Chapter VII. The Laodicean State

4.—Tribes of Israel’s Sons

John says, that the servants of the Deity were sealed from among, or, out of every tribe of Israel’s sons—εκ πασης φυλης ὑιων Ισραηλ. This, of course, is metaphorical—a simile comprised in a phrase not according to the primitive meaning of the words. The real signification of the phrase, is the mystery it conceals from the eye of the unsealed—from the perception of the churchman, or “natural man.” The Seven Stars, and Seven Golden Lightstands, of ch. i. 20, were not to be taken literally, as what are vulgarly styled stars and lamps. They had “a mystery” hidden in the words; “star” being used to signify in that place, angels, or Spirit-anointed elderships, of the Ecclesia; and “lightstands,” the Ecclesias themselves. So in the sentence before us, Israel, tribe, sons, are words used apocalyptically in a metaphorical sense. They each contain a mystery, which is the literal apocalyptic import, or true meaning of their use in this place.

In the prophetic and apostolic writings, “Israel” is used in more senses than one. The first time it was used is found in Gen. xxxii. 28. The divine man with whom Jacob wrestled said to him, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but also Israel; for thou p. 298 hast power as a prince with Elohim, and with men, and hast prevailed.” In Exod. iv. 22, it is applied to the whole of Jacob’s descendants who came out of Egypt under Moses. “Israel,” said Yahweh to Pharaoh, “is my son, my firstborn.” Here, it stands for a nation of twelve tribes, which comprised also “a mixed multitude,” who were not the fleshly descendants of Jacob—Exod. xii. 38. Tried by a law of faith, this nation was partly believers of the promises, and partly not. The believing section, which was always a small number, were the real “Israel;” all the rest of the fleshly descendants were “not Israel;” as it is written in Rom. ix. 6: “They are not all Israel who are of Israel: neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children: but in Isaac, O Abraham, shall thy seed be called. That is, they who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of the Deity; but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.” Moses, Phineas, Joshua, Caleb, David, the prophets, and those of their school, were “Israel;” Korah, Dathan, Abiram, Saul, Ahab, Manasseh, and their class, though descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, after the flesh, were “not Israel.” The difference between these two classes of the same nation, was purely a matter of faith. The Mosaic Law condemned both classes to death; for “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified;” “for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” “The law was weak through the flesh,” in which “dwells no good thing;” therefore the law which was good in itself, became death to those who lived under it: for it is written, “Cursed be every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” No Israelite ever escaped this curse; for, although Jesus was “without sin,” the law cursed him, saying, “Cursed is every one that hangeth upon a tree.”

From these premises it will be seen, that Israel, not only signifies the man Jacob, and the Twelve Tribes his descendants according to the flesh, but men of the nation who are Israel in the highest and noblest sense of the word—the metaphorical. Hence, in regard to the question, who are the seed of Abraham; who are the sons of Israel; who the sons of the Deity? Christ Jesus interposes, and says, “the flesh profits nothing:” Israelites will not inherit the blessings promised to Israel, because they descend from Jacob; they must be men of faith, “Israelites indeed in whom there is no guile”—Israelites, the sons of the Deity, who believe into his name; “who have been begotten, not of bloods, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the Deity”—John i. 12, 13. Therefore it is that, because “the flesh profits nothing,” Israel after the p. 299 flesh, are not now the people and sons of Deity. They are broken off because of unbelief in the gospel Paul preached. But, they will not always continue a faithless and stiffnecked generation; for “they shall be willing in the day of the power of David’s son and Lord”— Ps. cx.: and then, “in the place where it was said to them, ‘Ye are not my people,’ there it shall be said unto them, ye are the sons of AIL the living one”—Hos. i. 10.

But, before they were broken off because of unbelief in “the truth as it in Jesus,” efforts were made by John the Immerser, Jesus Christ, and the Apostles; in other words, by the Spirit of the Deity through them; to manifest a generation of “Israelites indeed,” of the sons of Abraham and Israel, and therefore, of sons of the Deity, by faith, repentance, and immersion:—by faith in the promises covenanted to Abraham, and David, and in Jesus as their promised seed, delivered for the offences, and raised for the justification of all who believe the promises: by repentance, characterized by a thinking and disposition such as Abraham evinced: and by immersion, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, for the remission of sins. Many “of Israel” became “Israel” after this method. They were begotten of the will of the Father of Lights by the word of truth, which they received with meekness as the engrafted word which was able to save their souls—Jas. i. 18, 21. But, after all done, compared to the whole nation this was but an election, and that only a remnant. It did not afford Israelites indeed in sufficient number for the kingdom of the Deity. They of Israel “who were bidden were not worthy.” Those servants, therefore, who had the seal in those days, were sent into the highways to gather people together of all sorts that the wedding of the King’s Son might be furnished with guests; and his house be filled.

This was quite a new crisis in Israelitish affairs. It consisted of nothing less than, as it were, raising up children to Abraham from stones—creating Israelites out of Gentiles upon the same principle that “Israelites indeed” were created out of mere natural Jews, styled by Paul “Jews outwardly.” Peter, to whom the opening of the kingdom to the Gentiles was committed, went to the house of Cornelius upon this mission. He invited them to become Israelites in every respect except the accident of fleshly descent, which “profited nothing” in the begettal of sons to Deity. When he recounted what he had done to the brethren, he told them that “Deity put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” And afterwards, when writing to these newly created Israelites, he says: “Ye as lively stones are built up a p. 300 spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to the Deity through Jesus Christ.” Again, he says: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a HOLY NATION, a purchased people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light (‘the Gospel of the Kingdom’); who in time past were not a people, but are now the people of the Deity; who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy”—1 Peter ii. 5-10.

Paul also in treating of the same subject, says, that “he is not the Jew who is one outwardly; but he is the Jew who is one inwardly”—Rom. ii. 28. That is, he is not the Jew who is the seed of Abraham in the sense of being heir of the promise, who is only a Jew by accident: to be the seed of Abraham, a man must be a Jew inwardly; he must be sealed in the forehead with the truth which is Deity’s seal: in other words, addressing both natural Jews and natural Gentiles, Paul says: “Ye are all sons of Deity in Christ Jesus through the faith;” and here follows the reason: “For as many as have been immersed into Christ, have put on Christ.” In whom “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”—Gal. iii. 26. “They who are of faith, the same,” saith he, “are the children of Abraham.”

And again likewise, addressing the Gentile element of the Ecclesia in Ephesus, Paul calls upon them to remember that in time past they were uncircumcised Gentiles in the flesh, and consequently, “without Christ, being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope, and atheists (αθεοι) in the world.” But now, all this was reversed when they came to be sealed, and to be constituents of the New Man—“THE ISRAEL OF THE DEITY”—Gal. vi. 16:—“the One Body.” They were now “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens of the saints, and familiars of the Deity”—ch. ii. 11-19. They had become the adopted citizens of Israel’s Commonwealth or polity. They were Jews inwardly, “walking in the steps of that faith of their father Abraham which he had before he was circumcised.” They differed from common Jews in not being of the same fleshly descent, which was a matter of no profit; and they differed from them also in being men of faith like Abraham. But the only difference between them and those noblest of all Jews, the prophets and their class, was the accident of birth. Ezekiel, Daniel, Cornelius, Crispus, Gaius, Erastus, and such like, though Jews and Greeks, were yet all “Israelites indeed” through faith—the Jews p. 301 inwardly, living under the law before the faith came by Jesus, being justified “by faith” in the promises (εκ πιστεως); and the Jews inwardly, living after the faith came, being justified by one and the same Deity, “through the faith” δια της πιστεως, in the promises, or “the truth as it is in Jesus”—Gal. iii. 23-25; Rom. iii 30; iv. 12-16.

Now, the citizenship of the Old Israelites commenced on earth; while the πολιτευμα, or citizenship of the New Israelites begins in heavens, εν ουρανοις ὑπαρχει. The citizenship of mere common, or outward Jews, begins with circumcision—with the flesh. If they omit this, the accident of birth from Jewish parents goes for nothing, they are regarded by the law as cut off from their people, having broken the covenant of Yahweh in the omission of the rite on the eighth day—Gen. xvii. 14. They are neither “Israel” nor “of Israel.”

But the citizenship of the New Israelites, or Israelites of the New Covenant, begins in heavens, and also with circumcision—it begins with faith, with the truth believed and obeyed, with the Spirit. A Jew, or Greek, comes to “believe the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity, and of the name of Jesus Anointed;” and to fall in love with them above all other things; he acquires a “faith,” in other words, that “purifies his heart,” and “works by love”—he receives the doctrine of the kingdom of the Deity as a little child—with all humility and teachableness; and demands only to know what the Lord would have him to do, that he may do it. He is required, then to be circumcised in Christ, to “purify his soul in the obedience of the truth”—to “put off the body of the sins of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ.” The churchman, or mere pious natural man, discerns not these “deep things of the Deity;” but such a Jew or Gentile as we are considering, being “filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,” knows that, by being buried with Christ in the one immersion, he puts on Christ; and that when thus invested with him as with a white robe, all his sins are covered over, remitted, or washed away; and that he stands “complete in him.” Jesus was circumcised the eighth day, according to the law; he was a Jew; the son of Abraham, David, and the Deity; the Heir of all things; he was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners; he is king, priest, and so forth. Now, it is only those Jews and Gentiles, the eyes of whose understandings have been enlightened by the word of the truth of the gospel of the kingdom, who can by immersion get into Christ; for men are saved “through the faith,” δια της πιστεως; and “without faith,” which Paul defines as, “the confidence of p. 302 things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,”—“it is impossible to please the Deity.” This, then, is the indispensable prerequisite for introduction into Christ, and completeness in him. Those who are thus qualified in the act of passing through the bath of water, pass into Christ. Before entering the bath, the truth believed has changed their minds, made them “dead to sin,” and “quickened them with Christ”—Rom. vi. 2, 11; Eph. ii. 5: when they are in the bath, and buried under the water, they are “buried with Christ by the immersion into his death,” which was for sin. Hence, this water burial is their investiture with Christ as with a white robe. The burial is, therefore, a clothing, or covering over by which their sin-nakedness is metaphorically concealed; and they are in that situation in which it may be said of them, in the words of the Spirit, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered over”—επεκαλυφθησαν—Rom. iv. 7. This is the point of time in which they are “circumcised with the circumcision made without hands;” and, as in the circumcision performed with hands, there was a cutting, or putting, off, of flesh, so in the circumcision made without hands, there is a metaphorical putting off of flesh, “in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh in the circumcision (εν τη περιτομη) of the Christ, being buried with him in the immersion”—Col. ii. 11, 12.

Being therefore thus introduced into Christ’s circumcision by faith and burial, they are the subjects of “circumcision of heart in spirit, not in letter”—“the foreskins of their hearts are circumcised, and they are no more stiffnecked”—Deut. x. 16—like many that could be named. “We are the circumcision,” says Paul, “being servants to Deity by spirit (or by the sealing truth) and rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and having no confidence in flesh.” By this admirably devised scheme, Jews and Gentiles get into Christ, though at the right hand of Deity and they upon earth; and “their citizenship begins in heavens.” He, being the truth, dwells in their hearts by faith; and having got into him constitutionally by water burial, they continue to dwell in him; so that, having come forth from the water-grave, the life which they live in the flesh, they live by the faith of the Son of the Deity, who loved them, and gave himself for them—Gal. ii. 20.

Being thus circumcised in their water burial by the truth believed they become Jews in the noblest sense of the word. They went into the bath dead to Judaism and Gentilism, and were born of the water in coming out of it, Israelites indeed; sons of Abraham, David, and the Deity; brethren of Israel’s King; heirs with him of p. 303 all things; holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners; citizens of the commonwealth of Israel; kings and priests for the Deity—they become all this and more, because Christ is such, and they are “complete in him.”

Hence, circumcision of heart, in the sense explained, is as indispensably necessary to the Israelitish citizenship which begins where Christ now is, as circumcision of flesh was to Israelitish citizenship beginning the eighth day after birth. The two circumcisions developed two Israels—the carnal and the spiritual. While occupying Palestine, the Carnal Israel were the kingdom of the Deity under the Mosaic Constitution; and the throne upon which David and Solomon reigned in Jerusalem was “the throne of Yahweh.” Deity permitted them to continue in the land so long as the constitution was respected; and there were enough “Israelites indeed” among them, to preserve the nation from putrefaction. These were the real, spiritual, life of the nation—the salt of the land; and when they became insipid; or, when they, as the chosen generation, died off from the arena, the nation became “a carcase,” fit only for the talons of the Roman Eagle, according to the predictions of Moses, Daniel and Christ—Deut. xxviii. 49; Dan. viii. 10-12, 24; Matt. xxiv. 28.

But, when the Israelitish Carcase was rent and devoured by “the Great Eagle,” “THE ISRAEL OF THE DEITY,” consisting of Jews and Greeks in other lands, or sections of the habitable, who were Jews in Christ, was still an organized and flourishing community, styled also by Paul, “the Ecclesia, his Body,” of which Jesus Christ is the Head; and the “One Body.” This new community figures in symbolic writing, as “The Seven Ecclesias which are in Asia;” these seven being representative of all Israelites, “circumcised with the circumcision made without hands,” in all the habitable. This Israel was rooted in Jacob’s twelve sons, as the patriarchs of the tribes. “First that which is natural,” says Paul, “and then that which is spiritual.” This is the order of the Deity’s developments in relation to body, world, and nation. Hence, the spiritual body is developed out of the natural; the spiritual world out of the natural; and the spiritual Israelitish nation out of the natural, we Gentiles coming in by adoption through the King of Israel, who himself was first natural before he became spirit. The principle is fundamental, and perceived in the generation of all things—first, the naked grain, or body; then that which shall be fruit-bearing in the field.

Jacob was the wall of Israel, and his sons his twelve gates, in the beginnings of things. Jesus and the Apostles emerged from Jacob, p. 304 through these gates; being descended from Jacob in their line. But said the Spirit in Jesus, “before Abraham was I am.” He was “the Root” of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David; and when He came to be manifested in Jesus, in this combination of flesh and spirit, he was “the Offspring” of those patriarchs. While, therefore, Jacob was a wall enclosing the whole future nation in his loins, “the Root and Offspring of David,” and therefore of Jacob—Apoc. v. 5; xxii. 16,) is the Jasper Wall, great and high, “in whom” is contained all “the Israel of the Deity.” At the natural gates of the twelve tribes, the apostles stood as so many Angels or messengers—ch. xxi. 12. They went forth inviting Jews and Gentiles to “enter in through the gates into the city,” enclosed within the Jasper Wall—xxii. 14—to enter into Christ through adoption into the commonwealth of Israel; that in so entering, they might, as precious stones, garnish the twelve foundations which represent the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

The apocalyptic Jasper Wall, which constitutes the limit of the Holy City, is Deity manifested in flesh; who, in Zech. ii. 5, saith, “I will be unto Jerusalem a WALL OF FIRE round about her, and will be the glory in the midst of her.” The Chief Corner, or Prince, of this foursquare wall is Jesus. The Deity, before his manifestation in him, said unto him in prophecy, “Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified. . . . It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the desolations of Israel; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my (Yeshua or JESUS) salvation to the ends of the earth”—Isai. xlix. 3, 6. Thus, the Deity manifested in Flesh is herein styled Israel; and in calling him, “my salvation,” He is also styled Jesus. Now, the spirit in Hosea xi. 1, says of him, what is equally true of the whole nation in Moses, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt;” which saying, as a part of its mystery, Matthew says was fulfilled in the child Jesus—ch. ii. 15.

Christ, then, being Israel, all who “wash their robes, and make them white in the blood of the Lamb,” become Israel also—the metaphorical Israel developed out of the outward, whose polity flourished two hundred and fifty years after the destruction of Jerusalem. This spiritual commonwealth, I have said, is symbolized during this period by the Seven Ecclesias, which were encamped in the territory of the Great Eagle, an imperium in imperio; and symbolized again, in the periods of the first four seals, by the Four Living Ones full of eyes. These all were the spiritual “tribes of Israel’s sons”—the Sons of Deity, and brethren of Jesus, constitutionally p. 305 manifested as such by immersion, as the outward sign. Speaking of this honor, John saith: “Behold what great love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called CHILDREN OF DEITY! . . . Beloved, we are now children of Deity, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is”—1 Ep. iii. 2. Then will be “the apocalypse of the sons of the Deity;” and the world that knows them not now, because it knows him not, will be brought into such practical acquaintance with them, that its knowledge of them will never again fade from its remembrance—Rom. viii. 19.

But, after the apostles were withdrawn from the arena, it happened to the “Tribes of Israel’s sons,” as to the fleshly Israel after the decease of the elders who overlived Joshua, that they began to fall away from the institutions of the Deity. Immersionists, or as they would now be styled, “Baptists,” began to teach “perverse things” to draw away disciples after them; and in so doing, to corrupt the way of the Lord, and to conceal it at length, under a cloudcapped mountain of “philosophy and vain deceit.” As we have seen elsewhere, these evil men and seducers in Israel were denominated “Nikolaitanes,” “that Woman Jezebel,” “the Satan;” nevertheless, they pertinaciously claimed to be Jews. The Spirit, however, repudiated their claim, and denounced them for liars and blasphemers of the Synagogue of the Satan—Apoc. ii. 9; iii. 9. But as Paul predicted, they “waxed worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived,” until they had succeeded in substituting SACRAMENTALISM for “the simplicity that is in Christ”—2 Cor. xi 3. They preached “another Jesus,” “another Spirit,” and “another gospel” than Paul preached, as the basis of their immersion; and therefore were “accursed” Israelites, and degraded to a level with mere formalists, who have “a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof: from such, saith the apostle, “turn away”—2 Tim. iii. 5; Gal. i. 8, 9.

Here then, were two classes of Israelites in apostasy—the one class composed of men circumcised in flesh; the other, of men having the form, immersion, which introduces to the circumcision of Christ. These had the form or profession of christianity without the power; the others had the form of Mosaicism, but without faith in the promises made to Abraham. The apocalyptic “tribes of Israel’s sons” had substituted abstract spirit for belief of the truth—abstract spirit was the power, or virtue, that accomplished everything for them. It entered the water they used, and made it p. 306 holy, and purifying, to every faithless ignoramus they put into it; it entered the hypocritical and spiritually dead carcases of the “seducers” they ordained to “holy orders,” and made them sanctifying administrators of ordinances; it entered the bread and the wine, and made them spiritual meat and drink: in short, this abstract quiddity mesmerized everything, as in all “the names and denominations” of our day, being the very essence of sacramentalism, as opposed to the “form of godliness” and its true “power.” The Tribes of Israel’s sons had degenerated into mere ritualists, who, in practising religious ceremonies, regarded them as both the form and power of christian godliness. The Jews of our time practising the mummeries of the synagogue; or papists genuflexing with their priests before images; or snoozing protestants dosing under the vaporous emissions of pulpit drones and imbeciles—are legitimate and life-like representatives of “Israel’s sons,” established by Constantine the First as “the lords spiritual” of the Great Eagle of the earth.

The following extracts from ecclesiastical writers on the times of Constantine, will afford the reader some idea of the condition of things in the apocalyptic “tribes of Israel’s sons,” called “the Catholic Church.”

“In the new order of things,” says Jones, “which took place under the Emperor Constantine and his clergy, one of their first objects was to remodel the form and order of the christian church, the administration of which was, as far as possible, arranged conformably to the government of the state. The emperor himself (unimmersed as he was) assumed the episcopal functions, and claimed the power of regulating its external affairs—in other words, he was constituted HEAD OF THE CHURCH”—the new-born Man of Sin. “He and his successors convened councils, in which they presided, and determined all matters of discipline. The bishops corresponded to those magistrates, whose jurisdiction was confined to single cities; the metropolitans to the proconsuls, or presidents of provinces; the primates, to the emperor’s vicars, each of whom governed one of the imperial provinces. Canons and prebendaries took their rise from the societies of ecclesiastics, which, Eusebius, Bishop of Verceil, and after him Augustine, formed in their houses, and in which these prelates were styled their fathers and masters.” Scarcely any two things can be more dissimilar than this new order of things, and the order instituted by the Apostles nearly 300 years before. Mosheim speaking of the episcopal presbyters, or overseeing elders, of the apostolic ecclesias and those of the second century, p. 307 says: “Let none confound the bishops of this primitive and golden period of the ecclesia with those of whom we read in the following ages. For though they were both designated by the same name, yet they differed extremely in many respects. A bishop during the first and second centuries was a person who had the care of one christian assembly, which at that time was, generally speaking, small enough to be contained in a private house. In this assembly he acted not so much with the authority of a master, as with the zeal and diligence of a faithful servant. The ecclesias, also in those early times, were entirely independent; none of them subject to any foreign jurisdiction, but each of them governed by its own rulers and its own laws. Nothing is more evident than the perfect equality that reigned among the primitive ecclesias; nor does there ever appear in the first century, the smallest trace of that association of provincial ecclesias from which councils and metropolitans derive their origin.” “Nothing,” adds Jones, “could be more abhorrent to the first churches than to acknowledge any earthly potentate,” and he not even a christian, “as their head.” “Be not ye called Rabbi,” said Jesus to the apostles, “for one is your guide, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. Neither be ye called guides; for one is your guide who is Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your minister; and whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” These divine maxims, which are constituent principles of the christian ecclesia, were lost sight of by the ecclesiastics who undertook to remodel the churches under the auspices of the Emperor Constantine, whom they, as a matter of courtesy, condescended to make their earthly head”—the Head of every “Tribe of Israel’s sons.”

In proportion as these Sons of Israel enjoyed any intervals of exemption from persecution, they became more litigious in their tempers, and more worldly minded. But now that the restraint was entirely removed by Constantine, the churches endowed, and riches and honors profusely heaped upon the clergy; when he authorized them to sit as judges upon the consciences and faith of others, he confirmed them in the spirit of this world—the spirit of pride, avarice, domination, and ambition. The glaring delinquency that marked the conduct of the leading ecclesiastics, in professing a religion of humility and self-denial, and at the same time pursuing the pleasures and aspiring after the honors of this world, seems to have struck the very heathen themselves. Hence, a pagan historian who lived shortly after the days of Constantine, named Ammianus Marcellinus, remarked concerning some of the leading bishops: “It p. 308 would be well if, despising the magnificence of the city, they would copy the example of some of the bishops of provincial towns, whose temperance, plainness of dress, and heavenly-mindedness, must recommend them to the Deity as his sincere worshippers.” These to whom he refers were probably some of the sealed ones with whom he happened to be acquainted.

These testimonies may serve to show us how “the Mystery of Iniquity” was then busily working in “every tribe of Israel’s Sons,” developing the already gendered Man of Sin Power, as well as the powerful hand the clergy, so-called, had in it. Restored to the full possession of their liberty, the places of worship rebuilt and secured to them, and the imperial edicts everywhere published in their favor, these new bishops soon gave the emperor convincing proof what manner of spirit they were of! As their several revenues became augmented, they grew more and more ambitious, less disposed to endure contradiction, more arrogant and haughty in their behavior, more litigious, and more reckless of the simplicity and gravity of their character and profession. Constantine’s letters afford ample proof of the jealousies and animosities which reigned among them. Adverting to a quarrel that had arisen between Miltiades, Bishop of Rome, and Cœcilianus, Bishop of Carthage, in which the principals had enlisted a host of their colleagues as auxiliaries, he tells them that it was a very grievous thing to him to see such a number of persons divided into parties, and even bishops disagreeing among themselves. He earnestly wished to compose their differences; but, in defiance of all his efforts, they persisted in their quarrels, which drew from him a feeling complaint, that those who ought to have been the foremost in maintaining a brotherly affection and peaceable disposition towards each other, were the first to separate from one another in a scandalous and detestable manner, giving occasion to the common enemies of Christianity to scoff at and deride them. To put an end to such disgraceful proceedings, Constantine summoned a council to meet at Arles, in France, in order, if possible, to bring to a friendly and Christian compromise this long pending altercation, at which the emperor condescended to be present, and there exerted all his influence to restore peace and harmony between them; but it proved to be with little effect. He had to do with the men Paul predicted, in 2 Tim. iii. 1-13, would appear in “the Israel of the Deity,” making the times perilous to his sealed servants. “Men,” said he, “shall be lovers of their ownselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, devils, incontinent, p. 309 fierce, despisers of those who are good, betrayers, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of the Deity; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” Constantine had sown fresh seeds of strife and contention among these mere ritualistic and sacramentarian Israelites, by his liberal endowment of their churches, and by the riches and honors he had conferred upon the bishops; and he was now reaping the fruit of his own folly.

From this and much more that might be adduced from history, it is evident that the Wild Olive Branch, which had by “the engrafting word” been grafted into the good Israelitish Olive Tree, was in a perishing condition. In Rom. xi., Paul, speaking to the Gentile element of Israel, exhorts them not to boast against the branches of the good olive tree, broken off because of unbelief in the word of the kingdom; and adds, “Thou standest by faith; be not highminded, but fear: for if the Deity spared not the natural branches” of the good tree, “take heed lest he also spare not thee.” The goodness of Deity had been manifested to the pagan Gentiles in inviting them to fellow-citizenship with those Israelites who had already become Christians—in offering them repentance and remission of sins, and a right to incorruptibility and life in the kingdom of Christ and of the Deity, on the same terms. It was, nevertheless, possible to place themselves in a position such as the Jews were in at the time of the breaking off by the Roman power. They had become faithless, and were broken off in consequence. If the New Israelites by adoption through Jesus, became faithless of the Word, the same fate awaited them; for they only stood in the favor of Deity by faith. Therefore, Paul adds, “if thou continue not in his goodness, THOU ALSO SHALT BE CUT OFF.” The “goodness” he refers to is, the exhibition of the goodness of the Deity set forth in the gospel of the kingdom, the belief of which “leads to repentance.” We have seen that they did not continue in his goodness, but had turned their backs upon it, and bartered off faith in that goodness for irrational sacramentalism, and the wealth and honor of the state. The gospel, which is the “Deity’s power for salvation,” had no power over them. They had failed to continue “to stand” in it, and to hold fast to it, or keep it in mind. That “certain word” Paul preached was forgotten, and buried under those piles of rubbish, taught as orthodox theology by their descendants, in the schools, colleges and pulpits of our modern Laodicea. They could no more “handle the word” as skilled workmen, than the benighted spirituals of our “glorious and enlightened 19th century!” A “strong delusion” p. 310 had come over them, a vail had overspread them, the spirit of the world had “made them drunk,” and, instead of the truth, “they believed a lie.”—2 Thess. ii. 11; Isai. xxv. 7; Apoc. xvii. 2, 6; xviii. 3. What was to be done with such unprofitable, blasphemous, faithless, and disgusting Israelites as these?—these ancestors of modern Christendom? What but to pronounce upon them the sentence that awaits all such—“Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi”; “thou art not my people, and shalt obtain no mercy.” This sentence is embodied in the words, “thou shalt be broken off.” They had come into the situation they were warned against—a state of unbelief—and, as the Deity always fulfils his threats, as well as his promises of good, the time had almost arrived to do execution upon the guilty.

But, there were many centuries and generations to come and pass away before “the Mystery of the Deity should be finished, as he had declared the glad tidings to his servants the prophets” (Apoc. x. 7); and he did not intend in breaking off the unbelieving tribes of Israel’s sons, to leave himself without witnesses and a testimony against Lo-ammi the Apostate. For this reason, the symbolic sealing angel proclaimed an arrest of judgment, that time might be afforded for taking out from the apostate tribes a “Remnant,” which would be more and longer faithful to the commandments of the Deity, and the testimony of Jesus Christ—Apoc. xii. 17. To afford scope for this, he said to the four angel-powers, standing ready for the work of judgment at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds, “Injure ye not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, while we may seal the servants of our Deity in their foreheads.” This sealing work accomplished, and there would be no cause for longer restraint upon the howling, and sweeping, and uprooting tempests, which were to signalize the breaking off of the decayed and sapless branch apocalyptically styled the tribes of Israel’s sons. The judicial visitations of the first six seals were against the worshippers of the gods; while the more terrible judgments of the trumpets and vials, and thunders, were and are the indignation and wrath of the Lamb upon the apostate symbolical “tribes of Israel’s sons,” repudiated by the Spirit as “men of corrupt minds, reprobate, or of no judgment, concerning the faith,” and therefore no longer the people of the Lord.

5.—The 144,000 Sealed

John says: “I heard the number of them who had been sealed;” and then informs us that the number amounted to 144,000. As we p. 311 are expounding a revelation hieroglyphically communicated, we must not suppose that this is the literal number of the sealed. Like all other numbers in the apocalypse, it is symbolical or representative; and subject to the like rule for its interpretation. They do not represent less numbers than themselves, but more. This remark, however, does not include the thousand years, which is the numerical symbol representative of “the Day of Christ,” comprised between the binding of the Dragon, and his release for a little season.

The 144,000 represent the whole number of the redeemed. This appears from ch. xiv. 3, where they are styled οἱ ηγορασμενοι, “the redeemed” (or those acquired by the Lamb by a ransom or price paid, his blood) “from the earth.” The real, or exact, number of the “redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish, and without spot” (1 Pet. i. 18, 19), we are told in Apoc. vii. 9, is “a great multitude which no man could number.” Abraham was invited to number the stars, if he were able, which, of course, he was not able to do; upon which he was told, “So shall thy seed be”—Gen. xv. 5. Paul tells us, we are Abraham’s seed, if we be Christ’s; otherwise, we are not; and in Rom. iv. 18, informs us, that the promise embraces whole nations of mankind, which, in the day of Christ, when he dwells in the midst of Zion, will “be joined to Yahweh and be his people”—Zech. ii. 11; Apoc. xv. 4. The number of the redeemed, saved, or sealed, it is impossible for any but the Deity to define. He has chosen to be reticent upon this point—to conceal it by saying nothing about it, further than to let us know that no man can count them. It is clear, then, that 144,000 is only a definite number representative of a much larger multitude, which the Deity himself alone can define to a man; for “known unto him are all his works from the beginning of the world” or αιων—Acts xv. 18—and every redeemed man is one of his works, as saith Paul, “we are his workmanship”—Eph ii. 10. In his counting up the number of the saved, he will, therefore, remember exactly how many he has created after the likeness of his Son Jesus. We must, then, be content to know simply the number by which he has thought proper to represent the unknown, and the mystery that number secretes, from all who have not the wisdom to “see” and understand.

Thus, then, the 144,000 being a miniature representation of an unknown predetermined original, it cannot be interpreted by what is called the literal; a rule which, when applied to the Apocalypse, reduces it to an unintelligible absurdity, which commends itself only p. 312 to the mind of a “churchman,” or of one hopelessly spoiled by “philosophy and vain deceit.”

But what is the mystery of the Deity secreted in this number? Why should the number representing the redeemed be 144,000? Why might not 121,000, or any other number, have sufficed? I reply, because 12 and not 11, is the square root of “that great city, the Holy Jerusalem,” which is the Bride of Christ—ch. xxi, 2, 9, 10. The holy root of the Good Olive Tree is 12; which, when multiplied into itself, produces 144, thousands, furlongs, or cubits, as the number or mensuration may be in the premises. If, in the Holy Root, there had been only 11 sons of Israel, “the Urim and the Thummim” would have consisted of no more than eleven precious stones; the foursquare breastplate of judgment would have been defective in one of its rows, a twelfth stone would have been wanting; there would have been only eleven oxen under the laver, and eleven tribes of Israel; only eleven lions on the steps of Solomon’s throne; there would not have been a double 144, “instructed in the songs of Yahweh” (1 Chr. xxv. 7); nor a double 144,000, under twelve captains, or princes (1 Chr. xxvii. 15): there would have been only eleven thrones of the House of David, which would have required only eleven apostles to occupy them in the regeneration (Matt. xix. 28). Had 11 been the square root, and not 12, there would have been only twenty-two elders, and 121,000 sealed, 11,000 from each of 11 tribes; there would have been only eleven gates to the Holy Jerusalem, and at the gates only eleven angels standing; there would have been only eleven foundations to the city on which only eleven names of apostles would have been inscribed. The city would have been only 11,000 furlongs, and the encircling wall but 121 cubits; and lastly, the Wood of Life would produce only eleven fruits. From this, the reader may see how the difference of a unit in the root of the Holy Square would have affected the divine numerical system from Genesis to the end of the Apocalypse.

Any number multiplied into itself will produce a square. In 144,000 we have a square number given, from which the square root is extractable according to rule. The extraction is the finding of the number, which, multiplied into itself, will make the given number. Thus, 12 x 12 = 144—thousands, furlongs, or cubits, as the case may be. It is the square of twelve, and, as the symbol of a commonwealth, polity, or city, applicable only to a community all of whose citizens are based upon a square root of 12. In the Apocalypse, this root is doubled in ch. iv. 4, there being “twenty-four p. 313 elders;” and in ch. xxi. 12, there being twelve gates and twelve angels at the gates. The reason of this is, that the Holy Square, styled Jerusalem “holy” and “new,” and “above the Mother of us all,” both Jews and Gentiles in Christ, consists of two classes; the one, based upon the prophets; and circumcision of flesh, which made them citizens of the polity founded on the twelve sons of Israel—their faith in promises made and covenanted to the fathers, giving them citizenship in the Holy Square; one 12, therefore, is their symbol: the other class, without regard to flesh, are adopted into the Foursquare Polity, and partake of the square root 12 with those under the law; and are also based upon another 12, the apostles of the Lamb, with whom the believers before Christ came as yet have had no acquaintance. Hence, to represent these two classes united in one and the same square, the square root is doubled in the elders, and the gates and their angels; and in Chronicles both the root and its square, where the numbers are 24 and 288, the last being a double 144. The 24 has been transferred to the apocalypse, where the 288 has been halved, 12 being the square root of neither 24 nor 288.

6.—The Apocalyptic Urim and Thummim

The apocalyptic 144,000, 144 furlongs, and 144 cubits, are the Breastplate of Judgment; that is, the thing signified in that splendid decoration worn on the breast of Aaron in the holy place, is fulfilled in those who are the units of the Holy Square.

To understand this, the reader must first comprehend the Aaronic symbol itself. The first place mention is made of it is in Exod. xxviii. 15. It was not a plate of metal, but a texture wrought of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twined linen. It was foursquare and of equal sides. It was filled in with settings of precious stones; four rows of them, and three in a row, and each stone set in gold. Upon these twelve stones were engraved, as upon a seal, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, thereby showing that these tribes were represented by them; so that symbolically speaking, the whole nation of Israel was contained in the square ornament, and borne upon the breast or heart of the High Priest in the holy place. This ornament, styled חשׁן משׁפט khoshen mishpāt, and in our version, “the breastplate of judgment,” was attached to the אפוד aiphod, a robe called ephod, or the overall, because it was put on over all other vestments.

Having prepared the foursouare texture, Moses was commanded p. 314 to put into it the Urim and the Thummim; that is, the twelve precious stones: not that the stones abstractly were the Urim and the Thummim, but were indispensable to its manifestation. The Urim were the glistering of the stones—the lights refracted and reflected from their cut and polished surfaces, and developing lights of divers colors. These were styled, אורים urim, lights; and the twelve stones themselves, תמים, thummim, fulnesses, that is, of number and measure—fulness of number, and fulness of measure; or 144,000 and 144 cubits and furlongs; because these are the perfections, or square of 12.

The next remarkable place where the Urim and Thummim are named is in Deut. xxxiii. 8. There Moses speaks of them prophetically. He addresses the tribe of Levi, whose chief pontiff wore the ornament, or as it is allusively termed by Paul, “the breastplate of righteousness,” and saith, “Thy Thummim and thy Urim be of the Man thy Holy One, whom thou didst prove at Massah, and with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah.” In Exod. xvii., the particulars of this strife are recorded. The question in debate was “Is Yahweh among us, or not?” This was affirmatively proved by his saying to Moses, “I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink:” and by his doing what he said. Now, in all this there was a mystery hidden, which they did not see into, nor Moses, nor the Elohim themselves; but which we may discern: for, in “the revelation of the mystery” taught by Paul, referring to this strife in 1 Cor. x. 4, he says: “They did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that Spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ.” The Holy Man, אישׁ חסיד, ish khăsid, with whom they strove, stood upon the rock, and thus, in a figure, made the rock a part of himself; and representative of something afterwards to be smitten by certain, who, like Moses, should speak unadvisedly with their lips. In this way, it became a “spiritual rock.” Paul says, “the Rock was Christ;” that is, it was representative of him. The Holy Man upon the rock was the Elohistic representative of the Deity dwelling in light whom no man hath, or can see—1 Tim. vi. 16. He spoke the words of the Invisible One, by whose power, placed at his disposal, water was made to flow. Hence, Eternal and Almighty Power pervaded the rock in Horeb so long as the water gushed forth and followed them in their wanderings. The Holy Man himself was an embodiment of this power; and as the same power was afterwards to be manifested in the nature of Abraham, p. 315 and thus become his Seed, the Rock became highly typical of Christ. Hence, the Power, of which the Holy Man on the rock was an expression, was YAHWEH, or “He who shall be,” first in Christ Personal, or Jesus; and afterwards, in Christ Mystical, or the Square of Twelve.

In Moses’ prophecy of Levi, he says: “They have observed thy word, and will keep thy covenant.” The second generation of Levi in the wilderness had observed the divine word, but the covenant referred to they have not yet kept. Levi after the flesh has been in apostasy for ages, and will continue to be so until “Yahweh, the Messenger of the Covenant,” shall come. When the time appointed arrives, he will suddenly come in, and proceed to the work of purifying the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto Yahweh an offering in righteousness—Mal. iii. 1-4. From this future time, “they will keep the covenant,” even the New Covenant, of which Jesus, not Moses, is the Mediator. Then, when Yahweh-Christ, the Branch of Righteousness, shall sit upon the throne of his father David, and execute judgment and righteousness in the land of Israel, “the priests the Levites shall not want a man before me,” saith the Spirit by Jeremiah, “to offer burnt-offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to do sacrifice continually”—ch. xxxiii. 15-18.

When Levi, then, is in this purified condition contemporary with the reign of the Lamb and the 144,000, Levi’s Urim and Thummim will be, as Moses testifies, “of the Holy Man,” who will then be their High Priest after the order of Melchisedec. He will not need to wear on his breast such Urim and Thummim as Aaron wore. The Lights and Fulnesses will be of himself, He being Deity Incarnately Manifested; for “it pleased the Father that in him all fulness dwell”—Col. i. 19.

Ezra and Nehemiah, doubtless, understood that a priest was to stand up, in and from whom the reality signified by the Aaronic Urim and Thummim should proceed. This appears from Ezra ii. 63; Neh. vii. 65. In these places we learn that certain priests sought their genealogy in the register, but it could not be found; “therefore were they, as polluted, put from the priesthood; and the Tirshatha said to them, that they should not eat of the most holy things until there stood the Priest הכהן, kakkohain, for Urim and Thummim.” Although they were thus excluded from the priesthood, yet, if they were Israelites of faith, when the Priest who shall himself be Urim and Thummin shall stand in the temple Ezekiel describes, they, having risen from the dead, will be permitted to eat p. 316 of the most holy things in the Paradise or kingdom of the Deity.

It has been remarked that, where the precious stones are mentioned, there is no mention of Urim and Thummin, as in Exodus xxxix. 10; and that, where the Urim and Thummin are mentioned, there is no mention made of the stones, as in Lev. viii. 8, which seems to show they are one and the same thing. The reader, however, will have perceived that they are not exactly the same—that the difference between the Urim and the stones is the difference between various colored lights and the stones reflecting them; and yet, without the glistering gems there would be no light; so that the lights imply the stones, and the stones the lights, and the presence of the one argues that of the other. As to the Thummim, the difference between them and the stones is not a matter of lights, but of number and measure. If, by some accident, the filling in were deficient of one or more of the twelve stones, the Four-square Ornament would not have been Thummin, however bright the Urim of the gems present might have been. The deficient stones must have been supplied, and then Thummim would have been restored to the Holy Square.

From this scriptural identification of the Urim and Thummim with the Expected Priest after the Order of Melchisedec, we have one of a multitude of instances in which, as Paul teaches, “the Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes” the gospel of the kingdom. But he is the beginning also, therefore he styles himself “the Beginning and the Ending”—Apoc. i. 8; hence, as it is written, “Out of him, and through him, and into him, are all things”—Rom. xi. 36. The Mosaic law, in all its “weak and beggarly elements,” compared with the things they represented, was all of or from Christ, and through Christ, and into or for Christ. He invented these “elements of the world,” which “made nothing perfect;” through the Christ-Spirit he showed them to Moses, and taught him, and the prophets and apostles that they were a foreshadowing of “heavenly things,” which were το σωμα του Χριστου, the Body of the Christ—Col. ii. 17, of which body Jesus is the head—the Body, “the fulness of him who filleth all” the saints “with all things”—Eph. i. 23.

In Heb. viii. 5, Paul tells us that the priests of the law served for an ocular representation and shadow of the heavenlies; that is, that Aaron and his priests, in their service, vestments, and relations to the Deity and Israel, submitted to the eyes of observers a shadowy representation of things pertaining to Jesus and his Brethren, the saints—Christ personal and Christ mystical. These constitute “the heavenlies,” “in the heavens,” εν τοις ουρανοις, not in “the heaven,” p. 317 του ουρανου, where Jesus now is, but in the heavens in which they enjoy their great reward, when he shall sit upon the throne of his glory in Jerusalem, and they shall “reign with him upon the earth” over Israel and the nations, as the kings and priests of the Deity—Apoc. v. 10; xx. 4. The law, in all its details, was a pattern—a system of figurative righteousness, which represented a system of real righteousness, termed “the righteousness of the Deity.” The figurative was prophetic of the real; so that, until the real was developed, no one could fulfil the righteousness of the law. When Jesus was about to be immersed by John, he said: “Thus it is becoming for us to fulfil all righteousness;” and what was becoming for him is deemed so by the Spirit for all who would become constituents of the Holy Square of Twelve. The Deity condemned sin in the flesh of his Son, says Paul, “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” or the truth—Rom. viii. 4. This was a most remarkable development, that the prophets and priests under the law could not fulfil its righteousness. The High Priest might put on the ephod decorated with its sparkling jewels, and thus be invested with a holiness and brightness and perfection which, when put off and suspended in the wardrobe, left him in all the unholiness, dulness, and imperfection of a natural man. A man whose righteousness is in his dress fulfils not the righteousness of the Deity represented by the dress. This can only be fulfilled by those “who walk after the Spirit;” and they only so walk, who, whether Jews or Gentiles, it matters not, understand the gospel of the kingdom and the truth as it is in Jesus; who believe heartily what they understand, and obey the truth by immersion into the Christ, and a patient continuance in well doing. These, who were never under the Mosaic law, do what the priests and prophets could not do. By their intelligent obedience to the law of faith, they show the work of the Mosaic law written in their hearts, whereby they do the things contained in the law, and so fulfil its righteousness.

Now, the Ephod, with its Foursquare of precious stones, represented το σωμα του Χριστου, the Body of the Anointed. “By one Spirit we all into one body were immersed, whether we be Jews or Gentiles . . . and all into one Spirit have been made to drink; for the body is not one member, but many”—1 Cor. xii. 13. For the development of this body, the Deity set forth Jesus as a Propitiatory or Mercy Seat in his blood. He was of the curiously wrought texture of the ephod, in common with all those who should become his brethren. “My body,” said the Spirit in David, “was not hid from thee, when I was made in the hiding-place, and curiously p. 318 wrought in the lowest parts of the earth”—Ps. cxxxix. 15. The Ephod was of the same material and workmanship as the Vail, with the addition of gold; and the vail, we know, from its being rent when the body of the Spirit was broken on the cross, and from the teaching of Paul—Heb. x. 20—represented the flesh, which, in Ps. xvi. 9, the Spirit styles “my flesh.” The embroidering in of gold thread, in addition to the “blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen” of the Vail, indicated purity of the flesh after trial—“when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

While Jesus, then, was living, and afterwards in death, he was typified by the Vail, whole and afterwards rent; but when he lived again, and ascended to the Divine Nature, and became Son of Deity with power by “Spirit of holiness,” he was typified by the “curiously wrought” ephod, or Jewelled Overall and Robe put on by Aaron when standing before the Deity. As the living embroidered Ephod, he stands in the presence of the Father with the names of the twelve tribes of the “HOLY NATION” engraven on his heart. He is set forth “for all,” as an ephod to be put “upon all” who would enter the Divine Presence, that they die not. This ephod may be put on after the manner in which Jesus became the ephod—by being born of water and Spirit. When the ephod is thus assumed, the immersed and resurrected believer is not only regarded as in it, but as a part of it, and, consequently, as one of the Urim and Thummim—one of the lights—and, therefore, one of the elements of the twelve precious stones, or Thummim; for, as each stone in the type represented a tribe, a multitude of individuals must have been signified by a separate stone.

It may be remarked here that the Apocalyptic Urim and Thummim, or 144,000, are presented before us in two states. In the present state, in which they are being sealed, and in the future state, with the Lamb on Mount Zion—Apoc. vii. and xiv. The two states are divided by the resurrection. As the gold wire has been twined and interwoven with the blue, and the purple, and the scarlet, and the fine twined linen of the Vail, as far as the Lord Jesus is concerned, the Ephod is perfected; but, in relation to his brethren, the gold is in their moral texture only as a principle—a tried faith; but when by Spirit of holiness they are quickened, a golden thread of incorruption, as it were, will be interwoven throughout all their material substance, and they will be like Jesus, immortal. By being born of water, then, the true believer, and only such, is even now invested with the Ephod, and a light of the Urim and the Thummim of the Square of Twelve.

p. 319 The following testimonies will identify the saints as the Urim and Thummim of the foursquare of the Body of the Christ. The Spirit by Isaiah addressing the widowed Jerusalem, which shall hereafter be married to the Elohim of the whole earth, saith, “I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of Yahweh; and great shall be the peace of thy children”—ch. liv. 11. In this, the children of Jerusalem the exalted, “the Mother of us all,” are compared to precious stones of fair colors, or lights, Urim, without defining the Thummim, or full number of them.

Peter styles the saints “living stones;” and all that are built upon the foundation that Jesus is the Christ, and stand firm by the truth, Paul calls “gold, and silver, and precious stones.” And when he teaches, that they are citizens of the commonwealth of Israel, he says in effect, that they are Thummim, or individual elements of the precious stones, whose rootfulness of number is twelve, and its symbolical square 144,000.

In Zech. xiv. 7, the saints who come in with Yahweh Elohim are styled יקרות yĕkāroth, the splendid shining or glorious ones. The word is used of stones, gems, and stars. Their splendor constitutes them Urim. They are the gems and stars through which the brightness of the Spirit enlightens the nations of the earth, when Jesus and his Brethren inherit all things. This reference to the Urim is very remarkable, and in the English Version very imperfectly translated. As it stands in verses 6 and 7, no sense can be made of it. It may be seen by the margin; which deepens the obscurity of the text, that “the authorities” do not know what to do with it. There is no obscurity, however, in the original to one whose mind is not darkened with clerical traditions, and who understands the glory to which the saints are called in the gospel of their salvation. The passage should read thus: “Yahweh my Elohim (He who shall be my Mighty Ones, or righteous governors) shall come in, all the saints with thee. And it shall be in that day there shall be no brightness, the splendid drawing in. And it shall be one day that shall be made known by Yahweh; not day nor night, but it shall be in time of evening there shall be brightness,” or Ur. From this we learn, that when the Lamb and 144,000 enter upon their work of judgment at eventide, they will not “shine as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars” (Dan. xii. 3)—they will not be manifested as Urim; but, though capable of so doing, they will draw in their brightness, and appear as men: but, p. 320 when the judgment is over, and the kingdom established, and the time is come for them to rest from their labors, then they will no longer draw in their splendor, but “shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father”—Mat. xiii. 43; not in the “day” of Jerusalem under the law; nor in the “night” of her widowhood, “not day nor night;” but at eventide, which begins the seventh, or great sabbatic day.

In the present state, the believers, who are constitutionally in the Christ-Ephod, and therefore citizens of the Foursquare Polity which decorates it, are Urim, and addressed as such by Paul in Phil. ii. 15, in the words, “in a crooked and perverse generation, ye, the sons of the Deity, shine as lights,” or Urim, “in the world:” and in Eph. v. 8, “ye were formerly darkness, but now light in the Lord; walk as children of light.” Being in the Lord, they are the lights and precious stones of his breastplate—the Urim and Thummim of his Ephod. They became such by the law and the testimony dwelling in them richly. This gives them their polish, and enables them to “shine as lights.” Where the law and the testimony are not in the understanding, there is no light there. In such only darkness reigns; and while this continues, they can be neither Urim nor Thummim, nor in Christ.

It was because of the darkness, or “strong delusion Deity had sent” the apocalyptic twelve Tribes of Israel, “that they should believe a lie; and all be damned who believed not the truth”—sent by him as a punishment upon them for not continuing in the love of the truth he had given: because of this, he commissioned the sealers to make proclamation among them, that, if there were any disposed to return to first principles, they might be “sealed” with these principles “in their foreheads;” and thus polished and filled in, might shine as the Apocalyptic Urim and Thummim—as the Lights and Fulness of the Body of the Christ.

All exterior to the sealed community, the Holy Square of Twelve, are mere denizens of the unmeasured Court without the Temple—Apoc. xi. 2. These are mere Gentiles, who hold a like relation to the Foursquare Community, that mere Jews do to “the Israel of the Deity,” constituted of Israelites under the law who were sons of Abraham by faith. Blindness has happened to these mere Gentiles of the Court, as it has to mere Jews. The mission of the Angel-Sealers in sealing the 144,000, was to preserve the faith from extinction. Had they not been stirred up by the Lamb through an intelligent belief of the truth, to “spue,” or throw up a flood of words of evil against the apocalyptic tribes of Israel’s sons, the p. 321 catholics would have had everything their own way; and there would have been no Holy City for them to tread under foot for forty-two symbolic months; there would have been no Witnesses to prophesy in sackcloth a thousand two hundred and sixty symbolic days; there would have been no woman in the wilderness for a like period; there would have been no Remnant keeping the commandments, and having the testimony of Jesus Christ; there would have been no war between the Beast and the Saints resulting in their being conquered; and there would be none now to watch and keep their garments in expectation of the Lamb. In all the past fifteen hundred years and upwards, Deity would have had no Urim and Thummim to stand as embodied lights before him. The Body of the Christ would have perished the while; and nothing but “a wretched, and pitiable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” world of apostate “tribes,” calling themselves “the people of God,” would have remained. But, the labors of the Angel-Sealers altered all this. By them, the Lamb “spued out of his mouth” those in place and power with all their adherents, “who said they were Jews, but,” in so saying, “lied;” and organized anew the Holy Nation of Israel’s sons.

7.—The Tribes of the Apostasy

That the tribes from which “the Remnant of the Woman’s Seed” was to be separated were not the tribes of Israel after the flesh, appears from the specification of them. The reader will see from the following table, that the lists enumerating and specifying their names, vary according to the speaker or writer passing them in review. Thus:

In the apocalyptic specification Levi and Joseph are inserted, and Ephraim and Dan omitted. Ephraim and Dan are both inserted p. 322 in Moses’ distribution of the tribes into Four Camps. This diversity shows that two different organizations called Israel are signified; nevertheless, though diverse, yet related according to the principles I have before explained. In the apocalyptic Israel, the tribe of Levi is not Yahweh’s especial inheritance, lot, or clergy, as in the natural Israel; although, after the destruction of Jerusalem, the “Jews of the Satan’s synagogue,” who set up for apostles, and by the saints in Ephesus were found to be “liars,” claimed to be the Lord’s clergy, as at this day, in place of the natural tribe of Levi. “Yahweh’s inheritance is his people;” not a particular tribe of them. Joseph is inserted instead of Ephraim in the apocalyptic polity by which the division of the natural Israel into two nations and kingdoms under Judah and Ephraim is repudiated. The future union of the natural Israel under Jesus and his Brethren is foreshadowed in the union of the symbolic Israel. In the regeneration, when the apostles sit on the twelve thrones of the House of David ruling the twelve tribes, there will be but one nation and kingdom in the land upon the mountains of Israel, with Yahweh’s servant as their Prince for ever—Ezek. xxxvii. 15-28.

In Ezek. xlviii., the two tribes omitted by John are inserted, because Ezekiel is treating of the allotment of the land of Israel among the natural tribes restored from their long dispersion. Levi has no allotment of territory as under the Mosaic law.

The 144,000 sealed ones being separated by the truth believed and obeyed from the apocalyptic tribes of apostate sons of Israel, become themselves exclusively the Foursquare Community, or “Israel of the Deity.” They are not his kingdom, but “the Heirs” of it, through the gospel thereof they believe. They constitute the only temple, or habitation, he has upon earth. He dwells in them, and walks in them, by the truth believed, which is his moral power, or spirit. The Spirit in Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Hence, in the individual, or community, in which the truth dwells, the Deity dwells. It is a body anointed with the truth, and therefore the Body of the Anointed, or Christ. Being founded upon the Square Root—upon the Root and Offspring of Israel—it is regarded as consisting of twelve tribes, though no fleshly, territorial, or political divisions among the faithful exist; for “they are all one in Christ Jesus.”