Study in the Epistle of Jude # 16: Verse 4

by Chris McCann

EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study time. We are studying the book of Jude, and have come to verse 4, which says, “certain men crept in unawares.” We have been thinking about that and trying to understand what God means by that kind of language. We have been taken to Matthew chapter 25, where we find the parable of the ten virgins. What was significant about these virgins, and how they relate to our study in Jude, is that they were sleeping. It is like the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13). We learn there that it was while men slept that the enemy came and sowed tares amongst the wheat. We also looked at Isaiah 29, where God connected a deep sleep with sealing up the words of the book, the Bible. We are seeing from the Bible that when God speaks of a period of sleeping, as He does in Matthew 13 with the parable of the wheat and the tares and in Matthew 25 with the ten virgins, what is in view is that the words of the book are sealed. The Bible was sealed. Much information concerning end-time events and some other very important doctrines was closed up. It was shut up, and there would be no understanding it in a right and proper way until the time of the end, as Daniel 12 indicates. In Matthew 25:5-6 we read:

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

Here is the awakening of the virgins. They are all sleeping, but a cry is made at midnight, the middle of the night. In the Bible, night can relate to the time of the Great Tribulation. That period of time will be characterized by intense spiritual darkness, which will overtake the churches and congregations of the world. Therefore, God occasionally speaks of the Great Tribulation as a period of nighttime.

In this parable, it is midnight, the middle of the night. It is no accident or coincidence that God is choosing midnight. We know that midnight relates to judgment, and we have seen this in the judgment on Egypt, when the death of the first born occurred at midnight. But midnight is also significant—and it is a very important word—because it is speaking of the middle point of the night. If the night represents the Great Tribulation, then the middle point would look forward to the time when the Great Tribulation would be split in two.

We have learned from past studies that the Great Tribulation is spoken of in the Bible as coming in two parts. The first part we read about in Revelation 11 where the two witnesses are slain and lying dead in the street. This would mean that the sleep continued through the Church Age, and it was still continuing at the end of the Church Age when Satan had been loosed and the Great Tribulation had begun. There was no awakening of the people of God then. As a matter of fact, it seemed as if their condition was worse then ever. Satan had now risen out of the pit, the Holy Spirit had left the church, and the believers in the churches and congregations were lacking the blessing of God as far as their occupation of sending forth the Gospel from the church was concerned. God’s Spirit had left, so they were still sleeping. There was a lack of understanding; confusion was overtaking them. They did not understand what was going on.

Then the point in Revelation 11 where God commands the two witnesses to stand upon their feet was reached. Three-and-a-half days after the first part of the Great Tribulation, there is a second part where the believers are standing on their feet and sending forth the Gospel into the world, and they are coming out of the church to do so. This happens in the second half of the Great Tribulation.

The cry at midnight fits right in. It is in the middle of the night, the middle of the Great Tribulation. That is when God opens the Scriptures and unseals the book, because, as we have to keep in mind and constantly remind ourselves, Isaiah 29 associates sleep with the sealed book. Now, at midnight, the cry is made. The alarm is sounding, awaking the people of God. The book is no longer sealed, because these virgins are no longer sleeping.

This is very much related to what is going on in our day. We are in the mid-point of the Great Tribulation where we have realized that God is finished using the churches and congregations of the world. We have come to realize that God, in many places in the Bible, is commanding His people to come out of the church. He issues this command in Matthew 24:15-16 where we read about the “abomination of desolation” that will “stand in the holy place.” There God says, “Let them which be in Judea,” (which is a figure of speech referring to the corporate church) “flee into the mountains.” Again, in Luke 21 God speaks of those in Jerusalem and commands them to depart out of the midst. Then in Revelation 18:4, God refers to the corporate church that is fallen away and is extremely unfaithful as the harlot Babylon, and He commands, “Come out of her, My people.”

We could mention many more places in the Bible, such as the book of Jeremiah where God speaks of His people fleeing Babylon (Jeremiah 51:6). In other places, God indicates that it is time to come out, it is time to wake up. The book is being unsealed, and much of the information that God has hidden within the pages of the Bible is being revealed. The great mystery that the people of God have only been able to gain hints of, the passages that would fascinate and tantalize them into wondering, “What is it that God is saying here?”—is all becoming clearer. These passages are now being understood, and the believers are seeing what God’s end-time plan is—that the church is to be given to Satan.

Satan’s assault all along has been against the church. We saw in Acts 15 that those Pharisees who believed had almost immediately, during the early formation of the church, crept in unawares. They were already taking positions of leadership and teaching that individuals had to be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. The grace of God was already being perverted and turned into another Gospel.

Satan has attacked the church time and time again throughout the centuries. God, of course, has always accomplished His purpose and saved those whom He intended to save, but increasingly the churches were becoming more tares than wheat. There were more unsaved than saved; more foolish than wise. God has allowed this to happen until the time was right, and that time would be the Great Tribulation. Then He would unseal the book.

What a trap and what a snare this is for Satan. All of Satan’s weapons are geared towards confusion and deceitfulness, so that as believers went to churches, we would not know who was a true child of God and who was not. Those individuals who kept questioning things and coming up with other ideas, or the pastor or elder who had this unusual slant on a verse, only gave the appearance of being true children of God. By this, true believers were greatly and repeatedly troubled as they went from church to church trying to find truth and not knowing that Satan had such a strong foothold in just about every congregation of the world.

Eventually, God pulls the rug out from under Satan. But for then, Satan had it all planned out to deceive those coming into the churches. They will never know the difference. They will never realize that it is his ambassadors, these “angels of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15), these messengers of Satan, who are doing the teaching and preaching and are the authorities in the churches. Satan is the “man of sin” who has taken his seat in the temple (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). He has it all figured out to destroy the people of God, to give them no food or drink or spiritual nourishment. This is his plan. He is pinching off the Gospel more and more until the day when we are in the Great Tribulation and there is a famine in the land. The believers, even during the first half of the Great Tribulation, are overcome. They are in the churches and they do not realize what a tremendous, triumphant victory this is for Satan. The true children of God, the elect, are now under his teaching. They are under the teaching of his emissaries and his ambassadors, so they are malnourished, they are not being fed at all. This is exactly what Satan wants. Now Satan can show himself to be God as “he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” (2 Thessalonians 2:4)

It all looks as bleak as it could possibly look. There is no chance of anyone becoming saved. Satan cannot do anything about those who were already saved, but he can certainly do something about the witness of the elect. They can go and hand out tracts and witness to their friends and family, but where are those witnessed to going to go? They are going to go to church, and it is in church where there is a famine of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11). There will be no further salvation; Satan will win. According to his plan, the last of the elect will not become saved because he has taken over the church. He is going to make sure that no one within the boundaries of the church becomes saved.

What a tremendous plan in an extremely perverse way! What a brilliant plan to overcome the church! We know, of course, that he could not do it without God’s permission, without God’s allowance; but there he is, seated in the temple. Now everything is in place, and he is going to push this one last battle to try and prevent the elect of God from obtaining salvation. Who can prevent him from winning? He owns all the churches—there is not a church anywhere, without exception, in the entire world where one can find any true water hole or any true bread in all the land. Yes, there might be a couple of people here or there who get disillusioned with the church and stay home, but for the most part, Satan is overwhelmingly in control of the pulpits, and it is the pulpits and the church ministry that God has used for nearly two thousand years to evangelize the world.

We can see how he was thinking. He had pinned all of his hopes on this last assault against the congregations of the world. He was hoping that God would not save that last elect person, and therefore the world could not end and Satan’s judgment, his casting off into Hell, would not take place.

This would have been the case, except that God had one final mystery to unveil, one final grand plan that nobody knew about. He hid it so well in the pages of the Bible, so brilliantly in historical parables and language that is difficult to understand that it is only by the Spirit of God’s illumination that anyone can understand. God Himself must open up one’s spiritual eyes to see these things.

What was this mystery? God reveals to His people that the Church Age is finished. It is over and done with, and therefore God says, “Come out of her, My people.” It is time to leave. It is time for the New Testament exodus, for the people of God to leave their church and congregation and never return. As believers begin to do this, as they begin to come out at first in different parts of the country, then in different parts of the world, they begin to form fellowships or meet together in homes. They begin to spread the Word to others about the condition of the church.

Now Satan works by deception. He works underhandedness through discretion. He operates in darkness. But now, the light of the Word of God is shining fully on him. He is like a rat that has been caught in the house and cannot get away. He is like the thief that has been found breaking in, and now the spotlight is shining on him. Everyone is seeing that Satan is there, located in the temple, in the church. Therefore, the believers are coming out.

This is terrible for Satan. How can he now deceive the elect? How can he work to frustrate God’s purpose in saving them? He had it all set up in the church. He had everything arranged. He was in full and complete control and no one could be blessed. He was able to bind men’s hearts and to snatch away the word that was sown (Matthew 13:19). Now it is all ruined from his vantage point, it is all a mess. The Gospel is going out everywhere from nooks and crannies—from this household and that fellowship group, from the radio and the Internet and tracts. It is going out all over, and the believers are no longer pointing people to the church. They are pointing people to the Bible alone. “Read the Bible,” they say, “that is where you can find God. Do not go to churches.”

What warfare can Satan develop to combat this? What can he do now to frustrate the sending forth of the Gospel? He will, of course, continue his assault. He will continue to try to frustrate the Gospel wherever it is going out. However, he cannot bind men’s hearts. God will save that great multitude.

Going back to Matthew 25, we read in verse 6:

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh…

We know, for example from John the Baptist’s declaration in John 3:29, that the bridegroom represents the Lord Jesus Christ. At midnight, the cry is made that the bridegroom cometh. This is not saying that the bridegroom came, it is only giving information that a herald is beginning to cry out and say that the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is near. He is near; He is at the door. Christ is on His way, but He is not yet here. You are to do something, you who hear this message, you virgins who were sleeping and are now awakened:

…go ye out to meet him.

Once again, God is issuing that same command that we read in Revelation 18:4:

…Come out of her, my people…

The wise virgins are commanded to go out to meet the Lord Jesus Christ. Actually, this command is given to all the virgins, to everyone who is in the church. “Go ye out to meet Him.” We read of what results in verse 8:

And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.

The Great Tribulation is characterized in many different ways and in many different pictures. God uses another illustration in Joel 1:10, where He says:

…the oil languisheth.

This is speaking of the church. The oil represents the Holy Spirit and the blessing of the Gospel of God’s salvation. Once we reach the period of Great Tribulation, the oil languisheth. It is gone; there is no more oil (2 Thessalonians 2:7).

These foolish virgins had lamps because they were associated with the church. God had placed a light in the churches and congregations—the light of the Gospel. Therefore, they did have a lamp for a period of time. But now, once we get to the point of the Great Tribulation, the light in the church is extinguished. The two witnesses are said to be that light, so they cannot say that they have a light corporately anymore. The light now must come from within.

We read in Matthew 25:2-4:

And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

The oil is representing the Holy Spirit. The wise are saved—they have the Holy Spirit, they take oil in their vessels—but the foolish are unsaved and have no oil. Once the cry is made to go out of the church, this will bring about a division between these virgins. We would not know who is wise or who is foolish except by which ones had oil and which ones did not have oil. It is the wise who will have oil and who can light their lamps. They, therefore, can see the path to go out to meet the bridegroom. They will be able to find their way and to see in the dark. Those, however, who do not have any oil cannot light their lamps. They cannot see and they cannot understand these things.

This is just as Daniel 12 indicates—that the wise will understand, but the wicked will not understand. That is what is going on in Matthew 25. The division is being made. God is separating the wise virgins from the foolish virgins, just as He is separating the wheat from the tares. All of this is related to the trouble that started as men slept and Satan operated in their unaware condition. However now, once men are awakened, the believers are coming out of the church while the unbelievers are remaining in it.

We are going to stop here in this study. In our next study, Lord willing, perhaps we will finish looking at Matthew 25, and then go back to the book of Jude and pick up in verse 4.