Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #25 of Revelation, chapter 11, and we are going be reading Revelation 11:13:

And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.

In our last Bible study, we were looking at the language of the “great earthquake,” as it is found in some other places.  In Revelation, chapter 6, we saw that the Lord spoke of a “great earthquake” in the context of the sun becoming black as sackcloth of hair, the moon turning to blood and the stars falling to earth.  We saw how that relates to the language of Matthew 24:29:

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.”  

We also went to Revelation, chapter 16, and, again, in the context of Judgment Day God spoke of a “great earthquake” or “megas seismos,” something that had never occurred in the history of the world – an unparalleled “great earthquake.”  We realized that God is identifying a “great earthquake” with Judgment Day.  But, as we have learned, Judgment Day began in a spiritual way on May 21, 2011, and no one could see any noticeable difference from that day and the previous day.  It seemed like just any other day and, yet, there was a drastic difference because on that day God ended His salvation program for this world, as far as continuing to save people.  By that day He had saved all those whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  All those that had been predestinated to become saved had become saved and this allowed Him to shut the door to heaven.  This was a spiritual act on God’s part.  He is the one that opened the door to heaven in times past and He is the one that shut the door to heaven on that date.  No one could ever see when the door was open and no one could ever see when the door was closed.  It is that action which God likens to a great (spiritual) earthquake.

We were looking at Acts 16.  I want to go back there because the same two words (“megas” and “seismos”) are found there.  These two words together are not found too often in the Bible.  They are found just a few times in the New Testament and maybe a couple of times in the Old Testament.  They point to Judgment Day, but we also saw, in Jeremiah 10:22, where it says there was a “great commotion” out of the north country.  That word “commotion” is a word that is translated as “earthquake” in other places in the Old Testament.  Let me read this again.  It says in Jeremiah 10:22:

Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons.

This, of course, is familiar language to us.  We know this refers to the churches at the time of the end and the churches became desolate, spiritually, once the Spirit of God departed out.  That left the church a “desolate wilderness,” and that is what identifies spiritually with a “great earthquake,” as far as God’s judgment on the churches.  Well, it is the same thing with His judgment on the world because it is the same “cup of wrath.”  On May 21, 2011, the day of transition from judgment on the churches to judgment on the world, God brought to pass a worldwide, spiritual earthquake that impacted every living person and it especially had great importance to every unsaved person because God’s Spirit left this world, insofar as salvation is concerned; He left the world “desolate,” with no more possibility of salvation and this is that “great earthquake.” 

In Acts 16, we read of a “great earthquake,” and let me read it again, in Acts 16:25-26:

And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.

We see there was a  “great earthquake” that occurred and we do not read of any damage except that it opened the door of the prison and everyone’s bands were loosed, setting them free.  This is the only recorded “damage” that the earthquake did and it was actually a very positive thing, insofar as the prisoners were concerned: they were released from their prison and released from the shackles that had bound them.  This was the only thing we can see that this “megas seismos” brought to pass. 

The language of “great earthquake” makes us think that what we are reading in Acts 16 does relate to Judgment day, but so does the use of the word “midnight,” in verse 25.  The “great earthquake” occurred at midnight: “And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed.”  Now “midnight” is a time that normally indicates “judgment” in the Bible and the context will determine which judgment is in view.  For instance, it says in Exodus 12:29:

And it came to pass, that at midnight JEHOVAH smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

Midnight brought a grievous judgment upon the Egyptians.  All the firstborn of Egypt were slain. 

We also read this word “midnight” in Luke 11, where the Lord Jesus is teaching us to pray.  First He gives the Lord’s Prayer and then He gives additional instruction for prayer in the following verses.   What is interesting is that in this parable, in which the Lord is teaching us to pray, we can see that He is teaching us how to pray in the Day of Judgment.  The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer that gave instruction on how to pray during the “day of salvation,” but once that transition is made from judgment on the churches to judgment on the world, we would be in unchartered waters because God’s people would experience things that had never been experienced by the people of God in the history of the world.  As we have learned, it was God’s plan to leave His people on the earth during the Day of Judgment and to live through it, but we are living in a time when there is no more salvation.  Therefore, the Lord’s Prayer does not fit and does not help us as it did for those that lived in the time that God was still saving because then you could have prayed the Lord’s Prayer (as it directed us how to pray) and you could have prayed, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  This was a petition for salvation.  But, again, now God does not want to confuse His people at the time when He has ended the possibility of salvation, so He devised another prayer and this is what the Lord is giving us in Luke 11:5-7:

And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves;  For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.

We are not going to go into this parable at this time, but we do see the language of the door being shut.  We could go to other verses to show how that relates to Judgment Day in conjunction with “midnight.”  It is just as we are reading in Acts 16: “And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed,” and then there was a “great earthquake.”  There are two elements here that point to Judgment Day and, likewise, there are two elements in Luke 11 that point to Judgment Day: midnight and the door being shut. 

There is one other instance and I am going to read it, just so we can see that the context is very important when we are looking at the word “midnight.”  The use of the word “midnight” does not always point to the final judgment, but it just points to judgment.  But the context of a passage where God is indicating it is Judgment Day, it points to the final judgment, but in other contexts it can point to the judgment on the churches, which it does in Matthew 25:5-6:

While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

We know that in this parable of the five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins that “midnight” cannot refer to the final judgment.  The cry is made at “midnight” as all ten of the virgins “slumbered and slept” and that points to the church age and the cry at “midnight” work them up, and that relates to God opening the Scriptures during the Great Tribulation during the time judgment had begun on the churches.  It was at that point the cry was made, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh,” the declaration that time was short and the appointed day was revealed to be May 21, 2011.  Then a little further along in verse 10, the bridegroom comes and that happened on Judgment Day and this period of time we have entered.  So in Matthew 25, it does not point to the final judgment, but to the beginning of judgment on the house of God.

Well, let us go back to Acts 16:25:

And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.

Let us compare that to our verse in Revelation 11:12:

And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud…

Remember, we saw the cloud represents judgment.  So they “heard a great voice from heaven.”  And in the prison where Paul and Silas were praying and singing praises to God, the prisoners “heard them.”  Paul and Silas were two men, just as we read of “two witnesses” in Revelation 11.  Paul and Silas are in a dark, dank dungeon.  We can just imagine the conditions.  There were no overseers, as far as we know.  In modern society today we take great care to see that prisoners are treated well, but that was not the case back then.  It was probably a filthy place and a wet place.  It was a place where you could get quite sick for some time before wasting away into death.  And, here, in these awful circumstances these two men of God were praying and singing praises unto God.  You can imagine that the prisoners heard them, but they were in no mood for this and they certainly did not feel like singing and they definitely would not have wanted to praise God.  Look at their circumstances.  Look where they were.  How strange and how unusual that these two new prisoners are in such good spirits; they are praising God.  Are they lunatics?  Are they crazy?  Do they not know where they are?  Can they not look around and see the darkness all around them?  Well, we can see how the prayers and the praises would have sounded loudly in the ears of those prisoners.  Everyone in the prison would have been aware of the presence of Paul and Silas.  They would have heard their testimony and that is exactly the situation with the “two witnesses,” once they stood upon their feet.  The people of the world that had a “great fear” upon seeing them “heard a great voice from heaven.”  They heard the message of God and it stood out in the darkness of this world.  There is a great similarity between a dark, dirty dungeon and this world, spiritually.  This world lieth in darkness and it is a filthy and ugly place.  Oh, yes, there is much singing and people are praising their gods of gold and silver.  There is a lot of that kind of praise going on, but as far as singing to God and praying to God and glorifying God, there is very little of that.  Yet, there came that point in time when God opened up His Word and sent forth His messengers to carry the serious message of the approaching Judgment Day and the light of that Word of God illuminated the world and they were all listening.  God’s elect heard, just as these prisoners heard Paul and Silas praying in that prison long ago.

Then after hearing, there is an earthquake, just as we found in Revelation 11:12-13:

And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour was there a great earthquake…

There is the witness of God and the bright, shining light of the truth of the Bible into the darkness of this world and then God brings to pass a “great earthquake,” simultaneously, in a way, with the salvation of that great multitude.  That is the way God is viewing it.  And, in Acts 16, we have these prisoners, and this is just like God’s elect that were not yet saved and they were still captives in the dungeon of slavery to sin and Satan.  They were bondmen and bondwomen, doing servitude to their lusts and desires, until the time that God (at the very end of time) saved them.  Right before the spiritual death of this world was about to take place and the door of heaven would be shut once and for all, God saved a great multitude that was still left to be saved.

And what happens when someone becomes saved, spiritually?  It is like the prison doors have been opened and their bands have been removed.  They are free and free indeed.  This is the beautiful language of the Bible.  For instance, it says in Isaiah 61:1-2:

The Spirit of the Lord JEHOVAH is upon me; because JEHOVAH hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of JEHOVAH, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

This is exactly what God did during the “day of salvation.”  The day was about to close – that prolonged period of salvation which had been in effect for the 1,955 years of the church age.  Then there was a short period at the beginning of the Great Tribulation period when God was saving (virtually) no one, but then came September of 1994 and God stretched forth His hand the second time to recover the remnant of His people.  It was a second glorious outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a second glorious Jubilee period.  A Jubilee is the time to set the captives free.  Now the Jubilee period was coming to a close; the day of salvation was coming to a close; the “acceptable year of JEHOVAH” was coming to a close.  Finally, God put forth His hand in a mighty way to touch the hearts of souls all over the world at the last,  He freed them in salvation and, as Revelation 11 describes, they “ascended” up to heaven to be seated in heavenly places and they were now safe and secure in Christ and they can never be harmed.

That is what happened in Acts 16.  The foundation of the prison was shaken and, immediately, all the doors were opened and all the prisoners’ bands were loosed.  God is indicating that one effect of the “great earthquake” of Judgment Day was a great release of the captives.  Notice the language that says that all the doors were opened and everyone’s bands were loosed.  There were none still bound in the prison; there were none whose prison door was still closed and locked; there were none who still had chains binding their hands or feet; their bands were all loosed.  This all points to the completion of God’s salvation program at the time of the “great earthquake” and the time of Judgment Day.

Then it goes on to say in Acts 16:27-28:

And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.

Now is this not interesting?  Here is a great deliverance.  A miraculous thing occurred when the prison doors opened and everyone’s bands came off.  You would have thought that these prisoners would have begun to run and gotten out of that prison.  Some of them had probably been there for quite some time and, yet, not one of them left – not a single prisoner left the prison.  How can we understand this and see the spiritual implication? 

Here is how we can understand it.  When we realize that Acts 16 is speaking of “midnight” and it is speaking of a time of a “great earthquake” and both of these things relate to the final Judgment Day.  It is describing a great release of prisoners at the point of a great earthquake.  We know that God did save a great multitude “out of great tribulation.” 

When the great earthquake, in Acts 16, stopped shaking the foundations of the prison and when the jailer came and saw all the doors opened, he learned that none of the prisoners had left and escaped.  They were all still there.  What we can understand from this is that God’s plan was to deliver His elect (the great multitude), but it was not His plan to rapture them at that time and take them out of this world and into heaven.  Not a single individual of those freed captives fled the prison and, likewise, not one of those that God saved during the Great Tribulation has been raptured or translated into the heaven.  We are all still here.  We are all living on the earth in the Day of Judgment. 

I think Acts 16, with the picture of the prisoners being freed, is just like all of us are free.  We are not a prisoner of sin and Satan any longer.  We are “free men.”  Christ has made us free and we are “free indeed,” but we remain alive and living on the earth unto that final day of this prolonged period of Judgment Day.  Then on that last day God will take His people up; on that last day He will resurrect the dead, but not at this point.  Acts 16, in a very interesting way, is giving us encouragement.  God is saying, “Yes, I did save all those I said I would save.  And, yes, Judgment Day did come and a ‘great earthquake’ did occur and there was a glorious opening of the prison as the Jubilee came to a close.”  Yet, it was all spiritual, so we can look with renewed expectation (and a good expectation) for the hope that the Bible gives us, as we see that God is doing exactly as we have learned.  He is “trying” His people throughout this entire period of Judgment Day on the unsaved.   It is a period of severe testing for His elect.