Ephraim Come Home! Are You Part Of The 10 Lost Tribes Of Israel?
After King Solomon died, Israel divided into 2 kingdoms.
The 10 northern tribes rebelled against Solomon's son and became known
in the Scriptures as "the house of Israel" or as "the house of
Ephraim" which referred to the most dominant tribe in the northern
kingdom which was Ephraim.
3 tribes (Judah, Benjamin and the Levites) stayed in the south and
they became known in the Scriptures as "the house of Judah" which
referred to the most dominant tribe in the southern kingdom which was
Judah.
As we see in the following Scriptures, God promised to bring back both
Judah AND Ephraim to the land of Israel in the last days. Judah (the
Jews) started returning to Israel in 1948. However, God also promised
in Ezekiel 37 that Ephraim WOULD return and be reunited with Judah:
Ezekiel 37:15-22
15 The word of the LORD came to me: 16 "Son of man, take a stick of
wood and write on it, 'Belonging to Judah and the Israelites
associated with him.' Then take another stick of wood, and write on
it, 'Ephraim's stick, belonging to Joseph and all the house of Israel
associated with him.' 17 Join them together into one stick so that
they will become one in your hand.
18 "When your countrymen ask you, 'Won't you tell us what you mean by
this?' 19 say to them, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am
going to take the stick of Joseph-which is in Ephraim's hand-and of
the Israelite tribes associated with him, and join it to Judah's
stick, making them a single stick of wood, and they will become one in
my hand.' 20 Hold before their eyes the sticks you have written on 21
and say to them, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will take
the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather
them from all around and bring them back into their own land. 22 I
will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel.
There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be
two nations or be divided into two kingdoms.
So the promise of God is that once this happens they will never be
divided again.
Has this happened yet?
No.
So it is a prophecy that is waiting to be fulfilled.
This promise of a reunification between Judah and Ephraim is also
found in Isaiah 11:
Isaiah 11:10-13
10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the
peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his place of rest will be
glorious. 11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second
time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria,
from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from
Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea.
12 He will raise a banner for the nations
and gather the exiles of Israel;
he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
from the four quarters of the earth.
13 Ephraim's jealousy will vanish,
and Judah's enemies will be cut off;
Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah,
nor Judah hostile toward Ephraim.
So who is Ephraim today? Long before Christ came, Assyria invaded the
northern kingdom and took the ten tribes away and scattered them to
the four winds just as the Scriptures foretold.
So how can we identify them today? A good place to start is in
Genesis.
Genesis 48:17-19
17And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the
head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he held up his father's hand,
to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head.
18And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the
firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head.
19And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he
also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his
younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a
multitude of nations.
The term in v. 19, "a multitude of nations", should literally read
"the fullness of the gentiles" because that is what the Hebrew text
actually says. Even back in Genesis, God knew that Ephraim would
someday be mixed in with the gentile nations.
Today God has been revealing to His people that much of what is called
"the church" around the world is Ephraim. But Ephraim is unfamiliar
with many of God's ways:
Hosea 8:11-12
11Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be unto
him to sin.
12I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were
counted as a strange thing.
Isn't that an exact description of our day? God has written to Ephraim
the great things of His Law in the Bible, but we consider the "Old
Testament" to be a "strange thing", don't we?
But the days of restoration are coming just as the Lord promised
through Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 23:5-8
5 "The days are coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch,
a King who will reign wisely
and do what is just and right in the land.
6 In his days Judah will be saved
and Israel will live in safety.
This is the name by which he will be called:
The LORD Our Righteousness.
7 "So then, the days are coming," declares the LORD, "when people will
no longer say, 'As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the
Israelites up out of Egypt,' 8 but they will say, 'As surely as the
LORD lives, who brought the descendants of Israel up out of the land
of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.'
Then they will live in their own land."
The truth is that God is calling Ephraim from the 4 corners of the
earth to be reunited to his brother Judah, and they will have one
shepherd (Yahshua - Jesus) over them.
If this post has been tugging at your spirit, I would encourage you to
watch this YouTube video to learn more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHCRfUDCllw
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