After King Solomon died, Rehoboam his son reigned in his place and at that time Israel was still a unified nation. Under the leadership of Jeroboam however, who had been in exile during the reign of King Solomon, the citizens of Israel approached Rehoboam to petition him not to govern Israel as harshly as King Solomon had done. Rehoboam’s response to the citizens of Israel was that he would govern them even more harshly than his father had. This was obviously not the response the citizens of Israel were hoping for, and so the outcome of these failed negotiations is that ten tribes of the nation seceded from Israel to form their own government under Jeroboam, leaving just two tribes under Rehoboam’s rule. It seems that Rehoboam couldn’t quite grasp the fact that most of the citizens of Israel had rejected him as being their king and he travelled with his treasurer to the rebellious states to collect the taxes that were owing to the king’s treasury. The response he got was that the people killed his treasurer and Rehoboam had to flee for his life back to Jerusalem. Rehoboam was determined to subdue the rebellion however and mustered an army from the two loyal states to go to war against the rebel states. In other words, civil war was about to erupt in Israel. It was at this point that God intervened by sending His prophet to tell Rehoboam’s army to stand down because the split in the nation had taken place at God’s command. Amazingly, the army listened to the Lord’s prophet and stood down thus averting a civil war (1 Kings 12:24). And so, two new nations were born into the earth. The larger of the two nations which consisted of ten tribes of Israel kept the name of Israel, while the smaller of the two which only consisted of two of the tribes of Israel adopted the name of Judah after the dominant tribe of that nation. Nevertheless even though all of these events played out in the natural, as revealed in the earlier quoted passage of scripture, God had already decreed decades before this event what would take place, for God is the one who pre-appoints nations in the earth.
There are many other methods available to the Lord which He uses to form new nations in the earth, and we will not attempt listing all of them in this teaching. Suffice it to say that every nation that is formed in the earth is formed by the direction of God. This same principle is also applicable to empires that are formed in the earth. An empire is normally formed by one of two main methods, i.e. either a consortium of nations get together to form some sort of an alliance or one dominant nation conquers surrounding nations thus bringing them under their rule. In both instances however, the empire that is formed is formed because God has decreed that it should happen.
Michael E.B. Maher
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