Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #29 of Genesis, chapter 28, and we will be reading Genesis 28:16-19:
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely JEHOVAH is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.
I will stop reading there. We were discussing in our last study that Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and we know that the Bible can typify “sleep” as a picture of death. When Lazarus died, the Lord Jesus said, “He sleepeth.” So there is a definite link. The Bible also says, “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” (Ephesians 5:14) So that is one picture of “sleep” in the Bible.
We saw another picture with the parable of the ten virgins, the five wise and the five foolish, and all of them “slumbered and slept.” Or, in the parable of the wheat and tares, we saw where it said, “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat.” (Matthew 13:25)
Further, we saw in Isaiah 29 where God relates it to a book that is sealed, and that fits in perfectly with the church age, just as the wheat and tares growing together also fits in with the church age; and just as the ten virgins “slumbered and slept” until the cry was made at midnight, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” That also fits perfectly with the church age. We have harmony in all these things because over the course of the church age, the Word was sealed up until the time of the end. The end comes at “midnight,” as “midnight” is a reference to judgment. Judgment began at the house of God (in 1988) and the church age ended; and, immediately, God began the judgment process beginning with the people called by His name. And then the transition date was May 21, 2011 when judgment included all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth.
So we understand that Jacob is an elect that God had saved, and he had already received the birthright and the blessing of the firstborn son. And now at age 60, he is leaving the land of Canaan. Again, this is significant because it ties in with the end of the church age. Canaan is a figure of the kingdom of God, just as the churches were also an outward representation of the kingdom of God on the earth, and just as Israel was in its time. So Jacob will leave Canaan, just as he would do later when he was 130 years old and there was a famine in the land, and his son Joseph would manipulate and orchestrat things to get Jacob and his brethren to come out of Canaan and to enter in Egypt. And that is also a picture of leaving the churches (Canaan) and entering into the world (Egypt).
But, here, this is an earlier prefigure of the same thing, and Jacob was “driven out,” really, because his brother Esau wanted to kill him because Jacob had received the blessing of the firstborn, and Esau realized there was no blessing of the firstborn for him. So God has made it known, and that is also in view with the parable of the wheat and tares: “Let both grow together until the harvest.” And at the time of harvest, it would be known which were the wheat and which were the tares. And it was the same thing with the ten virgins – five wise and five foolish – and the cry, “The bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” And that would separate the wise from the foolish.
Really, these thing fit together in an excellent way, so we can understand that Jacob being awaked out of his sleep is happening at a time when the was coming out of Canaan. And that also harmonizes, as the elect were also sleeping over the course of the church age. But when the church age ended and judgment began at the house of God, they were awakened. And this also fits in with the idea of “sleep” in Isaiah 29. The seals were taken off the book, and when the seals were taken off, the elect children of God were typified by the “learned” in that passage. They now had the ability to understand because, previously, they could not read the book. Let us go there, in Isaiah 29:9-12:
Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For JEHOVAH hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.
In the case of the one who is not learned, the sealing or unsealing of the book does not really matter. His problem is not that the book is sealed, but his problem is that he is “not learned,” so even if it is unsealed, he still cannot read it and understand, and that is exactly the situation with the unsaved. During the church age, they slumbered and slept, along with the elect. And while sleeping, you cannot learn. You cannot read the book. You cannot increase knowledge. You are sleeping. So the elect have the ability to understand because God has given us His Spirit in salvation, and we are able to hear the voice of Christ, but the elect also could not understand the Words of the book that were sealed – the great many doctrines that we have learned over the course of the last couple of decades. They had been sealed up, so no one could possibly have known them during the church age.
So both the elect (the learned) and the non-elect (the unlearned) were in the same condition regarding the information that was sealed in the Bible, and that is what Isaiah 29 is pointing out. If you give the book that is sealed to the learned, he cannot read it because it is sealed. For that reason, he got nothing from it. If you gave the same book to the unlearned or the unsaved, he also could not read it, but his problem is that he is not learned. He does not have eyes to see or ears to hear. So that is the emphasis for his not learning; it is not that it is sealed, because whether it is sealed or unsealed does not matter. And that is the point when we to the time of the end, and the book was unsealed, and that only changed the understanding of one group, the wise. It does not change the lack of understanding for the foolish, the wicked, because they are still unlearned. So when God took the seals off, then the elect came to know, and that is what it tells us in Daniel 12:9:
… Go they way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
You see, none of the wicked will understand. None of the foolish will understand. They may as well remain asleep and, actually, they are spiritually still asleep, because their “sleep” is a different type of sleep than the sleep of the elect during the church age. The elect were asleep in the sense that the book was sealed, and the unsaved were asleep in the sense that they were spiritually dead. So, again, their “sleep” identifies with death. And when the Bridegroom comes and the cry was made to go out to meet Him, the wise lit their lamps and they could see to follow Him because they were learned. They understand because of the “oil,” but the foolish cannot light their lamps. The book is opened. God had taken off the seals at that point, but it does not matter because it is still “dark” to them due to their spiritual condition of being unsaved, as we are told in 1Corinthians 2 regarding the methodology God has established for coming to truth. It says in 1Corinthians 2:13-14:
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
They lack the new, born-again spirit to discern truth. They cannot know the deep things of God, the parabolic, spiritual things, because that was the only way God could seal them up; they are hidden truths. And, therefore, it requires spiritual discernment to know them, and in order to have spiritual discernment, you need the Spirit who gives eyes and ear to make one “learned,” as it were.
And now that the seals are off the book, it is not a problem for the learned individual to read. Going back to Matthew 24:15:
When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
“Whoso readeth,” and you cannot read a book that is sealed. That is the problem the learned pointed out when handed the book: “I cannot; for it is sealed.” But when it is unsealed, then the learned can read, and that is God’s point here: “whoso readeth, let him understand.” And no one would have had any idea what God was talking about in these verses and passage until the time of the end when the seals were removed. Then there was understanding. The wise will understand: “Oh, the reference to the holy place is the church. The abomination of desolation is Satan. Judaea is a type and figure of the churches. The statement, ‘Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains,’ is a command to leave the corporate church.”
At this point and after so many years, I am just now having a different sense of understanding of that statement in Matthew 24:15, and I have read it so many times: (whoso readeth, let him understand:) That phrase in itself is a statement indicating that this will be activated at the time of the end when it is possible to read the Bible that has been sealed, and then come to understanding. And with understanding, there is action (obedience).
But as far as those unsaved people with the churches and congregations – multitudes of professed Christians that were the tares sown among the wheat or the foolish virgins that slumbered and slept along with the wise – even after God removed the seals, they could not see. God took the seals off the Bible, and it is wide open, but they still will not understand.
And this was the mechanism used. It is like a machine a farmer would use to harvest his crop and separate the wheat from the tares. It is the mechanism that God established to bring about the separation between the saved and the unsaved, and to distinguish between those that have received the blessing (as Jacob) and those that did not receive the blessing (as Esau). “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” It was at this point in time, beginning back in 1988 with the end of the church age, that God started that process, and it was carried out for the 23 years of the Great Tribulation until May 21, 2011, and then it was completed as far as the corporate church was concerned. All the wheat had come out of the churches, although not all that came out were wheat, but the wheat (all the elect) did come out of the churches by that time, and all that remained behind were tares. And on that date, it was as though God bundled everyone that stayed within the churches and congregations as one enormous bundle of tares and threw them into the (spiritual) fire of Judgment Day that immediately followed the Great Tribulation.
So this is the idea that is touched on when Jacob awaked out of his sleep. And, of course, when he awaked, he came to realize the information that God had just delivered to him during his sleep in a dream. There was a ladder set up on the earth, and the “angels of God” ascending and descending, and JEHOVAH standing above it, and God making promise concerning the seed and how he would come again to the land, and how God would not leave him, and so forth. All of this became known to the newly awakened Jacob from his sleep, and now he was going to embark on his journey, and he will not return for 40 years.
And, again, I know I mentioned 1988 (as the end of the church age), but it became “official” in 1994. You know, when God is dealing with a series of numbers, you cannot always pinpoint precisely when things are happening.
Let me give you an example, as far as the distinction between 1988 and 1994. Jacob will later leave the land of Canaan in the days of Joseph, and he will find that his son Joseph is ruling in Egypt. That was an incredible and amazing thing for him to learn after Jacob thought Joseph was dead. And he learned that because Joseph, a type of Christ, “revealed himself” to him. And that all points to the Great Tribulation, as Acts 7 tells us that there was “great affliction” at that time, and the two words are “megas-thlipsis,” the same word translated as “great tribulation” in Matthew 24. So that historical period of time, without question, is a figure of the Great Tribulation. And there were two years of awful famine that typified the Great Tribulation wherein Jacob and his other sons and families dwelt in the land of Canaan. But then Joseph revealed himself and he orchestrated events to the points where he finally brought his father and his family out of the land of Canaan and into Egypt. And that is a picture of the elect coming out of the churches and going out into the world, just as what happened when the Lord opened the Word that had been sealed to reveal the end of the church age, and the command to His people to flee to the mountains, and so forth. Then when Jacob entered into Egypt, Pharaoh asked him, “How old art thou?” And Jacob responded that he was 130, and the number “130” is a number that identifies with 1988, the 13,000th year of earth’s history, but the spiritual point is not focusing on 1988; that is, that was not the beginning of the famine, as the famine had already been under way for two years. But it was a “dividing point” of the seven-year famine. It was after two years, and there would be five more years of famine. So at this “dividing point,” it was the time that he left Canaan and entered into Egypt where he would be nourished by Joseph, a type of Christ, which would focus in on 1994, not 1988.
But here is the problem. God uses types and figures, and in this case it is the number “130,” which is “10 x 13,” with the number “10” representing “completeness,” and the number “13” has to do with the end of the world, and with “super fulness.” And that directs our attention to 1988, which was the actual 13,000th year of earth’s history and the end of the church age. But how could God get “more exact” than that and pinpoint 1994, which was the 13,006th year and some months from creation? What was Jacob to say? “I am 130 years old, and six days.” You see, it gets to the point where you cannot do that. So from the Lord’s perspective as He develops these kinds of spiritual pictures, He goes to the “main number” that identifies with that particular period of time. Sometimes you cannot get too precise with these things because there is no way to do it. You sometimes cannot be that exact with numbers when it calls for an “addition” to the fulness of a number like “13,000.” And we see that here with Jacob awaking, and then he will be gone for 40 years.
And we know that 40-year period does not fit with 1988, but it does fit in with 1994 to 2033, inclusively, which is 40 years. And, again, that is a similar thing regarding Jacob’s answer to Pharaoh that he was 130 years old. But, more specifically, it would tie in with the Biblical calendar date of 1994, the “dividing point” of the Great Tribulation. So, this too, would tie in more specifically with the official end of the church age in 1994, going to what the Biblical evidence points to as the end of the prolonged judgment in the year 2033.
So Jacob awakes out of his sleep and it says in Genesis 28:16-17:
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely JEHOVAH is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
We do not have time to get into this right now, but Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will look at this. The words “afraid” and “dreadful” are the same Hebrew word, and we will see what this has to do with, as the Lord moved Jacob to make these statements. We will also look at the reference to “the house of God,” in this context. I thought someone might say, “You were saying that Canaan is the churches, which are the house of God, but now it is saying that this is the house of God, so how does that fit? We will have to wait until our next study to try to answer that question.