Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #16 of Genesis, chapter 28, and we are continuing 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.

In our last couple of studies, we have been reading in Revelation 11, and we have spent some time discussing who the two witnesses are, and what it means that they were killed, and their dead bodies lay in the streets.  Then after three and an half days, they rose up, and the spirit of life from God entered into them, and then great fear fell upon them that saw them.  This was the proclamation of the Gospel that went out over the second part of the Great Tribulation leading up to May 21, 2011, and during that time God saved the great multitude outside of the churches and congregations of the world.  Their salvation is illustrated 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.

They ascended up, and that is exactly what Jesus said to Nathaniel.  We have been talking about how this is what happens, spiritually, in salvation.  The only difference is that in Revelation 12, it says they ascended up to heaven in a cloud, but it does not say that they descended.  It only says they ascended up.  There was no dispatching or sending of them back to earth, in this context, because God is making a point.  And that point is that the salvation of the elect has come to an end.  He has completed it, and He has done what He said He would do.

You know, the Bible speaks of a Lamb’s Book of Life, and the names of all those that were chosen and predestinated before the foundation of the world were recorded in that book.  Christ paid for the sins of everyone whose name was written in that book.  God applied the blood of Christ to each one through the hearing of the Gospel at some point in their lives as they lived in the world throughout history, until May 21, 2011.  They heard the Word, and God blessed the Word and saved them, and then they “ascended up” in salvation, and up until that day they would descend as messengers of the Gospel.  After that date, there would be no more individuals descending because they would have received their access and have been seated with Christ in the heavenlies.  So the process of “ascending and then descending,” as far as evangelization was concerned, stopped.  You cannot get any more salvation than the salvation of everyone that God intended to save.

You see, that is the “hair-pulling” problem of the people that say, “It is cruel and hard-hearted for you to say that God stopped saving people on May 21, 2011.”  They just do not understand – it is not penetrating their thick skulls. (And we all have thick skulls to some degree.)  But it has to get through  to them that God only obligated Himself to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  That is what Christ said.  “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”   It was exclusive.  He was never sent to every human being in every nation of the world throughout all time.  Never.  It has always targeted the elect, the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  And once God saved the last of these lost sheep and brought them safely into the fold of the kingdom of heaven, then there was no further purpose to send forth the Gospel (unto salvation).  It had accomplished its mission.  It had done what God intended it to do, and that was it.  Hallelujah!   Praise be to God. 

That idea sounds depraved to some: “Oh, it is terrible – no more salvation.”  But what the Bible is really telling us is that on May 21, 2011, God had accomplished the utmost in salvation;  that is, God had saved all that were to be saved.  How does that verse go?  It says in 2Peter 3:9:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

I think this is an excellent verse to highlight the exact error that so many make as they profess to be true believers that understand the true Gospel.  They profess to recognize God as Sovereign Lord who has an election program.  And, yet, at the time of the end, God was doing something that exalts that very idea of His being Sovereign God, and that it was never man’s free will that got people saved – it has always been salvation by the sovereign decree of the One seated upon the throne.  Can you think of a better way for God to bring glory to Himself concerning His salvation program than to complete it while leaving just a little time left for this earth to play out afterwards in this prolonged period of Judgment Day?  And during the time leading up to Judgment Day, He did everything He said He would do, and He has saved everyone whose name was recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  He was not willing that any of them should perish, as this verse is pointing to, so He was longsuffering and patient up until May 21, 2011 when the last of the elect did become saved: “He was not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”  And all His elect have come to repentance in our hearts, and we have all received new, born-again souls, which is what the Bible intends for those that God brings to repentance, and that flow of iniquity that came from the heart of man is completely turned from in salvation.  It is true repentance, and God is the One who has done it, so all glory to God.  He is faithful.  He is just.  He is righteous. 

And now He has a designed a judgment program which will work itself out over a matter of a few years, which is insignificant because eternity will come immediately at the conclusion of these few years.  This time does no harm to God’s elect.  Yes – we are being severely tried, but it is only a temporal affliction, and although the tribulation is severe in the time we live on the earth, it is soon to be forgotten for evermore.  So it is really of no significance to God’s elect, as God works out His judgment program for all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth.

And on top of it all, He is able to say to those that have perverted the Gospel of grace (salvation by the faith of Christ alone), “The door is shut.”  It is a sovereign decree, and with that statement, God gets all the glory for salvation.  You see, the problem has been that man has always said, “Yes, I believe in grace, but we have to believe.”  That is what many Reformers say: “It is all by grace.  It is by election, but you have to believe.”  There is that little bit of man’s work that they slip in.   Then there are the free will gospels that are more upfront about it: “You have to believe.  You have to walk down the aisle.  You have to repent, and do this and that.”  They all have their “twists” on how man can participate and contribute: “You have to be baptized.  You have to partake of the Lord’s Supper.  You have to do this, and you have to do that.”  Work, work, work.  But the Bible has always said that it is all God’s work: “Salvation is of the Lord.”  It is Sovereign God’s business.  He gets all the glory in the matter of salvation because He has done all the work.  Man does not contribute anything.  Man’s only role is that of a “dead, stinking corpse.”  And the Gospel has been so horribly changed and perverted.  God’s “rest” has been violated again, and again, and again, so at the end, God got great glory by purifying the Gospel that went forth to save the great multitude.

But, finally, we should also note that as these free will churches are now saying, “We got thousands saved, and they have accepted Christ,” the Bible is now saying, “Nobody was saved.  The door was shut on May 21, 2011.”  And when the Reformed Church comes along and says, “It is all grace and all election, but we had some that have recently professed their faith,” and the Bible says, “Oh, no, you did not.  There is no more ongoing salvation.  The door was shut on May 21, 2011.”  Or, when both factions combine and come together and say, “We had this many baptized and this many that partook of the Lord’s Table, which imparts grace in a mysterious way.”  And, of course, they do not want to define it because they know they are saying more than the Bible allows, as the Lord’s Supper and water baptism were only ceremonial signs that were pointing to deeper spiritual realities of salvation.  Of themselves, they are nothing.  Water baptism is just water, and it never took away sin.  Partaking of a cracker and some grape juice to remember the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ never imparted grace to anyone.  God took care of those ceremonial laws with the judgment on the churches.  But when they try to imply that God is imparting some grace to them, the Bible says, “No.  No.  No.”  God’s judgment came on the churches, and in addition to that, on May 21, 2011 God shut the door on the whole world. 

You see, deep down in their hearts, men have always been rebels, but some have been rebels that had some intellectual understanding of the Gospel of grace.  There have been rebels that called themselves true believers.  There have been rebels that listened to Family Radio and followed (the teaching) of Mr. Camping, but they remained rebels in heart all along.  And, finally, at the end they are insisting, “There must be continued salvation.”  They stubbornly refuse, and they stick their fingers in their ears at any other idea.  They will not check out what the Bible says.  They will not listen to EBible Fellowship studies.  It is not in the realm of possibilities for them to consider that God would shut the door, having saved everyone to be saved, or for God to have this end time period of time to test them.  “No way.  No way.”  You see, it is bringing to the surface the rebellious nature of their hearts. 

That was the whole point in the book of Jeremiah regarding a certain remnant.  The Babylonians had set up a governor over them, and the governor was slain, they wanted to flee down into Egypt.  And this remnant went to Jeremiah, “Go to the Lord, and whatever He tells us, we will do!”  They seemed so faithful and ready to obey.  God waited 10 days, and then He gave the message to Jeremiah to them not to go down into Egypt.  Then their true nature came through even more: “We will do whatever we want to do!”  That is basically what they told Jeremiah, and they even wanted to offer cakes unto the queen of heaven.  It was rebellion, but now it was not even covered up by giving lip service to obeying whatever God has said, or giving lip service to the idea that they were “the remnant.”  So this is what God has done, and these things are coming to the surface, and they will continue to come to the surface over this time period.

Anyway, here in Revelation 11, the great multitude ascend up to heaven in a cloud, and a “cloud” can represent the Lord Jesus, as He is the Word, and the “cloud” identifies with the Word of God, the commandments of God.  They ascend up through the Word.  It is just like the picture of the “ladder” as the Son of man, with the angels of God ascending and descending upon Him.  And the “cloud” also identifies with judgment, so that message of judgment lifted up that great multitude, and the whole world heard, so “their enemies beheld them.”

Then it says the second woe is past and the third woe comes quickly, and then it says in Revelation 11:15:

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; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

And, again, this is something that is just tremendous.  It is something wonderful and incredible that God had kept in reserve until our time.  You know, we had always heard the Premillennial preachers and theologians and the commentaries they have written where they long for the millennial reign of Christ on this earth: “Jesus is going to come and reign for a thousand years.”  They had all kinds of things associated with that regarding the church and the nation of Israel, and much of it was completely erroneous and false.  However, they had one big truth that the Amillennialists, like the Reformed churches, missed, which is that the Bible does teach that Christ would reign over the earth for a period of time.  Their big mistake is thinking it would be a literal thousand years, and that was not even close and not even in the realm of possibility.  But Christ did come as Judge, spiritually, and set up His judgment throne.  Only a king sits upon a throne to judge and, in this case, He is one and the same.  Christ has put down the rule of Satan.  He has deposed him and taken over the rule of everything that Satan had previously ruled over.  That is why there are three instances where we find Jesus called “KING of kings and LORD of lords,” it is always in the context of Judgment Day and His appearing.  So He has come and put down Satan, and He has taken His seat to rule the nations with a rod of iron, and to rule over the corporate churches because Satan had defeated the churches and they became a province of his kingdom, as typified by Babylon.  Of course, Christ is not reigning in the churches like He did previously when His Spirit was in the midst of the congregations, but He is reigning to punish the churches, just as He is reigning to punish all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth.  It is not a benevolent rule.  It is one of wrath.

So we have begun to learn this glorious information and this glorious truth that Jesus is presently ruling over the earth.  This is wondrous!  This is a tremendous truth that God’s people have been given, as the Lord has opened it up to our understanding as we have been learning one thing after another, like Judgment Day being locked in; like it being a prolonged spiritual judgment; and the elect appearing before the judgment seat.  One conclusion follows another, once we have that basic understanding that it is Judgment Day itself, and then we see this glorious fact come forth from the Bible.  We have been learning much more about this over the last several months.  But, again, it is as the seventh angel sounded.  Angels  “five, six and seven” are the same as the “three woes.”  They are the ones we read about back in Revelation 8:13:

And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!

They were yet to sound, so the seventh angel has sounded.  The three angels have sounded simultaneously, and they began to sound on May 21, 2011. 

Now if we turn back to Revelation 10, the Lord gives us a Scripture verse that I was confused about for some time, but now it fits in with everything we have been learning.  It says in Revelation 10:7:

But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

It is in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, and we will look later at why there is a “voice” of the seventh angel as he is sounding a trumpet.  To reveal that particular secret, the “trumpet” is the Word of God.  There is a Bible verse in Revelation 1 where John heard behind him Christ’s voice “as the sound of a trumpet.”  And Christ is the Word.  Again, it says, “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound,” and the word “begin” is a Greek word, “mellō,” and is used in Revelation 4:10 where it says, “I was about to write.”  Therefore, when the seventh angel shall be about to sound, the mystery of God shall be finished. 

And what previously confused me was that I struggled with thinking this was all mysteries in the sense of parables, as Jesus said, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given,” and I thought, “Well, God is continuing to bring forth many hidden things.  He is still revealing many mysteries.  And the definition of a parable is that which hides truth, and the revealing of hidden truth is the understanding of the parable.  But if the mystery is finished, then God should not be bringing forth more hidden truth.”  But my mistake was in not recognizing that the word “mystery” is singular in Revelation 10:7, whereas in Matthew 13:11, the “mysteries of the kingdom” is plural: “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven…”  And the Apostle Paul had a “mystery” (singular) revealed, that the Gentiles would be fellowheirs with the Jews.  And, here, too, in Revelation 10:7, it is a mystery (singular) that is finished.  But what mystery?  It could be any of dozens because the whole Bible is a parable with many hidden truths.

But in this case, the “mystery” that is finished we can understand to refer back to Romans 11:25-26:

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved…

So, in this case, the mystery was that not all Israel are the Jews or physical descendants of Abraham, but it would include Gentiles.  “that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.”  So (in this manner) all Israel shall be saved.  That is the mystery, and it was a mystery that identifies with salvation, and not only with salvation, but with the salvation of “all Israel,” so when the angel was about to sound, the mystery of the salvation of all of spiritual Israel was finished.