Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #18 of Revelation, chapter 13, and we are continuing to look at Revelation 13:10:

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.

We have been spending some time looking at the last phrase: “Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.”  We have seen that this statement about God’s people is found in the midst of a chapter that deals with the Great Tribulation (Revelation 13) and a chapter that deals with Judgment Day (Revelation 14).  In thinking about these references to the “patience and faith of the saints,” we were led to Matthew, chapter 21, where the Lord Jesus does something mysterious in cursing a fig tree.  Then He says something even more mysterious, in Matthew 21:18-22:

Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

We were discussing in our last study how the Lord Jesus pronounced an eternal curse against the fig tree: “Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.”  That was a picture of God cursing national Israel wherein they would no longer be the people of God.  That would be finalized at the cross when the veil of the temple was rent in twain and, never again, would God save individuals through the synagogues or through the religious worship system of national Israel.  He was done with them and they were no longer His representatives and His Spirit departed from them.  Therefore, they had no salvation.  That is why throughout the church age, people did not go to synagogues to become saved, but they went to churches where the Word of God was and where God’s Spirit was and, potentially, they could find the blessing of God in salvation.  That was not the case with the synagogues, even though they still had the Old Testament, which is the Word of God.  They could have taught some faithful things regarding the Old Testament and it could have been a faithful message to some degree.  Of course, they did not have much truth because they rejected the Messiah.  But could someone have been saved in a synagogue, as the teacher taught something faithful from the Book of Isaiah, for example, about the God of the Old Testament?  After all, that is the Word of God and “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  Could God save anyone by any Scripture, even in the Old Testament, in a religious system like the Jews have had in the centuries after Christ had gone to the cross?  No – that is not possible, because Jesus cursed the fig tree: “Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.”  That was the pronouncement and decree of God; it was an eternal curse.  As a result, no one could, ever again, become saved in that system. 

Jesus said to His disciples, who typify the body of believers, in Matthew 20:21:

If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree…

We discussed this last time.  We saw that Jesus is saying, “You will do what I have done and you will not only do that, but something in addition.”  We will look at that in a little while, but first let us review what we discussed last time. 

First, He is saying that the people of God will “curse the fig tree,” as Jesus had cursed it.  That came to pass recently at the time of the end, at the beginning of the Great Tribulation, when God opened the Scriptures and revealed to His people that the New Testament churches and congregations were under the wrath of God; that is, the “curse” of God.  God’s people believed that information by faith, by trusting the Word of God and trusting the things the Bible said about the end of the church age and the Holy Spirit coming out of the midst and Satan entering into the churches and taking his seat as the man of sin.  These are all “matters of faith” and, finally, the true believers departed out of the congregations and fled to the Bible.  These were all “matters of faith” because we could not physically see any of it.  We cannot see any of it.  We cannot that the Holy Spirit is not in the churches; we did not see Him leave with our physical eyes; we cannot see that Satan had entered in and he is seated there as the man of sin; we cannot see “the abomination of desolation” stand in the holy place, with our physical eyes, although this is what God says 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:

When you “see the abomination of desolation” does not mean to see it with your eyes, like you would see the clouds in the sky.  God does not mean that.  He means that when you see with “eyes of faith” and you understand spiritual things through the Word of God, the Bible, as God opens up our understanding and we begin to comprehend what He has done through the Word of God.  That is why there is the reference to “whoso readeth, let him understand,” because the one reading the Bible with understanding will see through his spiritual sight the “abomination of desolation stand in the holy place.”  And we have seen this, but, again, not with our physical eyes.  We cannot see Satan by looking in the Presbyterian or the Lutheran church or whatever church there may be, even churches that are more obviously “other gospels,” like the Pentecostal churches that have added to the Word of God because they think God is bringing additional divine revelation outside of the Bible.  You can open the door of a church building and look in and you are not going to physically see Satan.  But we see him in all these churches – the Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Pentecostals and Catholics and all churches – through the “eyes” of the Word of God.  We see Satan being loosed.  We see him entering into the congregations for the duration of the Great Tribulation and we see Judgment Day in these days after the Tribulation. 

We see these things through faith and it would probably be good for us to remind ourselves what God says about faith, in Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

When we are discussing these things with others, they may say, “You have no proof.  Where is your proof that the church age is over?  Where is your proof that it is Judgment Day?”  We refer them to Bible verses and we say, “Look at this verse in Isaiah 24, or in Revelation 9, or in Revelation 14, or in Matthew 24, where it says immediately after the tribulation, the sun is darkened.”   We tell them, “Here is where we see it, because we read it here in the Bible or there in the Bible.”  When we compare Scripture with Scripture and spiritual with spiritual, doctrine comes forth and teaching comes forth.  We are showing them that this is how we see, but they do not see it.  That is no proof or evidence to them because these things are discerned by faith.  That is why the wise will understand.  The wise are those made wise through salvation – through the grace of God and the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.  He gives us eyes to see and to understand.  That is what it means “to see” in the Bible.  We begin to see the substance: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  We see through faith and we have great evidence of these things that have taken place. 

It is by faith the fig tree is cursed.  It is by faith and that is the point Jesus is making in Matthew 21.  Let us read that again, in Matthew 21:21:

… but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

What mountain is in view?   If we have faith, what mountain shall be removed and cast into the sea?  First of all, in the cursing of the fig tree, Jesus did curse an actual fig tree, but He did so in order to teach the spiritual meaning of it, as the fig tree represented national Israel at that time.  When He said that we would do the same thing, that “fig tree” took on the meaning of the New Testament churches and congregations of the world.  Likewise, when He speaks of a mountain, He does not mean that we will speak to some literal mountain.  In Pennsylvania, we have the Pocono Mountains and it is not possible that anyone, by faith, can speak to a literal mountain and it will remove into the sea.  That will never happen.  This is not what God means when He says, “If ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.”  Someone can believe all they want and then go up to Mount Everest and say, “Be thou cast into the sea,” and when they open their eyes, it will still be there.  That is taking the Bible literally and we get into trouble when we take the Bible literally.  We have to look at the figurative meaning and the typology.

What does God mean, spiritually, by His reference to a mountain?  In Matthew, chapter 4, we are helped a little bit.  This was the time when Satan was permitted to tempt the Lord Jesus Christ.  It says in Matthew 4:8-10:

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

Here, Satan takes the Lord to an exceeding high mountain to show Him all the kingdoms of the world.  Why did he take Him up to an exceeding high mountain?  Perhaps, it was for the vantage point, but I do not care how high the mountain was, you could still not see all the kingdoms of the world – you would still have limited sight.  But it was for a very particular reason because mountains in the Bible represent kingdoms.  When Satan deceived Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden, he won (by right of conquest) the victory over mankind and all that man had been given rule over, which was dominion over this earth.  Satan won that dominion and he became the ruler of the unsaved men that ruled over the earth, so all the kingdoms of the world came under his rule in a legal way.  So he is saying to Christ, “I will give you all these kingdoms, if only you will bow down to me.”  What arrogance!  The Lord Jesus rebuked him, but the point in taking Him up to the exceeding high mountain was to show Jesus the glory of his kingdoms.  The position of the exceeding high mountain identifies with the kingdoms which Christ was shown.  Remember, a while back we looked at Revelation, chapter 17.  It says in Revelation 17:9:

And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.

The seven heads” are describing the beast or Satan.  He is pictured as having seven heads and ten horns and God is defining the “heads.”  The seven heads are “seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.”  Then it says in Revelation 17:10:

And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.

The seven kingdoms are the seven periods of rule of Satan throughout the history of the world from his conquest in the Garden of Eden until the very time of the end; the last “head” or the last period of Satan’s rule was when the Lord Jesus loosed him out of the bottomless pit and he rose up out of the depths of the sea and he was given a period of rule during the Great Tribulation that was greater than all of his previous periods of rule.  This would be his final kingdom and he would sit as king over that kingdom for the duration of the Great Tribulation period, which turned out to be an exact 23 years.  By the time Satan was loosed on May 21, 1988 when the church age ended, that was the point at which the sixth kingdom (or sixth head) ended its period of rule and the seventh and last kingdom of Satan began.  When God finally brought judgment on Satan and his kingdom of this world (all the nations of the world) on Judgment Day, May 21, 2011, it was the conclusion of the Great Tribulation.  It was the beginning of judgment on the unsaved inhabitants of the world, so it is a judgment on the “seventh kingdom,” the last kingdom of Satan.  So if God were to speak of this as a “type and a figure” it would be a mountain; that would be the mountain that represented the kingdom of Satan.  For instance, we read in Jeremiah 51 about judgment on Babylon and the king of Babylon at the end of the seventy year period in which they had overcome Judah; that seventy year period typified the Great Tribulation which was actually 23 years long.  At the end of the seventy year historical period, Babylon fell and the Medes and Persians conquered Babylon.  That typified Judgment Day and Jeremiah 50 and 51 describe Judgment Day as the judgment on “Babylon,” and we read in Jeremiah 51:24-25:

And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight, saith JEHOVAH. Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith JEHOVAH, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain.

Here, God is calling Babylon a “destroying mountain.”  It was God’s plan to take the “destroying mountain,” which had been extremely destructive during the Great Tribulation against the people of God and against the corporate churches, and destroy it.  God would take that “mountain” and bring His wrath upon it and make them a “burnt mountain.”  It would be a “burnt mountain” because the fire of God’s wrath was upon Babylon.  God is currently judging the unsaved people of the world and a fire has been kindled in His anger.  It is a spiritual fire and we should not expect to see any literal flames, but, spiritually, it is language that indicates God’s anger is burning against Babylon – against the unsaved people of the world that are in the kingdom of Satan because they never did become saved.  It is that “mountain” Christ is speaking of in Matthew 21, when He says to His people, “but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.”  It is language indicating the two-part judgment program of God at the end of the world.