430 vs 400 Years: The Bible 'Contradiction' Finally Explained

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, an Oklahoma rancher and farmer. Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for over 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. It's good to see everybody in again this afternoon, and we're going to be picking right up where we left off in Galatians chapter 3, and we've got it on the board. Our starting verse is going to be Galatians 3, verse 15. But, rather than jump in at verse 15, I want to go back up to 13 and 14, which we covered in our last program, and then come on into 15. So verse 13 of Galatians 3, "...Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written, Curse it is every one that hangeth on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we as Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit, not through the law, but through faith." Now verse 15, "...and I speak after the manner of men, though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disanulleth, or can cancel it, or add thereto." Now that sounds like double talk in a way, doesn't it? But see what the Apostle is really saying, that as he himself is also human, he's a man like anyone else, and he has an understanding that the Law, so far as humanity was concerned, was weak and beggarly. It just couldn't get the job done. And that sometimes shocks people, because we ordinarily think of the Law from the other side, and that is that it was perfect, holy, righteous, and that it is. But from the human standpoint, it was powerless, and all it could do was point the finger of condemnation at mankind. But since it is a covenant, a covenant in Scripture is always a one way street. Every covenant in Scripture begins and ends with God, and men can't touch it. They can't enlarge on it, they can't subtract from it, and this is exactly what he was saying. Even though from a man's standpoint it is weak and beggarly, yet if it be confirmed that no man disanulleth or addeth thereto. Now let me take you back, sometimes things come to mind that I didn't intend to do, and this is one of them. Am I sure I wasn't going to do that in this half hour? Come back with me to II Samuel chapter 7. And here is the Davidic covenant. Now that just simply means that it was a covenant that God made with David concerning his offspring, the nation of Israel. II Samuel chapter 7, and we'll come all the way down just for sake of time to verse 14, where he's been speaking about the royal line of the house of David, which would lead up to the coming of the King, the Christ, the Messiah. But it's going to come down through Solomon on one side, and Nathan on the other. But he's speaking primarily here of Solomon in verse 14 of II Samuel chapter 7. And the Lord says, "...I will be his father, he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men." Now even though it sounds like he's only addressing Solomon in particular, yet he's looking at the long view of the whole nation of Israel. That's who he's really talking to. And he would chasten the nation of Israel, of course, by their nations who were their enemies and the various other ways that God had of chastening His people. But now continue on. He's going to chasten them in verse 15. What's the first word? But. See? And what do I always say? The flip side. Yes, He's going to chasten them. He's going to deal harshly with them when they come into a place of unbelief and abject behavior. But in spite of everything that Israel does in opposition to her God, His mercy will never depart from them. Why? Because it's a covenant. Because it's a covenant. And God will never, ever go back on His Word. And He has promised that through the line of David, coming down through Solomon and Nathan, would one day come the King, the Messiah. And it had to happen, regardless of what Israel did in the meantime. The covenant stands secure. Come on back now again to Galatians chapter 3. So the covenants, and there's all kinds of them in the Old Testament. It starts with the Abrahamic, of course, in Genesis 12. And then you have the Davidic, as we just looked at. You've got the Palestinian that promises them the land of Palestine. You've got the covenant of the Law, which was a covenant. And none of those things could Israel or anybody else add to, or take away, or ever cancel, because it's made and going to end only with God in His Heaven. Alright now let's move on to verse 16. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made, and he saith not, and to seeds, plural, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, that is the seed of Abraham in this case, who is Christ. Now I guess we better chase all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, because after all that's what the Scripture expects us to do. Even though this is old to you, and it's just review again for a lot of you, yet this is exactly what I think the Scripture demands that we just build line on line, and precept on precept, and not just take it and say, Well I wonder what Paul is talking about. No, let's go back and see what he's talking about, because it's all back here. Genesis chapter 3, dropping in at verse 15, a verse that I think most of you have grown up with, and I think one great old preacher called it the beginning of the silver thread of Scripture, or not the silver, the scarlet line of Scripture. And now here it is. Verse 15 of Genesis 3, and God says, I will put enmity between thee, now remember who is He talking to? He's talking to Satan. And so He says to Satan, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed, see the language, it, the seed of the woman, shall bruise thy head. In other words, when Christ finished the work of the cross as the seed of the woman, He defeated Satan, made him powerless, but thou shalt bruise his heel. He got his licks in by virtue of making him suffer. Now that's the beginning of the promise then of the seed of the woman. That it would come through the female side of the human race, not from Adam, but from the woman. And we'll follow this all the way through Scripture. Now if you will, come to Genesis chapter 12, that portion that most of you have worn out your Bibles if you've been with me very long, and we call it the Abrahamic Covenant. And I still maintain it's one of the most important portions of the whole Old Testament. And if you don't understand the Abrahamic Covenant, the rest of the Bible is just sort of like a mist. You just can't see it clearly. But oh, once you get an understanding of this covenant, everything falls in place. But don't forget the seed of the woman back there in Genesis. Genesis chapter 12, verse 1, "...Now the LORD hath said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country from thy kindred, from thy father's house, unto a land that..." Now I want you, if you haven't before, underline the I wills. Because whenever God says I will, what is that? The promise. See? It's a promise. He's going to do it. And nothing in heaven or earth will ever stop Him. And so He says, I will make, or I will show thee a land. Then verse 2, "...I will make of thee a great nation, I will bless thee, and make thy name great. I will bless them that bless thee." And you can put the verb back in, "...I will curse him that curseth thee. And in thee," again you can put in the verb without any danger to Scripture, "...in thee I will bless all the families of the earth." Now that's a bunch of promises, isn't it? That's a truckload. And all of this was promised to this one man. Now on the surface it doesn't seem that great. But listen, all of human history since 2000 B.C. is resting on these promises. And God has kept them, every one of them. Abraham became a great man. He's still thought of as one of the great men of history. The Scriptures uphold him as a great man. God blessed him and his progeny, and God has blessed those who blessed Israel. He has cursed those who have cursed Israel, and you think I'm stretching the point? You don't know human history. All you have to do is go back in human history, and every nation that has ever come down hard on the Jew, has gone down the tube. Right on up to our present system of nations. Anyone that has turned against the nation of Israel, goes down the tube, whether they like it or not. And that's why I've maintained the 25 years of my teaching. As long as America remains a friend of Israel, America is going to be in pretty safe straits. But oh, if we ever turn on the nation and stab them in the back, America is going to go down the tube, just like all the others have. Now you say, well what are you talking about? Well Spain is probably one of the best examples. Now if you know American history, who were the explorers that really covered a good part of North America? Well the Spaniards. Spain was riding on the crest of national power and empire. And then Spain in 1492, which of course was even a little bit before the great explorers. God's wheels move slowly, very slowly. But in 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella made the decree that every Jew would either be out of Spain, convert to Catholicism, or be dead by such and such a day. And so there was a great exodus of Jews out of Spain, naturally. And it wasn't but a hundred years in what was Spain, nothing. Just a blimp on history. And so it's always been with every empire that has turned on the Jew, down they go. And it all comes back to this covenant promise that He will bless them that bless the nation of Israel, those out of the seed of Abraham, and He would curse them who curse them. But however way things go, one promise is secure that through the man Abraham, all the nations of the earth would receive a blessing. And that of course came about with their Messiah. When Christ came and finished the work of the cross, He became then a blessing out of the line of Abraham, but a blessing for the whole human race. And that's where you and I are tonight. We are resting. Do you remember when I teach Romans chapter 11, that He broke off the branches of natural Israel and He grafted in the Gentiles? Oh I love that chapter. And when He said, "...Israel aside," He brought the whole Gentile world into that place of privilege. Not that they're all saved, but they're brought into that place of privilege where they now have an opportunity for salvation, based again on the promises made to Abraham. It's fascinating when you study this. Now the whole human race for the last 1900 and some years as Gentiles have been resting and feeding on the fatness of the root of Abraham, while Israel has been out there in a dispersion. But the day is coming, and I think it's getting close, where God is once again going to shut the door on the Gentile world. He'll break them off from that grafted position, and Israel will be brought back in, grafted in again as Paul says in Romans chapter 11, and the Gentiles will find themselves again where they were before, without a Messiah and outside the covenant promises. Well anyway, the promises, and I hope you've seen them now, I will, I will, I will. And all the way up through Abraham's life, God is constantly promising. Now remember, some of these things took years before they were consummated, and this is why the poor man grew impatient, and finally succumbed to the temptation to use a slave girl. Because after all, he couldn't have a nation of people if he didn't have even one son. And so that gave rise of course to the birth of Ishmael, which we'll be looking at in a future program. Now let's see, I don't want to leave Genesis just yet. You're in Genesis chapter 12, come on over to chapter 21. Genesis chapter 21, and drop down to verse 12, because we're going to follow this seed concept for a little bit. In Genesis 21, now of course Ishmael has reached the age of tormenting little Isaac. Isaac is probably five, and so Ishmael and his mother Hagar are sent out at God's instruction. But now look at verse 12 of Genesis 21. And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, in other words because he has sent Ishmael out into the desert. And don't be grieved because of thy bondwoman. In all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice, and here it comes now, for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. Now remember, I think I've stressed it in some of my classes here in Oklahoma. Maybe we haven't put it on the board in a while. But you want to remember that the word seed in the Hebrew is like sheep in the English. And that is that if you've got one over there, it's still a sheep. If you've got five or six down here, it's still sheep. Well the word Hebrew for seed is Zerah, if I remember correctly, probably pronounced with a W. But anyway, Zerah was the same kind of a word in the Hebrew as sheep is in the English. In other words, if you've got a multitude of seeds up there, it's Zerah. If you've got one seed down here, it's still Zerah. And so we have to watch the text, the context. Is it speaking of the many, which would be the offspring of Israel, the tribes, and the multitudes of people? Or is it speaking of the singular, the seed, which was Christ? Now this is where it would be singular. He's not speaking about the offspring of the millions of people from the twelve tribes. Now look at verse 12 again. "...hearken unto her voice, for in Isaac shall thy seed, the singular seed, be called." And so we have this constant promise according to the Abrahamic covenants that through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the twelve sons would come the Messiah. Not through Ishmael, but through Isaac. Now you see, the Muslim world, they argue with that because they claim that the Old Testament has been polluted and has been distorted, and that in reality, Ishmael was the promised seed. Well, you see, that's how it's so easy to confuse people and to lead them astray. But our Bible being the Word of God that it is, we can rest on it that it was through Isaac that the seed, singular, would come. Alright, now then if I think we can come back to Galatians chapter 3 again, and pick it up in verse 16 again, "...that to Abraham and his seed were the promises made." The singular seed, Isaac. Not the whole nation now, but the one man, Isaac, where the promises made and the covenant is going to rest. Then he goes on to say in verse 16, "...he saith not as of seeds or many, but of one seed, and one son, and that seed is Christ." So this is why every one of us, regardless of where we are in human history, we are all benefiting from this Abrahamic covenant through whom all the world would be blessed. Now I think we can move on to verse 17. Now Paul says, "...and this I say, that the covenant," now that's an important word, all through the Old Testament, "...the covenant that was confirmed before of God in the person of Christ." See, that's what it's really saying, that this covenant was confirmed of God, but in the person of Christ. And what covenant now is he talking about? The Law. The Law was a covenant, just like the Abrahamic covenant was a covenant. The Davidic covenant was a covenant. It was an agreement that God made, and which He could never change or withdraw. It settled forever, because God made it. And so this covenant, the Law, which was 430 years after this promise to Abraham that out of him would come the seed, 430 years later, Israel is going to come out of Egypt and receive the Law at Sinai. Now I've got to stop here a minute, because you see, here is one of the places in Scripture where the scoffer likes to scoff and say, see, the Scripture contradicts itself. Here it says 430 years. In another place it says 400 years. And in another place it says 490 years. Well what's going on? Well there's no contradiction. No contradiction. Again, let's come back to Genesis. Come back to Genesis chapter 15 this time. Genesis chapter 15, down to verse 13. All got it? Genesis 15, verse 13. And he said unto Abram, now this is before his name was changed, Know of a surety, God is speaking and you can just rest on it. Know of a surety that thy seed, now here it's plural, it's talking about the whole nation of Israel, thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, speaking of Egypt, and they shall serve them, they'll be in slavery, and they shall afflict them 400 years. Now the other place said 430, here it says 400. Now let's go over to Exodus chapter 12, Exodus chapter 12, verse 40. Now the sojourning, verse 40, of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years. And it came to pass at the end of the 430 years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord, that is the nation of Israel, went out from the land of Egypt a night to be much observed. Now that of course was the night of the Passover when Israel begins to Exodus out of Egypt. Now I'd like to have you come to Acts chapter 7, verse 6. And Stephen here is rehearsing again the whole history of Israel, just like Paul does a little later on in the book of Acts. Now you come down to verse 6, and Stephen says, "...that his seed, that is the offspring of Abraham, should sojourn in a strange land, and that they should bring them into bondage, and treat them evil." Not 430, but what? Now it's 400. Contradiction? No. It's just simply a benchmark of where they measure time. Now again, maybe I can put this on the board. I hope I can make a little sense because I think it helps when people can see things on the blackboard, and the feedback we get from our audience seems to substantiate that. Now here we've got the little old map that I like to draw, just not to scale or anything like that. But here's your Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, the Mediterranean, and here goes the Euphrates River all the way out there. Down here on one side of the river or the other, I don't know, I think on the east, some Bible scholars say on the west, but anyhow down here was Ur, where God first spoke to Abram, and said, "...leave Ur, and leave your family, and go to a land that I will show you, which of course is going to be Canaan." But He doesn't tell Abram where. Now it would seem that Abram is fifty years old when the Lord first spoke to him. Fifty years old. And so he leaves Ur, and he migrates all the way up to the Euphrates Valley, up to this place in Syria called Haran. And there they stopped, remember, until his father, who was not supposed to have left with him, but did. So they stopped at Haran until Terah dies. Then after Terah dies, Abram and Lot and Sarai are now ready to move down into the land of Canaan. Now we can pretty well figure out from Scripture that when Abram left Haran, he was seventy-five. So twenty-five years after the promise, "...I will make of you a nation, and I will do this, and I will do that." Twenty-five years have gone by, and still nothing has happened. No child. Now at the age of seventy-five, with Terah off the scene, he brings him on down into Canaan. And now he's seventy-five. Now when you start going back on the chronology of all this, the four hundred and thirty years begins from the time that he left Haran, came down to Canaan, until Moses led the children out in what we call the Exodus, for a total of four hundred and thirty years. Now then, the four hundred years is from the time that Isaac was five, and Ishmael is sent out into the wilderness. And that's up here yet. So when Isaac is five, and Ishmael is sent completely away from contact with him, from that point on, then it becomes four hundred years until Moses leads the children out. So contradiction? No. It's just a matter of a benchmark of time. Are you going to start from Haran, or are you going to start from when Isaac was five years old? Four hundred and thirty years from Haran, four hundred from the time that Ishmael is sent out, and Isaac becomes then the prime object of our affections, because everything is now going to revolve around him. Alright, now that you've come back to Galatians, and I guess our time is about up. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you.