For a few weeks, we have been studying the idea of the release of those whom God intended to save and did save. Then it all finally came to pass before Judgment Day, May 21. God released all elect captives, completely, all of them.
We have also been talking about how God speaks, how He wrote the Bible in parables. As Jesus spoke, we read, “Without a parable spake he not unto them.” He is the Word, and so we know that He is teaching us that this is how we have to understand everything in the Bible.
We have also seen how difficult it is, even for true believers, to decipher and to understand what the Bible says. We have the example of when Jesus said to the disciples, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,” and they took it to mean that He was referring to bread, that it was something physical. Christ corrected them, “Do ye not yet understand?” Then they learned that this was actually a spiritual reference to the doctrine of the Pharisees and the scribes.
This is how God wrote the Bible in just about every place, but there are occasions where God hides truth and yet His statement is very direct and very straightforward. For example, Jesus told the disciples several times the things that He must suffer and then after three days rise from the dead. Luke 18 tells us that they understood “none of these things” and that it was “hid from them.”
We wonder how the disciples could not know when Jesus said this plainly in Luke 18. We read in Luke 18:31-33:
Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:
This is Christ telling the disciples what was going to happen. Did all of these things literally happen? Yes; they did.
It continues:
And they shall scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again.
Was Jesus whipped and put to death? Yes; and it was all very physical.
Then look at what we read in verse 34, Luke 18:34:
And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.
We have this common expression where something just sails right over our heads, which is like what happened to these disciples. Why did they not get this?
We know that man can be pretty dense, especially natural man, concerning the truths of the Bible. But these were true believers mostly, except for Judas. We would assume that the other eleven were all true believers. And Christ told them pointblank and straightforwardly what was going to happen, but they did not understand.
We can probably see why, because every time Jesus would say something, or on most occasions, like with the leaven, they would be corrected that they were not to take it literally and that they were to look for the spiritual meaning.
But now He is saying these things and we can see them thinking and maybe even discussing what these things meant. “What does He mean by being spitted on, spitefully entreated, whipped, and dying? What are the spiritual meanings of these things?” And so, they were confused.
We read in Luke 24:44-46:
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:
Now they understand. Now they completely get what Christ was telling them.
This is kind of cheating, is it not, because this is after the fact? This is after He was spitted on. It was after He was spitefully entreated and scourged and died and rose from the dead that Jesus tells them this again; and now they get it. They understand.
This is how it is sometimes. This is how it is. There is no humanly possible way that any person who studies the Bible can know something, a truth, if God does not want them to know it. There is no way. He will blind people to spiritual things if they take it literally; and sometimes He will say something literally and we might be thinking spiritually.
So the Bible is complex and difficult. This is why we compare spiritual with spiritual, then we try to harmonize our conclusions, but then we also have to go to God in prayer and say, “O Lord, help me to understand. Open my eyes that I might behold wondrous things out of Thy Law. Give me spiritual understanding of these things.” Then if this is God’s will, He does.
Now we are after the fact of May 21 and there was not a great physical earthquake, but when we follow these two words, the “great earthquake” that we read about in Revelation 6 and in Revelation 16, we would not know from these passages if it was to be literal or spiritual. We would not know.
In this case, God did not want us to know until it happened. After it happened, then we could know, like we know today. And if this is God’s will, like it was with the disciples concerning His rising from the dead after three days, then who are we to say anything about this?
So these two words, “great earthquake,” are also in Acts 16 where there is a prison. Paul and Silas are thrust into the inner part of it and they are securely bound in this prison and the prison doors are shut. Then a great earthquake happens, but nothing apparently happened to the city of Philippi. The next day, the magistrates who threw them into prison and had them whipped send a messenger to go and release Paul and Silas.
If there had been a great earthquake in the city of Philippi, they would not have been interested or even concerned at all about releasing Paul and Silas from the prison. Nothing is said about the city falling down and crumbling. When you read Acts 16, even the prison itself did not fall. There apparently was no damage. The walls did not fall. The ceiling did not collapse. The only thing that the great earthquake did was open prison doors and take off the bonds of every prisoner, all of them. God makes a point of stressing this.
So we have these ingredients; plus the earthquake happened towards midnight, and midnight has to do with Judgment Day. But before this, Paul and Silas were praying and praising God, and all of the prisoners heard them. This is spiritually important because we know that God sent the Gospel into all the world so that all the world would hear. All of His elect had to hear in order to be delivered, in order to be freed.
It is just an amazing thing that we have these words “great earthquake” in view with the release of the prisoners from Acts 16. And this just so happens to have everything to do with just about the whole Bible, because God likens sinners to being in prison.
We can look at Isaiah 42:7, Isaiah 61:1-2, 2 Timothy 2:25-26.
Isaiah 42:7 says:
To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.
Isaiah 61:1-2 says:
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;
And 2 Timothy 2:25-26 says:
In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
Look at these verses where God is looking at sinners in prison.
We have not looked at this one yet. Let us also go to 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3:18-20 says:
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also [that is, by the Spirit] he [Christ] went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime [aforetime] were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing…
Before the flood, Christ preached, but who were these mysterious spirits in prison? He preached to the people of the world of that day, to those who saw Noah constructing the ark.
The Bible tells us that Noah was “a preacher of righteousness.” Christ is righteousness, so Noah preached Christ; and this how Christ preached. He preached through His servant Noah, just like He has preached to the world all throughout history through His servants. But notice how God says that He went and preached to “spirits in prison.”
If you are not saved, woe unto you now because you are going to stay this way. Woe unto you. This is the time when if you are filthy, which has to do with sin, the Bible says that you will be “filthy still.”
This is what it says in Revelation 22:11. We read in Revelation 22:10-11:
And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
The Book was unsealed, which God did in 1988 but not completely. He did not completely unseal this until May 21. Now, in its aftereffects, we are learning more. We are learning more things, a lot more. There is another great amount of information that God is revealing to His people now.
So if you are spiritually in prison now, and any unsaved person is, you are going to remain spiritually in that prison, because there is no more deliverance. The thing is, though, we do not know whom God did free and whom He left bound, and so we continue praying for our family members and for our friends, maybe even for ourselves. Of course, the prayer is not, “O God, save me. Have mercy on me today.” No; the prayer is, “O Lord, could You have saved me before May 21 and maybe I do not know this? May You work out that salvation with me now in these days.” And so we are basically praying, “O Lord, having had mercy, have mercy,” because this was a past action. This action was already taken by God, and then He shut the door to Heaven, which was what we were seeing.
We had focused on this and had warned people about this as we told them, “The door is shutting. There will be no more salvation.” We were correct as we told them, “The door to Heaven is closing on May 21, which will be Judgment Day.” And then we were also correct that there would be this five-month period. This was what we were warning people about, but we did not see these other aspects to this. Yes; the door shut, but then all of the doors of all of God’s elect all over the world opened. They opened and God set all of the captives free.
This is what I want to take a look at today in relation to the Babylonian captivity. Remember that we have to look for the deeper spiritual meaning. We have to look for parables. When we read about the Jews in Babylon, that was true history. It was not a parable as in when Jesus would speak a parable and say, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” This was a historical parable; that is, what happened was all full of meaning, of types and of figures and of spiritual truths.
This is like we read in Job 27:1, which says:
Moreover Job continued his parable…
Job was a real man and he really suffered those things. But in that suffering, God painted a picture of the Gospel and that was the parable.
In Galatians 4:21, we read:
Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
Then it speaks about historical occurrences in the book of Genesis with Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and their children.
Then, incredibly, God says in Galatians 4:24:
Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants…
The two wives of Abraham and their two sons were an allegory; that is, they had a deeper meaning. This is why verse 21 says:
…do ye not hear the law?
This is like when Christ would say, “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
These are similar statements to make sure that we understand what God is saying, because we have to look for the deeper meaning. We have to find the Gospel truth, and this is what God is saying here:
…do ye not hear the law?
Then He refers, not to Deuteronomy or to the Ten commandments, He refers to history; because the whole Bible is a Law Book. But not only should we learn the historical events; that is, we could, by memory, tell you what Abraham did with Hagar, as Sarah gave her handmaiden to him. We should not only learn just this, but do we not hear what the Law is pointing to, to the shadows, to the figures, to the types?
Look also at Psalm 78. It says in Psalm 78:1-2:
Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old:
Again, God makes reference to the Law.
O my people…incline your ears…
Give ear; this means to hear this. Do not just read it. We can just read the story of Joseph or we can just read the story of Joshua. These are very interesting stories. Many preachers read them today and say, “What can we learn to benefit us in the way that we live our lives? What morals can we glean from these accounts? What important truths do they contain to help us to live the Christian life?” Alright; fine, fine fine, but then they stop – and they did not hear the Law. They did not hear it. Where is the Gospel?
Family Radio has taken so much abuse for the way in which they approach the Bible, because none of the churches approach it in this way; and yet the Bible is just full of examples of how we should approach the Bible, which is exactly the way in which Family Radio has been doing for over 50 years. We should be looking for spiritual meaning, looking for truths.
Here is one in Psalm 78. When we just read this, it has to do with the release from Egypt and the wilderness sojourn. Remember that it says in Psalm 78:2:
I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old:
But when we read this Psalm, this is a historical account; it is history. It is the history of Israel. But this account is not like the rich man and Lazarus. That is only a parable, because they were not real men. They typified real men, but they were not, themselves, real men. Here in Psalm 78, this is real, actual history; and look at verse 51. We read in Psalm 78:51:
And smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham:
When did this occur, or what time of day or night? This occurred at midnight. God smote all of the firstborn of Egypt at midnight; and He is telling us that this was a parable. This was a parable. There is spiritual meaning there.
This is just like the great earthquake in Acts 16. It was a true earthquake, for all we know, but a very strange earthquake. It was also a very great earthquake. It was not like just a little tremor on the Richter scale. This was a great earthquake, a megas seismos, but it did not do any damage. And God can do this if He wants.
But, of course, there was a plague in Egypt and the death of the firstborn. This plague passed by the Jews, because they had the blood on their doorposts. This really happened. These things took place. But then notice what we read in Psalm 78:52-53. It says:
But made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. And he led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
Okay. There was a great earthquake that we identify with May 21 and the release of captives. In Egypt, we can say that there was a great earthquake at midnight. As a result of this, all of the slaves are set free.
It actually says in Exodus 12 that “in that night” they were delivered, because Pharaoh rose up hastily. Every house in Egypt had death, from Pharaoh on his throne to the captive in the dungeon. Pharaoh lost at least one son. We do not know how many wives he had, and I do not know how God figured that event, but we do know that he lost at least one son.
Many died in Egypt on that night. As a result of that tremendous shaking of Egypt in the death of their firstborn, it released all of the slaves, all of the Jews, at once, immediately. Pharaoh got up and said, “Go; get you out,” and all of the Egyptians were with him. They quickly wanted them out. They gave jewels of gold and silver to the Jews. In other words, the Jews spoiled them because this was a victory. This was a victory, and to the victor go the spoils.
So they were going out and they started heading out at night. But with over 600,000 footmen, it was, of course, whatever time it must have been after midnight when they got started and continued going out the next day into the daylight until they were all gone; and so then they left Egypt.
Now this relates to May 21. Notice how God just says in this parable that He “made his own people to go forth,” they were free; and they went forth “like sheep.” And where are we at?
Do you remember John 21? We read there of the great catch of 153 fish, and 153 just so happens to be the number of days from May 21 to October 21. 153 fish are brought to Jesus and the next thing that happens is that Jesus says to Peter, “Peter, lovest thou me?” Peter replied, “Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.” This went back and forth three times. After Peter would say this, then Jesus would say, “Feed my sheep.”
This is the picture here. It is midnight, it is judgment, all of the captives are freed, and God leads them “forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.”
It is not a mistake when you go to Family Radio’s webpage (www.familyradio.com) and you see what? You see Bible verses on feeding sheep, because this is where we are. We are in the 153-day period, and we have come out of Egypt, in a sense, like all came out. Not one Jew remained behind, no matter how young or how old, not a single Jew. All of the captives were released. All of them were freed; and so God released all of His people on May 21.
So it is important that we hear the Law and that we look for the spiritual meaning. Then we come to Babylon and the king of Babylon. We will turn to Isaiah 14 in a minute.
First, when we told people that the church age was over and that the Bible said, “Let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains,” the people in the churches did not understand this. They would say that God was talking to the people in the first century A.D. They would say things like, “He is just referring to the Jews of that time because there was that horrible tribulation when the Roman army came in 70 A.D. and destroyed them.”
No; they missed the spiritual meaning. Christ is speaking and “without a parable spake he not unto them.” For example, Matthew 24 speaks of “let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains.” In the previous verse to this, it speaks of “when ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation…stand in the holy place,” and then it says to “flee into the mountains.”
We understand that Judaea spiritually represents the church. We understand that the mountains represent God and His Word. And fleeing has to do with coming out of the church.
There is nothing unusual about this understanding according to the Bible, because this is how we interpret the Bible. But this is extremely unusual if you are in a church. This will be extremely strange to your ears if you are a Catholic or a Baptist or a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, because you do not interpret the Bible this way. Sadly to say, this is true. This is true. You have your own methods of interpretation according to your denomination. How ever it is that your denomination has determined to approach the Scriptures, you allow for some parables, as long as the New Testament explains them. If it is like the allegory in Galatians 4, then you will permit this.
There is a mountain of evidence that can be given to show how the Bible was written and how Christ spoke in parables. It is enormous and you would think that at some point people would realize, “Hey, I had better hear the Law. When I am reading the Old Testament or anywhere in the Bible, I had better have my ears open to hear what the deeper meaning is.”
As we are going to talk about Babylon, we have to find the deeper meaning; and so let us go to Isaiah 14 and I will read from verse one. It says in Isaiah 14:1-2:
For JEHOVAH will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land…
Judah and Canaan, in this case, would typify Heaven, the Promised Land.
It continues:
…and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of JEHOVAH for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.
This is referring to Babylon and Satan. God’s people now take Babylon captive. This is really what God is saying. The power and authority that God gave Satan to rule in the churches and congregations is done. It is done. May 21 was the end of that judgment on the house of God. It was the end of the great tribulation.
Remember that God called Nebuchadnezzar “my servant” in order to accomplish the destruction of Judah. God utilized Satan and gave him official rule in the churches. For example, take a look at Revelation 13 where “power” is given “unto the beast,” and “power” is the same worth as “authority.” How long was this given to him? It was “given unto him to continue forty and two months,” which is another way of saying that it was for the duration of the great tribulation.
So he was given authority for 42 months, but not after. He was given authority for the 23-year period that we just went through, which was 8400 days, but not after. And maybe we will get a chance to look at what comes after and what God says about this, but let us keep reading here.
It says in Isaiah 14:3:
And it shall come to pass in the day that JEHOVAH shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve.
This is speaking of today. This is why we are to stop crying. When we read the Bible and we read of the Israelites coming out of Egypt, it was not long after that they were murmuring.
What do we think about this? They were constantly murmuring. They murmured over food, over water, over this and that, over who Moses was, over who Aaron was. They would ask, “Are we not all servants of the Lord?” They complained and complained and complained. They gave no glory to God at all. They were in constant misery. Moses had to keep going to the Lord because the Lord would want to destroy them.
Of course, they were not saved people. This is how unsaved people act. Historically, we know that the Gospel was preached to them; but only a handful actually entered into the land of Canaan because of their murmuring after they went to search out the land after the spies brought back an evil report. God is very observant and He takes note when His people are complaining.
What was the problem? The problem was that they did not realize that God had just brought enormous plagues upon Egypt, that they had been slaves there, that they had been under cruel bondage with hard taskmasters over them. He had just brought Egypt to its knees, the greatest nation on earth and He caused Pharaoh, that hard-hearted man, to let them go, to release them. And how long did it take them to start complaining? It was not long. It was only a couple of days after coming out.
Well, we can look back to May 22nd. Actually, we can look back to May 21st in some cases with some of those who were professing to understand and believe the Bible. They decided to put all of this away from them and to not listen to Family Radio anymore. There was a lot of murmuring and complaining by certain individuals. And I think that God’s people were a little confused and wondered what was going on; but some of those who really were not God’s people, their colors were shown.
So here, we can relate this to our being delivered spiritually from hard bondage; again, this is what is in view. There is a release of the captives. This is such an incredibly major theme of the Bible, and our release from captivity is the theme for these five months.
Again, Isaiah 14:3 says:
And it shall come to pass in the day…
And then Isaiah 14:4 says:
That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon…
Again, a proverb is a parable, and we take this up “against the king of Babylon”; but we could not have taken this up prior to May 21, because we did not know this. However, now we can take up this proverb “against the king of Babylon” because we know it and because God is showing us what is happening and what is going on.
Then Isaiah 14:4 continues on to say:
…and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!
Satan would be the “oppressor” and the “golden city” would be Babylon. They ceased oppression.
Isaiah 14:2 said:
…they shall take them captives, whose captives they were…
And so we have the 200 million who were bound in the great river Euphrates in Babylon. They were captives, and God looses them from their captivity on May 21. They then go forth like locusts into the world. 200 million people are out there. There are 200 million who have just been set free and who are all the people of God. And these 200 million are in all of the nations of the world.
They are everywhere and they are going to learn the truths of the Bible, and many of them have. As they share them, if anyone asks them, they will say, “There is no more salvation.” This is a sting like a scorpion, because a scorpion has to do with false gospels and false gospels have no salvation.
So these locusts are going forth en masse. They are just living their lives, and God will make this known to the rest of the world in His own ways.
I just wanted to come to Isaiah to show what it says here in Isaiah 14:4:
…take up this proverb [or parable] against the king of Babylon…
Here, Babylon is spoken of as a parable or a proverb.
So we need to understand this 70-year period, but I do not want to go into all of the proofs that are already out there in Mr. Camping’s books. He shows how we can look at certain historical time periods and how they are historical types of the great tribulation.
For example, we know about the 7-year famine in Joseph’s day. This is translated as “great affliction” in Acts 7, but these are the same two words for “great tribulation” that we read about in Matthew 24.
We also know that the 23-year period from 609 B.C. to 587 B.C., inclusively, was a figure of the 23 years that we just went through. And we also know that there was a 70-year period from 609 B.C. to 539 B.C. when Judah became a desolation. This is when the Babylonians came against them, destroyed them, took them captive, destroyed the temple, and brought them to Babylon. They went to Babylon in captivity, and that typified this 70-year period.
The number 84 has a lot to do with the great tribulation. We read of three and a half days in Revelation 11. This is how many hours? It is 84 hours. The seven years of famine in Joseph’s day is how many months of famine? It is 84 or 7 x 12. The 70 years from 609 B.C. to 539 B.C. is how many months of desolation? It is 840 or 70 x 12. And so this number 84 has a lot to do with the great tribulation and is a helpful indicator when we are looking at something. We can ask, “What period does this identify with?”
We just went through 23 years from May 21, 1988 to May 21, 2011. How many days was this? It was 8400 days, and so the 8400th day was May 21. We see 84, 84, 84.
There was one other 84 that really locks in the 70-year period to our present day. Let us go to Ezekiel 1 and I will read the first couple of verses. It says in Ezekiel 1:1-2:
Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captivity,
Family Radio has some very great books, like the The Perfect Harmony of the Numbers of the Hebrew Kings and Adam When? Mr. Camping has really been blessed by God, as God opened up his understanding, to really outline the whole timeline of history, from creation, which was 11,013 B.C., all the way down. We have this record in the book Adam When? and Mr. Camping has done some work on the period of the judges and on the period of the kings. He has done a chronology of the kings, which is exact and trustworthy. You can see this if you go through it. And so I am going to use some dates.
We have a short time left and a lot of information. We have a lot of information concerning this day that we are living in. This information is out there and this has never been disputed and this has never been proven wrong. Those chronologies are correct. They are correct and they can be trusted. The dates fit too perfectly for any of the dates to be off.
In the chronology of the kings, we read about Jehoiachin and this captivity. King Jehoiachin was one of those kings during that last 23-year period before the destruction of Jerusalem. He went into captivity and was taken into captivity in 598 B.C. Ezekiel is talking about the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's captivity, which would be 593 B.C.
What does this have to do with anything? Look at Ezekiel 1:1 again:
Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month…
So this thirtieth year identifies with the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's captivity. What is this thirtieth year connected to? God does not tell us here. Actually, we will see what this is connected to, but this is the only reference made to it. It must have been very important for God to join it with the chronology of the kings. The fifth year of King Jehoiachin, which was 593 B.C., was this thirtieth year of something unnamed.
Jehoiachin was taken captive in 598 B.C. Since we go back to 593 B.C., the fifth year of Jehoiachin, we then go back these 30 years. When going B.C. dates, we count backwards. This can twist your brain a little bit.
So at 593 B.C., go back 30 years, and we would think that we would land on 623 B.C. Actually, 623 B.C. or 622 B.C. would both work, but I think that this would be 622 B.C. and that it would be inclusive.
I have trouble with some numbers, so how I do this is that I just write down the years, as in 622, 621, etc. Then you can count one, two, three, etc., and mark what year is the fifth year and what year would be the thirtieth year. And so when we go back, it would be 622 B.C., which was during the reign of King Josiah.
Let us go to 2 Chronicles 34:1. It says:
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign…
Are there any young people here who think that they have it tough or that they have too much to do? How would you like to be a king at age eight?
So Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign and then it says:
…and he reigned in Jerusalem one and thirty years.
How old was Josiah when he died? He died at the age of 39. No numbers in the Bible are insignificant. This number, if we were to break this down, would be 3 x 13.
By the way, I have said this before, but maybe some people who are listening have never heard this before. But breaking down numbers is Biblical. For example, you can look in the book of Revelation and see where it talks about 12 gates and 12 foundations, etc. Then God actually breaks these down and says, “On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.” This is 4 x 3, which adds up to 12.
So God does this in the Bible, because it maintains the same meaning, but He also does this in history. There was a reformed theologian by the name of A. W. Pink who was pretty well respected in the reformed community. He died in 1952. Family Radio did not begin until 1958. And so Pink had already taught this years before and died before Family Radio began and before Mr. Camping began to teach on the air.
So Pink was reading something in Exodus. He came to something that mentioned months that had numbers involved. Then he broke them down, much like we do. He had some of the same similar meanings, but a couple were slightly different. What does this tell us?
The only reason I mention this is that the method of breaking down numbers did not originate with Mr. Camping. A reformed theologian much earlier than him had already been using this, and I doubt that A. W. Pink was the first.
In other words, God, of course, is the teacher of His people, and, more than likely, in past history, God’s people did this. But I do not have the time and I know that you do not have the time to go searching church history to find out who else did this. For those who believe that they have the truth and are reformed, the name of A. W. Pink will perk up their ears. He was a very faithful theologian for his time.
So here we have the number 39. Josiah was 39 years old when he dies, which is 3 x 13. As we examine the Bible, just like for any other thing, how does God use the number 3? How does He use the number 13?
We find that 3 has to do with purpose and that 13 has to do with the end of the world. This is one way of putting this, as 1988 was the 13,000th year of earth’s history. The great tribulation began in that year. Judgment began at the house of God and then transitioned to the world on May 21st of this year, and so forth.
So judgment began in the 13,000th year, and here is Josiah, the last good king of Judah. He began to reign in 640 B.C. He reigned 31 years to 609 B.C. Then he was killed in battle with the Egyptians. From that point on, God removed all blessings from Judah. Then it was not long after that before the Babylonians and King Nebuchadnezzar came and finally destroyed the temple. They took the vessels and the silver and the gold into Babylon and they took captives back to Babylon.
So here is Josiah who began to reign in 640 B.C. Now look at 2 Chronicles 34:8:
Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land, and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder, to repair the house of JEHOVAH his God.
The eighteenth year of his reign would be 622 B.C. or 623 B.C. This is because the kings of Judah could reign according to accession or non-accession. I forget exactly which one it is; but, again, this does not matter because 622 B.C. would be inclusive and 623 B.C. would just be exact. This does not matter. It is one of these two years and I believe that it is 622 B.C.
This would be the eighteenth year of Josiah, and Josiah wanted to repair the house of God. This was a good thing, but was this major enough for God to keep track of this all of the way to the thirtieth year of the days of Ezekiel? Well, no, not really.
Another interesting thing is that in Josiah’s eighteenth year – and he was eight when he began to reign – how old was he? He would have been 26. Broken down this is 2 x 13. He was not 27 and he was not 29. He was 26, which is 2 x 13. Again, we see an emphasis on the number 13. This is happening because God is trying to use these numbers to direct our attention to 13,000 years of history.
We are not going to read all of this, but in 2 Chronicles 34:14-16, it says:
And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of JEHOVAH, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of JEHOVAH given by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of JEHOVAH. And Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan. And Shaphan carried the book to the king…
Somehow, the Book of the Law was lost. Remember what God asks, “Do ye not hear the law?” The whole Bible is the Law of God. And so we can understand that they lost the Bible. They misplaced it in the house of the Lord.
We might laugh, but has anybody here lost their Bible? You do not know where it is and you have to look for it when you want to read it occasionally. This is not a good thing.
The churches have lost the Bible, even though they have them in great numbers. You can also lose the Bible when you do not know where truth is, when you do not know what God is saying in His Word. And this is the condition of the churches today.
So the Book of the Law was lost; it was completely lost. But the important thing here is that it was found. Hilkiah finds the Book of the Law, and then they give it to King Josiah, the most faithful king that Israel or Judah ever had. Even though he was a young man, when they read this to him, he “rent his clothes.”
Then Josiah brings all of the nation together so that they can hear the words of the Law. Then a great revival began where they cast out all of their idols. Josiah was very zealous. He wanted to do things God’s way. He was fully a man of God who wanted to do things His way.
Well, in 1988 when the great tribulation began, God opened up the Scriptures. He took the seals off; and even though we have had these Bibles all through history, we never understood them.
So in 1988, God basically gave us the Bible. And over the last 23 years and now just a little bit more, we have been learning truths from the Bible that have never been known before.
Again, we see the number 13 in Josiah’s age. He was 26. Thirteen years from this point, he will die at age 39; and so God is breaking things up and emphasizing the number 13 in order to help us understand that we find the Bible when God opens up the seals. He did this in 1988 and this has been continuing up until this time.
Now, this is something that we would want to keep track of. They found the Bible. Thirty years later, Ezekiel is moved by God to make this reference. There is nothing else that happened in the eighteenth year of Josiah that would really be significant enough. But they found the Book of the Law, the Bible; and God is keeping track by telling us of the thirtieth year, which was the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's captivity. And so 593 B.C. is thirty years from the finding of the Bible.
What if we kept counting down? God does not do this for us. He only gives us one reference. In the other references in Ezekiel, you will find phrases like “the fourteenth year” or other references to certain years. In one place, it says, “in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten,” and things like that.
So there is no other reference anywhere in the Bible to the finding of the Book of the Law, but this is enough because it gives us the date when the Book of the Law was found, it gives us the timeframe of thirty years later, and so we understand that 593 B.C. was the thirty-year mark.
If we continue on to 539 B.C., what is this? This is the 70th year. In 609 B.C., Josiah is killed. In 539 B.C., 70 years later, this is the end of the Babylonian rule and the release of the captives. In 539 B.C., the king of Babylon is slain.
If you remember, this is when God came and wrote with His finger on the wall, and nobody could interpret this. But then the queen comes in and says, “There is a man, oh king, in your kingdom and he interpreted dreams for your father, Nebuchadnezzar.” At this point, Nebuchadnezzar had probably been the grandfather or great-grandfather, because Nebuchadnezzar had been long dead.
So Daniel comes in to read the writing on the wall, but he did not need to go to God like he did in former times to petition God, “O Lord, what does this mean?” This is what happened with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Daniel does not need to do this at this time. He is just simply able to interpret this right away.
Let us turn there to Daniel 5. It says that the king of Babylon wanted to make Daniel a great man for interpreting the writing on the wall, but Daniel tells him to just keep it. Then we read in Daniel 5:24-26:
Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written. And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
This is said twice, because something doubled means that it is shortly going to come to pass.
Then it says in Daniel 5:27-29:
TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.
But Daniel had told them to keep their gifts, because he understood that this kingdom was at an end. What good would it do to be made the third ruler in the kingdom of a kingdom that was coming to an end?
Then we red in Daniel 5:30-31:
In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.
This happened at the end of the 70 years. The death of the king of Babylon or the conquering of the kingdom of Babylon happened very quickly, like “a thief in the night.”
They had been partying and drinking from the vessels of the temple, the vessels of gold and silver. They were having a big party. Belshazzar was there with a thousand of his lords. It did not seem that they were concerned about the approach of the Medes and the Persians. It was almost as if they did not know anything about this.
The army of the Medes and the Persians would have had to have been huge in order to conquer Babylon, because Babylon was a great nation. And so how could this huge army approach them? Where were their watchmen?
We can ask this same question of the churches. Where were your watchmen? How could God come and take your kingdom of Babylon and you not even know it? But He did. He came like “a thief in the night” and He took the kingdom of Babylon.
So where is Satan today? Well, when one king conquers another king, he puts his foot on his neck. This is really one way that we could look at this. This is like the king of Babylon being slain, historically, after 70 years. This king was not the cause of trouble in Daniel 6 when Daniel was thrown into the den of lions. That was not because of the Babylonians. It was actually Darius who did this, and Darius loved Daniel. He loved Daniel and he did not want to do this; but out of necessity, because the law of the Medes and the Persians could not be changed, he did cast him into the lions’ den.
But we should not think that because we have come to the end of the great tribulation and to the end of the rule of the king of Babylon, which we have done, that everything is going to be a bed or roses in relation to Satan. Daniel was still in Babylon, but the Babylonians were not ruling Babylon – and we are still in the world. Daniel was in Babylon and under the rule of Darius who is the same person as Cyrus.
And what does God call Cyrus? He calls him “my shepherd.” A shepherd takes care of sheep. Again, we see the destruction and the end of the 70 years and then we see the good shepherd Cyrus taking care of the sheep.
We are going to stop here and have a word of prayer.
Dear Father, we do thank You for this wonderful information. We thank You for how we had this all wrong. We thought that we were silenced. We thought that somehow it had been a mistake, an error, that we did something wrong; and yet this was all perfectly according to Your plan. No one has silenced us. It is You who has removed the great commission in one way, because we no longer have to warn the world in order that they might be saved. This is all finished and done. Father, we pray that You would help us. We pray that You would feed us. We know that You will. You will search out Your sheep and protect and feed them. We pray for all of those people out there in the world, all those out there in India and in China and in Africa and in South America, wherever they are. We pray that You would comfort them and feed them and bless them more and more. May You also continue to bless us here. Father, we pray that You would help us in all things today to keep our thoughts on things above and to do Your will. We pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.