Let us go to Joshua 6. We were looking at this chapter a little bit last week, and I am going to read verses 1 through 5 and then pick up again in verse 12. It says in Joshua 6:1-5:
Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in. And JEHOVAH said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour. And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns…
That is actually “seven rams’ horns of the Jubilees.” It continues:
…and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.
And then moving down to verse 12, Joshua 6:12-20:
And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of JEHOVAH. And seven priests bearing seven rams’ horns of the Jubilees before the ark of JEHOVAH went on continually, and blew with the trumpets: and the armed men went before them; but the rereward came after the ark of JEHOVAH, the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets. And the second day they compassed the city once, and returned into the camp: so they did six days. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only on that day they compassed the city seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for JEHOVAH hath given you the city. And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to JEHOVAH: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent. And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it. But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto JEHOVAH: they shall come into the treasury of JEHOVAH. So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.
And I will stop reading there.
We were noticing last week that God uses the word “jubilee” twenty-four times in the Bible: nineteen times from Leviticus 25 through Leviticus 27. And in all nineteen instances there, it is translated “jubilee.”
The twentieth time, God uses it in the book of Numbers and it is translated “jubilee.” The twenty-first time, it is found in Exodus, where it speaks of going up to the mount “when the trumpet soundeth long,” and that is the word “jubilee.” So that is 21 times.
The other three times that the word yowbel in the Hebrew is found is here in Joshua 6. And in each case in Joshua 6, it is plural. Joshua 6 is the only place in the Old Testament where “jubilee” is plural; and as I read in a couple of verses, it is actually translated, “seven rams’ horns of the Jubilees.” It is also found in verse 8; it is in verse 4, 8, and 13.
Last week, we were looking at how it is God’s plan that prior to the sending forth of the Gospel into the world, just like here with Jericho before the conquest of Canaan could begin, the walls of Jericho had to fall down. So, too, prior to God’s salvation plan of sending the Gospel out into the world, the “walls” of salvation had to come down.
First, with the nation of Israel as they ceased to be the people of God, the corporate body, the external representation of God’s kingdom on earth.
Following that, Jesus who was born in a Jubilee year, in 7 B.C., He is the essence of the Jubilee, and He has the Gospel to go into all the world, with the churches and congregations. They would accomplish the task of bringing God’s Word to the nations.
A second time (because it is “jubilees,” plural) when the wall comes falling down happens in 1988, when it is the end of the Church Age, after 1955 years—from AD 33 to 1988. The wall of salvation is gone, completely.
Christ is salvation—He is righteousness, He is faith, He is all these things—and when the Holy Spirit came out of the midst, that wall that pictured salvation collapsed completely, so there is no more salvation within the church. That was the second time that God would “set His hand again,” as we read in Isaiah 11.
So from 1988, there was that short 2300-day period of the first part of the Great Tribulation where virtually no one was being saved. And then in 1994, following those 2300 days, on the day—I think it is the 1st day of the 7th month (I keep forgetting this)—which is the sounding of the trumpet that signals the Jubilee, God, once again, began sending the Gospel into the world: the “latter rain,” as it is called in the Bible, or the second Jubilee. And in each case, the wall had to collapse and then God could send forth His Word into the world.
And, you know, it is only because God has given us understanding concerning the Biblical calendar of history that we can know anything about this, in all the history of the world.
The Jews had the book of Genesis. They had Genesis 5 and 11, where the genealogies are given. And actually, we have discovered that they are actual Biblical calendars that outline the history, from creation up until very significant points in Israel’s history. So the Jews had Genesis, but they did not understand it.
The churches also had the whole Bible throughout the Church Age, and they never understood time. They never understood a timeline of history from the Bible’s point of view. Some tried, some gave effort to come up with a timeline, and yet they came up with a timeline that makes the earth about 6 or 7,000 years old. And if you follow their timeline, you are going to find that many people perished in the flood who were in the line of the godly, because of the way that they were working out the timeline.
It is not until the latter part of the twentieth century, when Mr. Camping wrote the book Adam When?, which was completely in God’s control. And somebody had to see this. Somebody had to uncover this, who is a human being, who is a person. God is not going to speak to us directly. He does not do that anymore since the Bible was completed, and so He chose Mr. Camping. And just like Jesus must open up our understanding concerning any truth, He opened up Mr. Camping’s understanding concerning the Biblical calendar of history and the solution that unlocks it. And that solution is that if we do not find the phrase qara’ shem, then we are not looking at an immediate father/son relationship necessarily, except when God gives us information in other parts of the Bible that does indicate that it is an immediate father/son relationship.
So at the death of one patriarch, the other patriarch, who was said to be “begotten,” would be born, and we have references to immediate father/son relationships when God uses qara’ shem or gives us other information. So when you follow that, it is amazing how perfectly it works out and comes down through history, through the period of the judges and the reign of the kings of Israel, and matches very closely in some of the dates that some secular archeologists and theologians have come up with—for example, the reign of Solomon, and so forth—which proves this, really, beyond any doubt.
If anybody is honest and they look at the book Adam When?, which lays it all out, and they look at that Biblical calendar of history, they would have to say that this is Biblical, because it is Biblical. It is correct, and it can be confirmed also with secular references to certain reigns of Pharaohs and so forth.
So God opened up our understanding of the Biblical calendar of history, and then, do you know what we find? We find that 1988 was the 13,000th year of earth’s history. From 11,013 B.C., when Adam was created, until 1988 is 13,000 years exactly. 11,013 + 1988 – 1 (because there is no year “zero”) = 13,000. Right on the nose. Right on the money!
Is that not amazing? Because if it had come out to be some other year—for example, 9,000 or 15,000—maybe then we could breathe a little easier, at least some people could. Maybe then they could breathe a little easier. But it came out to be 13,000 years of history.
Then, of course, when we add to that—using this same Biblical calendar—from the flood of Noah’s day in 4990 B.C.—and we know that date exactly because God has given us this information concerning this calendar—until AD 2011 is 7,000 years exactly. 4990 + 2011 – 1 (because there is no year “zero”) = 7,000 years.
Maybe we could breathe easier if it was only 5,000 or 6,000 or 8,000 years, or some other number, but it is 7,000. And God told Noah, “Yet seven days” and He would bring the flood waters upon the earth to destroy everything with the breath of life, except those who were in the ark. And God tells us in 2 Peter 3 that “one day is…as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”; 7,000 years.
So we have two highly significant dates: 1988, the 13,000th year of history, and 2011, 7,000 years from the flood. And the flood occurred 6,023 years exactly from creation. 6,000 and then a tribulation period of 23 years, and then God destroyed the earth. From that point of the destruction of the flood to 2011 is 7,000 years.
You know, it is amazing, and we have to remember something that I would just like to mention. There are three very important principles or points that we have to keep in mind. One is that God spoke in parables, that Jesus spoke in parables, “without a parable” He did not speak unto us. So when we read the Bible, we have to look for the spiritual meaning of things.
We are reading Joshua 6. What does it mean that the nation of Israel marched around Jericho once a day for six days; and then on the seventh day, they did it seven times? They had to rise up very early in the morning to do that because it was the whole army. It was the whole army. We are not told how many people they had, but there were hundreds of thousands in their army. And they had to march around a full turn, and then go around it seven times on the seventh day. Upon the seventh time, they would shout and blow with the trumpet, and the wall would fall down.
Now that is very interesting history and it is a very wonderful children’s story, Joshua at the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down. It is really, actually, kind of fun for children to look at this story. But it is in the Bible, so it has a Gospel meaning, a spiritual meaning.
Remember what we found when we read about the ten lepers in Luke 17? When we analyzed that chapter, Christ is telling us that it is far more important to look for the spiritual meaning than it is for the literal meaning.
There were ten lepers, and He told them, “Go show yourselves unto the priests,” because Leviticus 14 says, “The leper in the day of his cleansing…shall be brought unto the priest.” And nine lepers went. Actually, all ten went and then “they were cleansed,” but one of them returned back and fell at Jesus’ feet and Jesus said to him, “Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?”
What did He mean, “Where are the nine?” They went to Jerusalem to find a priest like He told them to do! “There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger,” and “he was a Samaritan.” Why? Why did that glorify God? It glorified God because “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing (matter),” it says in the Proverbs. And the word for thing/matter there is dabar which means “word.”
Actually, I might be getting this wrong. Let us go to Proverbs 25:2:
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing…
And that is the Hebrew word dabar.
…but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
And that is also the Hebrew word dabar, which means “word” in both instances.
It is God’s glory to hide His Word and it is the honor of “kings”—prophets, priests, and kings are the believers—to search it out, and this glorifies God.
So the Samaritan ran back to Jesus and fell at His feet, thanking Him for cleansing him from his leprosy, and that glorified God. But the other nine, well, they just took the surface meaning of the Word of Christ! Jesus told them, “Go show yourselves unto the priests.” Leviticus 14 says, “The leper in the day of his cleansing…shall be brought unto the priest,” so that he could offer a sacrifice. And it was a surface meaning.
Take it literally at your own peril. Take it literally and you may perish. In the Word of God, the Bible, look for the deeper meaning. Jesus is the High Priest. Leprosy represents sin. And when a sin-sick soul is cleansed and washed, we go to Christ. We fall down at His feet, and that glorifies God.
So God is telling us, especially in that parable or in that historical event—which has a deeper spiritual meaning—that the most important thing when we read the Bible is to find the Gospel. That is the principle that we apply to Joshua 6, as well as anywhere else in the Bible. We have to find the Gospel meaning.
The second thing to keep in mind is that numbers convey spiritual meaning. Who knows why? I know that you know why. Who knows why numbers in the Bible convey spiritual meaning?
They convey spiritual meaning because they are words. They are words. So the number three is a word. The number four, the number twelve, the number thirteen: they are all words. They are all words, and that is how God wrote the Bible. It is full of words, and every word of God is the Gospel. It is the Law. It is the Law Book. And so we cannot demean numbers, that they are somehow less significant than other Scripture.
If we want to go to John 3:16 or if we want to go to Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,” they are glorious words. Well, so is the number six or the number seven that we find in the Bible. It is all part of God’s Word, and God could actually save someone from any hearing of His Word, from any part of the Scripture.
But numbers are the Word of God; and as such, they can be trusted. We know that they are correct. We know that there is no mistake and no error in any of the numbers we read. And also, since it is part of God’s Word, we know that we can look for the spiritual meaning. And God does give spiritual meaning to numbers.
The number ten: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills,” or “ten virgins,” and when we look at the number ten, we find that it means “completeness.”
The number three: we know when Jesus was crucified, again and again and again, the number three shows up. There were three thieves and three writings on the inscription and Christ prayed three times—because it was God’s purpose that He would go to the Cross.
And the number thirteen, when we analyze it from the Bible, has to do with the end of the world—the end of the world. And we are going to look at this a little later, but I would just like to mention one other thing.
The third thing that we need to keep in mind is time paths. Time paths are Biblical. The people here are sharing information that we are learning, “Did you know that it is 7,000 years from the flood in 4990 B.C. to AD 2011, and that this is very significant because we expect the world to end in 2011, that we know the world is going to end in 2011?”
That is a time path, and people just respond with, “You cannot do that! You cannot do that! How can you have a date over here and then take 7,000 years from that date and then go to another date in the future? How can you project it into the future? The Bible does not let you do that!”
Yes, it does. Go to Daniel 9, with the “seventy weeks,” beginning in verse 24. Daniel 9:24-25:
Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
There is a time path, right in the Bible. You have a time reference of “seventy weeks,” and then God breaks it down further to sixty-nine weeks and then the seventieth week. You have an event, “from the going forth of the commandment,” so you have to find where that is in the Bible. We know that this is when Ezra went to establish the Law, so that is where you begin. “Unto the Messiah the Prince,” and this is when Jesus would be born and would suffer and die.
This is a time path. It is a significant event and when you project this time into the future, it lands on a certain date. This is right in the Bible. It is right in the Bible.
So when we are saying that 4990 B.C. was the flood, which was a significant event that God confirms the dating of, and then He says, “Yet seven days” to get into the ark, and that ark, with the spiritual meaning that the Bible tells us to look for, certainly represents the Lord Jesus Christ, and then 2 Peter 3 tells us “one day is…as a thousand years,” we have all the Biblical validation we need to say that 7,000 from the flood goes to 2011 and that this is the last day, May 21st, that we will have to find the safety of salvation in Christ before God shuts the door. And God confirmed this by making May 21st, 2011, also the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar, which is the very day in the Genesis account, according to the calendar of Noah, that God shut them in.
So we have to keep these three things in mind when we are studying the Bible. Christ spoke in parables. Numbers convey spiritual truth. And the third thing: that time paths are Biblical. And this helps to explain why believers are so excited and convinced that these things are so.
Well, let me give you a word. This will be our word for today. Let me give you a word, and if I could pronounce it, that would help. The word is tris-kai-dek-a-pho-bia. What kind of disease is that? Triskaidekaphobia.
(From someone in the fellowship): “the fear of the number thirteen”.
Exactly. Exactly. Very good. Literally, it means “three and ten fear.” That is how they would say the number 13.
Actually, I visited Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) to just get some information about this. It is amazing. I will just mention a couple of things. In the ancient code of Hammurabi is a numbered list that omits the number 13. In Kerala, India, today, they have a High Court building, but they have not assigned the number 13 to any court room. Air NewZealand does not have a seating row with the number 13. And in the U.S., we know that many buildings omit the number 13 from the elevators. They will go from 12 to 14. Some will go 12 to 12-A to 14.
Actually, this fear or phobia is found in many, many other countries of the world. We know that it is superstition. It is superstition. I would not put any stock in it. They do think, as they try to understand why people are afraid of the number 13, that it has something to do with the last supper or the twelve apostles and the Lord Jesus. After that, of course, Judas went out and betrayed Him and he had a miserable end, and then the Lord Jesus went to the Cross. That is one of the possibilities that people think this phobia comes from, this triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13.
Let us go back to Joshua 6. Again, we do not put any stock in that information. It comes from the world. And yet, it is interesting that God has assigned the number 13 to represent the end of the world, plus the events of the Great Tribulation that come right before the end of the world are also involved with the number 13.
When we look at the number 13 in the Bible, we find that very faithful kings (or marginally faithful kings who were good for a time), at a point in which God inserts this number 13, following that point, they become totally unfaithful. They become wicked and evil in their actions.
We also find that following the number 13, God shows us that He reveals His Word, as we study it in the Bible. Also following the number 13, God indicates that He will save a “great multitude.”
All of those ideas are involved with the number 13, and they are all teachings from the Bible that we read about today. But in Joshua 6:3-4, it says:
And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.
6 + 7 = 13, which I am sure we knew. 6 + 7 = 13, and it is broken. Six: once a day for six days. On the 7th day: 7 times.
It is not the exact teaching of this passage, but it is interesting that God breaks up the world into two epochs, which He speaks of as the first earth in 2 Peter 3 that was “overflowed with water,” and then the second earth, which is now.
When we look at the timeline, it was 6,023 years when God brought the flood, or if we use that same principle, “one day is…as a thousand years,” it would be six days, and then the flood came.
Following that, there is a 7,000-year period that goes until 2011, and that would be our current world, this current earth, and yet totaling 13,000, plus 23 years of history when we do get to 2011, and then that will be the end and it will be over.
But here, God mostly is focusing on the Jubilee periods, which come at the birth of Christ and that wall of Israel, the corporate body, comes tumbling down. And then the second Jubilee, following 1988 and the 2300-day period, is when the earth is 13,000 years old and then the wall of salvation, the corporate church, comes tumbling down. And following each, there is the Jubilee, a time of sending the Gospel to the world, the conquest of Canaan, where many are going to be saved.
Let us look at a few verses in the Bible. Let us first go to 2 Chronicles 24. I will read the first two verses and then skip further down. 2 Chronicles 24:1-2:
Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name also was Zibiah of Beersheba. And Joash did that which was right in the sight of JEHOVAH all the days of Jehoiada the priest.
You see, he had Jehoiada’s influence. Jehoiada was his confidant, his mentor. He was the one who set him up when he was a young child, and so he did not want to offend Jehoiada at all; he probably had a fear of Jehoiada the priest, who was this elderly wise man who had raised him practically from a child. So he did what was right “all the days of Jehoiada.”
Well, look to verse 15 in the same chapter. 2 Chronicles 24:15:
But Jehoiada waxed old, and was full of days when he died; an hundred and thirty years old was he when he died.
He was 130. How do you break down 130? 10 x 13. 10 x 13 will be the complete end. When we reach 13,000 years of history, then there will be a short tribulation period, and then it will be the end.
Now at that time, Joash becomes unfaithful, exactly as we found in 1988 when the corporate church became unfaithful because God left it and turned it over into the hands of Satan.
Look also in verse 20 of the same chapter. 2 Chronicles 24:20-21:
And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of JEHOVAH, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken JEHOVAH, he hath also forsaken you. And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of JEHOVAH.
“Zechariah the son of Jehoiada;” he was probably a grandson or even a great-grandson, because Jehoiada was an old man. But Zechariah was in the line of Jehoiada and he was a prophet that God was using to point out the sins of Israel, and they stoned him at the commandment of Joash.
Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 23:35:
That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Now here, Barachias would be the immediate father, probably, of Zacharias or Zechariah, with Jehoiada being the grandfather, and the Bible does that from time-to-time.
But Jesus is talking to the religious leaders of Israel, and He is telling them that all of the righteous blood from Abel, who was the very first believer who was slain, to the very last, Zacharias. (A to Z in the English alphabet; we see how that works.)
But, actually, how can that be since Zacharias was slain hundreds of years before Christ? Now Jesus could not have used anyone in the future as an example, but he could have used someone who was maybe a little closer, maybe in his own day, “from Abel until now,” but He did not. He chose Zacharias because Zacharias was in the line of Jehoiada the priest. And Jehoiada died at 130 years old, which represents the 13,000th year of history when the church will become unfaithful and begin to rise up against the believers and cast them out, and so forth.
So that is one instance where we can see this number 13. Stay in 2 Chronicles and go to chapter 14. 2 Chronicles 14:1-5.
So Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead. In his days the land was quiet ten years. And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of JEHOVAH his God: for he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves: and commanded Judah to seek JEHOVAH God of their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment. Also he took away out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the images: and the kingdom was quiet before him.
He was a very good king. Now turn over to 2 Chronicles 16, and this is the same man, the same king. It says in 2 Chronicles 16:11-12:
And, behold, the acts of Asa, first and last, lo, they are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to JEHOVAH, but to the physicians.
So it is the “thirty and ninth year” of Asa’s reign, and how can that be broken down? 3 x 13. It is God’s purpose that after 13,000 years of history, which this king is typifying in a very faithful reign…he did that which was right and good; he went after the images. He was a saved man, yet in the 39th year of his reign—and he would reign a total of 41 years, two more years—he got a disease in his feet. As a result, he did not seek to Jehovah, but went to “physicians.”
Remember what the Bible says? “How beautiful are the feet of them that…bring glad tidings of good things!” The feet carry the Gospel into the world. And after the 39th year, no matter how good the church had been (and we know that it was not really all that good), but no matter how faithful a particular church might have been, they will get “diseased” in the “feet” and they will no longer seek to Jehovah, to the Lord. They are going to seek after “physicians” of no value. They are going to seek after ministers who will prophecy out of their own hearts and not from the Mind of God.
That is what this is pointing to. And, again, God is emphasizing—we do not see it immediately; you do have to break down the number. Who knows A. W. Pink? A. W. Pink was one of the faithful Bible teachers of the early twentieth century. Do you know that I read a study on the book of Exodus where there was a number involved and he broke it down, just like we hear Mr. Camping break down numbers. He was breaking down a number and applying spiritual meaning to this number and to that number. (If anybody is interested, I will try to find it. I have it at home on the computer.)
So he broke them down, and some of the numbers were exactly as we understand them, as far as the spiritual meaning. A couple of them were slightly off as to what we understand the spiritual meaning of them to be. He was a renowned theologian who many in the Reformed churches today respect, and he broke down numbers. (You never hear them admit to that!) But that tells us that God’s people have used a certain methodology. If he used it, then there was certainly somebody before him who would have had to have used it who was a child of God. Well, anyway, God gives us in the Bible the permission to break down numbers.
So Asa is 39, 3 x 13, and the emphasis is on God’s purpose, with 13 pointing to the end of the world, which begins with judgment on the churches and congregations.
Let us also go to 2 Kings 22:1. We just looked at a very good king, Asa, but now we are going to read about the best, the very best, Josiah. 2 Kings 22:1:
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem…
Who can do the math? 8 + 31 = 39, which is 3 x 13 again. What happened when Josiah was 39? He was killed. He was slain as he went out to battle the Egyptians, and he was the last good king of Judah.
Following that in 609 B.C., Judah went way off course and all of their following kings were evil. It was that 23-year inclusive historical picture of the Great Tribulation, from 609 B.C. to 587 B.C., where God is teaching us about our present day, after the king reached 39. And it was all God’s plan that he would be such a wonderful king and that God would slay him at this particular age, to emphasize to us that the church will be gone after 13,000 years. The end of the world is upon us after 13,000 years.
Let us change the focus and the direction a little bit, and let us go back to Genesis 41. We are still going to be looking at the number 13. I just want to read one verse because it is important for us to decipher and understand the age of Joseph. It says in Genesis 41:46:
And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt…
He was 17 when he was taken into captivity. He is 30, which is 13 years later, but I am not going to get into that. But again, we see 13 years, and then Joseph is raised up out of prison. And then we know, as he stood before Pharaoh and interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams…and Pharaoh’s dreams represented two periods, each seven years long: “seven years of great plenty,” followed immediately by “seven years of famine.” The “seven years of great plenty” would be when Joseph was 30 until he was 37, followed immediately by the famine, which God tells us in Acts 7 typifies the Great Tribulation.
Let us go to Genesis 45:1. It says:
Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.
And Joseph is a picture of the Lord Jesus. We have the duty to look for the spiritual meaning. He represents Christ, Christ who hid Himself.
Joseph had “made himself strange” to his brethren earlier as they came into Egypt, just as, really, Christ has hidden Himself in His Word, as the Scriptures were “sealed till the time of the end.” And when does the end come? It comes after 13,000 years of history. But not at first, because there is that 2300-day period.
God was not revealing Himself then. But after that, then the Scriptures begin to open up and we find that we are learning about the “faith of Christ,” that it is He who saves us and that we have no part to play. We are learning about the end of the Church Age, and we are learning about the nature of judgment and the resurrection. And all of these things are being opened up as the “latter rain” has gone into the world, this time of the second Jubilee, and God is making Himself known. He is revealing Himself.
Now look in Genesis 45:5-6:
Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land…
So he was 30 when he stood before Pharaoh. The “seven years of great plenty” made him 37. Immediately following, there is the famine and this is the second year of the famine. How old is Joseph at this point? He is 39.
What other significant event happens when Joseph is 39? As he is revealing himself to his brethren, his brethren are going to return home to their father. At first, this is unbelievable. But then, his father is overjoyed. They pack their belongings onto carts and the whole family goes into Egypt. And Joseph brings his father proudly before Pharaoh, in a good way because he is so happy that his father is there, and Pharaoh asks his father a question. “Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou?” What did Jacob say? “And Jacob said unto Pharaoh…an hundred and thirty years.” 10 x 13. And at the same point, Joseph is 39. 3 x 13. And when did Jacob have Joseph? He had Joseph when he was 91, which is 7 x 13. That was when Joseph was born. It is all wrapped in that family, is it not, that number 13, these generations of Joseph?
Here, Joseph is 39, 3 x 13. It is God’s purpose to open the Scriptures, to make Himself known. And he tells them, “For these two years hath the famine been in the land,” and this famine represents the Great Tribulation, “and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.”
It is amazing. He told them the beginning of the famine, the dividing point of the famine (two years, because they are going to come out of Canaan), and the end of the famine (seven years). This is just as God has told us that 1988 was the year that the Church Age came to an end and that it was the beginning of the Great Tribulation. 1994 is the dividing point, after that 2300 days. 2011 is the very end of the world.
It fits perfectly. This fits perfectly with Joseph, who was a type of Christ. Joseph is telling his brethren, “This is what is going to happen. How do I know? I know because God reveals dreams to me.” This was historically, but Christ, of course, knows all things, because “times are not hidden from the Almighty.”
So even as He was giving these Scriptures, thousands of years ago, God is pointing ahead to our day and to what is going on after 13,000 years of history. Now we speak of 1988, and that was 20 years ago, over 20 years ago! And we are coming to the conclusion and to the final end. We have three years left of twenty-three; we have less than three years.
Let us go back to 2 Kings 22. Josiah is 8 years old. He was a young boy when he begins to reign. Look at verse 3. 2 Kings 22:3:
And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah…
He was eight when he began to reign. 8 + 18 = 26. How do you break down 26? 2 x 13. What happens in the eighteenth year of Josiah? 2 Kings 22:8:
And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of JEHOVAH. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.
Then it goes to Josiah and he hears. They somehow lost the Bible! They lost the Bible, and they just found it. They just discovered it in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah, and what happens as a result? This king gets energized like no king before. He goes about Judah and Israel and he gets rid of the high places and the altars. He cleans up the land like never before.
So, too, God has hidden His Word. For all intents and purposes, it has been a lost Book to the understanding of the people, until the Scriptures are unsealed and opened up and revealed to His people.
Now we are beginning to understand and we are getting rid of the “high places.” We are getting rid of the doctrine that man plays any work in his salvation. Just get rid of it. Destroy it. Obliterate it! Obliterate that we have to muster up repentance in ourselves. No, God gives the gift of repentance.
We are getting rid of the idea that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the church, the corporate body. No. That is the eternal Church. God is finished with the church. After 13,000 years of history, judgment begins at the “house of God.”
Let us get rid of the idea, no matter how deeply imbedded it was, that we thought “hell” continued on forever and ever and ever, that there was eternal suffering and misery. No. God is revealing to us His judgment. His plan of judging the wicked is to wipe them out, to destroy them, to bring them to an end and their sin, once and for all. That will glorify God.
And, you know, there are many things that we are learning. They are all “high places,” and they are all being wiped out. And this is similar to the Spirit that came upon Josiah as he went about his kingdom getting rid of all the wickedness that he could find. That was happening because they had found the Book of the Law. It convicted them, and they responded. And God is teaching us that this is the character of what happens after 13,000 years of history when He opens up the Book.
I wanted to go into more detail, but let us look at one last verse in Genesis. This is something that is very encouraging. Well, I cannot just look at one verse. I will have to look at a couple, but they are all in the same vicinity.
In Genesis 16, Hagar fled from Sarai, her mistress, because “Sarai dealt hardly with her” after Hagar had gotten proud that she could conceive and bring forth a child, where Sarai was barren. Then we read in Genesis 16:10-11:
And the angel of JEHOVAH said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of JEHOVAH said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because JEHOVAH hath heard thy affliction.
Then Genesis 17:18:
And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee!
Then Genesis 17:20. This is the Lord speaking:
And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly…
Now look at Genesis 17:24-26:
And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son.
Do you see what God is saying? He tells us in Revelation 7 that there is “a great multitude, which no man could number” that He is going to save. When? He also tells us this in Revelation 7, “these are they which came out of great tribulation.”
Here God is making a point. Abraham was to circumcise everyone in his household, but God only gives us two ages. He did not tell us the age of others in Abraham’s household. Abraham is 99 and Ishmael is 13. This is because after 13,000 years of history, during the second part of the Great Tribulation, God is sending forth the wonderful news of the Jubilee: freedom to the captives, to the inhabitants of the land, freedom from sin and bondage to Satan, freedom for the “sons of Ishmael” whom God intends to save.
Okay. We will stop here, and let us close with a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we do thank You for Your Word. And, Father, we are blind, naturally. We cannot see the next step in front of us. None of us knows what is going to happen tomorrow or next week, let alone the time that we have left. But we know, Father, that You know the end from the beginning, that Your thoughts are higher than our thoughts as the heavens are than the earth, and we know that Thou art all wise. So we do not look to ourselves or to our own measly understanding, but we pray that we would trust in You and look to You to be our Guide. We do ask that You would guide us into all truth, as this is Your plan for these days. Father, we pray that You would bless Your Word to our hearts and help us. In everything that we do, may it be God glorifying, and may it be honorable to You. And we pray this in Christ’s Name. Amen.
If anybody has something that you would like to ask about what was taught or anything else, you are welcome. Feel free to take the mic.
1st Question: Do you know where that proof verse is, somewhere in one of the books of Chronicles I think, that shows that one of the sons that are listed in Genesis 5 or 11 is not a direct son of the one who begat him?
Chris: You are going to have to be a little bit more specific. We know that in Genesis 5:3, it says:
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years (130), and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
An interesting thing about this is what happened between Cain and Abel. In Genesis 4:3, where it says:
…in process of time…
Actually, if you look at the Hebrew, it says “in the end of days.” “In the end of days,” Cain rose up and slew his brother, Abel. Following that, God gives another seed. And the only date that we are given is Adam’s life, his age of 130, but this is not an exact tie-in because Seth was born after Abel was slain, but I think God is giving us a little connection there.
Anyway, here in Genesis 5:3:
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
That is qara shem, and that is an immediate father/son. But in other instances, like for instance in verses 9-10:
And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan: and Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters:
This does not say that he “called his name,” which is that Hebrew qara shem. So at that point, there was an ancestor of Cainan who would have been born. Then once Enos died, verse 11:
And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years: and he died.
Upon his 905th year, then Cainan would be born. So it is end-to-end, and that is how we understand this. Unless God gives us a little bit more information, like He does with Noah. In Genesis 5:32:
And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
And this does not say “called his name.” The reason He does this, and He does it in another place, even though they are immediate sons, is that God names three of them. They were not triplets. So when God does this, on occasion, He will say “begat” but then the context indicates that they were immediate sons. That is how we can understand this.
A statement is made from someone in the fellowship: In Genesis 11:12, I think this may be what Mark is looking at:
And Arphaxad lived…and begat Salah:
I think in Luke 3, Cainan was added in between those two.
Chris: So he is saying that is a proof. That is some evidence. There is in the genealogy in the New Testament, where God is speaking of the kings, he uses that language “begat,” there is a gap in between the kings, and that is some evidence to show that it is not an immediate father/son relationship.
So it sounds like that is what he is saying about this verse.
From the fellowship: Yes. He was asking if you knew where that was.
Chris: No. I am sorry, but I do not.
2nd Question: How do you answer people who say that it is an assumption to say, “Because it does not say ‘he called his name,’ we can say that this person was born exactly when the previous one died?”
Chris: Well, you see, when we lay it out, if our assumption is wrong, we will be way off course. When you come down through history to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and then to the 430 years that Israel spends in Egypt, through the judges period, through the kings, you would be way off course.
It would be just like those who follow the calendar of Bishop Ussher. He tried to do it a different way, rather than end-to-end, and he came up with a very short duration for the earth of about 6 or 7,000 years and ran into all kinds of problems.
But when we work through this whole calendar and we come down through history until the time of Solomon, it is almost exact with what archaeologists have found and some theologians have said regarding the dating of Solomon. On top of that, God is giving us confirmation with Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. Remember that time bridge, as we find that Levi was a certain age, 76 or 77, when he entered into Egypt, and then God says in Exodus 6:16:
And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations; Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari: and the years of the life of Levi were an hundred thirty and seven years.
But, you see, they were keeping track according to these Levites. Yet we have to know the age of Levi when he went into Egypt in order to follow that. Mr. Camping lays this out very well in Time Has an End or in Adam When?, and it shows that Levi was about 76 or 77, and then it says in Exodus 6:18:
And the sons of Kohath; Amram, and Izhar, and Hebron, and Uzziel: and the years of the life of Kohath were an hundred thirty and three years.
Then down in verse 20:
And Amram took him Jochebed his father’s sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years.
So we have Levi’s age upon entering Egypt, the 133 of Kohath, the 137 of Amram, and then we have Aaron’s age upon the date of the Exodus. And when you put it all together, it totals 430 years, which is the exact timeline that God gave for their stay in Egypt. And it also fulfills the prophecy that Israel would be in Egypt for four generations: the generation of Levi, the generation of Kohath, the generation of Amram, and then the final generation of Aaron.
That is how God kept track of time. In the 600th year of Noah’s life, he was the calendar reference. Here, it is the priests whom God is using for the time bridge of the 430 years that they are in Egypt. In our day, it is the year AD 2008, Anno Domini, “In the year of Our Lord.” So time is reckoned by a person, the Lord Jesus Christ, as it has been in the Bible. And that is why we call it a Biblical calendar of history because it is all laid out. And we find that this is the confirmation of how we are to do it in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11.
3rd Question: The flood occurred in 4990 B.C. and you spoke of 1988. In that case, if we have 1988, how come we have continued to 2008?
Chris: That is a good question because we have to be careful. The flood does not really necessarily have a time path to 1988. The flood of 4990 B.C. goes to AD 2011. And God gives us a little help and direction in Genesis 7 when He says, “Yet seven days,” which tells us to look for 7,000 years, according to 2 Peter 3. If God had said, “Yet five days,” He could have done that and people could breathe easy. A lot of people could breathe easy. But He said, “Yet seven days.” Why did He do that?
First of all, why did He pick that number? Why did He say in 2 Peter 3, “one day is…as a thousand years” in the context of the flood and of the destruction of the earth? Right in the middle, He makes that statement and He says, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
So we have to have our starting point correct and our landing point correct. For 1988, it would be from creation of 11,013 B.C. to AD 1988, and that would be exactly 13,000 years, and the number 13 ties into the end of the world.
But that was a good question, and we just let God direct us to where it should end up.
4th Question: I was looking at the wall of salvation. Could Christ be the “wall”?
Chris: Yes. That is a good point, Lester. In Isaiah 26:1, it says:
In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.
And that is repeated in Isaiah in a later chapter. And remember when Nehemiah was building the wall? It took him 52 days, and the 52 days represents the 52 weeks that are found in a year. So God is likening it to the “the acceptable year of the Lord,” and then the wall would be completed. God’s plan of salvation will be over. The Jubilee is only a year in length, historically, and the Jubilee will come to an end May 21 st, 2011.
So Christ is the essence of salvation, and when the Holy Spirit came out of the midst of the church, immediately, salvation, as a “wall,” crumbled. Because without Christ, without God, you can have the Bible, but God says, “I will curse your blessings.” So the Bible is a blessing, but He has cursed it insofar that it brings no benefit and that God’s Word cannot save anybody within the church.
Let me just look at a verse that relates to this in Isaiah 1:21:
How is the faithful city become an harlot…
And we know that the “faithful city” is referring to the church. And that is the question.
First of all, how did God ever consider it a “faithful city,” because it always had “high places”? And then, how did this “faithful city” become “an harlot,” like we read about in Revelation 17 and 18?
Well, it says it Isaiah 1:21:
…it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.
Jesus is “made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification.” When Christ was in the midst of the church, in the “midst of the…candlesticks,” righteousness was there, faith was there, salvation was there. But immediately, when He left, when Satan was loosed and set up in the churches as God permitted him to be, the “faithful city,” at that point, became “an harlot.”
So it does not matter what your pastor teaches. It does not matter if he teaches the best sermon on…well…I was going to say “hell,” which we know now…you know, some people say, “Oh, my pastor teaches about hell,” but we were off on that. It does not matter if he teaches election, if he teaches the most faithful things, the whole institution of the church is viewed by God as “an harlot” because “righteousness” departed; Christ left it.
5th Question: The Jewish people had the Old Testament and the churches came with the New Testament, so why do the Roman Catholics hold to the Old Testament, just like the Jewish people do?
Chris: Well, they understand that God gave us the whole Bible. And the whole Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, is the Word of God. So some churches have certain things correct, even though the Roman Catholics add the Apocrypha books. They have added to the Word, and that is contrary to what the Bible says because we are not to add or subtract. So I would never use a Catholic Bible; but as far as their understanding of the Old Testament, wherein they do not add those Apocrypha books, that is true.
But thank you, and why do we not stop here.