Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #8 of Genesis, chapter 7 and we are continuing to look at Genesis 7:4-6:

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. And Noah did according unto all that JEHOVAH commanded him. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

In our last study we were looking at the reference to the “forty days and forty nights” of prolonged rain and the Lord destroyed everyone outside the ark, all the unsaved people and all the animals that had the “breath of life.” Not all sea creatures were destroyed, although some of them would have been destroyed in the flood, but all the animals that “breathed” were killed by the rain.

We saw that the Lord caused it to rain beginning on “the seventeen day of the second month” in Noah’s 600th year and that was the day that corresponds to May 21, 2011, the beginning of the final Judgment Day for all the inhabitants of the earth. God caused it to rain for “forty days and forty nights” in order to stress that Judgment Day would also be a time of testing and that is what has been happening throughout this period of prolonged judgment.

We are not going to look at this now, but it is interesting that after the five months in which the waters rose and prevailed and then they began to decrease, that it says in Genesis 8:5-6:

And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:

This is not the same “forty days” that was in view at the start of the flood. This is the second time that God makes reference to a forty-day period. The flood account gives us several dates and several periods of time, but the Lord is, once again, mentioning forty days. I think it is significant because there have really been two periods of time in our day of severe testing. There was the time that began on May 21, 2011 when Judgment Day started, but there was another date we were looking toward and that date was October 21, 2015, which was exactly five months after May 21, 2011. So I do not think it is accidental that God gives us another time period of “forty days” within the flood account during the overall length of the flood. There are two references to “forty days” because there would be a second time of severe testing following the five months when the people of God would be faced with the question: “Do you trust the Word of God, the Bible?” We saw that many did not after May 21, 2011, but others hung on and continued to “wait and see” until a literal five months elapsed to October 21 (because we had thought it would be a literal five months to the last day). When that time period passed and October 21, 2011 passed it was another “test,” with more people failing the test as they thought, “Well, the timeline has to be wrong.”

However, the Bible continues to lock in the timeline, as we continue to look at the Bible and that is what every professed child of God should be doing – we have to turn to the Bible. We cannot trust our eyes and we cannot trust what the world thinks. We can only go back to the Bible and follow the only methodology that God approves and that method is “comparing Scripture with Scripture,” to make sure that conclusions harmonize with the entire Bible. As God’s people return to the Bible, we are going over all these passages. I do not know if you are aware of it, but since May 21, 2011 E Bible Fellowship has gone, verse by verse, through the Book of Revelation. We are going, verse by verse, through the Book of Daniel and through the Book of Genesis. We are also going over passages like Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13, Ezekiel and everywhere we can find something that God has to say about Judgment Day, the Great Tribulation and the end of the world. We are carefully going back over all this information and we have been doing that for years now and we are re-examining it to see if these things still fit. So far, we are finding all kinds of reinforcement and confirmation of the timeline.

We have also corrected some things that we had wrong. For instance, in regard to the rapture we were wrong when we thought the elect would be raptured out of the world before Judgment Day began. In 2Corinthians 5, verse 10 it says that we all must “appear,” or be made manifest, before the judgment seat of Christ and that contradicts the idea of being raptured before the judgment. You see, that idea is a lack of harmony and now we have harmonized this and many other Scriptures. It harmonizes with what God said in the context of the giving of the cup of His wrath: “Here is the patience of the saints.” It harmonizes with what He tells us in Isaiah 24, verse 6 where it says, “the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.” There are several verses like these that indicate that in the time of judgment the people of God will be here and now all these verses harmonize and we could correct the error in our doctrine about the elect being raptured at the beginning of Judgment Day and not having to go through it.

We also made correction about the nature of judgment. We had thought there would be a physical earthquake, but through the Bible we can define judgment in a much clearer way than we understood before. The Bible speaks of major judgments such as the judgment of man in the Garden of Eden when God had said that in the day they ate of the forbidden tree they would die and they disobeyed, but they did not fall dead physically. They died spiritually. If we could transport ourselves back in time and be a witness to what God had told them: “For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” we would expect that when they ate of the fruit they would drop dead right before us. We would watch the serpent deceive Eve and she took of the fruit and ate and nothing outward happened. She gave it to Adam who was with her and he ate and nothing happened outwardly to him. We could have watched a long time, like the inhabitants of the isle of Malita watched the Apostle Paul when the “venomous beast” latched upon him and they expected him to fall down dead, but he shook it off into the fire. Had we viewed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we would not have seen them fall dead physically, but they did die in their souls. In other words, the first major judgment of God was a spiritual judgment.

Then Christ drank of the wrath of God beginning in the Garden of Gethsemane and He was in agony and great drops of sweat as blood were falling to the ground. And, yet, an outward observer would have seen no terrible wrath. We would have just seen Jesus kneeling and praying to the Father that the cup might pass and, yet, there was a spiritual judgment upon Him and it was a grievous thing.

Then God judged the churches and congregations through the removal of His Spirit from their midst and through allowing Satan to enter in and take his seat in the churches as the man of sin and rule in the congregations. From May 21, 1988 which was the end of the church age through May 21, 2011 when Judgment Day began Satan was being worshipped in the churches for 23 years, but no one could “see” that because Satan is a spirit and fallen angels are spirit beings and you cannot see them. God’s judgment upon the churches was that He removed salvation from them when He removed His Holy Spirit; they could preach all they wanted from May 21, 1988 and forward and there was no possibility that anyone would become saved. It was an awful and grievous judgment, but it was a spiritual judgment. And that is the defining of the “cup of God’s wrath,” the cup that Jeremiah 25 tells us is first given to the city called by His name (the churches) and afterwards that same cup is given to the entire world. The world is presently drinking of the cup of the wrath of God and the Bible defines that “cup” as spiritual, to begin with. The spiritual judgment of Adam and Eve eventually gave way to their physical deaths and that was also a consequence of their disobedience, but Adam’s physical death happened over 900 years later.

Man today is under the wrath of God. They are spiritually dead, as God has brought unsaved man into the condition of the “grave” or “hell” and soon the spiritual judgment will work itself out and transition into the physical destruction of man and the entire universe – it will all be destroyed. So the spiritual judgment eventually leads to literal and physical destruction, but at this time it is spiritual and during that time God also “tests” the people of God and the test is, “Do you have faith?” And you can only have true faith through the faith of Christ or through salvation. When God’s people turn back to the Bible, they still hear the voice of Christ and they hear the same consistent voice. In other words, they hear the same Scriptures that are still intact like pieces of a puzzle and even when we try to “move” them or “adjust” them, we end up with them in the same position, especially as it concerns the timetable for the church age, the end of the church age, the Great Tribulation and the beginning of Judgment Day, and so forth. These things cannot be moved.

We can see that when God uses “forty days and forty nights” at the beginning of judgment and then He mentions “forty” again within the judgment account, we can definitely be sure that Judgment Day will be a severe testing for the people of God.

Let us go on in Genesis 7:4:

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

The Hebrew word translated as “substance” is found only two other times in the Bible. It is used a second time in this same chapter in Genesis 7:23:

And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

Two times this word translated as “substance” is used in Genesis, chapter 7 and it is only found one other place in the Bible and that is in Deuteronomy 11:6:

And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel:

The word “substance” is used here in connection with the judgment of God upon rebels in the camp of Israel during the wilderness sojourn. We read more about this in Numbers 16:25-33:

And Moses rose up and went unto Dathan and Abiram; and the elders of Israel followed him. And he spake unto the congregation, saying, Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest ye be consumed in all their sins. So they gat up from the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, on every side: and Dathan and Abiram came out, and stood in the door of their tents, and their wives, and their sons, and their little children. And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that JEHOVAH hath sent me to do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind. If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men; then JEHOVAH hath not sent me. But if JEHOVAH make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked JEHOVAH. And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation.

So we see that this same word “substance” (as used in the Deuteronomy 11, verse 6 reference to this judgment) is used in the context of the earth opening its mouth and swallowing them up and all their substance. It is a picture of God’s wrath destroying the sinners in “hell,” or death, because they went “down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them.” That truth has significance. The Hebrew word translated as “closed” is Strong’s #3680 and it is the same word translated as “covered” in Genesis 7:19-20:

And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

The sin that was in the camp of Israel had to be expunged, so God opened the ground and all the wicked went down into the pit and then God “closed” the ground. That is just incredible and it was truly miraculous. Someone might argue that it was just a coincidence and there happened to be an earthquake at that particular spot where the people in rebellion against God stood. But not only did the ground open up and swallow all the rebels, it also “closed” so that you could not even know that it had opened. It is just astounding and it was the hand of God and, without question, it was God’s doing. Then the ground “closed” and you could not find them or their substance because of their rebellion.

That is one of the reasons the waters of the flood had to rise and they kept going higher and higher upon the entire earth to the height of 15 cubits above the highest mountain in the world, covering everything. It is as though the wrath of God has swallowed up all the wicked people of the earth and all their possessions. Actually, the wrath of God swallowed up the earth itself, in a sense, and that is key. It is an integral part of the final judgment because the world will be totally destroyed. It absolutely must be destroyed because it was cursed due to man’s sin. God had pronounced a curse upon this creation and, therefore, the creation must be destroyed. It must be “covered” over and no trace of it will be seen or found again. That will happen on the last day of Judgment Day.

But, here in Genesis 7 God says, “and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.” Historically, this is speaking of the flood. The language of the Bible is that the flood destroyed the first earth and, yet, the earth continued to exist and the flood had no impact upon the sky above and the sun, moon and stars and the universe. It was the same earth after the flood, even though the geography would have been changed somewhat, but it was the same ground and the same creation, but the picture is that when God brings the final judgment upon our present earth, He will destroy everything tainted by sin. We read in Isaiah 51:6:

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.

What will happen to the sinners that will have to atone for their own sins because they have no Saviour is the identical thing that will happen to the heavens and the earth. They will all vanish away. They will all be annihilated and you will not see the wicked. Like it said of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, you will see them from this point no more forever. Neither will we see this earth or any part of this creation because it is corrupt due to sin.