The Legacy of Jacob - Moriel Ministries

lessed him there. So Jacob named the
place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen
God face to face, yet my life has been
preserved.”
(“No man can see God and live” (Ex.
33:20). That is why, you see, Jesus had to become
a man.)
Now the sun rose upon him just as he
crossed over Penuel, and he was limping
on his thigh. Therefore, to this day
the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew
of the hip which is on the socket of the
thigh, because he touched the socket of
Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip.
(Genesis 32:22-32)
We see how “Jacob” always has to do with
the sons of Israel, specifically the Jews.
He is blessed alone. When the dark night
of the soul happens in our life we will be left
alone. Other Christians will not be able to relate
to our trial; not even our family can help
us. It is a lonely experience. There is nobody
there but us and the Lord, and we think he is
against us. We wrestle with God: “Why are You
doing this Why did You bother to save me
Why did You choose me Why did You give
me these promises if You are not going to keep
them and destroy me” All of his scheming
would not work anymore—he was in trouble.
This angel is called “the angel of the Lord”
with a definite article in Hebrew. The Talmud
calls Him in Greek the “Metatrone”—“the angel
who dwells at the center of the throne.” It
is a “Christophany,” an Old Testament manifestation
of Jesus. He wrestles with Jesus to
the end of the night, the dark night of his soul,
and he prevails. How does he prevail By losing
the fight.
Winning by Losing
This is the only way we are going to get
God’s blessing and prevail. God’s values are
always present within us and we think we
have to pin them down and make them say,
“Uncle!” God says, “No, you have to lose. I’ll
make you say, ‘Uncle!’ and then you’ll win
the fight.”
Jacob’s femur—the thigh bone, is dislocated.
The femur is the strongest bone in
the human body. I am told that you can rest
a Volkswagen on the femur of an adult male
and it will not break.
Before I was saved I was a coke dealer. I
used to smuggle hash in Africa and dope in
South America. I used to go to parties with
rock stars. I knew how to manipulate them; I
knew how the game was played. I knew how
to make money. I used to embezzle money
with a computer. I went through a dark night
of the soul. For me it was two years and one
month. It was terrible. It was not trials, it was
not breaking, it was death of the natural man.
After that, Jacob walked with a limp. After
we have a dark night of the soul, we will walk
with a limp. Remember, the femur is the place
of greatest human strength. We walk with a
limp. What will happen when we come to the
Jabbok experience in our walk as a Christian
God will touch your place of greatest human
strength. Our personality, our intellect, our
good looks—whatever it is, that is what He
is going to hit: our place of greatest strength.
We are going to walk with a limp and we will
never be the same again.
How long will it last Until the end of
the night.
No one who is really serious about attaining
the blessings and purposes of God for their
lives will not go through this at some point.
How long the night is, how bad that breaking
will be is relative to the individual. After
it happens they will never be the same, but
after it happens, then God blesses us. After it
happens, then God uses our human abilities.
Why Because we do not rely on them anymore;
we walk with a limp. We no longer trust
our own sense, we do not trust the natural man,
we have learned the hard way what happens
when we do that. Then we get that blessing.
A New Name
Jacob prevails and he gets a new name.
What does it say in Revelation “You have a
new name” (Rev.2:17).
It is interesting that after this, when Jacob
behaved in his old nature after Peniel, Genesis
calls him “Jacob,” but when he behaves
like the new creation it calls him “Israel.” It
is the same with us. When we behave like the
old natural man or woman, God calls us by
our old name, but when we behave like the
broken man or woman who prevailed and got
the blessing—who behave as spiritual men
and women—He calls us by the new name.
I have two names, you have two names, we
all have two names. We got one when we were
born, but we got another when we were bornagain.
But we have to have that name in the
Book of Life, and we have to earn the right to
be called by it. We have to wrestle, we have
to prevail, we have to get the blessing. We are
all “Jacob.” We all have to have that breaking,
we all have to have that dark night of the soul,
but when it is over we do not regret it.
Part 2 – the lesson for israel
The Question of the Tribes
James, a bond-servant of God and of the
Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes
who are dispersed abroad: Greetings.
(James 1:1)
There may be some intended spiritual
meaning in James’ address to “the twelve
tribes,” but as a genre, epistles do not use typology
or figurative meaning without assuming
the believers understand what it means.
Epistles are to be taken literally.
We know that in the Book of Luke, Anna
was from the tribe of Asher (Lk. 2:36). Most
Christians have the wrong idea that the ten
northern tribes—all but Benjamin, Judah
and the Levites—went into captivity. That
Feature Article – Continued
is wrong; the faithful people in Israel came
south to Judah. (Faithful people will always
leave unfaithful churches before the judgment
of God comes on them.) They kept their
identities in the Second Temple period all the
way to the time of Jesus.
In the UK there is a something which dates
back to at least the last century called “Anglo-
Israelism.” My grandparents were from the
north of England, except my one grandmother
was from Glasgow, and I saw some people
who were into Anglo-Israelism in Speaker’s
Corner. They had all this British stuff in Hebrew,
one of them titled, A Covenant with
Man. They said things like, “The lion of Judah
is the lion of Scotland,” and insisted that
the Aran Islands were named after Aaron.
They had it all worked out. (When they found
out my little daughter was born in Israel and
her family was from Scotland and England,
they thought she stepped out of a flying saucer.)
This stuff has absolutely no biblical or
anthropological basis whatsoever.
The Celtic peoples, anthropologically, are
not one nation, but many: there are the Cornish,
the Scottish, the Welsh, the Irish. These
have certain things in common. But then the
other inhabitants of the British Isles are Anglo-Saxons—Germanic
people. Then come
the Normans—Vikings who came to France
and then to England. There are several strata
of people who invaded Great Britain and
were integrated into the British identity over
a period of many centuries. The British are
not one, pure stock—they never have been.
So how do people come up with something
like Anglo-Israelism There are no Semitic
features. Just go to the people with Semitic
features: Yemenites, Jews, Sephardic Jews,
Arabs, pure-blooded Bedouins—do they look
like people from England No, they do not. It
is almost as ridiculous anthropologically as it
is theologically.
The twelve tribes are the basis. In Revelation
4 we see the twenty-four elders, who
would seem to be the twelve apostles and the
twelve sons of Jacob. But there is all manner
of spiritualizing away the literal basis of the
twelve tribes.
If we were to go to the Domitian Abbey
(a Roman Catholic place) in Jerusalem, we
would see three concentric circles cut up like
a pie into twelve sections. The innermost section
contains the twelve names of the sons of
Jacob, the twelve patriarchs of Israel, one for
each tribe. The second circle, corresponding
to the twelve sons of Jacob, represents the
names of the twelve Apostles. Can you guess
what is in the outermost circle The Zodiac.
I get letters and email from people who
think I have it all figured out. Believe me, I do
not have it all figured out. I may know what
people say about things like Revelation 7—I
know the prevailing opinions, but I am not going
to teach something unless I am sure that
the Holy Spirit has shown me what it means.
“What about the 144,000” they ask. “How
will God know which tribes modern Jews be-
March 2012 • Moriel Quarterly 11