Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #13 of Genesis, chapter 28, and we are going to read Genesis 28:12-15:

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; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

In our last study, we were looking at the word “ladder,” and that led us to the New Testament book of John.  I will read it again, where Jesus said in the last verse of the chapter, in John 1:51:

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.

We saw in this verse that God defines the word “ladder,” spiritually.   And we are not surprised that it is the Son of man, Jesus Christ, as many things in the Bible point to the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is actually pretty obvious when we think about it.  In Genesis 28, the Lord is giving Jacob an illustration that has to do with entering heaven or having access to heaven.  So He gave him a dream concerning a “ladder” that is set up upon the earth and it reached the top to heaven, and the word “top” is often translated as “head,” and we are not surprised because the ladder is picturing the Son of man, and Christ is the head of the eternal church, the body of Christ.  So Christ reaches from the earth to heaven, and JEHOVAH stood above.  He gives direct access into the kingdom of God and into the throne room of JEHOVAH God of the Bible, and Christ is the “bridge.”  He is the One who “comes between” man and God.  He is the propitiation for our sins, the “mercy seat” that covered over the Law.  He is the One that Job called the “days man” that he desired would come “betwixt” God and him.  Of course, Job was a picture of Christ there, and Christ had no “days man.”  He had to face the wrath of God directly as He bore the sins of His people.  But since our sins were cast upon Him, we have a “days man,” and it is Jesus who bore our sins and paid the penalty of death.  In so doing, He cleansed all sin from us and from Himself as He successfully paid the penalty the Law demanded, which was death.  With His atoning work, there is now restoration of the connection between God and certain people, the elect that were chosen before the foundation of the world and whose sins had been paid for then. 

And this ladder is there today for each one of God’s elect, in the sense that salvation has saved us and obtained for us access into heaven.  Turn to Ephesians 2:4-6:

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

He has raised us up.  Remember when I said the Hebrew word translated as “ladder,” which is only used one time, but there is a related word that is translated a few times as “raise up” or “exalt.”  And that is what Christ has done through salvation as He bestowed grace upon these few blessed individuals out of the whole of mankind.  We have been “raised up” with Christ as He quickened us together with Him.  To be “quickened” means to be “made alive.”  It says in Ephesians 2:5, “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ,” and we must ask, “Why would we be quickened together with Him?”  It is indicating that He was “dead,” and, likewise, made alive.  He was quickened with us.  It is because the foundation of the world was the point at which He bore our sins and the point of His death at the hands of Almighty God.  And Christ died and went into the grave, which is “hell.”  And, yet, being Eternal God, He wonderfully and mysteriously paid that penalty and then rose again from the dead.  The Father raised Him up and He came out of death or hell in the resurrection at the foundation of the world.  And, therefore, “This is the day which the Lord hath made.”  That is, the rising of Christ was the rising of the “sun” for the day of salvation, and He was the “day” declared at that point to be the Son of God, the firstborn from the dead, “that he might be the firstborn among many brethren,” as it tells us in Romans 8:29.   There would be many brethren that will follow Him.  So He was quickened, and since He was paying for our sins (which He did fully and completely as He made payment for sin for everyone He intended to save), He was “baptized” and the sins that He bore on our behalf were washed away at the same time, and we were quickened or made alive in that sense. 

And then it was just a matter of the application of it throughout the history of the world as elect would be born, and God would apply the shed blood of Christ to those individuals in their generation.  And upon the point of the application of the blood, which would be salvation, we were, in a figure, lifted up into the heavenlies seated in Christ Jesus.  We went from the earth where we had been dirty rotten sinners, and we were exalted or raised up into the heavenlies upon the Son of man, the Lord Jesus Christ – He was the ladder.  That is the transportation that John 1:51 is describing.  And, again, in John 1:51, we see that “order.”  I will read it again, John 1:51:

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.

As I mentioned before, the “angels” in this Scripture cannot be “angelic beings,” as we know that the Greek word (as well as the Hebrew word) translated as “angels” (ang'-el-os) can properly be translated as “messengers,” and it often should be translated that way.  So if these were the angelic beings or the spirit beings that God created and called “angels,” then we would expect the “order” of ascending and descending to be reversed, because they dwell in the spiritual kingdom of God.  And upon that ladder, we would expect that they would first descend and come down to earth for their visitation purpose, and then ascend.  Then it should read, “Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God descending and ascending upon the Son of man.”  But it does not read that way.  The order is to first ascend, and then to descend, and that is because it is not referring to spirit beings called “angels,” but it is referring to people as they became saved.  And at the moment of salvation, they become an “angel” in the sense that they have now become a messenger of God or a messenger of the Gospel.  So when they become saved, they are spiritually transported up the “ladder” of the Son of man (Jesus) and seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  Their citizenship is now in heaven, and they have legitimate residency in that heavenly kingdom.

But since they are still living human beings dwelling on the earth, God still has a task for them to perform.  So once the spiritual salvation (and all the wonderful blessings associated with it) is accomplished, they are instantly dispatched back to the earth to be messengers of God.  And throughout the “day of salvation,” which was in effect for most of earth’s history until May 21, 2011 when God completed His salvation program and began Judgment Day, when people became saved, God dispatched them instantly back to earth, sending them with the command which the Lord Jesus gave at the end of Matthew 28: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”  That is what it means to be sent.  The word “apostle” means “to be sent,” but so, too, is a messenger sent, and we are messengers of God as all previous elect were His messengers, and that is why we descended back down the ladder (Christ) to go forth as messengers.

In Ephesians 4 both words – ascend and descend – are use in describing the Lord Jesus, in Ephesians 4:8-10:

Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)

This is the reverse order because it is speaking of Jesus.  We are told that Jesus first descended.  As I said a little earlier, at the foundation of the world, the sins of the elect that were chosen to salvation were laid upon Christ, and God the Father struck Him dead, and He died and paid the penalty.  He “descended first into the lower parts of the earth,” which is a figure of speech to represent death and hell.  Keep in mind that “death” and “hell” are synonymous.  Hell simply means the grave.  Christ descended first, and then ascended on high, leading captivity captive.  This was looking ahead to what would happen when Satan would deceive mankind, take them captive, and they would be led into bondage to sin and Satan.  So being captive, Christ’s glorious work was to pay for their sins and to take captivity captive for those few that God had determined to save.  And for those few, we are now bondservants of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Apostle Paul often pointed out. 

So Jesus “descended” first from heaven above into the depths of hell, or death and the grave.  He paid the penalty and rose again.  So Jesus descended and ascended.  But, we, in the verse in John 51 and in Genesis 28, are on the earth, and we ascended to heaven, and then we descended to earth.  It is the reverse order, but it is understandable when we carefully consider why this is so.  And we actually see this illustrated in the Gospel accounts.  We will look at the account in Matthew (which also appears in Luke and Mark) when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.  We read in Matthew 3:16:

And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water…

The English translation “went up” is from the Greek word that is translated “ascend” or “ascended.”  It is Strong’s #305.  He ascended straightway out of the water.  But, you see, Christ is coming up, just as Ephesians 4:8 also first stated that He ascended up on high taking captivity captive, and in the following verse we are told that He first “descended,” and, of course, He had to descend first in order to rise.  God says, “when He was baptized,” and to be baptized He went down into the water.  That was the case with the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip in the book of Acts – they both went down into the water.  The spiritual meaning of baptism is to have one’s sins washed away.  And in order for Christ to have His sins washed away (which were the sins of His people), He had to descend into hell or into death, and through the descent, He made the payment and was “baptized.”  The sins were washed away from Him that He was bearing, and at the same time it washed away the sins of all God’s elect because they were our sins.

So, again, it says in Matthew 3:16:

And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him…

There, again, is the “bridge.”  He ascends into heaven, and He is the firstborn of many brethren.  The baptism of the Lord Jesus by John the Baptist is a picture or historical parable describing what took place at the foundation of the world.  We have all the elements: 1) Christ is baptized; and 2) He ascends out of the water (and we know the river Jordan can typify hell or the wrath of God.  And then notice what happens next in Matthew 3:16-17:

… and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Please notice the connection between the baptism of Jesus (going down into the water and then ascending up) and the Father making the proclamation, “This is my beloved Son.”  And keep in mind what we learned in Romans 1 regarding the Lord Jesus, in Romans 1:4:

And declared to be the Son of God with power…by the resurrection from the dead:

As Christ rose from the dead, the declaration was made.  He was declared to be the Son of God.  When Christ came up out of the river Jordan in the baptism, it is as if the sins were washed away as it is illustrating what happened at the foundation of the world when He came up out of hell and death, and God is declaring, “This is my firstborn Son – the firstborn from the dead.”  And He was the firstborn among many brethren.  Every time one of the elect had the Word applied to him and became saved in his soul and his sins were washed away, he followed the pattern set by Christ. 

And all the elect are following that pattern, as God at this time has turned all the nations into “hell” when He shut the door of heaven (on May 21, 2011).  He basically made the world into a graveyard, and now no one’s spiritual condition can be changed.  It is just like when someone died, and whatever spiritual condition they had at the point of death will remain that way forever.  Upon physical death, the righteous will remain righteous still, and upon physical death, the filthy (the unsaved) will forever be unsaved.  By shutting the door of heaven on May 21, 2011, God fixed or established everyone’s spiritual condition exactly as if we had all died,  and the righteous are righteous still, and the filthy are filthy still.  By doing that, He turned the world into “hell,” and, yet, time continues.  This period of time will last from May 21, 2011 to the year 2033, which is indicated by the Bible’s mounting evidence pointing to that year as the year the world will end, and it is a time we are living on the earth in the Day of Judgment, and we are following the pattern established by Christ.  God has positioned all His elect to be in the condition of “hell” until the last day, which is the day of the resurrection and Rapture.  And in the resurrection, those elect that have physically died come up out of the grave, do they not?  They come up out of the ground, and their bodies are changed into new spiritual bodies.

All the elect that are living physically are alive in our souls and, yet, we are in the condition of “hell” because that is the condition of the world, and we have been left on the earth to experience this, and we will also “come up” out of the world that is in the condition of “hell” or the grave  So it is the same picture, except we call it the Rapture for those (elect) that are physically alive.  But from God’s perspective, those that are physically dead in the grave and those that are physically alive living in the world in the condition of “hell” are both coming up from death to experience the resurrection that Christ experienced.  And we will receive that glorious declaration, “These are my beloved sons.  They have endured to the end.  They have endured chastisement unto the end, and they have proven to be sons.”  Or, to put it more accurately, God has proven us, and we are now the many brethren, following the firstborn, the Lord Jesus Christ.  And together, the family of God will turn their attention to the tremendous future God has in store for us in the new heaven and new earth, with eternal life filled with nothing but joy, peace and love, and all the ugliness of sin and death will be behind us.

This is the beautiful picture.  And when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, it is showing forth what happened at the foundation of the world.  And we see that He descends and ascends.  And in John 1:51, we ascend upon the “ladder,” and then we descend.

But there is another interesting part to this we will look at in our next study.  When we get to Judgment Day, there is no more “ascending.”  We do not have time right now, but that is what we will look at in our next study.