Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is study #40 of Genesis, chapter 19. We are continuing to read Genesis 19:25-26:

And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

In our last study, we were discussing the area that is behind the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible identifies that with the spiritual location where Satan can be found: “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Lot’s wife, “looked back from behind him,” which means she looked back from following the Lord Jesus and turned to follow Satan. The way we can understand this is that she turned from following the truth and began following the lie, because Satan is the father of lies. That is what is happening when people go back in these days after that tribulation. They are not following the truth, and I pointed out that they are going back not because they have received correction (from the Bible) or because they have seen an error that must be corrected in our studies regarding the end of the church age, and so forth. No – they are not doing that. But they are simply following their feelings, their own desires or they are relenting to the pressures placed upon them after May 21, 2011, and they are now following a lie.

This has everything to do with our time in history when Jesus said in Luke 17:28-32:

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot’s wife.

The Lord Jesus, of course, is the greatest theologian, as theology is the study of God. And Jesus is God and He is the Word. He is the one who moved Moses to write the things we are reading about in Genesis and the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah and the cities of the plain. Jesus is the one that controlled the information being written and then in the 1st century A.D. He recalled this information to highlight these things for the benefit of those of us living at the time of the end of the world, so we could go back and read of these things as examples to teach us spiritual truth regarding the time of the end of the world, like coming out of the churches and following God’s commandments for this time. The Lord pointed out that the days of Lot are similar to the days when the Son of man is revealed. We have discussed this. The Son of man (Christ) was revealed on the pages of the Bible as the Judge of the churches and now as the Judge of the world. It is the righteous revelation of the judgment of God. According to Revelation 19, it is the Word of God that is judging the world and in that chapter the saints are on “horseback,” following the Word of God. We are following what the Bible says for this time.

After saying all this, Jesus underlined this statement: “Remember Lot’s wife.” In the previous verse He had said, “and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.” To be in the field is to be in the world and not to return back to the churches. Or, for the one on the housetop, he was not to go back into the house. “Remember Lot’s wife.” And we have been doing that.

But, this is the Bible and when we study the Bible, we must look at every word God uses. Here, in Luke 17:32 God is using the word “remember.” What does it mean to remember? This is where we must be careful, because we can easily provide our own definition because we use this word in our language today: We forget things, or we remember things. For example, if we are packing for a trip, someone may say to us, “Did you remember to bring this or that?” But, again, this is the Bible and the words in the Bible are not to be defined by our modern understanding of these words or by the Webster’s Dictionary. The Bible defines its own terms. In the Bible, the word “remember” is used numerous times. Sometimes it does have that meaning, like when God says that He will remember His covenant. When God made a promise to give Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, God had made a promise that He would give Abraham and his seed the land of Canaan and God will remember that promise. God has made a covenant, which is the Gospel, and He will remember that covenant with His people. We have that same understanding of the use of the word “remember.”

But, more than that, this word “remember” is used in a specific way in Mark, chapter 8. We will look at a few places we find this word. It says in Mark 8:14-18:

Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf. And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread. And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?

What Jesus is saying about remembering is very significant. He spoke a word about bread and the disciples immediately thought of the plain, literal meaning. By the way, this verse disproves the doctrine taught in seminaries for students that want to be pastors; they teach them to look for the plain, literal meaning of a verse. And they may have even added, “And seek no other meaning. Do not go spiritualizing things and looking for spiritual meaning.” I am sure that in some seminaries they may even use Mr. Camping as an example of how not to approach the Bible that way. Of course, Mr. Camping was a faithful man of God and he was using the proper Biblical method of understanding the Bible; he used the right hermeneutic.

But, here, Jesus is giving an example of that. He did not say, “The kingdom of heaven is like bread…” He simply said, “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.” The disciples naturally reasoned: “It is because we brought no bread.” They still did not get that Jesus spoke in parables to help them understand the whole Bible and not just some sections that some deem as parabolic. He is the Word made flesh and the whole Bible is the Word. Jesus pointed out, “Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not?” This language has to do with failing to understand the spiritual meaning or the parable. The mystery of parables is given to the elect: “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” In Matthew 13, it says of the non-elect: “…because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”

But, notice He also adds in Mark 8:18:

…and do ye not remember?

You see, this is a clue to help us realize that to “remember” in the Bible does not simply mean to recall the verse or the historical situation. For instance, when Christ said, “Remember Lot’s wife,” the reader of this statement could reply, “Oh, yes, that was in the book of Genesis. I remember that.” Yes – they can recall a historical situation, but to properly “remember” Lot’s wife, you must know the hidden spiritual truth. What did Lot’s wife represent? Only God can open one’s eyes to that. Only God can open one’s ears to that.

Therefore, the people in the churches were not remembering Lot’s wife, were they? If they had, they would have come out of the churches? (At least Lot’s wife went that far.) And people that are going back to the churches are certainly not remembering Lot’s wife. You could ask them: “Do you remember Lot’s wife?” They would reply, “Yes – I remember Lot’s wife. It talks about her in Genesis 19.” They could tell you all about the historical situation, but they did not learn or perceive what the Bible is really telling us about Lot’s wife. They have it wrong and, therefore, they are not remembering.

There are some other verses that help us with the Biblical idea of “remembering.” It says in John 15:20:

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

The Bible is only concerned about the Bible, as far as remembering. We may be forgetful about some things and some people have better memories than others, but that is not God’s concern. God’s concern is for His Word: “Remember the word that I said unto you.” Again, Jesus is the Word, so we cannot just think of the “words in red” in the “red letter Bible” as the words that Christ spoke. No – we must start from Genesis 1 and go all the way through Revelation 22, because those are the words that He said unto us.

Let us go the next chapter, in John 16:1-4:

These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.

Here, Christ is saying something interesting: “But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember…” What time is that? What time would come that we should remember the things He told us? Let us go down a few verses to John 16:12-13:

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

You see, the Holy Spirit would come and guide into all truth. Did the Holy Spirit guide into all truth when He was poured out on the Day of Pentecost in 33 A.D.? No – because we can just look at the history of the church age; the churches did not have “all truth” and, in fact, they lacked much truth, especially regarding things related to the time of the end. But then God poured out His Spirit the second time in the 1994, a Jubilee year, and He opened the Scriptures and guided us into “all truth” and He is continuing to do this throughout our present time in the Day of Judgment. This is the time the Bible spoke of Daniel 12:4: “…shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” It was the time when the Holy Spirit would guide into “all truth” as we are coming to learn many things.

These things are not “new,” in the sense that they were already written in the Bible. God revealed to us the end of the church age, the doctrine of annihilation, the doctrine of Christ having been slain from the foundation of the world, the doctrine that May 21, 2011 was a spiritual judgment. Were these things the Holy Spirit had to speak audibly to someone? Did someone receive a message in a tongue or a vision of these things? No – there was none of that. God forbid, because the Bible states very absolutely in the least chapter of the Bible in Revelation 22 that we are not to add to the Word of God. The Bible is the complete revelation of God and we will not receive another Word or even a single letter of a Word beyond what was completed in the 1st century A.D. Since God has guided us into all truth by the Holy Spirit, it must be through the methodology of comparing Scripture with Scripture; and then the Holy Ghost teaches, according to 1Corinthians 2:13. That is how the Holy Ghost teaches us and how He guides into truth, which is the role of a teacher. That is how God leads us down the right path in these days as He reveals things that were sealed “to the time of the end.” This is how we are brought to remembrance. Again, it says in John 16: “But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them.”

You see, we are remembering that which is already written in the Bible, but it is remembering in the sense that we are coming to know what it means spiritually, and the intention of God when He wrote it. It is the learning of the deeper spiritual truth that had been concealed and, therefore, was part of the mystery.

Unfortunately, we have come to the end of our time in this study. But when we get together again, we will pick up this idea and discuss it further.