Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #2 of Genesis, chapter 22. We will be reading Genesis 22:1-2:

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

I will stop reading there. In our last study, we were looking at the word “tempt.” We read here that God did tempt Abraham. We also looked at a passage in James 1:13-15 where it said that God cannot be tempted with evil and He does not tempt any man. We discussed how when we see two or more conflicting verses, we need to harmonize them and fit them with everything else the Bible says. We cannot just leave it. Of course, we must leave it if God does not open our eyes regarding it, but we must make the effort. We must study and pray for wisdom to see how both statements can be true. And that is always the key. When we read the Bible, we must start with the idea in our mind (and soul) that the Bible is true and faithful. God has written the Bible and everything in it is true and faithful in the original languages. There can be an error in a translation into other languages. Yes – we know that. We do not think the translations are perfect, but the original Hebrew and Greek are perfect. We saw that God declares that fact in Psalm 12. He let it be known that He Himself is the guardian of the Bible. He watches over the entire Word of God and keeps it from harm by the generation of evil forever, so no one can make an accurate claim that there is error in the original Hebrew or Greek. God protects His Word, and He has faithfully handed it down from the beginning as a true text of the original language.

By the way, if you listened to our last study, the way the Bible harmonized the question of whether God “tempts” any man, it was referring to testing man with sin in the book of James. God does not do that, but the way God tempts us is through testing to prove us to see if we will obey and keep His commandments. God does that all the time, and He has been doing that since the beginning with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

We also looked at Luke, chapter 8 in the parable of the sower who sows the “seed,” the Word of God. It says in Luke 8:11-13:

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.

At the end of our last study, I referred briefly to this “time of temptation.” By the way, the word translated here as “fall away” is found in 1Timothy 4:1:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;

The English word “depart” is a translation of the same Greek word that was translated as “fall away.” So, the Lord is saying that some believe for a while and in the time of temptation, they depart. They no longer believe the truth of the Word of God, the Bible. What is significant about this statement is that it refers to a “time of temptation.” And when we search the Bible, we find some interesting things regarding this word. For example, in the Lord’s Prayer, it says in Matthew 6:9-13:

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Here is a petition within the Lord’s Prayer that the Lord gave to teach His people how to pray. I will say (because I can show it from the Bible) that this prayer was given by the Lord to instruct the people of God how to pray in the day of salvation. The various petitions such as, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” was a prayer for salvation and forgiveness of sins.

Then it says, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” We have understood the reference to “evil” as speaking of the “day of evil” or Judgment Day, but we never looked too carefully at the first part of verse 13: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I have referred to this in the past when reading the Psalms and other verses in the Old Testament. There is a theological term to describe this kind of verse that we see a lot in the Old Testament: God will say something one way in the first part of a verse, and then repeat it in the second part of the verse using slightly different language. And I think that is what is in view here when we read, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Again, the “evil” we have correctly understood as the Day of Judgment, and we could go to a couple of verses that show that God refers to Judgment Day as the “evil day.” The “evil day” is the same as “temptation.” They are synonymous. It is a request to lead us not into temptation; that is, lead us not into the time that Luke 8 refers to as a “time of temptation.” It specifically says there is a “time of temptation.”

How do we know how long this timeline for Judgment Day will be? When this time comes to pass, we know from the Bible that judgment began at the house of God. The final judgment of God had a beginning point – it began at the churches, the house of God. We know from the Biblical calendar of history and other confirming Scriptures that judgment began on the churches in 1988 after the 1,955 years of the church age ended. That began the time when the Holy Spirit came out of the midst of all churches. It began the time of spiritual famine the Bible refers to as 2,300 evening mornings.

We know that during God’s plan of “times and seasons,” God has alternated seasons of rain with seasons of spiritual famine. There was the early righteous rain, followed by the famine of Christ’s three and a half years of ministry; then there was the early rain of the church age, followed by the famine beginning on May 21, 1988 to September 7, 1994; then September 7, 1994 was the final season of the Latter Rain. God has alternated between rain and famine throughout thousands of years of history. The Lord used the churches to bring in the firstfruits of the early rain, and because the Lord did use the churches to accomplish that purpose, it could not be known until the 2,300 days of famine was past until it was seen after September 7, 1994 that God was not using the churches to bring the Gospel of the Latter Rain. But on September 7, 1994 when God began pouring out the Latter rain outside of the churches, it could be seen that it was the official end of the church age and when it could be proven, without question, that God was done using the churches and congregations of the world. Therefore we say 1994 was the official year the church age ended, even though God was not using the churches during that 2,300 days and the Holy Spirit was not present in the churches. There was no salvation there. From that point of 1994, we can say it was the time that judgment officially began on the house of God. Then we continued to May 21, 2011, the day of transition from the judgment on the churches to the judgment on all the world. As we are now well into this prolonged time of Judgment Day, there is Biblical evidence mounting that points to the year 2033 as the year that may conclude the judgment on this world. If that is the case, then the official overall period of Judgment Day (including judgment on the churches and on the world) would run from 1994 through 2033, which is 40 inclusive years. The term “inclusive” means you count 1994 as “year one,” and so forth, through the year 2033, and it is 40 years, inclusively. That would be the timeline for Judgment Day.

This is the reason it is so interesting that God speaks of a “time of temptation.” When we search the Bible, we see verses like we find in Psalm 95:7-11:

For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

It is interesting that God referred to the prolonged time when Israel was in the wilderness as “the day of temptation.” Remember, we looked at the Lord’s Prayer which said, “And lead us not into temptation,” and we looked at Luke 8:13 which referred to a “time of temptation.” Here, there is a reference to a prolonged time as a “day of temptation,” and we know that time was longer than a day. It was 40 years long, as it says here in Psalm 95:10: “Forty years long was I grieved with this generation.” If we go to the New Testament, these verses are quoted in Hebrews 3:7-11:

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

Again, it refers to a “day of temptation,” but in the next verse it refers to a 40-year period. First, this is a verse that supports the idea that when the Bible speaks of “a day,” a much longer time period may be in view. God looked at the time from the coming out of Egypt until the entering into the land of Canaan as “a day.” He has the whole 40 years in view, and He is saying it was “a day of temptation.” The entire 40 years is called “a day of temptation.”

You know, this is one of the big problems some people have when they hear what EBible teaches about us living on the earth in the Day of Judgment. Then they hear that May 21, 2011 began Judgment Day and we are still in Judgment Day today, next year and for several years to come, and it does not register with them. It does not make sense to them because they are thinking of Judgment Day as just one day (singular). We are trained in this world to understand that a day is 24 hours long. We wake up. The sun is up, and we do what we must do, whether it is going to work or something else we must do that day. Then the sun goes down and late at night we go to sleep, and the day is over. That is how we have become accustomed to thinking of “a day” in this world, because each day is 24 hours. Today is Sunday, an then we go on to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We even have dates for each 24-hour day. But this is the Bible and it is God’s Word, so God defines His own terms as He pleases, and He can do so in a different way than how it is naturally defined in the world.

Therefore, if God wants to call it “a day of salvation,” He can do so. We can find this used in 2Corinthians 6:2:

(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)

Now, let us apply the same mindset some people have when they hear about the “day of judgment” to the day of salvation. That would mean that God picked a (single) day in history that was 24 hours long and during that day (and that day only), He saved people. Is that true? Is that accurate? Of course it is not accurate. That is wrong. The day of salvation continued for a long period of time.” (And some even incorrectly understand that the “day of salvation” will continue until the world ends.) So, they understand the principal of a long period of time being referred to as “a day,” as long as it refers to the day of salvation.

But you cannot have it both ways. You cannot then say it is impossible for the Day of Judgment to also be a prolonged period of time. You cannot say, “It is unbiblical. You are playing around with the Word of God.”

However, you cannot say that the “day of salvation” can be a prolonged time, but the “day of judgment” cannot be a prolonged time, even though the word for “day” is the same word. The “day of salvation” lasted for centuries in times past. We are beyond that “day” now, and we must emphasize that. But the “day of salvation” was a very long time, covering century after century, and all during the church age. Then there came the Latter Rain and it was again the day of salvation. But when the Latter Rain ended, God shut the door and ended His salvation program and, thereby, ended the light of “day,” as God likens the light to the Gospel. He speaks in the Psalms of shining His face upon people and they become saved. We know that Christ is called the Light of the world, as the sun illustrates that fact. But when salvation ended, the light of the “sun” was darkened. The “day” ended and that concluded that incredibly long period of time in which God displayed His mercy and grace to save His elect in the “day of salvation.”

Then began another period of time that we are presently in, which is the Day of Judgment. It is also a prolonged period of time. We know from Hebrews 3 and Psalm 95 that God can refer to a period of 40 years as “a day of temptation.” We know that God judged the corporate church and that was not done in a single day, but He carried it out for exactly 23 years, if we include the 2,300 evening mornings. Why did He just not do it in a single day? It was because He had a program that He wanted to work out. There is a principal in Ecclesiastes that says that judgment is not executed speedily. (Just look at that verse when you get a chance. It is very revealing.) God does not bring judgment in a speedy way, but He does it in a very purposeful way that He has arranged over time. Likewise, on the day of transition He brought the world into a prolonged period of judgment known as Judgment Day.

We have run out of time, but when we get together in our next study, we will resume looking at this because it is very pertinent to our present time, as we think of the “day of temptation” or the Day of Judgment.