Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight, is study #8 of Genesis, chapter 14 and we are continuing to look at 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,

In our last study, we were looking at the statement in verse 4: “Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer.” God gives us the number “12” (as well as the numbers “13” and “14”) in these two verses, but they identify with thousands of years. They identify with the time of the end which takes place, according to the Biblical timeline of history, in the 13,000th year. This year was when the church age ended and the Great Tribulation began, but the 13,000th year can also be correctly viewed as the 12,000th year, based on the information God gives us concerning the binding of Satan.

We have the four kings battling five kings and we understand the “four” connect to the “beast,” which represents Satan’s rule at the time of the Great Tribulation (because he was loosed after 13,000 years of history). God said, “Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer,” and Chedorlaomer would be a figure of Satan. We concluded that the five kings were a picture of the outward representation of God’s kingdom on earth, going back to the very beginning. We read in Genesis 3 that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and believed the lie of Satan, they became servants to the one they obeyed. The Garden of Eden was the first representation of God’s kingdom on earth and it happened at the very beginning, which can be traced back 12,000 figurative years or 13,000 actual years from the beginning of the Great Tribulation in 1988. We discussed how the outward corporate bodies, like national Israel or the New Testament churches or Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, constantly did service to Satan. That is what this verse is telling us in Genesis 14:4. For 12,000 years, the people that were the outward representation of God’s kingdom on the earth served Satan. We looked at Romans, chapter 6 where it said that you are servant to the one you obey. Service performed to Satan was obedience to his lies. We could go to many verses in the Old Testament that would show Israel’s tendency to be disobedient to God and, instead, they set up their own high places in Baal worship and their own kind of gospel. At the end of Israel’s period of identification with the kingdom of God and right before the churches would take over that role (as the vineyard was transferred to other husbandmen), Christ spoke to the Jews, in John 8:39-45:

They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.

The problem in the Garden of Eden was that man believed the serpent over God. And, here in the Book of John, we see God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He came to His own people. He was a Jew and they were the people of God. They were the only people of God on the earth as representative of God’s kingdom. He came to them and they believed Him not and, instead, they believed lies. They believed Satan. The service performed to Satan at the very beginning with the fall of man in to sin was because man obeyed the devil and disobeyed God and that “service” continued throughout the entire history of the world. When God established a corporate body, they preferred the “lie.” Jesus gave them the reason: “And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” Of course, God could not lie, but when someone comes along and strings together a few Scriptures and comes up with some fanciful tale, they will be believed. It is just like today in the Christian church world where scores of millions of people believe the wildest things. They believe in “holy laughter.” They believe in miraculous healings. They believe in “tongues” and “falling over backwards.” And they are all lies; they believe these things are from God, but they are not from God. They believe the devil over God. God simply said at the point of the completion of the Bible, in Revelation 22:18: “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.” That statement is not believed. You can tell people, “God only speaks through the Bible, since the Bible has been completed. Look at this verse. It pronounces a condemnation upon you, your church and your pastor and anyone that believes that God is still bringing divine communication outside of the Bible.” No – they do not believe it because it is the truth. They have no ear for the truth; their ears are in tune with deceitfulness, falsehoods, erroneous doctrines, other kinds of gospels and with lies. It can be the strangest, oddest or most far-out lie you can imagine and it will be believed by the natural-minded sinner over the truth of the Word of God. It is because they serve the one whom they obey. Their father is not God, but it is the devil and they honor their father by doing him service. They worship Satan by doing so.

You know, God really fit the punishment to the crime when He brought judgment upon the corporate church. He loosed Satan and He permitted Satan to take his seat within the churches and congregations of the world, shewing himself that he was God. Why not? The churches and congregations had been doing service to him down through the centuries. They lusted after the lie and they preferred and desired the lie and, above all, they wanted the lie more than the plain “manna” of the Scriptures. They wanted something more exciting and dramatic and new. They wanted something they could see and feel and something that stimulated their senses and emotions and their sensual nature. God’s Word was very “plain.” It was direct, plain truth that could be found through the tedious process of comparing Scripture with Scripture: “How unexciting and boring can you get?” After putting in all the work of searching the Scriptures to finally arrive at a truth, it is like a “still, small voice,” and no one wants to pay it any attention. The masses with their natural minds do not pay it any attention because it is the truth. A lie is much more riveting. It is much more exciting. And it is much more popular to become involved with the “lie” and to do service through the lie. A lie is so much nicer, is it not? The lie says that all you have to do is to “believe” and it is all in your hands and under your control. Any old time you want to believe and accept Christ and get yourself saved, you can! Is that not a wonderful teaching? Yes, it sounds wonderful, but the only problem is that it is a lie. It is of Satan. It is Satan’s doctrine and when men believe it, they are serving Satan.

This is the problem and God is directing our attention to this longstanding problem. Of course, this problem is a horrendous and terrible thing because the corporate institutions that identified with the kingdom of God on earth throughout time from the very beginning have failed to serve God. As a result, God brought judgment upon each and every one of them. Did the Garden of Eden continue? No. Why not? It was because of sin. The beautiful, perfect garden was ruined by the curse placed upon it because of the transgression of Adam and Eve that were duty bound to obey God, but they disobeyed.

What about national Israel? They were the people of God for over two thousand years, but what did God do because of their disobedience to Him and their service to Satan? When one is disobedient to God, you are doing service to the devil and God brought judgment upon Israel. He destroyed them and He turned over the “vineyard” to the New Testament churches and congregations.

Then all was well and wonderful with the New Testament corporate church. No – it was not. If we turn to Revelation, chapter 2 the Lord moved the Apostle John to write in the first century, in Revelation 2:8-9:

And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

Or, we can see what the Lord said to the church of Thyatira, in Revelation 2:20-22:

Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.

From the very beginning of the church age, there was falsehood, errors, lies and deceitful things. These things were found in individual churches and because of this the churches we read about in Revelation, chapters 2 and 3 no longer exist. These things were found in entire denominations, like the Catholic Church. They have been in evidence over the many centuries of the church age and these lies have been built into the creeds and confessions and the theological writings held by these churches. The churches and congregations have done exactly like their sister Israel in the Old Testament. They established spiritual high places. They set up spiritual idols that they serve and worship over the Word of God, the Bible. In so doing, they do service to Satan. After giving them space to repent for 1,955 years, God came to visit to see if they had repented. He found they had not and at that point He judged them and cast them into “great tribulation.” We know the date this happened. It was May 21, 1988, the 13,000th year, which we can also understand as the 12,000th year of earth’s history. Satan was loosed and came against the camp of the saints (the churches). Satan was performing a service to God as God utilized Satan to do what he does best – to destroy. God used him as a destroying weapon to wreak spiritual havoc upon the world’s churches in order to carry out His judgment.

We see all of this in the language of Genesis 14:4:

Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer…

The outward representations of God’s kingdom on earth (the last of which was the New Testament churches) served Satan throughout history. Of course, with Israel of old there were seven thousand at one point in time that had not bowed the knee to Baal. In the church age, there were the (figurative) 144,000, the elect firstfruits. There was always a remnant in these situations and that is why we find Zoar in association with the other four kings. Zoar was the “little one” that identified with the remnant that was in the churches when God’s judgment first came upon it. It was not until several years into the Great Tribulation period that the Lord opened His Word to reveal to the elect that they had to get out (of the churches).

But, again, it says in Genesis 14:4:

Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.

Now we have another question. We understand that these corporate bodies were the outward representations of God’s kingdom. We can see through their tendency to set up idolatrous high places and to believe lies over the truth that they did service to Satan throughout the history of the world. But, now it is the 13th year and we understand the 13th year identifies with the 13,000th year, May 21, 1988 and the end of the church. Finally, at the end of the church age, they rebel against Chedorlaomer. It does not say they rebelled against God, but it says they rebelled against Chedorlaomer and he is a type and figure of Satan. So, is that not a good thing that after they had done service to Satan for 12,000 (really 13,000) years, they are no longer doing service to Satan?

When we get together in our next Bible study we will see that even in rebelling against Chedorlaomer, a picture of Satan, they are doing wrong and they are continuing in their rebellion against God.