Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #9 of Revelation, chapter 11, and we are going to read Revelation 11:8-10:

And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.

I will stop reading there.  We have been looking at the “two witnesses,” at the time they were overcome by the beast, which is a name for Satan, and their dead bodies (“ptoma”) lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt.  We saw in our last study how God spoke to Israel and likened them to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness.  Sodom and Gomorrah were famous for their evil ways and the degree of sin to which they had given themselves over to in transgressing the Law of God.  Likewise, Israel of old followed in the footsteps of Sodom.  In the Book of Ezekiel, God speaks of “thy sister Sodom,” when addressing Judah and Israel, indicating that they are related to Sodom and the relationship is due to wickedness.

God also says that the “great city,” which represents the churches, where the “two witnesses” are lying dead in the street is called “Sodom and Egypt.”  Why does God say the churches are spiritually called “Egypt” here?  Normally, Egypt is a picture of the world, but there is a particular characteristic which God assigns to Egypt and He mentions it frequently in the Old Testament.  We will go to Exodus 20, where the Ten Commandments are being recorded.  It says in Exodus 20:2:

I am JEHOVAH thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Egypt is associated with bondage and with being a slave.  The Israelites were in captivity in Egypt.  There are several other verses, but we are going to read just one more, in Deuteronomy 6:12:

Then beware lest thou forget JEHOVAH, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Again, and again, Egypt is linked to the “house of bondage.”  Remember, historically, that wicked Pharaoh would not let the Israelites go.  In his stubborn and perverted rebellion, he refused to hearken to the commandment of God to let God’s people go.  That Pharaoh very aptly pictures Satan and Satan also had captive the elect people of God which had been chosen to salvation from the foundation of the world.  These elect were out in the world and in their sins and under the wrath of God and, therefore, they were held captive by their own iniquity.  They were serving sin and, as a result, they were serving Satan in his kingdom of darkness in that “house of bondage,” until the Word of God came and delivered them from sin.  That is why Jesus said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be freed indeed.”  The deliverance from Egypt pictures that deliverance from sin and Satan and the kingdom of darkness.

God gave up the churches and abandoned them when His Spirit came out of the midst of the congregations all over the world.  They had been a place of deliverance, but the moment the Holy Spirit departed, the “daily” was taken away and the abomination of desolation was set up and when Satan entered in it was as if Pharaoh, once again, was “ruling in Egypt.”  The churches and congregations were immediately transported, spiritually, to the condition of captivity and bondage to sin.  There was no more deliverance and there was no Deliverer, because Christ had left the churches.

We read another very interesting verse in Deuteronomy 28:68:

And JEHOVAH shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

This is very interesting because God is speaking to Israel.  He is speaking to those that obey His commandments in the first fourteen verses, but from verse 15 to the end of the chapter, He is addressing those that disobey His commandments.  He is recording curse after curse and, finally, as He sums it up in verse 68, He says, “And JEHOVAH shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships.”  Israel had come out of Egypt at the time of the exodus and they had not returned, but God is prophesying to Israel (which represents the churches) that they will return to Egypt and to the house of bondage and they will be carried there “with ships.”  Now you can read the Old Testament and New Testament and you are never going to find anywhere in the Bible that the Israelites were loaded onto ships and shipped back to Egypt.  This is a problem for those that want to take the Bible literally, because there is no literal fulfillment of this.  Now they may attempt to get around it by saying, “Oh, this is going to happen in some future age.”  But there is no “future age” and anyone that thinks there is going to be some “thousand year reign” of Christ on this earth is extremely off course.  We are living in the last days of the world – there will be no future generations in which this could be fulfilled literally.  But does this mean that God is not going to fulfill a prophecy?  God is making a prophecy here, in Deuteronomy 28:68:

And JEHOVAH shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

If God says something is going to happen, it must happen.  How else are the Scriptures going to be fulfilled?  If the Scriptures are not fulfilled, that means that God did not speak the truth.  If God failed to fulfill a single Scripture, then it would be a calamity and it would be as awful as anything could be.  Of course, He has not failed to fulfill this Scripture.  In this “time and season” we are living in, we have witnessed the fulfillment of what God is saying here.  God will bring Israel, as typified by the corporate churches, “into Egypt again with ships,” and this is not referring to literal Egypt, but it refers to the “house of bondage,” the condition of spiritual captivity.  God brought the New Testament churches into “spiritual captivity” to Satan.  Just as Egypt had a Pharaoh that ruled over it, Satan is the ruler over those that are in spiritual bondage.  God says He will bring them “into Egypt again with ships.”  The mode of transportation is not going to be by horses or by foot, but it is going to be in “ships.”  So the “picture” is that all the Israelites are going to be loaded in ships and sail to Egypt and when they get to Egypt, they are all unloaded and go into captivity.  That is the “picture” God is giving us. 

Let us as the question: What do “ships” represent in the Bible?  When we search the Bible we find that God speaks of making faith “shipwreck.”  God uses the illustration of a “shipwreck” in Acts 27 to picture the end of the church age and the Great Tribulation period.  Churches are typified by “ships” in the Bible and that is how God is going to bring “Israel” (church members) back to Egypt because God’s “times and seasons” decree that the church age would last almost 2,000 years, then there would come a point (May 1988) when the church age would end and the “two witnesses” have finished their testimony; they are slain and are lying “dead” in the churches and, in that moment of time, the churches become “Egypt” and God has now fulfilled His prophecy in Deuteronomy 28:68.  He has brought His people in the churches that identified with Him back to the “house of bondage” and He did it through the churches and congregations of the world.  The people that were not truly God’s people would remain in the churches; they refused to listen when God opened up the Scriptures to reveal the end of the church age and they refused to listen when God commanded them to “come out of the midst.”  They remained on the “ship” and they were returned to Egypt, the “house of bondage,” indicating that they had never become saved.  They were enslaved to sin and to Satan and, finally, they become bundled as tares for the burning. 

Notice the extremely tragic conclusion to Deuteronomy 28:68:

Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

The “man” is Christ Jesus and “to buy” means to redeem.  Christ will not redeem them there in Egypt, which the churches have become, spiritually.  There will be no redemption.  They will not be purchased by the blood of Christ.  They will not be delivered any longer in that place.  Of course, this ties in with all that we have learned – when God brings a spiritual judgment (and He did bring a spiritual judgment on the churches) which no one could see with their physical eyes; no one could understand this by looking at the churches outwardly.  These things were discerned through the Bible as God opened our understanding to what He had written; just look at how God hid the meaning of that verse in Deuteronomy 28, by speaking of taking Israel back to Egypt in ships. 

Who could understand that, apart from the grace of God?  Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 13 to His apostles, who represent the God’s elect.  He said, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.”  Because of that principal, a verse, like this one in Deuteronomy, is “hidden” spiritually from the unsaved.  We have to understand it spiritually, looking for the parabolic meaning.  This is why God uses a phrase like “which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt,” and this means that the churches are not actually “Egypt,” but we are to look at what the spiritual meaning of “Egypt” would be; Egypt is identified as a “house of bondage.”  The churches used to be the house of God, but now they are the “house of bondage.”  How tragic and how awful it is when people think they are going each Sunday to the “house of God,” but, in reality, they are going to a “house of bondage.”  They have brought their own children to a place of spiritual captivity where there is no “man” to redeem them; there is no Saviour; there is no Deliverer.  There is no salvation in any congregation in the world, once the witness of the “two witnesses” had concluded and they were lying dead in the streets.

No wonder Jeremiah was called “the weeping Prophet,” as God used Him in the Books of Jeremiah and Lamentations to record much of these details of the end of the church age and God’s judgment upon the churches.  It is the most awful of circumstances for people that remain in their churches; it just cannot get any worse.  Actually, it did get worse, because at the end of the Great Tribulation and the beginning of Judgment Day on the world, God “slew” the “third part” and He killed them all, because there was no more hope of salvation for them.  It is just awful and terrible that God judged His own people and destroyed them, spiritually – man, woman and child.  Notice what God says in Jeremiah 25:28-29:

And it shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith JEHOVAH of hosts; Ye shall certainly drink. For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name…

Judgment begins at the “house of God,” as 1 Peter 4:17 declares and God is referring to that here.  Notice that He is now going to turn His attention to the nations of the world and the unsaved inhabitants of the earth, but He first points out, “I began to judge my own people.”  God had a close relationship with those people; they had a certain intimacy with God because they were caretakers of the oracles of God and God had blessed them in many ways.  Even if they were not saved, there were certain blessings for those individuals that identified with God in Israel of old, as well as in the New Testament churches. 

Yet, there came a time when He judged them; He returned them to Egypt where there would be no Redeemer for them any longer; He ended salvation for His own people in every church in the world, which number about two billion people.  There were elderly people, middle-aged people, young people, little children and infants and babies in the womb.  Some children had been conceived and born into a church that was already under judgment.  They never had the opportunity to be outside in the world in the place where God, in the last seventeen years of the Great Tribulation, was pouring out the Latter Rain.  These children were born into the churches and they lived there however long they did before Judgment Day began.  They may have been born in 2005, 2008, 2010 or 2011 and their parents never left the churches.  How tragic, but is it unjust?  No – we can never accuse God of that; it is just that God had no elect left within the congregations and there are children included in these non-elect; God did not predestinate them to salvation. 

God brought such a terrible judgment upon His people and the point He is making in Jeremiah 25 is that He is saying, “If I did this to my own people, do you think I will not do it to you, the unsaved people of the world with whom I have no such relationship and these not called by my name?”  Here is what God says in Jeremiah 25:29:

For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished? Ye shall not be unpunished: for I will call for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith JEHOVAH of hosts.

God is saying, “Do not think for a minute that I will not do to you exactly what I did to the churches?  It is the same cup of wrath that the churches drank and now I take that cup and I give it to you and you will drink, also.  If I did this to my own people, I am going to do it to those of you that are not my people.” 

This is the point that people are missing and they do not understand this.  They say, “Oh, God would never do that to the world.  He would never end His salvation there.  God would never make it so no ‘man’ can redeem them.  That cannot be.”  Ask these people, “Did God do it to the churches?”  (This is supposing they have not lost that understanding, too.)  They say, “Oh, yes, I believe God did that to the churches.”  So the question is: “So you believe God would do something that terrible to His own people, but He would not dare do it to those that are not His people?”  That is contrary to what God is saying in Jeremiah 25 and the teaching of the Bible.”  Look, first, at what a God did to a people that He had a close relationship with and then, fear and realize that if God did that to them, then He will do the same (at least) to those that have no relationship with Him. 

In other words, God ended salvation in the churches and He did this throughout the entire 23 years; no one was saved and that was the “cup” they were given to drink.  No one was being saved in any churches in the world and now the same cup has been given to the people of the earth.  God has most definitely done that and He let us know He would do that when He did it to those that had a special relationship with Him.  It is just completely wrong to think that God would not dare to do such a thing.  I am afraid that people who think that are not reading the Bible with a proper understanding at all.