“the knowledge of the Most High” (Num. 24:16)
Starting from this teaching, that of Day 1700, readers will no longer receive three teachings every week, but only two. The content of the teachings has, over the course of the years, become more and more dense, and because we walk on largely unmapped paths, it requires a weaving together of different disciplines, and thus much research, pondering, and prayer, the slow and careful piecing together of revelation. To inquire and search carefully (1Pet. 1:10) for that which has been destined for us, requires a completely new way of thinking and mode of operation: “you have not gone this way before” (Jos. 3:4). Because we live in an epoch in which knowledge increases exponentially (Dan. 12:4), the prophetic scribe needs to not only keep track of “wisdom … knowledge … language … and literature” (Dan. 1:4), but also be acquainted with “the knowledge of the Most High” (Num. 24:16).
The (renewed) mandate for the writing of these teachings is nestled in Ezek. 9:1-3, but Ezek. 8 offers the necessary context to properly understand this. In this chapter Ezekiel is shown (in the spiritual realm) what really happens in the temples of God, and that they do not pray “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). Religion has brought so many perversions that the true agenda of God has been completely derailed. In verse 12 God explains this state of affairs to the prophet: “Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth.” (KJV).
Try to ponder for a moment the possibility of this terrifying situation. What if the collective universal church, despite its absolute sincerity, is largely practising ideology, if, what Os Guinness notes in his book The Call, is indeed the case: “(M)any modern Christian believers are atheists unawares. Professing to be believers in supernatural realities, they are virtual atheists; whatever they say they believe, they show in practice that they function without practical recourse to the supernatural.” Most Christians witness with their mouth, but their heart is far from God’s spiritual reality (Matt. 15:8). In his book The Spirit of the Disciplines and a sure Guide to this momentous Aspect of Faith, Dallas Willard articulates it well: “Spirituality is a matter of another reality.” This physically unseen spiritual reality is not an unreality. It is a world with its own dynamic, a distinctive energy, and a completely unique mode of action. It runs according to completely different principles. Although Paul makes clear that we are in the world but not of the world, this remains theoretical knowledge for most believers, and it is surely not an everyday reality. And even if they see it, they rarely live within it: “It is quite common for people to trumpet that they have been ‘born again’ yet exhibit no signs of living in the supernatural dimensions of the reality they have been born into.” (Guinness, again).
What most believers do not realise is that this cultic religious observance is in fact idolatry – most Christians bow the knee for a god that exists only in their thoughts. This is the terrifying reality of every man in the chambers of his imagery. Ages of tradition and spiritual paths have rendered murky a true search for God, so that the universal church does not realise that they are living in an imagined construct. For this reason, the power of Christ is largely missing in our walk of faith, both for the individual and for the collective.
With these teachings it is of the utmost importance that we do not engage in a fictitious story about God. We must know for sure that the far-off God is often kept from being wondrously close by an imagined construct of our faith. Reynolds Price wrote a book entitled: A Palpable God. The word palpable could have the following synonyms: perceptible, perceivable, visible, noticeable, discernible, detectable, observable, tangible, recognizable, notable, unmistakable, transparent, indisputable, self-evident, undeniable, touchable, noticeable, detectable, solid, concrete, material, substantial, real, amongst others. Is this how you experience God? And would this characterise your life and your walk with God? Price pricelessly articulates it as such: “We crave nothing less than perfect story; and while we chatter or listen all our lives in a din of cravings; jokes, anecdotes, novels, dreams, films, plays, songs, half the words of our days – we are satisfied only by the one short tale we feel to be true …” (p. 14). Each person deeply desires to read, interpret and understand his individual book of God’s blue print plan.
The Book of Life and of the Lamb (Rev. 21:27) is the book of life of Jesus the Christ, and it is thus also the compilation of ALL the books of the lives of the collective Bride, “the wife of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:9). This is what John (21:25) means when he notes that there is still much to be written about Jesus, “which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written”. Really? You can only read this remark metaphorically if it pertained to all the books of life of everyone on earth.
Back to the prophet Ezekiel, in chapter 9. After God witnessed the violence that religion wreaked in the lives of all people, “He called out in my hearing with a loud voice, saying, ‘Let those who have charge over the city draw near, each with a deadly weapon in his hand.’ And suddenly six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his battle-ax in his hand. One man among them was clothed with linen and had a writer’s inkhorn at his side. They went in and stood beside the bronze altar. Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer’s inkhorn at his side …” (verses 1-3).
There are six different prototypical bastion establishers appointed to have the old earth and old heaven pass away, and bring into being the new heaven and new earth (Rev. 21:1-2). It does not refer to 6 individual persons, but rather six types of approaches across many people who draw the sword of their calling and destroy the old order and lead in the new. The group of leaders, those who walk ahead, verse 3 notes, are the collective group called men (= they that can remember”) with linen (= mantles), who carry the writer’s inkhorn at their side. This scribe’s ink is seed, as he carries it at the hips. The Hebrew word that is used here, according to Strong, specifically refers to loins, equivalent to 1Pet. 1:13’s “the loins of your mind”. But according to the AHLB it also refers to “the slender part of the body above the hips”, the side of the Bridegroom from which the Bride was taken!
As we noted earlier, this section from Ezekiel is the specified (new) mandate of these teachings. Verse 3 makes clear that the writer/poet/prophet plays a key role in the manifestation of the gospel of the glory of God, and that that glory that must spread over the entire earth, “gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple”. The word cherub interestingly enough has no set meaning in Hebrew, but a related root word here means “near” or “approaching” (www.abarimpublications.com). More on this in the next teaching.
• Selah: What do you think is the spiritually symbolic meaning of the cherubs?
• Read: 1 Sam. 10-15
• Memorise: 1Sam. 14:27 (try to understand this verse in typological terms)
• For a more in-depth understanding: Read any of the books mentioned above.
