Through the Bible with Les Feldick
LESSON 1 * PART 1 * BOOK 74
CONNECTING THE DOTS OF SCRIPTURE – Part 1
Genesis through Revelation
Okay, it’s good to see everybody in again this afternoon. For those of you out in television, believe it or not it’s raining cats and dogs in Oklahoma on Labor Day weekend. That’s kind of hard to believe, isn’t it? But anyway, we are glad you all braved the weather. You’re here, and we can fellowship together and study together. For those of you joining us on television, we always like to invite you to just sit down and study with us. Compare Scripture with Scripture with us. We don’t stick to any denominational line. We’re just going to see what the Book says. It’s between you and the Lord to determine what the message is for you personally.
We’re going to do something totally different for these next few programs. I don’t know where we’ll go or how far we’ll get, but it just suddenly dawned on me the other day that it’s been a long time since we’ve done some of these things on the timeline. And these last two years we have picked up a huge share of our audience, and they’ve probably never studied this stuff with us.
So for those of you who’ve been with me for twenty years, yeah, it’s old stuff. But if you haven’t been with us very long, hopefully it’ll be an eye opener. I’ll never forget, and I don’t know whether you were there at the time, Gary, but we had just finished our first thirty minute program over there in the old studio. After those four programs, the camera guys all came up, and we were trying to decide how we could arrange things so that when I’m at the blackboard the audience wouldn’t be looking at my backside. And one of the fellows who had been in my class for about fifteen years down at McAlester, he’s gone to be with the Lord now, was walking by, and he heard what we were talking about. He stopped and he said, “Look, fellows, I’ve been looking at that guy’s back for twenty years and all I ever did was learn, learn, learn.” So we never changed a thing. We’ve never tried to overcome the fact that when I’m at the board you’re just going to have to wait until I turn around again. So, we’ll be doing that today sometime.
So anyway, we’re going to start clear back in Genesis chapter 3 with what I call the very first prophetic statement of Scripture. Adam and Eve have just eaten of the tree. They’ve fallen, and the curse will immediately follow. They will be out of the Garden of Eden and starting a whole new concept of life. It’s going to be under the curse. It’s going to be a whole new relationship with God—not in complete innocence, but through the process of sins forgiven.
We’re going to look at that all the way from Genesis chapter 3 up until the last verse of Revelation. We don’t know how long it will take. Maybe we’ll do it in four programs or maybe in two or maybe in eight or twelve! I don’t know. We’re just going to go as the Spirit leads.
So join with me now in your Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 3. I think I’m going to go all the way up to verse 6, because it may have been a long time since most of you have had this reviewed. Here Satan has just approached them in the Garden. You remember the instruction from God was, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shall not eat.” The tree of life was also in the midst of the Garden, but they partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All right, we’ll pick that up in Genesis chapter 3 verse 6.
Genesis 3:6
“And when the woman saw (Now this is another point I like to make. She’s not called Eve until sometime later.) that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” So, now they’ve both eaten. Now verse 7, because of that act of disobedience—now always remember, it isn’t just the fruit that was the problem; it was their act of disobedience. That was the sin. That’s what caused the fall.
Genesis 3:7
“And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” Now, if you remember when we taught this, God didn’t tell them to go and sew fig leaves together. They did that of their own volition. So the point I always like to make is from Proverbs 14:12 that says, if I remember right, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
Well, that’s a perfect example here of Adam and Eve with their fig leaves. They thought it would be sufficient. That it would cover their nakedness and God would never know the difference. But it wasn’t. It was the way of a spiritual death. Always remember that. They rationalized just like Cain did in chapter 4. Now verse 8:
Genesis 3:8
“And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.” Now think about that a minute. What did they do? They ran from God and hid.
Now, let’s just compare Scripture with Scripture. Keep your hand here and go all the way up to John’s gospel chapter 3 verse 18. This is the Lord speaking in His earthly ministry.
John 3:18-19
“He that believeth on him (That is on God the Son up in verse 17.) is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, (Why?) because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Now watch verse 20, this is Adam and Eve all over again.
John 3:20-21
“For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”
In other words, Adam and Eve started the whole ball rolling that men in their sinful condition do not run to God as God would have them, but what do they do? They go the other direction, and they hide and they deny. They live a life of denial.
All right, come back with me to Genesis, then. So, this is where it all started. That’s why the book is called Genesis. Genesis means beginning. This book in the opening part of your Bible is the book of beginnings—verse 8 again.
Genesis 3:8-9
“And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?”
Now that’s another interesting thing. Do you think the omnipotent God didn’t know where those two people were? Well, of course He did. But have you ever realized that all through His earthly ministry, whenever He was confronted by someone; whether it was the Pharisees, the Sadducees, or whatever; how did He invariably answer? With a question. He always does. Over and over He would open a conversation with a question. Well, same way here. He wasn’t asking the question because He didn’t know where they were. He was asking a question to put them on a soapbox, as I put it. They had to respond, because He’d now asked the question, “Where are you?” And what do you suppose they said?
Genesis 3:10-11
“And he (Adam) said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11. And the LORD said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? (Now here comes another question. God knew. But the point is to bring Adam up to the place where he had to respond.) Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?” Now look at Adam’s answer. The human race is already showing all of its frailties right here. Just as soon as we’re confronted with guilt, what’s the number one thing we all do? Find a scapegoat.
She did it! I didn’t. It’s her fault. And she’ll be the first to tell you if I miss an intersection—it happened again the other day up in Minnesota. We missed an intersection. I should have turned left, and I went straight. Whose fault was it? Hers! Because when she should have been watching directions, she was showing me something that she was fiddling with. And I was looking at what she was doing and went right on through. So, eight miles down the road I said, “Honey, we’re on the wrong road.” And she said, “I’ll bet it was back at that intersection when I was showing you my stuff.” And that’s exactly where it was. But that’s human nature. We might as well face it, and it started with Adam.
Genesis 3:12-13
“And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13. And the LORD God said unto the woman, (to Eve) What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, (Sorry, it’s all my fault! No! What does she say?) The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” See, there always has to be a scapegoat.
All right, now here we come to where I want to take off from Genesis to Revelation over the next several programs.
Genesis 3:14
“And the LORD God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:” Now here’s the verse, verse 15, the first prophecy in Scripture where God is foretelling something that’s going to take place hundreds, yes, a couple thousand years out into the future. And what is it? The promise of a coming Redeemer.
Genesis 3:15a
“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed (in other words, all the demonic forces of Satan) and her seed;…” Now stop right there. Whose seed? Eve’s. You see that? Most people miss it. We’re already talking about the Messiah. He’s going to come as a result of the promises made here to Adam and Eve.
Now you say, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don’t get this.” Okay, let’s jump all the way to the New Testament. Go up to Galatians. That’s the only way we can understand these things. Go up to Galatians chapter 3 verse 16. I have to purposely force myself to wait until you’ve all found it; because that’s the one complaint I get from the TV audience. Slow down. I can’t find them fast enough. So I try to remember that. Galatians chapter 3 and we’re going to drop in at verse 16.
Galatians 3:16
“Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. (We’ll be looking at that. I don’t know whether today or next taping.) He saith not, and to seeds, (with an “s” on it, plural) as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is (Whom?) Christ.”
All right, but I said back there it was the seed of the woman. Jump across the page in my Bible; go to Galatians chapter 4 verse 4. And those of you who have heard me teach a pre-Christmas class, this will remind you. I’m always using this verse for Christmas instead of Luke chapter 2, because nobody else uses it. But here it is. This is the only time that the Apostle Paul refers to Bethlehem—never a reference to His birth. That’s what Christendom puts all their emphasis on, you know, Christmas and the celebration of all that. But Paul doesn’t. All right, now I think here’s one of the reasons.
Galatians 4:4a
“But when the fullness of the time was come,…” Now, what does that mean? That at the exact day and hour and minute that God had prescribed from eternity past Christ was born! Not a day late. Not a day early. Right on schedule. That’s what the fullness of time is.
Galatians 4:4
“But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a (What?) woman, (Now we just got finished with a series of programs on the incarnate Christ. Remember? And what did we say the incarnate meant? God in human form. The God-Man in the flesh, and that’s exactly what it was when God sent forth the Son, Christ Jesus, by means of the woman, so that He would be now the God-Man.) God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,”
It went all the way back to Genesis 3:15. All right, go back there with me now, once again. Genesis chapter 3 verse 15, now this is prophecy. This is God telling us things that are going to take place over the next 6,000 years. And it’s accurate to the last little detail. Read verse 15 again.
Genesis 3:15a
“And I will put enmity (a running battle) between thee (Satan) and the woman….” And I told the class here not too long ago. I think the woman here was already looking forward to the Nation of Israel, which is always referred to in the female gender.
And it is through Israel that Satan is always trying to defeat God, because Satan knows if he can destroy the Nation of Israel, he’s the winner. Because in all of God’s prophecy, not just in His first advent, but all the way up to the second advent, Israel is the key player. Never forget that. If Satan can destroy Israel—that’s why Satan is using that guy over there in Iran—oh, Satan would love nothing better than to have that guy succeed in wiping Israel off the map. If Israel is gone, God’s program falls apart, and Satan’s the winner. So we know it’s not going to happen. It’s merely a threat. It will never happen, because God will not let it happen. But all right, it’s going to be a running battle. All right, then read on.
Genesis 3:15b
“…and between thy seed (Like I said, that is the demonic and the wicked hosts of Satan.) and her seed; (That is the seed of the woman, which is Christ.) it shall bruise thy head, (In other words, that’s the only place you can defeat a serpent, on the head. He did that at the cross. That’s where Satan became a defeated foe.) and thou (Satan) shalt bruise his heel. (the seed of the woman)” Which, of course, was the suffering and all that was accompanying at the cross.
All right, so now we have the beginning of the human experience. Adam and Eve will now be cast out of the Garden. They’re going to have to live under and with the curse. They’re going to have to battle the sweat of the face. They’re going to have to battle the insects and the drought and death and everything else that’s associated with the curse and that is still with us until this day.
But we who know our Bible know the day is coming when it’s going to end. It’s not going to last much longer, because one of these days Christ is going to show that He is still superior to Satan. He’s going to come and yet complete His prophetic program. All right, so here we have the first, that I call, true prophecy here in Genesis chapter 3.
Now, for the next eleven chapters it is nothing but a sad commentary on the race of Adam. Do you know that? There’s just not much good stuff in the first eleven chapters, except a record of the down, down, down, down direction of the human race leading up to the next great event. What was that? The flood.
Okay, now I think we’ve probably got it up on our timeline. No, we didn’t start with that, yet. We started with Abraham. But the flood, 1,600 years in round figures after the creation of Adam. Now I’m getting used to saying it over and over so bear with me. Think! Stop and think. Sixteen hundred years is a long time. That’s a long time. All right, so from Adam until the flood, sixteen hundred years, and they’re mostly living to be 800-900 years old. So, only God knows how many children every couple had.
So, you had a tremendous population explosion. By the time of Noah’s flood I’ve always been comfortable with the number of four billion people on the then-known world, maybe more. But out of that four billion people—let’s just look quickly at their behavior in Genesis chapter 6, so that we get a full understanding of why God was so severe in His judgment on that generation.
Genesis 6:5a
“And God saw…” Now remember, when we were studying the theophanies several months ago God is invisible until Christ appears at Bethlehem. It’s the invisible Triune God who would appear from time to time in a temporary human form. But God for the most part all through the Old Testament was in the invisible realm of the Triune Holy Spirit, God the Son, and God the Father. All right, so whenever you see the word God, back here in Genesis especially, it’s the Triune invisible God.
Genesis 6:5
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his (man’s) heart was only evil continually.” In other words, what does that mean? Those people could not think a decent thought even once in twenty-four hours. It was just nothing but a mindset of continual wickedness. Well, we’re getting there, aren’t we? The world is getting there. We’re not there, yet, but we’re getting there. All right, now verse 6.
Genesis 6:6-7
“And it repented the LORD (or God was sorry) that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (So He’s got to do something. He just can’t let it go until everybody kills everybody else.) 7. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me (or it makes me sorry) that I have made them.” But then we know–
Genesis 6:8a
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” But I want to keep on this picture of wickedness. Come down to verse 11.
Genesis 6:11a
“The earth (Now we know the earth then wasn’t as we know it now, because the flood completely changed the makeup of the planet’s surface. But however much land mass there was before the flood it doesn’t make any difference. I think it was pretty much totally occupied by human beings.) The (whole) earth also was corrupt…”
Now, don’t read that word casually. You know what the epitome of corruption is to me? I did this with a bunch of Sunday school kids years ago. I hope you’ve got a good stomach. How many of you have ever raised potatoes in your garden? Come on, raise your hands. Oh, most of you have. All right, now when you’re digging potatoes, when the new ones are ripe and ready, and you’re scratching through the dirt, what will you invariably run into? That old seed potato. To me that’s the epitome of corruption. Because when I was kid, and I’d hit that thing, I just couldn’t stand it! Well, that’s the way God felt about planet earth. The whole thing was just like that old seed potato that was rotten to the core. What else could He do? Destroy it. He had to get rid of it.
Genesis 6:11
“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” We think Baghdad has been bad. And it has. But you know what? That was just a sampling of the whole planet just before the flood. They were killing each other over and over, and that’s what violence meant. It was a society of nothing but murder and mayhem.
Genesis 6:12-13
“And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh (not just some of it, all of it) had corrupted his way upon the earth. 13. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” And, of course, that brought in the phenomenon of Noah’s flood.
Now I think I’ve got time. Go all the way back to II Peter. I tell especially high school and college kids, always be aware that you will never see the secular world, in science or anything else, they will never admit to a Noahic Flood. II Peter chapter 3 and always remember this is the mentality of the secular world to this very day. And in it they totally reject the scriptural account of a Noahic Flood.
II Peter 3:4-6
“And (they’re) saying, Where is the promise of his coming? (We hear that all the time lately, don’t we?) for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 5. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6. Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:”
And what does Peter say? “They are willingly ignorant.” They do not want to believe the account of Noah’s flood.