Good morning, good morning!!!
So yesterday we finished #blog12daysxmas, and as @FiFYI reminded us on twitter yesterday, it’s 12 days leading up to Epiphany. Which, according to Wikipedia,
“traditionally falls on January 6, is a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God the Son as a human being inJesus Christ. Western Christians commemorate principally (but not solely) the visitation of the Biblical Magi to the Baby Jesus, and thus Jesus’ physical manifestation to the Gentiles. Eastern Christians commemorate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, seen as his manifestation to the world as the Son of God.”
Cool, huh?
I’ve blogged before that I’m a Christian. I’ve also mentioned that I (try to!) blog daily in an online forum with a couple of Christian women from my church. We read a chapter or two in our Bibles, then comment about what we’ve read in the forum, discussing it and sharing how we think we can learn from it. It’s pretty amazing how much we learn from each other!
Well, this morning we were up to the book of Numbers, in the Old Testament. It can be pretty ‘dry’ reading, but I want to share here what I wrote there. (Yes, Google, I know I’ll probably be in trouble for duplicating content or something.) But, in a way, it shares an ‘Epiphany’ I had. (As in, ‘Epiphany’ the feeling, not ‘Epiphany’ the day!) Here ’tis!
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Numbers Chapters 1 and 2
The ‘census’ chapters!
These are cool. I never used to get much out of them, until I was listening to a Chuck Missler tape one day, and what he explained out of it, blew my mind.
On the surface, it’s just a bunch of numbers, right? But picture it out. And this is what you come up with.
The tabernacle’s in the centre. A rectangle. And the Levites are camped around it. Then the twelve tribes of Israel are broken up into four groups, 3 tribes to camp on the East, 3 to the West, 3 to the North and 3 to the South. Okay.
Each of these groups is to marshal under the banner, or standard, of the ‘main’ tribe for that direction. So you end up with the standards of Judah, Reuben, Ephraim and Dan. Okay – but when you realise that Jewish tradition tells us that these standards were: Judah – the lion. Reuben – the man. Ephraim – the ox, and Dan – the eagle, you realise that the Israeliites are camping, showing the picture of the ‘four living creatures’ that we read about in heaven, in [the Book of] Revelations [which we had gone through at the end of last year]!
And then we get to the actual numbers. We read that Judah, to the East, numbers 186,400. Reuben, to the South, stands at 151,450. On the West, under Ephraim, are 108,100; and then to the North, under Dan, are 157,600.
Now if you think like a rabbi, and God tells you to camp these people to the North, South, East and West of the Tabernacle, then that’s what you do. Directly to the North, South, East and West – not NorthEast, SouthWest, or anything like that.
Now imagine you’re in a helicopter. Come up across the desert, from the East. You look down, and see the Israelites camped. What do they look like? A giant cross! 186 thousand at the base, and 108 thousand at the top, 150 thousand odd on either arm, and right in the centre, the Tabernacle. And altogether they’re forming the picture that we see in Revelations – the four living creatures around the Most High.
How incredibly COOL!!!!! is that!!!
anyway, I need to go. Have an awesome day today!!!
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So – just a little bit of light reading to start your day. LOL! Here’s wishing you a truly wonderful day, dear readers!!!