Most of the information about the showbread is in one place;

Leviticus 24:5-9 And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof: two tenth deals shall be in one cake. And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the LORD. And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the LORD. Every sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. And it shall be Aaron’s and his sons’; and they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the LORD made by fire by a perpetual statute.

The simple question is, what does this showbread represent? We know that it is something outside the heart, and yet inside the body, simply by where it is in the temple. We know that it must symbolize something in the temple in heaven as well as the garden of Eden.

Although I can’t find a Biblical reference that proves it conclusively, everyone agrees that the showbread was unleavened; I am inclined to believe that as well since everything else that was in the temple was unleavened and God didn’t say otherwise for this, and I think if it were to be leavened He would have made it clear as He did with the Pentecost offering – nonetheless, it doesn’t specifically say.

We do know that there are twelve loaves. Twelve is a number that shows up repeatedly in the Bible as everyone knows, so we have lots of options to choose from, if we merely guess, and if you read commentaries you’ll hear most of these guesses proposed: Twelve apostles? Twelve tribes? Twelve sons of Israel? Twelve months? Twelve hours in a day? Twelve stones on an altar, twelve oxen holding up the brass sea in front of the temple, twelve lions by its door? Twelve gates in the holy city, twelve manner of fruits on the tree of life?

These twelve loaves represent something, it is sure. They are only symbols, after all. But what? Let’s not guess like everyone else does. First of all, bread represents the body of Christ, we know for sure.

Matthew 26:26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.

But Jesus’ body isn’t divided into twelve parts; At least, not twelve complete parts. At this passover service there may have been twelve broken pieces, but in the temple there were specifically twelve complete loaves.

1 Corinthians 5:7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

This goes on however and tells us that WE are a lump (of dough), that is UNLEAVENED! But it doesn’t say we are baked. It says we are a lump of dough. A lump from which can still be purged the “old leaven” so that we can be a new lump. This allows us to make the connection that our bodies are lumps of uncooked bread; But there is also a larger portrayal of this symbol in the Bible…

Hosea 7:8 (GWV) “…Ephraim, you are like a half–baked loaf of bread.

This sets us up a specific principle that a TRIBE is a loaf of bread. For the time being, a partially-cooked loaf of bread, at that. Now if we, or a whole tribe of Israel, could be “cooked” by fire as the Showbread was…

Leviticus 24:9… for it is most holy unto him of the offeringsof the LORD made BY FIRE by a perpetual statute.

…then our bodies would be cooked bread. And cooked unleavened bread, at that. Bread that can no longer be affected by leaven. It is after all a simple culinary fact that once bread is cooked it can no longer be leavened. So after we pass through the fire of testing, temptation, and so on, we are fit to be displayed before the literal throne room of God and be “before His face always” (remember that phrase for later). But we won’t reach that stage until we are “born again” as spirit:

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.

So we are today uncooked lumps of dough; passing through the trials of fire in this life, and at the resurrection our baking will be complete and we will be finished. Back to the showbread, it is clear now that it represents us; that is, our future selves, if we endure to the end. But only twelve of us. As Hosea said however, these twelve loaves also represent groups; so to look for twelve groups of “baked” Christians, where would one turn?

Revelation 7:4-8 And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel. Of the tribe of Juda… Reuben … Gad … Aser … Nepthalim … Manasses … Simeon … Levi … Issachar … Zabulon … Joseph … [and] Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand [each]

So the firstfruits are divided into these twelve tribes; both Ephraim (as Joseph) and Manasseh are listed, but Dan is not mentioned as Genesis 49:18 has Dan prophetically complaining “I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD”.

So the twelve loaves of the showbread represent the twelve tribes of the firstfruits; not the twelve tribes in general, but strictly the firstfruits. So let’s build on that. The word “showbread” comes from the Hebrew words “lechem paniym” which means literally “bread of faces”, or as some translate it “bread of my face”. Most translations read “bread of the [i.e., God’s] presence”.

Psalms 27:8 When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.

And those of the firstfruits are always in God’s presence, before his face “… for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5).

Revelation 14:1, 4 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads. … These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

These redeemed firstfruits are ALWAYS in the presence of the Lamb, for they follow Him wherever He goes; so in the heavenly temple sense, they must be represented in the throne room of God. When we go to the throne room of God, we find several symbols already explained; the candlestick (seven spirits of God), the censer (the angel guarding the throne), the ark (the throne of God) and so on; but we also find something else sitting there in the throne room of God, apparently close at hand…

Revelation 20:12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

These dead were symbolically standing in the throne room of God; and these “books” were opened, and another book, the “book of life”. So I ask the obvious question – where were these books kept?

We know they weren’t in the Ark of the Covenant, since we have a comprehensive list of its contents. Surely it couldn’t be outside the temple, for it would be silly to keep something so valuable, so important to God outside of the holy place; so it has to be inside, and we’ve explained the other contents of the temple … So it can only be setting on the table of showbread in the temple in Heaven.

The book of life is a book that contains the names, history, designers notes and so on of each of the 144,000. For now! By the time the first resurrection comes around, it will have exactly 144,000 people written in the book, broken down into “chapters” of twelve tribes of 12,000 each! Every person who will be in the first resurrection has their name written in that book. So every person who is in the first resurrection is, symbolically represented by a crumb of one of those loaves.

Revelation 14:4 These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

The Bible makes it clear that to be a firstfruit, in the first resurrection, and to represent the showbread, you have to be undefiled with women; symbolically here, false churches. But if you’ll recall, that was the one condition the priest put upon David and his men before eating the showbread…

1 Samuel 21:4 And the priest answered David, and said, There is no common bread under mine hand, but there is hallowed bread; if the young men have kept themselves at least from women.

These men and David had no business under the law eating this hallowed bread; showbread was to be eaten ONLY by priests and ONLY in the Holy place (Leviticus 25:9)!

Verses 5-6 And David answered the priest, and said unto him, Of a truth women have been kept from us about these three days, since I came out, and the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in a manner common, yea, though it were sanctified this day in the vessel. So the priest gave him hallowed bread: for there was no bread there but the shewbread, that was taken from before the LORD, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away.

This bread wasn’t the showbread which was presently being displayed, not even a priest could eat that until the next Sabbath’s loaves were made and on display. This was showbread which had been displayed and was now edible for priests. Jesus specifically condoned this event, and used it to justify His own actions on the Sabbath day…

Matthew 12:3-4 But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?

David was blameless in eating the showbread simply because that showbread represented David and His men. The showbread was a symbol of the resurrected firstfruits, and David represented Jesus and his “mighty men” represented the 144,000 firstfruits; so since the bread was actually themselves, it belonged to them in a way; and so David said that his men were “holy”, and that this showbread was “in a manner common, yea, though it were sanctified this day in the vessel.” – that is, it was common enough for them to eat since the men were “holy”.

But the priest wouldn’t have allowed any of them to eat of that bread if they had been “defiled with women”, just as none of them could BE that bread if they were “defiled with women”. Because those in the book of life are not corrupted with the seductive traditions and deceits of pagan churches descended from the great whore; that book is to be filled with, as I said earlier, 144,000 names of those who have not bowed the knee to Baal. For now.

But I said “for now”, because once God resurrects the 144,000, is the book empty? Is it from that point just an antique, merely a memorial of an old resurrection? The Bible says it isn’t! For after the time when the 144,000 are resurrected, in the second resurrection when all the dead stand before God…

Revelation 20:13-15 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

So WAY after the first resurrection has taken place (Revelation 20:6) God is STILL hunting for people who are in the book of life! They clearly weren’t in it when the first resurrection happened, but they – at least, SOME – are in it now!

The only way to explain this is that, as people live out their lives in the second resurrection, some are called, chosen, and prove faithful just as we are today. Some, hopefully many, are worthy to be written in that same book we were in; in a new chapter, perhaps, but in the same book nonetheless.

And as shown in the plan of the holy days, specifically the counting of seven weeks to Pentecost and seven weeks of years to the Jubilee, God will resurrect the faithful from the preceding six thousand years every seventh day – every “Sabbath” of millenia. And, just as the faithful will be resurrected at His coming on the seventh day of THIS seven thousand year “week”, so for each week thereafter God will resurrect the faithful at the end of the week, and another batch of dead from this life at the first day of the next week.

He will continue this until the fiftieth millennial “year”, pictured by the Jubilee and Pentecost, when all who can be saved from this time will have been saved. (For proof of what I so blithely stated there, please see “The TRUE Plan of the Holy Days”). For our purposes, what this means is that every week a new batch is resurrected, the family of God (which will by then include us) will work for six thousand years saving that batch, and then those who are worthy will be resurrected at the beginning of the seventh millennial “day”. For one thousand years we will train them as we have been trained, and then they will in turn help us to save another batch.

And lest you think this is not relevant to the topic at hand, I point out the fact that the loaves … which represent the book of life, divided into twelve “chapters” representing the twelve tribes of firstfruits … these twelve loaves are baked EVERY SABBATH!

1 Chronicles 9:32 And other of their brethren, of the sons of the Kohathites, were over the shewbread, TO PREPARE IT EVERY SABBATH.

Every week another batch must be put on the oven and “baked” from their uncooked lump into an untarnishable, unleavenable member of the family of God! And they are displayed for a week, and then they are replaced with ANOTHER batch, and another, and another until all who can be written into that book of life have been.

THE HUMAN BODY

But so far I have spoken only of the temple of Solomon and the temple in Heaven; I’ve said nothing of the temple of Eden or the temple that is us. I neglected Eden because Eden gives us, as nearly as I can tell so far, no hint of what might have been outside the Garden which represented the book of life; so I’ll suffice it to say that, where men “called upon the name of the Lord” (Genesis 4:26), there men were written in the book of life, and so the symbol must have existed in one form or another. There may well be something more definite but I’m drawing a blank.

About the human temple, however, there is a good deal more to say… so I’ll start with a question; what is there, outside the heart but inside the body, which could represent the book of life?

John 7:38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Did you ever think it odd that these rivers of living water flowed, not out of your heart, but out of your BELLY? God certainly knows the difference, and went to great lengths to make that difference clear:

Matthew 15:17-18 Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.

So even though we might say the heart is part of the belly, God doesn’t think so; God considers it a completely distinct concept. So why does the river of living water proceed, not from the heart, but from the belly?

The job of human digestive system is to take food which comes in a variety of forms and qualities and break it down into its constituent substances; it picks and chooses as the food slurry passes through the intestines and pulls out the “good stuff”, leaving the rest to be expelled, as the King James Version so prissily puts it, “in the draught”.

So when the body eats bread, digestion begins in the mouth, passes through the stomach, hits the intestines and is broken down into sugars, ultimately; what won’t convert in the time the body has to deal with it, or is otherwise unusable gets pushed on through and winds up flushed down the drain.

When we are adopted into the family of God at baptism, we are all penciled into the book of life.

Luke 10:20 Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.

And yet it is quite possible to get written out of this book, with a simple dash of white-out.

Exodus 32:33 And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.

Revelation 3:5 He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

To ensure that your name will never be blotted out of the book, you have to overcome; reach a point where you understand the exceeding sinfulness of sin and “His seed remains in you and you cannot sin”. But God pencils everyone who is baptized into the book of life; perhaps even before baptism, when He begins working with them.

And while they’re in this book they’re tested; tried by fire, as the loaves were, and digested as the belly does; those who are useful, those who show promise of being a contributor to the body of Christ and not a poison, are kept in the book; those who are worthless, or don’t get their act in a pile in the right timeframe, just get pushed on through the doors of the church and wind up metaphorically flushed into the toilet Satan has made this world into.

So as the temple represents the body, the censer represents the mind, the holy of holies and the ark in it’s midst represents the heart, so the showbread represents the belly; meaning in God’s terms, the entire digestive system. It corresponds to the book of life in your body.

Just as the book of life is where everyone is written in, and most penciled out, so your belly takes all the “bread” you eat and breaks it down and keeps the good and discards the rest; so, in a similar analogy, God eats the bread that is displayed before His face in His heavenly house, which passes into the symbol of HIS heavenly belly! The good is retained to be a cell in His body, the bad is discarded into “outer darkness”.

Job 20:4-7, 15 Knowest thou not this of old … That the triumphing of the wicked is short … Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he? … He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: GOD SHALL CAST THEM OUT OF HIS BELLY.

This man shall perish forever like his OWN dung, as God will cast them out of GOD’S BELLY! In a sense as God’s dung to be never seen or heard from again; flushed down a proverbial bottomless black hole. Because when this man is written out of God’s books of life (long story; see my article on the “Book(s) of life”), he no longer exists.

When you think about it, the belly symbolizing the book of life makes a lot of sense, because doesn’t all new life come from the belly?

Isaiah 46:3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by me from the belly, which are carried from the womb:

And so it is natural that newly begotten beings are written in the book which is “in the belly”. Where else would they be? God says He formed them in the belly!

Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Not only does God claim credit for forming us “in the belly”, God directly connects that formation with the writing of our names and body parts in His book of life!

Psalms 139:15-16 (Rotherham) My substance was not hid from thee, —when I was made in secret, when I was skilfully figured in the lower parts of the earth. Mine unfinished substance, thine eyes beheld, and, in thy book, all the parts thereof were written, —the days they should be fashioned! while yet there was not one among them.

So since we are called to be the elder brothers and sisters of the family of God, we will be the ones who are helping God with this process; we will be beholding the unfinished substance of newly begotten humans, as well as newly begotten Christians; and so in an exact symbolic sense, rivers of living waters will flow from our belly, as these people who we care for will be written in our own bellies, tested by our own digestive process, judged by their works and either kept as a cell in the family of God or purged in the draught. And that is the symbol of the showbread.