Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #6 of Genesis, chapter 22.  We are reading the first two verses, in 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.

We have already taken a detour.  We had just gotten into studying this chapter.  Because we read in verse 1 that God did tempt Abraham, I thought it would be good for us to take an in-depth look at how God tempts His people.  This word is also translated as “prove.”  It is a word we saw used in Exodus 16 when we were reading about the manna that fell from heaven during the 40-year wilderness sojourn.  It says in Exodus 16:4:

Then said JEHOVAH unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.

Then it said in Exodus 16:13-14:

And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground.

So, here, in an interesting way, God speaks of raining manna from heaven and He also tied it to the “dew.”  They would go early in the morning and the dew had wet the ground, and when the dew was gone up, there was the manna.  That is important information because God tells us in Deuteronomy 32:1-2:

Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: Because I will publish the name of JEHOVAH: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.

Here, the Lord ties together His doctrine  to dropping like rain and His speech to distilling as dew.  This is how the Bible was written.  God would speak parables: “The kingdom of heaven is like…”  Christ spoke parables, and He would make connections between words: “The field is the world,” or “I will make you fishers of men,” where God identified men with fish.  And, here, He tied doctrine to rain and His speech to dew.  They are synonymous.  His doctrine and speech are the same thing.  It has to do with the teachings of the Word of God, the Bible.  That is what the “manna” is related to as it was rained from heaven and was found along with the dew. 

This is the reason that in our last study I pointed out that this fits into our time period, the 40-year period from September 1994 when God began to send forth the Latter Rain.  And it was not very long after that we began to learn many doctrines.  Early on, we learned of the “faith of Christ,” because God wanted to send forth a pure form of the Gospel, like had never been done before.  He wanted to “settle the issue” and make it clear how people became saved – it had nothing to do with man’s faith in any way.  So, there it was in verses like Galatians 2:16, where the eyes of the people of God were opened to the use of the “genitive case.”  It was the faith of Christ that justified.  Man is not justified by works.  The Lord revealed, and we learned the fact, that faith was a “work.”   So, our faith would be a work and no man is justified by works and could never become justified by the work of faith that we do in believing on the Lord.  God clarified things, saying, as it were, “But do not fear.  You are justified and saved by the faith of Christ.”  It is a wonderful and beautiful doctrine that glorifies God to no end.  It opened up early in the Latter Rain period because the Lord wanted that truth to go out.  You know, the Great Tribulation was likened to a period of Sabbath rest, which identifies with doing no work.  We cannot do any work, as it relates to God’s salvation program.  But the churches had been teaching “works plus grace,” and they were contaminating and perverting the true Gospel by saying that man must contribute a little of his own works.  The so-called Reformed churches were doing the same thing as the Armenian churches they would condemn.  They were twisting the doctrine: “Yes – we are saved by God’s predestinating us and electing us, and it is all by the grace of God.”  Then they would say, “But, of course, you must believe.”  They would confuse things, but God removed that confusion and there was the beautiful grace of God in a pure form like never before in the history of the world.  Therefore, it had been unknown to our fathers, so it was like “manna from heaven,” in that sense.  It came down from above like the rain and the dew, and that Word (doctrine) went forth as God saved the great multitude to complete His salvation program.

So, the “manna” kept falling and falling, as we understood correctly (for the first time) doctrines like baptism and the Sunday Sabbath.  Then we learned about the end of the church age.  We learned about the “high places” of the churches and how God had given them space to repent, but they did not repent, and then He came in judgment to judge them.  The Lord opened up all kinds of information or doctrine, the “manna from heaven,” regarding why He was judging the churches, and the fact that it applies to 100% of the churches.  Then we learned about Satan being “the man of sin” that had taken his seat in the temple, showing himself that he was God.  We actually learned that God had turned over the corporate church into the hand of Satan, whom He had loosed for the purpose of bringing spiritual destruction upon the churches and congregations of the world. 

And, on and on it went as we have continued to learn that the final judgment of man was “annihilation,” and there was no place called “Hell,” but that “hell” is the grave.  The words “grave” and “hell” are synonymous in the Bible, and God’s intent was to destroy (unsaved) man with eternal destruction, meaning that man would cease to exist and have no conscious existence forevermore.  That is the judgment of God.  That is the definition of “death,” which is the payment for the wages of sin, but there is no eternal place of suffering where God would pour out His wrath to torture the sinner for ever and ever.  We learned that idea was contrary to the Bible.  It goes against the Law found in Deuteronomy 25, wherein the Lord stipulated that a just judge may not sentence someone to more than “forty stripes.”  That is, there is a limitation placed upon judgment.  There must be an ending point and once that point is reached, one cannot supersede it or go beyond it.  We learned that God is under His own Law and He cannot violate that Law and, therefore, there must be a limitation on the judgment of God upon the sinner, and there cannot be “unlimited” or eternal judgment, which is judgment without end.  It is a violation of the Law of God and God would never violate His Law. 

We have continued to learn about the beautiful doctrine that the Lord Jesus Christ died for the sins of His people at the foundation of the world.  That is when He made the payment.  That is when He died and rose again to be declared the Son of God.  What a glorious doctrine it is, which serves to give God all the glory, because when He performed this work for His people, there were “none with Him,” because no people existed.  Therefore, mankind can not pridefully find a way to take the glory from God, as man tends to do whenever God makes a declaration concerning His true Gospel.  Man is always trying to add a little of his own works to it, but you cannot add anything to what Christ did at the foundation of the world.  No man can do so because none were present.  That is when the atonement was made. 

Then we learned all about the demonstration of that work when Jesus entered into the world, born of the Virgin, and went to the cross.  He suffered the second time, just as Moses smote the rock two times.  He suffered a second time and, yet, the second time He was not bearing the sins of His people – He was not making payment for sin at that time.  It was all to show what He had done at the foundation of the world.

These are all glorious truths that have come forth that never had been known.  These things were stored up and kept in reserve to feed the people of God over the course of the most difficult time period in the history of the world, spiritually speaking, the time of the Great Tribulation and into our present time period of Judgment Day.  God revealed the timeline of history, and through it there was an ability to pinpoint the Day of Judgment as May 21, 2011, and the Lord locked that date in, out of His kindness, goodness and graciousness to His people.  It was more “manna” from heaven, as He revealed when God’s salvation program would come to an end.  When the Great Tribulation ended, the “rain” stopped.  God stopped saving people, and He let it be known.  He did not do this thing “in a corner” or in a secret, hidden way.  But God published and broadcast it, using the ministry of Family Radio (at that time) and Mr. Camping to use all their resources and to lay their entire reputation on the line to proclaim that message to all the world, because all must hear.  It was needful that there be the certain sound of the trumpet, declaring “May 21, 2011! Judgment Day!”  Why was it a certain sound?  The Bible says, “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? ”  It was Judgment Day and it was necessary for all God’s elect out in the world to think, “This is it – this is the only time I have to go to God and beseech Him for mercy, that He might have mercy upon me.”  God required (and it was an absolute necessity) that this message go forth to the world because God was, indeed, going to shut the door to heaven.  It was the last call for the Gospel and the last worldwide declaration of evangelization unto salvation that there would ever be, so God allowed His people to think it was the time of the rapture and the end of the world, so that message would be declared, and people would take it seriously and prepare themselves to “meet their God.”  The Lord used it to complete the salvation of His people and then, just as He had said, He shut the door of heaven and Judgment Day began.

So, the “manna” was nourishing the people of God all the way up until that day.  Afterwards, when it did not happen as we had thought (regarding a great earthquake and the rapture of the people of God, followed by a 5-month period of judgment and the end of the world), we were confused.  We were distraught.  We did not know what was going on.  We had been thinking that God had revealed everything He was going to reveal.  In other words, we thought all the “manna” had already fallen, and we just had to keep feeding upon it.  But, remember, when we read about the manna in Exodus 16, God spoke of it falling “day by day,” except for the Sabbath Day when He caused twice as much to fall.  Then they could store it up for the Sabbath Day and they could eat it on the Sabbath and it would not breed worms or stink.  Then it would begin falling again the day after the Sabbath, but it rained manna the entire 40 years.  The manna from heaven was like the dew, and could be found by the Israelites for not just for a portion of the 40 years, but for the entire time period.

We had thought that since God opened the Scriptures at the time of the end and up until May 21, 2011, that would be it, and He would not show us anything more.  People began to think we could not know the “time” any more or when the end would be, but we would just have to be thankful and glad for all the previous information and to feed upon it for the rest of time.  But a little while after entering the Day of Judgment, we began to ask some questions.  First, we did a thorough reexamination of the Scriptures for everything related to “time and judgment” to see if we were wrong.  When we did search the Scriptures in this way, we did not find an error in the Biblical calendar.  We cannot find mistakes in the “locking in” of that date (May 21, 2011).  Yes – the flood did occur in the 6,023^rd year after creation in 4990 B. C.  Yes – God had said to Noah, “And yet seven days,” and 2Peter 3 related that “one day is as a thousand years,” and 7,000 years from 4990 B. C. fell on 2011, which happened to be the 23^rd full year of the Great Tribulation.  And, yes, the day of May 21, 2011 had the underlying Hebrew calendar date of the seventeenth day of the second month, the very day God had shut the door of the ark.  That was also the 8,400^th date of the Great Tribulation as it came to an end, the day we would expect that God would shut the door (of heaven).  The Tribulation concluded, and the Bible says that immediately after the tribulation, the sun would be darkened, and so forth. 

All this information has not budged, and this can only mean that the Bible is insisting that we have understood things right and we have a proper understanding of that day as the Day of Judgment.  It was also the 13,023^rd year from creation and, that, too, has great significance, not to mention the 722,500 days from the cross, or the incredible number “breakdown” that provides and the doubling of that number.  So, God was continuing through this information to emphasize, “That was the day!” 

But then we looked around and there had been no earthquake.  Everything seemed to be continuing on as usual.  The world was still operating.  The believers were still here.  And, yet, because the Bible locked that date in, we were forced to come to certain conclusions:

1) If it is Judgment Day, but nothing happened physically or outwardly, therefore it must be a spiritual judgment.  We went back to the Bible, asking, “Does the Bible teach a spiritual judgment?”  The answer was, “Yes, it did, in many places.”  The major judgments in the Bible have been spiritual judgments, from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden with the judgment upon Adam and Eve.  God had said, “…in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”  They did not die physically in that day, but they died spiritually.  The judgment against Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and the judgment against the churches were also major spiritual judgments.  These were major judgments – they were not minor things.  They were spiritual, spiritual, spiritual, so we should have expected the judgment on the world to follow the same pattern.  So, that answered our question.  A spiritual judgment was not unbiblical – it was very Biblical.  There was strong Biblical precedent for looking for a spiritual judgment.

2) The next question after that was a stunner, and the question was: If it is Judgment Day and it is a spiritual judgment on the world, why are God’s elect still on the earth?  Then we started seeing all over the Bible that God’s plan was always to judge the righteous with the wicked.  There is one event unto all, as it says in Ecclesiastes a couple of times.  God is not a respecter of persons.  Of course, we should have known from the perspective of the sake of appearance and for the sake of the outward testimony and witness of the thing itself, so that none could charge, “You are not being fair.  Where are the others?  They should be here going through the same judgment process.”  God did bring all (people) before His judgment seat.  Then we saw that it said in 2Corinthians 5:10: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” and the word “we” could only refer to the elect.  If anyone would take the time to read the previous verses in the chapter, they would see the word “we” was used 13 times leading up to verse 10 and in every case the context refers only to the elect.  We, the elect, must appear before the judgment seat. 

So, we began learning again, and learning again.  Not only did we learn about a spiritual judgment, but we learned it was never God’s plan to rapture His people at the beginning of the prolonged judgment, but at the conclusion of the prolonged Judgment Day.  And that is another wonderful “new” truth that had never before been known.  And, of course, the whole idea of “appearing” had to do with the demonstration.  It is the same word translated as “manifest” that was used of the Lord Jesus as He entered the world to show forth His atoning work that was done at the foundation of the world.  God’s elect are also (in a tableau) involved in a demonstration before the judgment seat of Christ.

Then we learned about the judgment seat itself.  We have known for some time that in the Bible “to sit” has to do with ruling, so when we read of God seated upon the throne of judgment, it has to do with God’s rule over the world during the time of Judgment Day.  This is the reason Jesus appears, in Revelation 19, with a “rod of iron.”  I will read this verse, in Revelation 19:15:

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron…

That is, He will be seated upon the judgment throne, ruling the wicked of the earth with a “rod of iron.”  His rule is not for their welfare.  It will not be for their good, but it will be for the purpose of pouring out the wrath of God upon them.  And, again, the information began flowing forth from the Bible, as we learned that Satan had been put down and Christ is the one that is ruling the whole world at this time.  God’s plan for Babylon was its fall: “Babylon has fallen, has fallen.”  The world has fallen.  Then we began to see and to learn that a house divided falls.  We learned from the Bible that it was God’s plan to “divide” the world in the Day of Judgment. We look out at the world and there it is all around us, the incredible “division” everywhere we turn within the world’s institutions.  It confirms the Biblical evidence that God is performing a spiritual judgment on the world.

Again, this is “manna.”  It is manna from heaven.