Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight, is study #6 of Genesis, chapter 14 and we are going to read Genesis 14:4-5:

Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled. And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim,

I will stop reading there. In our last study, we were discussing the 12-year figure that God says they served Chedorlaomer and the 13-year figure in which God says they rebelled. We saw that the Bible breaks down the entire history of the world from the creation to the first coming of the Messiah to “11,000” years plus a modifying number. From 11,013 BC, the creation date revealed by the Biblical timeline of history, to the year 33AD, you add 11,013 + 33 and that equals 11,046 years and then you subtract “1” because there is no “year zero” and you get 11,045 actual years from the beginning of the world to when Jesus hung on the cross.

By the way, if you go from creation to 2033AD you will get the identical modifying number. You come to 13,000 years, the fulness of that number, just as the first coming (of Christ) pointed to 11,000 years. The Bible presents “13” as a number that identifies with the end of the world. There were 13,000 years of history and then came the time of the end (in 1988). So, we have 11,013 plus 2,033 (if that latter date is correct for the end of the world), and that equals 13,046 calendar years; when we subtract “1” for no “year zero,” there are 13,045 actual years. It is identical to the pattern of the 11,046 calendar years or 11,045 actual years to the completion of the first coming of Christ. Likewise, there is an identical “modifying number” of “46” and “45” to the possible second coming of Christ in 2,033, as there is mounting Biblical evidence for the completion of the judgment.

So, it is very interesting and it is more interesting when you consider the time from 7BC, a Jubilee year, to 33AD, which is 40 calendar years and 39 actual years. We have another Jubilee Year that came after the 13,000th year of earth’s history and that was in 1994. From 1994 to 2033 is 40 inclusive years and 39 actual years. The pattern is unmistakable. And there are only 2,000 years separating the first coming from the second coming.

There are 12 years, which the Bible identifies as the period that all human history should unfold within, so it was 11,000 years to the first coming of Christ and after that was the time of the cross when Satan was bound and there was the figurative time of the binding of Satan of “1,000 years.” At the point of 12,000 years Satan was loosed. The number “12” points to fulness and it indicates that the fulness of time had been reached and then it was the time of the end of the world. That was one reason the number “120” was given in the flood account; it would be 120 years before the flood came, pointing to “10 x 12” or the completion of the fulness of time and then would come the end of the world, which was typified by the flood. It was “12,000” years and, yet, 1988 was not the 12,000th year of earth’s history, but it was the 13,000th year. Please do the math: 11,013 plus 1988 equals 13,001 and then subtract “1” because there is no “year zero” and it gives us exactly 13,000 years for the point of Satan’s loosing. So, it is 12,000 years, on the one hand, but the way God wrote the Bible it is 12,000 years and, yet, it is 13,000 years at the same time. The 12,000th year is complete and 1988 should be the beginning of the 13,000th year, but it is the 13,000th year (complete) and, really, the beginning of the 14,000th year. We have not looked at it yet, but it says in Genesis 14:5: “And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer…” So, in the 13th year we were told they rebelled, but it is the 14th year that Chedorlaomer came. And the exercise I just went through explains why: once you have completed 13,000 years, after that you are in day “one” of the 14,000th year, if you look at it in millennial terms. That is what the time after 1988 has been. It has been 13,001 years and then on May 21, 2011 it was 13,023 years; and now we are six years beyond that at 13,029 years. We are in the 14,000th year that would be completed (if time were to continue) at the 14,000th year, which is way off in the future and we will never reach it because God will end the world shortly after He works out this prolonged Day of Judgment. But we can see that the number “12,” the number “13” and the number “14” all have spiritual identification with the Biblical calendar of history that God sealed up until our time; just a few decades ago He brought this information forth as He opened the eyes of Mr. Camping to see it.

By the way, I have great respect for Mr. Camping, but the fact is that he would not have seen it no matter how faithful he was to the Bible (and he was), unless God wanted him to see it at the proper time. And it was the proper time, so the Lord opened his eyes of understanding to see these things. God gave him a studious nature and he dug in to the Bible and God blessed it for the benefit of all the people of God, so we could have the timeline of history from the beginning of the world to see these key milestones, like 1988, and reveal to us the 13,000th year and 23 years from that date, and so forth. He is showing us how these verses in Genesis 14 fit into these things. If we did not have the right understanding of the overall calendar of history, we could not see the significance of these numbers in Genesis 14.

In other words, if we were still operating based on Usher’s calendar, we could not see it. Usher’s calendar is sometimes even placed in Bibles and numerous churches adhere to it, but that calendar is way off base; it managed to lose about seven thousand years of history. It is not a pleasant thing when a creationist is dialoguing with an evolutionist and the creationist declares that the world is only six thousand years old and then the evolutionist can laugh and mock and point out the impossibility of that because they can point to some ancient civilizations that require much more time than that. And they are right on that point. The creationists that hold to Bishop Usher’s calendar do not allow for enough time for events that are recorded, but when we have the correct year for creation (over 13,000 years ago), then we allow enough for ancient civilizations to have developed and run their course. We can explain everything within that longer timeframe with no difficulty because we have the correct number of years. It is not just over 6,000 years, but it is just over 13,000 years that the world has been in existence. We understand this, by the grace of God, because He has opened up the Biblical calendar. That is why He began to open up some of this information even before 1988, before the time that Daniel prophesied: “…shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end.” It was because it was necessary that the calendar be in place and laid out before the time when God would open information in the rest of the Scriptures regarding the Great Tribulation period and Judgment Day. We had to have a proper understanding of the timeline of history in order to see these things and to realize that the Great Tribulation was the end of the church age and how events would unfold.

This is one of the reasons why when people start rejecting points of time that the Biblical calendar of history has pinpointed (like the point of May 1988 being the end of the church age and the exact 23 years of the Great Tribulation ending on May 21, 2011, the beginning of Judgment Day), then these people begin to reject the calendar in its entirety and they lose sight of where we are in time. As soon as they lose sight of where we are in history (at the very edge of the end of the world), then they begin to lose sight of doctrine that is immersed in the Biblical calendar. Therefore, they reject it being Judgment Day, which means they have also rejected the 23-year Great Tribulation period, which means they have rejected May 21, 1988. Then they do not know if the church age is still ongoing or if it has ended. They do not know if God is still saving people, or not. Normally, they even revert to church doctrine and to what we understood when we were in the churches; they return to former, erroneous doctrine. There is a whole list of doctrinal errors that we have discussed often. These people are losing sight of truth or, more accurately, God has taken truth from them. If God is taking truth from them, it is because they were never saved to begin with and they never had a genuine understanding of these things and they are quickly separated from truth and knowledge and they “return to Egypt,” because the churches have become spiritual Egypt. They are in the house of bondage and there is no deliverance there and all that remained within are in captivity.

Well, we can see the incredible depth of this one area of spiritual truth in Genesis 14, verse 4. Of course, the Bible presents an incredibly brilliant mind who spoke these things and laid them out in the Bible. God has the advance information that allows a Scripture in Chronicles to agree with a Scripture in Corinthians, Timothy and Jude and a doctrinal truth comes to light that is built upon the comparison of Scriptures as the Holy Ghost teaches the doctrine. It displays an enormously brilliant Mind that has written the Bible and laid all this out and this example in Genesis 14 is just one little piece of it, as God is describing a battle. It is nothing major like we might read elsewhere in the Bible where millions of people are involved. It is just a handful of city states warring with one another and, yet, God (in His brilliance) is picturing events that will take place at the very end of time and only He could have given us these numbers, like “12” and “13” and “14,” and cause them to fit the “battle” or fit what the battle represented spiritually, which was the spiritual battle that would take place at the end of 12,000 years and 13,000 years. Then Satan would be loosed and come against the camp of the saints. And God also caused it to identify with 14,000 years. It is just amazing. God even tells us that this was His plan regarding the numbers “12” and “13,” in Deuteronomy 32:8:

When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people…

Since the Lord is speaking about the “sons of Adam,” He is speaking about mankind and their bounds has to do with how long they would live upon this earth, which is their temporal inheritance. God set their bounds and He did so from the very beginning. And he did so, as it goes on to say in Deuteronomy 32:8:

…according to the number of the children of Israel.

Now there could be a couple of different ways to understand this. We might look in the Book of Numbers where it “numbers” the people of Israel upon their coming out of Egypt, but it only numbered the men. It did not number the women or the children. And there are different figures given later upon their entry into the land of Canaan and at various points in history. For instance, David also numbered the people. So, if that is what God was referring to, what number would you use? The number of the people of Israel constantly varied and you would not know at what point in history to take that number. There are too many numbers that come into play, but there is one number that is consistent concerning the number of tribes.

How many tribes of Israel were there? Someone might quickly respond, “There were 12 tribes.” We can go to many verses in the Bible where the tribes are numbered and they number 12, so you would be correct. But there were (actually) 13 tribes because God gave Joseph two tribes: Ephraim and Manasseh. There were 12 sons of Jacob, but in blessing Joseph He made Joseph two tribes and, thereafter, there were 13 tribes of Israel. Do you see the similarity? On the one hand, according to the Bible there were 12,000 years of earth’s history, but there were (actually) 13,000 years. How many tribes of Israel? There were 12 tribes, but there were (actually) 13 tribes. If you look at the Apostles listed in the New Testament, how many Apostles were there? There were 12 Apostles. The Bible is clear. Judas fell by reason of transgression and he hanged himself and then a replacement was picked in Acts, chapter 1 named Matthias. Then we had 12 Apostles once again. However, there was the Apostle Paul and we call him an Apostle because he insisted (under inspiration of the Holy Spirit) that He was also an Apostle, hand-selected by Christ when He appeared to him on the road to Damascus. So, there were 12 Apostles, but there were (actually) 13 Apostles.

Why would God do this? It is because He set the bounds of the “sons of Adam” according to the number of the children of Israel. There were 12,000 years, but (actually) 13,000 years. There were 12 tribes, but (actually) 13 tribes. Is this not incredible? Is it not mind-boggling how God has placed these things in the Bible and caused them to harmonize in the way they do? They harmonize in a brilliant way. I know I keep saying that word, but what other word can I use? If there were a word that was descriptive of greater intelligence than “brilliant,” I would apply it to God, the Author of the Scriptures. He is the One whose mind formed these things and like pieces of a puzzle, every Word in the Bible is carefully inserted and every event that happened was carefully placed. Everything worked harmoniously in complete perfection. It is truly a holy and perfect Bible and we see just a glimpse of it in this language in Genesis, chapter 14.