Welcome to Watchman on the Wall, a daily outreach of Southwest Radio Ministries and SWRC.com. God is still on the throne and prayer changes things. Dr. Petrovich is back today sharing the evidence proving Israel's Egyptian sojourn. Our first Prophecy in the News live event is coming to the Seattle area, Friday and Saturday, March 14th and 15th. Two full days of nationally known speakers that will be unveiling the coming cosmic conflict, the new America, and the Jewish roots of Christianity. Speakers include Eric Barger, Micah Van Hus, Greg Patton, Mac Dominick, and Larry Stamm. Registration is now open, so make sure that you reserve your spot today. visit SWRC.com and click on Events, or simply call 1-800-652-1144. Prophecy in the News Live, coming to Bellevue, Washington, March 14th and 15th. Last October in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, author and professor of biblical history Dr. Douglas Petrovich revealed the evidence proving Israel's Egyptian sojourn. Today, we're going to listen in on this important presentation. Well, it's great to be with you and it's great to share one of my favorite topics this evening. I've taught over 50 different courses in my career so far. Many of them more than once. And only once have I taught a course where it takes all of the... well, it takes the topic of what I'm going to be talking about to you tonight and it puts it into an entire course. And it was 24 hours long. That's how long I taught on evidence for Israelites in Egypt. Did you ever even know anyone could teach for 24 hours on that topic? How many of you know How many books have been written and published on the topic of evidence for Israelites in Egypt before the Exodus? Does anybody know how many books have been published? One. Guess who published it? So, if I mess up tonight, folks, I need to just stop teaching. But this is a really thrilling topic. Now, Matt was suggesting some things related to this topic and posing some questions such as, you know, what would be the value of this compared to other things, right? I mean, how can you get more fun and exciting than prophecy? But what I get to do is reverse prophecy. And it's a lot easier. You know why? Because you don't get the past as wrong as you get the future. Because you can make a lot of mistakes with your ideas about the future. And hard work can keep you from a lot of mistakes with the past. But why is this so important? It goes back to this. I did my final two degrees at a secular university, Canada's flagship university. Anyone know what that is? What's Canada's flagship university? No? I didn't hear it yet. The University of Toronto. My last two degrees there, I did an MA, it was my third master's degree, and I did my PhD there. I'm officially educated beyond my intelligence. So things are still seeping out of ears. But I took enough courses there under secular professors who hated the historicity of the Bible that I heard for myself in classrooms what their bad opinion was. And they were infusing that right into students, especially when I was in what we call cross-listed classes, where you have undergrad students working on their bachelor's degree, right? And boy, my blood boiled. But I couldn't say a thing. You know why? I was a student. Well, guess what? Tonight I have a microphone. I can say whatever I want within bounds. The kids, our kids, and I'm in that same boat, I now have three through their bachelor's degree, and I have one working on a master's degree, who've gone to universities and have been infused with things such like this, and I know what they get whenever the Bible's brought up in a secular institution, and even, dare say, and this is true, in some Christian institutions, the doubt on the historicity of the Bible. And that's a bad thing, that really bothers me a lot. But what they're doing is they're trying to take our kids, and I can see a few gray hairs here, not many, but I see a few, and our grandkids, and they're corrupting them with views and opinions of the Bible that try to demonstrate how factually impossible it is and historically invalid it is. And therefore, and this is a great point, by the way, if you can prove it, if you can prove that the historicity of the Bible doesn't exist, Then, the next question is, if I can't trust the history in the Bible, can I trust the faith message in the Bible? That's a valid question. That's a very valid question. So what do they do? They try to coerce and convince people that the evidence shows that it's not true and accurate, historically, and then the kids look around and they say, well, you know, How much can I trust my Bible that I grew up with in Sunday school? I never had any Sunday school teachers who knew about all these things that these professors know about. The professors must be right, right? They have their degree, they have their credentials, they have the classroom, et cetera. That doesn't make you right. Just because you have the classroom or the pulpit doesn't make you right. If what you're saying is true, it makes it right. So there's a very important reason why this is vital, because it's what's being used by the secular, especially university professors, to persuade our kids and grandkids that you cannot trust God's word. That's why we are here. It's that ministry to which God has called me to demonstrate the power of God in human history on a timeline with events that actually took place as described. Are you with me? You're getting me really revved up here. All right, and we need to go on because at 5.15 I need to be done or I don't get dinner. So if I start getting close to that moment, flash some cards or do something. All right, so all of this is based on this book that I published in 2021, Origins of the Hebrews, New Evidence of Israelites in Egypt from Joseph to the Exodus. According to Exodus 12, 40 and 41, the Israelites were there 430 years to the very day. And if you study chronology well enough, well, you have to study a lot of things well enough, but included in that is chronology, you will know that the Exodus actually happened in 1446 BC, And if you go back 430 years before that, it means in 1876 BC, Jacob moved his family into Egypt. That fits the Bible, that fits every passage in the Bible, no matter what you may have been taught or told, it fits all of them, okay? And I can prove, I can disprove what they've proven to you if you've been persuaded differently, okay? If you give me enough time, I can do it. Not tonight, but I could do it. So this is the source. And this is available to you tonight. I'm pretty sure they had a number of copies here. So if you're interested, you can always pick up one. So let's start with the chronology and the relevant connections just to get us going and warmed up and get oriented to all of this. So we know that the promise line starts with Abram, who became Abraham, and it goes through specific people, right? So, for example, his firstborn son, Ishmael, he was not part of the promise, was he? So I'm X-ing him out because he's not part of that line. Isaac was the son of promise through Sarah, right? And then after Isaac is Jacob, not Esau. So Esau is X'd out because he's not part of that promised line. And of course, Jacob is renamed Israel. And by the way, there's a lot of renaming that goes on, you see already, right? And this isn't a lot of it, this is just part of it. Sarai becomes Sarah, right? So this happens all the time. And in my research, I found that when I identified Joseph, I realized, wow, this is crazy. People are never gonna believe me, but Joseph's got five names in Egyptian. And that's not even counting the one that's in the Bible. that he was given. That's just the way it is, okay? I didn't plan it that way. I didn't create anything to confuse people. Follow the trail, right? Not the money. Follow the evidence trail, and it'll get you where you need to go. And he has five names. So Jacob and all of his descendants. So from Jacob, it becomes an umbrella that kind of, you know, as far as it goes, that's who's included. And yet, There is going to be someone who gets the birthright. The birthright was the most important blessing obtained by a son, right? You only have one birthright per family, per father. And the one who gets Jacob's birthright is who? Who gets it? Who gets Jacob's birthright? Ooh, this is fun. I'm really gonna make you sweat. I haven't heard the right answer yet. Here he is, right there, Ephraim. Ephraim and Manasseh become sons of Jacob. He steals them from their parents, physically and illustratively. So Ephraim receives the birthright. Yeah, that's right. Check your Bible. Don't believe me? Check your Bible. Okay, so there's our context. Now, our focus for tonight is gonna be on, okay, so Joseph, you know, this is one of those five names in Egyptian that he has, Sobek Emchat. And he has numerous children. The oldest two are Manasseh the firstborn and then Ephraim, right? And so those are the ones that we're gonna look at with as much time as we have today. So with our greater chart of Israelite chronology, the two moments that are most important to us are the ones I mentioned already. 1876 is the year that Jacob moves his family to Egypt for good. And then 430 years later, Moses helps them out of Egypt. All right, and for our purposes, I wanna expose you to a little bit of this to get you going to see what's happening in the right time period in Egypt. So it's a chronology of important events, and I'm just giving you several, not a lot. In 1885 BC, that's when Joseph has his dream. In 1878, that's when, and this is very important, two things happen. There's a transition in Egypt, and context-wise I needed to say this. Once we have down pat the right year in Israelite history, when Jacob moved his family into Egypt as 1876, we need to also get Egyptian chronology right. And we need to synchronize them. Perfectly. You don't do those steps. You're, you know, you're a fish up against, you know, going upstream. And there are people out there, and I'm going to mention one name, and I'm going to calm my heart rate, slow my heart rate as I do it. There are people out there like David Roll, who want to create something out of nothing. Okay? They don't do the hard work. both educationally, by the way, that part of it, and then secondarily with the actual material, the evidence, everything related to ancient history. So you've got to get that right. And so if you end up synchronizing the two perfectly, what you're going to find is Sosostris II, one of the kings of Egypt in the 12th dynasty, he dies in 1878. And probably suddenly, and his son comes on to the throne. I don't think we know of any co-regency between the two where they rule together. And so, Sosostris III all of a sudden gets on the throne in 1878. And in that same year, if you match it with biblical history, we have the shift from the seven years of abundance Remember, because of the famine? And then the seven years of the gross famine, yeah. So that transition moment, that year, is the same year that there's a change on the throne. And that's convenient. And I'm sure my critics say, well, you probably just created it that way, right? No, I didn't create it that way. That's just how it landed. But what that gives us is Sesostris II is the what pharaoh? Abundance pharaoh. And Sesostris III is the? Famine, feral, good. See, you're gonna be Egyptologists, all of you. So this year we already know, 1859, that's when Jacob dies because the Bible says he dies 17 years after going into Egypt. True? Check, you know, you can fact check me. I can work with that. You can tell me how many times I've lied. Doesn't bother me. And in that same year, Sesostris III, he doesn't die, but he brings onto the throne his son as a co-regent. And you know what's great about that? You guess, especially those of you with gray hair, you guess which of the two pharaohs, once his son's on the throne, which of the two pharaohs probably is doing the day-to-day muck work, making all the decisions and going to all the places? The older or the younger? Younger. Come on, it's semi-retirement. It's the golden years. Give it to your son. You enjoy it. And that's what happened. And you know what, folks? I'm not categorically saying this is true, but it's very possible that the reason he makes that decision... Remember, he's the famine pharaoh, isn't he? He knows Joseph. He knows Jacob. If Jacob dies in 1859, it's possible that Sosostris III looks in the mirror and says, mirror, mirror on the wall, oh boy, I can't believe how old I am, right? And it's time to turn it over to Junior. So that's very plausible. I don't know for sure which one happened first, but that would make sense to me if it did work out that way. 1842, that's the year of the oldest attested letter, alphabetic letter in world history. And as Matthew alluded to, the first book I published, which it's only available through the Israeli publisher in Jerusalem. You can still buy copies today, as far as I know. People have asked me lately and I send them to them. But that book published in 2016 is the only book ever written to claim to identify the Semitic language behind the world's oldest alphabet. And in it, I demonstrate that it's Hebrew. Guess how many friends I made in the academic community? Not many, perfect, not many. I made a lot of enemies. I had my own professors who were part of my PhD program on my dissertation committee who thrashed me publicly up and down for publishing that book. That's what happened. Wait a minute, what did Jesus say? Yeah, woe to you if all men Speak well of you, good. We're gonna have to have some Sunday school on Sunday to get those down pat. Yeah, woe to you if all men speak well of you. You know what that shows me? That shows me I'm right where I need to be. The more enemies I have, not that I make them my enemies, but you know what I mean. The more Jesus's words are being fulfilled. So let the enemies come. So in that book, I demonstrate that the oldest inscription with an alphabetic letter dates to the reign of Amenhotep III, the guy who comes on the throne when his father gives him the royal scepter, Sesostris III gives him the royal scepter, and Amenhotep III, it's in his reign that we see that first alphabetical letter. Well, that makes perfect sense because what happened in 1859? As Jacob is about to die, Joseph visits him, and whom does he bring with him? Yeah, 7.30 a.m. for Sunday school. Who does he bring with him? Who does Joseph bring with him to visit Dad, who's about to die? His sons. Which ones? All of them? Only Ephraim and Manasseh. Only those two. Joseph only brings Ephraim and Manasseh. And in that conversation, you know what Jacob does? He steals them away from their father. Why? He's about to die. He's brought his family to live in a foreign culture. They don't know the culture. They don't know the religion. They don't know the language. They don't know how to do commerce there. They don't know architecture and on and on and on. But when Joseph's two sons come strolling in the room, however well Jacob can see them, of course, when they stroll in the room, he sees them and he thinks right away, aha, now I know how my sons are going to survive here in this foreign place. Their nephews are going to be the conduit to bring it all about. They are what God used to bring about the origin of the alphabet. And in my second book, Origins, the one that's here, I try to prove that Ephraim and Manasseh are the originators of the alphabet. Which is pretty awesome. Can you believe that? And listen, folks, you gotta trust me here, and you can ask Clayton, I suppose, if you want, but I'm not a person who goes out on an island or on a limb, whimsically. That's not how I work. It has to be proven up and down and backwards and forwards for me to buy in, okay? So I'm not just throwing something out there, throwing it at the wall and hoping it sticks, no. Don't even think that. All right, so Sosostris II, abundance pharaoh. Sosostris II, abundance pharaoh, good. And Sosostris III, famine pharaoh. And Amenhotep III is the pharaoh whose rule began in the year of Jacob's death. All right, so those are the three pharaohs we're dealing with today. I also want, in case we're gonna talk about this, to give you some important information about the site where they lived. The Bible uses a term called Ramesses. You can ask me about this in a Q&A time or on your own or whatever. I don't have time to go through it here right now, but that term is what's called an anachronism. The site where Jacob moved his family wasn't actually called Ramesses at the time. It went by a different name. And that name was Avaris. We know this to be true now. So at the site of Avaris, there are original, I guess you could say, or earliest occupational levels of the Asiatics who came to live there. So the people who came there who were foreigners, they're called Asiatics by the scholars. In this case, they're the Hebrews. And the first phase, the first phase of their occupational level is this one, right? The first Asiatic level at Avaris. And Jacob is alive then. And it's D2, lowercase d slash 2. And then D1 is the second occupational phase. It's when the Asiatics are there after. And I think there's enough reason to be certain that it's at Jacob's death or very, very soon after that we have a transition culturally at the site. It all of a sudden out of nowhere goes from this Asiatic, Levantine, Levantine means the Levant, right? Lebanon is part of the Levant. This Levantine community down in Egypt all of a sudden transformed into something that looks Egyptian. And you're wondering, why does this all look Egyptian? The buildings, the architectural design goes from Asiatic to Egyptian. They use Egyptian tools, they use Egyptian measurements for how far things are apart from one another. The whole kit and caboodle changes. It makes perfect sense if Ephraim and Manasseh move there, doesn't it? So, first Asiatic phase, D1. Second Asiatic phase, D2. Jacob with the first phase, Ephraim and Manasseh with the second phase. Relevant biblical passages. So Joseph settled his father and his brothers, and this is Genesis 47, 11, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Ramesses, but remember that it's the earlier Avaris. It doesn't become Ramses until after 1290 BC, much later, as Pharaoh had ordered. Now, Israel lived in the land of Egypt in Goshen, and they acquired property in it and were fruitful and became very numerous. Doesn't that sound like the hand of God right there? They were getting, in a good sense, fat. So Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years, and there's our marker for what I told you about, from 1876 to 1859, he dies in 1859. Now it came about after these things that Joseph was told, take note, and by the way, any translations are my own, because I teach all levels of Hebrew and Greek, so everything, I do my own translation. As my final Greek professor taught us, my beloved Dr. Robert Thomas, the danger with standing on someone else's shoulders is that you both may fall. So I'm not standing on anybody else's shoulders when I've been taught how to read and understand the Word of God in the original language. No way. I'm going to make my own mistakes if I make mistakes, but I'm not going to fall on their mistakes. No way. Take note, your father is sick. So he took his two sons, Manasseh, the first born, and Ephraim, the second born, with him. Aha. When it was told to Jacob, look, your son Joseph has come to you, Israel, that is Jacob, collected his strength and sat up in the bed. Genesis 48, then Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. And he said to me, you see, I will make you fruitful and numerous and I will make you a company of peoples and will give this land to your descendants after you for an everlasting possession. That's Canaan, right? The land of promise, not here in Egypt. Now, your two sons, and here it is folks, and I put it in blue so it would catch your attention. You can still see blue, right? Okay, I can too, so we're thankful, praise the Lord. Your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt, before I came to you in Egypt, right before Jacob moved there, because Joseph was already there, they are mine. I used to think this is like a plaque on a wall. This will only come into play once the Israelites move into the land of Canaan. No, no, no, no, no. When I did all this research and stumbled into all this amazing evidence, I realized, oh my goodness, I misunderstood this all the way along. When it says they are mine, it means they're mine. They're not yours anymore. And here's what it comes to. Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine as Reuben and Simeon are. They're on the same level as all of the other sons of Jacob, right? So therefore, Ephraim can receive the birthright because he's one of the sons. And by the way, I don't know how well you can understand this culturally, the taking of those children, but these are Eastern people. I look like a Westerner, I talk like a Westerner, I probably sing like a Westerner, but I'm an Easterner inside. I'm a Serbian. I know Eastern thought. I lived in Russia for 10 years. I know how Easterners think. And it makes perfect sense to me that the patriarch of the family would do this. And nobody would squabble, nobody would complain, nobody would ask any questions. It would happen, so let it be written, so let it be done. That's the East. I get it. But your offspring that have been born after them will be yours, Joseph. You get to keep your other children, that's what he said. They will be called by the names of their brothers in their inheritance." So, do you see what's going on here? This is the real deal. This is theft. This is elderly theft. One character who has fascinated readers of the Bible greatly is Nimrod, whose brief biography is hidden away in Genesis chapter 10. Since Moses wrote about Nimrod before his death in 1406 BC, the options are limited for the identity of this ancient Near Eastern empire builder. In his latest book, Nimrod the Empire Builder, Architect of Shock and Awe, Dr. Douglas Petrovich reveals the true identity of this tyrant. Historical evidence from archaeology, ancient texts, and ancient drawings points to only one man who fits the description of biblical Nimrod. In this book, Dr. Petrovich attempts to weed out the wrongly identified candidates and prove to the reader just who in history can be equated confidently with Nimrod the Empire Builder. Order your copy of Nimrod the Empire Builder Architect of Shock and Awe when you call 1-800-652-1144. That's 1-800-652-1144. You can also order this book on our website. SWRC.com. Nimrod the Empire Builder, by Dr. Douglas Petrovich, 1-800-652-1144. Tomorrow, author J.B. Hickson will be here to help us keep the main thing in focus when it comes to Bible prophecy. Be sure to tune in by downloading our free SWRC mobile app, or by subscribing to our daily Watchman on the Wall podcast. Watchman on the Wall is a production of Southwest Radio Ministries and we're supported by faithful friends like you. Please visit our website SWRC.com.