Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #16 of Genesis, chapter 29, and we are going to read Genesis 29:21-30:
And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in unto her. And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for an handmaid. And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me? And Laban said, It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years. And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week: and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also. And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid. And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years.
In our last study, we were just getting into the timeline given to Noah, as the Lord had told him, “And yet seven days,” and He would destroy the world with a flood. Historically, seven days later that is exactly what God did as the flood began on the seventeenth day of the second month in Noah’s 600th year on the exact day God had told him that it would begin.
From there, we went to 2Peter 3. Just to remind you of why we are doing this, it is because of the historical parable in Genesis 29, wherein Jacob is serving his father-in-law Laban for 14 years in order to marry these two daughters. After the end of the second seven-year period (14 years), he will have purchased both of them.
We took that idea and we saw how it relates to the Lord Jesus who is married to mankind or to all people that are created in the image of God, and they were married to Him through the Law. And Christ is married to the elect, those He has redeemed. And we asked the question, “Is there anything in the Bible that points to a seven-year period of time (or a 14-year period of time) where at the conclusion of that time, Christ would have saved everyone that was to be saved, the whole spiritual bride of the body of Christ?” They would have been found and brought into the kingdom of God, safely and securely. Revelation 19 says that the bride has made herself ready, and then the marriage takes place and it is Judgment Day.
And that led us to this reference to seven days, because seven days is a week. We also saw in Genesis 29:27 that Laban said, “Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years.” He was referring to a week and, yet, applying it to seven years. And we know that there are 52 weeks in a year, so in seven years there would be hundreds of weeks, and it is a figure of speech that Laban is using, but it is God who is using it because this is the Word of God, the Bible, and everything in the Bible is inspired by God or God-breathed. So God is relating the seven-year period to a seven-day period, because a week is seven days. And God is able to do that in the Bible – it is His book, and He made the determination of what was allowed and not allowed. For example, God says that we can count each day for a year, as He does in Ezekiel when Ezekiel laid on one side for 390 days and laid on the other side for 40 days, and each day was counted for a year. Or, God also said in 2Peter 3:8 that each day was to be considered an even longer period of time, as it says in 2Peter 3:11:
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing…
We saw from Luke 10 that the reference to “one thing is needful,” that is has to do with something extremely important. And God is speaking to the elect, the beloved, and He says we are not be ignorant, as the Bible also says, “a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.” The elect discern and understand “time and judgment.” That is what it says in Daniel 12: “…for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end,” and then it goes on to say, “… and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.” The wise will not be ignorant, but the wicked will be ignorant. And, of course, the wicked are ignorant, and I do not mean that as a nasty word. It is an accurate word God uses to describe the unsaved individual. They are ignorant of spiritual things because they are dead in their soul or their spirit. And if you are dead in spirit, how can you perceive spiritual things? They are dead to God and the things of God. God is Spirit, and God is the one who made them dead in their souls by “cutting them off.” So (unsaved) mankind is ignorant. He is in darkness. He has no understanding and no ability to see in the spiritual realm because he is “dead.” That is what we read again, and again. God is very consistent, especially in regard to judgment, because it is at the time of the end and the time of final judgment when God opened the Scriptures, and the Scriptures are spiritual things. The Law is spiritual, we read in Romans 7:14. We are to compare spiritual with spiritual, and the Holy Ghost (Holy Spirit) thus teaches – spirit with spirit.
But, here, it speaks of a natural-minded man, and it says in 1Corinthians 2 (after laying out the Biblical methodology for coming to truth), it says in the next verse in 1Corinthians 2:14:
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.
You see, he cannot know them. He is ignorant of them. He is blind, as the Bible says, and if you are blind, you are in darkness and you cannot see. But God is speaking to the elect when He says, “Beloved, be not ignorant.” That is, do not be as those that are blind and in darkness. Do not be ignorant of time and judgment, but listen to His voice. If someone is truly saved, he has been given a new heart and a new spirit and “ears to hear.” Let the ears perk up and listen to the voice of Christ. The voice of Christ is truth, and the Holy Spirit guides into all truth, as we compare spiritual with spiritual. Are you hearing someone that teaches using the Biblical methodology of comparing Scriptures? Are these conclusions coming only from the Bible, with nothing added or subtracted, with no dreams, visions or tongues added? Then pay all the more attention, and cup your hand behind your ears so that you hear very well because it is the voice of Christ, and God’s people are able to hear His voice and follow it. When we hear the voice of the “evil one,” the stranger, we do not follow.
And this is how God led His people out of the churches, although most of the church world – including many good friends and even family – said, “You have to stay in the church.” And they would bring up verses they had misapplied, like their understanding of the gates of hell not prevailing against the church, but to our ears it did not register. It was not the voice of Christ, and God’s people followed His voice, the Word of God. It is following the teaching of the Bible when we are following Christ.
But God, knowing that His people would not be ignorant because He would cause them to understand the “one thing” that was most important when we got the time of the end of the world. And that “one thing” was this statement in 2Peter 3:8:
…that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
God had said to Noah, “And yet seven days,” and He would bring the flood. In the context of the flood and the final judgment, we find this verse placed in this location by God Himself to let us know that we are to calculate “seven days” from the flood, but that it was Biblically permissible for us to go “seven thousand years.” And this information would be of no value if we had lived in any other time period of history. If we were living at any other time in history, like even 100 years ago, nobody knew when the flood was. Or, if we were living 500 years ago or 1,000 years ago, nobody knew, because God had sealed up the Biblical calendar of history until we approached the end, and then just before the unsealing of His Word during the Great Tribulation and end of the church age, God opened up the eyes of Mr. Camping to this mystery. And we know it was a mystery because the whole Bible is a mysterious book. But God opened up that information first, because it would be necessary to have the Biblical calendar in order to understand the rest of the information He intended to reveal regarding where we are in time in the history of the world.
And it would only be at time of the end that God would refer to separating the wheat and the tares. That was not to be done during the church age. So there needed to be a “time” established for that, and once the calendar secrets were revealed to the people of God, then we could see all these time relationships between major Biblical events that took place in the Old Testament and the first coming of Christ, and then project them into our time period at the end. And they neatly did project into very similar time paths that had Biblical precedent for being fulfilled by God.
So God did all that, and He also revealed the date that the flood began. We know that Noah was born in the year 5590 B. C., and we know that the year 5013 B. C. was the 6,000th year of earth’s history since creation in 11013 B. C. And we know that 23 years from 5013 B. C. would bring us to 4990 B. C., which was 6023 years from the creation. And 4990 B. C. was the year the flood began. From 4990 B. C., if we go 7,000 years (or 7 millennial days), which would be taking “one day…as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” it would bring us to the year 2011 A. D. All this is amazing that we had this timeline, but then God did something even more amazing. Totally separate from this, He revealed to His people the timeline for the Great Tribulation and the timeline for the end of the church age which began in 1988, and the understanding that the Great Tribulation would be 23 years in duration to the very day, from May 21, 1988 through May 21, 2011. It was exactly 8,400 days, and the number “84” completely identifies with the Great Tribulation. So it was 8,400 days, an exact 23-year period, that was all cleanly worked out, off to the side, as it were. First, we had a timeline of 23 years for the Great Tribulation, and then after that, as the Lord continued to open up Mr. Camping’s eyes, we began to understand that the 7,000 years (“one day…as a thousand years”) came to the same year of 2011. The 23-year Great Tribulation ended in 2011, and the 7,000-year time period from the flood also ended in 2011. Wow! When things begin to work together like that, it really causes us to start paying closer attention.
So, someone (I do not think it was Mr. Camping), that was a listener out there did some further checking, and noticed that the date of May 21, 2011, which was exactly 7,000 years from the flood, had the underlying Hebrew calendar date of “the seventeenth day of the second month.” And that is significant, and let us go back to Genesis 7:10-11:
And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
God tells us exactly when that seven days later occurred, as God had said, “And yet seven days,” and He would bring the flood. In Noah’s calendar, it was the seventeenth day of the second month. Then when we go 7,000 years into the future (“a thousand years as one day”), we land on the year 2011, exactly 7,000 years from 4990 B.C. Then we had this other time path of the Great Tribulation that had already been worked out separately from the 7,000-year time path. Of course, we can see the 7,000 years fell in 2011, but on which day? Would it fit, because Matthew 24:29 said that immediately after the tribulation, the sun is darkened? It would make sense that the day the Tribulation ended would be the day that judgment would begin and, therefore, it would be the equivalent day that the flood began, and the flood was a great type and figure of judgment on the whole world. God had destroyed the whole world with a flood. And, of course, at the end He will destroy the whole world with fire. So, 7,000 years went by and, finally, that year came, and in that year on May 21, 2011 a 23-year period of time also elapsed, and the judgment of God on the house of God, the corporate church, concluded. It was exactly 23 years or exactly 8,400 days. And, again, a listener (to Family Radio) noticed that May 21, 2011 was “the seventeenth day of the second month” in the Hebrew calendar.
You know, I think there are some people out there that are God’s elect, but they never really put that together. They heard the voice of Christ, and they followed. But if you are someone who has never really understood that, stop a second and think about this: Seven historical days after God told Noah, “And yet seven days,” the flood came, and the destruction of the world began. Spiritually, 7,000 years fulfills that “seven days,” and it fell in the year 2011, and in that year (after 23 years of Great Tribulation, to the very day) is the same date as in Genesis 7:11, except it is the Hebrew calendar. And the Hebrew calendar is the Biblical calendar, so it is the selfsame equivalent day to the very day!
And what did God do in “the seventeenth day of the second month” in Noah’s 600th year? He shut the door of the ark. It was on that day that the door was shut. And what did He do on May 21, 2011? He shut the door of heaven. All to be saved in the days of Noah were safely in the ark, and all to be saved in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ were safely in Christ in the kingdom of heaven. You see, it is really a wondrous parallel that God has made, and He locked it in. You cannot budge that date. You cannot move it around. It locked in the Great Tribulation, but now there are those that want an “endless Tribulation.” They will say the church age is over and there is judgment on the churches, and so forth, but it is really just “chatter” because they do not really know it. They do not know what they are saying because they have lost sight of “time and judgment.” They have lost sight of the actual timeline for the Great Tribulation, and now they are just making up things as they go along. But, you see, it locked in the duration of the Great Tribulation, and it proved the timeline for the Great Tribulation. That was the judgment period that God had established for the churches, and we knew it because of that 7,000-year time path that fell on that very same day, immediately after the Tribulation, and it was Judgment Day, the judgment of the world. It fit so incredibly (along with other information, of course) and it locked it in so that there was no other possibility for the day of the beginning of Judgment Day.
And that is why Mr. Camping finally relented, although he did not want to say it absolutely. If you listened to his teachings over the years, even with the year 1994, he never said it was absolute. It was only when these things came together in this manner that he finally said, “We have to proclaim this with certainty!” So when the billboards went up, it was with an “exclamation point.” It was taught in this way: “This is the Day of Judgment.” There was no other possibility. “But what are you going to do if it does not happen?” And we would not even consider that because it was locked in, and things fell together so tightly that it had to be the hand of God.
But then God brought to pass a spiritual judgment, and the duration of that judgment was much longer than we had realized, and there were other things like the misunderstanding that the elect would be raptured out of the world before the world went through judgment. But that turned out not to be the case and not Biblical, but God allowed these things in order to set up the severe testing program of Judgment Day for His people, and many people turned back. And, yet, we are right on course.
But in relationship to our study in Genesis 29, this seven-day period is a week, is it not? Seven days is one week, so “fulfill her week.” And the Lord Jesus did so. The Gospel going forth over these past seven thousand years was when the overwhelming majority of the elect were saved. There was some time leading up until the flood in which there was a handful of individuals saved. But, again, overwhelmingly, the elect were saved over that last 7,000 years, and by the completion of the “seven-year period” (7,000 years) on May 21, 2011, everyone that was to be saved had been saved, and they had entered into spiritual marriage with the Lord Jesus Christ.
But someone might say, “But there are two seven-year periods in view here.” And there is the idea that the Great Tribulation is also viewed as “seven years” in the Bible, and we are going to look at that in our next study, but the Great Tribulation was built into the overall period from the flood to 2011, because the Great Tribulation ended on May 21, 2011, so we had an elongated “seven days,” and also included was the very short seven years, which can be viewed as a week or seven days, as Genesis 29 reveals. So it was the completion of the much longer seven-day period, as well as the much shorter seven-year period viewed as a week that took place on May 21, 2011.