Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #9 of Revelation, chapter 10, and we are looking at Revelation 10:6:

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:

The Lord Jesus is the one swearing and taking an oath that there shall be “time no longer.”  We have been looking at the word “swear,” as it pertains to God.  God has sworn and He has promised with an oath certain things in the Bible, especially things related to His salvation program.  He swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob certain historical promises which He fulfilled and, yet, they have a deeper, spiritual meaning, some of which are yet to be fulfilled. The final and great promise is for the “seed of Abraham,” or the elect predestinated to receive the salvation purchased by the Lord Jesus Christ is that they might live for ever in the Promised Land of the new heaven and the new earth.

We were looking at similarities concerning God swearing, in regard to the bondage of Israel in Egypt and the Babylonian captivity which relates to the time of the Great Tribulation, and I want to go over these and finish it.  There are five main similarities and I think more could be listed, but these are five main similarities.  If you are writing this down, you can put in one column what relates to Egypt, historically, and in the other column you could title it “Babylon/Great Tribulation.”

1. is the captivity of Israel in Egypt” relates to the captivity of the Jews in Babylon and the Captivity of God’s people leaving the churches and going into the world at the time of the Great Tribulation. 
2. is the Israelites multiplied while in bondage in Egypt, according to the promise of God and, likewise, God’s elect multiplied in the world (spiritually typified by Babylon) at the end of the church age when God commanded them to leave the churches, through the figure of “Judea” in the Book of Jeremiah, and go into captivity in Babylon, typified during the Great Tribulation, and to come out of the churches and worship God in the world;  and it was in the world/Babylon that God saved a great multitude; i.e., the spiritual Israel multiplied.  It is a very parallel situation, spiritually.  The Israelites multiplied in Egypt and the spiritual Israel of God multiplied in the Babylon of this world during the last seventeen years, or so, of the Great Tribulation.
3. is there was a time of great deliverance for Israel that had been held in bondage in Egypt.  God remembered His promise, as we read in the 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.”  He remembered His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and He delivered His people.  How many Israelites were delivered?  He delivered every one of them.  Not one – not a single one – was left behind.  Is that not something?  Oftentimes, people can be “forgotten” or left behind, but not one Jew – not one Israelite – was left behind in Egypt.  Everyone that was in the captivity came out, and that points to great deliverance and complete deliverance.  It really points to the deliverance of all Israel; not one was lacking.  And, likewise, God saved a great multitude out of Great Tribulation from the Babylon of this world, and He saved them all – everyone whose name was recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  The entire company of spiritual Israel was delivered out of bondage to sin and Satan and they came out of Babylon, delivered out of Babylon by May 21, 2011.  Every spiritual Jew was delivered from the Babylon of this world; they no longer were held in the dungeon of sin, in captivity to Satan in his kingdom.  But the Lord Jesus Christ had set them all free and delivered them all.  What a wonderful similarity that is with the exodus from Egypt and the exodus from the spiritual bondage to sin that the elect experienced, prior to God shutting the door on May 21, 2011.
4. is the forty-year period of testing for all of Israel that came out of Egypt.  Let us think about this: you cannot find a more exciting, dramatic and wonderful account of the glorious demonstration of God’s mighty power to deliver than what God displayed when He brought Egypt to its knees – mighty Pharaoh and the greatest army that was upon the face of the earth.  God humbled them and destroyed, for all intents and purposes, the greatest nation in the world of that day and delivered His people.  The Jews were so used to their bondage in Egypt and they certainly were rejoicing and looking forward to the time when they would leave Egypt.  With each plague brought upon the Egyptians, their expectations grew and mounted.  Certainly, the excitement of the approaching day of final deliverance was at hand.  The Israelites would have been eager to leave the gates of Egypt behind them and enter into freedom – into deliverance.  So they did and, yet, what they experienced, very quickly, was the “hot sun” and a “wilderness” and a “dry land,” a land where they worried and fretted and feared, concerning food to eat and water to drink.  They feared their enemies pursuing them and they were constantly murmuring about their situation.  Soon, the wonderful, glorious and incredible act of God’s deliverance was quickly forgotten.  They did not consider (properly) what God had done and the power He had shown in delivering them from such cruel bondage.  So God began to afflict them and to judge them and He determined, after their murmurings about the Promised Land of Canaan when the spies came back with an evil report, that they would wander in the wilderness for forty years until all that evil generation had died.  God also swore concerning that; for instance, it says in Psalm 95:9-11:

When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

Here, God is swearing in His wrath, or in judgment, that those individuals that came out of Egypt and which He had delivered from under their taskmasters and cruel bondage would “not enter into his rest.”  So God devised a 40-year period of trial and severe testing for those people in order that they would not enter into the Promised Land of Canaan.  We also read about this in Hebrews 3:7-8:

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

Remember that the word “temptation” can also be translated as “testing,” so it could read, “in the day of testing in the wilderness.”

Then it says in Hebrews 3:9-11:

When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.

See how God is pointing to that experience – that 40-year wilderness sojourn – and He is reminding us that we ought not to duplicate it; we ought not to follow their example of “unbelief,” and their example of murmuring, after a great and glorious deliverance!  That is just a very, terrible, wicked and evil sin, is it not?  They were there and they saw first-hand…and we just cannot compare anything to it.  Throughout the Bible, it refers to the “exodus” and the mighty hand of God working that deliverance for His people and all the tremendous plagues He brought upon Egypt.  What an incredible display it was of the awesome power of the infinite God of the Bible.  Yet, in no time… (repeat)…in no time, quickly, they just forgot all about it and they were murmuring as if nothing had happened and as if there were not a great and powerful God on their side, helping them and bringing them forth. 

So God says, “I sware in my wrath.”  God swears regarding good things and He swears to fulfill His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the things that go along with that oath, but we can be certain, also, that when God swears regarding His people that are doing evilly (and it was certainly evil doing to murmur the way those people murmured after that great deliverance), He will, likewise, fulfill that oath: He swore that they would not enter into His rest and that would be the Promised Land.

A little further on in Hebrews, God repeats it in Hebrews 3:15-19:

While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Is that not something that God, just a few verses, later repeats it?  This is a very important point.  Now, remember, we are charting the similarities between the Israelites’ Egyptian bondage and God’s people’s bondage in the Babylon of this world.  We saw their captivity was alike, the multiplication of God’s people was alike, and we saw there was a time of great deliverance for the Israelites and May 21, 2011 was a time of great deliverance for the people of God – for God’s elect.  What did God do to work a great deliverance?  He simply saved everyone whose name was recorded in the Book of Life.  God saved everyone to be saved – you cannot get any more salvation than that. 

You know, some critics of what God has done (and that is the only way to put it, because the Bible teaches this) do not like what the Bible teaches at this time – that God has completed His salvation program and saved everyone to be saved.  So they say, “Oh, the no-salvation teachers!”  They are constantly trying to emphasize that: “You have a Gospel of no salvation.”  Even though it is true that God is no longer saving people today, since May 21, 2011. That is a fact and it is what the Bible teaches.  Yet, it is a wrong emphasis to say that this is a Gospel of “no salvation.”  Actually, the truth is that God’s people today are emphasizing a Gospel of great salvation – of salvation to the uttermost – and you cannot get more salvation than God fulfilling the application of redemption to all He had obligated Himself to save from the foundation of the world.  God chose certain individuals and we do not know exactly, but there is a very good likelihood that the number is 200 million souls that He predestinated to obtain salvation, and then God fulfilled His obligation.  He guaranteed they would become saved and then down through the history of the world, He went to work to save them, in generation after generation, until the time of the end when He determined to save the best until last by saving a great multitude out of Great Tribulation.  And that completed the salvation program of God.  What great and wonderful deliverance it was.  By May 21, 2011, the entire company of God’s elect, as it were, “marched out of Babylon, out of this world” and into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son, translated from darkness to light.  They were in the City of God, even though they remain on this earth, but, spiritually, they were lifted up and exalted unto heavenly places to be seated in Christ Jesus.  So there was great salvation – uttermost salvation – and you just cannot get any additional salvation. 

Here is what people are saying today, whether they know it or not.  It is just like when God delivered all of the Israelites out of Egypt and, again, not one of them was left behind.  And now the Israelites are en route, marching to the Promised Land  (because God has taken them out of Egypt) and it as if people in the company were saying, “Well, it was great that God delivered us, but what about other Jews that are still in captivity in Egypt?”  But, you see, the problem is that there are no more Jews left in captivity in Egypt – they all came out.  That is the problem with people today that are saying, “What about the people that are still out there in the world today?”  Well, they are not part of “spiritual Israel,” if there are unsaved individuals today.  They were not named from the foundation of the world.  They were not included in the Lamb’s Book of Life, so it is not as though there is anything lacking, or that there is anyone additional to be added to God’s kingdom. 

This is God’s program and just as God is sovereign in determining who He would save, as He said: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau I have hated.  I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy.”  That is God’s sovereign right as God, to save whom He will.  God, likewise, is sovereign over when He will save, and He determined a time period in which the day of salvation would occur, a prolonged period of time that lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years; a time in which God besought men to be reconciled to Him and He did this through His messengers and ambassadors: “Be ye reconciled to God.” 

There was a definite time in which God besought men to seek him “while He may be found.”  That is a time reference to represent the day of salvation, but God also told the world of a time when He would no longer be found, a time when the day of salvation would conclude and the Day of Judgment would begin: May 21, 2011.  “Now I will no longer be found.  The door is shut.  The sun is darkened.  The light of the Gospel goes out.  The voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee.”  In types and figures in many places in the Bible, God constantly affirms, “This is my sovereign will.  This is my sovereign decree: I will end my salvation program at a set time, the appointed Day of Judgment, and I am sovereign over when I save.”

It is just like when people argue and dispute with God concerning who He is to save and they say, “Oh, it is not fair.  It is not right.  It is not just.  A loving God would not only save certain ones, but He would save all.  God loves everyone and has a wonderful plan for their lives.”  They do not like what God has done concerning His choosing of an elect people.  Well, they can do that.  They can go that way and they have.  They develop their own gospel; it is a gospel foreign to the Bible, but they are happy with it.  Of course, there is no real salvation in those “free will” gospels that go hand-in-hand with that thinking. 

And, likewise, now we have individuals that are stirred up and troubled in mind.  Oh, they do not like it at all that God has “set a date” and an appointed time in which He has stopped saving people. “It is not fair.  It is not just.  It is not right.”  You see, it is the very same words.  It is the very same argument against the “time” of God’s choosing, as was used against those whom God would save – that God would dare impose His will upon people and only save certain ones.  “Oh, that is not fair.”  And now the same God would dare impose His will upon the world and determine to save within a set time frame.  “Oh, that is not fair.”  Whenever God acts      sovereignly…and He is King, and not just King, but King of kings, and whenever God does make a sovereign decree in matters like this, you will always find men that argue and dispute with Him.  The Bible tells us that: “When once the master of the house has risen up and hath shut to the door,” many will then come knocking: “Lord, Lord, open to us.”  You see, God has made a decision; it is time to shut the door, and some now come, after the fact, after the door has been closed – and they want to dispute with God and they want God to open the door.  It is the same thing with Jacob and Esau when the blessing was being given.  Once it was found that Jacob had received the blessing, then Esau began to plead.  Then Esau started to cry and, with tears, sought the blessing.  It was after the fact.  This is the nature of man.  Yet, God has said that what He has shut, no man can open, and that is the time period we are living in.

• 5. Then on this chart would be the 40-year test that follows the great deliverance and that relates to the 1,600 days, which is the very likely time duration for this period of judgment.  The number “1,600” breaks down to “40 x 40.”  Is that not something that God would emphasize “forty” with Israel when they came out of Egypt, and God is certainly great emphasizing the number “forty” through the number “1,600,” which ties into May 21, 2011, and the day of great deliverance for God’s elect, the great multitude that came out of Great Tribulation.  It is emphasizing “40” and “40” and testing is in view in both cases.