It is true that in this time God is opening up a lot of information—a lot of truth—and we need to be careful. We need to really be diligent to make sure that the things that we are saying are true to the Bible. We can not just flippantly make comments. We can not flippantly make statements. We have to be very diligent to try to correct anything that has been in error that we have taught.
Actually, I have been thinking that we are really going to need to do this on the website, because we continue to learn. We continue to learn new truths, and yet we have information on the website that maybe was taught several years ago and is not quite as correct as it needs to be. We may need to put a statement on the website listing corrections until we can edit these things out and remove them. We really need to make sure that what we are saying is true to the Word of God, and this requires study. This requires time to put into study.
One of the problems that we have just as individuals as we live in this world is that we have jobs, we have families, we have all kinds of things to do, which basically means that we have limited amounts of time for study and this can open us up to the possibility of error. I am really getting more and more hesitant to come up here with studies when I know that I have not put in twenty or thirty hours on what I am going to teach. I may have put in three or four or five or six hours. Typically, this is what I get to put into study in a week, but there is so much more that needs to be verified and checked out.
I really felt that way this week, so I did not want to just teach something new where I knew there would be threads hanging—things that needed to be connected. So I am going to go back and go over something that has been taught before—something that I am very sure is true to what the Bible says. This is found in Genesis 45:1-7:
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 he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. 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: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
This is a passage that is very eye opening to that which is going on in our present time, these days of the Great Tribulation. God, in the way that He has given the Scriptures or given His revelation, moved prophets of old to write down the information that we have in the Old Testament, i.e., the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. God moved all of these men to record these books, and so we have an Old Testament. However, the Old Testament was really veiled. It was in shadows and types and figures.
Believers of the Old Testament days would have faith that God gave them in the coming Messiah. They would trust and they also knew, I think, that God was going to come and enter into the human race. They could find that information in the Old Testament in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 9 speaks of this. In Isaiah 53, God talks about the Messiah who would bear the sins of His people. So they could trust in these things, but they did not know exactly how it would unfold, exactly how it would work out. They did not have all the information.
For example, in Psalm 22 when David is moved by God to write, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”—they maybe could have had some idea about this, but they would not have had the full understanding or the fuller and more complete understanding that we have. This is because God began to give further revelation with the New Testament Era as God moved individuals in the New Testament Age to also write Scripture that they received at the hands of God, the revelation of God. Those truths then enlightened and opened up many truths of the Old Testament.
You can read Psalm 22 and know perfectly, no question about it, that the verse in Psalm 22 is the exact same statement that Jesus made on the Cross as He was suffering for the sins of His people, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” There are many other things like this in the New Testament that really shed a lot of light on the Old Testament, and the Old Testament became clearer and much more able to be understood than it was previously.
Then also in the New Testament, we have statements like the Apostle Paul makes in Ephesians 3:3-6:
How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel:
Here, the Apostle Paul is saying, “God is revealing to me, teaching me, and instructing me about the Gentiles coming in.” This information was not made known to the Jews, “the sons of men,” as readily as it was made known to Paul.
Now in the New Testament Era, of course, the Gospel goes out into all the world. Everyone is qualified as a sinner to possibly receive the mercy of God and experience the salvation of God. Yet the Jews of old did not understand this truth, so the New Testament opens this up—a mystery is revealed.
So God, in giving further revelation, began to explain the previous revelation of the Old Testament, and that is how it was for a long time. Actually, there are schools of thought where theologians say that you can allegorize or spiritualize an Old Testament passage only when a New Testament passage explains it. This is a part of the hermeneutics of many theologians. So you could go to Galatians 4, where it speaks of Hagar and Sarah and how they represented two covenants, and you could say (and they would be in agreement with this) that spiritually, back in the book of Genesis, Hagar and Sarah represented these things.
So the theologians say that as long as you have New Testament validation, or when the New Testament is shedding light on the Old Testament, then you can do something like this—then you can look for a spiritual meaning. However, they stop right there and will not go any further than this, and sometimes they are not even consistent with this. They do not continue with the same thought, so they do not realize that if Hagar and Sarah represent this and that this information is coming from the history of Genesis, then why would not other individuals and other historical events begin to represent spiritual truths, too? So they do not pursue it; they do not go any further than this.
Part of the reason for this is that God had closed up certain things and sealed them, things that were not to be known until the latter days—our present time of Great Tribulation. God tells us in Daniel 12:4:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
A little further down, in Daniel 12:9-10, it says:
And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
We can not look at a passage like this and think that this is referring to the New Testament, explaining the Old Testament, because it says “till the time of the end.” This is a reference to the “latter days,” the time right near the end of the world and the return of Christ. So Daniel is saying that much of the revelation that God gave him was “closed up” and “sealed.” It was “closed.”
Let us turn back to Genesis 26. This is just an example that God has in the Bible that I think will help us to understand what it means to have things “sealed” and “closed.” In Genesis 26:15, we read:
For all the wells which his father’s servants had digged…
This is referring to Isaac.
…in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth.
The word “stopped” is the same word that we find in Daniel that is translated as “closed.”
Here, the Philistines were envious of Isaac because of his possessions and his cattle and because he was becoming greater than them. There was a well of water and the Philistines got some shovels and they started shoveling the dirt into the well. They filled up the well, maybe several feet higher than the water level. The water was still in the well, but at the very bottom of the well.
So the Philistines closed the well so that no water could be gotten out of it. If they had lowered a bucket down into the well, they would have only brought up dirt. Even if they jumped down into the well with a shovel and shoveled a couple of feet, there would still be no water. They would just give up, but it was still there. Just maybe a few feet further down was all the water that they would need to water their flocks or quench their own thirst.
The problem was that the Philistines filled the well and as travelers came by from a distance, they would see the well and they would see the rope and the bucket and they would run up to it, but there would not be any water. They could not find any water.
This is what God is saying and the example that He is using about sealing up the words. He does call the Word of God “water.” Actually, in Isaiah 12:3, we read:
Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
The Bible, the Word of God, is the flowing “water of life.” It is the “wells of salvation,” and people come to the Bible thirsty. We read in Psalm 42:1:
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
People come to the Scriptures with spiritual thirst and there can be drink, yet when God seals up the words “till the time of the end,” He has stopped the well.
The “well” was not stopped as far as salvation. It was not stopped as far as understanding certain things, but events concerning the timing of the end, events concerning other doctrines—like the end of the Church Age and even the understanding of salvation, to some degree—were sealed up “till the time of the end.” Then at the End Time, the indication is that it will be unsealed. It will be unsealed and God will just simply reveal the water that has been there all along.
This is just like that well where you go down and you dig five or six feet, and there is the water. Well, where did that “water” come from? Where did this information about the end of the Church Age come from? Is it new revelation?
No, it is not new revelation. God is not speaking audibly anymore. He is not giving additional revelation. It has always been in the Bible. It has always been there. Now, God is simply revealing truth, opening up the understanding of His people’s minds so that they can see it.
God is always in control of this. He is always in total control of what any individual understands about the Bible. So this is what is going on and this is why we read in Mark 13:11:
But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
Mark 13 is a chapter that is parallel to Matthew 24 concerning end-times.
What does this “hour” represent? What is this “hour” pointing to? It is pointing to Revelation 18, the judgment of Babylon, “for in one hour is thy judgment come.”
So here in this passage in Mark 13 that is dealing with the subject matter of the end of the world and the sign of the “Son of Man coming,” we read:
…take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak…in that hour…
“In that hour” of Great Tribulation.
This is very strange, is it not? Is this not unusual for God to say this? What does God normally tell us when it comes to the Bible? He tells us to study. “Meditate upon these things.” Think about the Word of God. “Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.”
Yet here, He is telling us to not do this, to not premeditate, to not think ahead or mediate about what the end of the world is going to be like. Why? This is because it will be “given you in that hour”—in the hour of Judgment, in the time of Great of Tribulation, God is telling us that He will reveal the truth.
There were many faithful men of the past, like Matthew Henry, who wrote a commentary on the whole Bible, or Charles Spurgeon or Jonathan Edwards or George Whitfield. You can tell by their writings that these men gave every appearance of being children of God, of being true believers. But if you are like Matthew Henry who wrote a commentary on the whole Bible, when you come to the book of Daniel or to the book of Revelation or to any of these significant passages dealing with the end of the world, what are you going to say? What are you going to teach?
So you have theologians, faithful men of God. In some cases, brilliant men with high intellects who would know the Latin and the Hebrew and the Greek. These were men who had many years of schooling. They did not have all of the Bible helps that we have today. We have Bible helps today that save us hundreds of hours as we search the Bible.
These men, just from personal study of comparing Scripture with Scripture and seeing what God is saying here and there, came up with a lot of right doctrine. But when they would get to the teaching on the end of the world, they would come up with the amillennial position, the premillennial position, the postmillennial position—and they were all wrong, every one of them. Faithful men holding various positions contrary to the other, and none of them understood what God was saying concerning the end of time.
Why not? There is a very simple explanation—because they could not find the “water.” The well was “closed up.” The well was “sealed.” They were lowering the bucket and they were trying to get an understanding of what God was saying, but all that came up was dirt. All that came up was misunderstandings and errors concerning the time of the end.
So actually, in this statement in Mark 13, God is telling people throughout all those ages during the many hundreds of years of the Church Age to not waste their time, to not premeditate concerning these things. The only problem with this is that this information was also sealed up, so they would not have understood it. Nonetheless, God was saying to not premeditate on what we were going to say in that hour, because He was not going to give us this information until we got to that hour—until the Great Tribulation did come.
Then Mark 13:11 says:
…that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
We are talking about things that some people shake their heads at. It hits them like a rock: the end of the Church Age, Christ coming in 2011, the information on the true Gospel and that you can not accept Christ or develop your own faith in order to get yourself saved. They hear these kinds of statements and they do not understand that it is not coming from a man. It is not coming from any man. It is coming from God. The Holy Spirit is speaking.
How does God the Holy Spirit speak? According to 1 Corinthians 2, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual,” the Holy Ghost teaches. So as we are studying the Bible and as we are teaching and looking at words and comparing them to other passages, the Holy Spirit is teaching and speaking through His people. He is not speaking by adding anything to the Word of God; it is all coming forth from the Word of God.
So anyone who has trouble with these things is really having a problem with God, not with man. Even though they want to say it is a man, they want to say that it is all coming from an individual, it is coming from the Bible which is the Word of God—so it is coming from the Spirit of God.
Actually, if we turn back to Habakkuk, the book before Zephaniah and after Nahum, we read in Habakkuk 2:1-2:
I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision…
What is “the vision?” Is it just this one particular vision? Well, it could be, but the Bible, the Word of God, is called “the vision.” We read in Isaiah 1:1:
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz…
So the Scripture is as a “vision” from God. Habakkuk 2:2:
Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables...
And that word “tables” is used to refer to the Ten Commandments. Habakkuk 2:2-4:
…that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.
God said, “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables.” Is it not amazing that once God gives you the answer and once He opens up your understanding to see a spiritual truth, it becomes plain as day? Once the Lord uses someone to reveal something, or this happens in your own study time as you are searching the Scriptures, and a previously difficult passage begins to make sense, once you see it, you see it. Once you see it, you really see it. You understand it and you know that it is truth. You can see it as plain as day because it was “plain upon tables.”
The problem is, with our sinful condition and our physical bodies and minds being tainted by sin and our limited abilities to begin with, we have very severe limitations upon our intellect and our ability to comprehend what God is saying in His Word because as the Bible tells us, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
We are, actually and really, like a little tiny ant, and this is not even a good comparison, compared to the Infinite God who “inhabiteth eternity” and who has spoken and given us this Word. How are we going to understand anything of our own? We really can not do this until God gives us the ability. Therefore, He says in Habakkuk 2:3:
For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak…
And this is what is going on. The Holy Spirit speaketh; He will teach. He is going to reveal these things to His people.
So here we are because we just happen to be living in this time, but we do not have any PhD’s. There might be one or two somewhere, but we do not have brilliant minds. We have very severe limitations, yet we can understand these things. We can grasp these things that some of the finest men in history, as far as those whom God has used to bring the Gospel, could not understand. This is only for one reason and it is because of where we are in time—we happen to be living right up against the end of the world.
Let us turn back to Genesis 45:1:
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.
This tells us that Joseph “could not refrain himself” anymore. Was Joseph refraining himself previously? Yes, he was. Remember, his brethren came because they “heard that there is corn in Egypt,” and they, “bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth.” Turn to Genesis 42:7-8:
And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food. And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him.
So they “knew not” Joseph. Who was Joseph a picture of? Joseph was a picture of Jesus. Who came up with the idea that Joseph was a picture of Christ? Actually, this has been widely known for hundreds of years.
Let me read something that I just copied down from an individual named Henry Law. Henry Law did a study called, “The Gospel in Genesis,” and he wrote about Joseph. He wrote:
In every page the voice of Jesus is heard—at almost every turn the image of Jesus is discerned. It is clearly so in the dungeon-scene before us. Joseph in custody, reviled for iniquity which he did not commit, foreshadows Jesus, who, without sin, is made sin for us.
Henry Law (1797-1884) was a faithful teacher and pastor from the 19th century. He was writing about the Gospel in Genesis and saying that Joseph was a type of Christ, a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The only problem is that he did not carry this through the rest of the Genesis account. We know why—because he could not. He could not. He could only see certain glimpses and get certain ideas that were true.
Joseph was a picture of Jesus, and here was Joseph seeing his brethren coming to him at the time of famine. That seven-year famine represents what? It represents the Great Tribulation. How do we know this? We know this because of what we read in Acts 7:11-13:
Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt and Chanaan, and great affliction…
“Great affliction” are the same two words “Great Tribulation.”
…and our fathers found no sustenance. But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first. And at the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren; and Joseph’s kindred was made known unto Pharaoh.
So we are reading of a time of great affliction/great tribulation, a seven-year famine, and those seven years represent and typify the Great Tribulation. This is why God used those two words in Acts 7. He could have used any number of other words, but He chose those two specific words that are only found maybe three or four other places in the New Testament, where in each case, it has to do with that “little season” of Great Tribulation when Satan is loosed.
So God is linking the famine to the Great Tribulation. He is basically telling us to look in Genesis at that period of time, and to look at it with the mindset that it is representative of the Great Tribulation.
When we do this, what do we see? We see Jacob and his family in the land of Canaan for the first two years, and then they hear that there is corn in Egypt. It is a terrible famine. There is no food found anywhere else, so they send the brethren, the brothers of Joseph, to Egypt.
We know the story. Joseph had been thrown into prison through events that had transpired. Then God arranged for Pharaoh to have a dream. The butler remembered that Joseph had interpreted his dream and told so to Pharaoh. “Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon.” Joseph then explained the dreams to Pharaoh and Pharaoh tells Joseph, “Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thou.”
So all of this is in view, and then the brethren come to Joseph, after two years of this famine being in the land of Canaan, in order to find corn. Joseph knows them; they do not know Joseph. They do not know Joseph—Joseph was “sealed” to them. They could not see him even though he was the same person.
At work yesterday, they had a little contest where everyone was asked to bring in their high school photographs. (I did not do it.) They put them on this bulletin board where they had numbers next to them, and I had to guess who certain people were today. I was looking at these pictures and I just had to shake my head at some of them. “That is him?” I could barely tell that it was the same person in the picture.
This is how it was with Joseph. Remember, Joseph was 17, a teenager, when he was sold by his brothers to the Midianite merchantmen who “sold him into Egypt” as a slave. Then at the time that he was standing before Pharaoh coming up out of the prison, he was 30. Now as his brethren come before him, he is how old? When his brethren come for corn in the second year of the famine, how old is Joseph? He is 39.
Is that not interesting—3 x 13? 3 x 13—God’s purpose that at 13, representing the end of the time, at the end of time, after 13,000 years of history, the brethren of Joseph will come from Canaan, typifying the church, to Joseph, representing the Lord Jesus Christ, for corn.
By the way, I am learning an awful lot reading all kinds of articles on the internet, doing research where I have to find these articles for a part-time job that I have. I have to find faithful articles from these men, so I am reading a lot of works from the teachers and preachers of the past.
There was a man, a faithful preacher by the name of A. W. Pink, who lived in the 20th century and who was trying to explain a few verses in Exodus where there were some numbers involved in the passage. A. W. Pink broke down the numbers and looked for spiritual meaning. The spiritual meaning that he assigned for the numbers is different than what we have come to know, but still, the methodology was exactly there. He was making statements like, “This means this,” and applying it to the Gospel.
What I am finding is that a lot of the truths that we are hearing today have been known in history—bits and pieces, here and there—but now they are all just coming together. They are all opening up, wide open, to the people of God.
I want to add that I am not turning to A. W. Pink to justify the breaking down of numbers. I think that this can be done from the Bible itself. We can go to the book of Revelation to see how God uses the number 12, for example.
Still, it is highly significant that Joseph is 39. He is 39 years old when he is now going to reveal himself to his brethren after two years of the famine, or we can look at it as the dividing point of the Great Tribulation. At the dividing point of the Great Tribulation, he is making himself known to his brethren.
I just want to say this before we close. Let us turn to Genesis 45:6:
For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.
What is Joseph saying? He is a picture of Christ. His brethren are typifying true believers. Joseph had stated, “Cause every man to go out from me.” All of the Egyptians had to go out because this information is only for the true believers. It is for his brethren only. They are the only ones who are going to understand. “None of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.”
We can figure out these dates from other information, but he is saying that in 1886 B.C., the “seven years of great plenty” began. This went on until 1879 B.C., because he told them, “For these two years hath the famine been in the land,” and it is 1877 B.C. when he is speaking to them. So two years earlier, the famine began in 1879 B.C., and it is going to continue for five years—1877 B.C. to 1872 B.C.
This represents the revealing of truth by the Lord Jesus Christ to His people during the time of Great Tribulation. So in one verse, God is letting us know when the seven-year famine began, the dividing point in the seven-year famine, and the ending point of the seven-year famine. All of these three bits of information are in this one verse.
It began two years earlier. If I am Joseph’s brethren, I know what year it is. It is 1879 B.C. It has been two years. It is now 1877 B.C., and it is the dividing point. It is at this point when Jacob and his family will come out of Canaan and they will enter into the land of Egypt. They also have an ending point—1872 B.C.
If we follow the same methodology—Joseph is a type of Christ, his brethren are representing believers, the famine representing the Great Tribulation—do you see how God is telling us that when He opens up the Scriptures, when He makes Himself known, when “at the end it shall speak,” when the “Holy Ghost teacheth” “in that hour” and reveals truth, He is going to tell us a starting point for the Great Tribulation—1988, He is going to tell us a dividing point to the Great Tribulation—1994, and He is going to tell us an ending point to the Great Tribulation—AD 2011?
I do not think that it is a coincidence that as others have studied the Bible and have come to these particular dates, and each one of these dates have Biblical support from the calendars of history and from internal evidence within the Word of God, we have arrived at three pretty conclusive dates that match perfectly with what Joseph is telling his brethren as he is making himself known.
That is why this verse is so important. Here we are just four years away from 2011. In keeping with everything that God is telling us, it seems like 2011 is going to be the end of the world.