One reason the Torah is so important is that it is the purest of prophecies. If one wants to have context for anything that John sees in his Revelation, the Torah is the reference point. For instance:
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Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. (Ex 19:3-6)
This gives the reader a reference point for Israel’s experience leaving Egypt, entering the wilderness, accepting the Torah at Mount Sinai, and becoming a nation of priests. Now John’s Revelation has context when he speaks of the wings of an eagle:
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And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. (Re 12:13-14)
In our continuing look at the dragon and his beast kingdoms in these newsletters, Pharaoh is the metaphor of the dragon and Egypt the ”seas” or “waters” of the earth:
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In that day the LORD will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent [nachash], with His fierce and great and mighty sword, even Leviathan the twisted serpent [nachash]; and He will kill the dragon (ha-tanin) who lives in the sea. (Is 27:1)
The “fleeing serpent” has a depth of meaning. “Fleeing” is the translation of the shoresh (Hebrew root) בָּרַח barach:
- to bolt, i.e. figuratively, to flee suddenly:—chase (away); drive away, flee (away), put to flight, make haste, reach, run away, shoot.
Exodus 36:33 used barach to describe passing a bar through a Tabernacle board, piercing through it. In Nehemiah, barach describes how the prophet drove away all the priests who married foreign, idolatrous wives:
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"Do we then hear about you that you have committed all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?” Even one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite, so I drove him away from me [וָאַבְרִיחֵהו]. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Thus I purified them from everything foreign and appointed duties for the priests and the Levites, each in his task, and I arranged for the supply of wood at appointed times and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good. (Ne 13: 27-31)
Nehemiah gives the “driven-away serpent” additional context. As it pertained to Judah returning from Babylon, it was characterized by a holy people, especially holy leaders, who intermarried with idolatrous foreign wives. It was a move to obscure the difference between a holy people and their covenant and the surrounding nations. It allowed the unclean realm to pierce through the “board” to the holy realm of the Tabernacle. Leviathan is sometimes translated as the ”piercing serpent.”
Nehemiah oddly follows his separation of the idolatrous marriages with two items of business:
- Arranging for the wood to be supplied to the Temple altar at the appointed times. The first moed is Passover.
- The first fruits offerings. The first of these is at Passover.
This focuses the reader on the necessity of removing uncleanness/idolatry from the returning remnant before rekindling the fires of the feasts in the Temple and returning the first fruits to the Temple. Nehemiah's driving away of those who intermarried foreign wives has been improperly used to justify forbidding intermarriage among ethnic groups or races. To demonstrate that this is NOT the case, Scripture establishes that the returning exiles celebrated Passover ALONG WITH those from the nations who had separated themselves from the impurity of idolatry:
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The exiles observed the Passover on the fourteenth of the first month. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were pure. Then they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the exiles, both for their brothers the priests and for themselves. The sons of Israel who returned from exile and all those who had separated themselves from the impurity of the nations of the land to join them, to seek the LORD God of Israel, ate the Passover. And they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the LORD had caused them to rejoice, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. (Ezra 6:19-22)
This demonstrates that the purging of foreigners from a nation of priests was only of those who failed to seek YHVH as their own exclusive God. For this reason, the Israelites were taken to the wilderness in order to test their thirst for the Word and hunger for the Bread of Heaven. They were nourished with Heavenly food and drink. Had they driven away their appetite and thirst for Egypt's foods? It is the sword that will judge the driven-away serpent.
Sword in Hebrew is cherev, "to make thirsty." This is what the wilderness does. It makes us thirsty. It exposes the twisted serpent so that we can see into our own souls. We can then drive him far away from the holiness of the Tabernacle, a nation of priests. What the sword does, so does the wilderness. And next comes Israel above, a restoration to the Garden.
In effect, when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree to become like Elohim, they were Israel committing spiritual adultery and immorality with the serpent who had pierced the Garden's holiness. They were thrown upon a sick-bed of death, and their children have suffered pestilence. They took the pride of rule from the serpent, becoming like the beasts of the field, spawning the kingdoms of the beasts. Two cheruvim with flaming swords kept them away from the thirst-quenching Rivers of Eden (Ge 2).
If Elijah’s departure was considered the Third Cause for the rise of the beast Rome (review last week's lesson), then his return is a testimony FOR Israel and against the red dragon and his red beast Rome. The tribes will be re-united and then sorted tribally. The 144,000 first fruits from those tribes who have not committed adultery with women, i.e., mixed with idols, represent the nation of Israel itself, which Elijah re-built with twelve symbolic stones and ONE trench of water in the duel with the priests of Baal.
Thus with Elijah and Messiah's return, the world will see that the beast’s power depended solely upon Israel’s spiritual decline. When Israel arises to the testimony of Yeshua and the commandments of God, when they return to Jerusalem as the place of the feasts, when they purify themselves from idolatrous attachments, then the dragon is thrown down from Heaven and the beast must decline upon the earth.
The dragon's time is short. Ours is eternal. This is not the end of the world. It's the beginning of the world to come. On eagles' wings.
