Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #15 of Genesis 33.  We have been looking in our last couple of Bible studies at God’s end time program to purify His people.  That is the whole point behind separating the wheat from the tares, is it not?  God is no longer interested in having “two manner of people,” as it was said to Rebekah regarding having two manner of people, or two nations, in her womb, as were Jacob and Esau, the saved and the unsaved, or the elect and non-elect.  God wants only His people, and it is near the time that He will take His people out of this world and into His glorious kingdom.  It has been the whole purpose for this earth’s existence, and it is the reason God allowed this world to continue for over 13,000 years.  It is not tied to anything else.  It is not as if God wanted to see the progress of humanity in the buildings they would make, or their fields of “arts and entertainment.”   He did not allow this world to continue just to see how much of the creation man could figure out and come to understand, as far as inventions are concerned. 

The whole purpose of this world was to save a people for Himself, which would glorify Him, and God put the whole thing on display to principalities and powers, and it has glorified Him, and it will glorify Him into eternity, and we are near that time.  Very little time remains for this world, as God has already saved everyone He intended to save, and it is just the matter of finishing the judgment and accomplishing the few purposes that remain.  And we are right at that point.

Of course God wanted to begin the separation process, and at the end, He does not want imposters or professed Christians.  The Lord has never been interested in saving great numbers.  Many pastors and Christian ministries got caught up in the numbers game: “How many can we get baptized?  How many can we get to sign up?  How many can we get to fill up our church?  How many can we get to come to this crusade?”  You see, that impresses men, and it was all pride and arrogance, as they tried to increase the kingdom through numbers of people, but that is not how anyone was added to the kingdom.  People were added to the kingdom of God when they became truly saved, and they would have had to have been one of God’s elect people, chosen before the foundation of the world, and that would have limited the numbers because God chose a few out of the whole of mankind.

So at the end, the Lord is separating.  “Remove the tares and gather the wheat into my barn.  The tares are for the burning.”  And He carried out the separation of those in the churches while sending forth the Gospel over the Latter Rain period during those few years of about 17 years, from September 7, 1994 through May 21, 2011.  The Word of God, the Gospel, was proclaimed to the nations of the world primarily over the electronic medium, and God saved a great multitude of people, but still only a remnant of the billions in the world.  Yet He saved tens of millions of people, and in saving them, He brought them into His kingdom, or into the “net.”  He was dealing with individuals (outside the churches).  It is amazing that God is so powerful and almighty and omnipresent that He can know the conversations, affairs, and dealings of everyone, and still be there for the elect across the face of the earth as they pour out their hearts in prayer.  He has His eyes always upon them as He maneuvered His Word into their paths, and made sure that they heard, and then used the power of the Word to draw them.  He is an incredible God.  He is incredible in His Person and glorious Being, and it was His end time plan to deal personally and individually with His elect sinners to save them, and to bring them into the kingdom.

He had no program for “calling” the masses of people to come who were not His elect.  You know, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  He was not sent unto the world, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and that is what is in view in Daniel 8:14, so let us read it again.  It says in Daniel 8:14:

And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.

It was after the 2,300 days (of famine) had passed, and it was September 7, 1994, in a Jubilee year, which has to do with setting the captives free.  It was the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  The first (outpouring) was back in 33 A. D., and that coincided with the first major fishing expedition which took place over the course of the church age.

And this time, in September 1994 was the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the second major fishing expedition, wherein God would put forth His hand the second time to recover the remnant of His people.  Only this time He would guarantee that all who came in were born again – they were all righteous and cleansed from their sins.  And they would enter into the “holy place,” or the sanctuary, of the eternal kingdom of God.  The Bible reveals that there is an earthly Jerusalem and a heavenly Jerusalem.  There was a literal  house of God in Solomon’s time, and then the New Testament churches were likened to the house of God, the physical or earthly house.  But there is a spiritual house, “whose house are we,” as we would become saved and added as living stones to that spiritual house.  This is the sanctuary, or holy place, that was cleansed after the 2,300 days, beginning on that date of September 7, 1994, when God sent forth His Word (outside the churches).

The Hebrew word translated as “cleansed” is Strong’s #6663, and it is only translated as “cleansed” in this verse, but nowhere else.  It is normally translated as “righteous” or “justify.”  That is what this word means.  For example, we read in Daniel 12:2-3:

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

The word translated as “righteousness” is this word, and it is the same word we find in Isaiah 53:11:

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Here, it is the word “justify.”  He will justify His elect people.  How will He do that?  He will take away their iniquity, bearing them in His own body upon the tree.  He suffered and died for them, thereby paying the penalty the Law required, which is death.  In so doing, He removed the sin from off them, and now they are justified.   They are just in God’s sight.  They are righteous in God’s sight.  That is the whole idea of God’s salvation program, as we read in Romans 5:15:

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

The one man that was disobedient was Adam.  We were made righteous by the obedience of One, Christ.  And what is in view with Christ’s obedience?  He was obedient to the commands of the Father, even unto death, the death of the cross.  By the Lord Jesus Christ’s obedience, many were made righteous – everyone who was named in the Lamb’s Book of Life, the elect, chosen people of God.  We have the atoning work of Christ that was performed on our behalf at the foundation of the world, and applied to us through the hearing of the Word of God during the boundary of the day of salvation.  The blood that had been spilled, as it were, was in a basin, and the hyssop of the Word was the applicator that applied the blood to our souls, cleansing and washing us from all guilt, shame, and filthiness.  It is removed from us, and that is the justification.  That is what being made righteous means.  It is not by our faith, but we are justified by the faith of Christ.  The Reformers got it almost right.  Luther had it almost right.  We are justified by faith alone.  Yes, but it is not our faith.   It is the faith of Christ – His faith is the only faith that justifies.  It is the work of faith because the Bible tells us in James 2:18:

 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.

It refers to the work finished at the foundation of the world which showed the faith of Christ.  It is that atonement, as He was the Lamb slain, and He accomplished the work of faith for His people, and that is why we are justified by the faith of Christ.  Faith is not a profession.  It is not just words.  It is action, and it is the fact that He has done it.  He has obeyed the Father’s command, and He was obedient unto death, the death of the cross.  That is the work of faith that has saved His people and justified us.  And this is the Hebrew word translated as “cleansed” in Daniel 8.

Let us look at one more verse having to do with this word, which is also in Isaiah.  It says in Isaiah 45:25:

In JEHOVAH shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.

It is in JEHOVAH because JEHOVAH alone is Saviour, and Christ is JEHOVAH: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”  (Luke 2:11)  God said, “I JEHOVAH am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer,” in Isaiah 60:16.  Again, “In JEHOVAH shall all the seed of Israel be justified,” and Christ is the Seed, singular, but we are counted for the seed in Him.  So all the elect that are as the stars of the heaven for multitude, according to the promise to Abraham,  shall be justified, and shall glory.  We are all made righteous in Him.  We are cleansed in Him, if we want to use that word because God allowed the translators to translate it that way, and it is correct because you are cleansed if you are made righteous and your sins are washed away.  To be justified means to be cleansed. 

So after 2,300 days, then shall the sanctuary or the spiritual house (the holy place) be cleansed, and it consists of all those God has saved.  It is the spiritual house or spiritual Jerusalem, which are figures of the same thing.  Then shall the sanctuary be righteous – all righteous.  Then shall it be justified.  There is no more pollution.  There is no more wicked mixed in with the pure at the time of the end in God’s plan to save that great multitude.  The “net” will not break, and everyone within that net will be made holy and righteous, and be justified and cleansed of all sin. 

This idea is picked up in a couple of places.  One is in Joel 3, and the context is clearly Judgment Day.  It says in Joel 3:15:

The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. JEHOVAH also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but JEHOVAH will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. So shall ye know that I am JEHOVAH your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more.

The word “holy” is the same word translated as “sanctuary.”  There will be no “strangers.”  It is not like the church age.  This is a different operation.  God’s plan was to only bring in His people through salvation, and there are no longer “two manner of people.”  There is no need to separate them in the net.  Everyone is safe and secure in the kingdom of heaven.

Let us look at one more verse in Zechariah 14, a chapter that also relates to Judgment Day.  It says in Zechariah 14:21:

Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto JEHOVAH of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of JEHOVAH of hosts.