Study in the Epistle of Jude # 67: Verse 12

by Chris McCann

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

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. We are currently in verse 12 of the book of Jude. God has been giving us some insight into the false prophets who He said were “spots in your feasts of charity,” and we have learned that this has to do with those who are still in their sin and are, therefore, not righteous in God’s sight. This is the same as the sacrificial animal, which God commanded could not have a spot or a blemish. The sacrificial animal had to be, in that sense, perfect in order to typify the complete perfection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who would be the “Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Likewise, when believers become saved, when they hear the Gospel and God blesses His Word to their hearts, they become part of the body of Christ, a member of the Bride of Christ, and part of the eternal Church. In Ephesians 5:26-27, God says that that church is without spot and without blemish because the sins of each one who is a part of the spiritual bride of the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, have been washed away by the washing of water by the Word. God is looking at those who have responded to the Gospel call.

We also looked at Luke 14, which spoke of a supper and a feast. Many were called unto that feast, which is basically pointing to the sending forth of the Word of God into the world. As people hear the Gospel, they respond and they approach unto God. Yet, there are many in the churches who are spots. This was the situation throughout the Church Age—they were “spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear.”

We have looked at that phrase and how it primarily has to do with those who have positions of authority in the church, or are teachers within the church. God commands them to feed His sheep, but in Ezekiel 34, the shepherds of Israel are not feeding the sheep but are feeding themselves of the sheep. They are feeding themselves, just as we read here, and they are doing so without fear because they do not possess the fear of God. There is no fear of God in the land. As we look at the church of our day and as we view the churches and congregations of this present world, we see that they have no fear as they develop their false teachings and doctrines. There is no fear of God. They think that they can teach anything under the sun—any far out idea, any erroneous doctrine—and God will not bring judgment upon them.

So many are shocked and surprised to hear that the church of our day is under the judgment of God and that judgment has begun at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). That is because they do not understand that the God of their imagination, the God of their own making as they have contrived Him with their doctrines, is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is a God of judgment. He is a God that ought to be feared, yet His condemnation of these false prophets who have crept unawares into the churches is that they do not fear Him.

It goes on to say in Jude verse 12, still in the context of these men:

…clouds they are without water…

Now what does that mean? Why does God speak of these men as being clouds? As we search the Bible and examine what it has to say regarding clouds, we see that “clouds” is a word or a subject that is identified with the judgment of God. In 1 Corinthians 10:1-2, it says:

Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;

“Our fathers were under the cloud”—that cloud represented the judgment of God. God’s cloud was with Israel by day, and the fire was with them by night. The passage through the Red Sea was a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ delivering His people, and in order for Jesus to deliver His people, He had to endure the judgment of God. Here, therefore, the cloud is related to God’s judgment. Yet, we also know that God can relate the cloud to the body of believers. In Hebrews 12:1, we read:

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses…

Here, God is speaking of a cloud of witnesses. This verse is following Hebrews 11 in which God spoke of all the men of faith, all those witnesses to the truth of His goodness and of His person. He refers to these men as a cloud of witnesses. That is an interesting way to view the people of God—as a cloud—but that is how God speaks of them.

As God writes about the sending forth of His Word, as He describes how He will send the Gospel into this barren world, how does He represent it? He refers to the sending forth of His Word as the rain. In Deuteronomy 32:1-2, we have this picture. We read there:

Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass

God is referring to the rain. As the rain falls from Heaven, the figure, the picture that God is developing, is of the Gospel. As the water falls from the sky, so the Gospel comes down from Heaven above. Also, in Isaiah 55:10-11 we read:

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

The Word of God is most definitely likened to the rain. That is why, as we look at believers as being represented by a cloud, we can see how this fits. A true believer is a messenger of the Gospel. We are servants who are commissioned by God to go into all the world and teach all nations (Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:19). We are to go forth with the Word of God. As God leads His people to share the Word of God, as He moves in them to will and do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13), it is as the rain that is falling. As He leads them into a certain city, for instance, on a tract trip, and they bring a hundred thousand tracts and begin moving throughout the city, it is as the rain that is falling upon that city. As God moves His people to get together and start a radio ministry that is faithful to the Word of God, and as that radio signal is sent out to be heard in many different parts of world, it is as the rain that is falling from Heaven. As God has moved His people to develop websites and to use the internet to send forth the Gospel, and as people are hearing this Gospel over the internet, it is as the rain that is being sent forth from God coming down from Heaven above. This rain will accomplish His purpose.

In order to have rain, you must have clouds. The clouds are the carriers of the rain. God does not speak from Heaven directly; that is, He does not speak audibly from His Heaven above so that the whole world would hear His voice that way. Rather, God has developed a program, a science, of sending forth the Gospel into the world that requires the body of believers. Each child of God is commissioned, moved, and directed by God to go with his time and his money and his effort and to bring the Gospel to the world.

God moves about the clouds, His elect, from place to place. He moves their combined efforts, which He blesses by sending down His Word from above upon a city or upon a little town or upon a single household. This is how God has designed His plan of salvation. This is His program of evangelizing the world, especially in our day when God has opened up technology to such a degree that it takes relatively few believers to gather their resources and to come together with ministries that operate within the electronic medium of radio or internet or satellite. Through these means, God can much better accomplish His purposes. The rain can fall evenly over many different countries and areas of the world. God can begin to blanket and cover the earth with His Word.

We have learned, as we have been studying the Bible, that God has a season in His salvation plan that comes near the end of time. It arrives during the time of Great Tribulation, which is right up against the end of the world. This season is called the latter rain (Joel 2:23), and God is going to use His people as the clouds that will bring this rain (Proverbs 16:15). They will operate within the electronic medium to send forth the Word to a world of six and a half billion people and counting. These people, to a large extent, will hear the Gospel, and definitely, without fail, every single one of God’s elect will become saved.

God speaks of this latter rain in Zechariah 10:1, which says:

Ask ye of the LORD rain in the time of the latter rain; so the LORD shall make bright clouds…

As we are desiring to be obedient to God, we want His will to be done. We know that He is waiting for the latter rain. In James 5:7, He speaks of Himself as the husbandman who is waiting for the precious fruit of the earth “until he receive the early and latter rain.” The early rain has to do with the whole New Testament Church Age, while the latter rain comes at the end of the New Testament Church Age when God begins evangelizing the world through His people outside of the churches and congregations, using the electronic medium.

When we begin to realize that God has a plan for sending forth the latter rain, which is His Word coming down from Heaven above to bless His people who have been predestinated from before the foundation of the world to become saved (Ephesians 1:4), then we begin to pray to the Lord and ask Him for rain in the time of the latter rain. We beseech Him for this rain. We cry out to Him, “Oh Lord, could it be that You would send forth this rain.” We then pray, of course, for those whom we know. “Send it upon my family and friends and those whom I work with and those in our neighborhood, but send it forth according to Thy will wherever you would, Oh Lord.” We beseech the Lord to begin to rain down His precious Word from above. We beseech Him to bless that Word so that a great multitude, as the Bible indicates, which no man can number (Revelation 7:9) can become saved in this little season, this short period of time of the latter rain. Then the Father, the husbandman, can receive the completion of the precious fruit. He will no longer be patient but will bring about the end of the world.

In order for God to answer this prayer and send the latter rain, what does He do? What does He say in Zechariah 10:1, after it is recorded that we are to ask or pray to the Lord for rain in the time of the latter rain? We read:

…so the LORD shall make bright clouds…

First, there have to be the clouds. First, God has to prepare the clouds. We should not despise this period of time, as God gets the clouds into place. Perhaps we do not see great multitudes becoming saved at all. We definitely do see, though, faithful declarations of the Word of God going forth over the electronic medium. We do see believers banding together and using their time and their resources and everything that they can to bring the faithful Gospel message, the whole counsel of God, to the world.

We can look around and we can see this gathering together of believers over the radio and over the Internet. We see preparation being made for reaching the world. The Internet itself is an arena that anyone in the world could reach by purchasing a computer or visiting their library or going to an Internet café. They could, at God’s leading, stumble across a website that is presenting the true Gospel of the Bible. God can then draw them to Himself and bless and save them. They then have been a recipient of the latter rain; they have been a recipient of God’s grace falling down from above. We see these things taking place, we see the clouds being put into place, and then we read what the next thing to happen is, as we continue in Zechariah 10:1:

…and give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field.

This is going to happen. It is happening, actually, already. God is going to do a wonderful work, a glorious work, in the end of time during our day in this little season. He is going to save more than He has saved in the whole history of the world, in all probability. This is often how God does things at the end—the end is much greater than the beginning or even throughout. This is, for instance, how God worked in the life of Job—He blessed him more in his latter end than He had previously (Job 42:12). This is how God worked in the life Samson—Samson slew more in his death than he had in his life (Judges 16:30). This is how God often works. The latter temple, the temple that Zerubbabel and Joshua built, was a temple that God said would be of greater glory than the former temple (Haggai 2:9).

This is how God is definitely working when it comes to saving sinners and saving His elect. He has so designed things in order to bring Him tremendously great glory at the final end of all things. At the sound of the last trump, the Lord Jesus Christ will return upon the clouds of glory, and the judgment of God will be complete (1 Corinthians 15:52). However, before Christ returns, those clouds must be put into place. Those clouds must rain down; they must be full of the water of the Gospel that is going out into the world so that each and every one whom God has chosen will hear and become saved.

It is wonderful that God teaches this in His Word. In looking at Jude, as we are constantly looking at false prophets, it is a nice change of pace. However unfortunately, we want to know what God means as He is speaking of these wicked men and says, “Clouds they are without water.” True believers are typified by clouds with water. We do have water—we have that water of the Gospel, and believers will be faithful to that Word of God. We also remember that when someone becomes saved, Jesus says, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). This is the mark of a true child of God who has experienced the salvation of God. However, someone who has not experienced the salvation of God may give the outward appearance of being a child of God and look like a true believer. God speaks of them as clouds. A cloud ought to be filled with water and ought to be able to rain down water, but these are clouds without water.

In Proverbs 25:14, we see a related verse. It says:

Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain.

We see how this ties in. “Whoso boasteth”—that has to do with someone who is glorying in something that he ought not to glory in. We ought to glory only in God, but here someone is boasting himself of a false gift. What could that gift be? In Ephesians 2:8-9, God speaks of the gift of faith. He says:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

When someone is involved with works, when they think that they have done some act or some work to bring salvation to themselves, it is something that leads to boasting. God says that no, salvation and faith are gifts, and that men ought not to boast. Therefore, we understand Proverbs 25:14 very well. “Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift”—we are talking about those who have accepted Christ. We are talking about those who have walked down the aisle or said the sinner’s prayer or attended church regularly for some time or participated in the Lord’s Supper. Perhaps they have done something, and so the pastor, the elder, the deacon, and the church have assured them, “You are a child of God.” They believe them, but unfortunately it is a false gift. It is not the true gift of faith. God is the only One who can bestow the gift of grace. He is the only One who can give the gift of faith, the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ in dying for the sins of His people.

Any who boast of a false gift, Proverbs 25:14 says, are like clouds and wind without rain. Again, the emphasis is upon someone who is deceived, someone who has been fooled by his own self (Jeremiah 17:9). He has no understanding of the fact that he has never become born again, but he acts as if he has. He even thinks it in his mind. He thinks that he is a believer, he calls himself a Christian, and he teaches the Bible. Perhaps he does everything that gives the appearance that he has become a child of God. He is about as close to a real Christian as you can possibly get. Therefore, God speaks of him as a cloud, just like a true believer is a cloud; the only difference is that there is no water therein. There is no rain, there is no Holy Spirit, and there is no water of life (John 4:14) residing within that individual.

People go about and expect that rain will come forth. They expect that when they go to the church, the church will bring the true Gospel of the Bible. They expect that the pastor is going to bring the truth of the Word of God; however, he is a cloud and wind without rain, so he preaches a sermon on morality. He preaches a sermon on politics. He preaches a sermon that has nothing to do with the truth of the Word of God. He does not declare that we are sinners under the wrath of God and that we are headed for Hell. He does not preach this to his congregation. There is no water of the Gospel; there is no rain coming down from above.

This is the sad state of affairs in the church as a whole today. There are all kinds of clouds giving the appearance that a lot is going on and that all kinds of people are becoming saved in many different churches, yet there is no rain. God has left the church. He has removed His blessing, and there is no rain. There is no latter rain taking place inside the church, only outside.