Dead Men Walking Podcast Greg Moore Jr. & Josh Stacey Episode 2

Dead Men Walking

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:01

Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

00:08

Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now. Well hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Dead Men Walking.

00:23

Glad to have you along. I have a very special guest today, Joshua Stacey. Mr.

00:30

Josh Stacey. What do you go to, by Josh or Joshua? Either one works for me. Either one works. Well, he's just a great guy and just a brother in the

00:39

Lord, and we're going to learn a lot from him. But thanks for tuning in guys. We're on Apple, we're on Pandora, iHeartRadio,

00:45

Spotify, all the places you can find your podcast, download it, stream it, listen to it, please do.

00:52

And make sure you leave us a review and subscribe and tell people about the podcast so God can be glorified.

00:58

So Josh, how are you doing today? I am living the dream, brother. Living the dream. We're going to get into all kinds of stuff today.

01:03

It's going to be very interesting. I know we're going to talk about the Mosaic Covenant, Ark of the

01:08

Covenant, and how it reflects Jesus Christ, which is an absolutely beautiful thing. But before we do,

01:14

Josh, why don't you just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, a little bit of your bio, your testimony, and where you are today.

01:23

Absolutely. It really began for me about eight years ago.

01:28

I was in one of the lowest places of my life. Drug addict, alcoholic, slowly going down the road to hell, as ACDC would play, right?

01:41

And the Lord was kind to me in the midst of my brokenness and found me at one of the deepest points of my life and pulled me up out of that miry pit, man.

01:55

What a great verse, too. Yeah. So you were just going wild. Hog wild.

02:01

Like the exact opposite of the direction of God. Absolutely. Our stories are similar there, I think. Yeah, absolutely running from it and really just screwed my life up.

02:14

I was looking at one point at life in prison. I had 37 to 52 years over my head, and the

02:21

Lord just brought me to the place where I came to repentance.

02:27

I really cried out to Him and really just began to seek Him with all my heart. I grew up going to churches, all that kind of stuff.

02:35

I probably said the sinner's prayer a thousand times, but never really met

02:40

Jesus, never really knew what it was to experience the love of God. It happened one day in the shower when

02:49

I found out that I was looking to never come home again.

02:55

I really cried out to God. I was still backslidden. I was still using drugs. I was on house arrest.

03:02

The Lord just steadily began to move me and use people in my life to really pull me towards Him to the point where I was going the day

03:11

I was going before the judge. I went and stood before Him, and the judge even said,

03:19

I don't know why I'm doing this. I was two weeks sober at that point, finally. I got a

03:25

DUI, and I had to go for a three -day hotel visit, go for some reprogramming. I ran into a guy that I had literally partied with for years all through high school that was clean and sober for the first time

03:37

I'd ever seen him in my life. Through that, the Lord brought me to AA, where I learned to pray.

03:46

I don't know. The Lord can use anything for His glory. Exactly. Even AA. Even AA, man.

03:54

I'm two weeks sober. I'm standing before the judge, and he's saying to me,

04:00

I don't know why I'm going to do this, but I'm giving you two years. You were looking at possibly life.

04:08

Possibly life. They offered me a plea deal, different things, and it came that day where even the prosecutor was begging for me to get eight.

04:18

Wow. The judge, literally, I still have the transcripts. I'll look at it from time to time, and it says,

04:24

I don't really know why I'm doing this, but I'm going to give you two consecutive 24 -month sentences, and I'm going to run them concurrent.

04:32

Wow. Usually, most of the time, the judge will align with the prosecutor. Yeah. They work hand -in -hand in recommendations.

04:38

They really do. The fact that he was even pushing for eight, which he probably thought that was a deal because you were looking at, what did you say, 32 to life.

04:46

Yeah. And even with my deal, it was 2 to 10, so that was a higher end, and the

04:52

Lord just had a different plan for me. Yeah. And so I started my steady progression because even at that point,

04:58

I had no knowledge. I barely had read the Bible. I thought I knew some stuff about God.

05:04

Sure. And so I got shipped off to prison, and I went through a wild, crazy journey my first six months traveling from camp to camp, and when

05:14

I finally got to my home camp in Chillicothe, I met an ex -Aryan nation enforcer turned

05:21

Jesus freak. Okay. And he introduced me, which at that point, I was a very prejudiced, very racist young man.

05:29

Sure. And the Lord used this guy who came from the same type of lifestyle as me and been reformed to introduce me to this group of guys, black men, that did this

05:41

Bible study in the midst of prison where we gathered together on the yard. We did praise and worship. We were gathering together every day, five days a week, studying in the middle of the gymnasium while basketball, weightlifting, all this stuff's going on around us, and we would sit and fellowship, and it changed my whole life.

06:00

Oh, isn't there just such a great experience to the closeness and intimacy of God in brokenness?

06:08

Oh, my goodness, man. It was... It's just, it's amazing. Yeah, and it was so like him.

06:16

Yeah. He took me to this place where I had nothing. Nothing else.

06:21

I could have been doing other stuff. Sure. Especially at the camp I was in, I could have done whatever I wanted, but the

06:27

Lord placed me with all these guys, even surrounded me with one. My buddy

06:33

Blake, the Aryan Nation enforcer, was bunked next to a dude from Defiance, Ohio, which is around near where I was originally from, that was a

06:43

Darwinist, creation -like arguer. He practiced

06:48

Buddhism, all this stuff, and we would all just sit there and have debates and sit there and talk about different things, talk all the crazy stuff.

06:56

Oh, my gosh. It was amazing. Some good church is what that was probably, too. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, and now that same dude, we're literally even in prison, like I don't know if I would do the same thing now.

07:08

He was complaining to me one day that he could go down to the chapel and any

07:14

Christian could go down there and get their book, but him being a Buddhist, he was excluded. So I actually bought him a

07:21

Dhammapada, which is their like scripture. Sure. And had it ordered in so that he could have his own.

07:26

Blew his mind. It was super cool. And now that same brother, I talked to him about two years ago.

07:32

When he got out, he got put into a halfway house and got saved. Awesome.

07:37

It's incredible, dude. So the Lord just was so kind that he used prison to be the first place

07:44

I ever went to ministry school. And I was surrounded by such— I like how you called it ministry school. Oh, man, it was.

07:50

I learned to evangelize there. I learned to share the gospel with people that literally did not want to hear it.

07:56

At one point, I was in a bunk with guys that were Muslim 5 %ers that if you try to talk to them about Jesus, they will tell you that—

08:03

What does 5 %er mean? It's a super— It's kind of the strictest kind of—

08:09

Okay, I thought so. And it's minimalized to a certain people group and all these different things where me and my skin color were not welcome to them.

08:17

Right. And if you even tried to approach them and mention Jesus, they would threaten to kill you. Right. And that was your bunkmate?

08:23

Yeah. I was literally across the row. He was the dude that ended up doing my laundry at one point.

08:28

So being surrounded in there with people that had such a diverse faith from what you had, and we had so much favor in the prison that we were in.

08:39

We were allowed to have prayer groups of 50 or more people. You're literally not supposed to be able to gather in groups of four or more.

08:47

Wow. It was like doctrine boot camp. Yeah. Aw, dude. For international religions.

08:53

Yeah, it was rowdy. I bet you there's people who go to seminary that don't learn as much in this short of time. Exactly. Oh, man.

09:00

And just seeing the way God moved there, seeing us working with my dude Blake, who would sit and get to minister to guys that were still in the

09:09

Aryan Brotherhood, and all of that, talking to them about their faith and what they believe and being able to share

09:15

Christ with them. Just different things like that. You're not supposed to get those opportunities in there.

09:22

You didn't get to share with COs. We got to minister to COs at different points and even see God use

09:28

COs to be able to protect us. We were doing a Jericho walk at one point. Really? And we ended up, half of us got thrown in the hole for it.

09:36

Were some guys just jumping on board like, maybe these walls will come down and I can get out of here? No, most of them.

09:41

Prison break. That is a great show if you've never watched it before. I watched it before I got locked up.

09:47

It gave me some weird ideas and it got shut down real quick. Yeah. Even in the midst of it, there's a sergeant screaming in our faces and saying, you're going to segregation.

10:00

You're going to segregation. And this wonderful CO, her name was Miss Smith. She was straight from West Virginia.

10:08

And she walks into the room and everything changed. It was like God walked in with her and the dude changed his entire tone and let the two of us go.

10:16

The other two. Because there was only four of us going around. It was really amazing.

10:21

I have probably said this so many times in my life, but it just remains true. Like men, humans, mankind, we try to convince the mind and move on the mind and the

10:34

Lord moves on the spirit. And when he has chosen to use someone or to convince or to move them in the spirit, like your judge, like your

10:43

CO, like the people around you, there's no resisting it. To the point of you just have to sit back and you just go, wow, mind blown.

10:54

I mean, the Lord moves on people's spirits now in my life and I still know what's going on, but I still just get that awe and wonder of,

11:01

God, you're so awesome. Like it makes no logical sense. There's probably no way I could convince them or debate them or argue them or bribe them or whatever it is that I could do to try to get something accomplished.

11:13

And then on top of that, the Lord does it in such a mysterious and cool way that you just go unbelievable.

11:20

Because when you tell that story to you, me knowing you and you just being, who you were back then without the

11:27

Lord and being a hustler and just hard worker and the whole thing, you could have went to prison or into jail and just went a totally different route.

11:35

You could have hooked up with guys, with a gang, whatever you wanna call it. And you probably could have been running stuff in there and getting deeper into the things that the

11:44

Lord was pulling you out of. Instead, it's a refining period. It's like I said, it's doctrinal bootcamp, it's church.

11:51

And so what, so did you serve your time and then come out of there just like on fire? Exactly. So as I was saying,

11:58

Blake introduced me to this group of guys and my brother, Rudy, my first Bible teacher, one of the most extraordinary men that I know.

12:07

I can't, he's just, he was a father when

12:12

I had none. Right. And just invaded my life, man. Taught me, taught me everything, taught me how to read the word correctly, taught me how to study the word, taught me how to live the word, taught me how to disciple others, how to be a pastor.

12:28

Like he was preparing me. And his biggest thing, it wasn't to get some people to learn the

12:33

Bible, it was to prepare men to go home and to be who God created them to be.

12:39

So when I came out the gates, I was ready. I was gonna go start a church.

12:44

I was ready to go do whatever God had for me. And it, even when I first got home, right around five years ago, it startled people in my life.

12:54

I bet. I came out, my mom and them, they had like, they'd came and visited me in prison. They read my letters.

13:00

And, but when I came home, they realized like, Oh, something's different. Like, yeah, something was way different because even when

13:09

I told them I was, I was done doing dope. When I told them that I was done drinking, they laughed at me.

13:16

Right. Yeah, right. Normal response. Like they had seen me, they'd heard it, yada, yada. And when

13:23

I came home, they saw it. And they were like, wow, they knew. And now both of them,

13:29

I've seen an enormous transformation in their lives. My mom comes to church with us now. She comes to our

13:34

Bible study. My sister, her husband, both go to church. It's been amazing. And I've seen widely used term revival in my own family to see

13:45

God really moving on them because my sister was the one that, when I was an evangelistic atheist growing up, she was the one that was part of the

13:55

Lutheran church in our hometown. She did the whole acolyte thing all the way up through high school.

14:01

My mom, same thing. She had been raised Catholic and then Lutheran and had always had the relationship, always was praying for me when

14:09

I was off doing dumb stuff. And then now getting to see their lives transformed, I have finally pursued after God and taken the role in my family the way

14:19

I should have when my dad passed away 11 years ago and seeing what God has done to transform their lives.

14:24

Literally this year, all three of us got new houses. Oh, that's awesome. Only favor God. And it's just his poetic justice, man.

14:32

The way he does things, it's just been phenomenal. It's awesome to see when your obedience to God actually blesses others.

14:43

Oh, man. It's crazy how that covering of blessing, I mean, even David says it in the Psalms. He's like, let the shadow of your wing, let your blessing encompass my children, my children's children, and my children's children's children, meaning generational blessings because of one person's act of obedience and sacrifice to the

15:01

Lord. Exactly. And it's so cool when you come out like that and actions speak louder than words, man.

15:07

I think we have some real issues in the Western Christian church. And funnily enough, your third world countries don't have this problem that much is we're all about what we say and not so much about what we do.

15:22

There's a lot of preachers and teachers and leaders that'll tell you what to do, but you don't see the action in their life.

15:29

And when I've been to Nicaragua and India and Thailand and these other places, and I see these Christians that are either being jailed or beaten or tortured for their faith, the action, the actual discipleship in their life speaks far louder than any words they say.

15:43

Come on. And it's so cool to see that in your life. I'm gonna give you a compliment. I know you're not comfortable with them, but for people listening,

15:49

I've seen that gospel walked out in actions in your life.

15:55

And that's so exciting because I will take, and you're good with words too, don't get me wrong. I've heard you preach.

16:01

I've heard you teach. Absolutely love it. But I'll take someone of action in the gospel over someone in words in the gospel any day of the week because we can change the world.

16:10

Absolutely. And that's why even like preaching the gospel and also living it is key.

16:16

That whole phrase of preach the gospel and then use words, I think that gets thrown around a little.

16:23

No, I like it though. It can be right, but people actually have to live it for it to actually be meaningful.

16:30

And that was exactly what I learned in prison. It was how to actually walk it out.

16:36

And I appreciate it. And I know like for me, we all get it wrong, but the

16:43

Lord, and I definitely agree with you, the Western church, what they really miss out on is the character.

16:50

God cares about character. He sees the intent of our hearts. And when we're really about it, when we're really practicing what we preach, it's gonna be evident in our life and there's fruit then.

17:02

People are attracted to that. They are. I mean, that's even in the secular world. I mean, leadership is done by example.

17:09

Yes. It's not done by, you know, we all have bosses in our lives. We all have supervisors and managers and no one likes them when they tell you to do something, but don't do it themselves.

17:18

Yes. Look at, they teach you that 101 when you go into bootcamp, like we're all a unit and we don't expect any.

17:24

Yes, there's a hierarchy of command, but everything I tell you to do, I can do and will do. And I've got your back and you've got mine.

17:30

And the Christian faith is really like that too. Yeah. You know, between the fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ and not only that, but acting out what the

17:38

Lord commands us to do and not just commanding other people to do it. Absolutely. I think that's a beautiful thing and I think it's a very effective thing for evangelism.

17:48

Absolutely. In the kingdom. So you get out, you're a different person.

17:54

I'm sure you get all those run -ins with friends that you'd seen years before and they look at you weird and sideways and go, what?

18:00

You're not doing what anymore? You know? Yep. So you kind of got to readjust your social life, your family life, everything.

18:06

Everything. I went through that as well. Not from prison. I should have been in prison, but the Lord was gracious enough to refine me in my home instead of prison.

18:15

But so you get out and then where do you go from there? Because that's just what? Five years ago. Five years ago.

18:21

And now I look back at it, man, and God has just been so good to me.

18:26

So good that I don't deserve it. Yeah. And it's incredible. Looking back, because one of the great things that happened for me and one of the things

18:34

I had prayed for so much in prison, there were two things. One was to find a really great church community.

18:40

Sure. Which I found through my home church, City Light, and then also through the community of Emory Toledo.

18:46

Some of the brothers and sisters that I've done ministry with in both my church and in Emory Toledo have impacted my life in such a way.

18:54

That's even how I met you. Absolutely. I believe it was through Emory Toledo. Shout out to Emory. Yeah. Oh, man. We're having Savannah on soon,

19:00

Joe Liggett who kind of took the reins of that. He's going to be on the podcast in the coming months.

19:06

But what a great ministry that was too. Oh my goodness. Bringing different churches together and just to glorify, worship, praise,

19:12

Exactly. Preach the gospel. The Book of Acts way. Yeah, that's kind of where we met even I think before City Light.

19:17

Right around the same time. Yeah. About that long ago. Yeah. So you got involved in that stuff. Yeah. That was one of the things that also aided in my continued accountability in discipleship was being around other on -fire believers that were passionate about Jesus, passionate about spreading his kingdom, spreading the gospel,

19:37

Absolutely. And about actually living and walking it out. And as I've done it, I met my wife, which is another really crazy, crazy testimony because I love me some

19:48

Amber. Oh, man. She's a great girl. She is. She blesses me and refines me more than anybody else in this world.

19:56

Yeah. Through Jesus using her in my life. I know that I wouldn't be here.

20:02

And I know that I wouldn't be the man of God that I am now if it wasn't for her impact. Literally three weeks

20:08

I met her after I got home from prison. Oh, wow. I didn't know you guys knew each other that long.

20:14

Yep. So I got out of prison February 24th. It was six weeks. Okay. I'm usually,

20:20

I'm good with dates. I started attending City Light a month later, March 22nd. Then I met her

20:25

April 7th at Ember. She was a coffee girl. I walked in and the Lord captured my heart for her.

20:31

Man, I literally, I wouldn't always call it this, but I had a encounter where the

20:37

Lord highlighted her to me and showed me and I knew that she was going to be my wife and she friend zoned me with a friend zone wall that was taller than I think any

20:48

Donald Trump could hope to build. And we became best friends and I pursued her for nearly eight months and then the

20:57

Lord brought those walls crashing down and since then it's been history. The friend zone can't stand up against the will of God now.

21:04

Heck no it can't. It's supposed to be. And it was worth it because it was the same type of refining thing.

21:10

Yeah. For all the single young guys that are listening out there, many of you, and I got to have this conversation with a brother at work today, many of you are praying for that godly

21:21

Christian woman in your life and the question that God is asking you is, are you a godly

21:26

Christian man? You're asking to be rewarded. He who finds a wife has found favor from God.

21:34

So in knowing that boys, realize that God is trying to make you into who he has called you to be so that you can lead that woman well and so that you can be the godly man that she needs in her life.

21:46

That's so important. It's funny because you get maybe some non -Christians or religious

21:53

Christians that will quote, wife submit to your husband and they'll drop it there.

21:59

Yeah. And it's like, read the next verse and husbands love your wives.

22:05

Okay, that's hard enough. As Christ loved the church, giving up your life for her. It's like my mandate says

22:11

I have to give up my life for you. Yeah. So it's like all these people in Christianity kind of forget that last second part where we have a very important duty as godly husbands to love her so much.

22:25

And I mean, when I just say love it, and guys, they think like manly like, oh, I'd take a bullet for my wife. And it's like, no, he's saying giving up your life, all your wants, all your desires, all your needs, all your professional goals.

22:37

Anytime you're feeling unloved or impatient or not needed or whatever, I'm not saying to be in an abusive relationship if your wife is that, but guess what?

22:47

Her needs come first in every single way. Yeah. And that's the mandate that Christ gives us to how to love our wives.

22:54

And so when you get a wife that is godly and wise and discerning, and I've been blessed with that as well too.

23:00

Yeah. And then you read through Proverbs, just have you been blessed with Amber the same way? You read through Proverbs and it says things like, you know, like you said, a godly wife is to find favor with the

23:10

Lord. And then Proverbs 31, and you're just like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I could do life in this walk without her.

23:17

I tell people all the time as a joke, I say, I might be the head of the house, but she's definitely the neck and the neck always turns the head.

23:24

Ooh, that is good. Just meaning, you know, my wife is so wise,

23:30

I'll come up with an idea or something I want to do or buy or go or, you know, and I get all these ideas. I think you're the same way.

23:35

You get excited about something. You're like, let's do this. And she'll go, okay, just, you know, if you really feel that way, pray about it.

23:41

And if the Lord tells you to do it, then we'll do it as a family. And I went, she always gets me because she knows I have to answer to God.

23:47

Yeah. And believe me, I fear God much more than I fear anyone else in this world. Uh, and you know, and then

23:53

I'll pray about it and I'll know, yeah, that's just me. That's my flesh wanting it. And then I'll have to go to her and say, no, that was just me.

23:59

The Lord doesn't want us, you know, but not to say I make all decisions by myself. We make almost all our decisions together, but those things that I just get, you know,

24:07

I get on a thing about a rant about, give it up to the Lord then. And I just went, there's such wisdom in submission.

24:13

She's saying, sure, I'll submit, but guess what? You have to submit to the Lord then. And I'll tell you what, if you're the type of husband that will do something and say, the

24:21

Lord is telling you as the head of the family to do it just because you want to do it, you better tread very lightly because you will be answering for that as, as your wife shepherd one day when, you know, when every knee will bow and every tongue confesses before him, come on, but I'll tell you what, but yeah, so, so five years out.

24:38

And then I know you were hooked up in a couple of different ministries. Ember, you were leading in and then you were doing some stuff down in chill coffee.

24:45

Yes. With my buddy, Clayton Collins. Yeah. I've met him a few times in healing ministry with him.

24:54

And what's, what, what is down there? I've never been down there. Is it a church? Is it like, is it a group? Yeah. So Clayton's church is been down there.

25:01

His dad, it was actually his dad's, um, which his dad has a crazy, incredible testimony.

25:07

He, uh, he was beaten within an inch of his life, lost hearing. And one of his ears lost his eardrum and God miraculously healed him.

25:14

Awesome. And the really crazy thing, five years ago, Clayton prayed for me on April 12th, which we just passed on a son.

25:22

Like it grinds my gears that we didn't get to sit in on a Sunday service these past couple of weeks, but it's all right.

25:28

Um, it was my five year mark from when God miraculously healed me. Really? Yeah. I was dead.

25:33

I was partially deaf in both my ears, my entire life. I was supposed to be using hearing aids by the time I was 30.

25:39

And God did something. It was insane. And now you can hear just fine on the podcast. Look at this.

25:44

It's insane. And, um, and so Clayton, the really crazy thing.

25:49

So I meet Clayton within the first, uh, two months I get out of prison.

25:55

Okay. I was in prison in Chillicothe. Oh, wow. That's right. You said that. He said, so when you were saying

26:01

Chillicothe camp earlier, I was going, wait a minute. Is he, was he visiting a church? But you were in prison there.

26:08

And then that's where you end up hooking up at too. It was crazy because while I was inside, I actually heard of Clayton's church.

26:14

Okay. His buddy, he has a buddy that, uh, does worship named Clay Webb. He actually came into our prison and played for a praise day.

26:22

Yeah. It was incredible stuff. I mean, I got a couple of his albums on iTunes. I think he came down to Ember.

26:28

Yeah. A couple of times. That's where I met him. Yes. Um, he probably came with Dr. Brian Adams when he came, he came a couple of different times.

26:35

I missed both of them. I was super salty, but, right. But, um, so I've gotten to do some different stuff with Clayton.

26:41

Definitely with Ember, Ember Monroe, their affiliate up there. Um, and I've gotten to just do anything the

26:49

Lord has called me to do. So what kind of stuff you do now? I think you do, you do, do a small group, right? Yup.

26:54

I, I, I do know you preach from time to time, correct? I've gotten a preach at probably four or five different churches, different opportunities, different places.

27:02

And then right now, uh, me and my wife hold a small group through our city light church.

27:08

Um, but even with that, we have people come from different churches. Um, it's really open to anybody.

27:13

Yeah. And we, we love to dig into the difficult topics. Last year we did a extensive seven month study just on the book of revelation.

27:22

It was awesome. Yeah. Um, at the end of this year, we actually are going to be looking deeper into the topic that we're going to talk about here in a little bit, talking about the

27:31

Moses tabernacle, how to points to Jesus. Sure. Um, but how was that revelation eschatology study, man?

27:39

And that's probably one of the, one of the biggest like, uh, sections of, uh, the

27:45

Bible where I just, I'm just kind of still up in the air about everything. Uh, there's so many different things you can get to rabbit holes and different theologies and things like that at the end of the day.

27:56

And I'm trying to get better at it because for a few years, I was just like, you want to, what doesn't matter, live every day like crisis coming back today anyway.

28:04

And you know, that's how the apostles live. That's how the early church fathers lived. And then the Lord just really spoke to me and was like, well, you can't ignore certain parts of who

28:13

I am just because they either don't interest you or they're too convoluted or you feel like they're, they're too nuanced.

28:19

Um, he said, dig in. So I've actually, the last six to eight months have really just been kind of looking at that and go, where do

28:25

I fall on it? Because here's another thing too. I'm, I'm much more concerned about, uh, first degree doctrinal issues,

28:32

Trinity, DD, Christ. Yeah. Like when I talked to a brother, a sister in Christ, I want to know, make sure we agree on those first.

28:37

Yeah. Um, pre -trib, preterist, a millennial, you know what?

28:42

There's some differences there, but I think at the end, we're all on the same team still. So I kind of took a backseat for me too, just because it was like, uh, is it really that important?

28:51

And I come to realize it is that important. It is. So like, what kind of stuff did you guys cover in that? Just for our listeners that might, you know, might prick their ears a little bit.

28:59

When you say we revelation, we literally went, uh, chapter by chapter and work through talking about the heart issues.

29:06

Um, because I've been on the same type of journey, you know, I'm in prison. I read all the left behind books.

29:12

They had them all in the chapel library where I got to work. Sure. At one point. So, you know, I read that, but really a year ago, um, at city light, our pastor

29:21

George preached a message on the, on, um, the return of Jesus and some of Jesus words.

29:28

Like I, I had had a kind of like unbalanced view where I'm like, I'll, I'll, uh, pray for rapture, prepare for tribulation, which

29:36

I think like people use that. And it can be a good thing. I think that a lot of people land in that. Definitely.

29:42

And the same type of thing. The Lord really just cracked me hard and, uh, really began to just move where, um, now

29:50

I would call myself a, a post trib, but it, it's all definition of where you think tribulation ends, begins, all that stuff.

29:58

Um, really, uh, but working through all of, and be one of the things that I always try to do within any

30:07

Bible study. I do. Um, I follow the principle of acts 1711 talking about the saints of Berea.

30:12

Sure. They would study to show themselves to prove reading the scriptures daily. Oh man.

30:18

Uh, my brother Rudy ground that into my brain. Like I, that's the way I treat every, uh, podcast or teaching everything

30:25

I listened to, because first of all, like we're men, we get it wrong. Not every, there's no man who has his theology perfect on this earth in any given moment.

30:36

And so, um, always being willing to be teachable in that. Um, but I always present every view that's available.

30:45

So like you had brought up, um, I'm a millennial. There's pre tear trip. There's post trip. There's mid trip.

30:51

There's no trip, like partial preterist preterist. There's all kinds of weird. Yeah. All of this stuff.

30:56

Um, and I've, and I've worked through and really dug in and read in and like, it's a journey.

31:02

I'll just put it that way. And it's one that I encourage everyone to go on because just like, I feel like the

31:08

Lord probably had spoke. It is important. Oh, absolutely. What, what we believe about the end is going to prove how we live now.

31:17

Absolutely. And, um, it doesn't have to be a bad thing. Whatever position people take.

31:22

One of my favorite ministers, um, again, another dude can be kind of crazy. Uh, Perry stone,

31:27

Perry stone is a hardcore pre trip teacher. Yeah. Um, everyone loves Perry. Oh man,

31:33

Perry. It's so shirts. That's what it is. I love what he says that everyone loves. I watched a couple of his, uh, sermon.

31:39

Everyone loves Perry. Yeah. I'm just Perry. Anyway. Sorry. That was a bad Perry stone impression. Sorry, Perry stone.

31:44

If you're listening, I doubt it. So I think I'm safe. Oh man. But yeah, but, I love how big he is on Israel too.

31:50

Man, he's a part for Israel and taking it back to the old testament, aligning the messianic prophecies.

31:55

Exactly. And that's, that's the next thing I was going to get to. So with him, even though he's a pre trip person, he doesn't allow that to let him withhold from how he evangelizes, how he reaches the community, how he impacts the world with the gospel.

32:10

He is more about it than some others that probably take on the escapism and the pre -trib rapture and all that stuff.

32:18

We are so tracking on the same wavelength because I was just going to say that. I was just going to say, uh, you know, one of the reasons why

32:25

I didn't really delve into it too, is I just went, you know, people get off on a tangent and then, you know, they, they have a warped view of like rapture or pre -trib or whatever.

32:33

And then they, and then they change the way they act. And the Lord just said, you know, look at, there's all kinds of doctrine and theology that can warp how you act out the gospel.

32:42

Exactly. It's not, it's not limited to end times eschatology. It could be, you know, in doctrines of grace, it could be creationalism.

32:49

If you're letting a theology warp the, the, the, the way that you act out the gospel in your life or a doctrine, then it's warped no matter where it's coming from.

32:58

Exactly. You know? And I just went, Oh yeah, I guess that's right. There's stuff that I can do and get into a weird space where you become extreme or become, you know, hyper whatever, hyper dash, put whatever you want in front of it.

33:11

Exactly. So I love that you just said the exact same thing I was thinking while you were talking is, you know, if it's affecting the way that you either evangelize or walk out the gospel or, or, or even how you view

33:21

God and his true character, then it, then it can become an issue. If it's changing the way that you live out the great commandment and the great commission, then, then it's right.

33:29

It's whack. And you just need to get back to the basics then and really see what God's really saying.

33:35

Um, and the other thing that changed everything for me was going to Israel. I got to,

33:41

I got blessed enough to go with heart of David, which that's actually another ministry I'm semi involved in. I haven't gotten to be as much because of the quarantine, but once everything lifts up, um,

33:51

I'll be facilitating as the only person I believe in Michigan under the heart of David covering of facilitating a, um, 24 seven prayer and worship thing and doing some different stuff with that.

34:03

Wow. Whenever it, what are they based out of? Um, Dallas, Texas. Okay. It's a Rick Pino's ministry.

34:09

Oh, Rick Pino. Oh dude. Yeah. And then I got, when I went on my trip, I got connected with a man named

34:14

Jose Diaz who just started a heart of David school in Philadelphia. That's where Clayton actually just moved, which is super cool.

34:21

He's teaching up there at their school. It's been crazy, man. But I met all these guys when, when I went to Israel and,

34:28

Oh, like walking through the land. Have you gotten to go to Israel yet? No. Oh man.

34:33

It's on the bucket list. Yeah. It's, it was the first mission strip I've gotten to go on, which most people wouldn't consider that missions.

34:39

Uh, don't believe that lie. People anywhere you go with missions. Exactly. And when, and when you go to the land where Jesus walked, when you walk through the ruins of Capernaum, when you go across the sea of Galilee and see where he cast out the legion of demons into the pigs and they, and they drown themselves.

34:56

When you sit in the tomb, like, wow, it, it's a missions trip.

35:02

Yeah. When you get to interact with the people that God so loves. And that was one of the things that impacted me so much was meeting like the most hardcore

35:12

Jewish man I've ever met in my life. Uh, I don't know if it would be cult, uh, politically incorrect.

35:17

Like our tour guide, his name was Gideon and he was the Jew of Jews. It was just this manly

35:24

Jewish man that just loved God more passionately than more than most

35:30

Christian men that I see in my life, which is just mind blowing and just loves him so passionately.

35:36

And the other thing that I really loved about my experience is I, I learned what America was like in the 1950s when you could talk about politics and religion without it hurting everybody's feelings because you sit and have a conversation with a

35:49

Jewish man about Jesus being the Messiah and they don't believe it. They get passionate and to be able to be in one of those conversations with a group of men.

35:58

And then everybody being fine afterwards. It was amazing. And that's just their culture there. That's how they live.

36:04

They are just passionate. Uh, they call it chutzpah or just angst.

36:10

They have it in them. They, they, they're passionate and they just love God and they know him.

36:16

And it's not the same thing of them believing that they like Muslims with them having the, they think that we believe in the same

36:23

God. Right. But like they know our father. Right. And, um, they're just missing that key piece.

36:29

And it also just broke my heart for them to meet these men and like pray for them to know

36:36

Christ and to really meet him. Some of my favorite preachers or people I talk to, and I don't know the term that they like to use, but like a

36:44

Messianic Jew or someone who has been saved who is Jewish. Yes. It's, it's so amazing to just sit down and talk to them because we have to remember we're just grafted into the faith.

36:56

Gentiles have just been grafted in. We're adopted sons and daughters. Uh, you know, Jesus was walking around.

37:01

He goes, I came for the Jews, but no one's listening. So guess what? The Gentiles are going to be blessed through this. Exactly.

37:07

And when you talk to a Jewish believer, it's just, it opens up your mind to so many.

37:13

You just go, Oh, everything makes the way they can explain it. Their customs, the old Testament, the

37:19

Torah, obviously, and then how it all aligns. I mean, obviously we can do this study ourselves and we do, and we're going to talk about it here in a few minutes, but when you see it and you see the passion in their eyes and they, and it clicks and they go,

37:30

Oh my gosh, this is for me. And now it's for you too. And this is why Jesus did this because you know, he was a

37:37

Jew. Yeah. He was a Jewish man in, in, uh, you know, Rome occupied Israel, but all those customs and all those things and the ceremonial laws and all the stuff that Christ said he was talking to the

37:50

Jewish people. And, and he was still fulfilling it. He was still doing it. And that's what, um, especially in our, uh, super Greek thinking,

37:59

I think sometimes in the Western church, people miss that. They, they, they read that scripture where it says that Jesus saying,

38:06

I didn't come to do away with the law, but to fulfill it. And they think fulfill means abolish and that it just ends not at all.

38:12

And not at all. Jesus was a Jewish man living in Israel, fulfilling all of the

38:19

Torah. Yeah. The, the only way that he could fulfill it was to do it all.

38:25

Right. So like acting like he was above the law of God, like he was the fulfillment of it.

38:31

He was literally. And that's where like the name of Jesus being the word of God, the promise of God.

38:38

Yeah. He, he was the living fulfillment of it. And that's where like his life is so important to understand the old testament and what that stuff was truly all about.

38:50

Yes. The 613 laws of the Torah were so important because in one way or another, they all pointed to Christ and his life, which is part of what we're going to get to talk about, but absolutely all of it pointed to Jesus.

39:05

All of it pointed to the word of God living in the flesh. And I know

39:10

I've heard you talk about, we've had discussions or I've been around you. What there's, there's a quote that goes around that Jesus is perfect theology.

39:18

It's kind of wonky. The, what Jesus is just a fulfillment, right?

39:26

He is the picture. He's the prototype. He is everything that the, the Torah, the

39:31

Tanakh, all of it was pointing to and in him, we find the truth behind all of it.

39:38

Absolutely. But to, I think that phrase is, is a little weird and I would agree with you on that.

39:44

It has to be properly put into context before you say things like that. That's the only issue is context.

39:50

And I've said this before, even on the podcast is the, the further I get in my walk with Christ and I talk to people, the more

39:57

I usually start out with, well, let's just define our terms. So we know where we're at because we have all this Christian knees and kind of, you, you say one word,

40:05

I say the same word, we mean two different things and we're, and we're talking and now we're off on, you know, off to the races in the wrong direction because it's just like, well, let's just define what we're talking about and put it in context.

40:15

And, you know, even fulfillment of the law, like you say, like, I literally have met Christians who say, well, they'll say it like abolished.

40:22

They'll go, well, Christ fulfilled the law, like fulfilled means done. And, you know, I've talked about it before.

40:27

I mean, you even look at eye for an eye, right? Like, you know, back in the day, I for nine, it equal punishment under the law, which was like unheard of back in the day.

40:36

Like, you know, you, you steal food, you get your arm cut off. We talked about this on the last episode too. So I won't go too deep into it.

40:42

And the Jews come along and in the old Testament, and they're like, well, no equal punishment under the law. I for nine, if someone steals something, you're not going to put them to death.

40:48

You're not going to, you know, put them into life imprisonment. You're not going to put them into servitude for the rest of life because they stole bread to eat, let's say, or, you know, to feed their family.

40:57

Yeah. The Jews come along and say, no. And God says the more humane way is, is equal. Let the punishment fit the crime essentially.

41:04

Well, then Christ comes along and he goes, oh, now I'm the fulfillment of that. Now, if you even, you've heard it said, but if you even think of this, or you, in fact, go the extra mile and, and, and clothe your enemy and give them your tunic too.

41:16

So he was, he was even stepping it up and saying, well, now you have the spirit living inside of you to where, yes, the law was good.

41:23

And the, and the law does deter a lot of people from doing evil acts. And you can look to the law and say, it's a measuring against my morality and Christ saying, yes.

41:31

And so now the law is still there, but now I've fulfilled it to the point to where you have the Holy spirit temple, the Holy ghost living inside of you to, to, to make those godly decisions.

41:40

So, you know, it's very irritating when you hear people use that fulfillment as an abolishment.

41:46

Cause I look to that and I say the old Testament, the new Testament is so congruent. It's it's, it fits together perfectly.

41:52

Yes. And the old Testament is nothing more than just, uh, reflecting Christ and everything that it did, exactly.

41:58

Which is such a beautiful thing. So my brother Rudy always put it this way. The old Testament is the new

42:04

Testament concealed in the new Testament is the old Testament revealed. I love it. Oh man. Yeah. And, um, the, what you were just touching on too.

42:11

I remember once, um, I think you were sharing something for, um, when you were leading worship or something, you said a phrase that is stuck with me that I think takes the whole, the law up to the point where after that,

42:26

Jesus took it so much further because, um, Jesus is not a moral

42:32

God. Our God is not a moral God. He is a holy God. Yes.

42:37

And when we seem to just fill more moral, uh, encompassment and do the right thing, that's only going to take you so far, but God in his holiness, we are called to be separate work because even bad men can do good things.

42:53

Sure. There's a lot of moral unsaved, horrible people, but they're moral. Exactly. They're sinners, but they're moral.

42:59

Exactly. But when we live that holy life, because the holy ghost lives inside of us and we go that extra mile, those are the things that actually glow.

43:07

Those are the good works that point to our father in heaven where people look and say, you're different, man, you, you're weird.

43:14

You're, you gotta be one of those people that knows Jesus because that's the thing that he would do.

43:20

Yeah. And absolutely. Amen. Yeah. Come on. Well, let's get in. Let's get into a little bit of the arc of the covenant.

43:28

and kind of tell me, I don't know, you can frame this however you want, but obviously we know, we just said old

43:35

Testament does point to new Testament, meaning points to Christ. Um, I have a book in my library upstairs and I think it's 525 messianic prophecies fulfilled.

43:45

And this guy just goes through and like listen, reference all of them. Obviously, uh, don't have those memorized or probably couldn't say too many off top of my head, but the arc of the covenant and, uh, how it points to Christ.

43:58

Talk a little bit about that or how, how you even got interested in that and some of those points. Definitely. Um, so looking at not just the arc of the covenant, but the whole tabernacle of Moses, um, is literally a prophetic type or a picture.

44:13

If you guys aren't familiar with what a biblical type is, I can't, I want to say it's Colossians two, where it talks about shadows and types of the things to come talking about the religious feasts and all of the things of the old

44:26

Testament, how they were pointing to Jesus, um, to, to first start any foundation for it.

44:33

The first place I heard about it was in prison. Listen to my brother Rudy and he would talk about these things.

44:38

And, and I didn't have yet the one, the foundation or the spiritual eyes to hear all of it.

44:44

I just took really good notes. And then as I have progressed through my walk, looking things back over and studying it out for myself again,

44:53

I have, the Lord has just opened up so many things in it to me that are just super cool. one thing

44:59

I always, uh, act 1721 or act 1711, go back and check it for yourselves guys.

45:06

Um, because we're men, we get things wrong. And when you start digging into looking into like prophetic typology, when you get into symbolism and stuff, some of the stuff in the

45:16

Bible, people can get weird. You find all these different dream handbooks and all this stuff.

45:22

but that's not to deny that there isn't such a thing as symbolism and numerology and things of those nature. I believe in those things, but like you said, it can, anything extreme can get a little, it can.

45:31

And that's where, um, the, one of the foundational standpoints, my brother Rudy always used to instill in us was that you need to let the

45:39

Bible interpret the Bible. We want to use the biblical text to find our keys for our symbolism, to find the keys for things like biblical numerics.

45:48

I love biblical numerics, but if you dive too deep into it, you turn into Ashton Kutcher in the number 23, and you think that the world is coming to an end.

45:57

And you start trying to name out dates for when Jesus is going to come back and somebody is going to call you a heretic. Yep. Just don't want to jump into that kind of stuff.

46:05

So hermeneutics 101 Bible interprets Bible. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so the foundation is, uh,

46:11

Exodus 19. We, we see, uh, Moses, he goes up on the mountain. He's hanging out with God for 40 days.

46:19

One, let's just think about that for a moment. Yeah. On top of the mountain, hanging out with God in the heavenlies.

46:26

Like when you read the testimony of later, when the elders go up and they literally eat a meal, they are sitting on the glassy sea, as it describes it in the book of Ezekiel, as it describes in the book of revelation, you can see the correlation to see like where they're eating with God in a heavenly realm.

46:44

Like that, that molten lake was not just sitting on the top of this mountain. When you read those things, you, we got to see that he went to a different place with his relationship with God.

46:56

And literally, yeah, you want to use the right terminology. Uh, third heaven encounter.

47:02

If you take the words of Paul of the guy that he knew, but he, uh, didn't name for that went up.

47:09

Um, but we, uh, Moses went up there with him and God on these two tablets of stone gave us the 10 commandments.

47:16

And then also, and this is what people miss out a lot of times. He gave him the perfect transcription of the

47:25

Moses tabernacle. And when you read Exodus 25 through 40, you read all this stuff that God told him.

47:32

Like I imagine Moses had to come down holding the two tablets and then like a giant scroll that he had to write all this stuff down on, or like God imprinted it on his brain somehow to remember all of the specifics behind every little thing, like what the walls were made of exactly how many boards are supposed to be in it, how you're supposed to make them like all of these innate little things that make up this grand masterpiece.

48:00

That's literally a picture of heaven. It's a picture of what the heavenly sanctuary looks like, where God dwells.

48:08

And he gave it to Moses that way while they're traveling for 40 years in the wilderness, God can hang out with them.

48:16

Like his presence was with them. Walking through the wilderness is a pillar by fire.

48:22

And it's a cloud by day. He literally dwelt with his people. And so like, which no other air quote, small

48:30

G God. Nope. None. I mean, that's what set the Jews apart as well because their

48:37

God dwelt among them. Yes. And positioned the tabernacle in such a way that he could dwell among them.

48:42

It would correct me if I'm wrong, but it was usually in the middle of the encampment wherever they were at. And such a cool thing because, you know, in paganism back then you had gods that were aloof and kind of out of touch and non -relational.

48:57

And you petition them through maybe self -sacrifice and, you know, even self -harm sometimes.

49:03

And you'd have a, you know, maybe a wooden or a gold or bronze or whatever type of statue. And even

49:09

Paul talks about that. Like, look at your God's made out of like gold, but mine's the one true living God that still lives, you know?

49:14

And then you have the Jews who didn't have a state, you know, didn't have a place to stay, but their God dwelled among them. Yeah. Which was just unheard of.

49:21

Yeah. At that time. Exactly. I didn't mean to interrupt. No, no, And even bringing up how the camp was set up because there was even, like God gave a directive order on how they were supposed to set the camp up in such a way.

49:34

That if you draw it out and I challenge any one of you to do this, you'll see that there's two crosses in the midst of it.

49:40

Really? Which is super cool. The actual Ark of the Covenant, or the Moses Tabernacle, it's set up, creates a cross, and then the way that the camp is set up with all the tribes of Israel and their setup, along with the

49:52

Levites around the tabernacle, creates a picture of a cross, which symbolizes, one, the cross of Jesus, and then the cross that we're called to take.

50:01

Yeah, absolutely. It's incredible. So yeah, looking at that, what are some other things that you see that point to Christ?

50:09

Definitely. So the Moses Tabernacle is made up of, it's a structure, 100 cubits wide by 40 cubits, 100 by 40.

50:21

Inside of it, there are seven distinct pieces of furniture. So when you're looking into biblical numerics, seven is like God's signature.

50:31

Anytime you find a seven in scripture, you can be sure that God is speaking something through it.

50:36

Absolutely. The first one is the brazen altar. Then you have the brazen laver. Those are the two pieces of furniture that are in the outer court.

50:45

Then as you go into the inner court, or the most holy place, you come across the menorah, the table of showbread, and then the altar of incense.

50:54

And then as you enter into the Holy of Holies, which was a 10 by 10 box, which is super cool, it points to the millennial reign of Jesus.

51:02

Yep, 1 ,000, yep. Yep. Inside, you find the Ark of the Covenant and the mercy seat.

51:09

And so each of those, all these components of this actually point to Jesus in a lot of different ways.

51:15

It points to our walk of salvation because we know salvation is both momentary, so we come to our moment of salvation where we come into relationship with God, but then there is a process behind it as well where we're moving from being saved, where we receive the

51:31

Holy Spirit, we receive the seal of the Spirit, to the process of sanctification where we live out this walk until glorification.

51:40

And so it's a threefold component as you walk through it because you start in the outer court.

51:46

Yeah, even that is Trinitarian. Dude, yeah. From salvation to sanctification to glorification is a

51:52

Trinitarian kind of three -ism that is very cool in the walk too. It is. There's a specific scripture even that it's

51:59

Proverbs 22, I believe 10, it was

52:05

Solomon, he said, have I not wrote to you of excellent things, of things of counsel, and I can't remember the other component of that, but when you break down that word excellent, it actually means threefold thing, and it actually is talking musically, but isn't everything

52:24

God does musical? Yeah. A little bit. And you even see the same language when you read the book of Hebrews talking about the more excellent ministry,

52:34

Jesus is a more excellent Moses, he brought a more excellent law, these different things, it was all a part of God's plan, and that's why in the

52:42

Old Testament, these things are all typology pointing to Jesus and what he was going to do when he was on the earth because even in John 1, 14, when it says the word became flesh and dwelt among us, when you break down the word dwelt in the

52:58

Greek, it literally means he tabernacled among us. He like, he hit it there for us to say like,

53:05

I was all the way back there and you guys didn't even realize it yet. That's why, you know, I implore so many

53:11

Christians who read the Bible, I say, if you can, at least try to take some entry level

53:18

Hebrew or Greek. Oh man. If, and absolutely what you can do too, is at least it should be strong concordance,

53:26

Bible, and maybe a commentary or two. Every time you open the Bible. Now I'm not saying the Lord can't give you revelation by reading the

53:32

Bible, does all the time to me and Christians, and I've read a verse 200 times and on the 201st time, the

53:39

Lord just dropped something in my spirit and I go, oh, and I see it a different way, right? Love that. But at the same time when we study the word, like the

53:45

Bereans who went back and they look and they compare and they go, okay, this was that prophecy, this, you know, and really dig in, the

53:52

English language just totally fails on so many levels for interpretation. Yeah.

53:58

Like just what you just said there in John one, where it says, and God came down and tabernacled with us.

54:04

I mean, if you just said it that way in the Bible, it's just because everyone knows the word, everyone, but I'd say most

54:09

Christians understand the word tabernacle, but it is, it's that same word that's being used. Well, not the exact same word, but the same interpretation, the

54:16

Greek word for what the Hebrew used when they says dwell. Yes. To dwell among. So you even see in just very, very,

54:25

I want to say average, but everyday kind of verses that's just always pointing towards Christ, the

54:31

Old Testament pointing to the new, and we kind of lose it to where sometimes that's not even a proof text of what you're talking about right now, but it's a great proof text of what we're talking about.

54:42

If we just dig one layer deeper and go, well, what's that actual word that we're using there? Or even like you said, excellent, meaning threefold in all these different things.

54:49

And I've been pleasantly surprised on a lot of verses when I dig into them and I go, oh my gosh, what?

54:56

I cannot, you know, like even like when I dig it and this is totally off subject, but we'll let you get back to it, but a great example of this, it's my, sorry, it's my

55:02

Christian ADD kicking in, but a great example of that is one of my favorite

55:07

Proverbs where it says man orders his steps, but the Lord orders his path, essentially. The man will plan his steps, the

55:13

Lord orders his path. That's actual, the phraseology being used there is almost temporal.

55:19

It's like, it's timing. So the true interpretation of that is man decides his time and the

55:28

Lord will decide his distance, how long he goes. And when you, even when you read it that way, you go, oh my gosh, that makes, you know, we are creatures caught inside this thing called time.

55:37

So it's like, you decide your time and the Lord will decide how far he takes you in the distance that that ministry, that thought, that season in your life, that relationship, how far it'll go.

55:47

And you just go, but it works both ways, right? Because when you think of steps and path, that's what you're saying.

55:54

Like a step is maybe three foot, a path could be a mile long. So, you know, and you go, oh my gosh, just a different way to look in that one verse that we say all the time.

56:04

So, you know, even in my life, and when I, you know, a few years ago, when I read it that way, I go, I almost approach everything like that.

56:10

Lord, this is the time you tell me how, for how long the distance you want this to go, you know?

56:16

Well, and then when you, if you took that verse, and this is one I'll elaborate a little bit on when we get to the menorah, but Psalms 119, 105, the word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

56:29

So if you coupled that even with that and saying, yes, the Lord is going to take me a certain distance in the way that he's gonna reveal it is through his word.

56:39

And his word is only going to provide enough light for you to see what's right in front of you so that you can make sure that you're saying on the correct path when you're relying on the word of the

56:49

Lord, not on your own wisdom, not on your own talents and all that other stuff.

56:54

But when you really rely on God, when you really rely on the word that he says, first in his

56:59

Bible, and then if he does give you any rhema word, but the Bible, of course, like it provides a lot of the, most of the direction that we need.

57:09

You need help with your finances? That's so interesting, the Lord gives you a lamp, he doesn't give you a spotlight.

57:14

Cause I'll tell you what, you get a spotlight, you start looking ahead down the road and you get distracted. I mean, it's manna, right?

57:19

It's daily sustenance in God, daily relation with him. Come on. My father's famous for saying this.

57:26

He always says, Lord, give me enough to survive, but don't give me too much to where I'm distracted. I want just enough every day.

57:33

Come on. And it's so funny that you bring that up, the lamp. I've never really thought about that, but a lamp will light your way just enough to get you to that next pace, that next step.

57:43

He's not gonna give, I don't, and I don't think he, we would want the spotlight to illuminate the whole thing.

57:49

I want daily dependence on him. Exactly. And even like looking at the life of Jesus just for a moment before we, another little rabbit trail, look at him.

57:58

He had the whole gamut. He knew at the end exactly what was going to happen.

58:04

Oh sure. At the end of his 33 years, he's sitting in a garden bleeding blood and saying,

58:09

Lord, if you could take this cup from me, I would really appreciate it, but your will be done.

58:15

Absolutely. And in that like, that is where like, even for God, even when

58:20

God was in man, perfectly God, yet perfectly man at the same time, he even still had a struggle.

58:27

Sure. Knowing the full picture and what he was going to go through. I think that's one of the best examples of the mystery of the hyperstatic union.

58:36

Dude. Because he's praying God's will, because he knows God's will, but he's also, he's fully God and fully man.

58:42

But he's also having that struggle because God, Christ had emotions. He had all those things.

58:48

Now he wasn't sin nature. Exactly. So our emotions are kind of restrained by that or controlled by sin nature.

58:54

Look at when I get angry, the first thing I want to do is get even or lash out or you know, Christ can be righteously angry because he wasn't in sin nature, but he had all the emotions of man, but he had all the deity of Christ and God.

59:06

So that's such a beautiful picture. You know, some I've even talked to non -believers, atheists, agnostic friends.

59:13

Oh, that's a contradiction. No, that's the beautiful hyperstatic union of being fully God and fully man. Knowing the exact will of the

59:19

Father and knowing that he had to go through it, but at the same time having a struggle and understanding the physical and mental and spiritual pain that he was about to go through.

59:27

Yeah, we, me and my wife just watched The Passion for Easter. It's one of our annual traditions.

59:34

So really reliving it and then like, I got to sit in the garden at one point and reflect and think about what

59:42

Jesus was experiencing there when he watched Judas approach him and kiss him. Like, oh, and it's just, it is.

59:50

It's so powerful to just speak of the mystery of God. And I think for people and being someone,

59:56

I was an evangelistic atheist at one point in my life that if you tried to talk to me about Jesus, I gave you inappropriate words and hand gestures.

01:00:06

And now I can just see it's because it defies their logic to say like, you believe in a

01:00:16

God that did that and allowed himself to go through that. Like, ugh, like, and it just, he uses the foolish things to compound the wise.

01:00:28

And it, I think it just, it aggravates just their whole everything to think that that's what the love of God could look like.

01:00:37

Yeah, no, I steal a line from, I think his name's Frank Turek. I think that's how you say his last name.

01:00:45

But he just, and he wrote a book and it's called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. And I just use that flippantly because it's almost true.

01:00:53

It's like, if you can't believe that there's some type of intelligent designer to what this reality is, if you just take, just slow down, lower the pride a little bit.

01:01:03

I said this before, I'm a hunter, man. I'm out in a blind six, seven, eight hours and I'm staring at nature and I'm looking at it and I go, there has, how can you not say there isn't something that has designed this?

01:01:16

So it takes a little too much faith for me to be an atheist and I say half jokingly, but it's kind of true.

01:01:22

But getting back to the tabernacle, let's circle this background. So when you first walk in, you have the altar.

01:01:30

The outer court. The outer court, but the altar's there, right? And that's where they would sacrifice. Yes, but even before that, so to even enter in, you have to go through a door.

01:01:41

This is one of the really cool things. And what did Jesus say in John chapter 10? I am the door to the sheep gate.

01:01:48

The place, the tabernacle was meant to be the place for the sheep to go. Okay. And so when he's saying that, it was fulfilling, even just that doorway.

01:02:00

And that's where sometimes you can take symbolism and these different things a little weird, but that's one of those, like you, the first way in was to enter in through the door, through Jesus, because he said,

01:02:12

I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through me. We read in Hebrews, it literally says it's through the flesh of Jesus.

01:02:21

So we enter in past the veil. So we enter in and it points to the significance behind our entrance into our

01:02:29

Christian walk. Which once again, very quickly, we read that now today as Americans and we go, okay, we get it.

01:02:37

We got to believe in Jesus. He's writing to, he's a Jewish scholar writing to other Jews saying very

01:02:44

Jewish things. To them, that meant something. They're thinking of what you're describing right now. They're reading this letter from Paul and they're going, oh, he's the entryway into where we need to make sacrifice, the tabernacle.

01:02:54

I mean, that's what all these things you're explaining is what they're thinking when they're reading this. They're not going, oh, I have to believe in this guy named

01:03:00

Jesus, which, you know, like how we think of it. They're going, oh, he's the actual passageway and the sacrifice and all of our customs for tens of thousands of years that we've learned.

01:03:11

This is what Paul is explaining or in Hebrews, the author of Hebrews, whoever you think it is. But Paul talked about it a lot too.

01:03:18

Absolutely. But yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry. So we enter in through there and the first thing that they would come upon is the altar.

01:03:25

And one of the crazy, so the, I'm blanking on the word, the intrinsicness,

01:03:34

I'm using the wrong word, but. Sounds like a word to me, we'll go with it. The absolute detail that went into every single component of the tabernacle is mind blowing.

01:03:44

And if you really dig hard enough, you can find a little symbolism stuff for all of it. We're going to keep it real broad to a degree.

01:03:52

But you look at the altar and the first thing that it points to is the cross, to repentance.

01:03:58

Because that's really where everything starts. The Lord draws us, but we do not enter into a relationship with him, no matter what anybody else would tell you, without repentance.

01:04:08

That was Jesus's message. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That is what it's all about.

01:04:15

Confess your sins, that way you might be. When the Jews were crying out in the book of Acts, they said, what must we do to be saved?

01:04:23

And Peter told them, you must repent for the remission of your sins. And so we look at that in the altar, the cool thing.

01:04:33

And very quickly to define that for people listening, a lot of people in Christianity think repent means ask forgiveness.

01:04:39

Repent means, you're going to say what it is, the same thing I'm saying. Turn around and go the opposite direction.

01:04:45

180 degree turn in lifestyle, thinking, all those things. That's what repent means.

01:04:50

Not I'm sorry, which there's a lot of I'm sorry that goes along with repenting, I need forgiveness.

01:04:56

But repent means to change the direction in which you are traveling, to turn around, to go the opposite. So you're headed for death in sin and depravity, now you're gonna turn around, you're heading for righteousness, life, and eternity with Christ.

01:05:08

Exactly. Repentance, there's two different words for it. You got the Hebrew word that I always forget, and then you have the

01:05:14

Greek word metanoia. Metanoia, and this is what even our westernized, Christianized culture always wants to go with.

01:05:20

It's just change your mind, man. You just need to change your mind, change your perspective, change your lens.

01:05:25

No, you need to change your life. You need to die. That's really what it is. And that's why even, just to put a plug,

01:05:32

I love the name of the podcast, Dead Men Walking, because that's literally what we are. We are dead men and women, for the sisters out there.

01:05:39

We are dead people walking because we have been made alive again in Christ Jesus. Amen, brother.

01:05:46

And so in that, we have been given new life because we turn, we have to change our mind.

01:05:53

Absolutely. Because the first commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all of your mind.

01:06:00

So in that, that's where repentance, it has to be that turn towards actually loving

01:06:05

God because before we come to salvation, we are at enmity with God, we are his enemy, and whether we want to admit it or not, we hate him.

01:06:13

We don't want nothing to do with him. We don't want to come underneath his leadership, his lordship, and have to say that we need a savior.

01:06:20

But when we come to that saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, we have to turn from all of that and accept him for who he is and turn towards him.

01:06:29

And that's when we begin that run. And it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

01:06:35

We're not gonna, you're not gonna get it right all in the beginning, even in my own life. I said the sinner's prayer a hundred times, but then there was that day in the shower where I had an encounter with the

01:06:47

Lord and I dropped to my knees in repentance and crying out to God realizing that I actually was a scumbag.

01:06:55

Yeah, it was a release of pride. Yes, I think, I tell people, I grew up in a Bible -believing, church -going family, said the sinner's prayer at seven and got saved at 24.

01:07:07

Yes. And people go, what? That seems weird, but the more people I talked to, especially if you grew up in a,

01:07:13

I say saved, but okay, I knew who God was, I grew up in there, but the Lord did not radically change my spirit, who

01:07:20

I was. I didn't give up my pride and all those things that went with it until I was 24.

01:07:27

Come on. And that's when I look at it, I say, okay, that's when the Lord started to work in my life and actually be able to use me.

01:07:33

I knew who God was, I could quote the Bible, I went to Bible camp and all these other things, but I truly look at the conversion at that age, which is a little weird thing to say.

01:07:42

But anyway, so you go through the door of the tabernacle, points to Jesus and John 1, we get to the altar.

01:07:52

Yep, the brazen altar, which points to the cross. The cross. It points to the work of Christ. So what else do we have in there in the outer courts?

01:07:58

Do we have anything else? There is one more thing, but first I wanna touch on one of the significances of the brazen altar.

01:08:06

Okay. So the brazen altar had five tools. Okay. And the way that that points even to the cross is

01:08:13

Jesus suffered five wounds at the cross. He had the crown of thorns forced upon his head.

01:08:20

He had the nail in each hand, the singular nail through both feet, and then he was pierced with the spear, which even for that, just to even take it back, pointing to Old Testament literature, talking about the

01:08:35

Passover lamb. So this is one of those messianic scriptures that might not even always be signified as a messianic scripture, even though it was, is when talking about Passover, when talking about what we celebrate as Easter.

01:08:47

I dislike that word. I know, me too, me too. I don't wanna - I let it slide. Look, I've redeemed the word.

01:08:53

You know, reject, receive, redeem. I've redeemed it Easter, but I know what I'm, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

01:08:58

We're celebrating the Passover lamb. And one of the things that occurred and that is spoken of when you read in Exodus chapter 12 about the different proceedings of them preparing the sacrifice for the

01:09:10

Passover lamb is that none of its legs were broken. That is a key and pivotal verse because in Roman history, one of the main things that they would do when they were crucifying someone is break their legs.

01:09:23

And it was because they were standing on a small block of wood and it's really cool. It was called the mercy seat.

01:09:30

And that is what they would use to prop their bodies up because what actually killed men on crucifixion wasn't the beating they took, they suffocated.

01:09:38

And so they would be able to push themselves up so they could still breathe. And that thing was actually called the mercy seat, which is like, that's mind blowing in and of itself.

01:09:47

So they would break the legs of the man so that it would finally cause him to strangle himself. And that didn't happen for Jesus.

01:09:55

That was literally foretelling in that moment talking about the Passover lamb in Exodus 12, that was a prophetic declaration that his bones would not be broken on the cross.

01:10:06

And I believe they're in Isaiah, it says that, right? Yeah, no bone was broken. Exactly. Pierced for our transgression.

01:10:11

And then he was pierced, which that was also a Roman custom that they would not do.

01:10:17

They did not do that to the men that they were crucifying. So even that man that day who said, you know what?

01:10:24

I'm not gonna break this dude's legs today. I'm gonna stab him with a spear instead. He was literally fulfilling two separate scriptures, which the astronomical value of somebody doing that, unless it was the work of God, is insane.

01:10:38

When you really look at it, you can crunch the numbers and it's like one in 216 ,000 chances that he would do that that specific day with that specific person, really breaking down the math.

01:10:50

It's insane to know that God prophesied that through his word over 4 ,000 years before that.

01:10:58

And we watched it come to pass in the crucifixion story of Jesus. And I'm sorry, but the

01:11:03

Jewish men that wrote those books didn't fudge the words. There was no reason for them to lie because they didn't even know at those points that they were showing through their writings the prophetic fulfillment of the word of God, which is just, it's mind blowing.

01:11:19

It is. And that's where like the things like this, it points to it and it just blows the faculties of saying like,

01:11:26

God had such a plan. Far and beyond what we even can think or imagine, just in some of the easy, there's typically 300 scriptures that point to the first coming of Jesus Christ and through his death and resurrection.

01:11:41

For his second coming, there are literally seven to eight verses for every one of the first time he came.

01:11:48

So that's literally 2 ,100 to 2 ,400 different verses that foretell of the second coming of Jesus, of his return.

01:11:56

And so God's had a plan this whole time. So you have five tools on the,

01:12:03

And you say those relate to basically the five. The five wounds and the five things, which

01:12:09

I'm gonna, I have a note on this one to make sure that I'm saying this right.

01:12:14

Because when you look up the word, because there's two words for salvation, I'm sure you've probably talked about soteria or soteriology, which is usually the study of salvation in different camps and stuff like that.

01:12:29

But there's another word, and this one gets misused a little bit. Most people hear this and they think of something else, but it's the word sozo.

01:12:38

And so sozo is another word for salvation. When you look at the Acts chapter two, verse 42, when it talks about what must a man do to be saved, the word there, it uses sozo.

01:12:49

And when you break down that word, it literally has a five -fold meaning. It can mean and point to five different things.

01:12:56

One is eternal life in Christ, the forgiveness of sin, healing, which that doesn't only point to physical healing.

01:13:04

We know that God still heals. I'm sitting here as a testimony. We - Spiritual healing. Yep, spiritual healing.

01:13:11

There is deliverance from the satanic kingdom, deliverance from demonic spirits, which that was a very, it's a real thing now, but it was also like in the first century when you got saved, you went through deliverance and you had any bad dudes that were hanging out inside of you, cast out and then entrance into the kingdom of God.

01:13:34

And so it has all these correlating things that point to the things that were bought by Christ by his death and resurrection that point to his wound.

01:13:46

And this is one of those things where like, you can take it to a weird place. I'm putting it out there because after I did the word city,

01:13:53

I was like, it has five different meanings. That's really interesting. It all depends on who you're, I think I got it from Thayer's.

01:13:59

So the Thayer's Greek lexicon, if any of you are Thayer's fans, I think it's the best lexicon out there.

01:14:05

Very, very good. You can get on your Blue Letter Bible app as well. So we, you come to the cross, you come to repentance, we come to the altar and how that points to the life of Jesus.

01:14:17

And then moving past that, the next thing that's in the outer court is the brazen or labor. So this is the place that after the priest would cut the goat or cut the sheep or cut the ox or whatever animal, if they were cutting the turtle dove in half, whatever was going on, they would go there and they would wash their hands.

01:14:36

So one of the cool things that that points to, of course, is baptism, which is one of our, it was one of the commands of Jesus.

01:14:43

Be saved and be baptized. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It's pretty much a sacrament that any denomination across the board,

01:14:53

Protestant, Roman Catholic, we all get baptism, yeah. So we can agree on that. So some cool things about the brazen labor.

01:15:01

There are no specific, there's no specific blueprint for how it's supposed to be made, which is really interesting things.

01:15:11

Now in the book. So in all that detail that Moses received, that was. It was kind of left open. It was kind of left open, okay.

01:15:16

Yeah, which is weird, right? You read when, I believe it's in 2

01:15:21

Kings. See, this is one of the things, if we were in my Bible study, I'd be doing pushups right now because I can't name this scripture.

01:15:28

I'm pretty sure it's in 2 Kings, it's talking about the temple because we all know that the Moses tabernacle eventually became the layout for not only the temple of King David and then

01:15:38

King Solomon, but then when you read in Ezekiel, you see the temple that'll be rebuilt depending on your eschatology and all those things, when it's gonna get built.

01:15:49

So it's a blueprint for all those. It's a blueprint for all those because they're all continuation looking at the heavenly sanctuary and it being on the earth with man.

01:15:59

That's God's eventual plan. He wants to dwell among his people and the temple even later on is gonna play a part during the millennial reign of Jesus.

01:16:08

When you read the different scriptures on it, and this weirds people out sometimes, the temple sacrifices resume again because they all point to Jesus.

01:16:18

They're all supposed to be that fulfillment and it's literally going to be worship lifted up to him in eternity.

01:16:24

But when looking at it, I believe it's in 2 Kings. I'll get a scripture reference later. You can add it in maybe or put it in the comments.

01:16:31

Put it in post, yeah. It's talking about it and it literally, when you look up the measurement given in the scripture, it's pi.

01:16:39

3 .14 and an infinite amount of numbers afterwards. Really? Really interesting, really weird tidbit.

01:16:45

I heard it from a man named Chuck Missler. Okay. Genius, genius man of God.

01:16:52

He was an engineer, very knowledgeable in the word and brought some things scientifically that proves some of the real crazy stuff in the

01:16:59

Bible like the day the sun stood still and stuff like that. Yeah, I love that stuff. Yeah, oh man, super good. I love when science catches up to the

01:17:06

Bible. Absolutely. And so the brazen labor, it's that place of washing and regeneration and what it points to in Christ is he is our baptizer.

01:17:21

That's what John the Baptist says. He says, there's one who's going to come after me whose sandal

01:17:26

I am not fit to tie and he is going to baptize you in the spirit and in fire but also by following the commandment of Jesus, we get baptized by water as well.

01:17:36

We can get into all the other baptism stuff on some different levels and that's well and great.

01:17:42

We'll have you back for that one. Absolutely, that'd be a fun one but looking at that, Jesus is our baptizer and so from there, we go into the next doorway.

01:17:54

Okay. We go from the outer court which this is one of the cool things with the outer court. The outer court is lit by natural light.

01:18:01

Okay. Pointing to the early portions of your spiritual walk where you're just being awakened, just being reborn to the things of God and who he is and then you enter in through the spirit and everybody has different things on baptism of the

01:18:17

Holy Spirit and when that occurs and so we don't have to dive into that but entering into the holy place, we come into the next pieces of furniture and so there's some super, super cool little things about these.

01:18:33

When you first would walk in, you're looking around and the thing lighting the room up is the menorah.

01:18:39

So many of you would probably know the menorah, possibly even the one that they use to celebrate

01:18:45

Hanukkah which has nine branches but an original menorah holds seven. Okay.

01:18:51

There's that number seven again too. Which and even, so there's a place in the

01:18:56

Bible, book of Revelation where it explains what the sevenfold significance is and it represents the sevenfold spirit of God.

01:19:05

And then you go back, you read in Isaiah 11 too where it talks about the spirit that rested on Christ during his earthly ministry.

01:19:15

People can make weird theology out of all that stuff if they want to but it points to the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the fear of the

01:19:21

Lord, of counsel, of might, of all these different things. That's who the Holy Spirit is. Sure. And when we look at the menorah, not only is he a person but one of the things that he does as we talked about a little bit earlier,

01:19:32

Psalms 119, 105, he illuminates our path, he sheds light and he illuminates the most important thing in our life other than Christ, which is also

01:19:42

Christ and that's the scripture. Until we are born again and until we have a spiritual awakening, we cannot read this scripture with natural eyes.

01:19:54

We have to read it through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When we have our eyes open,

01:20:01

I remember being a kid and trying to read the Bible and being like, what is this stuff? And then now

01:20:06

I read it and I get excited from reading genealogies and first Kings. So. Yeah, and there's a difference between having a head knowledge or having an intellectual knowledge of the scriptures and then having a spiritual knowledge of the scriptures.

01:20:20

Exactly. I know plenty of people that are not saved and do not believe who

01:20:26

Christ says he was and they have the Bible memorized or portions of it memorized and definitely understand the words.

01:20:33

I think what you're talking about is the spiritual knowledge of having your spiritual eyes opened.

01:20:39

Yes. Having that revelation, understanding that. I always relate it to, without having that spiritual revelation from the

01:20:48

Holy Spirit, because he's the author of the Bible, first of all. Yes. That'd be like me and you and a bunch of friends standing around a painting and we're all going, well,

01:20:56

I think it's this. Well, I think it's that. Well, I think it's a picture of this. And you have the artist standing right next to you and no one's asking the artist what it is.

01:21:04

Oh, maybe we should ask the person who painted it. Well, this is what it is. The Holy Spirit illuminates in that exact same way because he is the author, the finisher.

01:21:11

He is one person in the Trinity. Yes. Right, the Bible is written through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Yeah.

01:21:17

So having those spiritual eyes open, it's totally different than just having a intellectual understanding of the words in a paragraph, in a chapter, in a book of the

01:21:27

Bible. Exactly. And even going back to what we talked about earlier when we're reading the

01:21:33

Bible and you've read the same verse, one of those, the super popular verses that get cast aside and you're reading it and then there's that one day where you're going through that one thing and then the

01:21:43

Holy Spirit just takes you there and reveals it to you. And you're like, whoa! And you just get your mind blown because what he reveals to you that you had been missing.

01:21:53

And it's because he's the author and he knows exactly how to reveal it to you in that moment.

01:22:01

So some cool facts about the menorah. We touched on the whole seven branch arm thing.

01:22:07

So it was made out of a single piece of gold. And the incredible thing is that the base of it would be challah.

01:22:16

So the way it was formed and fashioned outward, it was hemmed and twisted and moved into 66 specific components.

01:22:28

Really? Yes, which is one of the craziest things when you look into it. It has three specific things.

01:22:35

It's supposed to be almonds. So it has a seed, it has, I can't remember the exact names for the three different components.

01:22:44

There's the three again, the three different components and it comes into 66 specific pieces that come off from this one branch.

01:22:50

Now, was that very detailed as well? Yes. That's a detailed piece that was supposed to be made.

01:22:56

Very detailed. And so when we look at the Bible, when people would question, like, did they get the canon right?

01:23:03

Yeah. I think it was kind of foretold when you look at the one thing that is supposed to represent the word of God.

01:23:10

If the word of God is the thing that lights our path, yes, and illuminates it.

01:23:15

And it literally is the person of the Holy Spirit while also being Jesus because they are one.

01:23:21

Yet, that whole mystery, but you look at that, God made no mistake.

01:23:28

Certain books didn't make it because they weren't supposed to make it. Absolutely. There's 66 books there for a very specific reason.

01:23:34

Each one of them point collectively to Jesus, to his work. And it's incredible just seeing that like that when

01:23:42

I read about that and really studied it out because even in Jerusalem, there is a

01:23:47

Messianic Jewish man who has built in the specific framework of all of the pieces of the tabernacle furniture, everything to prepare for when the

01:24:00

Messiah returns. He has it all made and certain components of it are around Jerusalem.

01:24:06

And I actually got to see the menorah that he built in person. It was gorgeous. It was huge.

01:24:12

It's massive. And it's just so intricate and just so, it was so cool.

01:24:18

So you have the menorah in the, where are we at right now? We're inside -

01:24:24

The Holy Place. The Holy Place. We're not in the Holy of Holies yet. We're in the Holy Place. You have the menorah and then you also have the table of showbread, correct?

01:24:30

Yes. So the table of showbread would hold 12 loaves of bread that signify the 12 tribes of Israel.

01:24:38

And even look in the components of the church because we are engrafted in, it also kind of points to the 12 apostles, the foundational layer that Jesus used to take the message into all the world, which they were all

01:24:52

Jewish men, which is cool. So both of those 12s are foundations that are found in Jewish culture with Jewish men.

01:25:01

And so the table of showbread, how it points to Jesus is the words that he gives us in John chapter six,

01:25:08

I am the bread of life. I am the one who gives and sustains.

01:25:14

I am the one whom you are called to feed from. And so how it points to him, that's where we get our sustenance.

01:25:21

That's where we feed from. Because in one of the cool things, so mere men, us who weren't a part of the

01:25:28

Levitical priesthood, we were not supposed to eat that bread. That was only for the priests. Everything inside the

01:25:33

Holy Place is for priests only. And so when they would get in there, they feed from the bread, that was only supposed to be for them.

01:25:42

But you can read a story of David. I believe it's after the occurrence at Ziklag and he's on the run.

01:25:49

They're chasing down the guys that tore through the village. I think it was the Philistines. And he's chasing them down.

01:25:55

He stops in a temple and goes in and eats the showbread. Which in their, yes.

01:26:02

Which in their culture, that was not okay. Even him being the king, it was not okay.

01:26:10

But one of the things that that did was actually that was another type pointing to Christ because he was going to be a king who also had priestly duties.

01:26:20

Yes. And he - And priestly title. To be able to do that. Exactly. He was suitable. And so that's one of those cool, again, one of those things in the scripture that without having the

01:26:32

Jewish mindset in that. Yeah. I never even thought of that. Yeah. I've read that a few times.

01:26:38

Yeah. And that's where we can kind of miss that stuff, especially in Western culture because we're just not taught that way.

01:26:45

We don't always think about it that way. And so that's one of the things I kind of love about this stuff. You just have to be super balanced and looking through the scriptures to be able to find

01:26:54

God writes a plumb line from Genesis to Revelation where he reveals himself in all of these things.

01:27:01

And so the showbread, it always was pointing because even when

01:27:07

Jesus says when he's being tempted by the devil and he said, and he tries to get him to turn the bread into or the rocks into bread, he says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every mouth that, or by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, he was quoting

01:27:21

Deuteronomy. Yeah. And so even that, like he's pointing back and saying like, it was talking about me all the way back there because even then they were crying and they had bread, but what they weren't crying and looking for were from the words of God himself who was in their midst.

01:27:38

Yeah. Who was pointing to me. Yeah. Right now, even though I was saying it back then to you,

01:27:43

I was pointing to me. Yeah. It's a crazy paradigm. You look through the whole Bible and sometimes

01:27:48

I feel we can just kind of read in to the Bible and think that it's about us when in fact the

01:27:54

Bible is just about Christ from Genesis to the maps. Yeah. Beginning then. As my old Southern Baptist preacher friend, you said

01:28:01

Genesis to the maps. The whole Bible is about Christ, you know? And then even you saying about how

01:28:06

David eating the show bread and that even being a prophet, you can call it whatever you want, prophetic sign or foretelling of how

01:28:13

Christ would have priestly duties and kingly duties. And like you said, was then able and allowed to eat that bread.

01:28:20

You know, we do that far too often, I think, sometimes in Bible stories too, you know?

01:28:28

One of the famous ones that really gets twisted around is David and Goliath. And if you really do a character study on that and what that's about, you know, so many times we hear it preached, you know, what's the

01:28:39

Goliath in your life? And you're the David and you can overcome it, which is fine. Yeah. That can encourage people if they're going through a valley in their life and things like that.

01:28:46

But when you actually look that David is actually Christ in that story. Yes. Okay. Come on.

01:28:53

Goliath is Satan. We're the scared Israelites on the side in that story, unfortunately. Okay.

01:28:58

We're the ones. And you look at the words used for when it says he came at him with a male of scales.

01:29:03

It was actually like dragon scales or snake scales.

01:29:09

And the fact that he cut off the head was very significant. From the very beginning when

01:29:15

Satan tempted Eve and he thought he got one over on us and then

01:29:21

God comes down and goes, oh yeah, you think, you know, you think the exact thing that is going to conquer my creation, man,

01:29:28

I'm actually going to have, I'm going to have the conqueror Christ come from the seat of man. Yes. And from that day, he's going to be the head crusher of you,

01:29:37

Satan. So you read, you read, yeah, you read David and Goliath and you actually see David as a prophetic

01:29:43

Christ slaying Satan, crushing his head. And you go, man, I liked that story.

01:29:49

Give me chills when I see that. Even that story is reflective of Christ to come.

01:29:55

Exactly. When, you know, I feel it does a disservice when we just turn it into, well, you know, Goliath is your car payment and you're, you know, and you're

01:30:07

David and you can overcome that with whatever, whatever, you know, it is. Which, like I said, you know, if it encourages someone, that's great.

01:30:14

But just the fact that story, just everything in the Bible just points to Christ. There was a very specific plan before the foundations of the world.

01:30:22

There was a plan of redemption for our sins. And it's a beautiful thing because it just, it allows you to look at the

01:30:27

Lord and go so sovereign, so mighty, so glorious, powerful, righteous, and merciful was he that he had a plan of redemption from us in the beginning of time.

01:30:36

And like, these are the things that when we read the story of the men walking to a mass after the resurrection of Christ, where they're walking with him and they're sitting there talking about the scriptures, most people, we don't realize they're not talking about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, guys.

01:30:53

They're not talking about 2 Corinthians, Titus, 1 Timothy, Philemon, or Revelation. They're talking about the

01:30:59

Torah. And so when they're sitting there walking and then Jesus reveals himself to them through the conversation that they're having and shows them that he is the

01:31:09

Messiah, it's because he's revealing them to, he's revealing himself to them through the

01:31:16

Old Testament. He's revealing himself to them as the Messiah from the things they were talking about.

01:31:21

And that's why we look, whoever wrote the book of Hebrews even said, he came in the whole volume of the book.

01:31:29

He came from Genesis to Revelation and it all speaks about him. Whether you're reading Obadiah, which is only 27 verses.

01:31:37

If you're reading the book of Jude, which is 24. My favorite book of the Bible, the book of Ruth is all about Jesus, which that would be another one

01:31:45

I'd love to come on and talk about sometime. Oh my goodness, that one is just full of so much stuff.

01:31:50

It's incredible. So, and we will, I have a feeling you're gonna be hanging out for a little bit, a couple episodes, because we could just keep going and going on this stuff.

01:32:02

But so then, so we have the realization of Jesus in the showbread and then do we have anything else in the holy place?

01:32:11

So there's one more piece of furniture that's in the holy place. And that is the altar of incense.

01:32:16

So this is the one piece that this is actually supposed to be in the holy of holies, but it can't be.

01:32:23

And the reason why everybody, especially anybody that's familiar with the 24 seven prayer movement, the fire on the altar shall never go out,

01:32:34

Leviticus 6 .13. What it's talking about is the altar of incense. So on that altar, there is constantly incense burning that is going up to the throne of God.

01:32:45

When you read Revelation chapter four, where it talks about the bowls being the incense with the prayers of the saints, that has that implication.

01:32:56

But what that points to, because, and I forgot to touch on this one, with the menorah,

01:33:01

Jesus said, I am the light. In John, it's one of those verses in the book, one of those iconic

01:33:11

I am statements. I am the light of the world. And then I am the bread of life.

01:33:17

When we look at that, it talks about it all through Hebrews chapters seven, through pretty much the rest of the book about Jesus being our high priest.

01:33:25

And that is what the altar of incense is all about, is his mediation as our high priest next to the throne of God himself right now in heaven as a man still bearing the wounds of the cross.

01:33:40

Like next to God on the throne, sitting there making mediation on behalf of humanity right now in this moment.

01:33:49

And eternally, yeah. And we look at that, like it's incredible for one, because we have a high priest who, from the order of Melchizedek, who can know what we're going through and pray for us accordingly.

01:34:03

Praying prayers that we probably aren't even praying for ourselves, because either we're too prideful, we're not asking

01:34:09

God what we should pray for, we're not seeing things, all those stuff, but Jesus knows. And I love the altar of incense, just in knowing that Jesus was probably praying for me long before I ever did.

01:34:24

Even long before my mom ever did, knowing that he had a plan for my life to redeem me from my own pit and had a plan whenever it came to pass, like that just brings me so much hope knowing that he is my mediator.

01:34:43

He is the one standing there beside the Lord. And even now for people that don't know

01:34:49

Christ, even this time, knowing that we have a high priest praying for us is incredible because even looking, when we were watching the

01:34:59

Passion the other day, some of this stuff occurred to me because Caiaphas, the guy that was supposed to be going in once a year, which we'll talk about this in a moment, go into the most holy place, the

01:35:12

Holy of Holies. If he went in there with any sin, you drop dead. You're done. The shell bread might be your last meal.

01:35:18

Yes. And when you look at that, they had high priests on tap because every year, and this is the whole debatable thing on if you think when

01:35:30

Jesus, when the veil tore, if the Ark of the Covenant was actually there or if it was somewhere else because of during the reign of King Solomon, it disappeared somewhere.

01:35:40

It depends on people's timeline for all that stuff. But - I just assumed it was there. Is there like scholarly debate about whether it was there or not?

01:35:47

There is. We'll touch on it in a minute when we jump into that. But if the high priest was going in there, like there was a very good chance that that man was dropping dead that day.

01:35:58

And so even you read the story in the Garden of Gethsemane when, cause this is like one of those high priest moments, the guy that was supposed to take over for Caiaphas is the one whom

01:36:09

Peter cut his ear off. Really? Yeah. Micah or whatever. I can't think of his name off the top of my head.

01:36:16

But when he cut his ear off, he actually took away his opportunity to be the high priest because the high priest could not have any deformity on his body.

01:36:26

He couldn't have anything wrong physically with him. So when Peter cut his ear off, he literally took away his opportunity to be the high priest when

01:36:35

Caiaphas no longer was high priest. Wait, didn't Jesus heal his ear though? He did.

01:36:40

And so when we know that like Jesus in that moment restored him even to that opportunity.

01:36:47

And who knows that we won't see that man in heaven someday when we get to enter into glory and see all the saints that went before us.

01:36:56

What life -changing moment that could have produced because like he was a Jewish man.

01:37:02

He knew the implications in that moment and that Jesus was so kind as they're getting ready to take him off and beat him and whip him and scourge him and all those things.

01:37:12

He still healed the dude's ear. Like that is the God that we serve. He is so merciful and so good and so kind even when we don't deserve it.

01:37:22

Absolutely. Oh my goodness. From the line of high priests that we're essentially trying to kill him. Yeah. Stuff like that is just mind -blowing to me.

01:37:32

I love it. So you have the, no, I agree, amen. So you have the incense. Do we have anything else in there besides the menorah, the table of showbread and incense?

01:37:42

Nope, those are the only three, which is, go ahead. I was just gonna say, so then past that, there is a curtain, correct?

01:37:51

Into the Holy of Holies? The Holy of Holies. And this is the one when we read when Jesus was crucified, it says that the veil was torn.

01:38:00

This was the veil. And it was pretty thick too. It was like a, it was well -guarded, I would say, right? I mean, you couldn't just like trip and fall into the

01:38:07

Holy of Holies. No. There was a separation between the ark and even that inner holy place.

01:38:13

Exactly. It was actually made of four. So three layers too. To get to the Holy of Holies.

01:38:19

Outer, inner, and - Yes, exactly. Inner, inner. There's that three again, that Trinitarian, that, you know.

01:38:26

Yes, and even when you think about the holy place, that is illuminated by the light of the menorah, which is super cool, which is the illumination, yes, of Jesus and of his spirit to illuminate the things of God to us.

01:38:41

It's beautiful. The table of showbread speaks of community, of the body, of what was going to be extended from him and the whole point and purpose behind it.

01:38:51

So you almost have three steps to the Holy of Holies. Inside of the second step, three things that are representative of Christ and his role to the

01:39:01

Father, to the Holy of Holies. It's like it all just kind of just lines up. Yes. That's so cool.

01:39:06

Isn't it? Like, I've been talking about this stuff for five years and still every time

01:39:12

I do, it just blows my mind. And it was even really cool when you had messaged me about this because I just started walking through this study with a couple of guys on a

01:39:22

Zoom Bible study on Sunday afternoons because it was a gentleman I worked with when I worked at Cherry Street Mission who was like, dude,

01:39:29

I know I remember you talking about this and I want to dig deep and do it again. And so we've been working through it.

01:39:36

So now we're going to jump in. This is like the fun part. This is one of my favorite ones. Okay. So now we're going into the

01:39:41

Holy of Holies. The place where the presence of God would dwell with his people in the wilderness.

01:39:47

Okay. It was incredible. So again, talking about the high priest for a moment, he, when he would go in there, he went in one time a year during the

01:39:56

Feast of Tabernacles, which one more cool thing I want to drop for you guys to go and study out there actually is biblical and scholarly evidence that says that Jesus was born on the

01:40:08

Feast of Tabernacles. Really? Yes. I would encourage you guys. There's a way where they actually look at the life of Zechariah, his uncle, who is the father of John the

01:40:18

Baptist and his priestly cycles that show that John the Baptist was likely born around the

01:40:23

Feast of Passover. And in that six months later is when Jesus was born. And when is that?

01:40:29

Do you know what month that is? Or is that like springtime or is that fall? So for the

01:40:35

Feast of Tabernacles is in our Gregorian calendar because the

01:40:40

Jewish people run off a different calendar than we do. Their calendar is only 360 days.

01:40:45

Ours is 365. They have a weird thing to account for leap years that was put in during the time of Hezekiah.

01:40:52

Okay. Really, really cool stuff to dig into. But so it would be around September, October. Okay.

01:40:58

Yes. There's even, so I recently actually read an article about it that they think that Jesus was born on September 11th of 3

01:41:08

BC. Yeah, I've heard that too. Yes. That that's kind of where we're gathering now. Yes.

01:41:15

From scholarly, you know what I mean? When you're looking at different works. Yep, and just because they can actually trace back all of the days and all these things.

01:41:22

So it pointing back to that, that's why to jump off on a tangent for a second, that's why he was born in a manger, people.

01:41:30

It wasn't literally a manger. It was actually a Sukkoth, which is the tabernacle that they erect during the

01:41:36

Feast of Tabernacles. When they had no room in the inn, they jumped into an abandoned Sukkoth, and that was where it looks like the baby

01:41:43

Jesus was born, which is just super cool. Just there, and like that even goes back to that whole

01:41:49

John 1 14, that the word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and he came down during the

01:41:56

Feast of Tabernacles. So, you know, we as humans read that story and go, oh, he wasn't born in his home, and God goes, oh no, he was born in his home, in his tabernacle.

01:42:09

In his, he was born, as God, the Father, you know, Christ, his Son, he was born in his home.

01:42:15

He was born, he couldn't have been born in a more perfect place then. That, ah.

01:42:21

Isn't that awesome? Man, so recently the Lord's really been, I've been studying, as I've been restudying all this,

01:42:26

I've been looking at how it also points to the feasts, the original Jewish feasts, so that just even ties more into some stuff

01:42:33

I've been studying. And then when he's 12, right, and he says, I'm in my father's house, I'm right where I should be. Dude. This is where I, this is my natural state.

01:42:40

This is what, you know, and then opens up in the beginning of the history into Isaiah and talking about himself, it's like he knew who he was.

01:42:47

Yes, he was not unbeknownst to himself that he was the Mashiach Nagid, that he was the one who is called to be the anointed one, the

01:42:57

Messiah, who is coming for the restoration of humanity. Oh, it's beautiful.

01:43:03

He knew who he was, peeps. Yeah. It was not unbeknownst to him. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to think that he was standing on top of the bath water when

01:43:11

Mary's trying to give him a bath. Right. If you guys have seen that meme on Facebook, it's a good one. Yeah. But yeah, he knew.

01:43:18

And so looking into the holy of holies. Yeah. Oh, I love this stuff.

01:43:26

I just, I get super nerdy, geeked out when I get to talk about this. So there are two pieces of furniture that are in the holy of holies.

01:43:36

The first one, which we touched on it a little bit, talking about the crucifixion, is the mercy seat. Okay. So most people, when we think of the

01:43:44

Ark of the Covenant, they put the Ark of the Covenant and the mercy seat together and think that they're just one part in the same.

01:43:50

Okay. But they're actually two entirely significant pieces of furniture. So, and I keep using the word furniture for a very specific reason that I'll touch on at the end.

01:44:01

Which I mean, that's what the Bible calls it, but it has a cool correlation to a teaching of Jesus that I think is important.

01:44:07

Okay. So I'm gonna plug it at the end. Okay. But so the mercy seat is a piece of pure gold and on it are erected two statues of seraphim.

01:44:19

And so this on top of the mercy seat is where the presence of God would dwell in the

01:44:26

Holy of Holies. Okay. That is where the presence of God would illuminate the whole room.

01:44:32

Okay. Like the high priest would walk in there and he had to sprinkle blood on that thing. He didn't do it in the dark.

01:44:38

And it was because the presence of God was literally in the place with him and illuminated it.

01:44:44

Just like when we read in the book of Revelation, when it talks about in Revelation 21 and 22 about what the new heaven, the new earth will be like and what the restored temple will be like, it says that there is no darkness there, that the light of Christ literally emanates and lights everything in creation.

01:45:02

Wow. Like that, the speed of light no longer matters anymore.

01:45:08

It goes everywhere all the time. And so that is eventually pointing to, because there's a verse that,

01:45:16

I wanna say it's in Hebrews. We can boldly approach the throne of grace, the throne of mercy.

01:45:24

And so that's actually pointing to Jesus in his role as our judge someday.

01:45:31

That one day we are all going to stand before him. And yes, we are covered by the blood of Jesus.

01:45:37

Our sins have been atoned for, but we are still going to be judged on some things. We're still going to be judged on the words that we use.

01:45:45

We're still going to be judged on the lives that we lived after we have come to know Christ, not to be cast aside because of sin, but to actually judge the fruit of our lives because there, and it talks, there's seven different crowns that are going to be bestowed to the saints of God for their lives that they lived in the certain, like if you're martyred, like people ask me what my five -year plan is.

01:46:09

My wife gets mad when I say this, but I say martyred in a foreign country. And I'm kinda serious.

01:46:14

Like I'm not going to be mad if I got the opportunity to go preach the gospel and I ran and somebody cut my head off.

01:46:20

Like I would get to die doing what I love. And hopefully that person would come to Christ afterwards.

01:46:26

But like that's the highest honor is to get to die.

01:46:32

It's kind of the attitude we should have. Exactly. It's kind of the attitude that a lot of Christians outside of Western Christianity have.

01:46:42

Yes. It's not a lot of attitude that you find here in the United States or Canada, or, you know, kind of in this,

01:46:49

I would say civilized air quotes in the developed world because we just have, we have so many freedoms and luxuries that just blind us to what it is to mean to truly serve

01:47:00

Christ and to actual sacrifice for Him. Exactly. You know, we think we're sacrificing for Christ when we go to two church services in a week and it's like, oh, you know, it was so backwards here.

01:47:13

It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking is what it is. It really is. Cause you just go, geez, don't ever,

01:47:18

I don't ever want to be a David that counts my own men. And we slip into that so easily because we're afforded.

01:47:24

So, and we do, we have, I mean, you and I, we have, I told, I said this on the last podcast too, you know, if you make more than $27 ,000 in the

01:47:34

United States, you're in the global 1%. There's 99, there's 7 .2 billion people poorer than you.

01:47:39

And we just forget, we slip so into complaining and materialism and all these things when in fact, the

01:47:46

Bible calls us just to give up our life for Him. That's the, you know, obedience, sacrifice, and ultimately if we would give our life for Him, that's the least we could do for someone who gave his life for us.

01:47:56

Exactly. And that's where like, it's so key, so pivotal, so important to have a true realization of what this

01:48:07

Christian life is all about. It is not to become your best you. It's not to live your best life, which

01:48:14

I mean like, I'd say like when we opened the podcast, Craig asked me how

01:48:20

I'm doing, and I said, I'm living the dream. And most people ask me that, and I give everybody that response.

01:48:26

And the reason why people ask me like, are you sure? Like, this is a dream to you? And I'm like, yes, this is a dream because I know my

01:48:33

God. I know that my Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. That word for truth there,

01:48:39

I can't say the Greek word. I'm not real good at Greek yet, but that word for truth there literally means reality.

01:48:47

The I am is reality. And so if you're a Matrix fan, we're in the

01:48:54

Matrix, technically. Like this life is something that God is using while we're here, but the true reality behind this is eternity.

01:49:06

It is eternity either with God or without him. And so I am living the dream.

01:49:12

I know my God. I am married with a beautiful wife, a great stepson.

01:49:18

I have an incredible job where I get to minister and shepherd to people, selling them great products.

01:49:26

And like you just said, I'm part of the 1 % within the world. I am so insanely blessed, but not by what

01:49:34

I have materially, but by what God has truly given me that actually matters.

01:49:40

That's how I can say I'm living the dream. Salvation and eternal life. There's nothing better to know where I'm going to go when my eyes closed the last time.

01:49:49

Absolutely. I told someone this recently. I said, there's so much fear with this whole coronavirus and COVID -19 and all this stuff.

01:50:00

And I just feel sad because there's not a whole lot of, there's room for wisdom and discernment and to take precautions and all that, right?

01:50:08

God calls us to be wise and discerning. But I don't live a daily fear because I go, what's the worst that can happen?

01:50:15

I go to glory. And look at my family would be sad, I'm sure, and vice versa if the

01:50:21

Lord took them from me. But at the same time, the ultimate thing that happens is

01:50:27

I get to meet my creator. Yeah, we get to be with him. And I would definitely agree on that too from the flip side for people that are so fearful for what's going on around us.

01:50:39

And you hear like, oh man, where's this at in the Bible? And to be fearful that this would point to the return of Jesus.

01:50:46

I'm ready for that dude to come back. I'm not worried about my 401k.

01:50:51

Like I'm gonna make sure that I'm being responsible, being wise, but I'm not trying to set up so that I am just gonna be perfectly hunky -dory here on this side of the earth and not worrying about the return of Jesus.

01:51:04

I'd much rather him come back. I'm not trying to worry about furthering my career or any of that.

01:51:10

Like if the God, if the Lord wills it during this time, absolutely, but my hope is in the return of Christ and him doing what he says he's going to do and him coming back and ruling and reigning from Jerusalem and ushering in eternity.

01:51:25

And whether I get to go and be with him beforehand or I get to be here when he comes back, that's what

01:51:30

I'm ready for. That's what I'm hoping for. And I think this has been an opportunity for the body of Christ to really dig in and really find out.

01:51:40

I got to share this on a devotional for church about what's your hope in? Because in the midst of chaos and trial and tribulation, what are you putting your hope in?

01:51:49

Are you putting your hope in Jesus? Are you putting your hope in a vaccine or things that are going to make it so that life can go back to life as usual?

01:51:58

Because I'm - And the key there is putting your hope in. Not saying something is, a vaccine is good or bad.

01:52:05

It's saying, what are you putting your hope in? Luther said it so eloquently. He said, whatever your heart clings to in times of trouble, that's who your

01:52:13

God truly is. That's what your God is. And it's so true that in times of need and trouble, whatever you're clinging to, your money, your relationship, your material things, well, then that's really your

01:52:23

God. Exactly. And I think it's also good to your point is prepare for the journey that you're going on.

01:52:31

No one gets into a plane and starts building a bunk bed. I'm only here for four hours, three hours till the flight ends.

01:52:37

And so many Christians are building a bunk bed when their life is like a vapor, Ecclesiastes says.

01:52:43

Exactly. We're here for a moment and then we're onto eternity. But yeah, let's get back around to the

01:52:50

Holy of the Holies. Cause I know you got some stuff to say there and boy, we can just chat it up. We're getting close to two hours here, but I'm sure everyone listening doesn't mind because you're so energetic and informational about this.

01:53:00

But so let's talk about the Holy of Holies then. So we have the mercy seat made out of gold. We're illuminated and it's where the spirit of God dwelled.

01:53:08

Yeah, and the cool thing that it points to, it's got the seraphim there. When you read the accounts of Isaiah in Isaiah six, where he is taken up into a throne room encounter with God, or you read in Revelation, he's surrounded by the seraphim who are crying out, holy, holy, holy.

01:53:24

So that's even pointing again, it's a picture of the heavenly sanctuary where God dwells.

01:53:30

Trinity of Holies as well too. Yes. Holy's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that stuff.

01:53:38

So now we're gonna get into the other threefold thing that's in the Ark of the Covenant. So there is definitely some mystery to the

01:53:46

Ark of the Covenant and where it's at because it disappeared. So some people have a different timeline to when it disappeared.

01:53:54

The one I have, there's a bunch of different theories out there, just like we have tons of different doctrine and tons of different ideas and thoughts.

01:54:03

But some believe that it actually disappeared during the time of Solomon because of a war that broke out after his kingdom ended and his kingship ended.

01:54:15

Which was also kind of the end of the golden age of Israel too. Yes. It kind of ended with Solomon, which would be kind of be weird if it did.

01:54:22

It's kind of correlates with - Yes. Favor or whatever you want to call it, but - Absolutely. Because we see where the

01:54:28

Ark of the Covenant was, that was where the favor of God was. Absolutely. That's where his presence was, where he would dwell with his people.

01:54:35

So what's the other theory? That it was destroyed during the siege of Rome in AD 70.

01:54:42

Yep, which is another one where it could. I honestly point to the theory that Solomon moved it and hit it.

01:54:51

And there's a reason why, which I'll bridge to in a moment here. So the theory is because Solomon had a really great relationship with the

01:55:00

Ethiopian queen. Okay. I can't think of what her name is right now. That she sent him a bunch of gold and all that kind of stuff.

01:55:10

Queen of Sheba? No. No. It starts with a C. I know it's not Cleopatra.

01:55:16

I can't remember. Yeah. But he, it's even people think that there was a connection there, a love affair, stuff like that.

01:55:25

You know Solomon, 700 wives, three concubines. Yeah. But so some people believe that the

01:55:33

Ark of the Covenant was actually taken to Ethiopia to be hidden. And so one of the reasons why is in Jewish tradition and heritage, they believe that the

01:55:43

Ark of the Covenant will be brought back when the Messiah returns. And so the interesting thing about that is when we look in the book of Acts, when people hear the story of Philip, the thing that always jumps out to him was his transportation.

01:55:58

Like he teleported into this place and all of a sudden ran into this dude, which yeah, that's cool. Like if that's what

01:56:04

God did, that's cool. But the even cooler part of the story is his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch.

01:56:10

So the Ethiopian eunuch, for some reason, traveled all the way up to Jerusalem and got confused because the

01:56:18

Messiah had been crucified. He was very confused. And so he's riding back and he's trying to figure out the confusion behind the

01:56:27

Messiah's crucifixion because he was sent there because they heard that the

01:56:33

Messiah had come. And so then he's going back and he's reading Isaiah 58 and then

01:56:38

Philip ministers to him, shares the gospel with him, shares about Jesus with him and that Jesus was the

01:56:45

Messiah and he was resurrected and went to heaven. And then the

01:56:50

Ethiopian eunuch is saved and baptized. And so there's a correlation there that the

01:56:58

Ethiopian people are hiding the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia until the return of Jesus a second time.

01:57:05

And so there's scholarly research and different things that have pointed that that is why he was there and why that story is even in the

01:57:14

Bible, that he was going up to verify that the Messiah had come and if they needed to bring the

01:57:19

Ark of the Covenant from Ethiopia back to Jerusalem, which is incredible, super cool because there's so many really interesting ties with the early

01:57:28

Christian church in Ethiopia, some of the scholarly evidence, different things like that. It's even pondered that Jesus, when him,

01:57:37

Joseph and Mary, as foretold by scripture in the Old Testament, fled to Egypt that they actually stopped at a temple that was erected in Ethiopia.

01:57:48

And now you gotta be careful with things talking about Jesus's early life. You don't wanna get into the weird gospel of St.

01:57:55

Thomas Aquinas and some of those weird stuff, but there is historical evidence pointing that he stopped in Ethiopia during one of the feasts while they were on their travels to Egypt to bring sacrifice to the

01:58:08

Lord in Ethiopia, which that would be interesting if the Ark of the Covenant actually was there.

01:58:14

It's such a weird tie to that. And then, like you said, even like St. Thomas, I look at canonized and then

01:58:22

I look at historical. I have no problem with, I've read the book of Adam and Eve, the book of Enoch, the book of St.

01:58:27

Thomas. They're not canonical, but they're definitely historical references to it. And they can, in study, they're good for aiding to, especially when you read

01:58:36

Enoch, you're just like, whoa, that book is nuts, man. So many crazy things in there. But a lot of -

01:58:43

And in the Ethiopian church, actually, in their canonization of scripture in the first century, Enoch was included in their canonized bible, which is interesting, just because you brought it up.

01:58:53

And there's, and a lot of secular biologists now and anthropologists say that humans essentially started in the area of Ethiopia.

01:59:07

That's where the cradle of civilization was. So how funny that, I don't know, not that I'm saying one way or another,

01:59:13

I don't know where humans kind of started from, but that'd be really funny that the birthplace of humankind is also where the covenant might just be sitting, waiting for the return of Christ, who then is the birthplace of the new heaven and the new earth.

01:59:32

Kind of all comes full circle if it is. Interesting conjecture, right? Yeah, no, absolutely. I love thinking about that kind of stuff, because you go,

01:59:39

I don't really know 100%, can't prove it, but God knows. And I don't think there's any coincidences with God.

01:59:45

Exactly. As the rabbis say, coincidence is not a kosher word. It's not a kosher word, yeah.

01:59:51

And like that proves that God is so intentional with the scripture. If that does end up being the case, like that is a clear reason why we got the story of Philip, not because of his transportation in the spirit, which is cool.

02:00:05

Like if God did that, that's sweet. But at the same time, God so intricately thought that out to send

02:00:12

Philip there to minister to that man, get him saved, and then send him back to his people, which probably started a revival in Ethiopia, because by the time the apostles got down there,

02:00:22

I believe through historical record, I could be wrong on this. I haven't studied it out well enough, but they already found believers in Christ there.

02:00:31

And so that man doing the same thing that the Gadarene maniac did when he went and discipled the 10 cities, preparing them for Christ to come and minister there, he went down and spread the gospel, which is just powerful.

02:00:46

But now we'll jump back to the Ark of the Covenant because we kind of jumped off on a rabbit trail, but it's good stuff, man.

02:00:53

And this is where studying the Bible is supposed to be fun. Like you find all these cool, crazy rabbit trails and just again, and I know

02:01:02

Greg definitely talks about this, just being careful what you subject yourself to, what you read, and always making sure to balance it with the word of God.

02:01:11

We always wanna test everything against the word because the word is our ultimate truth. It's the thing that's always going to point back to Jesus, essentially.

02:01:21

And so the fun stuff, when we look at the Ark of the Covenant, there are three specific items that are actually found in the

02:01:26

Ark of the Covenant. The first one is a piece of manna that's in a glass jar from when the children of Israel were in the wilderness.

02:01:35

So think, this is one of those things where I love to really like get weird. Right now, if the

02:01:40

Ark of the Covenant is still like well and good in the world, like this makes me blank out because I just think about this stuff sometimes and it blows me away.

02:01:50

That means right now there is a piece of bread on the earth that God produced in heaven and grew on the ground in the dew of the earth almost 6 ,000 years ago.

02:02:02

And it's preserved in a glass jar to display to the world that is sitting somewhere right now.

02:02:08

The bread of angels literally is sitting somewhere right now. Like that's mind -blowing.

02:02:15

Then we look, another cool story, Old Testament story. The next thing that's in there is the

02:02:21

Rod of Aaron. So, and if you guys know the story of the Rod of Aaron, there came a time when some of the followers with Moses and with Aaron while they're traveling in the wilderness got fed up.

02:02:34

They didn't like that Aaron got to be the priest. They were jealous and they tried to challenge him and they tried to challenge

02:02:40

God. And God was like, okay, you guys all, all the 12 tribes, y 'all pick a leader and y 'all pick a branch and we're just gonna set them all down.

02:02:50

And then the morning, whichever one budded, that is who I choose to be priest. So they all get excited.

02:02:55

They're like, okay, yeah, we're gonna cut our branches. We're gonna lay it all down. And then they come in and the thing to bear in mind is that none of these branches were connected to anything, but they come in and a miracle had occurred because Aaron's rod budded.

02:03:08

Yep. It had leaves and buds on it. None of the rest of them did.

02:03:13

The rest of them left salty, but they recognized again, the priestly anointing that was on Aaron to be the high priest over the nation of Israel at that time.

02:03:23

And so in the Ark of the Covenant, after Aaron's passing, his rod went in there. So one of the cool things, there's no specification for the length of the rod in scripture, but just from the way they made them, it actually doesn't fit.

02:03:39

So it's kind of foretelling of the priestly role of Jesus that it can't be put in a box.

02:03:46

It actually overextends the boxes that we try to put it in. That's one of those fun little ones where you can kind of put some conjecture on it and say like, hmm, that's cool.

02:03:57

And then the last piece. Yeah, it wouldn't fit into the box of what even the Jews thought a Messiah was going to be.

02:04:02

Exactly. Or what we think it is to this day. Yes, because even for the Jews, all they thought they were planning and hoping the

02:04:09

Messiah was going to be is he was just gonna come overthrow Rome. Yep. He's gonna set them free.

02:04:14

A political savior. Yeah, and not looking for the one that was spoken of in Isaiah 53, which in their culture, they don't even read it.

02:04:22

They won't talk about that verse of scripture, but it actually talks about the suffering servant, how he would come, how he would bear our iniquities, how he would be beaten and how he would be pierced, all those things.

02:04:35

That's a hard one for the Jewish people to talk about. It's actually a very, very small minority of Orthodox Jews that believe in basically the suffering

02:04:45

Messiah. Yes. And Messiah, they call it. Yep. I have a friend that has studied this and it's so crazy because they're almost even a little bit closer.

02:04:54

They believe in a suffering Messiah, but they don't, they're agnostic on whether it was Christ or not.

02:05:00

Yep. But it's very minor. Yeah. Maybe one half of one half percent of actual Orthodox Jews.

02:05:07

But there is that sect in there because they can't ignore it. They can't. They come to the place that they're like, this actually is in our book and not just ignoring it.

02:05:17

Because with them, they follow a strict reading plan. So sometimes it allows them to just overshoot that and say,

02:05:24

I'm reading this portion of the Torah and these things. And Christians do the same thing. And I can do it too.

02:05:31

You get hooked into one little section and then you get focused on it. And the older I get, the more

02:05:37

I realize it's moderation in everything. Absolutely. You know what I mean? Because it's all the word of God. I can't be too much in the

02:05:43

Gospels. I can't be too much in the Old Testament. Can't be too much in Revelations. I can't be too much just in Proverbs or Psalms.

02:05:49

It's like, it's all good, Paul said. It's all good for edification and nourishment. Exactly.

02:05:55

And for our learning, so that we don't repeat the same stuff. So the next piece that's in there, because again, this is another excellent component.

02:06:05

It's a threefold component. And this is one that I can't wait to see it someday, is the 10 commandments on stone.

02:06:13

Okay. The ones that the finger of God had to rewrite the commandments because Moses had a fit for a moment when he clashed the other ones together.

02:06:22

Right. The two stones that the 10 commandments were written on by the finger of God are sitting somewhere on the earth right now.

02:06:33

These are the things I think about where I'm just like, it's out there somewhere. I feel like if someone found it right now, we could literally have a world war over it.

02:06:42

Oh man. Meaning just who would try to take claim to it. Absolutely. You'd have people who would want to examine it, have it.

02:06:48

I just feel like, because you've got to realize every geopolitical issue we have in the world really just dwells around who

02:06:57

Christ is and the Jewish people. Oh my goodness. It's crazy how you have people who just deny that Christ even existed, yet we have every geopolitical war is fought over Judeo -Christian religion.

02:07:12

And we base time around it, BC and AD. It's like the guy had so much, I say the guy, but Jesus Christ, the guy, the

02:07:19

God had so much influence in this world that everything is based around it, yet we have people who deny that he even existed.

02:07:28

It's just insane to me to think about. And the amount and extent that they will go to to try and ignore and say, and even the way they'll try and twist it.

02:07:39

I have heard so many claims in even the past 15 years that now Jesus was a

02:07:46

Palestinian. That he's of Palestinian descent and that he actually helps them stake their claim to the

02:07:51

Palestinian land in Israel. That was some of the stuff that I learned while I was over there that just blew my mind.

02:07:57

Those are some mental gymnastics you have to do there. And it makes you confused. I'm like, where did you come to that?

02:08:06

But Satan is constantly trying to deceive the world. Well, just twist. Yep, a little twist.

02:08:13

He started taking scripture out of context far before any of our. Well, Satan doesn't show up in a pitchfork and horns and a little pointy tail.

02:08:26

No, he makes himself look real good. He makes himself desirable. He makes himself look like the truth.

02:08:33

And it's just that little bit of skew, that little bit off, the changing of a word, a jot or a tittle.

02:08:39

I think Charles Spurgeon said, the difference, discernment is not knowing the difference between good and bad.

02:08:47

It's knowing the difference between good and holy. Ooh, come on. Good and almost good, something like that.

02:08:53

But basically making that distinction, like, yeah, if he came at you with just like that, like your

02:08:58

Hollywood devil from the 50s where he's dressed in a cape and a pitchfork, we have the morality of God seared into our conscious, the

02:09:08

Bible says, we know right from wrong. Most people would turn and run from that. But he comes always with something with truth intertwined in it.

02:09:15

He's the mimic, the fake, the twister of scripture, obviously the accuser as well.

02:09:22

And I think that's where I think it's so important for us to have the discernment of the Holy Spirit because then we can discern from half truth and full truth because half truth can look very close to full truth.

02:09:35

You only have to rationalize a little bit to go from truth to half truth. Exactly. I know we're getting off track here.

02:09:42

But so let's get back on. So and we'll wrap this up for everyone. So we're in the Holy Holies, we have the three things that point to, is there anything else in there that points to Christ?

02:09:52

So the cool thing about those three pieces, so the Ark of the Covenant is a thing that they would carry that would house the presence of God when they were changing, when they were moving.

02:10:04

And even we read the story of David with Uzzah, when David miscarries, he has them improperly carry the

02:10:11

Ark of the Covenant and he touches it and it slays him dead. People look at that and they're like, well, why God do that?

02:10:17

It's because God is very specific. He has a decency and an order placed to everything that he does.

02:10:25

There's nothing that he does without question. Everything is the way it is for a reason.

02:10:30

And looking at, and this is where, I'll try to use the best words for it.

02:10:38

The Ark of the Covenant is literally a picture of Jesus because it's the heart of his offices.

02:10:46

It's the heart of who he was in the ministry that he has. So the bread represents the prophetic ministry that Jesus carried, the message.

02:10:55

When we look at him on the earth, he was a prophet. They called him a prophet. He was said,

02:11:00

Moses said, there'll be a prophet that will come from the children of Israel that'll be greater than I, and he will come and if you do not obey his words, you will go on to destruction.

02:11:10

And so, and his message was repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, pointed to the father, that was his whole earthly ministry.

02:11:19

Outdoing the works of the devil, destroying the works of the enemy, doing all those things through the healing of people, through deliverance, through the forgiveness and remission of sin with his finished work on the cross.

02:11:32

Then we look at Aaron's rod, which represents his priestly ministry, which is the one that he fulfills now.

02:11:39

Right now, he is the high priest, as we talked about. Intercessor. Intercessor standing at the, or sitting right now.

02:11:45

Eventually, he's gonna be standing how Stephen saw him before he comes to return back. And then the last one speaks of the law, which speaks of his kingship, because when he returns, he's not coming back as a prophet.

02:11:59

He's not coming back as the lamb. He's coming back as the lion. He's coming back to rule and reign for eternity on.

02:12:07

He's coming back to judge the world. He's coming back to judge Satan, to throw him in his cage, and then to finally throw him into the lake of fire for all of eternity, him, his angels, and all of those who chose to deny him.

02:12:20

He's coming back to be the king and the judge. And so when looking at the three things that are inside the

02:12:27

Ark of the Covenant, it looks at his three offices of what he fulfills in scripture as the prophet, as the priest, and as the judge.

02:12:36

Or judge, yeah. Or king, same thing. And what's kind of cool too, when you look at the threefold component of the tabernacle, they also point to the same thing, because the works of repentance and baptism points to his message.

02:12:49

Repent, be baptized, and then go and make disciples of all the world. Then you look at the intercessory ministry.

02:12:57

You look at the priesthood of the work of us, as he said, you brought it up earlier, we're a peculiar people, a royal priesthood who are made to minister to God and minister to the world around us.

02:13:13

And then finally, and people get wonky with the whole kingship scripture, the whole, you can call it sonship, kingship, kingdom, whatever.

02:13:24

We're all called to minister within our sphere of influence and to enact the kingdom of God on the earth through our lives.

02:13:32

That's what we're called to do. And so that was Jesus's ministry, and that's how we are called to fulfill it with him.

02:13:41

Not for him, because we do it out of our own works, we're gonna mess it up. And we can't do it without him, because if we do it without him, we're building our own kingdom.

02:13:49

But when we're doing it with him, that's when we're gonna bear that fruit. And so looking at each of those things and how they point to Jesus, because again, the most holy, the holy of holies is a 10 by 10 room pointing to when

02:14:05

Jesus returns, it points to his millennial reign on the earth where he is gonna rule and reign from Jerusalem as king.

02:14:13

Right, as the right and true king. Yes, the one who is meant, the one who is called.

02:14:21

So what a beautiful picture that is, because what also strikes me is you see it, you see

02:14:27

Christ represented from the very entrance, from the outside of the outer courts, all the way through right into the holy of holies, to the innermost sanctum and place where the spirit dwells.

02:14:38

And every step of the way, it's pointing back to Christ, it's pointing back to God, which is such a beautiful thing, you know?

02:14:48

So man, that was so awesome, Josh. We could sit here probably for another two hours and just talk about this, but I gotta have you back on too, because I know there's so many more subjects that we could get into, and I know that you have passion for, but I just wanted to thank you for coming on and sharing that with us.

02:15:08

I know that so many Christians sometimes will leave one of the testaments behind when studying the

02:15:16

Bible, when in fact, we touched on it before, and I know you do this, we look at all of it. We look at all 66 books, that full canon always pointing to Christ.

02:15:25

But before we wrap up here, do you have anywhere you're preaching or ministries you're involved in or anything like that you wanna tell people listening about?

02:15:34

Currently, I have been working on the ministry, I've been kind of building myself, well, not myself, with Jesus, what

02:15:41

I feel like he's called me to. I've been working on a podcast, I think we had talked about a couple months ago, of getting things off the ground.

02:15:52

I was recently promoted at work, and so going through a lot of crazy life changes, but I'm actually working on putting together some online classes.

02:16:03

So doing some different discipleship stuff, working through eschatology, working through...

02:16:09

So you had brought up earlier in discipleship and even just having conversations with Christians, our primary doctrinal beliefs.

02:16:19

And one of the fun things that I love to challenge people with is Hebrews 6, one through three, because a lot of times, and they're very good subjects, we get caught on the doctrine of Christ, the deity of Christ, all those things, and that's our foundation.

02:16:34

That is what it's actually all about. And in Hebrews 6, one through three, there are seven specific doctrinal things that are talked about, that whoever wrote that called the foundations of our faith.

02:16:47

He said, let us not return again to the elementary principles of the doctrines of the Christ, which is pointing to Jesus, his work, all those things, by laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, faith towards God, the doctrine of baptisms, plural, laying on of hands, eternal judgment, and resurrection of the dead.

02:17:07

But let us move on from these things. And then it goes on talking about, we need to not just drink milk, but eat solid food and then move on to meat.

02:17:16

Working through those seven principles, how they actually apply. So I'm working on some teaching stuff with that.

02:17:23

Are those online yet? Not yet. No, okay. When do you think they're gonna be available? I'm hoping within the next three months.

02:17:29

Okay. I'm working on writing them up right now. Okay. And then, because one of the cool things, and I'd love to come back and talk about the book of Ruth.

02:17:40

No, absolutely. The book of Ruth is one of my favorites. And I've actually been writing a book on the book of Ruth for the past four years.

02:17:47

Okay. And just sometimes you gotta take your time through things. Oh, absolutely.

02:17:52

So that you're doing it right. And finding those seven principles. Well, you know what they say, you have five years to write your first book.

02:17:59

You have two years to write your second book. Ooh. So that's okay. Take all the time you want. Yeah. I got one more year then, if I'm hitting for the five year mark.

02:18:09

But how those seven principles that I just listed, the doctrine of Christ and all those things are actually found in the book of Ruth.

02:18:16

And I believe that they're actually found in every book of the Bible to some degree. To some degree, yeah.

02:18:22

Because they all point to Jesus. All of those things, repentance from dead works, faith towards God, eternal judgment, these things all point to Jesus, his work, and all the different roles that he plays.

02:18:35

So working through some of that stuff. As for preaching opportunities, that may change depending on when churches open back up effectively.

02:18:45

Right. Working towards doing just some online stuff probably. But this time, as I feel for many, this has been a time to really just recharge with God.

02:18:56

And to really press back in, reestablish the home, reestablish the life of devotion to God with my family.

02:19:03

Which is always our first ministry, guys. And it's like we talked about earlier. It's so important to be loving our wives and helping them to grow closer to God as we do.

02:19:15

I love that part. Man, what book is it? And you might know what I'm talking about. But Paul's saying basically like, yeah, it'd be better if, because Paul was just so singular focused and so passionate when you read him.

02:19:29

He was like, it'd be better if you weren't even married. It'd actually just be better for the gospel if you just, but if you do gotta get married.

02:19:35

And then he just writes this whole beautiful thing about what we're supposed to do for our husbands and wives and spouses and all that.

02:19:42

But I love that he preferences with like, well, it's almost like I'm reading it and he's going, I'd prefer it if you didn't get married. Because you have a lot of stuff you have to do that you couldn't do for the kingdom.

02:19:50

You're like, he was just so focused. And then you got Peter, who's a little more laid back.

02:19:56

See, I love looking at Bible characters too and seeing that their humanness came through in the word too.

02:20:03

Not that one was necessarily better than the other, but inspired by the Holy Spirit, but through human writers.

02:20:10

But you're so right when you, man, when you have a family and you have kids like we do, boy, you have responsibilities.

02:20:18

And the Lord makes them very clear on how they're supposed to be treated and the priorities that they take in your life.

02:20:25

But so yeah, when you get the podcast stuff up and going too, hey, there's a guy sitting right here that would love to be on your show and we can cross promote it.

02:20:33

But Josh, thanks for being here. I appreciate you as a brother in Christ and I appreciate all the information you brought to us tonight.

02:20:41

Anytime you wanna come back, especially the Book of Ruth, we'll have you back on. And I'm sure we'll learn a lot.

02:20:47

Amen. Thanks brother. Yep, be blessed everyone. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at deadmenwalkingpodcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at deadmenwalkingpodcast at gmail .com.