Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #12 of Genesis, chapter 28, and we are going to read Genesis 28:10-13:
And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, JEHOVAH stood above it, and said, I am JEHOVAH God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;
I will stop reading there. We were talking about the word “dreamed” and how it identifies with those that God gave divine revelation to and with those that claim to have received divine revelation from God and, yet, the dreams they dreamed were not from God.
It is the same thing today with those that teach other gospels and other doctrines that are false gospels and false doctrines. They say that it is what the Bible says, and they are saying, “This is from God.” But it is not from God. So this problem of people taking the Word of God of God into their mouth and proclaiming things that God has not said is not something new to our time of the end. No – it has been around through the history of the world since man fell into sin. But, of course, it is tremendously increased in our time at the end of the world because of the population explosion and the billions of people on the earth. And the professed Christians number about two billion people. Those are the “many” that were called, but few were chosen. God had commanded all those that named the name of Christ to come out of the churches, and all the elect hearkened to that command. And to hearken means to listen and obey. And we did come out, but there were some others that came out who were not elect. But as far as that commandment to come out at the time of the end, it acted as a mechanism to separate the wheat and tares, and it did an amazing job by leaving all the tares behind in the churches, bundled as tares for the burning. That is, they were cast into the fire of Judgment Day, once it began on May 21, 2011.
But that is not the area we wanted to talk about, as we want to look at the rest of verse 12 in Genesis 28. Jacob dreamed, and through this dream God gave him a parabolic scene where he beheld a ladder set up on the earth, and the top if it reached to heaven. As I mentioned before, it is not the first heaven of the blue skies; it is not the second heaven of outer space; but it must be the third heaven because the top of it reached heaven and JEHOVAH stood above it. And that means it went into His kingdom, the spiritual realm, because Heaven is a spiritual realm of existence, and that is why we cannot see it.
When mankind rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden, God struck us dead in our soul existence because we were all in the loins of Adam. Mankind died in his soul existence. We were dead to spiritual things. Our close, intimate relationship with God, who is Spirit, was broken, and man became “dark,” and dead in trespasses and sins, disconnected from spiritual life.
Only those few elect that God determined to save would have their souls restored and the spiritual connection to God restored once again, and our souls were enlightened. So we now had eyes to see and ears to hear, and the ability to understand the truths the Bible presents, because the Bible is a spiritual book. According to Romans 7:14, “the law is spiritual.” And the whole Bible is the Law of God.
So God, who is Spirit wrote a book that is spiritual, and even though it is written in paper and ink bound in a physical book, its message is spiritual, and that message is written in the language of His Kingdom, the spiritual kingdom of heaven. So the unsaved that are dead in spirit cannot perceive it. They cannot hear it, which is why Jesus spoke in parables, and without a parable He did not speak. That is also why He said, in speaking to the elect, “It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” Hearing, they hear not, and seeing, they see not. That is the nature of the natural man. The natural man may be, perhaps, a very nice person in the world, but in his soul, he is dead – a corpse that cannot hear. So God sealed up a great deal of information in the Bible until the time of the end. The fact that it was sealed up means it is hidden, and to be hidden means it is “mysterious.” And that is the definition of a parable, “that which hides truth.” God sealed it up in parabolic form in the Bible, and at the time of the end He opened it.
So when the Bible makes statements like it does in Matthew 24, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation…stand in the holy place, Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains,” it is a parable. It is completely a parabolic statement. The “abomination of desolation” must be identified by comparing Scripture with Scripture, and once wo do that, we realize it is Satan. And Judaea is a type and figure of the corporate church. The people of God that were in the churches at the time of the end when Satan was loosed to enter into the corporate church to rule as the man of sin were to flee and come out of the churches. We were to “go the mountains,” and the Bible tells us in a Psalm that the Lord God is around about Jerusalem as the mountains, so we were to go to God, and the way to God is through the Bible. So we were to leave the churches and go to the Bible. You see, that was all sealed up in a parable, and only at the time of the end could it possibly have been understood.
God has an uncanny ability to reveal truth in its proper time and season, as He did regarding the mystery about the Gentiles, and He revealed it to the believers in the 1st Century. The Apostle Paul said, “He made known unto me a mystery…that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs,” with the Jews. And, yet, this had been written about in the Old Testament in many Scriptures. From our perspective now, it is plain as day, but it was not understood until the (proper) time.
Likewise, the things sealed were kept safe by God; that is, they could not be known until the time of the end. And we have entered into the time of the end of the world, and we have been in that time since 1988, the 13,000th year of earth’s history, the time when the church age came to an end, and the end stage of this world began with the Great Tribulation. And now we have already gone through the Great Tribulation and we are in Judgment Day itself, but the revelation of hidden truths continues because we are still in the time of the end, and God is opening up these things continually to the understanding of His people.
Again, it says in Genesis 28:12:
… and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
This is our task as Bible students, as God commands us to search the Scriptures. We are to compare Scripture with Scripture. We are to study to shew ourselves approved.
But, first, it is God’s glory to “hide a word,” according to Proverbs 25, and it is the “honour of kings to search out a word.” And it certainly occupies our time, and it could certainly occupy any free time we have from now to the end of the world, as it has done throughout its history. This book is just so incredible, and it possesses such depths of knowledge and wisdom that it is beyond man’s ability in our finite nature to come to thoroughly understand everything the Bible says. As we read and study the Bible…and I have been doing this for decades and, yet, it is just a little insight over here and over there. Yes, on the whole, we have understood tremendous amounts of information, but there is still so much where we just have to say, “I do not know what that means.” It is just an incredible book in how God has written it.
Anyway, again, it says, “and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.” Recently I had to go up on my roof. Our neighbor’s tree hangs over our roof and the pine needles fall on the roof and they clog the corner drain, and then the water does not drain, and it seeps under the seal and seeps into one of the bedrooms. So I went to Home Depot and got a ladder, and my son and I went up on the roof. So this is very vivid for me with this idea of setting up a ladder. And there are certain safeguards you have to do when you set up a ladder. You have to find level, firm ground, and you have to set it at a certain distance from the wall – not too far away and not too close. And, of course, it has to rest against the top where you want to go, and it actually should extend three feet above, but mine did not go that high. It was right up against the top. And you are always having to lean the ladder against a building or something.
But, here, the ladder is set up on the earth, and it is not leaning against anything. It would be pointing straight up, but the top or head of it reached to heaven. You know, we cannot help because we are “flesh and blood” as we try to visualize this, we would picture this in our minds as just a tremendously high ladder going up into the clouds and beyond, and then into space, and going on and on. But we can never visualize the point where it finally gets to heaven where God is, but God is just illustrating the point that men are upon earth. And Jacob is on the earth, and God is in heaven. He is our Father which art in heaven. And in this dream, there is a ladder that enables one on earth to reach the glorious One in heaven above, and then there are angels of God that ascend and descend upon it. They are going up, then down the ladder.
Now we will think about that a little later, especially the order (ascent and then descent) where angels ascend and then descend. And there are angelic beings that are called “angels,” but if these were angelic, we would expect the order be reversed because angelic beings reside in heaven above. So if a ladder is set up, they should be coming down or descending, and then ascending. But, it says, “angels of God ascending and descending,” so there are “angels” on earth that go up first, and then come down. And that is an important thing for us to look at regarding the order of ascending and descending because that will help us understand who the angels are, but first we have to understand the “ladder.”
Of course, it is not an actual ladder. You could not get a ladder that would be high enough. If you had an actual ladder and you tried to set it up without leaning it against something, it would fall down. If you had an actual ladder, and you were trying to go into the “third heaven,” which is the spiritual kingdom of God, your ladder is “physical” and the physical cannot enter into the spiritual realm.
So all of these things teach us that is not an actual ladder, but it points to something else. Normally, when God gives us a Word in the Bible, we search it out and see how it is used elsewhere. But this Hebrew word for ladder, which is Strong’s #5551, is only found in this verse. Strong’s Concordance says there is a related word, but they do not have exactly the same consonants, but there is similarity, so I think that it is a related word. It is Strong’s #5549, and that word is sometimes translated as “raise up” or “exalt,” and that just helps us to see that it has to do with “going up,” if something is raised up or exalted. But in this case (and it does not always happen), we are greatly helped because the Lord Jesus Christ quotes this verse in the New Testament in John 1, and we will find that Jesus was referring to what we are reading in Genesis 28, as He was speaking to Nathaniel. He told Nathaniel that He saw him when he was under the fig tree, and then it says in John 1:49-51:
Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
So we can clearly see the tie-in with Genesis 28:12: “Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” This is exactly what we are reading in our verse in Genesis 28. Let me read it again, in Genesis 28:12:
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
Jesus was referring to that verse, but He changed something in a major way. And, of course, He is basically defining for us what the Old Testament word “ladder” means, spiritually. That is why I said He is greatly helping us, as He is teaching us, once again, how to understand the Bible. When Christ was speaking a parable, He would explain the parable to His disciples, and Genesis 28:12 is a parable about a “ladder” being set up to heaven, and that is the only place the Old Testament uses that word “ladder.”
Again, let me read it: “Hereafter ye shall see heaven open…” By the way, the word “see” is the word that is used in Matthew 24:30 when “immediately after the tribulation,” it says, “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” They will “see” it. EBible Fellowship has taught for several years that this means to “see” with spiritual eyes – we are not going to see it literally or physically. But “clouds” have to do with the commandments or the Bible. We “see” it on the pages of the Bible. It is the “revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” That is what the Bible is revealing, and it is why Jesus said in John 12:48: “…the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.” That is, the Word is declaring, showing, and revealing the judgment, as it says in Luke 17:30 in the context of final judgment, “…in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”
So, here, Christ is saying, “Hereafter,” and that word means “from now,” and He was speaking to Nathaniel in 33 A. D. Again, it says, “Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” I cannot recall any other Scripture where “angelic beings” are ascending and descending upon the Son of man, who is Jesus Himself. (If anyone can think of a verse, I would be glad for you to give us a call during our Q & A.) But the way Jesus said it, it appears to be something that will commonly take place and it is going to happen repeatedly – angels will ascend and descend “from now.” And, yet, we do not see that recorded in the Bible literally in that way. Christ is saying that it will be “seen with eyes of faith,” as so many things are while we live in this world on the earth. We see God, who is Spirit, with eyes of faith. We believe He exists and that His Word is altogether faithful. We see the kingdom of heaven, and every other truth, with eyes of faith. So that is what Jesus is saying. You will see it happen, but before then, we just have to understand who the “angels” are, and what the ascending and descending means.
We will try to get to this in the next study because we are running out of time. But for now, it is important for us to notice that the word “ladder” is not found John 1:51. What name has been substituted here for the word “ladder”? In Genesis 28:12, the angels of God ascend and descend on a “ladder,” but in John 1:51, the angels are ascending and descending (in a continual manner) on the Son of man. It makes perfect sense, and it is a beautiful picture.
You see, man’s problem is that when he fell into sin, he lost connection with God above, who is Spirit. Man, fallen creature, became dead in spirit. Then the Lord Jesus Christ, in God’s magnificent salvation program, bridged the gap, and He is the One who would connect man – only certain men, the elect – with God once again. So Christ, who died for these elect and paid for our sins, is the “bridge” that was set up on the earth, allowing mankind to ascend up into heaven.