America . . . Ephraim or Manasseh?
Aug. 17, 2002
11 a.m. Pacific time
Ken Westby: The message today is on Ephraim and the United States. The question we're putting on the table here, and it'll be an interview-style program, is: Is Ephraim the United States of America? And this will be an interview with Clyde Brown from California, a biblical researcher, one of the founders of the Foundation for Biblical Research back in the early '70s, long-time student of Scripture, and Gary Arvidson, also a cofounder of the Foundation for Biblical Research back the early '70s, an old colleague of mine from back in college days, going back to 1959.
So these are some old friends of mine but excellent Bible students, and they have good, fertile minds. Some people would say maybe they're too fertile.
But I enjoy their research and their studies. They're great to bounce things off and kick things around. We keep the Internet busy here with E-mails flowing to and fro on this subject and that subject.
So that'll be our subject today, but first I'd like to clear the air here by making some assumptions.
We go into this discussion with the assumption that Israel, or Jacob, had 12 sons, and their descendants are alive on this earth today, that their descendants realize the repeated promises made to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.
They exist today, not as small nomadic tribes stumbling around in the desert somewhere or as a forgotten people that just sort of disappeared into the ether, got absorbed by other people and they just disappeared from the scene, but rather we believe that they are the most important nations on the face of the earth.
And if you'd like more background to that subject, which we're not directly going to get into, I can highly recommend Steve Collins' book on "The Lost 10 tribes of Israel . . . Found." And he has more of the story on where Israel's been and how it's arisen to its present state, and of those 12 tribes two stand out above all others, Manasseh and Ephraim, and of these two one is vastly greater, and that is Ephraim.
So today our discussion is going to center on the identity of Ephraim.
Now, the British-Israel people and others who believe that Israel didn't disappear and still is on the earth and a major player, have taught that the United Kingdom or England or the British Empire is Ephraim, and Manasseh, who is the older brother of the two sons of Joseph, is the United States of America.
Now, that's been a very common belief in our tradition, and it's been probably the most popular belief among those that do hold to the identify of Israel in the world today.
Now, it has its logic, of course; that is, Manasseh being the U.S. of A., and it has its points. And at a future time we have a debate from both sides, letting each side put all their evidence on the table. We don't have time for that right now; our purpose today is to explore the challenging view.
Since most of our audience is familiar at least somewhat with the Manasseh being the U.S.A. view, today we're going to explore the challenging view that, no, it's not Manasseh; it's Ephraim.
I've thought a lot about who Ephraim and Manasseh are, and if you think we're getting a little archaic here and too technical in our jargon, let me just refresh your memory, and I'm sure those of you that even have a cursory study of the Bible will remember the beautiful Joseph story.
Joseph was thrown in a pit by his jealous brothers, eventually sold down into Egypt, and there ended up in prison and finally was brought out of prison, all this through miraculous intervention, apparently, from God, to be exalted, to be the actual leader and like Pharaoh over all the land of Egypt.
And he became then a savior of the Egyptians, but most importantly he became a savior of his brothers and the house of Israel, his father Jacob, because a great famine came on the land. Eventually that famine drove the children of Israel, the other surviving 11 sons, down into Egypt to get food, to get help. And there Joseph was reunited with them.
To make the story short, eventually his father, Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, now an old man, was brought down to Egypt as well.
But, before he left, he was unsure about leaving, because there was in the land of promise--he hadn't inherited it yet--there he was in the land of promise, and now he was being asked to leave the land of the promise that was given to him, given to his father Isaac, given to his father Abraham; these things were tremendously important.
And he was asked to go down there, and he had second thoughts, and he went to one of the shrines where his father Isaac had worshiped, and there he went to God, and he worshiped God and was in a conundrum himself about whether or not he should go.
Food demanded he should go. The invitation, logic and all said he should go, but these great promises still had to be realized. And he was now leaving that land, going to Egypt.
And God in a dream told them: Go ahead. It's okay, because you're still going to realize these promises.
And so he did go, and he went down to the land of Egypt, where he lived about 17 years, I think, until he died.
And there his children, thanks to Joseph, grew and became a great people, a great nation. They became large in number, so large that later Pharaohs became worried about their power and their presence and began to enslave them.
Then eventually under Moses they were delivered, and then reached that Promised Land, but this was many, many years after that event.
But getting back to the story of Egypt: Here Joseph was down there. He saves his own family from starvation. He's got his father there, and he's got all his brothers there. And now, as his father's about ready to die, he brings his two sons to his father to receive a blessing.
And blessings were very important in those days, and they are now, but we don't seem to place the same importance upon them.
And so his father was going to actually give a prophetical blessing that was regarded as having power with God and having a binding power with God, having an actualization of those words sometime in the future, and he wanted the good words to be said on his two sons before his dad died.
And so he brought them to his father, and that blessing, in a sense, is the essence of our discussion today, because he did something strange.
It had been done before, but he--that is Jacob, Israel--violated some of the standard rules, and this is no doubt by inspiration of God, in that he did not put his right hand upon the eldest, which would be the logical one to receive the greater blessing, passed down through the eldest son. The eldest was Manasseh.
And Joseph led Manasseh as he faced them. Manasseh was in his left hand, and in his right hand was Ephraim, and he was facing his father.
So as he faced his father, the right hand of his father would be facing Manasseh, and he expected his father to reach out with that right hand, put it on the head of Manasseh, and give him the blessing of the firstborn.
But instead this man who was blind, he couldn't see, did not reach out and put his hand on Manasseh but instead crossed his arms, reached over and put his hand on Ephraim, and gave him the blessing, which shows that God has the power to give blessings to whoever he wants, and his authority trumps all conventions and all of the rules, and this was done no doubt by inspiration of God.
So here we have now this greater blessing going on Ephraim.
Now, in our discussion today we'll get into some of the essence of those blessings and why we think they're still around.
But in my recent studies here in the book of Genesis, I've been taken aback time and time again by the great effort with which God went to see to it that there were children born and preserved to Abraham.
We regard Abraham as the father of the faith today, don't we? And a yet of people, Christians included, seem to think that all those promises given to Abraham about children being born and them being great and them having great inheritance and being numerous as the sand on the seashore and being a power in the world, that somehow those all disappeared or they were a lot of hyperbole or they were just realized in some dinky little desert kingdoms.
But, no, they weren't, and God saw to it through one intervention after another, miracles, giving, letting elderly women give birth, and seeing to it the sparing of Jacob and his children--God went to great lengths to see to it that those children of Abraham survived, and not only survived but prospered.
And then in the latter days there was going to be even a greater fulfillment. It wasn't going to end with them.
Of course they all died not having received the promises, so they understood, just as we understand, that the kingdom is not yet; the greatest fulfillment is yet future. They began to understand that was true even on these physical promises of greatness of their prodigy.
So we're here to discuss why Ephraim has become the most important, powerful nation on earth, the most prosperous nation and the reason for that: the promises given to Abraham.
So we think this is a fulfillment of God's promise and a testimony that he is good for his word, and those promises still hold true and he fulfilled them, and if he couldn't fulfill them to Abraham, how can we know that he'll fulfill them for us.
Now, this is not a spiritual matter in the sense that you got to believe that Israel is identified in certain nations. That has nothing to do with your personal salvation, your repentance from your sins and the developing of the divine nature in your own life. So we're not trying to make it a spiritual point that must be understood in order to have salvation, so we don't want to get that out of whack.
But at the same time it is a subject that sheds light on Scripture and gives us a better understanding of what God is doing and the Bible and also present-day world events. I tell you it makes an awful lot of sense.
Well, I'd like to open up the discussion to Clyde Brown first.
Clyde, now you've gotten into this study, and I know at first you weren't buying this. As I remember, when Gary first presented it to me some years back, I thought it was intriguing and some points immediately made sense, but I remained undecided.
I think when he presented some of these things to you, you were more disagreeing, and since with your research you've come to change your mind.
So, Clyde, did I characterize that correctly?
Clyde Brown: You certainly have, because Gary has done most of the work on this, and I think Gary will bring out here in just a minute that there were others I think got Gary researching into the possibilities that the United States was Ephraim.
So Gary approached me several times on it, and I just wasn't interested in it, and then one day I thought, well, I'm going to look into it, since Gary keeps pushing me on it, and so I was going through the Bible and came to [Matthew 21:43].
A very interesting statement was made by Jesus in [Matthew 21:43]. And we can visualize this is where Jesus is that greater prophet than Moses, the one that Moses said was going to come after him, this great prophet, and Jesus came to Jerusalem, came to his own, and he came nationally. In other words, he was just like the prophets of old. The prophets of old came to the nation, and they prophesied to the nation, and Jesus came that way too.
And so when I read this in Matthew [21:43] to where finally during the last week of Jesus' ministry he came in to Jerusalem and was rejected by the leadership of the Jews. He came riding on a foal, a colt of a donkey, and this was to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9. This is where Jesus was for the first time declaring himself openly as the king of the Jews. After being rejected by the leadership, and then he spent time in the temple there with many of the authorities, and finally he said to them that the kingdom was going to be taken from them and given to a nation that would bring forth the fruit.
Now, when you look at it from the point of view that individually the gospel goes to whomsoever will, whoever will receive it, and so we have that part of the gospel and that part of the kingdom promises of God, but we also have the national, and this is what intrigued me to see that here Jesus is talking about Judah, the nation of Judah, and this is national, and he's saying that the kingdom will be taken from Judah and given to a nation that'll bring forth the fruit.
This is a most profound statement Jesus has made.
And this got me into the real study, going back and rechecking everything, beginning with Genesis 35.
And so I went in to Genesis 35, and we won't turn there, but I'll just mention it and people can write it down and look at it later, and it just popped out at me that the promises there to Jacob were twofold.
The promise was that out of him was going to come a nation, and a company of nations.
All you have to do is look at history and see exactly what happened. The nation is Judah. That was one part of the twofold promises. The nation was Judah, not Manasseh; it was Judah.
And then the community of nations, which Ephraim was to become, we see that pattern up in the northern tribes, the royal tribe was Ephraim, and Ephraim led the house of Israel. In fact, in many cases in our Old Testament prophecies Ephraim represents the house of Israel.
In other words, when God is speaking to the house of Israel he called them Ephraim.
And so when I looked at that, then some of the things that Gary had been telling me really started to make since.
So I go into [Genesis 48] and I see there, well, this is the other side of that twofold promises. In [Genesis 35:11] we have both sides. In other words, it's twofold. One fold comes to Judah, and that's where the Davidic kingdom comes in and where Christ comes through that lineage of David.
And on the other side we have the birthright blessings that went to Ephraim as the main one, and part of those blessings went to Manasseh, because Jacob says Manasseh will become a people, he will be great, but Ephraim shall be greater.
So anyway that's how I came to swing over to Gary Arvidson's side, and I think Gary should take it from there.
I will make one other comment, why I think this is important, and as Ken just said not for salvation. We know how that comes about. It's by grace through faith and that not of ourselves. It's a gift of God. That's the faith of Christ imparted to us.
Seeing God’s promises being fulfilled builds more faith in God, seeing that what God said he's able to bring about.
And in [Deuteronomy 33:13-17], and this is my opinion and I think others that I'm associated with have the same opinion, that we're seeing that prophesy actually coming to pass at this very time, in this very day.
Now, is it possible that it's not coming to pass?
Well, sure, there's a possibility, but at least this gives us something to look at, and I'm going to let Gary go ahead and do his part of this, and then come to that text and let each person decide if the United States is Ephraim and if this prophecy is beginning to be fulfilled by the United States, if the United States is Ephraim, and Britain is Manasseh. Doesn’t it fit that Manasseh is standing by Ephraim's side as they begin to push at the nations, which we see happening today.
I mean is this prophecy for today? I have the notion that it is.
And I think each person, has to decide on their own. So anyway, Ken, I'd like for Gary now to pick up from there because he is the one that has done all the work on this and the one that brought me around to studying into it, and I found that Gary was correct.
KW: Gary, I know that you've got so much information and you've produced papers here giving 30 reasons why the U.S.A. is Ephraim or Ephraim is the U.S.A., and in our limited scope we can't cover all of that, of course, and some of that we can make available to our listeners, but maybe you can summarize as much as you can, give us enough of the evidence for believing what you believe.
Gary Arvidson: Okay, that's quite a tall order.
Just last night I started going through all the E-mails that have gone back and forth between Clyde and myself and yourself included in a number of them, and I found I had 93 E-mails for a total of 291 pages to review on this topic. And that's just on the E-mail aspects, let alone all the other research that sits here in piles of information that's been accumulating over the years.
And this is a difficult subject to try to even begin to prepare to talk about in about 20 minutes or so. It is beyond me.
But there are a few things that we can mention. Let me just go back a bit to November of 1996.
Until that time, from the time that I first knew about what we called BI [British-Israelism] or U.S. and British Commonwealth in prophecy, I pretty well held to the standard model, but I did make a modification before 1996 in my mind, and that is that I felt that since having read one article (about 10 or 15 years ago) in "U.S. News & World Report" about the makeup of the United States, and it was, as I recall, that approximately the Germanic peoples-- the Germans--were about 19 percent, the Irish 17 percent, the English or Scotch-Irish about 17 percent, and then it went on down from there. I forget--the Norwegians were about 8 percent, Swedes 5 percent, something like that.
So are we going to say this land of North America is Manasseh -- when we have this mixture of peoples -- and from presumed Israelite countries in NW Europe? And, frankly, since there are more Germans, this would make it, according to the old standard model, Assyria.
So I pretty well adopted in my mind that, well, if this is the land of Israel, then it is the melting pot for all tribes. And maybe it comes under the banner of Manasseh, but it certainly has a whole lot more of the other people, and it can't be exclusively considered to be Manasseh.
Then in 1996, November, as I mentioned, there was an article published in the "Servants' News," and in it two writers had proposed that the United States was Ephraim. The first writer, Harry Curley, listed 13 reasons why he felt the United States could be identified with the tribe of Ephraim, and then Lyle Timmons went ahead and added two additional reasons, making a total of 15 points for the United States being Ephraim.
And I looked at that, and I said “wow, this is amazing.” We talk about crossing of hands, we talk about overturns. I mean, Isaac overturned the firstborn Ishmael, then Esau was overturned by Jacob, and then we have Reuben, the legal firstborn, was overturned by Joseph, and then we have Joseph's two sons being overturned with the crossing of the hands, as Ken has just explained, so that Ephraim overturns Manasseh, and here you have generation by generation, overturn, overturn, overturn, overturn. What is this?
And now here we believed one thing about the United States and Britain for so many years -- and now we're being overturned again. I mean how crossed up could things be?
But there was a reason, and there was a basis, and we can put this into print. We have it only in a temporary contingency exposition form right now, and there's so much work to be done on this to gather all of the factors.
But--so in 1996 that was the change.
And
I worked on this for a couple of years, and over that period of time added
about 10 more reasons why I felt the United States could be singled out as
being Ephraim, which we listed together in a 25-reason paper entitled:
"Will
the Real Ephraim Please Stand?"
Well, I've worked on Clyde over the years with no result, but finally I decided to go ahead and make a full suicide dive with him back about February. And this is when I hit him with just about everything else that I'd come up with on this thing of the United States being Ephraim.
And Clyde in all honesty told me later, he said: “Well, Gary's been a good friend over the years, and we both know that I've resisted this information, and just wasn't interested.” But being a good friend, Clyde decided that he owed it to me to seek God concerning this matter -- and to ask God to help him to understand. And no sooner had he done this, than a scripture came directly to mind, which Clyde immediately looked up. It was Matthew 21:43, which he's already referred to. That was his turning point.
And I think there's a whole lot more that Clyde can say about that, and he will as we progress.
But the point is this -- that all this happened back in February, six months ago. And so all these E-mails have transpired on this topic in the meantime.
Now when Clyde brought out this Matthew 21:43 text to me in this new way of viewing, and he said, “Gary, look, it isn't taken away from the Jews and given to the gentiles” -- well, I was dumbfounded. I mean he showed that even the brethren of the Jews, the Israelites, haven't had a chance to receive this opportunity -- and it is given instead to the gentiles? How could this be? It doesn’t make sense.
And when Clyde pointed that out to me, and then I began to realize, well, right there in that very text it talks about “...a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof ...” -- why, Ephraim was to be a fruitful bough. The first opportunity to pick up where Judah left off should be other Israelites -- and most logically, the tribe of Ephraim.
And you find in Isaiah--let's see, I think it's Isaiah 27:6--“Israel shall blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit.” This has been done by the United States more than any other nation -- and on a worldwide basis.
So here you have Joseph being a fruitful bough, here you have Joseph bringing forth fruit--or Israel--and all Israel came under the title of Ephraim. That's made plain by Gesenius in his book "The Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament."
But the whole kingdom and the people of the 10 tribes came under the name of Ephraim--Joseph, yes, but Ephraim specifically. And that became the commonwealth, or the common multitude of nations.
So Right there in that Matthew 21:43 text we read that astonishing statement about “....a nation bringing forth the fruits therefore.” Who could this be?
What nations have produced more Bibles and promulgated the gospel to the world more than, of course, Britain first of all, but primarily the United States in the larger sense?
I'm told today that only 3 percent of the people in Britain go to church, but somewhere between 50 and 60 percent in the United States attend some church.
So, you know, from that point of view who's more devout? Who has brought forth the fruits?
Do you want any further comments on that, Ken or Clyde, or however you want to do this?
CB: No, you're doing just great, Gary. Just keep it going.
Female listener: Hello. Are we on open line? I would like to say something, just a real quick comment, that I really appreciate this Bible study. I think it's interesting, at least to me, that as I understand the traditional view that was held by many people in Britain, I guess there were books written on it, was that, like you're now coming to the conclusion that the United States is Ephraim and Great Britain was Manasseh.
And I think it was Mr. Armstrong who decided all these scholars were wrong and, you know, reversed it.
CB: That's interesting.
KW: There's a play on the word there even of Ephraim which means twice fruitful. It's one of those sounds where they do a lot of this in Hebrew, but it's missed in our English translations, where it speaks of a prophecy by Joseph there in Genesis 49:22: Joseph is a fruitful vine.
And the sound of the word of Ephraim is like that of twice fruitful. So the Hebrew scholars tell us it's a pun on the name Ephraim.
And he was to be so fruitful--the description of him there as a fruitful vine near a spring whose branches climb over the wall, and he was so full of wealth, so full of greatness, and of the children of Joseph, of course, Ephraim is singled out as being the leader of that, so the only question we're dealing with here in one sense: Are the descendants of Joseph's children inheriting any of these blessings that were given, and if so when?
And are these players in Scripture written by Almighty God who made the heavens and the earth, are they totally irrelevant to our modern world, or are they the most important nations on the face of the earth?
We certainly know that Judah's important. We call it the linchpin now of peace in the world. And we know how important the nation of the Jews over there in Israel is. But that's a small nation.
Of course there are many Jews scattered in other parts of the Western world, most predominantly right here in the United States. They have a tremendous amount of influence and money and power and the rest.
But the question is: Would the Jews exist as a nation without the United States guaranteeing their safety and being a promoter and a help and everything else that we've been here for many decades? Well, the answer of course is no.
So there is this alignment between Judah and Ephraim, and we know when the kingdom is divided the southern kingdom was the kingdom of Judah, it was over the city of Jerusalem, and the central tribe in the northern kingdom was Ephraim, and it extended its borders significantly, and as Hosea and some of the other prophets, as Gary mentioned, used the name Ephraim to describe the northern kingdom.
In other words, it was so politically influential and dominant that you could just refer to it as Ephraim, as you could refer to the southern kingdom as Judah.
So when the prophecies are given and the blessings are given, you see the selection of Judah--
SIDE 2 OF TAPE
--descriptions that we pick up from Scripture, the little gleanings here, a few words here and a few words there, where are they going to be fulfilled in our world today?
There is this company of nations that is going to be so dominant that it says it can reach out and hurt the world wherever it wants to hurt the world, could poke people in the eye anywhere in the world. There's been no nation that's ever had that power in the history of the world, and the United States has it. It's recently demonstrated that power to the amazement of all nations, Europeans and everyone else, that we could actually mount a force and go to the opposite side of the earth, which is where Afghanistan is, and mount such an effective campaign to punish people hidden in the mountains who have done an evil thing against us.
This is just never been done in the past the way the United States has done it, and we've done it many times, we've been doing it for years. We've been doing it for almost two centuries.
And so I think we need to find the United States somewhere in Scripture. Not that in some ways that's a racial thing, because it's an amalgam of different tribes of Israel and different people, so we're not trying to make that kind of a point, which some do. Some of the British-Israel people have that superiority angle to things.
So Gary, you had more to say?
GA: Yeah. Regarding that comment you made about the United States and Judaea, I use the name Judaea to distinguish the nation of Israel today, but it was Truman who primarily pushed that thing. There was a hiatus between the British people and the Jews. They had a lot of quarrels and fighting and killing going on there from the time that Allenby came in during 1917 and took over that whole Palestine area, and then isn't it interesting that 30 years later in 1947 that events were culminating, bringing to the birth the state in 1948? So there was a 30-year period there. This is highly significant.
And you can start dealing with some of the principals of the legal firstborn who would tend to take more care of a monarchy (which the firstborn child would do), which would be more of an older (physically older) brother type of a thing. That's another whole point which I can't get into right here.
However, Truman--and America really has been a friend of the Jewish people and Judaea--so there you see the difference between Britain and America on that score.
Another factor is this: I've had people say to me: How much difference does it make whether America or Britain is Ephraim? I would say this: “It makes a difference based on Hosea.” In the book of Hosea--if this is a prophecy for the end time--it mentions Ephraim 37 times and doesn't mention Manasseh once.
And when you go to Deuteronomy 33:17, where it talks about the powers of Ephraim and Manasseh at the end days, and they together will push the people to the ends of the earth, and there are the ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh, why that's a 10-to-1 ratio.
And you hear on the news in Afghanistan about “the thousands of Americans” and “the hundreds of the British.” I couldn't think of a better example. Thousands versus hundreds is basically 10-to-1 (additional new note: the Americans will have 450 planes on 5 aircraft carriers, and the British will add 50 planes of their own making a total of 500 planes to attack Iraq [that’s a 9-to1 ratio]).
And as it has been proposed to me that, “well, that ten thousands and thousands is a term that's talking about general population, and for various reasons Britain comes out on top when you count up the total number of people in the entire commonwealth (empire) as opposed to the numbers of people in America.”
Well, wait a minute, this Deuteronomy text is not talking about men, women and children. This is talking about armies, so this is a measurement of armies and not general population of these two tribes, and that you can see this being fulfilled today (1) if these are the last days and (2) we're coming down to it -- and the United States and Britain together are pushing the people all the way to the ends of the earth -- as far as you can go.
Basically we're a sea power, and as a sea power we are able to take the means to extend power around the world.
Other powers are land powers, and they can't go around the world in the same way that the United States can with our aircraft-carrier fleets.
KW: Well, the British have certainly been allies. We are the English-speaking peoples, so there is a great similarity of the children of Joseph between Ephraim and Manasseh, but the greater has certainly been Ephraim, the United States. England would maybe be having to write in German right now, and have German on all their street signs, had it not been for the United States saving them and the Continent in two great world wars.
And it's been the support and the power of America that's basically done that.
And as far as the British Empire, as it was for a short period of time, it no longer exists, and it lost its colonies, and many of them were never truly a part of Britain or the British people. They were simply land acquisitions occupied for a period of time.
The U.S. had done the same thing in the Philippines, for instance. It's not considered a part of America, although it's been under our influence.
There's a recent book out, and I don't have it here before me, but it's by Dinesh D'Souza, the title something like "What's So Great About America?" What he does there is just list the many blessings that America has been and has been to the world, and truly the country that has protected the world, kept it safe from the time when we were sending the Marines over to the Barbary coast there in north Africa, to stop the pirates which were destroying sea trade, and we sent American forces over there to do battle with them and to make the seas safe not just for ourselves but for all nations.
And we've done the same on matters of trade, slave trade, and many other things, and England had a big part in that, in enforcing some of these things.
There also is another book out that is excellent by Max Boot, a brand-new book entitled "The Savage Wars of Peace"--that is, the small wars and the rise of America's power. You think of the big wars that we've fought, but we don't realize that between 1800 and 1934 U.S. Marines staged 180 landings abroad.
Singing that song from the Marine Corps hymn, my brother was in the Marines, I had to learn it, and from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we forget how many enforcements [?] the United States has been doing, and we haven't been going it to take over land, rape it and then occupy it. Most of the time we got in and got out, and if we stayed we stayed for a while, trying to improve the situation, and get out, not that everything was done perfectly, but whether it was the Barbary pirates we were taking care of or the Chinese Boxers in 1900 or the Mexican __________ or wherever it was, America has been involved around the world, and it's been intervening and usually on the side of peace, and it's right now, who is it that's trying to stop world terrorism? The United States, at a great expense.
Is this not a blessing to the world if we can do that, if we could stop Iraq from acquiring these weapons of mass destruction, of blackmailing nations, of killing huge amounts of people?
It would be in the world's interest for that to happen.
But here right now the United States again planning halfway around the world to intervene, and is this not what the prophecies say about Ephraim? What is the exact wording there? It isn't smite, but it's something like that.
GA: Push.
KW. Push, or there was another word for it.
KW: _________ing [?] the nations around the world or in the far-flung lands of the world, and this is something uniquely the ability of the United States, or where there is a nation that has inherited the greatest wealth in the world, the greatest military power, there's none by comparison.
In fact, I ought to read just one section here from Max Boot in his brand-new book. He says:
The United States was thrust willy-nilly into Britain's old role of global cop. Of course, unlike 19th-century Britain, 21st-century America does not preside over a formal empire. Its empire, in quotes, consists not of far-flung territorial possessions but of the family of democratic, capitalist nations that eagerly seek shelter under Uncle Sam's umbrella.
____________ of that empire, North America, Western Europe, northeast Asia remains for the most part stable and prosperous, but violence and unrest lap at the periphery in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, central Asia, and he goes on.
But I think that's very well put, how he states that America's empire is a family of democratic, capitalist nations eagerly under the shelter of Uncle Sam's umbrella. They're not always as thankful as they ought to be, and they don't often give they praise that they ought to, but that's where they are. When push comes to shove, that's where they always want to be.
So I thought that certainly fit in with that prophecy about Ephraim.
So, Gary, you had other comments?
GA: No, that's good. I'd like to get that book. I'm sure it's very exciting to read.
Well, maybe we can take some questions. There's just so much. I just feel overwhelmed with the data here that we've got. I could comment on the multitude of nations, the United States is really a commonwealth in the sense that each state of the United States is a nation in itself, that we are a supranational state, and we're different from just other nations. So North Carolina can do business with Germany, France and all that--
INTERFERENCE INTERRUPTS THE DISCUSSION HERE
KW: I don't know how that got in there. You still there?
Female voice: Yeah, uh-huh.
KW: Well, I appreciate your point. Also another point that can be made there about the relationship with Judah and Joseph, not only are they spoken of predominantly in the blessings as the two most important tribes, but remember when Jacob was coming down into Egypt how he sent Judah ahead and said: Judah, you go meet Joseph.
And Judah was the spokesman and the emissary for the other 10 brothers.
But then not only did all the 10 and Judah come under the umbrella of Joseph, and under the protection of Joseph, and they survived because of Joseph, and, yes, this program, this wealth that was shared through his rule there in Egypt, so there are some real strong parallels there, and then the strong affinity that has been present between the English-speaking people, which would be the children of Joseph.
So maybe we're making a fine point about who is Ephraim and who is Manasseh, but I think if you've got to choose between the United States and Britain as the primary candidates, I really don't see that there is much choice but to conclude that the United States would be Ephraim.
Clyde, you had some--
CB: There's also a pattern that I think which we should consider too, and that is historically that Ephraim represented the other tribes in the north, but before they went into exile they never grew past the tribal stage. And yet the prophecies, if they're going to come to pass, then the prophecies have to be fulfilled in terms of nations.
In other words, these tribes that were in the north that got scattered out, and by the way I really recommend as Ken does Steve Collins' work, and I know he's got four more books coming out, and, although we would disagree on who Ephraim is, outside of that I don't know of anybody that has done a greater work or a more efficient work and conclusive work than what Steve Collins has done on finding the trail of the different tribes.
But anyway back to my point, that is for the prophecies to be fulfilled they have to become nations. Now, we have the pattern set in the tribal stage. In other words, Ephraim represented the 10 tribes, and oftentimes in Scripture we will use Ephraim as the 10 tribes. In other words, it's almost synonymous between the northern tribes and Ephraim, the 10 tribes and Ephraim.
And so they have to become nations somewhere along the line, and as we go through Ezekiel when they're going to all be pulled back into the Promised Land, there's one thing that absolutely must occur if Ezekiel's vision there in chapter 37 is to be correct, and that is we must find that Judah is a nation with Israelites associated with him, and we must find Ephraim a nation with Israelites associated with him.
Now, usually, traditionally what we've thought, is that when it says that Ephraim shall become a multitude of nations, we think of that, well, Ephraim's going to grow into a multitude of nations. In other words, Ephraim's going to be 10 nations or whatever.
I don't think that's what it meant at all. I think what it meant is that Ephraim is going to, by his influence and by being the royal tribe, just as he was the chief tribe in the house of Israel to the north, now Ephraim is the chief nation on the face of the earth that has influenced and brought blessings to the whole world, prosperity, as well as taken the gospel to the whole world.
In other words, it's not a matter of superiority; it's a matter of responsibility. The United States has been blessed to do a job. God's prophecy said that Israel shall be a light unto the nations.
Now, if we don't know that and if we think all Israel is just the Jews, then we say, well, has the Jewish nation been a light of Jesus Christ to the world? We'd say, well, no. Well, then God's prophecies failed.
No,God didn't fail at all. Israel has been a light to the world. The United States, and Great Britain has been a light to the world, and no nation has been a light to the world and has spread so many Bibles and has spread the gospel like the United States. And that comes from God. That's why we were given the blessings and given the promises.
So I don't think it is where it's saying that Ephraim is going to become 10 different nations over here. Ephraim is going to have that control and that leadership that it will lead. Just like we lead the free world. The United States leads the free world.
It's almost synonymous, when you say free world you think of the United States, because we have spread the gospel, we have spread the democracy, we have spread human rights, all over the world, and we have affected Britain, we have affected all the nations.
And so I think from that point of view that we don't look at--
Female voice: Hello. Hello.
CB: I'm sorry.
Female voice: Hello.
KW: We're online here.
Female voice: Hello?
KW: Clyde, I might add to that that you know in Deuteronomy 33?
CB: Yeah.
KW: Where you wanted to go, you referred to that section about Joseph, I suggest to our listeners to check that out in Deuteronomy 33. We won't have time to get into it now. But where it talks Joseph a prince among all of the tribes, how he was going to be like the firstborn bull with these horns and gore [?] the nations, even those at the end of the earth.
American troops are stationed in Germany, Spain [?] and Italy and South Korea, parts of the world, and that is unique to us of all the nations in the world, so not only has the world been blessed with the gospel but it's been blessed as well as an enforcer and a help of commerce, for democracy, for human rights.
Now, we don't suspect that's going to continue forever.
Well, I'm going to open the lines for questions since we're toward the end of our time here. Those of you who have been listening in who have some specific questions, we haven't covered exhaustively anything, but maybe we've stirred up some thoughts, and we've got the guys online here that might could answer your questions. So go ahead and speak up. I think I got the lines open.
Male voice: I'm sitting here listening, Ken.
KW: Oh, okay, good. Glad you are.
Male voice: They're open. In Virginia, anyway. No, I'm in New Jersey today.
KW: Oh, all right, well, good.
Any comments or questions from our listeners?
GA: I got a couple of points I might add.
KW: Go ahead, Gary.
GA: Go ahead?
KW: Yeah.
GA: Okay, it is interesting that in 745 B.C. the largest group of tribes, whole tribes, were taken into captivity. There were three stages of captivity. I believe it was 771, 745 and 721 to 718 that we've referred to and said, yeah, the Louisiana Purchase and all those events at that time fulfilled the 2,520 years period.
But it is interesting if you take 745 as the time of the taking of the major portion of Israel into captivity and you went 2,520 years, by going from B.C. to A.D. and adding one for no year zero, you come to 1776.
CB: Declaration of Independence.
KW: That's interesting. Certainly is.
GA: And then there's another factor too. It's interesting that Joseph’s brothers did not know the identity of Joseph when they came down to Egypt to buy grain. Joseph was the mystery man. And in the same way Joseph’s brothers (and all others) don't know the identity of Joseph today in the latter days. So there's kind of a parallel between Joseph's unidentified form in Egypt and also Joseph’s unidentified status today.
KW: Which has been pointed out. I hear in the background one of our listeners wanted you to repeat that 1776 date--
Female voice: It was a fax machine that came on and I had to hang up and dial back in, and I--what was it? About how many years between what and what makes 1776?
GA: Okay. What that was is this. There were three basic periods of invasion: 771, 745 and 721. The first date was only taking tribute from the northern tribes. The primary dates for the taking into captivity are 745-740, which was major taking into captivity, where five tribes were removed. Being a major axial point, if you consider that as a starting point for calculation, you would go 2,520 years, adding one for no year zero, and you come to 1776.
KW: That fits into another prophecy, the 2,520-year prophecy, which we're not covering here now. That would be a separate subject, but that's one of the major biblical prophecies, the 2,520-year prophecy, and--
Female: You know, talking about the nations--
KW: Who's this calling, from where?
Female: My name's Martha. I'm in Los Angeles.
KW: Okay. Go ahead.
Martha: Mackey. Uh, you know, there's a multitude of nations, in the United States, I think we all know this, each state is supposed to be self-ruling, and it's only been in the more-recent times that you know more of the strife between the federal government being over all the states vs. the states' rights, etc., right? I mean, now the federal government is stepping in and saying, no, we're going to be more powerful than the states, but when it was originated each state was a self-governing entity.
KW: Good point.
Martha: The war tested it. The Civil War tested it.
KW: Yeah, that point has been made, so that's another way of looking at this grouping of nations, but probably the weightier evidence certainly, certainly the greater fulfillment, is that of the leader of the whole Western world, and all the tribes of Israel that are under the leadership of Ephraim, just as anciently all the northern tribes were under the leadership of Ephraim.
GA: Uh-huh.
KW: But--any other questions or comments from any folks? Any additions any want to make. I hear a dog bark. I didn't understand his question, though.
Dog: Woof.
Martha: Is there anyplace, someone said that sort of not really an offshoot but a Sabbath-keeper--someone said that there's a prophecy that in the latter days as to which one was to fall first, like Ephraim and Manasseh. Is there anything anybody knows about that as far as what they had? They seem to think that one of these entities, the one, either Ephraim or Manasseh, they were saying the British Commonwealth, but I don't know who they interpreted the British Commonwealth to be, would stand last and that this country would be hit first as far as going into the tribulation.
KW: Any comments, Clyde, on that?
Martha: --had been turned around, I don't know. Is there any place in there that says Ephraim or Manasseh would fall first?
GA: Well, if you take Hosea, and there's an awful lot in there in the book of Hosea, and it is addressed to Ephraim: “Gray hairs are upon his head and he knows it not,” which is kind of like you got a society that just got old and fat and gray and complacent and self-satisfied and self-seeking, self-indulgent, whatever you want to say, and we're kind of going on our laurels. Sure, we've got mighty military muscle. But we're vulnerable in ways, and we're the biggest target too. We're a greater target than Britain.
KW: And certainly God's going to bring his judgment upon the whole world, and that judgment is also going to be brought upon the United States, and to what level is much going to be up to us, you know, how we turn our hearts toward God, and it's like Sodom and Gomorrah, are there going to be enough people that in this nation that are God fearers that God would decide to spare us from other calamity or not?
That's a decision that I think is still to be made, and God does give us freedom of choice. But judgment is surely going to come, and it's coming.
GA: Uh-huh.
CB: My thought, Ken, is I think we're going to take our hits here in America, Great Britain, and as you say in just about every nation, but it's interesting in Zechariah where you see where it says God brings all nations against Judah. The word there is the goy, in other words the gentile. It doesn't mean that all of the Israelite nations are going to come against Judah. All the Israelite nations are going to stand with Judah. It's the goy or the gentile nations that come against them.
So when we come down to this last tremendous battle, it's going to be who's going to stand on the side of the Muslims and who's going to stand on the side of Israel, and I think just as Joseph was instrumental in helping all of the brothers down in Egypt, I think we're going to see that the United States is going to be the power the others will join to help but I think we're going to take our hits. But I think the times of the gentiles will be cut short, as Christ said, lest no flesh be saved alive.
And we'll be delivered right along with Israel, geographically Israel over there.
And so I think probably if our act is not gotten together then we may suffer some of the tribulation described there in Revelation 18. Whatever parts of the Babylon system is still with us we'll suffer from that.
But I think our saving grace is that in the end God's promises will be fulfilled; he will bring all of the two sticks together, Judah and the house of Israel, and I think that's what we're seeing today, that we're being brought together by the circumstances and the situations going on in the world.
KW: There is a very close alignment between Israel and the United States. And even where we've opposed Israel, that is the Jewish nation, in times past, because of the terrorism and everything that's been brought against it and because of the disposition of our president, we're much more supportive now of Israel and the hard line that it's taking. And so it's pretty well the U.S. and Israel together.
Even though we try to be the objective broker on things, nobody doubts for a minute that we're going to stand behind Israel when push comes to shove, and that's the reason they're not overrun right now, I would suggest.
And now in the future things could change for sure, but right now both of the two most important nations I think on the face of the earth, as far as the outcome, future wars, is the United States and its allies and that Jewish state.
Dixon, did you have any comments?
Dixon Cartwright: I find it all fascinating. I think--one question I had was--did you say one time that you planned to have Steve on the Virtual Church and maybe he would play devil's advocate as far as the other way around on Ephraim and Manasseh? I just wondered if that's something that's coming up in the future.
KW: It's whether it'll be on the Virtual Church or done in a conference setting, a seminar setting, since there is so much detailed material. As you can see on our program, it's pretty well hard to get into a lot of details, but--
DC: And there is the larger question of, and you haven't even treated this today, of course, you've made the assumption that England and America are Joseph. And there's a basic--that's an assumption, and there's some basic questions that maybe in a larger conference could be dealt with there too.
KW: If England and America are not Joseph, then who are?
DC: Right.
KW: And among the nations you're going to have to find somebody dominant or you're going to go looking at a bunch of obscure nations and trying to make some sort of case for them.
I think it's interesting here that we have no problem identifying the nation of Ishmael. In fact, the whole Arab community has kept that identity to themselves, and they number a couple of hundred million of Ishmaelites, and somehow these Arab nomads have survived as a nation with their identity, and we're saying that Israel, which is much more blessed by God and has all these greater promises to inherit made to Abraham, the father of the faithful, that it is somehow inconsequential, disappeared, or we don't know who the heck they are.
Now, as Gary mentioned, the identify of Joseph is not widely known, but that doesn't mean God doesn't know--
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