breadcrumbing

AUDIO VERSION HERE

 

As I mentioned in part 1 of this series, I received a vision while reading the words I shared with you: I saw the temple building, complete with outer court, Holy Place and Holy of Holies. There was a very visible trail of manna scattered like a path through the outer court and into the Holy Place. It was wide and abundant in the outer court and became narrower as it passed through the Holy Place. By the time it got to the altar of incense, there were only a few pieces of manna on the ground and it ended there. It reminded me of a trail deliberately laid to show people what way to go. It is almost as if the Father has directed that pieces of manna, revelation light portions from the Bread of Life, be scattered to show His people how to find the way to the ark of His presence. Furthermore, the Spirit showed me this trail of white is like the walk down the aisle for the Bride and is specifically manna provided to lead the Bridal company through the temple to the place of marriage, oneness and consummation; essentially dwelling in the Holy of Holies face to face.

 

So the altar of incense is the last station the Bride of Christ visits before full union. It is a place of full surrender, of forgetting your people and your father's house, of separation from and separation unto. After this comes name change, station change, change of dwelling place and the receiving of full wedding covenant privileges, rights and responsibilities. Being a wife is very different from being a fiancée. In a holy covenant relationship, the Bride doesn't see the bedchamber of the Groom before the ceremony. You may have walked with Him, talked with Him, danced with Him, but consummation is a different matter.

 

Consequently this threshold of the Holy of Holies is also a place of sifting. The altar of incense is full of crushed incense that is set alight. But there is also a portion of incense that is crushed extra-fine and set apart or appointed to be carried by the High Priest into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur - the feast which is also known by the name 'Face to Face'.

 

Concerning the manna, I was reminded by the Holy Spirit of a prophetic experience I had on the 6th May 2020(when I also received the word concerning judgement on New York), where I was taken again in a vision to the room where the manna is formed in Heaven. I had visited it before and, this time, I noticed that the level of golden heavenly light in the atmosphere was significantly less and there was not much manna on the floor of the room. After commenting on this, the Father said the time of receiving daily manna by just picking it up from what had already been scattered daily along the path was coming to an end, and the time of experiencing the Promised Land of true union was at hand. Historically, once the people of God crossed over into the new dispensation and entered the Promised Land, the manna ceased falling the day after Passover:

 

Jos 5:10  And the Israelites encamped in Gilgal; and they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at evening in the plains of Jericho. Jos 5:11  And on that same day they ate the stored grain of the land: unleavened cakes and parched grain. Jos 5:12  And the manna ceased on the day after they ate of the produce of the land; and the Israelites had manna no more, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.

 

Notice that during this transition Passover, they received both manna in the morning, then unleavened bread made from ground stored grain AND they ate of the new grain that had passed through the fire - a 3-fold feast. All this grain was grown in the Promised Land. It was not carried with them from Egypt or obtained in the wilderness of preparation. At this Passover, they received nutrition from those already rooted and growing in the new dispensation. Not only that, but the phrase 'stored grain' is the Hebrew word Abur, meaning 'passed, or stored'. In the Ark of the Covenant beyond the veil, there is stored manna; stored bread of Heaven. The threefold feast on this pivotal Passover includes an hors-d'oeuvre of that which has been stored up in a golden vessel company dwelling in the hidden place of His presence, with the purpose of unveiling at God's appointed time.

 

The people born in the wilderness had never eaten unleavened bread as no crops had been grown in the 40 years of wilderness wanderings.  How delicious it must have tasted to them! This threefold feast contains nourishment and revelation never encountered by the eyes and ears of the current generation of saints. These termed 'stored grain' are seasoned saints, set apart and holy, who have been saturated in the presence of God continually, away from the eyes of the activity in the Holy Place. So we see that there are forerunner saints, those who have been sent ahead, who have successfully been tested by fire and found to be vessels of gold, carrying within revelation and understanding that is nutritious for the Bridal Company to consume. They do not carry the leaven of the Pharisees or the leaven of Herod. They are bearing the leaven of the Kingdom.

 

Abur comes from a root word 'abar' meaning 'to transition, cross over, enter into a covenant, pass beyond, to emigrate, to impregnate'. There is heavenly seed in this stored grain of the Promised Land! As the Bridal Company enters into a marriage covenant and transitions to married life, consummation takes place and seed within the stored grain is released into spiritual wombs. The season of great fruitfulness lies ahead.

 

The phrase 'parched in the fire' refers to the practice of testing the newly ripened grain to see if it was in the aviv phase (you can read more about this in the series on the Firstfruits Barley, written in 2018/19). This Passover takes place at the time of the barley harvest in Canaan. If barley is aviv, the grains can pass through the fire without being consumed by the flames and vaporizing. The heat only serves to harden the outside and make the grain fit for consumption. This aviv grain represents saints who are already rooted and grounded in the Promised Land, but who are being tasted for the first time - new ministries, new prophets fresh from their season of preparation, who come to impart great and mighty things that the Bridal Company has not known. They are new faces, new writers, new speakers; the unknown ones - just like John the Baptist who showed up after about 28 years of obscurity at the Jordan. I am sure many people who came to the river had never heard of him and his family had been wiped out by Herod's soldiers.

 

Son 3:6  Who is this that comes gliding out of the wilderness like stately pillars of smoke perfumed with myrrh, frankincense, and all the fragrant powders of the merchant?

 

The word 'parched' comes from a root word meaning 'despised, lightly esteemed'. So we know that those new aviv vessels through whom the Lord ministers nourishment called 'parched grain' at this crossing point have walked in the sufferings of Jesus - a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, one from whom men hid their faces and considered of no worth ( Isaiah 53:3).  They have been refined by trial and tested and found useful to the Master.

 

Notice also that the unleavened cakes and the parched grain were provided just before the end of the daily manna season. What the forerunners share at this juncture is nourishment that prepares for the new season ahead. Passive reception of daily spiritual nourishment would be ending. No more daily spiritual breakfast easily gathered on wakening. The fruit of Canaan was a different matter. Yes, they conquered giants and possessed the fields and cities of the pagans, but those crops still had to be harvested and passed through the preparation procedures necessary to make them table-ready. There was a lot of physical labour connected with accessing the fruit of the Promised Land. In a spiritual sense, this can be likened to eating meat instead of drinking milk. Meat must be cooked, cut up and chewed mouthful by mouthful to glean the nourishment it contains. Milk in contrast can just be swallowed straight from the cow!

 

In the same way, the revelation imparted in the Holy Place is depicted by the seven flames of the continually burning menorah and by the table of showbread, whose cakes were dished out every Sabbath to the serving priests. The olives have already been harvested and pressed to produce the pure oil. The flour has already been ground and the bread baked. The Holy Place is the place of readily accessible revelation truth, and some natural light permeates its interior through the doorway to the outer court. But the threshold marked by the hanging place of the veil announces a vast change. Here the trail of easily picked up manna ends. Beyond this threshold is the Speaking Place, the Holy of Holies, where there is no natural light. It is the place of Face to Face, the glory realm, and only a portion of all the crushed incense makes it beyond the threshold.

(To be continued)