Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #3 of Genesis, chapter 29, and we will begin reading Genesis 29:7-12:

And he said, Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together: water ye the sheep, and go and feed them. And they said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; then we water the sheep. And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep: for she kept them. And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, and that he was Rebekah's son: and she ran and told her father.

Again, the situation is that Jacob had left Canaan and come to Haran, and the first thing we are told is that he came to a well in the field, and there were three flocks of sheep lying by it.  We discussed this.  The well is a picture of the Gospel, the Word of God, and the truth of the Bible, and that identifies with the kingdom of heaven.  The sheep are lying by it, and these sheep would represent the elect, and just to enforce that, we can read in Psalm 23, a Psalm of David, in Psalm 23:1-2:

JEHOVAH is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

Christ is the Good Shepherd. The people of Christ (all those He has saved) are as “sheep,” and God makes us to lie down in green pastures beside still waters. 

And, here, the sheep are lying by the well, waiting for the stone to be removed.  The stone was in place at that time and they could not drink, but they were in the right location because it was soon to be rolled away, and the water would be available.  We spent time discussing how this identifies with the 40-year period from 1994 through 2033 and the opening up of the Scriptures at the time of the end, as God has unsealed His Word.  And, simultaneous with the unsealing of the Word of God was the outpouring of the Latter Rain, and rain is water.

Again, just to be clear, the Bible teaches that the Word of God was unsealed in 1988, but it just continued to bring forth more and more information, and then the Jubilee Year of 1994 was the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Latter Rain.  So it did work hand-in-hand in conjunction with the unsealing of the Word of God, as God revealed doctrines like the fact that we are saved by the faith of Christ, not be our own feeble faith, as well as other doctrines that served to purify and refine the Gospel message in a far greater way than it had ever been done before.

So that is what is in view here with the sheep that were waiting.  And, of course, in 1994, that Jubilee Year in which God would begin to stretch forth His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people, God was saving outside of the churches and congregations or the corporate church.  That is why Jacob had left Canaan and gone to Haran, and there were the sheep, the well and the water, so he spoke to the people that had the three flocks there.  You know, some theologians speculate that the shepherds of these flocks were young boys (just as Rachel was a young girl), and that is why they could not roll away the stone because it would require all of them to be present to roll away the stone.  But we do not know if that is true.  Historically, maybe it is, or maybe all the families that had these sheep had made a deal concerning the water of the well, and that they would all have to be present before the rolling away of the stone.

Interestingly, Rachel was “lagging behind,” as the other three flocks were there, and it was “high day.”  The Hebrew word “high” is the word for “great,” so it was “great day,” and I think we could understand this to be the time when the sun is the hottest around noon.  So it is pretty late in the day when Rachel arrived, and that was what Jacob was referring to when he said, in Genesis 29:7:

And he said, Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together: water ye the sheep, and go and feed them.

I think the idea is, “You should have done this long ago.”  They should have gotten their water already, and they should now be out grazing upon the land, and not waiting to be watered.  And they said, in Genesis 29:8:

And they said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; then we water the sheep.

It is interesting that they referred to someone else, “till they roll the stone,” and I am not exactly sure who is in view, but the important thing is that there seems to be a delay in watering the sheep, at least on this day, and they have to wait for everyone to come.  I think the idea is what we see in Genesis 29:9-10:

And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep: for she kept them. And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother.

Now I am going to speculate a little bit, because I do not think we are told that Jacob came with servants, but it appears likely that would have been the case.  Remember that when Abraham sent his servant, who was likely Eliezer, he went with several camels and many other servants and, yet, he was only a servant himself.  Of course, he did have riches with him, but I think it would also be probable that Jacob would have been given some servants by his parents, if only for protection, as it was dangerous to travel alone.  This great stone would have been very hard for one man to roll away, but Jacob may have turned to his servants with him and said, “Come on, let us get this done,” and the shepherds in verse 8 had made reference to more than one person when they said, “…till they roll the stone from the well’s mouth.”  So it is possible that they were young boys and they did not have the strength, but Jacob, along with some servants, did so.  But, again, this is speculation because I cannot as yet find any reference to servants.  Again, it would appear likely that Jacob just got a couple of his men and they rolled the stone away. 

It was as soon as Rachel appeared.  It was as soon as Rachel came with her flock, and that was the fourth flock, which would point to the universal aspect of all the sheep or all the elect.  It was now time – it was at the end of the world – and it was in God’s plan for His end time program to bring into existence the last of the elect at the proper time.  In previous history, especially in the Old Testament, there was just a handful of elect in the various generations.  Then when we got to the New Testament era, more and more elect were born into the world, as God established the churches and saved many more than He had saved in the Old Testament period.  But from what we can see in the Bible, during the 1,955 years of the church age, relatively few were saved in comparison to God’s end time plan to save a great multitude.  Those that God would save at the last would be far greater than all that had come before.  He would save scores of millions of people.  To be consistent, as the Bible teaches that many are called, but few are chosen and that many perish and only a remnant is saved, the Lord allowed man to multiply to a degree unparalleled in times past.  In the past, there would always be a plague or a disease that would come to pass that would keep the numbers of mankind down, or there would be terrible wars that would take millions of lives.  And, yet, at the time of the end, even though wars have continued, God allowed through modern science and technology the development of vaccines and cures that have allowed people to survive various illnesses, and the people of the world began to multiply greatly.  Instead of the two billion people that lived about 120 years ago, there were seven billion people at the time of the end.  With the multiplication of people, there could be a multiplication of God’s elect that entered into the world.  We do not know the percentages, whether it was one in a hundred, but we do know that God said He would save a great multitude.  And we do know that Revelation 9 mentions “two hundred million horsemen,” and that is a figure that could be the sum total of all of God’s elect, or all those He would save out of the world.  It is possible that God has given us that number, and of that two hundred million, the greatest number and greatest percentage would have been born into the world prior to May 21, 2011.  Since they were all there and God could bring them in, He caused His people to proclaim with a worldwide voice through the electronic medium the message of Judgment Day being May 21, 2011, and the Word of God went forth in a way it had never gone forth before, and with a message that was never proclaimed in such a prolonged and serious matter as was done, and God used that message to save the last of the elect.  And maybe that last one was a baby that had just been conceived the night before.  We do not know.  God could have saved a baby that had just been conceived and would not be born until nine months after May 21, 2011.

You know, people sometimes mistakenly make the statement, “Well, EBible Fellowship says that no one born after May 21, 2011 could be saved.”  But that is not correct, because God has the power and ability which He has demonstrated in the Bible to save a baby in the womb, so He could have saved a baby that was born in June 2011 or July 2011, or into the early part of 2012.  But whenever God did this, that child would have had to be saved prior to God’s shutting of the door on May 21, 2011.  So God could have saved a newly formed baby that was just a “little speck,” if you could look at it, but it was a human being that would proceed to grow from that point, but it already had a soul.  If it did not have a soul, it would not have been a human being.  And that soul was “dead” for an instant, and then it heard the Word – not with physical ears, obviously – in the spiritual realm, and that Word created a new heart and new soul in that child.  Then time passed, and the baby grew.  At some point (and this is our expectation in this prolonged Judgment Day, as the Biblical evidence points to 22 actual years or 22 inclusive years from the year 2011 until the year 2033), a baby that was saved a little bit after conception would have time to grow and mature into a young man or young woman.  The Bible is indicating in John 21 a great catch of fish which typifies the great multitude saved out of the Great Tribulation.  And remember that this was the second major fishing expedition in the Bible.   The first time, the net broke, but the second time the net did not break, and the statement was made that they could not draw the fish for the multitude.  There was an inability to draw the fish.  Then later, Christ commanded them to bring the fish they had caught, and then we read that they were able to bring the fish.

So this is the reason we have the expectation that today or in the years to come, there will be many that will come to the truth, the Word of God, the Bible, even though we may not see them or be aware of them personally.  But the Bible teaches that the great multitude  will be “drawn” after the completion of the Great Tribulation, which would be within the period of the Day of Judgment.  God will draw these souls that He had saved to Himself and His Word.  So when we look at the things going on in the world and we see that even before this virus outbreak, some people were talking about the world coming to an end in about twelve years because of “climate change.”  These kinds of things are being taught to the children.  Just think of these children growing up with this information that it will only be twelve years (which is around the time of 2033), and they are being taught that the world will end if man does not do anything.  And since these things are not being done, the implication is that the world will end, and now there is a worldwide virus that has shut down nation after nation all across the face of the earth, and mankind is “fearing” the possibility that they might catch the virus and die, even if they simply went outside or went about their daily routine.  Many people cannot go to work, and students cannot go to school, so, certainly, it is making a strong impression, especially upon God’s elect that He had already saved, and the Spirit of God is within them.  Do you see how these things could all be a part of God’s preparation for the time of drawing?  And God will do it in His own time, but I think we can expect this because in John 21 God does speak of the delay in drawing, and then the command to be drawn is given, so I think we can expect that these souls that are out there in the world by the tens of millions and when God once again brings His Word into their lives, they will be irresistibly drawn by it, and they will follow it.  They will come to the Lord Jesus Christ by coming to the Word of God. 

This is the wonderful expectation we have for our sharing of the Word of God.  Yes – we are to feed the sheep, are we not?  That is also the command in John 21, so this whole idea of there being sheep by the well, and then the stone is rolled away from the well and the water is available, and it continues.  First, it was for the saving of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and then since May 21, 2011, it is the feeding of the sheep.  We should not look at that task with the attitude, “Well, nothing is going to happen, but I will just inform people it is Judgment Day.”  No – we can have an expectation. 

But it may also be mistaken for there being “ongoing salvation,” and I am sure some people will try to indicate that, because some people reject that it is Judgment Day and they reject the Bible’s teaching on these matters.  They look at statistics that indicate that people are buying more Bibles, and they get excited and encouraged to think , “Oh, God is going to do a great work of salvation as people are now fearing for their lives.”  No – there will be no ongoing, active salvation.  There will be no one who will repent due to the circumstances today.  No one will become saved because that is an impossibility, and that is why the Bible says in Revelation 9 that they “repented not,”  and in Revelation 16 where the seven last vials of the wrath of God are poured out, we are told that they “repented not of their evil deeds.”

There may be people that repent on the surface, and they stop drinking, smoking, doing drugs, cursing, or lying, and so forth.  But that is not true Biblical repentance.  Biblical repentance means a turning away from the iniquity that flows forth from deep down in the heart and soul of man, and it is not possible for a sinner to turn away from that flood of evil that gushes forth out of his heart, unless he receives a new heart.  However, it is possible for such a one to stop smoking, using force of will, or to stop doing some other things.  But, again, those things should not be confused from actual repentance which is a “turning” of the heart, which only God can perform, and this is why true Biblical repentance is a gift from God that comes with salvation.  It is turning away from our old nature and having a new nature, simply because God has taken away our heart of stone and given us a heart of flesh in the moment that He saved us. 

Again, that will not happen now because God has completed that part of His salvation program.  He has completed the saving of the soul.  But what we can “look for” is for those that have already received that gift of repentance (in the fact that they were given a new heart) and for that to be activated in the lives of these people.  For God’s own purposes, He did not draw many of the great multitude immediately, but He plans to draw them at a later time, so that is how we should be praying for our children and our neighbors, as long as they qualify as having been outside of the churches at the time the Latter Rain was being poured out prior to May 21, 2011.  We can beseech the Lord, and I tell you that this has encouraged me in praying for those who, truthfully, I had thought, “Well, it is just too late.  It is too late.”  And there was no indicator of possible salvation.  As a matter of fact, there were indicators that went the other way.  Now I have been renewed in praying for them: “O, loving Father, having had mercy, have mercy on this loved one.”