I am about to explain to you one of the most beautiful pieces of understanding I have ever received; I say beautiful because it ties together unexplained fragments of scripture to form a picture so epic, so broad that it staggers the mind.

We all know how the Israelites escaped the fetters of Egypt, wandered the deserts for forty years, and finally entered into the promised land. We also know that those things happened “for our admonition” (1 Corinthians 10:11). But until now we have never grasped a fraction of just how much they were to admonish us – or how much we could learn from it. By the time you have finished this article you will have a newfound respect for the depth of the planning that went into this glorious scheme of God’s.

Let’s start with the overview of what we know happened; they started in Egypt, then when they were delivered out of bondage to Egypt, they passed through the Red sea. After that, Manna started falling, then they arrived at Sinai; there God offered them the new covenant when He personally spoke the Ten Commandments on Pentecost; but the people rejected Him and asked God not to speak to them any more, requesting Moses as their mediator instead. Thus, choosing for themselves the old covenant.

After that they went up to the promised land, camped on the east side of Jordan, and sent in spies. At first the spies brought back a great report, but said the giants were too much for them – then they changed their story and said the land was an unpleasant, dangerous place that “eats up the inhabitants” (Numbers 13:27-28, 32-33).

The next forty years were spent wandering in the wilderness until the faithless adults had died out. A full adult lifetime spend wandering in the desert, and then after the older generation was dead Moses finally led the children of Israel up to the promised land. However, because of his own mistake, Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land but instead passed the mantle on to Joshua, who parted the Jordan, circumcised Israel, then went on and subdued Jericho and the rest of the promised land.

Now what is so special about all that, you ask? You knew that already, you say? Yes, you did; but what is special about that is that it is ALL an allegory! Every last occurrence from the time God called Moses to the death of Joshua was an allegory of something much more meaningful! It is an allegory OF YOUR LIFE! It is YOUR LIFE, the PLAN of YOUR salvation laid out IN GEOGRAPHY!

THE EXPLANATION

To begin with, Israel on the western side of Jordan is used by Paul in Hebrews 3 and 4 to represent the promised land, and a type of the spiritual promised land we are all promised; that is, the Kingdom of God.

Hebrews 3:10-11, 4:8-11 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)For if Jesus [Joshua in the Old Testament] had given them [Ancient Israel] rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

So if the land of Israel represents the promised land that we and the rest of the men of faith will inherit at the resurrection after we die, then the wilderness must represent the period BEFORE we enter into that promised land – our physical lives, and where those with “an evil heart of unbelief” are left. The Jordan river, as the separation between those two states – physical life, and spiritual life – would represent the interim state, which of course is death.

So let’s think back a bit more – Israel wandered the wilderness for 40 years. Before then, they camped at Sinai. At Sinai, God spoke to them and gave them the ten commandments on the day of Pentecost – which was symbolic of later receiving the holy spirit on Pentecost, 1500 years or so later. Before then they had crossed the red sea. Paul later referred to that experience as a “baptism”:

1 Corinthians 10:1-2 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the CLOUD and in the SEA;

And where were they before the red sea? In Egypt of course! And Egypt is well known as a symbol for sin – the Israelites were in bondage to Egypt, hopelessly lost before God miraculously rescued them, just as we were hopelessly lost in bondage to our sins before God called us and rescued us out of them. Anyone can see that a pattern has emerged here, a pattern that shows us the plan of salvation revealed, of all things, in the geography of the middle east. Now let’s put these events in order and apply them to you and me.

Thanks to great⁹⁰-grandfather Adam, we are all slaves to sin. Your first sin was so early in your life you probably can’t remember it. And by now you’re sitting on quite a pile of them, no doubt. This places you, geographically, in Egypt.

Then one day God calls you; teaches you the truth – teaches you that He is God. Calls you to come out of Egypt. You do, and are baptized in the red sea – this corresponds to the baptism of John, the Father “drawing you” to Christ (John 6:44). Now you have geographically moved to the red sea; now the devil doesn’t have power over you any more – unless God lets him. (Job 2:6)

After being baptized you receive a taste of the manna (Acts 2:38), the body of Christ (John 6:51), and if you obey that spirit, you will be offered the New Testament baptism in the cloud – you will all be taught of God (John 6:45). Congratulations, you have arrived at Sinai.

Here God personally offers a direct spiritual covenant to you – that He will talk to you directly, as He did to Israel when He (not Moses!) spoke the ten commandments (Exodus 20:1). You can accept it – as Moses, Joshua, and Caleb did – and you are under the new covenant. This means you will be saved by faith, as Abraham was, and allow God full access to your uncircumcised heart.

Or, you can reject it as the bulk of Israel did and demand that God not speak to you any more – and keep his nose OUT of your heart! (Exodus 20:19). God will accept this too – although He won’t be too happy about it – and allow you to keep the law written on tablets of stone instead of your hearts. He will only give you physical blessings, but that’s what you wanted. Either way, God will then lead you to the promised land.

Now you have moved to the east side of Jordan. Here God shows you the promised land – what His kingdom will be like. If you look across there and tremble in your boots and are unable to trust God, then regardless of which covenant you are in, you will have to spend the rest of your life – probably about 40 years? – wandering in the wilderness, “delivered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Corinthians 5:5). Or, if you see the promise and embrace it, trusting God to provide for your needs and believing Him, that will be counted to you for righteousness (Numbers 13:30-31).

Of course, like Caleb and Joshua, you will still have to wander in the wilderness for now, because the rest of the world has chosen it. God will be with you with a pillar of fire for light by night and a pillar of cloud for shade by day and will lead you in the way that He wishes you to go. Geographically, you are back in the wilderness again.

As you wander around the wilderness you will run into the waters of Meribah, hunger, thirst, and spend your life surrounded by faithless people, but God will be with you and as long as your faith remains strong, God will see to it that your yoke is easy and your burden is light (Matthew 11:29).

Finally, as you near the end of your life you will migrate back towards the promised land, as Moses did, and encamp yourself on the east side of the Jordan once more. All of this time you have been growing in grace and knowledge and striving to control your carnal nature, and be a partaker of the divine nature. Of course, you will still HAVE carnal nature in you, but if you control that nature as you should, it won’t lead to sin.

You will be concluding a grand journey that began in bondage to Egypt and was traveled by Abraham, Enoch, Elijah, Steven, Paul and Moses; and you will, like Moses, not be allowed to enter the promised land directly. You will have to die first.

Deuteronomy 34:1-5 And Moses went up … unto the mountain of Nebo, … And the LORD shewed him all the land … unto the utmost sea, And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.

Unless you happen to be alive at the return of Jesus Christ, you cannot cross the Jordan into immortality without first dying. This is a time-honored rule which has been followed by all the men of Faith.

Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having SEEN them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

Moses SAW the promised land, as will you and I, but he wasn’t allowed to enter into the promised land at the time. He had to die and be buried in the land of the uncircumcised on the east of Jordan, in the spiritual wilderness which represents this current phase of Earth’s existence.

Hebrews 11:39 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

They all died! All of them, as Moses did, saw the promises afar off, and BELIEVED in them, and accepted that they were strangers without a country, with no stability in their lives, and nothing to call their own but a belief in a better country. And all along the way they, like you, had chances to return to Egypt – the life they left behind in the world of sin – and if they had cared about that, they could have freely gone! But they wouldn’t enter the promised land if they did!

Hebrews 11:14-16 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

No man has yet entered the promised land, except He who came from there – Jesus Christ. And yet we’ve all, in one way or another, been to Sinai. But the symbolism of Sinai goes beyond that;

SINAI

Think about this; Elijah went to Sinai for forty days (or at least, it took him forty days to get there). (1 Kings 19:8). Jesus went to Sinai for forty days. Moses was on Sinai for 40 days twice. Paul spent up to 3 years in Arabia, where Mt. Sinai is (Galatians 1:17). It is probable (fitting the pattern) that he spent some time on Sinai. Why did they go to Sinai? What did it picture, if anything?

Sinai has always held a special place in God’s heart. In another article, “Why Was Sinai Holy” I explained why that is – briefly, that Sinai represented the old covenant because physical, carnal-hearted man was created there. At the same time I explained that Jerusalem pictured the new covenant, and the spiritual birth we will undergo at the resurrection (Galatians 4:24-26). The division between the two was circumcision – one being circumcised only in flesh, and the other in the heart.

Ezekiel 44:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; No stranger, uncircumcised in heart, nor uncircumcised in flesh, shall enter into my sanctuary, of any stranger that is among the children of Israel.

The sanctuary, another “type” of what is variously called the promised land, the “rest” of God, the kingdom of God, eternal life or salvation – will not have anyone in it who is uncircumcised in heart. And the physical type of that, ancient Israel, could not be populated by people who were uncircumcised. So immediately upon crossing Jordan…

Joshua 5:2-3 At that time the LORD said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time. And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins.

The only real difference between the old covenant and the new is circumcision. Everything comes back to that. The old covenant physical circumcision, and the new has spiritual circumcision. One covenant agrees to submit only their outward actions to God, the other agrees to submit their thoughts as well.

The new covenant is the offering of eternal life and salvation by faith; the old covenant is only an offer of physical blessings and a physical life, and faith is not required. People under the old covenant (Hebrews 8) had uncircumcised hearts and no faith. The law was written on tablets of stone and that was enough.

Hebrews 8:10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

But this new covenant requires a circumcised heart – a conscience, in other words, that God has complete unhindered access to at any time, not one that is hardened and shielded from his influence by your lusts and sins. And the Jordan river represents the difference; on the one side, the covenant of faith, and on the other, the bondage to the law. So the covenant of faith has for it’s capital city Jerusalem (Galatians 4 again) while the capital of bondage is Sinai.

LAZARUS AND THE RICH MAN

This parable is often misused to justify heaven and hell, but when you really understand it (read “Lazarus And The Rich Man”), it actually explains a lot about the difference between first resurrection and second resurrection people, or the new and old covenants, respectively. Read the article for a complete explanation, but for now suffice it to say that we see Abraham and Lazarus on one side of “a great gulf”, with a certain Rich Man on the other.

The picture we see, when the symbols are explained, is one of God the Father (Abraham) on the circumcised side of the river Jordan, with Lazarus (Jesus) in His bosom, and on the “uncircumcised in heart” side of the Jordan, in the second resurrection, we find a prominent, faithless Pharisee. This Pharisee asks God the Father to send him Jesus (in the form of the holy spirit), and God the Father says no; that he can’t have the spirit (at least not yet). He then asks for it for his (equally faithless) family, and God again says no;

Luke 16:29-31 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

The point of the parable being that if you don’t learn the letter of the law and the prophets, that the SPIRIT of the law would not help you! Because the spirit of the law WAS in fact brought “by one risen from the dead” and they rejected it! Because that law is entirely built upon the foundation of the old testament law, and the Pharisees weren’t even obeying that!

John 7:19 Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?

The spirit of Christ, without having the foundation of Moses and the prophets CANNOT HELP YOU! Because the spirit of Christ merely interprets His Father’s law! And so if you’re not FIRST obeying that law (Acts 5:32), the Father won’t bother sending you His Son’s spirit because “If you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will you be persuaded, though one rose from the dead!”

Christ, in responding to a question asking which is the greatest commandment, responded saying “love God” and “Love your brother” and states that…

Matthew 22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

So if you don’t START with the law and the prophets, you can’t POSSIBLY “love God”, or your brother, because ON THE FOUNDATION of the law and prophets is where the spirit of the law rests!

THE RESURRECTION

But we rather left the analogy in the middle, when we stopped on the east side of Jordan. But the analogy carries on into the promised land! And there we find the most fascinating parts of the story!

Whether you are alive or dead at His return, it is still Jesus who leads you across the river Jordan. Moses could carry you through this physical life and lead you, but he could not lead you across into the resurrection because he was, himself, a corruptible man. To lead us into the kingdom of God we had to have a man who was incorruptible and perfect; and for that, we find Joshua. Which, interestingly enough, is just the Hebrew spelling of “Jesus”. A coincidence? Hardly. Just one of the easier parts of this allegory.

As Joshua – Jesus – led the Israelites into the promised land – the Kingdom of God – the very first thing He did when they crossed the Jordan was to circumcise all of them.

Joshua 5:2-3 At that time the LORD said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel THE SECOND TIME. And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins.

Circumcision of course represents accepting the covenant of God (Genesis 17), God having access to your heart (Romans 2:29) to prompt you to do the right thing. Conversion, in other words. Now we accepted this circumcision once in this life, at the beginning of our journey; but when we are made spirit, we will be permanently and spiritually circumcised AGAIN THE SECOND TIME!

And so to symbolize that, the very first thing is that Joshua did when He crossed the Jordan was to circumcise Israel again! And the very the FIRST THING Jesus does when He leads the dead across the spiritual river Jordan, from death into life (1 John 3:14) is to change the CORRUPTIBLE nature of man into the INCORRUPTIBLE nature of God!

1 John 3:9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he CANNOT sin, because he is born of God.

When man’s heart is really and truly circumcised, when his carnal nature is at last vanquished and God has complete unfettered access to the now completely spiritually-circumcised hearts of men who are born again into the family of God as spirit beings, those “spirits of just men MADE PERFECT” (Hebrews 12:23) will at last be full citizens of the promised land! They can at last DWELL there, not merely seeing it from afar, hoping against hope, but actually live IN the promised land that so many righteous men have longed for!

Moses couldn’t enter this promised land because HE was physical – only a spiritual leader, Jesus could lead men across Jordan into the eternal covenant of life! And after circumcising the newborn residents of the promised land…

Joshua 5:9 And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day.

Finally, after breaking out of bondage to sin and a lifetime wandering in the spiritual desert we live in today, after the stain of our natures and the uncircumcision of our hearts being at last completely eradicated, God throws away every last vestige of the reproach from our tour in Egypt!

Tell me that isn’t awesome. But I’m not finished yet! For we left out one significant incident along the way, namely, the twelve stones. As Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan, he first commanded the priests bearing the ark to walk down into the water; as soon as their feet touched the waters they stood up in a heap for an enormous distance upstream (approximately 20 miles, give or take). (Joshua 3)

Then God commanded Joshua to have twelve stones carried up out of the bottom of the river.

Joshua 4:8-9 And the children of Israel … took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the LORD spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, and carried them over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down there.

And at Gilgal (the place where God “removed the reproach of Egypt”, Joshua 5:9) Joshua erected these stones (Joshua 4:9). Our analogy has been pretty accurate so far, few details of the Christian life and resurrection have been omitted; so what do these stones represent? This is the most incredible part yet!

Jordan represents death, we said early on. The place where people go between physical life and spiritual life. And Joshua led a group of people across that barrier on dry ground, so that they passed directly from one to the other, without experiencing death in between; as Paul says “…We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52), and says again “…we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.” (1 Thessalonians 4:15)

Both of these verses speak of two categories of people being turned to spirit – those who “died in faith, not having received the promises” (Hebrews 11:13), and those who “are alive and remain” at His coming. In the story of Joshua crossing the Jordan we only see one group represented – those who walked across and passed DIRECTLY from one side of the Jordan to the other!

But what about those who DIED, like Moses, on the other side of the Jordan! Where are they represented here?

Remember that “we are buried with him by baptism into death:” (Romans 6:4). We symbolically DIE when we are baptized in water! Our “old man” remains buried under those waters, in principle!

Further, most Baptisms mentioned in the New Testament took place at the JORDAN river! (not surprisingly, since there isn’t a lot of water in the middle east to choose from). Christ, Himself was baptized in the Jordan! So if there is one place where more saints are “buried” than any other, it would have to be the JORDAN!

So we can draw the conclusion then that symbolically when we die we are placed “under the waters of Jordan”, buried there until the return of Jesus Christ. Who, when He returns, will “raise the dead incorruptible” from the “grave”. So then, when Jesus/Joshua crossed the Jordan, leading “those who remained at His coming”, He stopped as they crossed over on dry land into the promised land to pick up TWELVE stones!

When the Bible speaks of the resurrected dead, it speaks of them in divisions of twelve tribes; (Matthew 19:28, Revelation 21:12, etc). The firstfruits who are to be resurrected at the return of Christ are described as being 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes, resulting in the famous 144,000 (Revelation 7:2-8). And so these twelve large stones – one per tribe – are carried up from their resting place under the waters of Jordan, and planted in Gilgal, where “the reproach was rolled away”.

Doesn’t that fit the pattern perfectly! And there are still more scriptures to tie in! These twelve stones, although little more is said of them at the time, were likely laid up in some sort of an altar or monument.

1 Kings 18:31 And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, … And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD: …

So what, you say? Well, I’ve always found this next scripture strange, haven’t you?

Revelation 6:9-11 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw UNDER THE ALTAR the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

This clearly speaks symbolically of the state of the righteous dead as being under “the altar” someplace. If the idea of being buried under Jordan is correct, and if Joshua built an altar of those twelve stones representing those twelve tribes… then the symbolism will all fit neatly. But there is ONE more scripture that ties in here… (this is the best one yet!)

Matthew 3:5-9 Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him IN JORDAN, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able OF THESE STONES to raise up children unto Abraham.

We have always assumed that this was just some offhanded statement about the power of God, assuming that by some magical means God could raise up rocks to replace the Pharisees if need be… but what if we were wrong? Remember, this was said at Jordan; according to John 1:28, “These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing.”

Bethabara is a Hebrew word which means “house of the ford”, or in more modern English, “place of the crossing”. What crossing took place on the lower Jordan, near Jerusalem? Go back and read Joshua 4 – this is where the Israelites walked into the promised land on dry ground!

John was Baptizing at the exact same spot that Israel had crossed the Jordan into the promised land! And therefore He was almost certainly within line-of-sight of the VERY STONES THAT JOSHUA COMMANDED TO BE HAULED OUT OF THE RIVER JORDAN, THOSE STONES THAT REPRESENTED THE DEAD IN CHRIST!

And John the Baptist indicated THESE stones – specific stones. He didn’t say “some stones” or “a stone”, but said that God is able to raise up of THESE PARTICULAR STONES – perhaps with a gesture of His hand towards a certain pile of twelve stones!

While he could have been gesturing at the ground, or at a random rock, I have found that the Bible doesn’t really have coincidences – God put things there for a reason. And it is far more likely John was pointing to those same stones, telling the Pharisees not to think too highly of themselves, for God had all of those who had died in faith before to choose from, He needn’t pick them simply because they were Abraham’s children.

So are you intrigued yet? Think I’m making this up as I go along? Well, perhaps this is all just a lot of hooey. Maybe everything I’ve said was a coincidence, or an accident, or I’m making a mountain out of a proverbial molehill. But I’m not the first person to make a mountain out of this particular molehill. Which brings me to the final really awesome part; the river Styx.

Nearly every pagan mythology centers around a great river which must be crossed to reach the afterlife. The Greeks called it the river Styx. You will also find it in Dante’s Divine Comedy embraced by the Catholics as well as Paradise Lost embraced by the Protestants. For the Hindu it is the traditionally the Rasa river, although in many ways the Ganges also corresponds to it, while the Japanese call it the Sanzu, and bury their dead with six coins to provide a toll for the boat ride across it. I could fill the page with a list of cultures with legends about it, but suffice it to say, the legend is almost universal.

We just read where the Bible itself had a similar symbol. And we learned what it represents. But let’s see how Satan led these other cultures to COUNTERFEIT the symbol of God into their own pagan devices, as he so often does.

I will stick primarily to the Greek mythology for the sake of simplicity, and because it is familiar to the western world. I will also stick to the name of “Charon” for the boatman and “Styx” for the river, since both have many names. The majority of cultures buried their dead with coins in their mouths or treasures in their casket to give them something to barter with when they reached the river Styx.

If Charon wasn’t bribed, he wouldn’t carry you across the river on his boat. And without his boat, you couldn’t get across, and your soul would be doomed to wander forever in the wasteland between death and the afterlife – purgatory.

Now Satan’s lie has been from the very beginning that “you shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). And his promise to his followers has been that they can ignore God, do whatever they want to in this life (under the cloak of “free grace”) and when they die they will be able to cross the Jordan ANYWAY! They need not die and “sleep” under the Jordan as God says, but their “immortal” soul can be shipped directly ACROSS (not under!) the rivers of death!

These legends convey Satan’s promise to his followers to FERRY them across Jordan – not on dry land, with the waters held back in faith, led by Jesus, but sneaking in the back door taking a forbidden journey into the promised land WITHOUT SHOWING THE FAITH OF CALEB AND JOSHUA! All he asks in return is a small payment (your obedience to him!) and he will take your soul across the river into the Kingdom of God!

When Israel looked across the promised land and feared to enter it, God punished them and condemned them to die in the wilderness for their lack of faith. After hearing their punishment, Israel had a sudden change of heart, and without having faith, they decided they DID want to go into the promised land after all!

Numbers 14:40 And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the LORD hath promised: for we have sinned.

But it was too late for them! And Moses told them not to go, but they tried to go anyway and they lost the battle miserably. God won’t let you cross the Jordan UNLESS HE LEADS YOU ON DRY GROUND! And unless YOU QUALIFY FOR IT BY DYING IN FAITH!

Because without faith, it is impossible to please God… but Satan doesn’t care at all about your faith. Satan promises that when you are ready to die and look across into the promised land, even if you lack faith, all you have to do is pay Charon to get across the waters of Jordan (death) into Heaven. And every religion from the Japanese Buddhists to the Baptists believe him.

CONCLUSION

We could carry the basic analogy farther, and use events like the destruction of Jericho to explain more events after the return of Christ and in the kingdom of God, but… this is enough for now.

You may remember that earlier I asked the question “Why did all those people go to Sinai and back?”. The answer is that every man who has ever walked on the path towards immortality has begun his journey in Egypt, gone to Sinai where he learned the law, and then if he stayed faithful eventually wound up back at the Jordan to die, then will one day cross it and be born again into the family of God at the resurrection. These were all simply symbolic types of that journey. The great men of the Bible all died on the east side the Jordan and were buried under the Jordan…

Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having SEEN them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

And are waiting for the resurrection to inherit the promises. We too, have seen the promises and we now wander in the wilderness somewhere on the east side of the Jordan, where we will die unless Christ returns first. For you, the only question is, will you be one of those who He leaves in that wilderness to die because of your lack of faith, will you be one of those trying to bribe Charon to ferry you over… or one of those who will join ranks and walk arm in arm with Abraham and Elijah behind Joshua, your savior, into the promised land on dry land?