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

We know this is quoted in John 1 in the New Testament, 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.

The “ladder” is the Son of man.  This is how God wrote the Bible.  He uses types and figures and parabolic language that conceals the hidden truth, which is the “mystery,” and this mystery is the language of the kingdom of God, the spiritual language that underlies all Scripture.  It is the language of God Himself, and God would have us to develop that spiritual vocabulary, and that is why Christ spoke in parables: “The kingdom of heaven is like…;” or, “the field is the world;” or “that rock was Christ.”

And the “ladder” is the Son of man.  And we know that Christ, the Son of man, is the Word made flesh.  The Word of God is that which gives access from earth to heaven for God’s elect people.

We have been thinking about this and looking at how God uses the words “ascend” and “descend.”  And we discussed that during the day of salvation when people were saved, we entered into heaven to be seated in Christ Jesus.  The Word of God brought us up and gave us heavenly citizenship in Christ, and then we were immediately dispatched and sent back to the earth with the message of the Gospel.  We became “messengers” or “angels” of God, and as messengers, we went forth and shared the Gospel within that timeframe of the day of salvation.

And, yet, when we get to Revelation 11 (as we did in our last study), we see that the “two witnesses” were slain when the beast, a type of Satan, came up.  It says in Revelation 11:7:

And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.

It is interesting that the beast “ascends” out of the bottomless pit, and he would have had to have been put into or descended into that bottomless pit.  So this idea of “ascending” and “descending” and “descending” and “ascending” is really a central theme in the Bible.  Regarding the Lord Jesus Christ, He descended into the lower parts of the earth, as we read in Ephesians, and then He ascended, bringing captivity captive.  That is God’s salvation program.  Then when the Lord Jesus went to the cross (in 33 A. D.), He bound Satan in the bottomless pit, descending Satan down into a pit.  Then at the time of the end, He loosed him and Satan, who is called the beast, ascended out of the bottomless pit. He came up, and immediately made war with the “two witnesses,” which represent Moses and Elijah or the witness of the Word of God within the churches and congregations.  And since their testimony is finished and their time has elapsed…and God’s program is a program of “times and seasons…so, of course, if the time had not elapsed, Satan would not have been loosed and, secondly, he would have had no power over the Word of God, the two witnesses, and their ministry.  Satan had come often against God’s witness within the congregations, and God would only allow him to come so far, and no further.  But then at the end of the church age, that period of witnessing was finished.  God’s Spirit departed out of the churches, and Satan’s spirit entered in, which resulted in the death of the two witnesses.  The churches still had the Word of God, the Bible, but it was now an empty thing.  They had Bibles in the pulpit and Bibles in the pews, and they preached from the same Bible as they had preached when the church age was still active, but now the time had come and the Bible had no power because it required the Spirit of God to bless the Word to produce the “hearing” and salvation in sinners that were God’s elect.  So it was no longer possible from May 21, 1988 until the end of time for there to be any more salvation in the corporate churches, and the dead bodies, and it is interesting that God refers to the dead bodies of the two witnesses.  We know it is speaking of the witness of the Word of God, the Bible, but He uses a Greek word “ptōma,” and it is used five times in the New Testament.   It is used three times in the two verses here, and it is used one time in Matthew 24:28, where it says, “For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”  And that is also in the context of the Great Tribulation.  And the final time it is found is in Mark 6:29 regarding John the Baptist’s “headless corpse,” and in that case it is a similar figure of John being a church without a “head,” without Christ.  And that is the case here in Revelation 11.  Once the Spirit of Christ departed (the “daily” was taking away) from the churches, the abomination of desolation was set up as the beast entered in to stand in the holy place where he ought not be – and the churches were without a head.  Without a head, you cannot see and you cannot hear, so it really pictures having “no life,” so that is why in Revelation 13 we read of the beast coming up out of the earth, and an image was made to the beast, and the image was given “life” to speak, but it was not from God.  It was from Satan, who had the churches made after his image, which was deceitful and spiritually dead.  Anyway, this word “ptōma” is used to let us know that Christ was no longer present.

Then we read in Revelation 11:11:

And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.

The spirit of life from God entered into the two witnesses, but not in those within the churches and congregations of the world.  It was not there.  There are enormous amounts of information in the Bible that reveals to us that the churches were not the location – the Latter Rain fell outside of the churches and congregations, and that is where God began to minister His Word and saved the great multitude saved out of Great Tribulation.  We see this in the language that “they stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon them which saw them.”  This had to do with bringing the Word to the Gentiles.  The word for “Gentiles” is also the word for “nations,” and that is where God was operating to save. 

So we would expect some kind of concluding statement regarding the Great Tribulation, and we do get it in a veiled way in Revelation 11:12:

And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.

We are not surprised to find that great fear fell upon their enemies when they saw the two witnesses stand on their feet because, again, that was “life” from God that energized the Word of God once again, and the Spirit was poured out a second time to recover the remnant of the people of God whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  And what happened in salvation?  From one moment to the next, for each one of God’s elect, they heard the Word – they saw a billboard; they received a tract; they listened to the radio; or maybe they even heard a news report.  But they heard the Word of God in one way or another during the time leading up to the close of the Great Tribulation, and God saved them.  And, finally, by the date of May 21, 2011, all to be saved were saved, and they (collectively) were the great multitude: “And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither.”  Now this particular Scripture has been misunderstood, as many thought this taught the Rapture.  So, here is the Latter Rain and here are those “standing upon their feet,” and they were saved, and great fear fell upon them that saw them, “And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.”  You see, this was one of those verses that had us thinking that on May 21, 2011 (after the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit was complete and the Latter Rain had fallen), God would then immediately “bring up” His people.  He would rapture us, and then He would judge the unsaved.

And, if you remember, Mr. Camping, during the last few years leading up to May 21, 2011, would often say that a big part of the torment for the unsaved people left behind would be that they would “see” God’s people leave the earth.  They would witness the Rapture, and they would witness the Resurrection because at that time Mr. Camping thought – as most of us did – that that the Resurrection would take place and the elect in the graves would rise up, and then would be the Rapture, because that is the order put forth in 1Thessalonians 4.  And the bodies of the unsaved would be thrown out of the graves and be scattered upon the earth, and that would cause the earth to become an ugly, open graveyard.  And there would be shame and degradation over the course of a literal five months of Judgment Day.  I am just recounting what we once believed would happen, but it did not happen.  The Resurrection of the dead did not happen, and the Rapture did not happen, but Judgment Day did happen, but we had those two particular points – the Resurrection and Rapture – out of order.  We had understanding of a prolonged Judgment Day, but we thought it was a literal five months instead of the five months being a figurative reference to the entire duration of the “second tribulation,” the Judgment on the world.  Since then, we have learned from the Biblical evidence of a 22-year (23-year inclusive) judgment on the inhabitants of the earth, and that actually fits much better, following the pattern of other timelines in the Bible.

But, anyway, the error was in putting the Rapture and Resurrection on the first day of the prolonged Day of Judgment.  And now we have learned that they will occur on the last day of the prolonged judgment, whatever day that will be in the year 2033.  That will be the last day of this 23-year inclusive period, and then comes the end.  And the Bible does say, “And I will raise him up on the last day,” so it is the last day of earth’s existence.  So it is just a matter of moving the Rapture and Resurrection from the first day of the judgment to the last day, and once we make that adjustment…and, really, it is an understandable adjustment to make, is it not?  If there is Judgment Day, there is a beginning point and a concluding point because it is a prolonged period of time.  It is understandable to have thought that everything was going to happen right away, but once that day came and passed and we reached May 22, 2011, it began to dawn on us.  We began to see some enlightenment concerning God’s judgment program.  It began in earnest at that point and over the last few years, the revelation of God’s righteous judgment program has been opening up more and more.  That had been a point of stumbling on our part.  We could not grab hold of some of these things.  And, oftentimes, it is only when we go beyond a major milestone in God’s program - as we are limited finite creatures, even though we are elect – that we are then able, by the grace of God, to comprehend and understand what really happened.  It is just like it took Christ having gone to the cross and dying and then rising from the dead and coming back to instruct the disciples in the things He had meant when He said, “In three days I will rise again.”  They did not understand it until He showed Himself alive with proofs.  They only understood after the fact – they did not understand before Jesus went to the cross.  Afterwards, they could look back and say, “Oh, yes, He said it directly.” 

But the spiritual eyes or the understanding of God’s people are completely under the control of God, so God says things very directly at times concerning His judgment program, but we could not grab hold of it until we passed a point, and until we saw that the Bible was unwavering and had locked in the date of May 21, 2011 as Judgment Day.  No matter how we look at it, the timelines are accurate.  The information is accurate.  There was no error made in that way, so the Bible was insistent.  Yes – it is the Day of Judgment.  Then we went back to God and the Bible and we said, “Yes, but nothing happened, Lord.  There was no great earthquake.  There was no resurrection of the dead, and the ground did not open.  There was no Rapture and we are still here on the earth on May 22, 2011.  Does that not mean we were wrong?”  You see, on one point, the Bible insists it was Judgment Day, May 21, 2011!   But on this other aspect of our understanding, like a physical earthquake and the Resurrection and Rapture, and a five months literal period, we were wrong.  OK, but we were not wrong about Judgment Day, so how does this all work itself out?  And then the Bible began to bring forth more information, and it has been flowing ever since, and we learned about spiritual judgment and a prolonged judgment.  It is just like the Great Tribulation, which was a spiritual and prolonged judgment.  And so the cup given to the nations would be an identical cup.  And why are the elect still here and there was no Rapture?  It is because we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.  It is a trial.  It is a severe testing program, and so on, as we continue to learn enormous amounts of (new) information regarding God’s end time judgment program.

Having learned all this, we are able to understand when we read a verse like Revelation 11:12:

And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.

This is referring to God’s salvation program of the great multitude,  and what about this ascending up to heaven?  Well, as Jesus told Nathaniel, “Hereafter (from now), you will see angels of God ascending and descending.”  But they never saw this literally.  They did not see literal angels because they are invisible anyway, but they also never saw God’s elect, the messengers of God, ascending upon a ladder.  It was a spiritual reference to those God would save and then send forth with the Gospel.  Here, Revelation 11:12 fits in the same way – it is a spiritual reference to the ones God has saved.  They have risen upon the “ladder,” ascending into heaven to be seated in Christ Jesus.  Their lives are hid with God.  But that is it, and there is no dispatching or being sent back down because the evangelization program for the earth is finished.  It is over.  There is no more salvation.

So this idea is illustrated by them ascending up to heaven in a cloud and their enemies beheld them, just like what Jesus said to the high priest of Israel in Matthew 26:64:

Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

The high priest never saw that literally, but he heard the reports of the risen Christ.  He heard the report of the disciples and the continuing miraculous healings that Peter was able to do for a time, as God was proving and confirming that they were disciples of Christ and the Spirit of Christ was in them.  He confirmed these things through the elect of the 1^st Century for a short while.  Then when the Bible was completed, those miraculous workings also ceased.  But the high priest was hearing these reports.  He was hearing the Word of God.  He was hearing the message of the Bible.  And, so, too, when all the elect this great multitude, went up into heaven spiritually through salvation, their enemies “beheld them.”  Their enemies heard the report of these things.  It does not mean they saw it with their physical eyes, but they heard the reports that a great and effectual door had opened up, and the message to go to God and beseech the Lord for mercy (leading up to May 21, 2011).   And, finally, I am sure God saved much of the great multitude right before He shut the door of heaven, and their enemies beheld them, as it were, because God’s Word was saving right before their eyes, even though “seeing, they saw not.”  And, yet, God still reckons them as having “seen” these things.

Then in the following verse, it says in Revelation 11:13:

And the same hour was there a great earthquake…

It was not literal, but spiritual.  And we will not get into that at this time, but on May 21, 2011 there was a “great earthquake” in the spiritual realm, as it goes on to say in Revelation 11:13-15:

…and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly. And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ…

We are going to continue looking at Christ’s coming in judgment with a shout and the sound of a trumpet, and we will see how that relates to this ascending and descending at this time for God’s people.