on abortion? Sorry, I just, you know, that's why I told you re━“Judah acknowledged them.” By the way, I'm sorry. I just skipped over a verse here. “When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, I am with child: and she said, Discern━guess who these belong to? Your ring, bracelet and staff━who are━whose are these? If you could tell me to who these belong to, then I'll tell you who the father is, right?” “Judah acknowledged them. He said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more. And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. It came to pass, when she travailed, that one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first. It came to pass, as he drew back his hand”━hand appears, hand disappears. That's very strange, but a scarlet thread was attached to that first hand that appeared, “behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this beach be upon thee: therefore the name, his name was called Pharez. And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zarah.” And there you have the firstborn, and if you read, the reason why I read this passage to you is because we read about the division of the Zarahites and the Pharahites, or the Pharezites and the Zarahites. At the end of the rule of Joseph, there should have risen up a ruler out of this Judah line. And the interesting thing is you've got to trace the lineage to find out that Pharez, and the Pharez line will end up in the genealogies to Christ. Matthew lists the Pharez line, through, by the way, the harlot Rahab into this line that produces ultimately the King of kings. So when we talk about what's in this pile right here, every piece counts, and there's no pun intended with that. Save that one for a moment, folks. I need to just clear my mind. Sometimes things come out of my mouth and I'm just, I'm not even sure where they came from, but that's what it is. So, what I'm trying to tell you is that in the bifurcation of these children we just looked at in Genesis, we have, again, two types of people and we could follow the types of people. As I said, the kingship line that goes this way and ultimately what, a people, we're going to call this, in this bifurcated line, a people who essentially will become known as “the lost tribes,” which are not lost. But the end of the Zarahite rule is understood, as I said, by the opening of what happens in the book of Exodus, where it says, “There rose up a pharaoh who knew not Joseph.” Now I've just taken you through literally 400, 500, maybe even 600 years of Bible history, winding through and combining Scriptures to try and make a point about something. If a person were to begin to try and trace these diverse people as I've shown bifurcated and diverse people there are interesting things that are said in Genesis regarding some portion of these people. For example, I mentioned Dan and the serpent's trail and all you have to do is you begin to study the Scriptures, the reference that is in Judges. Remember the tribe of Dan is going to be part of this group of people essentially. We're calling them separate. So they're not part of this southern kingdom, they're part of another group of people that once was part of this whole community, which is separated in the blessings, Dan being described as a serpent. And even in the early passages of what is Deborah's song in Judges 5, we have a reference to Dan dwelling at; really it's actually a question is why is he dwelling in ships? These were people who had already been sea-bound and if you read the secular historians, they chronicle a people who went to found the city of Argos and what is essentially, you know, we look at different territories that these people who essentially disappeared from, from history, from, from━we'll call it Bible history: they disappear. The mystery that people talk about; why is Dan not listed in the book of Revelation as the 144,000, and lots of good theories are going to swirl around things that I'll say I'm sure. But the one thing we know is that these people began to move and they're chronicled moving, by the way, in Judges 18. They went by Kirjath-jearim and they changed the name of that place to a place that has a Dan name in it. And you begin to watch them kind of move off and then the daughter of the Danos, who is chronicled by Diodorus Siculus and people like Manetho, chronicled arriving in places like Argos and at the temple beside Athens, all bearing the names of the tribe of Dan. And as they went, it's like they're depositing as they go. If you follow the, the whole globe, you begin to see names with traces of Dan in them all over the place and that's━I talked about the serpent, the serpent's maneuvering all over the place with names that we've seen before: Macedonia (just think DN, don't think vowels, because in Hebrew there are no vowels like our English vowels), and the Dardanelles. And you can keep going and find these people essentially everywhere they went, they were naming things as they went and you can, you can say, “Is this a random thought”" It's like; did anybody hear this, the move to change Columbus Day celebration? Did anybody hear that? To the native or indigenous people day; did you hear that? Okay, well we have a big problem. Houston, we have a problem because five hundred years before Columbus came we have good solid records that there were a Celtic people that came, so now we're going to have to flip a coin for who are the indigenous━sorry, who are the indigenous people? Are they the Celtic people, or are they the native people that we're recognizing as the indigenous and native people? Now the native people won't like that and I'm telling you the Italians are pissed because they want to celebrate Columbus Day. Right? If you've ever lived, if you've ever lived in New York, you've seen what happens on Columbus Day. Some of you who live in San Francisco know what happens on Columbus Day, it's a celebration, it's an excuse for━it's like what Cinco de Mayo is for, for Caucasians, Columbus Day is for━see, right back there, “Yup.” It's exactly like that, it, but that's for like anybody who would say, “Yeah, you know, Great-grandma's grandma's grandma's toenail was Italian━let's go out and celebrate!” Right? It's just like that. Well you're going to have a real issue when you really begin to look at the evidence of who the first peoples were and it's, it's based on a lot of bad chronicling and whitewashing of history, which, by the way, we should get used to because it's going to happen all over again. Oh, but anyway. So you can begin to see when people talk about the idea somehow that all of these people are Jews, no, they're not. In fact, this is why it's important to distinguish between the house of Israel, sometimes referred to as Samaria, sometimes referred to as Ephraim, which in other places we may have two references to the Gentile nation, and sometimes the Gentile nation is going to be referred to as these people here and sometimes will be referred to as truly people of other lands who are not part of these people who are distinct and apart from these people. And if that makes any sense to you, homogenizing them creates the idea somehow that everybody is a Jew and they're not. And that opens up the argument for people to talk about the 144,000 being all Jew and they cannot because think of it this way. I'm jumping to Revelation for a minute. If the purpose of the 144,000 preachers of righteousness is to have 12,000 out of every tribe, or almost every tribe, go out; be summoned essentially, from the four corners. You've got to read that text, that whole passage properly, the corners of the earth, picture the four corners of the earth being held back briefly. We'll just imagine that angels are holding everything back, waiting for these 144,000 to be called out from every corner of the earth, to be sealed with a mark so that they can be clearly identified. Their distinguishing mark and the fact that they are virgins; sorry to the other religious group who hasn't figured that one out yet, but these are designed to be witnesses to the whole earth, even though, very important, even though I quoted the passage out of Ezekiel that talks about the two sticks being put together as one. The idea must be understood these will preach to far flung corners of the earth to be the witnesses of those people who are still on the earth to announce essentially, it's the last call, if you will, to those people, the remnant who will be saved who are called the tribulation saints. Failure to understand that, that these are being dispersed, that means somewhere in the world, let's just give a fictitious example and let's just say somewhere in the world, from a certain tribe these 12,000 will be raised up and they will preach to this particular group of people who will know and recognize the individual in their tongue, hypothetically, and preach to them and it will be made known to those people who they are descendants of. At the moment they're being preached to it'll be like, “Oh, we belong to that group,” essentially. Which is why these are dispersed and why it cannot just be 144,000 represent Jews. Now we know what happens to the nation and this great confusion that I'm trying to separate out because once you get to that passage, you've got to understand several dynamics, the plan that God had from the beginning, which ultimately He brings to fruition, if you will, because it is the last chapter talking about the King of kings, Lord of lords who comes. And when He comes as the final, there is no there's going to be another person, another king; as the final Ruler on earth. He still comes, the description of Him, “Lion out of the tribe of Judah.” It's almost like for some somebody to read the book of Revelation and say, “Fantasy, fabrication,” or to even pick up this book and say, “Well, you've got to fudge it a little bit,” it's failure to understand that woven into this book, as I said, the tapestry is so much detailed information that's straight to the end of days, we can see what God intends to do. And He doesn't ask, He doesn't say, “I'm going to make this so complicated.” Now the issue, as I said, with these people who are essentially carried away, I'm talking about the northern tribes, carried away and begin to be moved and these people begin to more. There are several waves, several successive waves of migration and things that are going on, which I will talk about in detail because I realize I must for people who don't have this background. There are things that must happen with Judah. And once these things have really taken root, you can step back and you can understand why there are people who have not seen separate and distinct and said, “Well, God promised all of these promises, including the birthright promise to, we'll call it a package to the Jews and that wasn't fulfilled,” because there were promises given to Abraham, repeated by the way by Nathan the prophet to King David talking about how there will always be a seed of David sitting on a throne somewhere. I could keep going on all the things that God said He would do. That's caused people to say, “Well, it's not happening here, therefore God's a liar because He hasn't made good,” and they're not even looking in the right place. When you start to look in the right place and you're guided to the right information, suddenly it's like scales fall off your eyes and you have to wonder how hundreds of thousands of people could just discount all of this and say, “Well of course, it's not true because God hasn't made good,” when in fact, God has still got His hand on the gears and the control. And the people that say, “Well, with Brexit going on and with our political disaster that's happening, it's very clear to see that the ties between Ephraim and Manasseh that being hypothetically, if you want to go down this interpretation of Britain and the United States is no longer what it was and the ties that we have are no longer bound.” Some would like to hypothesize and say, “We've distanced ourselves, we've distanced ourselves from Israel because of the last eight years, we've, we're at a distance. We're at arm's length.” Well, that is like the ebb and flow of things that happen, but if you're reading prophecy aright, you realize that between Ephraim, Manasseh and what we are referring to as Israel, there is a tie that goes much deeper than eight years of politics or somebody selling a canal somewhere to somebody under the guise of peace, much deeper than anything that we could, in our current and modern times imagine, because God is in control, even when we don't think so. Now for all of those people who are saying, “Okay, but you took us on this journey,” the ultimate and last word has to be the whole purpose for looking at this is to sort out and make clear. We must start looking at the minor, Major and minor Prophets to better understand Revelation, without those you're going to go nowhere. And without that clarity of who we are talking about when we refer to the house of Judah, versus talking about the house of Israel or Samaria or Ephraim, which are synonyms, they are, they are synonymous, they all belong to this ten tribes to the north, if we're not clear we'll fall into error. I want to make sure we know who we're talking about when we get there, not just for the 144,000 likewise, you'll hear me say this again when we get to the false church in the book of Revelation. Too many people, if you read any of the books that have been put out say in the last fifty, sixty, seventy, a hundred years, they want to point immediately━watch it━ they want to all point to the Catholic Church because it's, there's a great description that sounds really right. But the reality is if you step back and you look at the church in a more universal way (which is actually the meaning of Catholic), but if you look it at it in a more universal way, you'll see that the idea of what this church, the church, the false church will succumb to is much more indicative; sorry, you're not going to like this; it's way more indicative of the gullibility of the vast church out there under the banner of Protestantism. Much easier consumed by some man coming on the scene, producing great miracles that are so wild and so mind boggling that “This has to be from God, because it couldn't be,” as anybody who takes the time to study that book will know it's a false Christ. It's just an illusion. It's not; it's not just an illusion, but it is, it is the pseudo of what God has already demonstrated as verity through His book. So the relevance to all this you'll find it's almost a double happening, clarity to understand where we're going, the same type of clarity will be required to understand about the false church and all the other things that we will encounter. I hope I laid a little bit more foundation and for those you who have sat through hours and hours and hours and hours, you're going to have to sit through some more hours of this until it's clear for those people, until it's clear for those people who understand the reality is that most people that you will encounter are going to mess this up anyway. So you might as well just have it recarved in your brain again, and when we get into those passages you'll be able to say, “Yes, I know who this is, there's no question about it.” So it's to be continued, friends, next time. Come on up. What, what I want you to, to really take to heart, and some of you who've been here a long time know it, but I'm really probably talking to the newer folks: God is in control. There is no way the details given in this book and through this book that somebody could just randomly sit down and say, “Well, I'm going to write and do a little fabrication.” The details are so mind boggling that when you begin to study them you realize, not, no longer “Well, if this is true,” you almost have to stand back and say, “There's no way that it could not be.” And that's coming from someone who, when I first heard Bible teaching, I thought, “Aw, I don't know about all this,” from the skeptic's brain. Sometimes you have to make those tough journeys yourself and be a hardhead, which I have been, to come to the point where you stand back and you say, “There is no other explanation.” This is God's hand in past, showing us about His hand in the future. Remember a great lesson, God's on the corner before you get there, which means He's in control. Don't you forget that, okay. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com
