The Tabernacle Veil

This is VERY simplified information on the veil of the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle.

Exo. 26:31-37 The veil (as opposed to the outer curtains for which God also gave detailed description earlier in the same chapter) separated the Holy place (tabernacle) from the Holy of Holies (the inner room of the tabernacle where only the High Priest could enter, and only on Yom Kippur). The Holy of Holies is where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.

• Made of blue, purple & scarlet material of fine twisted linen with cherubim embroidered
• Hung on 4 pillars of Acacia wood overlaid in gold, with hooks of gold. These pillars sat on 4 sockets of silver

After the veil was hung, the Ark of the Covenant was brought in.

Outside the veil was the table for the bread (Exo. 25:23-30) on the North side. On the South side was placed the lampstand (25:31-40), and on the East side was an addition veil of blue & scarlet material (26:36-37) hung on 5 pillars of Acacia wood overlaid with gold with hooks of gold and on sockets of silver.

1st Prophecy in the Bible

What IS the first prophecy in the Bible????? You may be surprised to find out the first and second prophecies in the Bible are BOTH about the 1st & 2nd coming of Jesus Christ - respectively. Though, technically, the first one is NOT a prophecy, since it was spoken by God...a prophecy is something revealed to a man BY God, the prophet then relays God's word to the people.

#1 (First coming):
Gen 3:15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel." At the time God punished Adam, Eve, and the serpent (v.14), He predicted that the Savior of the world would be human.

#2 (Second coming - Armageddon):
According to Jude 1:14-15, the next prophecy in the Bible would have been by Enoch (7th generation from Adam - Gen. 5:21-24) and was regarding Jesus' 2nd coming!!!!!!!!

Jude 1:14-15 It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."

Bible Fact: Enoch was one of two men taken to heaven without dying (Gen. 5:24). The other was Elijah (2 Kings 2:11).

Bible Fact: Jude was son of Mary & Joseph......i.e. Jesus' half-brother. He identifies himself as the brother of James (v. 1), the leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15). Jude is also listed among Christ's half brothers in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3.

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Maranatha

Sometimes you may hear or see the term "Maranatha" used. Do you know what it means and where it came from?

To the best of my knowledge, Maranatha is a Greek transliteration of an Aramaic word meaning "Our Lord come". It may have been used by early Christians as a greeting and a goodbye, much like the Italian "ciao" or Hebrew "shalom" of today.

The word occurs only once in the New Testament at the closing of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (I Cor. 16:22): "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha."

Strong's Greek Dictionary explains it as such:
G3134
μαρὰν ἀθά
maran atha
mar'-an ath'-ah
Of Chaldee origin (meaning our Lord has come); maranatha, that is, an exclamation of the approaching divine judgment: - Maran-atha.

In the penultimate verse of the Bible Jesus Himself uses a form of this word in Rev 22:20 "He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming quickly." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."

Of this John Wesley wrote:
Rev 22:20 - [He who testifies to these things] - Even all that is contained in this book. Saith - For the encouragement of the church in all her afflictions. Yea - Answering the call of the Spirit and the bride. I come quickly - To destroy all her enemies, and establish her in a state of perfect and everlasting happiness. The apostle expresses his earnest desire and hope of this, by answering, Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Who Was Moshe Dayan????

I'm new to studying Jewish history, so this may be old news to some or most of you but I was surprised.....to say the very least, when I found out that a man named Moshe Dayan had captured the temple mount during the 6-day war of 1967..................and 12 hours later gave it away to the enemy - to the their own surprise! The temple mount! The most sacred of all their sites!

I keep scratching my head over this and wondering WHY?!? The only possible reason I could think of (from limited knowledge) is that perhaps the secular government was averse to the renewing of Torah worship & sacrifices to resume.


An online friend in a discussion on this very subject was helpful and wrote directly to the Temple Institute to ask the same question:
I wrote a short email to the Temple Mount Faithful, asking about this, and the Temple Mount Institute replied with the following data:

"The Israeli defense Minister at the time, Moshe Dyan personally made the decision and was responsible for handing the Temple Mount back over to the WAQF (Islamic Trust) just a few hours after Israeli soldiers captured it. He said he did this because he was afraid of Islamic retaliation and to foster peace with the Arabs. Basically, he was a complete secularist and saw absolutely no value in Israel keeping the Temple Mount. It was a horrible crime and sin and it never should have happened. The same thing is happening today.........."

Did you know............ (Exo 26:31 describes the inner veil of the tabernacle): The inner veil separated the Holy Place (which contained the Altar of Incense, the lampstand, and the table for the bread) from the Most Holy Place, or Holy of Holies (which contained the ark of the Covenant and the mercy seat)..............Jewish historian Josephus reported that the veil was four inches thick, was renewed every year, and that horses tied to each side could not pull it apart. It barred all but the high priest from the presence of God.

Mat 27:51 tells us at the moment of Christ's death on the cross that veil was torn from top to bottom "And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split."-

The Exo. veil and the Matt. veil are 2 different "temples". The first being the tabernacle which moved around with the Hebrews in the desert during their 40 years wandering, being assembled and disassembled at each place they camped. Eventually Solomon built the first temple The latter is in the actual 2nd temple of the Jews (destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans) and was probably about 18" thick!!!

All preparations for the third temple have been finished. All the garments, implements, etc. exactly as per God's description in the Bible. Personally, I believe the rapture will occur before the 3rd temple is again on this earth. Either way..........Maranatha!

Whose Name Is In The Book of Life????

A question was posted to me.......what are the qualifications for one to go to heaven (to have one's name in the Book of Life?, and conversely, the qualifications for one's name to be omitted? The items in bold italics below are his questions.

My problem is I love everyone and my hope is everyone is saved; though, I know this will probably not happen, the Bible teaches us there will be those thrown into the lake of fire.

Of course everyone will not be saved - wish though we might, that they all be. I dare say more will be unsaved due to the fact that there is ONE book of life and BOOKS of the unsaved. Hope and pray as we might, it's not up to us, it's up to the individual. Hell was created for Satan and his angels (those who followed him) - NOT for man. God did not intend for man to go there, but anyone who chooses to follow Satan, will. [Mat 25:41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, `Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;] (emphases mine)

First of all, anyone who sins is going to hell UNLESS he accepts that Jesus' blood washed their sins away. Not just "major" sins like murder, even one lie will get you into hell without Jesus (Rev 21:27 [below]). It doesn't matter how earnestly you look for "god" and how many poems you write about "god"! You can be looking right at something and not accept it as truth.

The Truth is Jesus Christ. It's the act of accepting Jesus into your heart/life that gets you to heaven.

Some feel there are many paths to heaven. That God is a universal force, and all sorts of nonsense. Worshiping one god does not make you saved. The Egyptians eventually moved from a polytheistic society to a monotheistic one and worshiped only 1 god: Ra, the sun god. Is that the same as worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac & Israel? Is that being saved? NO.

The Bible says about the Book of Life:

Rev 21:27 and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

At the judgment throne of God this is the criteria for who will be in the book of life:
He who is righteous will be in the book of life:

Psa 69:28 May they be blotted out of the book of life And may they not be recorded with the righteous.

Those who spread the gospel - i.e. spread the good news that Jesus Christ is our Savior:

Php 4:3 Indeed, true companion, I ask you also to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel, together with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

He who overcomes the world (does not succumb to its deceptions) and who therefore is not a Christian in name only - i.e. a "carnal Christian":

Rev 3:5 `He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

He who has been washed by the blood of Jesus - who has more than his "good works" with which to defend himself at the throne of Judgment. Since we, and even our BEST deeds are as filthy rags to God, it won't be enough to save us from hell:

Rev 20:12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. Rev 20:15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

NOT in the book of life:

Those who remain after the rapture, who are deceived by and worship the beast:

Rev 13:8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. Rev 17:8 "The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. And those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come.

I know some people like Judas and Pharaoh probably will not make it; they were selected for the purposes of God to be who they were. Now that we know this; did God select entire cultures to be thrown into the lake of fire and a select few not to be?

There WERE Egyptians who believed, I was just reading about the 10 plagues in Egypt. They had a choice, as humanity as always had!

Are all the Jews from the time of Jesus gonners? If they are, what does it mean to be God's chosen people? Moses pleaded with God not to destroy them for His name sake; how would it look if he delivered them just to destroy them?

&

If God can save the Jews what are his limitations and if He is going to destry them where is His mercy?

God has NO limitations, but those are questions no one can answer, since He has not yet revealed their answers to us; however, we do know that Yahweh is a just and loving God, and perhaps He leaves that question unanswered in order to test OUR faith in His loving kindness!

Equally important is the fact that HE doesn't send anyone to damnation, it's man's choice. Punishment is so often built in to the curse. The verse that comes to mind is James 4:4

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

I saw Zola Levitt mention in his testimony (watch online free) that his parents were not believers of Jesus, and he was quite peaceful about the fact. It was just a "by the way" at the end of a sentence, but I was impressed by his faith in God's love.

Conclusion:
We all have such questions, and we all have people whose salvation we are unsure of. Frankly we cannot be sure of anyone's heart decision for Christ except our own. When such questions of life arise, remember, the answers come from God's word. We must pick up the Bible (praying first that the Holy Spirit will show us truth, or guide us to peace about what we are seeking). He won't necessarily reveal it during that study session, but He WILL grant peace and show us the truth you are searching for.

I pray that you find peace about those who you fear are lost. We ALL have them in our lives. The most effective thing we can do for the world is to pray for their salvation. It is in prayer that we have the greatest power.

Tesseract - Salvador Dali

Pictured is Salvador Dali's 1954 depiction of the Crucifixion and an allusion to the 4th dimension. "Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubicus)" and "In Search Of The Fourth Dimension" or "Corpus Christi". This is interesting on many levels, Biblically it's a beautiful and original representation of the crucifixion. Physically speaking it represents the tesseract, a 4-dimensional representation of a cube, which as you can see happens to make a cross.

Definition of tesseract (Wikipedia): "The tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square; or, more formally, the tesseract can be described as a regular convex 4-polytope whose boundary consists of eight cubical cells."

Scientists now tell us we exist in 10 dimensions. It only took them 9 centuries to catch up to Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher/rabbi/physician/philosopher who, by studying the Hebrew Scriptures stated the 10 dimension theory back in the 12th century!

Genesis

This isn't Biblical knowledge, but it is so beautiful I couldn't NOT post it, it was in my "art of the day" on my Google page (iGoogle url to add to your page: http://www.artbible.info/art/artoftheday.xml).

Naturally EVERYONE has seen the creation of man as painted by Michelangelo in the Cistine Chapel. Truly awesome!