Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #13 of Revelation, chapter 13, and we are going to be reading Revelation 13:9-10:

If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

I will stop reading there.  Now when God says, “If any man have an ear, let him hear,” it is a signal to the reader that what He is saying needs to be understood as a parable, or spiritually.  He had been speaking of a beast that is coming up out of the sea and, obviously, this is not to be taken literally.  The beast had a deadly wound that was healed and the world worshipped the dragon.  There is no actual “beast” and no “dragon” coming against the camp of the saints and making war with them and overcoming them; it is all a parable and we are to look into the Bible to understand it.  Whenever Christ says, “If any man have an ear, let him hear,” it is an indicator that you have to look for the spiritual meaning and we saw this earlier in Revelation, chapters 2 and 3, with the addresses to the seven churches in Asia Minor, so it is found seven times.  Let us look at one of those examples, in Revelation 2:29:

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

This was typical of each of the seven addresses to the churches.  They conclude with this statement, indicating that you cannot take what is being said literally, but you must search the Bible, comparing Scripture with Scripture, in order to understand what is being said.  When you do this, if it is in accordance to the will of God to open our understanding, then we will understand.  It is also true that God had sealed much of the information and held back the understanding regarding many end time topics until the time of the end.  But this is where we are at today as we are living at the time of the end of the world, so God has revealed much truth to His people. 

Now I am going to read from Matthew 13.  After Christ had told a parable, He said in Matthew 13:9:

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Then He went on to explain the parable further in the following verses.  It says in Matthew 13-16:

And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. nd in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.

This lays down an important Biblical principal: God’s people have been given “ears to hear” and “eyes to see.”  What are they to hear and to see?   It is the truth of the Bible; the Bible is written in parables and a parable is something that hides truth.  The entire Bible is likened to a parable because Christ is “the Word,” and in another place it says, “And without a parable, he did not speak.”  It also says, “In the volume of the book, it is written of me,” so the entire Bible is a parable and God has not shown those truths to the unsaved.  They lack the eyes to see and they lack the ears to hear.  They can read and understand certain things.  They can understand the grammar, the moral principals, the historical perspective and they can, perhaps, come away with some encouragement.  Also, if they have heard from church fathers (the Reformers, for instance) who handed down certain teachings from the parables of the Bible, they may be able to grasp a certain amount of that.  Because it was presented to them from other men, they can know it to a certain degree.  They may hear a man teach and they can know some of the things about it and they may have some understanding of the concept of a parable and grasp some of the spiritual meaning, yet they lack true insight and they lack true ability to “see” and to “hear” spiritual things.  It is foreign to them.  For instance, in 1Corinthians, chapter 2, God speaks of this very thing, regarding who can understand the Bible and how the Bible is to be understood.  It says in 1Corinthians 2:11:

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

This means that an unsaved man, in his natural condition, cannot understand or know the Bible.  He cannot “hear” it and he cannot “see” it.  Then it goes on to say something regarding the children of God that were saved by the grace of God.  It says in 1Corinthians 2:12:

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

Here, God is saying, “I will give my people understanding.  They will know.  They will see.  They will hear.”  It says in John, chapter 10, “My sheep hear my voice.”  The unsaved do not “hear” His voice and they cannot “see.”  Remember what is said in Matthew 24, the chapter in which Christ answers the disciples’ question: “What shall be the sign of they coming, and of the end of the world?”  It says in Matthew 24:15-16:

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

Then Christ goes on with the parable and it is a very revealing statement by Christ: “When ye therefore shall see the abomination,” and who is going to “see” it?  It is only the people of God.  Those that are not the people of God cannot “see” the abomination of desolation. 

Notice the connection to “reading,” as it says “whoso readeth, let him understand.”  Then there are references made to “flee Judaea,” and almost 2,000 years later (a few years ago), we began to understand that Satan was in the churches; Satan had been loosed as the man of sin ruling in all the churches.  God opened up our understanding to realize that we had to depart out of the congregations and we had to “flee Judea,” which is a type and picture of the churches.  This was a type and figure that only the people of God could “see.”  The unsaved viewed “Judea” as that literal place over in the Middle East and they think, “Yes, we know that God has some kind of an end time plan for the Jews over there.”  Then they go off in a completely wrong spiritual direction and they go in a natural direction because they do not have “eyes to see” and they lack understanding.  That is why God says, in Daniel 12, that at time His Word is unsealed at the time of the end and “none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.” It is going to be the opening of the Scriptures that were sealed til the time of the end.  It is an opening of the parables that only God’s people will be able to understand and none of the rest (the unsaved) will be able to understand these things.

Going back to 1Corinthians, chapter 2, remember it said, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”

Then it goes on to say in 1Corinthians 2:13-14:

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.

The natural man cannot “see” and he cannot “hear.”  When the Lord is making references, like He does in Revelation 13:9, “If any man have an ear, let him hear,” it is only His people that will hear.  That is why, by God’s grace and goodness, He has revealed these things to His people and we, only, are able to read Revelation 13, as well as many other parts of the Bible, and we can read it like reading the newspaper.  We read it and we understand that the beast is coming up out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns, and we can understand the reference to the beast and we understand that the seven heads references seven kingdoms; we understand the different periods of his rule; we understand the “sea” was where he was held captive in the depths of the bottomless pit; we understand his “loosing” and we know the timetable for his loosing; we know one of his heads was wounded to death at the cross and that deadly wound was healed.  As we go, verse by verse, there is tremendous clarity which God has given us because He has opened our understanding to His methodology; He has opened our understanding to how the Bible is to be understood; it is a spiritual Book and you have to look for the deeper spiritual meaning. 

God has opened up our understanding to these things because we are living at the time of the end when it was His plan to unseal His Word and it is a wonderful blessing to us.  This is a great privilege.  Of course, there are many hardships, difficulties, troubles, afflictions and tribulations.  And there are many blessings, but it can be said that we possess this distinct privilege and blessing that God has given to us an understanding; He has given us eyes to see what many prophets and many wise men and many people of God in times past desired to see, but they were not able to see it because the Book was sealed.  God has given us this tremendous privilege and blessing to be able to read the Bible and understand it in depths that have never before been possible in the previous history of the world.   Due to our vantage point of living at the end of the world and having lived through the Great Tribulation, we can see how the Great Tribulation was laid out.  Living after the Tribulation in this Day of Judgment, we can see how many other things fit together.  Again, there is probably no better way of describing it than to say it is like reading the newspaper.  When we read our daily newspaper and we are familiar with the city and the streets and the people that are named, there is a base of knowledge, so we are very comfortable reading our newspaper because we know what it is talking about.  This is how it is with the people of God when we read the Bible in our day.   There is a great privilege in “seeing” and “hearing” the things God is saying to us, unlike at any other time in history. 

But it is kept back from the unsaved and it is not permitted for them to have this same ability to “see” and to “hear.”  So these people hear God’s people talking about facts like the church age is over; Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; there is no place called “Hell,” but only annihilation; judgment is the shut door of heaven and it is a spiritual judgment; the Biblical calendar of history and these “dates” and “times and seasons,” and so on.  I am sure it is like listening to another language, to some people.  It would be like you and me hearing a foreign language.  We may know a few words of another language.  For example, my wife speaks Spanish and I know “a little” Spanish (“un poco”) and I can pick up a few words, but when my wife gets together with her family and they are speaking naturally and quickly in Spanish, I try to follow along, but I am just lost and I do not know what they are saying.  This is how it must be when someone with a “natural mind” hears the things EBible Fellowship is teaching.  No wonder they speak evil of us; they do not understand.  This is what God says about those that lack the truth, in 2Peter 2:12:

But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;

I am sure we have all had encounters with people and they say that what we believe is heresy.  They say, “I cannot believe you teach no more salvation.”  They go on, and on, reviling and speaking evil of these things and speaking evil of the people that share these things.  As a child of God, we try to explain, “But you do not understand.  Look at this verse and see what it says about the door shutting.  And look at Luke 13, where it says that in that day when God has risen and shut the door, many will come knocking at that door.  That is today!”  We try to show them the verses, but their response is, “I do not want to hear it.  I will not listen to anything you say.  I just know you are a bunch of heretics.”  Then we say, “Can you offer some Scripture to correct us, along with your accusation?  Can you support your feelings and the things you are saying and show us (in the Bible) where there is error in the Biblical calendar?  Can you show us where the things we are teaching in Jeremiah or Revelation (or other studies) are wrong?”  We have done hundreds of studies that are in agreement and they harmonize with one another.  The Biblical evidence mounts for the teaching that God has, in fact, shut the door and put out the light of the Gospel and we are living after the Tribulation.  “Can you show us the error?”  But they are too angry and too upset, but the reason they do not want to discuss it with us and why they cannot show us the error is that they do not understand – they do not understand what we are saying; they do not understand the way to use the Bible, comparing Scripture with Scripture, to arrive at spiritual conclusions.  They do not understand because they lack ears to hear and eyes to see.  God says in Daniel 12:10, the “wise,” which are the elect, will understand, but none of the wicked will understand. 

We are living at the time when the truths of the Bible are so reprehensible and “too hot to handle” for an individual who does not love the truth; they will not go near these doctrines.  It is something that is abominable to them.  We read in Genesis that every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians and that is the idea with the truth of the Word of God that He has opened up in our time.  They are truths that are very hard and difficult things.   Jesus spoke in His earthly ministry and as He spoke parables to them, they said, “These are hard truths.”    As Christ spoke of “drinking His blood” and “eating His flesh,” it just did not register with them.  And, if that was hard, can you imagine the grievous nature of truths like the end of the church age and the end of salvation?  These things are something the natural man just cannot accept.  He cannot bring himself to even associate with that kind of teaching.  This is because it is God’s plan and it is one of the ways He is “putting the fire” to all those that profess His name.  Those that are “gold, silver, precious stones,” the true believers, will endure sound doctrine and they will endure to the end.  But those that lack the love of the truth because they are not “gold, silver, precious stones,” but they are “wood, hay, stubble,” do not have a love from the Spirit of God for His Word and for the doctrines derived from His Word.  They cannot identify with that Word any longer and they will be burned up.

Lord willing, we will continue to look at Revelation 13, going along in our Bible study, verse by verse, when we get together for our next Bible study.