Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is study #25 of Genesis, chapter 19. We will be reading Genesis 19:16-22:

And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; JEHOVAH being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord: Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die: Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live. And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken. Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

I will stop reading there. In our last study we saw that God (in the form of two angels or two messengers) was merciful to Lot, his wife and his two daughters in bringing them forth out of the city. It was a merciful act because the city was soon to be destroyed, so God was delivering Lot and these other members of his family from the coming destruction.

We were looking at the word “without,” which is Strong’s #2351 in the Hebrew. By the way, it is also a word that is translated as “abroad” in Genesis 19:17: “And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad.” We saw this word was used in relationship to a bullock being burned “without the camp.” We find it regarding other sacrifices that were to be disposed of “without the camp.”

Then we went to the New Testament and we saw that when Satan was loosed, in Revelation 20, Gog and Magog gathered their forces together to battle and came against the “camp of the saints” or the “beloved city.” The beloved city is “Jerusalem,” which is identified as both a “camp” and a “beloved city.”

Then we turned to Hebrews 13 and we read Hebrews 13:11-13:

For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

It was “without the gate” that Christ suffered or without the city. We finished our last study with this passage. We were thinking about this and we realized that the “camp” can be tied to the corporate church. Here, God is speaking to the elect children of God and He said, “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” Could we have gone forth unto Him without the camp during the 1,955 years of the church age? No – we should not have left the churches while the church age was still in effect. That was not the time to go forth “without the camp” to Christ.

But, here, it does speak of a time when a command of God was to go forth to Christ without the camp, bearing His reproach. We know that the “reproach” of Christ is the Word of God, the Bible. What God has in view here is that at the time of the end He would unseal the Scriptures and open up information regarding the end of the church age. He would reveal that His judgment was upon the churches and congregations and that His Spirit had departed out of the midst of all the churches. He also revealed a command that would be activated after the church age ended and after Satan had been loosed. God would activate His command to depart out and flee to the mountains. So, at that time in history it was revealed: “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” Then notice what it goes on to say in Hebrews 13:14:

For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.

Do you see how at the time we are to go forth without the camp (leave the churches), God is comforting us by saying, “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” This has to do with what I mentioned in our last study. God’s elect are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, the eternal city of God. We are in Christ seated in the heavenlies at the right hand of the Father and, therefore, when it comes to our lives in this world we were to be part of the corporate church or earthly Jerusalem for a time. But, again, it was only a representation of the spiritual reality. It only pictured the kingdom of God. Therefore, it was not a “continuing city.”

The Lord refers to “two cities” in Zechariah 14:1-2:

Behold, the day of JEHOVAH cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken…

The city that was taken was “earthly Jerusalem” or the corporate church. Satan took his seat as the man of sin in the temple, ruling in the churches and congregations of the world. That “city” ceased to continue and we have no continuing city there. Then it went on to say in Zechariah 14:2:

… and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

The residue that is not cut off from the city is the remnant or the elect. We just read that the city was taken and when we read the language of the Babylonians taking the city of Jerusalem and all were to go into captivity, we know that none were to be left behind. However, here, the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. On this earth, we have no continuing city, but there is another city referred to earlier in Hebrews 11:10:

For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

This was speaking of Abraham and it refers to the “eternal city,” like the city we read about in Revelation where the “city” comes down from heaven as a bride. All those that were saved are part of that heavenly Jerusalem and that is the city that we shall never be cut off from and it is the city where we have our citizenship. It is not the earthly city.

Another place we see this city in view is in 2Corinthians, chapter 5 which will lead us to the verse that says that all the elect must appear before the judgment seat of Christ. It says in 2Corinthians 5:1:

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved…

The “earthly house” is just like the “earthly city.” It is the house of God. Where did judgment began? It began at the house of God or the corporate church. But, here, it begins by speaking figuratively of the earthly church. We know it is the church that is in view because the Greek word translated as “dissolved” is the same word used in Matthew 24 where Christ said, “There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” In Matthew 24, the same Greek word is translated as “thrown down,” referring to the stones of the temple. So, we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were “thrown down,” it is the time when judgment has commenced at the city called by God’s name, as it says in Jeremiah 25. The church age is over and the whole structure is destroyed, spiritually. We could not continue as part of an earthly church. There is not a faithful congregation anywhere in the world because God’s Spirit has left the midst of all churches. And without the Spirit of God, it does not matter what the pastor teaches, and it does not even matter if they had confessions and creeds that were totally faithful. Christ being in the midst of the churches is what made the churches faithful. Christ departed out of the midst and, immediately, the churches turned in to harlots; the churches became apostate.

Again, it says in 2Corinthians 5:1:

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

It is just like the two cities mentioned in Zechariah 14. One city was taken, but the remnant was not cut off from the other city. One city or one house was thrown down, but we have another house not made with hands, which is eternal.

You see, this is our confidence. This is our assurance and our guarantee of spiritual safety that allowed us to check out the Scriptures like a Berean when we heard the information that the church age was over. The Lord opened up the Scriptures and the Lord opened the spiritual eyes of Mr. Camping. It was God’s doing. God was giving him that information from the Bible and allowing him to see these things at the proper time and season. God also gave Mr. Camping the platform of Family Radio to broadcast these things worldwide and to declare to the churches and congregations of the world that their time was over. God had come to visit. He had found their high places and their erroneous doctrines, teachings and gospels and He has destroyed them.

We read that wonderful study in the book, “The End of the Church Age and After,” written by Mr. Camping. It laid out hundreds of Bible verses that all tied together in a cohesive way, showing that the church age was over and showing that it was God’s commandment that we must leave the churches.

God’s people heard these things. We may have been part of an earthly church that we attended regularly. We had enjoyed our time in the churches. It was a place we went to hear the Word of God, but then we heard reports from the Bible itself that it was time to leave. And God’s people hear the voice of Christ. When we checked it out and searched the Scriptures, we saw it was so and we had a heart to believe and obey the Scriptures. We believed the voice of Christ and we acted upon it because God’s Spirit was within the elect to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Therefore, we came out of the churches, just as God was merciful to Lot and some members of his family and took them by the hand and brought him “without the city” of Sodom. And God brought all his righteous elect out of the churches and placed us “without the city.” And to think (if only for a second) of going back, it is despising His grace and mercy and the abundance of information He opened in the Scriptures to reveal these things to us.

Why go back? Is it because someone has proven those hundreds of Bible verses to be incorrect? Has someone done an in-depth study on point, after point, after point, to show how it was all wrong and had been misunderstood? No – you will not find anyone that is doing that. You may find someone that isolates a single verse, but they do not even bother to address the multitude of proof Scriptures. They will not go to all the other Bible verses that declare that we were to leave the church because the church age was over. They find a verse and they make a statement like, “Oh, it has been so many years and we were wrong about May 21, 2011 and we must have been wrong about the end of the church age, too.” It is just one error after another and the truth that they had seemed to have is being taken from them, verse by verse, doctrine by doctrine. And it is because they failed to follow through as God brought us to the point of Judgment Day, May 21, 2011. Yes – it was a shock that things did not happen as we thought they would, with a physical earthquake and a visible Judgment Day. But instead of staying in the Bible and continuing to search the Scriptures to see what was going on and what God was doing, they allowed their physical eyes to dictate their next move. They allowed their natural minds to reason and they said, “Well, it did not happen and, therefore, it was all wrong.” It is just like when you pull a thread of a garment and it leads to unraveling the whole garment. They made a big mistake by not waiting on the Lord and not continuing to pray for wisdom and guidance.

Here is what they should have looked at in depth: “The Bible had locked in a specific day, May 21, 2011, so let me study the Bible and see if we made a mistake in that date.” Personally, I did try to find where we might have gone wrong, when things did not happen as we had previously understood. And, yet, the more we checked the Bible and searched the Scriptures, the date remained in place. In fact, we found additional confirmation for that date. It was Judgment Day and it was all in accord with the Word of God. Then we wondered, “Why did it not happen the way we thought? Why was there not a worldwide earthquake?” We kept reading and studying the Bible to answer the questions. At that point we had come to realize that the Bible did say it was Judgment Day; the Bible was not relenting or turning back from that declaration of the date God caused to be broadcast to all the world. If the Bible insists (and it does) that it was Judgment Day, then how is that possible? It would have to be a spiritual judgment, but does the Bible teach a spiritual judgment? Then we realized that the Bible does teach a spiritual judgment in a tremendous way.

Starting back in the Garden of Eden, God said of the forbidden tree, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Adam and Eve ate of the tree, but they did not die physically. It was never pointed out to them at that time (or to readers of the book of Genesis) that in the day they ate thereof they would die spiritually, or invisibly, in the soul existence. God never said that in the book of Genesis. It was understood when we read the rest of the Bible. We realized Adam did not die in that day physically because he lived to be 930, but the Bible speaks in Ezekiel 18 of dying in the soul or in Ephesians 2 where it says we are “dead in trespasses and sins.” It was a spiritual death, and this is the reason the Bible says that we must be born again in our souls as God restores the souls (of His elect).

So, the first judgment, which was a major judgment, was spiritual. It came upon mankind without a direct declaration and without God having said, “What I mean is that in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die in thy soul.” He simply said, “Thou shalt surely die.” It is just like when the Bible declares that in Judgment Day, mankind will die. But God was not specific. Does God have to be specific? No – He is under no obligation to be specific. As a matter of fact, it is characteristic in the Bible for God not to be specific, because He hides spiritual truth and He encourages us to search the Scriptures to find the parabolic, hidden meaning of what He has said.

And, again, we saw a spiritual judgment at the very beginning of the Bible. We saw a spiritual judgment of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane as He was praying that the cup of the wrath of God might pass from Him. If you had been an outward observer looking upon Christ in the Garden as He was praying, you would not have seen the wrath of God upon Him – it was a spiritual judgment.

Likewise, the judgment on the churches and congregations was a spiritual judgment. We see the judgment of mankind in the Garden of Eden; we see the judgment of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane; and we see the judgment on the corporate church, which was the outward representation of the kingdom of God. So, tell me where you can find bigger judgments in the Bible that are not spiritual? You can find some historical judgments upon Israel or Judah, but they are not bigger than the judgment on the corporate church with its two billion people. The biggest judgments in the Bible have all been spiritual, so it was our error. God held back the information that Judgment Day would begin as a spiritual judgment. God did this to set up the “snare” of Judgment Day and He kept back from our understanding that the final judgment of mankind would also be spiritual in nature.

Again, God had locked in the date. It does not budge in the slightest bit. And here we are, still searching the Bible, and we are faced with the insistence of the Bible that it was the Day of Judgment, forcing us to understand it spiritually.

We will have to pick this up in our next study in the book of Genesis, as we look at all these interesting things.