Genesis 40 Series, Part 6, Verses 2-4

Hello, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #6 of Genesis 40, and we will read Genesis 40:2-4:

And Pharaoh was wroth against two of his officers, against the chief of the butlers, and against the chief of the bakers. And he put them in ward in the house of the captain of the guard, into the prison, the place where Joseph was bound. And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he served them: and they continued a season in ward.

In our last study I was explaining how it is possible that Joseph, a type of Christ, could have been already in the prison when the butler and baker were thrown into the prison because Pharaoh was wroth with them. I mentioned that prison is a figure of being under the wrath of God, or a figure of being in the condition of “hell” or the grave. Let me prove that by reading Revelation 20:1-3:

And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

The angel who came down is actually Christ because the Greek word translated as “angel” can be properly translated as “messenger,” and Christ is the Messenger of the Covenant. Christ came down from heaven in this figure, and this is when He went to the cross and Satan was “bound.” According to the biblical language Satan was cast into the bottomless pit, which means that he was in the condition of hell, which is not an actual place. We know that Satan continued to go about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, but from this biblical perspective he was “bound” with chains and cast into the bottomless pit. In 2Peter 2 we see confirmation of what the “bottomless pit” is a figure of in 2Peter 2:4:

For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

Here we see the “chains,” and Christ, the Messenger from heaven, bound Satan and cast him into the bottomless pit. And that is the same as sparing not the angels that sinned, but casting them down to hell into chains of darkness. Keep in mind that 2Peter 2 is writing of things in the past tense in the first century A. D., and it is looking at the cross in 33 A. D. regarding what happened to Satan spiritually. He was bound about with spiritual chains to be reserved unto the official Judgment Day that would begin in 2011. But now we are living right now on this earth in the official day of the wrath of God that the Bible has longed warned would happen. Mankind was to seek JEHOVAH before that day would come, but now that day has come, and there is no longer time to seek JEHOVAH unto salvation because God has accomplished the salvation of all His saints.

We were told that Satan would be loosed after a little season in Revelation 20:3, and then it says in Revelation 20:7:

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

Where did “prison” come into view? After all, he had been thrown into the bottomless pit, which we are told is “hell.” So you see, hell and bottomless pit and prison are synonymous. The Greek word translated as “bottomless pit” is “ab'-us-sos,” and that is also translated as “the deep.” In Romans 10 we find this same Greek word “ab'-us-sos,” which reveals that it identifies with “death.” It says in Romans 10:6-7:

But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep?...

So the words “bottomless pit” was translated here as “the deep.” We could read this, “Who shall descend into the bottomless pit”” Then it goes on to say in Romans 10:7:

… (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)

Do you see the link between “the deep,” or the “bottomless pit,” and “death?” And that is because “hell” is the grave. The word “sheh-ole'” is the Hebrew word for “hell” or for “death,” and it is translated equally about 31 times as “hell” or as “grave,” and the grave is where we put the dead. So to “go to hell” is to go to the grave, or to go into death. That is what Romans 10 is teaching us. 

So Satan’s “binding” was a figurative period of a thousand years, which is not to be taken literally. The churches that take this as a literal period of time are in error. In the Bible the number “ten” or multiples of “ten” points to completeness, as we see in the figures of 10 virgins, 10 coins, 100 sheep, 1,000 hills, or the 10,000 saints that come with Christ. They maintain the same spiritual meanings regardless of the multiples. So 10 virgins points to the completeness of professed Christians in the churches during the church age; there were five wise virgins and five foolish virgins, in Matthew 25. So the thousand years that Satan was bound has to do with the completeness of the period of time that Satan would be bound. It was not meant to be a literal 1,000 years. If he was bound in 33 A. D., he would have been loosed in 1033 A.D., but that was not the case. God is indicating that Satan will be bound for the completeness of His plan for the binding, and it just so happens that Satan was bound over the course of the entire church age. The church age began on Pentecost day in 33 A. D., and then the church age ended on the day before Pentecost in 1988, so the complete duration was 1,955 years, and that was the duration of Satan’s binding. 

We know that Satan was loosed in 1988 and came against the camp of the saints, which you can read about if you continue reading Revelation 20. He was loosed out of his prison, and we read of “Gog and Magog” coming against the camp of the saints, and they represent Satan and the gentiles (the unsaved) coming against the churches. We also read in Revelation 13:1:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

The beast comes up out of the sea, and remember that in Luke 8 the Greek word “ab'-us-sos,” which was translated as “deep” in Romans 10, is also translated as “deep” in Luke 8 where about two thousand swine went over the edge and into the sea, and they were choked in the deep, or bottomless pit. So a body of water like a lake or a sea in two of the Gospel accounts is referred to as “the deep,” and the swine died by drowning.

So in Revelation 13 we just read of the beast, and that is another name for Satan that is assigned by God in the Bible. In Revelation 20 he is called the devil, the dragon, and the serpent. The name “beast” is a name that is particularly prescribed to him at the time of the end when he comes up out of the sea or bottomless pit. It is the point of his loosing, and we find in Revelation 13 that he rises up to come against the camp of the saints, as we read in Revelation 13:7:

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

So it was the time of Satan’s loosing as the church age ended, and we read in Revelation 11:7:

And when they shall have finished their testimony…

This refers to the two witnesses, as represented by Moses and Elijah, or the law and the prophets, which is the witness of the Bible in the churches and congregations. It goes on to say in Revelation 11:7:

…the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.

And here we see a reference to the bottomless pit. He overcomes and “kills” the churches. Back in Revelation 13 when the beast arose, it said in Revelation 13:3:

And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

What was this deadly wound to one of his heads? God identifies the rule of Satan over the world by using the figure of Satan having various periods of rule, even though he ruled the world continuously from the time of the fall in the Garden of Eden to his defeat on May 21, 2011. But we read in Revelation 17:10:

And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.

That “short space” was the little season of the Great Tribulation that went from Satan’s loosing in 1988 to his defeat on May 21, 2011. The seven kings are all Satan, and five were fallen at the point of the cross. In all of Old Testament history, it was as though there were five periods during which Satan ruled. I will not get into that here, but, for example, he began his first rule by defeating Adam in the Garden of Eden until the time of the flood. With the flood event a big change took place on the earth because all the people Satan ruled over outside of ark were dead. So his second period of reign began after the flood as man repopulated the earth, and so forth. So we can say that he had five periods of rulership over the earth up until the cross.

Then after it says that five are fallen, it says, “and one is,” and there was a big change in his rule at the cross because he was “bound,” and he was cast into the bottomless pit in the condition of hell, and that was the sixth period of rule during the church age. But then the church age ended and Satan was loosed. Again, there was a major change, and that is why we see the language in Revelation 13 where it is as if God is putting words in the mouths of the people of the world: “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death…” Satan took a death blow at the cross. He was in the bottomless pit, and that identifies with hell, and the grave or death. 

And his deadly wound was healed upon his loosing. We have all seen the increase in wickedness upon the face of the earth, and it began in the churches. The first institution to fall in God’s end time judgment program was the corporate church. Satan entered into the churches and the churches “went wild.” Doctrinally, they went “off the rail,” and they began to teach every false gospel and doctrine under the sun, like falling over backwards, holy laughter, speaking in tongues, and so many things that are not biblically sound. We wonder how hundreds of millions of people could go after these things, and the answer is that God gave them up, and Satan took his seat, ruling over the congregations after he was loosed. God was using him to bring judgment on the churches to destroy the institution of the churches in all the world. Where did all this power come from? Satan had been constrained by spiritual chains as God had been holding him back to a large degree. 

But we can see now that God had been holding him back. Even among the nations, God’s Spirit was restraining

sin in the hearts of unsaved wicked men. If we could go back a couple hundred years, things were different. Yes, there were evil outbreaks, like wars and terrible things that evil individuals would do to their fellow man. But in general, if you go back a few hundred years, you could go into a village of quaint hamlets, and the people had basic morality. There was not just politeness and respect, but they obeyed the laws of God written upon their hearts as the Spirit directed them to do so.

You know, it used to be the big cities that were more evil, but now you cannot tell much difference Yes, there are still some differences, but now we find there is a “mindset” of the kingdom of darkness everywhere because the electronic medium has spread evil across the face of the earth, and this is evidence of the tremendous increase in power that Satan had compared to the time he was being restrained. 

But getting back to what we are looking at in Genesis 40, the prison is a figure of the condition of hell, or death, which the unsaved are in, and which Christ experienced at the foundation of the world. He experienced death. He experienced sin by bearing the sins of His people. Remember in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve sinned? Let us turn there because it is a very telling statement that God makes in Genesis 3:22:

And JEHOVAH God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil…

It happened when he ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. God had warned him: “…for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Dying, they would die. And he did die in his soul existence. Mankind died spiritually. It tells us in Ezekiel 18:4 tell us, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” He came to know death. He was curious about evil. What was the mysterious tree of good and evil? God had set a law regarding that tree. In the day they ate of it, they would die. Man’s curiosity for evil has been ever-present since then. “We have to know! “What is this thing I am not supposed to look at, or to hear, and what are the words that I am not supposed to speak? What is this line I am not supposed to cross?” Curiosity kills the cat, and curiosity kills man. Man is the ”curious George.” Man has to know what is that new evil? What is the latest and desperately wicked thing? That is the nature of the sinner. His bent is toward sin – he loves sin.

What is our entertainment industry but service to the sinner? “You want to see, hear, and experience sin? We will deliver. We will give you the story. We will sing the song. We will tell you tales of murder, lust, adultery, and of lying and stealing, and every evil you are not supposed to do.” And man is curious about it, and he wants to know about it. 

But we knows what comes after you “eat the forbidden fruit.” Misery comes. Destruction comes. Ruin comes. Death comes. Every evil imaginable will come. 

God has saved certain ones, and He is pulling us out of these sinful things of the world, and He is directing us to that which is good. Why do men not have curiosity toward good? Why is man not desirous of the good? Why is it always the evil? Again, it is because he is crooked. He is perverse in his sin. It is only through salvation that God gives us a new heart and spirit, and an ongoing desire to do the will of God.

And we are oddballs to the world that is immersed in iniquity and sin and delighting in evil day and night. We are going another way, and we want to read the Bible on Friday nights instead of partying. Thank God that He has made us “oddballs,” and He has given us a new desire and bent. Well, the term “bent” does not really apply because God has corrected us inwardly in our souls, although we still have the flesh that is bent toward wickedness. But by God’s grace, we can bring the body under submission, and He gives us that ability to do so.

Again, we are running out of time, but we will come back to our discussion of Genesis 40. You see, the Bible is like a portal that leads us into depths of knowledge and wisdom, and all the Bible is interconnected and related, and we can just enjoy learning of spiritual things, as we go from Genesis, to Romans, to Revelation, and so forth. We are comparing scripture with scripture – here a little, there a little. That is how God has designed a method of study wherein His people can come to truth.