Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #18 of Genesis, chapter 28, and we are still reading 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 study, we were discussing the last three trumpets, the three “woes,” and the last trumpet itself, how the Lord Jesus comes with a shout and the sound of a trumpet, as it says in 1Thessalonians 4. In that chapter we are told that He would descend from heaven with a shout and the sound of a trumpet, and from there we went to Revelation 18:1-2. We saw that the reference to Babylon’s fall ties it in with Judgment Day, and then it said in Revelation 18:1:
And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven…
The Greek word translated as “come down” is the word translated as “descend” in John 1:51, where the angels of God are ascending and descending. And it is the word used in 1Thessalonians 4 where the Lord would descend from heaven. So it is saying the same thing here in Revelation 1:18:
And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
There are several Scriptures that indicate that at the time of Christ’s coming, it is a time of great glory. We saw that in Matthew 25, but in Matthew 24, immediately after the Tribulation, it says in Matthew 24:30:
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.
This current period of time, unlike any previous time on earth, is a time of great glory to God because He has put down Satan. He has taken the throne on earth, and He is now LORD of all lords and KING of all kings. He is the Lord God Omnipotent ruling the inhabitants of the world with a rod of iron. And it is a time of tremendous great glory, where God is getting Himself honor, we could say, upon “Pharaoh and the Egyptians,” or upon Satan and all unsaved people. The rebels have finally been brought to justice. This is the time when the Law of God is obtaining its satisfaction for the mountains of transgression, so it is a time of great glory.
We are not surprised that when Christ comes, there is glory to God, but we are surprised to see that it says, “the earth was lightened with his glory.” In our last study, we went to several verses, like 1Corinthians 4:5, that spoke of bringing to light hidden things, and Ephesians 1:18 that spoke of the eyes of understanding being enlightened. And we saw that this Greek word “phōtizō,” which I would pronounce “fo-tid'-zo,” is #5461 in Strong’s Concordance, and it is only found 11 times in the New Testament. Oftentimes, it is used to describe spiritual enlightenment, or bringing something to light as light does make manifest or reveal things. So as far as the Word of God is concerned, in the Day of Judgment it was God’s plan to reveal many truths, including His end-time judgment program.
And that is not a light thing. It is not a minor thing at all. You know, this is something that all those that associate with this holy book, the Bible, have sought to know: “How is the end of the world going to come? How is God going to judge mankind? How is He going to work out His end-time judgment program? The history of the church world is full of theologians and the volumes of commentaries they have written in which they laid out all kinds of various scenarios regarding how God was going to do it. For example, some say, “He is going to take His people out of the world and reign for a thousand years.” And another one says, “No – He is going to come, and the world will be over instantaneously.” And others say this, and others say that. They make their eschatological points and they develop a following, so we have Amillennialism, Premillennialism, and Postmillennialism. It is just like so many other doctrines, with their opposing points, and they all cannot be correct. And when you see various options, you know that nine out of ten are wrong, but in this case all ten are wrong. (Of course, there are many more positions than ten, but I am just using that as an example.)
As God said a couple of times in the Bible, we are not to premeditate or take thought beforehand what we should speak in that “hour.” This was a veiled warning, a parabolic warning that God would not release the information about how He intended to judge the world until that “hour” was reached. And that is the statement made in Mark 13:11:
But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
And as soon as we got to the “hour” of Great Tribulation, God began to open the Scriptures to reveal things never previously known or understood, and His people marveled and were thankful to God that we were finally getting the understanding, from the timing of the Great Tribulation to the timing of Judgment Day and the information that the entire corporate church had been cut off (by God), just as Israel before them. God ended the church age, and commanded His people to come out. These are fascinating and amazing truths that nobody ever knew or understood, but now at the time of the end, we know and understand it.
God has revealed a great deal of information, especially the time when Judgment Day would begin: May 21, 2011. He revealed this during the “hour” of Great Tribulation, but He still did not reveal much about the final judgment of all the unsaved people of the world until we finally reached the Day of Judgment itself, and we passed the day of May 21, 2011. And that was a big help to us in order to guide us and instruct us exactly how God’s end-time judgment program would work out, as far as the judgment on the world. We had learned a great deal about the judgment on the churches, and we learned most of that during the time that God was judging the churches. So, too, since we entered Judgment Day itself, we have been learning more and more. We have been learning specific details concerning the overall final judgment plan of God for the inhabitants of the earth.
For example, we never knew before that God’s elect children would remain on the earth (in the Day of Judgment), even though God had said it pretty directly in 1Thessalonians 4:15: “…we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord…” He made that statement twice. What does that mean? Well, from other places in the Bible, we could now fill that in: “Oh, it means there is one event unto all – God intends (and has always intended) to judge the righteous and the wicked together.” He will not take the elect out of the world, but He will bring us into the Day of Judgment as the judgment is on the earth and the nations have been “turned into hell,” and His people will go through hell, in that sense, and we will endure to the end. In doing so, we will make a manifestation before the judgment seat of Christ, proving that we already had our sins paid for in Christ at the foundation of the world. To say it another way, our endurance through this prolonged judgment period and reaching the end of it will give evidence that our sins were paid for because there are no sins upon us. If there were sins upon us, we would be burned up and destroyed along with everyone else. But our endurance to the end is the proof and manifestation that our sins, indeed, were paid for, all glory to God. And through this the elect people of God glorify the Lord in the fires, as Isaiah 24 states.
You see, God has just been revealing all kinds of things, like the fact that Jesus is ruling and reigning on the earth, and the elect are judging the world with Him. There are just numerous Scriptures that all fit together, and now we have much greater understanding of the overall picture of the judgment on the churches and, now, the judgment on the world, just as God said in Romans 2:5:
… treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;
It is the “day of wrath,” in conjunction with the “revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” The revelation of it accompanies the “day of wrath.” It fits perfectly with the idea of the “angel” descending from heaven, having great power and the earth is lightened with His glory. The Lord is giving revelation of Judgment Day to His people, and now our eyes are enlightened concerning these things.
We may have started off confused and wondering why May 21, 2011 happen as we thought. Why was it not the Rapture? Why was it not the Resurrection? But now we are illuminated, and we are full of understanding, and we see all the reasons and purposes for why God did it this way. And we now see another timeline, another period of time that fits perfectly with the first coming of Christ, from 7 B. C. to 33 A. D. and the cross and His resurrection. So, too, we have a timeline from the Jubilee Year in 1994 to 2033, which is a mirror image and duplicate time as from 7 B. C. to 33 A. D. And what is our expectation in 2033? Resurrection.
It is just incredible how God has opened things up. I admit that after May 21, 2011, there was confusion for a time, especially related to the time. We were thinking that everything seemed to be in place, so it must be Purim or it must be October 7, 2015, the 1,600th day after May 21, 2011, plus the 8,400 days of the Tribulation, and we had a total of “10,000” days, a number of completeness. And it was also the last day of Tabernacles.
But – no. And I was disappointed. You know, after a while when something like that happens, we just go to God and say, “O, Lord, I do not know. I just do not know. Help, Lord. What are you doing? And how can we understand? Please direct us and give us wisdom.” And God has done that very thing, where now we have a timeline that is, perhaps, the most fitting as far as the pattern of Christ’s first coming. It is the best timeline that we have ever seen before, and all the Biblical evidence and time paths are pointing to that particular year (2033). We have the starting date of May 21, 2011 locked in.
You know, it is interesting that from May 21, 2011 to 2033 is 23 inclusive years. If it were 19 years or 25 years, there would be no consistency and no match with former time patterns. But it is 23 inclusive years. And we can look at the time from 609 B. C. to 587 B. C. as an example of 23 inclusive years. We know God does work with both actual years and calendar years or inclusive years. So that fell into place, as well as the amazing fact that from the flood in 4990 B. C. until 2033 A. D. is 7,023 calendar years. That would mean that the “first earth” that was destroyed with a flood was 6,023 actual years, followed by the second earth that would ultimately be destroyed in 7,023 calendar years. So we have a strong relationship between the destruction of the “first earth” and the year 2033. The timing is “right on the money.”
Why is it that these things are all falling into place? We have been learning all this information, and we have the Scriptures to support them. That is the amazing thing. When we say a “spiritual judgment” took place, and we go to the Bible for support, why do we not come back empty-handed? If it was out of our own minds, and we are just saying it to cover ourselves because we do not want to admit we were wrong…and they say that is why EBible Fellowship came up with this “spiritual judgment idea.” OK, if that is true, when we look at the Bible, we should not find any examples of “spiritual judgment.” Then it would be just an idea out of our silly minds. But when we do look at the Bible, what do we find? We find that the most major judgments in the Bible were, in fact, spiritual in nature – in the Garden of Eden, and in the Garden of Gethsemane when there were great drops of sweat as blood were falling from Christ and He was in an agony. Why was He in agony? It was because, spiritually, He was already beginning to experience the wrath of God. Nobody could see it because it was spiritual.
And what about the judgment on the corporate church? I feel like “shaking my head” when I hear believers that listened to Family Radio and Mr. Camping for years and years, and they professed to understand a spiritual judgment of God on the churches. They realized it was spiritual and they could not see a literal judgment. The church stones or buildings were still in place. There was not rubble on every street corner where there was a church. When the Bible said there would not be one stone left upon another, it is a spiritual picture. There is no literal bloodshed. It was all spiritual. These people understood that, but when they hear of a spiritual judgment on the world, amazingly, the first thing out of their mouth is, “Oh, you just made that up. You do not want to be held accountable, so you have to make correction.” Well, OK, that is exactly what we are doing. For correction, we go to the Bible, and the error was in thinking there would be a literal physical judgment – a literal earthquake and a literal five-month period (of judgment). So we go to the Bible and search, and we see that the Bible still locks in that date of May 21, 2011 as Judgment Day. It will not budge. It will not move an inch. It continues to insist that is the day. Then we go to the Bible. The ground did not literally shake, so what happened? The judgment on the church (the cup of wrath they drank) was spiritual, and God said to Jeremiah, “Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.” It is the same “cup.” It is spiritual judgment.
This was in keeping with the judgment on Adam and Eve: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” They did not die physically on that day, did they? It is in keeping with the judgment on Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and with the judgment on the churches. Name a judgment greater than these. You cannot find any. They are the most awful and severe judgments recorded in the Bible. And the judgment on the world follows the same pattern, the Biblical pattern and Biblical precedent. That is what lawyers say when they want to establish something for their client regarding the law. They check all the lawbooks and law cases to find a precedent, and then they build on that precedent. That is some of what we do when we study the Bible. Is there a precedent for a spiritual judgment? And the answer is a resounding, “Absolutely, yes!” There are spiritual judgments that have come to pass in Biblical history and, just recently we have experienced the completion of the judgment on the corporate church, and now God is doing the same thing with the world.
And all these things began to open up once we had the eyes of our understanding enlightened to that truth. We do not go back from it – that is nothing but a terrible mistake for anyone that has done it. I have yet to see even one person that is better off once they step back from the understanding that May 21, 2011 was Judgment Day. What happens is that everything begins to “unravel” for them. It all falls apart, and they soon lose sight of the time of the Great Tribulation because if May 21, 2011 was not Judgment Day, then the Great Tribulation was not exactly 23 years or 8400 days. And if it was not, then there are problems. It is a problem concerning when the Great Tribulation would end. Seventy years from now? Or is it seventy years from 1988? Again, what happens when they step back from May 21, 2011, is that they just do not talk about “time” anymore, and they do not try to pinpoint it because they cannot. And the reason they cannot is because God has just one actual period of time that is the Great Tribulation, and which He revealed to His people. And we know it was that 23-year exact period (from May 21, 1988 through May 21, 2011), and it is the only thing that fits. Stepping back from the date of judgment, they lose sight of the Great Tribulation, and when they lose sight of the Great Tribulation timeline, they lose sight of the judgment on the churches.
Then the next logical step backwards is to go back to the churches and congregations, which many have done. Then back in the churches, they are like a rock falling down a hill, going back, back, back. And people have gone back from understanding the “faith of Christ,” the Sunday Sabbath, and all kinds of things the Lord graciously opened up, and which they had professed to know. They gave lip service to believing and knowing these things, and now they do not. Now they think they have discovered something because they have gone back and embraced the doctrines of the Reformers in their church: “Now I have truth.” Yes, but what they call truth is the same thing that had brought down the wrath of God upon the corporate churches due to their “high places” and their spiritual idolatry.