The Sons of Jacob
Each issue of Pilgrims Promise will discuss the prophetic meaning of
one of the episodes in the Bible. This issue examines the sons of Jacob.
When the time came for Jacob to marry, Isaac, his father, sent him to Ins kinsmen. He wanted Jacob to choose a wife from Ins own family. Jacob fell
in love with Rachel while working for her father, Laban. When Laban asked Jacob what he wanted as payment for his labor, Jacob begged for
Rachel's hand in marriage. Laban agreed if Jacob would work for him for seven years.
At the conclusion of Jacob's indenture, Laban gave his daughter to Jacob in matrimony. The bride was veiled during the ceremony and, since the
wedding occurred at night, Jacob did not get to see the face of his wife until the next morning. How surprised he must have been to see that he had
married Leah instead of her younger sister, and his love, Rachel. The reason Laban had given Jacob Leah instead of Rachel was that Rachel was
prettier. Laban knew that Rachel could attract other suitors. All of them would give him a valuable dowry for Rachel, while few would give any for
Leah. Marrying Leah to Jacob was simply good business.
In ancient times a man's word was his bond. Jacob had made a sacred covenant with God for Leah and sealed it in physical union. Deception was not
a sufficient reason to break his covenant. His word obligated him to keep Leah as his wife. He never thought of leaving her. However, the law
allowed him to take other wives. He asked Laban a second time to let him have Rachel for his wife. Laban agreed to give her to him if Jacob served
him another seven years. A week later, after receiving Jacob's promise to serve Laban seven more years, making fourteen years of total service in all,
Laban gave Jacob Rachel.
Jacob preferred Rachel. This made Leah jealous. God consoled Leah by giving her children. Rachel remained barren. Meanwhile, Jacob fathered ten
boys and one daughter. Eventually, Rachel conceived. She named her son Joseph, saying, "The Lord shall add to me another son" (Gen 30:24). Later,
Rachel bore a twelfth son to Jacob, but she died in childbirth. Jacob named their last son Benjamin. Of Ins twelve sons, only two came from his
chosen wife, Rachel. The other ten, as well as his only daughter, came from others.
Moses revealed that the sons of Jacob typify the nations of the world He said, "When the most high divided to the nations their inheritance, when he
separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel" (Deut 32:8). The nations, whose
bounds Apostle Paul said God had appointed before the world was (Acts 17:26), were arranged into groups of twelve. In each dispensation twelve
nations compete in the struggle to produce the kingdom of God. Just as two of Jacob's sons came from Ins chosen wife, two of those nations come
from the bride of Christ. Jacob's ten other sons represent nations not produced by the communion between God and his church.
Both Daniel and John predicted that ten nations would rise after Rome and inherit its dominion. The Reformers identified those ten kingdoms to be
the kingdom of the Vandals and Alans in Spain and Africa, the kingdom of the Suevians in Spain, the kingdom of the Visigoths, the kingdom of the
Alans in Gallia, the kingdom of the Burgundians, the kingdom of the Franks, the kingdom of the Britains, the kingdom of the Huns, the kingdom of
the Lombards, and the kingdom of Ravenna. Those ten nations inherited the dominion of not only Rome, but of Babylon. God told Daniel that
Babylon headed the captivity of the Hebrews; that Persia would replace Babylon, Greece succeed Persia, Rome follow Greece, and, finally, the ten
kingdoms supplant Rome. Babylon was originally founded by Nimrod. Nimrod's kingdom extended from the straits of Gibraltar in Spain to the Indus
River in India. It was divided into ten realms. The ten nations emerging from the Roman empire were the reappearance of Nimrod's ten-nationed
realm.
Nimrod was not the first world ruler to govern a ten-nation dominion. Cain, who built the first city on earth, called Enoch, extended its domain until
it ruled the world. From it flowed war, greed, perversion, immorality, and oppression. It was divided into ten realms. Gods judgment in the days of
Noah destroyed that kingdom, but its memory lived among the survivors on the Ark. One of them, Ham's wife, taught its principles to her son, Cush,
whom the Greeks remembered as Hermes, meaning "Ham's son." Cush tried to reestablish that ten-realmed nation by building the tower of Babel.
After its divine destruction, Nimrod, Cush's son, who had help his father build the tower, conquered the scattering people and created another world
empire. It was divided into ten realms to honor Cain, the founder of world dominion. Nimrod's kingdom divided upon his sudden death. He was
executed for his crimes in Egypt under the counsel of Sherri, Noahs son.
Today, some are making efforts to join all the nations on earth into a single global government. The Club of Rome and the World Constitution and
Parliamentary Association, both globalist organizations, have proposed a world government with ten divisions. The World Constitution and
Parliamentary Association have even drafted its constitution. The effort Cam began, to govern the world with a ten-realmed empire, has continued in
every age and exists today. Like the first ten sons of Jacob, it did not come from God's bride, the church.
The two sons that Jacob had by Rachel-Joseph and Benjamin-represent the two nations that issued from the chosen wife. Just as Jacob favored both
Joseph and Benjamin, God favors his two nations. Moses said, "The Lords portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance" (Deut 32:9). He
also called Israel "the apple of his eye" (Deut 32:10). God favored the Hebrews overall other nations, delivering them from Egyptian bondage, giving
them the promised land of Canaan, and establishing them in it under David and Solomon as a powerful nation. Upon Solomon's death, they divided
into two nations. Two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, supported the son of Solomon as king and inherited Jerusalem. The other ten tribes rebelled and
followed Jeroboam, the man God selected for this position. He was a descendant of Joseph, of the tribe of Ephraim. This meant that God's chosen
people, like Jacob's favored sons, eventually divided into the two Hebrew states: Benjamin in the southern kingdom, Judah, and Joseph in the
northern kingdom, Israel. Like the worldly kingdoms, the ten tribes in the northern nation left the true worship of God. God cast them from the
promised land and sowed them among the Gentiles. The two tribes composing the southern kingdom retained Gods favor until Christ appeared
among them.
The ten tribes exiled by Assyria eventually migrated to Northwestern Europe. There they heard the gospel and received the church. Just like Jacob's
only daughter, Diana, came from the same women producing Jacob's ten sons and was their kin, the church is kin to the dispersed ten tribes, not the
two tribes now called Jews. The Jews as a body have always rejected the gospel and refused to enter the church. Recently, these ten tribes, along with
their associating Gentiles, have befriended the Jews and supported them in their latter-day effort to re-create a home in the land originally given their
father, Abraham. Their union is opposed by globalists trying to establish a ten-realmed empire. They despise both Christians and Jews, trying to
overthrow their religion and influence. Just as the sons of Israel prevailed over the nations of the earth, obtaining dominance in their promised land
under king David, today the descendants of Jacob, both those of Judah and Ephraim, will prevail. They will inherit a promised kingdom on this earth
where the northern and southern nations will join under the reign of the son of David, their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Since God wants all
nations to witness his accomplishment, He has allowed the ten-realmed globalist movement to appear today. It will surrender to the kingdom of God
when it appears and its survivors become a part of it. John prophesied, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of
his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever" (Rev 11: 15). The union of the two nations of Israel marks the conversion of the ten worldly nations
to Christ. When Jesus returns, all nations will bow to him. All will be sons and daughters of God.