Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #8 of Revelation, chapter 10, and we are continuing to look at Revelation 10:5-7:

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

I will stop reading there.  The Lord Jesus, who is this mighty messenger, is lifting His hand to heaven and swearing by him that liveth for ever and ever, and He is swearing that there “shall be” (future tense), or “will be,” time no longer.

The Greek word translated as “longer” is Strong’s #2089 and it is the same word that is normally translated as “yet” or “more,” for instance, in Revelation 9:12: “One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.”  The word “more” is the word that is translated as “longer” in our verse.  As far as I could see, this word was not translated as “longer” any where else.  The end of Revelation 10:6 really should read this way: “that there will be time no more.”  That is what the Lord Jesus Christ is swearing to.

Of course, the world laughs at that idea.  They know the Bible says this, but they mock the idea and they live as though this world will last for ever.  Of course, we just went through the “big test” for the world, as God opened the Scriptures to reveal the Day of Judgment and there was much talk of the end of the world; and the world was “nervous” and the world was uncomfortable, most definitely.  They tried to put on a front and a confident face as if they were not worried, but they certainly had an eye on the date of May 21, 2011.  If they were not really worried, there would not have been any parties or people celebrating the way they were.  They were most definitely troubled in their minds, because they know the Bible says this; they know it deep down.  Just look at the world and look at the condition of the world.  Deep down, we all know that this situation is just calling to heaven for God to destroy the earth.  We know we are doing wrong.  We know there is a God and we know we are in trouble with God.  If there were ever a condition or situation in the world that was “just asking” for judgment, it is the condition of the world today – in all nations, in all cities. 

The people of the world are just going full blast after their sins and sin is multiplying like crazy and people are going deeper and deeper into sin without any thought at all of turning around or turning back from it.  Is the world repentant and broken concerning the sin of homosexuality since we have entered into this period after May 21, 2011?  The answer is, “Absolutely not.”  Instead, the world has thrown off the many Scriptures and the many places where God addresses that question.  They do not even look at it.  They do not care about it.  They do not care what the Bible says at all; they do not care what God, who created them, says is right or wrong.  They only care about the way the things are headed in society and the way the majority of people feel about issues and the way of being “cool” and the way to be accepted by your peers.  These are the things the world cares about and, therefore, the world has decided that homosexuality is a “good thing.”  They not only commit that sin, but they even go further and deeper into it and they marry, just like anyone else, and they have children by adoption (or whatever way) and raise their children like any other parents would. 

The Bible, of course, knows nothing of that.  The history of the world knows nothing of that.  For thousands and thousands of years there has never been anything like this.  This is an undeniable proof that we have entered into Judgment Day.  God has given the world up to this sin in an unparalleled manner and the world has been blinded concerning it and actually thinks it is a good and positive thing.  Yet, they want nothing to do with what the Bible might say about it or with repentance.  It will not happen.  They have made up their minds; they are going straight ahead, with no intention of ever going back.  That is because we are living in a time when God has given the world up, just as He gave the churches up and the churches began, during that 23-year period, to go further and further away from the commandments of God and the things that God’s Word says.  We hear such outlandish and incredible things that the churches were doing (and are still doing), and we wonder how they could have any real hope of thinking that they are a congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ.  But they do these things because they are in blindness.  Likewise, the world is now going into depths of depravity, deeper and deeper into the spiritual darkness that has engulfed the world, as God has put out the light of the Gospel in the world and we are seeing the results of that.

Again, Christ is swearing, and we saw in our last couple of studies how God swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (to the fathers) and to all the saints of old.  He swore concerning a seed and the promised land of Canaan.   All of the promises of God that were given and revealed in history were basically parabolic statements to point to the Gospel – to point to God’s plan to save an elect people; they are the seed.  The children of promise are counted for the seed and the land is the eternal land, not yet created, but which God will create at the end of this world.

So we can see how God swearing these things to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has everything to do with time being “no longer” or “no more.”  At the end of time, which will happen once God destroys this world, the timekeepers will be destroyed and there will be no more days or hours or any “time.”  At that point, the Lord gathers all His elect.  He will speak and bring that glorious new creation into existence and His people will inhabit it with Him for evermore.  The promise will then be completely fulfilled.

Let us look at Acts 17.  We have been looking at several verses where God speaks of the promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Speaking of Jacob and the fathers, it says in Acts 7:16-17:

And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem. But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,

See how it says, “But when the time of the promise drew nigh.”  We know that, historically, it had to do with the promise made to Abraham in the Book of Genesis concerning bringing his descendents out of a strange land in the fourth generation; and Moses, knowing that, miscalculated and after 390 years in Egypt (when Moses was 40 years old), he thought to be the deliverer because the “time” drew near.  He thought (as well as the Jews of that time probably did) it would be a full 400 years; and there was good reason for that because God had stated the number “400.”  That is very helpful to us to show us how God “misleads” and lays traps and snares where even His own people can be deceived.  Let us go back to Genesis 15:13-16:

And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

So God did specifically mention “400 years” that they would be afflicted.  Now Israel would actually be in Egypt 430 years, to the selfsame day, before they would come out and they would be delivered after 430 years, not after 400 years.  How could God say they would be afflicted 400 years?  Well, the reason is that when Israel first entered into Egypt Joseph was second in command to Pharaoh.  He was prime minister.  He was one of the greatest men in Egypt and, certainly, none of the Egyptians would have dared to afflict Joseph’s kindred during the period of time when Joseph was a mighty ruler in Egypt.  But then after about thirty years, once Jacob and his family entered into Egypt in 1877 B.C., Joseph got old, the Pharaohs changed and Joseph was no longer that great ruler, although he was certainly respected.  It was about that time that affliction probably began.  You know, you do not always have to beat someone with a whip to afflict them – you can have prejudice against them.  For example, you could have two people applying for the same job, one a pure-blooded Egyptian and the other a Jew, and the job goes to the Egyptian, even though the Jewish man may have been better qualified.  You see, subtly, the affliction began and then it developed as the Jews grew and multiplied and became feared by the Egyptian leadership and enslaved.

But Moses misunderstood and he was counting on 400 years (as it seemed to say) and it was 390 years by the times he was 40 years old.  Moses was “lifted up” to a position of incredible power and authority in Egypt and he was a Jew.  Incredibly, he was a Jew and, certainly, he must be the deliverer and he began to put those things together: “The time is here and I am a Jew and look at where I am at compared to every other Jew in Egypt.”  Every other Jew was in bondage except him; it all fit and it all made sense.  It was not pride, but it was just logical.  It certainly fit the scenario and fit the Word of God and, yet, when he went to separate two Jewish men that were struggling (after he had killed the Egyptian the day before), one of them said, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?”  Then Moses feared and fled; it was not the time, as yet, and he went into the wilderness for 40 more years.  But then God sent Aaron and God spoke to Moses from the burning bush to indicate that now was the time.  There, again, is another instance of God revealing His secret to His servant the prophets.  God foretold Moses (and Moses told Aaron) that Israel’s time for deliverance had come even before it had come. 

We have had our struggles, too, with certain things in the Biblical calendar of history, just as Moses knew of the promise of 400 years and expected God to fulfill it.  Yet, God “hid” some things because that is what God does with the Bible – He hides truth. 

So we expected, back in 1994, that it would be the time.  Then came May 21, 2011, and we thought it would be the time of the rapture and we were off, but it was not wrong because “no man knows the day or the hour.”  That was not the case with Moses; it was just the matter of misunderstanding a key bit of Biblical evidence concerning the word “affliction” in relationship to the 400 years; if they had pondered that and considered that, then maybe they would have given more leeway for the timeline.  So, too, God has shown us that there are certain key things that must take place.  Back in 1994, it was the end of that 2,300 evening mornings and the beginning of the “latter rain.”  And then regarding May 21, 2011, it was the “spiritual judgment” that had begun upon the world, and we are gaining information and increased evidence as we continue.

Anyway, it said here that God had sworn to Abraham, and let me read it again, in Acts 7:17:

But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,

Let us lay out, in a way, a chart and just try to picture this chart in your mind.  One the one side of the chart we have the “historical situation in Egypt,” and on the other side we have “Babylon as a picture of the world during the Great Tribulation.”

First of all, there was the Israelite’s period of bondage in Egypt and they were afflicted and slaves for a long period of time.  Do we have that situation with Babylon?  Yes, we do.  In the Book of Jeremiah, God commanded the people of Judah to go into Babylonian captivity and that is a very similar situation to Israel’s period of bondage in Egypt.  As a matter of fact, let us see how God identifies these two periods together in such a way that He can speak of Babylon and then speak of the period of the exodus as though they are one.  It says in Isaiah 48:20-21:

Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say ye, JEHOVAH hath redeemed his servant Jacob. And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out.

Now, do you see what God did here?  In Isaiah 48:20 He is describing Babylon and fleeing from the Chaldeans (another name for the Babylonians).  Then in Isaiah 48:21 we do not read of an experience the Israelites went through after coming out of Babylon, but we read of an experience the Israelites went through when they came out of Egypt: “And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out.”  You can read about that in the wilderness sojourn account.  Once Israel was delivered and came out of Egypt and began to wander in the wilderness, it was not long before they began to cry for thirst; God heard their cry and He brought water out of a rock.  We do not read of that happening when the Jews came out of Babylon.  There is absolutely no record of that concerning the deliverance from Babylon.  That means (and God has done this very intentionally to make this connection) that the deliverance from Egypt, spiritually, is the same thing as the Israelites coming out of Babylon after seventy years; that seventy year period typifies the Great Tribulation.

1. So, on our chart is we have the Egyptian bondage and on the other side of the chart you can put that it equates to captivity in Babylon, which spiritually points to leaving the churches and going out into the world, where Babylon is a “type” of the world, where God was saving during about the last 17 years of the Great Tribulation.
2. Then, on our chart is that the Jews multiplied in Egypt, according to the promise.  We saw that in a few places where God spoke of multiplying the seed of Abraham and then we read that while they were in Egypt experiencing that affliction for 400 years, they multiplied; they grew in great numbers and there were so many Jews that the Egyptians feared them and increased the level of bondage.  Again, it said in Acts 7:17: “But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt.”  The multiplication of the people was also a part of the promise.  What does that relate to?  When God commanded His people to leave the churches (and He used the historic parabolic example of the Jews, in the Book of Jeremiah, to come out of Judea and go into Babylon), this, spiritually, identifies Babylon as a type and a figure of the world outside of the churches during the Great Tribulation period.  And what did God do out there in the world outside of the churches during the period of the latter rain?  He saved a great multitude as the timeline of the Great Tribulation period was counting down and we were getting closer to the date of May 21, 2011; more and more souls were being added to the kingdom of God; the elect (which the promise to Abraham always pointed to when God said his seed would be “as the stars of heaven for multitude”) were multiplying in the world, which, spiritually, we could say there was a multiplication of God’s people in “Babylon.”  So the Jews multiplying in Egypt and, as we saw in that verse in Isaiah 48, Egypt and Babylon are almost synonymous in so far as what they spiritually point to.
3. Then, on our chart is the time of great deliverance came for the multitude.  The multitude of Jews (the seed of Abraham) grew and, finally, God delivered them.  So God delivered hundreds of thousands of Israelites and they all came out; not one Israelite was left behind.  Likewise, on May 21, 2011, God delivered all the “spiritual Jews,” or all the elect; not one elect individual whose name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life was missed; not one was left behind, in the sense that the Word of God was not applied to them.  The atoning work of Christ from the foundation of the world was applied to their hearts and they became born again.  So there was great deliverance from Egypt and there was great deliverance from the Babylon of this world on May 21, 2011. 

What followed for the Israelites coming out of Egypt, when Pharaoh finally let them go and they followed Moses out of the gates of Egypt and out into the wilderness?  What followed was forty years of testing – a trial and severe time of testing – for the people of Israel after that wonderful and incredible deliverance.  What followed May 21, 2011, for God’s great multitude?