I thought and felt that it was high time to do a series on Joseph, the son of Israel who was sold into slavery by his brothers and ended up in Egypt. This will be categorized under the "Lost Tribes" index. Why Lost tribes? you may ask. Well, I hope that if you were doing an Internet search you did not stumble onto this article by itself before understanding what the rest of this site is about. Joseph has everything to do with Lost Tribes, and up until now, we've been discussing prophecies, archeology, various books of the bible, and so forth. We must understand that this came about by God's selection of certain people as well, and Joseph is as important as any of them. More on that shortly.
Lately, I've been hearing much preaching and teaching on the radio and television about Joseph, his "unfortunate" plight, and how God used him to rise to power to do God's will for Israel and become a blessing. Naturally, they use these stories to compare to the trials in our lives and how there will be a hopeful outcome. Joseph, I can assuredly say, is a "very much studied man" just as I once commented that "Genesis is a very much studied book." (Check out that link if you have not read that article yet so that you know where we are coming from.) The teachers and preachers of megaministries merely touch the tip of the iceberg when showing off Joseph's greatness and don't really know (nor care) what the posterity of Joseph became and thus becoming truly great long after his time. I want to give you the details, and as Paul Harvey would say with his whistle, "Now you know the resssssst of the story." We want you enlightened, and not ignorant. The story of Joseph affects us today in tangible ways, not merely as an uplifting object lesson and nothing more as evangelists would have us believe. God is greater than all that.
Although Joseph is already mentioned back in chapter 30 of Genesis, the stories about him do not really pick up until chapter 37. He was the eldest son of Jacob's most beloved wife Rachel (Genesis 29:18 regarding his preference of Rachel over Leah & Genesis 30:22-24), and later he was the inheritor of the birthright (of the firstborn) over his elder brother Reuben because Reuben defiled his father's bed. (Genesis 35:22 & I Chronicles 5:2).
Up to this point in time Jacob had 12 sons that later became the 12 tribes of Israel and God promised great things to him. This was passed from Jacob's father Isaac, and started with Abraham. Now, when we end the book of Genesis, they are all in Egypt and we see that Jacob gave each son an end-time prophecy and split the promises to his sons. The two most important ones went to Judah (the lineage of the Kings) and to Joseph (the birthright). Evangelists tend to gloss over the meaning of the birthright and call it a "blessing" like some little cracker-jack prize one of the sons received, but otherwise shroud the meaning in mystery. They will never tell you (that I ever heard anyway) just what this "blessing" really was that went to Jacob, and then later to his son Joseph. But the birthright blessing was everything! Like J. H. Allen said in his book that we have free for downloading on this site, the birthright was God's promise and saw things from His vantage point. The accompanied blessing was the father proclaiming it so that it was recognized from the human side. If you have not checked the Genesis link above, please do so. This will give you a bird's eye view and map as to where we are headed. I'm not so much interested in merely stating which son the birthright went to. We did loads of messages like that before. I want to get just a tad personal this time with Joseph's life and show some similarities between Joseph, the great people that would come from him, and prophecy. In other words, Joseph's life was a taste of "things to come" for the people Israel. The blessing was not just to rise to a time of greatness in his life alone to save the rest of his family from famine. (Genesis 42:1, 43:1) That's all these megaministries teach you, and then you are supposed to relate that past event alone (as if that's all there is to the story) and somehow apply it to your life to make it better. Well, that's just the start here! You will see that this story keeps paralleling the nations of the Lost Tribes today including us as individuals! When we understand that, the whole story, and indeed, the bible, makes a lot more sense! We will pick up with PART I next time in Genesis 37.