It is July 6th and we just had the 4th of July weekend. The 4th of July was just a couple of days ago. People from all over the world came to Philadelphia, because Philadelphia is known as The Birthplace of Freedom. Philadelphia is known for that, and one of the things that people have to see when they come to visit, when they come to The City of Brotherly Love, is the Liberty Bell. They just have to visit the Liberty Bell. They file past, and millions upon millions of people have visited the Liberty Bell. They take pictures, and, really, it is a symbol. It is a relic of the past that stands for freedom. It stands for liberty, and liberty for many people is an ideal that they have had which they have lived and died for. We may not have that same ideal to the degree that they have had it in the past, but many people have lived and died for this ideal. It is religious liberty and it is political liberty, and the Liberty Bell kind of sums this up.
I was just doing a little research on the Liberty Bell. Actually, it was in 1751 that an assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania drafted this idea to obtain a Liberty Bell from England. It was 1752, the next year, that it arrived. Soon after, upon its first sounding, it cracked. It cracked and had gotten worse over the years, so the bell was recast, and so forth.
The site I was at was the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and they were giving this history of the Liberty Bell. Actually, it was a little humorous because in 1976 there were protesters who went to England. They were the American Society of Procrastinators, and they were protesting that they had gotten a lemon and they wanted to use the warranty that came with the bell. Then the Whitechapel Bell Foundry was saying, “Okay. You can return it. We will accept it if you return it in its original packaging.” I thought that was kind of funny, “If you return it in its original packaging, we will take it back” (with a receipt; you do need a receipt, but only if you want a refund).
But the thing about the Liberty Bell is that there is a Bible verse on it. There is a Bible verse on the Liberty Bell! Now if today’s America got together and said, “Let us come up with some relic that represents freedom or that really describes our ideal in this country,” they would never put a Bible verse on it. They could never put a Bible verse on it.
So the men of the past who formed this nation, we know that many of them were believers who came to America seeking religious freedom so that they could worship God, really in their minds, in a faithful, Biblical way, where there had been prohibitions against this where they came from. Therefore, in many things in the Declaration of Independence, they made reference to God. On the Liberty Bell, they would put Scripture. In many, many things, their relationship to God really shined through.
But who knows what the verse is that is on the Liberty Bell? Leviticus chapter 25, verse? Verse, anybody? Let us go to Leviticus 25, and I am going to start reading in verse 8. Verse 8 is not what is on there, but I will start reading there. Leviticus 25:8-10:
And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year…
“Hallow” means to “make holy.” It means to “sanctify it.” It is set apart; it is holy.
…hallow the fiftieth year, and…
This is what is on the Liberty Bell:
…proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof…
And it stops there. But the verse goes on:
…it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
They were saying that this verse that was inscribed on the Liberty Bell was prophetic—that is what this website was saying—because just twenty-four years later, in 1776, would be the Declaration of Independence and America would seek its freedom from England. So that is where they kind of thought, “Well, having that verse really turned out to be something because it was one of the founding principles of America that this would be a democracy and a land of the free.”
And yet, actually, we see the hand of God, God’s providence, because it is in our day where we are experiencing the “latter rain,” the second Jubilee, and it is primarily from America that God is sending out the Gospel into all the world, into all the nations of the world. Yes, there are believers in other countries, but it is mostly through the electronic medium: radio, internet, satellite broadcasting, TV. It is through the electronic medium that the Gospel is going into all the world and this declaration of liberty. And God knew when He founded this country that He would instill these ideals into the people so that there could be religious freedom. At least over the airwaves and in many other ways, we have freedom to bring the Gospel to the world.
You know, this was a wonderful message, this verse, is it not? Leviticus 25:10:
…proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof…
It is a wonderful message if you are an oppressed people, if there is a government over you that is oppressing you. Or it is a wonderful message if you are a slave. If you were working in the cotton fields of Georgia a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, this was a message for those people.
To us today, what do we care? What do we care?
…proclaim liberty throughout all the land…
We are free. We are free. Are we not free? Is not everybody in America free? You can do what you want. You can have pink hair or purple hair. You can have earrings anywhere you want. You can do absolutely whatever you want in this country because it is a free country, and yet the principle, the ideal, does not register with us because we are free, because we were never oppressed, because we were never in bondage to any man. We were never, physically, slaves.
Actually, there were slaves in America and there were slaves in other lands, too. There were slaves who were under hard bondage, and they had cruel masters. They were physically oppressed like we cannot imagine in this country, but God brought His Word to the slaves. We know from some of the songs that came out of that era that God brought His Word to them. They did not have physical freedom and they did not have political freedom, and they had many things to where they were not free. But many of them, God saved. Not all of them, but some of them God saved.
And the truth is—and this is really the truth—the truth is that that slave that worked the field from morning to night and got his measure of food—he had his family in a little shack and they were in bondage—that those slaves are freer than many, many, many Americans today, because God saved them, because God had mercy on them and they were free from sin.
Let us look at a few verses. Let us to go 2 Timothy 2:24-26. It says:
And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
And that is referring to every unsaved person. There is a captivity. There is a prison that you cannot see. You just cannot see it. It is in the spiritual realm. It is invisible. But it is real. It is real, and those who are in their sins are in that bondage.
Go to Romans 6:16. It says:
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
You see, we are a servant. We are a slave of sin if we are obeying sin. If we are obeying sin, if we are going after our lusts and our desires, if we are going after things that are contrary to the Law of God in any way, then we are serving sin and we are a captive to sin.
Or look at John 8. Jesus here really points this out. In John 8:31-36:
Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
This is a fact. It is an absolute fact. We may like it. We may love that sin. It may be a great pleasure in our life. Whatever it is—sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, smoking pot—whatever it is, we may really get a thrill from it, but it is bondage, slavery, because we are captive to it and we are in the kingdom of darkness, enslaved by our own sin.
What is keeping us in the kingdom of darkness? What is keeping us in this prison house that we cannot see but is very real? Our lusts! It is what we want! We crave it. We desire it. We find it hard to live without it whenever we turn from it. We must have these things!
Go to Proverbs 5:22. God explains this. He recognizes that this is the condition of sinful man:
His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
Those are the chains that are about us. That is the bondage that we are in. We did it to ourselves! We wrapped our desires, our sinful pleasures, around ourselves and we are in bondage and we cannot do anything but what sin dictates to us.
It is Friday night and we have to go to the club. On Saturday, I have to do this. I have to go to my friends and drink. On Sunday, I have to go to a sporting event: baseball, football, soccer, whatever it is.
It is the Lord’s Day. “Yes, but I want to do what I want to do.” Well, why do you want to do that? It is contrary to the Bible. God says to keep His Sabbath Holy, to remove your foot from His Holy Day. “Because there is a power working within that I must obey.”
Well, this sin that has wrapped itself about us and is holding us hostage is going to reign “unto death,” day-by-day. That is what the Bible says. “The wages of sin is death,” and so we are following it unto the very end, and sin’s end is death. It is total destruction “from the presence of the Lord,” a total and complete destruction that will be eternal. We will cease to be.
That is the “wages of sin,” and we lose out on incredible blessings with God. “Life for evermore” is gone. We took the bowl of soup over the great blessing that God has for His people, the inheritance of eternal life.
Well, you see, God proclaims liberty. He proclaims liberty. He tells us this. Let us go back to Leviticus 25 again. He says in Leviticus 25:8:
And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.
So let us do a little math. 7 x 7 = 49 years from one period until the next period of Jubilee. So when Israel went into the land of Canaan in 1407, there would be 49 years, and then in 1357, it would be a Jubilee. Then it would work down to 1307, 1257, 1207, all the way down from 57 B.C. to 7 B.C. And in 7 B.C., we know that Jesus was born. The Lord Jesus Christ was born in 7 B.C. and that was a Jubilee year.
This makes perfect sense, and it fits in exactly with God’s plan of proclaiming liberty during a Jubilee, as Jesus is the essence of freedom and the essence of liberty. He was born on a Jubilee year because He is the One who is going to free His people.
If you go over to Isaiah 61:1-2, where it says:
The spirit of the Lord JEHOVAH is upon me; because JEHOVAH hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of JEHOVAH…
The Jubilee would be for a year; it would be one full year. And this language fits in very well with the language of the Jubilee.
By the way, I learned most of what I know about this from Mr. Camping and his writings over the years. Of course, he has this laid out in Time Has an End, which you can get. If you go to www.familyradio.com you can request this. It is free. Or you can write to Family Radio at Oakland, CA. Write to their headquarters and they will send you this book. They will send you literature on the information of the end of the world in 2011 and on the Jubilee, which has a lot to do with our present day. I say this because I am making reference to Mr. Camping’s writings while I am talking about this. When I am mentioning the year of the Jubilee, etc., that is outlined in his books.
So it is a time of proclaiming:
…the acceptable year of JEHOVAH, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
Remember what Jesus did in the New Testament in the Gospel of Luke? It says in Luke 4:16-21:
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was…
And this is referring to Jesus:
…he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
Because it is the fulfillment, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jubilee, and the Jubilee is a time of proclaiming liberty. The first Jubilee was when Christ was born in 7 B.C., and then it went throughout the Church Age. It went throughout the 1955 years of the Church Age, up until 1988. That was the first Jubilee, the first time the Gospel would go out into the world with the possibility of many becoming saved because God is setting the captives free. He is freeing the prisoners, and that is where we are.
This is why God has to show us first our sins. If we are not physically oppressed and if we are not a slave, literally in bondage to men, then we think that we are free. We think that we are free. But when God shows us our sins and we begin to see our spiritual poverty, we mourn over our sin and we are sorry for our sin. We begin to be greatly troubled by our sin and we realize that, actually, we are sitting in a dungeon somewhere, in a dark and filthy place, spiritually. Due to the filthiness of our sins, our hearts are “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” and there is no way that we can get out. There is no way that we can escape. We cannot come out of this prison on our own.
So God uses His Word to begin showing His people their sin. He begins to make them sorry for their sin. They realize the actual situation that they are in, and so then they can cry out like a prisoner who is sentenced to be executed. They can cry out, “God, have mercy on me!” And they can send a [request for] pardon. God permits this and allows this. They can send a [request for] pardon to the King whom they have rebelled against, that God might free them. “Deliver me! Open the prison door! Let me out, O Lord! I beseech Thee! Not for anything that I have done; I do not deserve it. I am a criminal. I am guilty. I deserve to be destroyed, but I beseech You. Open the door and let the captive free, because this is Your plan. You came to set sinners free, and I qualify.”
That is basically the Gospel. That is the Gospel. That is what Jesus came to do, to free those who are in bondage to sin, and we find here in Leviticus 25, this wonderful proclamation to the people of the world and to God’s people also. He would have us be the ones who proclaim liberty. Leviticus 25:10:
…proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants…
But notice in Leviticus 25:9. It says:
Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.
That was when the Jubilee was to start. Well, the first day of the seventh month was very important and connected to it. But also, here, we read about the tenth day, which was the Day of Atonement.
If we go back to Leviticus 16, we read about the Day of Atonement, beginning in verse 29. We read in Leviticus 16:29-31, where it says:
And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger that sojourneth among you: for on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before JEHOVAH. It shall be a sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls, by a statute for ever.
And that was the nature of the Day of Atonement, “afflict your souls.” Does that sound familiar? Remember in Isaiah 58, where Israel was saying back to God in Isaiah 58:3-7:
Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to JEHOVAH? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
You see, they misunderstood. They thought that it was a literal fast to abstain from food. But God said that that was not what He was talking about. It was not that kind of fast. The fast that God has chosen is to bring the Gospel, to deal the Bread to the hungry and to let the oppressed go free, that people might hear the Word of God, the Bible, and be saved.
You can see how that ties in with the proclamation of liberty. To all the land, on the Day of Atonement, this is what they would have been doing. And this is another picture pointing to Jesus who would set the captives free and who would pronounce deliverance to His people.
The Jubilee that is mentioned in Leviticus 25:10 is a word that is found twenty-four times in the Old Testament, nineteen times in Leviticus 25 through Leviticus 27. Nineteen times, it is “jubilee,” and it is the Hebrew word yowbel. One other time, in Numbers 36:4, it is translated “jubilee.” So that is twenty out of twenty-four times that it is translated as “jubilee.”
One time, in Exodus 19:13, it is translated as “trumpet”: “when the trumpet soundeth long.” They could not touch the mount until “the trumpet soundeth long” or until the Jubilee sounds. Then they could go to the mount—it was Mount Sinai—else they would have died.
It is only when God saves a sinner that they are able to face the Law of God without dying, without death, and so at that time when the Jubilee sounds, “when the trumpet soundeth long,” they could go to the mount.
The other three times—that was 21—are found in one chapter, in Joshua 6. In Joshua 6, it is translated as “rams’ horns.” It is yowbel and it is the same world that is translated 20 times as “jubilee.”
It should have been translated as “jubilee” here. The only difference is that in Joshua 6, from all of the other instances, it is plural. It is plural. It is “jubilees.” In every other place, it was singular. It was “jubilee.”
For instance, in Joshua 6:4:
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.
That should be corrected to “seven ram’s horns of jubilees”; of jubilees—plural.
It is also the same in Joshua 6:8 and 13. You can make that note, because this is how it is. It is “seven ram’s horns of jubilees,” not as we read in the King James English translation.
We would never correct the Hebrew. That is the Word of God. We do not dare do that. But in an English or French or German or Spanish translation, that is just men who were saying that this is what they believe it is. The ones who translated the King James were excellent scholars in the original languages and they did not make many mistakes. But here, it is kind of awkward to say “seven ram’s horns of jubilees.” It did not really make sense, and they were living at a time when God was not opening up the Scriptures like He is in our day. And yet the correct reading is “seven ram’s horns of jubilees.”
It is interesting, if we go to Joshua 6:1, it says:
Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in.
Jericho was the city that they first encountered when they crossed the Jordan River. It was a walled city. It was a great city with a very strong fortress, and so this would be a real test for Israel if they could get by Jericho. And yet God is laying out, He is giving them instructions on exactly what they are to do to overcome this mighty city.
So let us just read a couple of verses. Joshua 6:2-5:
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 ram’s horns of jubilees: 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 we know that this is exactly how it happened. They marched around the city once a day for six days. Then on the seventh day, they marched around seven times. On the last time, they blew and they gave a shout and the wall fell down and everybody died except for Rahab, the harlot, and her family; they were spared; they were delivered.
And again, it is the harlot, not the mayor of the city, not the most upstanding people of the city. It was the harlot and her family, the poor, the one who knew that she was a sinner, the one who knew that she had transgressed God’s Law. And God tells us in the New Testament that He saved her by the “faith of Christ.” It was the faith of the Lord Jesus that saved Rahab.
So this is a historical event. It truly happened. It happened just as Israel was entering the land of Canaan in 1407. It was their first encounter with the enemy of the land. Following this, they would go on to conquer all the land of Canaan, which is a picture, really, of bringing the Gospel, of the Kingdom of God extending its scope. Yet first, Jericho had to be conquered. It had to be destroyed. And here God is indicating that it has something to do with jubilees, that it is more than one jubilee.
What Mr. Camping pointed out in his study and what we can see is that Jericho is a type of the corporate or external Kingdom of God on earth. You do not see that readily. You do not see that right away, but turn just a few pages back to Deuteronomy 34:3-4. It says:
And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees…
In Psalm 92:12, God says that “the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree.” Jericho is a “city of palm trees.”
…unto Zoar. And JEHOVAH said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed…
And one of the places that he is referring to is Jericho. It was the Promised Land. It was the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to all the people of God, because it represented the Kingdom of God. I think that we can see that. It was a picture of the Kingdom of God on earth. Actually, it pointed to God’s Kingdom that He would establish forever in the new heavens and the new earth.
What else represented the Kingdom of God on earth externally? The nation of Israel and the New Testament corporate church, the churches and congregations of the world.
Jesus was born in 7 B.C., a Jubilee year. But really, in order for the Gospel to go into the world to the Gentiles, God first had to be finished with the nation of Israel because they were totally opposed to sending the Gospel to the Gentiles.
A mystery was revealed to the Apostle Paul, that God would bring the Gentiles in as well as the Jews. He is “no respecter of persons.” But the Jews, at every turn, were contending for the Law of Moses and circumcision, etc. You could not have kept the nation of Israel intact and operating as the people of God and bring the Gospel to the Gentiles. It would not have worked.
So what had to happen first was that God had to be finished with the nation of Israel. He had to put them away, and He did. When the veil of the temple was rent, He no longer used or utilized Israel to be His representatives on earth. Then He formed the New Testament churches and congregations and the Gospel went to all the world. The Gentiles heard, and God advanced His plan.
If we look at this one verse 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.
What happened to Jericho? It was this mighty, glorious city, and it had a great wall all about it. But God’s plan was not to cast bulwarks against it or to try to attack the wall and break down the gates, but to march around it. Just march around it. They were to go around it once a day for six days, seven times on the seventh day. And at the end of that seventh time on the seventh day, the walls would come falling down. They would come tumbling down and fall down flat. Not one stone would be left upon another. They were going to fall down flat after that 13th time around, and then they could go into the city and have the victory.
Well, you see, salvation God has appointed “for walls.” And so Israel, yes, they were the caretakers of the Word of God, they were the keepers of the oracles, of the Scriptures, and God did bless Israel in that sense and some of them became saved. If you wanted to hear truth, you would go to Israel, like the Queen of Sheba went to Solomon who was within Israel.
But after God brought the Jubilee, after Christ was born, the wall of Israel was destroyed. It fell down flat—no more salvation. No more salvation ever again within the nation of Israel through their teaching, through their synagogues, through their scribes and Pharisees. Never again would God bless the ministry of the nation of Israel, where anyone would become saved, up until today.
We were driving through Center City the other day and there was a synagogue on the corner. They had some of the pictures that remind you of certain events that happened in Old Testament history. But even though they are there and they are convinced that they are still the people of God and that they are the blessed people of God, we know (because the Bible tells us) that there is no salvation taking place in that synagogue, at all, in any way.
Well, you see, that was the nature of the first Jubilee. But God has a plan for a second Jubilee, because the first period went until 1988. And in 1988, God was finished sending the Gospel into the world using the churches and congregations. That was it. It came to an end in 1988.
What was 1988? I know that 90% of the people here must know what 1988 was. It was the end of the Church Age or the beginning of the Great Tribulation. But what year was it in the Biblical calendar of history? It was the 13,000th year of history. 13,000 years of history.
Israel went around Jericho—which represents the Kingdom God as an external representation of the Kingdom of God on earth—13 times. And after 13th time—not after the 12th, not after the 6th—after the 13th time, the wall fell down flat, not one stone left upon another that we read about. I mean, flat is flat. Flat is flat. It fell down completely and totally.
Now we see why God uses the word “jubilee” in a plural sense here, jubilees. Proclaim liberty throughout all the land. No, not in 1988, because there had to be a 2300-day evening/morning period of the first part of the Great Tribulation, but when that 2300 evening/mornings ended, from May 21st, 1988, till September 7th, 1994. What date was September 7th, 1994, in the Hebrew calendar? It was the first day of the seventh month.
So at the beginning of every month of a Hebrew month of the new moon, there would be the blowing of trumpets, the silver trumpets, except for the 7th month. You did not blow the silver trumpets in the 7th month. You blew, I believe it was the teruw’ah or the showphar, and that signaled the beginning of a Jubilee.
So from that day back in 1994, God has “set His hand again the second time,” according to Isaiah 11, to free captives, to let prisoners go free, and to save sinners. The second Jubilee is just a short little period of time compared to the first. It is about 17 years, or not quite a full 17 years, till 2011—May 21st of 2011—and it is a Jubilee.
But what also happened in 1988 was that the church’s wall fell down, and there is no more salvation, because God appointed the walls for salvation. So there is no salvation there. And actually, that was necessary, very necessary, or how else could the Jubilee, how else could the Gospel go into all the world?
We are finding, just as God opened up the Scriptures and a mystery was revealed to Paul and several new truths were made known to the New Testament believers at the very beginning, also now, at this time, God is opening up the Scriptures to teach us much information that has been sealed up, including the nature of judgment, the resurrection, the end of the Church Age, man’s condition as far as his sinfulness, and the nature of salvation, that we are saved by Christ’s faith.
And the church, if we were a part of the church, would have fought tooth and nail on all of these things, all of these things. A believer would have gone out and witnessed and shared the truth that he was learning from the Bible and brought him into the congregation and the pastor and the elders and the deacons would have been busy snatching away the seed that was sown on the hearts of those people as God revealed truth.
So God finished the Church Age. He was done with it, and now the Gospel goes out in a very single way. There is one Lord and one faith, and it goes out with one voice to the world, and the people of the world do not have other individuals in churches that are coming and taking this information away and being contrary to it. So God is blessing His Word and a “great multitude” is becoming saved during these last few days of the second Jubilee.
Let me just close with reading this verse that is a beautiful verse. All of the Bible is beautiful, but this has special meaning to anybody who is in their sins. Now this verse is not for you, it is not for you if you are content with the world. It is not for you if you are satisfied with its pleasures, if you want the things of the world, if you want your bowl of soup now, if you want your inheritance, like the prodigal, “Give it to me, now!” It is not for you. But it is for those whom God is showing their sins, and they are grieving over their sins and they are mourning over their sins. God is saying in Leviticus 25:10:
And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
Is that not a beautiful verse? Return unto your family, your family like the father in Luke 15 of the prodigal son. Remember, we are like the son who was thinking that there is bread enough and to spare in his father’s home where his family was, and there he was, out in the world, where he could hardly eat the food. “Return! Return!,” he thought. “I will go to my father. And I will say, ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and I am no more worthy to be called Thy son.’” And, you see, that father represents God. All of us have sinned and gone astray. We have gone our own way, but there is the possibility of returning, of going to God and crying out, “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord, have mercy!”
Okay. We will stop here, and let us close with a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we do thank You. We thank You for the Bible. We thank You for Your Gospel plan. We know the power and strength of the world and of sin and of Satan, but let us not magnify that too much because all is nothing in comparison to Your great might and strength. With a Word, You can take off the chains that bind us and You can set us free, like Peter, when he was in the prison and the chains fell off and the gates opened up and the guards were asleep, or You just shut their eyes so that they would not see, and Peter went out and he was free. Father, You can also do it as with the jailer of Philippi and all the gates of the prison sprung open. Lord, this is what we pray. We pray that You would spring open the gates of liberty and that You would set the captives free, that You would take captivity captive. We are not free to do what we want, to lounge around, but we are free, Father, to serve You and to obey You and to keep Your commandments. So we ask that You would bless Your Word to our hearts. And we pray that You give us wisdom throughout this day in everything we do. In Christ’s Name. Amen.
Chris: Okay. If anybody has any questions or comments you would like to make, whether you are here or on Paltalk, you are welcome. It can be related to what was said or anything that you like. Does anybody have anything? You can post your question; you can put it into the text.
1st Question: Hi, Chris. I appreciated your answer the last Lord’s Day regarding 1 Corinthians 2:13. Based on your answer, do you know of any studies that I could read or listen to that use that Biblical mandate to back up the five months of hell on earth after the Rapture of May 2011? I believe that it is a very serious error and would love to see or hear a line-upon-line study to back it up.
Chris: I think the studies are there. If you go to www.familyradio.com you can read We Are Almost There!!! and I think that Mr. Camping has some written material dealing with the five-month period. I guess that is what you are referring to.
A lot of it is still on audio because it is basically new, and so you are not going to find many written studies on it. But if you also go to Family Radio’s website and listen to the timeline of history study, you will find hours and hours and hours of material where Mr. Camping has been going over Revelation 9 and other verses in the Bible that are laying this out.
You know, we have to keep in mind, and Mr. Camping has mentioned this, but more importantly, the Bible says it. If we go to Ecclesiastes, in Ecclesiastes 8:5, it says:
Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man’s heart…
Now a “wise man” is a believer. That is a believer. Every child of God is viewed by God as being wise. On the other hand, anyone not a believer is counted “a fool.” It has nothing to do with intelligence or anything like that. It is just if we are in Christ or out of Christ, and so here God is saying:
…a wise man’s heart discerneth…
That is, you are able to understand. You are able to know.
…a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.
The interesting thing about this verse is that it was not true for most of history because God sealed up the Word. Whether you were wise or a fool, we read that all were sleeping when it comes to the ten virgins. “They all slumbered and slept,” until a certain point, and that is when God is unsealing the Scriptures. And once He does, then He is revealing to His servants the prophets, the true believers, things concerning time and judgment.
It is not a coincidence that it was almost 13,000 years of history before anyone understood the Biblical calendar of history that is in the book of Genesis. Genesis was written 3,500 years ago. And God’s people before the Cross and God’s people after the Cross never understood it until…I do not know how long ago Adam When? was written. But God finally opened that up so we could have a timeline of history and we could see where all these significant events of the Bible are falling and we could develop and project these dates into the future and come to an understanding of time. And now we are coming to a proper understanding of judgment, concerning the eternal judgment of the wicked and how they will be destroyed. And the believers will understand this.
I am just saying this because it means that it is very important. It is really important when we learn that 7,000 years from the flood falls on May 21st in 2011 and that that date, which is also a full 8400 days or 23 years from Mary 21st, 1988, is the end of the Great Tribulation, 23 complete years. And that date is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar.
That locks it in. It is not a coincidence. And I am sure that if anyone here wants to try to develop a calendar of the Bible and you want to try to fit some of these things together, just using your own dates, if it is just that casual, if it is so easy to do, please go ahead. Please go ahead and try to develop your own Biblical calendar of history where you can have all the significant dates that we find in the Bible falling in a precise timeline and then projecting it into the future where 1994 is a Jubilee and 1988 is the 13,000th year of history and also the end of the Church Age, and so on.
Wow! Believe me, Mr. Camping would be some kind of super genius in order to develop that. I do not think that you could get a whole team of geniuses who would be able to do it. Man cannot do that, but God can. And all it is is a matter of opening up the understanding of His people so that they can begin to see it. And that is really all that is going on at this time.
So when we come to that point of May 21st and God locks it in by it being the 17th day of the 2nd month and then we see that we are five months short of what has to be the end of the world because God has to fulfill that last Feast, an exact five months of our calendar, and we find in Genesis 7 that “the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days,” five months, in the same chapter where we read about the 17th day of the 2nd month, then we see in Revelation 9 how God fills out that five-month period.
You know, we can argue with this and we can waste a lot of time saying that we want more and more and more and more proof. Anybody is permitted to do that. Nobody will stop somebody from doing that, but time is very short.
I feel that God has confirmed His Word, and we just mentioned a couple of things. He has confirmed it. May 21st is the Rapture and October 21st is the end of the world. Man is going to be destroyed on that day and there is going to be an awful five months in between.
Okay. Anybody else have anything you would like to say? Yes, Howard.
2nd Question: Thank you very much for your teaching today. It was a blessing to me. As far as this conference coming up here, I have not been here in the last three to four weeks, but what I was interested in knowing is it seems to be that there are an awful lot of things that need to be considered in terms of the space there.
Chris: You are more of an optimist than I am, because I think that if we get this many people, we will be doing fine. I am not expecting hundreds of people to show up, but you never know what the Lord might do.
By the way, in that event, we did have an “Open Forum” here with Mr. Camping, maybe five years ago, and it was jam-packed in here, but we were able to fit 250-300 people, or around that.
3rd Question (continued): Alright. Well, I think some thought ought to be given to things like this. I do not know how much planning went into the feeding of the 7,000, but in any event.
Chris: Well, that would be a pleasant problem to have.
4th Question (continued): I also think that it is very good that you make mention of resources that are available through Family Radio, not that you are touting that as the Gospel or Harold Camping, because he is just a man.
Chris: Well, I appreciate that because if I am learning from Calvin, how many times have you heard people refer to Calvin? Or if I am learning from Luther? And it is just basically that if I learn something and that I am even quoting or I am referencing a person, it is just the only honest thing to do. You have to mention where you heard it from.
5th Question (continued): The reason that I am bringing it up is because of the people who are listening on the Internet. To those people: do not get the idea that you are endorsing Harold Camping as the Word of God. He is just another teacher, and his works are just the works of another teacher. I know that you have checked out many things that he has taught. You have checked them out in the Bible and then came to agree that, yes, he is right on that. And where he is wrong, I am certain that you have told him that also and shown it.
Chris: Well, I think that it is important, and we do have people listening and maybe somebody just popped in who is not familiar with Family Radio, and so it is a good thing to make reference if I am learning something from those books. But I know also that there are people out there who have their club ready. I mean, they are going to accuse you of being a “Campingite” no matter what you say, and being a clone or a drone, or whatever the term is. But I do not think that we have to fear them at all. I do not particularly care what someone labels me. The important thing is that we serve God and that we do it His way.
There are people, and we were looking at this a few weeks ago, that persecution is actually “following after”. We were talking about this. It is very interesting that if we were Jehovah’s Witnesses or if we were a cult or some kind of heretic group, people do not follow after those groups listening for every little thing that they say so that they can jump on it. But since we are following the Bible and we are doing it God’s way, there are many, many with their ear against the wall, and they are just looking to pounce.
Actually, I think that we can count that as a blessing because it does not happen to false gospels at all, but it does happen to the true Gospel, as we know. Israel was this way with the early Christians, as they were coming out of the nation of Israel.
Okay. We will stop here and have fellowship time and lunch.