What you are holding is, at least for now, the last lesson in this course. But I cannot begin to express how much more there still is to know. How much more there still is that you NEED to know. It might seem to you like you’ve learned a lot, and you have... but, well, as Paul said...

Romans 11:33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

I have shown you the foundation you need to understand the truth. But these last few lessons have hopefully given you a humbling glimpse into how much more understanding that is still hidden in the Bible. After all, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter” (Proverbs 25:2).

I made no attempt to exhaust any of these subjects, and I left hundreds of threads untied to show you how much more work still needs to be done – and this present lesson will take that understanding and give it a depth and breadth that you quite literally could not have imagined when you began these lessons.

And this is just Biblical knowledge – to say nothing of nutritional, medicinal, agricultural, scientific, historical, linguistic, and any number of other fields of knowledge that are important, both in this life and in the life to come. So this is not the end of your studies. You have not yet begun them. You have only been learning the most basic knowledge you must know about...

LESSON 60: THE PLAN OF GOD

I have reminded you regularly that to understand God’s ways, you must first obey him (Psalms 111:10, etc.). If you have not been faithful in a little bit of understanding, you certainly will not be faithful in a lot (Luke 16:10). This lesson is going to drive that point home.

I know that many of you who read this are not practicing the things you’ve learned in these lessons. I know that, for example, many of you are not traveling to keep the holy days. I know many of you have said to yourself “that’s interesting”, but have not actually kept God’s commandment.

Many, in fact most of you, are like the people in Ezekiel 33:30-32. You love to study about God, love to hear the words but you simply won’t do them. Instead, you make excuses. And what happens to those who make excuses – however good those excuses might be? Luke 14:17-24.

So if this is you, if you’ve let money (aren’t you tithing? Malachi 3:8-10), health (aren’t you keeping the laws of health? Isaiah 58:8-11) or family (do you love your family more than God? Luke 14:26) keep you from keeping the feasts... then you should know you’re wasting your time. Worse, you’re heaping up God’s disgust upon yourself for pretending to care about the truth when you clearly don’t (Isaiah 1:11-20, Revelation 3:16).

What excuse is valid for not following God wherever He goes? Luke 9:57-62. What happens to those who miss the land God is trying to deliver them from? Genesis 19:26, Numbers 11. Did the saints have excuses too – excuses they ignored in order to follow God? Hebrews 11:13-16.

If you aren’t doing EVERYTHING you’ve learned in these lessons, I would put this lesson down and go back to a Sunday church. I would forget about trying to understand the true God and admit the truth – that you were only here for the loaves and fishes, only here for the sound of beautiful words. Let God seal up your mind in unbelief and try again in the second resurrection, when excuses won’t get you very far.

God, and I, would much prefer you were honestly and openly hostile to the truth, than to pretend to be a brother of Christ while hating everything He truly stands for (Proverbs 27:5-6). I mean, remember how He felt about Judas? Psalms 55:12-15.

BUT TO THE RIGHTEOUS I SAY...

But for those of you who have tried to live by every word of God and kept the Holy Days, you have to have wondered at some point “WHY do we do this?” I know I explained some of the details, like why live in tents, why eat unleavened bread, why travel, and so on, but I left a great deal unexplained.

For example, why was the Feast of Shouting on the first day of the month? Why not the 3rd or 20th? Why was the first day and last day of Unleavened Bread holy, but only the first day of Tabernacles holy? (the Last Great Day, which is holy, is a separate feast after the 7 days of Tabernacles).

Why are there seven Sabbaths in the counting of Pentecost, and seven yearly Sabbaths in the counting of the Jubilee? You’ll remember I pointed this out in Lesson 25, page 13... have you figured out why yet? You can’t, without keeping the Holy Days. It’s quite impossible.

Or – and this one will be the most useful question – WHY do the 7 days of Unleavened Bread fall on the 15th-21st of the first month EXACTLY LIKE the 7 days of Tabernacles fall on the 15th -21st of the seventh month? We’re going to answer all these questions in this lesson, and so much more.

It’s time for another calendar exercise. Don’t cheat and skip ahead, write it out yourself so you remember it better and understand it better! Go get your 30-day-month calendar with the 1st day of the month on Sunday. On each row, draw a horizontal line across the calendar so you have each day divided into two equal parts.

What we’re going to do is write out everything God commanded to be done in the 1st month on the top half; and everything God commanded to be done in the 7th month in the bottom half of each day. Start by reading Leviticus 23, the “Holy Day chapter”, on your own and put everything you see on there.

Most of it is pretty straightforward; write the 7th days as Sabbaths, and write all the other days on the calendar. Put the Wavesheaf Day on the morrow after the Sabbath during ULB, as it says. Then, on the space you have, write down each Sabbath after that one as “Sabbath #1”, “Sabbath #2”, etc.

Get another calendar sheet and continue doing that on down until you reach Pentecost, which will be the Sunday after the 7th Sabbath. On the 2nd and 3rd month sheets, keep the days correct according to the ideal 30-day month, but also count the days from the first day of the first month (I’ll explain why later).

This means on the square marked “Pentecost”, you should have it marked as the 10th day of the 3rd month, and ALSO as the 70th day from the beginning. Now go back to the first sheet and write in the stuff from the 7th month found in Leviticus 23.

Now to finish up your chart, you need to add a few things not found in Leviticus 23. Read Exodus 12:2. On the first day of the first month, write “Beginning of Months”. What did Israel do on the 10th day of the first month? Exodus 12:3. On top half of the 10th day, write “Lamb Set Apart”.

You should now have a fairly complete chart. Remember, you’ve written down everything God commanded on any day of the 1st or 7th month. Are you surprised to find that, with the exception of Passover, everything that happens in one month has a counterpart in the other? 

THE SHADOW OF GOD’S PLAN

God does nothing by accident, certainly not something so central to His way of life as His feasts. Why did He give us the feasts? Colossians 2:16-17. These things were SHADOWS of things to come. Think about what a shadow gives you – an outline on the ground. Nothing more. It is a framework within which you can describe a thing.

The Holy Days are calculated based on the sun and moon. Why did God give us the sun and moon (and with them, the ability to calculate the Holy Days)? Genesis 1:14. The word translated “signs” there means just what it says; a sign to indicate something, or to tell something; for example, see Exodus 31:13, Exodus 13:9.

As the word was used for an identifying mark of God’s people, the same word (translated “ensign” in some translations) was used to show the sign identifying which tribe you belonged to (Numbers 2:2), or signs of God’s power (Numbers 14:11), proof that something will happen as God promised (Isaiah 37:30, Isaiah 38:7), and so on.

The sun and moon, and more particularly the Holy Days that use them for calculation, are given to us as just such a sign – signs that we are God’s people, signs that God is in charge of things, and signs that what God foretold will happen.

The Holy Days are shadows of the plan of God. They tell us the outline of everything He is doing, and as we see each thing being fulfilled we are given more proof that God is in charge. In fact, just by seeing how beautifully it all fits together we are given a powerful sign of God’s power and existence.

So you’re holding that outline in your hand – seriously, you should be holding it in your hand now. Look at it. What does it mean? To explain that we have to start at the beginning and cover a bit of material already covered in the lessons on the Holy Days, but fitting it now into a larger, deeper picture.

THE SIGNPOSTS OF GOD’S PLAN

I told you some of the basic meanings of each Holy Day in the earlier lessons, but as God often does, I passed lightly over the things you didn’t have the background understanding to process at the time (John 16:12). We must learn things little by little, concept upon concept (Isaiah 28:9-10).

The next level of understanding is based on two ideas; first, the concept of bridging. We can see, without any possibility of argument, that the Holy Days in the spring and fall mirror each other. But mirror is not quite the right word, for they don’t really mirror... they overlay.

Have you ever seen construction drawings printed on transparent paper, where each one contains a different layer of the final design? One sheet might be the structure, another might be how the electrical fits into that structure, another the plumbing and so on. You can look at them separately, and each one makes some sense – but only when you ADD them all together, looking through all the layers at once, do you truly UNDERSTAND the design!

Likewise, the spring and fall Holy Days are not separate concepts that happen to appear similar! Like with prophecy, these are the same concept described from different viewpoints! Separate layers of the same story which must be understood TOGETHER to be fully grasped! 

The lamb being set apart from the flock on the 10th day of the month to be prepared for the sacrifice, and the two lambs being separated on the Day of Atonement, are not two different stories but the same story with different details! Different layers might have a different scale, a different perspective, or a different moral – BUT they’re all meant to portray the same story!

Likewise the seven Sabbaths culminating in the rejoicing of Pentecost, and the seven land-Sabbaths culminating in the freedom and rejoicing of the Jubilee picture the exact same thing, and each adds details to the understanding of the other! But that’s not the best part – these two patterns, Sabbaths of weeks and Sabbaths of years, are only shadows of the greatest Sabbaths of God’s plan!

This is a tremendous key to understanding everything in the Bible, but the second key is even bigger. In fact, it’s the same key we’ve used to unravel several other vital pieces of understanding: 2 Peter 3:8. These are Holy DAYS. And a [Holy] day is like a thousand years to God, and a thousand years is as one [Holy] day! Therefore these days picture millenniums in the plan of God!!

You can prove these two keys intersect in the Holy Days by reading Hebrews 4:1-11. Paul spoke of a seventh day of “rest”, which was yet in our future. A day when ALL those who believed “do enter into [this] rest”. But though we do have a small type of that rest every week, the Sabbath, Paul made it clear that isn’t what he was talking about in verses 6-8.

Joshua didn’t give Israel rest, and in a duality, Jesus hasn’t yet given us rest. We must still WORK, while it is called “today” (Hebrews 3:13), laboring HARD in order that we may ONE DAY enter into that Sabbath. A Sabbath that we cannot keep today, but must be in our future! One that doesn’t last for 24 hours, but 1,000 years!

God is confirming the covenant with many – not all, but many – for one week (Daniel 9:27). Those whose heart is hardened will not enter into the seventh day, the Sabbath of rest, with Him. God created the heavens and the Earth and everything in them, and on the seventh day He rested with His creation. Adam rested too!

God created Adam nearly 6,000 years ago, and gave him 6 days to work. Adam and his sons have kept their charge, to dress and keep the Earth (Genesis 2:15), quite poorly. God is coming back, and on the seventh day the Earth will enjoy her Sabbath (Leviticus 26:34).

Those who didn’t trust God, didn’t obey God, and who therefore destroyed the Earth, will not enter into that seventh day, because of unbelief – just as those faithless Israelites died on the other side of the Jordan.

But will those of us who HAVE worked diligently rest from our labors with God? Revelation 14:13. When we work with God, will we be distracted by the things of this world any more? Hebrews 4:9-11. We will be living and reigning with Christ... how long? Revelation 20:6. One DAY! One millennial day in the plan of God!

Remember the key of prophecy – making bridges. ALL of these seven day periods, ALL of these Sabbaths of rest are different versions of the same story! INCLUDING the 7 days of ULB and the 7 days of FOT!

UNLEAVENED BREAD

Let’s take a look at Unleavened Bread in this new light. The day before Unleavened Bread is Passover. When Passover happens, we are still in Egypt! We are bought back by the Passover but not freed until the beginning of Unleavened Bread! 

The first day of Unleavened Bread finds us just having been freed from Egypt, fleeing for our lives from the clutches of sin. We put our own sins, represented by leaven, out of our lives and leave them behind in our past life. Six days we walk out of Egypt, still eating sinless bread without leaven – the spirit of Christ.

But on the seventh day we walk out of the farthest border of Egypt and watch as Pharaoh – the king of sin – is drowned in the sea behind us. Let’s think about that a moment – who is the king of sin? 1 John 3:8 answers the obvious question that it can only be the devil. Therefore, Pharaoh pictures the devil in this play God told us to reenact each year.

On the 7th day then, Satan is drowned. What does that mean exactly? Exodus 14:13. What did God call this? Salvation. Now what happens at the beginning of the Millennium? Revelation 20:1-3. What happens next? Verses 4-6. Salvation!!

Satan is “drowned” in a bottomless pit! And the saints are SAVED, and made a part of the first resurrection! On the seventh day after the first man began to leave Egypt! Which is why the resurrected saints sing the exact same song that Moses sang after Pharaoh was drowned! (Revelation 15:2-3). If you read Exodus 15, in particular verses 2-5, 17, you will see many parallels with Revelation. Because the song of Moses was a prophecy of the return of Christ!

Back at the time of the very first sin, God gave man the hope of salvation along with the judgment for his sins (Genesis 3:15). At the same time, God killed animals to cover his sins (Genesis 3:21) – to foreshadow the sacrifice of Christ, and to begin the long road back out of Egypt that Adam and his children must walk.

On the first day the hope began, and on the seventh day it was fulfilled! Thus the first day of Unleavened Bread and the last day of Unleavened Bread were holy! The days in between were filled with walking and carrying your dearest possessions away from a life you hated, a life of bondage, a life of slavery to sin.

And on the seventh day your freedom will be complete, when your old master is drowned, cast out of your sight along with all of his armies! You at last will have REST from your bondage! Your first REST on your flight out of Egypt! So on your calendar, mark all the upper half of the 15th-21st of the first month as “Firstfruits leaving behind their sins” or something like that.

On the very beginning of the first day, mark “Adam sold into slavery to sin”. On the seventh day write “first resurrection”, “Satan in bottomless pit” and “the Millennium” and “Rest”. It’s a lot to write – but it’s an important day!

But remember, the spring Holy Days tell the story from the perspective of the firstfruits! To complete the picture, we must keep Tabernacles as well...

TABERNACLES AND LGD

These days picture the same period of time, but from the perspective of the people who were not going to enter into God’s rest with the first resurrection saints because of unbelief! That is to say, they were not going to enter into this same rest with us. There may be other, future, rests they could take – but not this one. This is for the firstborn.

When Adam sinned, and God promised redemption for mankind, this affected both the first and secondfruits, all of whom were sold into sin and all of whom received the offer of the promise of salvation (Romans 11:26-32). Was Paul – and by extension, the saints in general – just a pattern for those who should be saved hereafter? 1 Timothy 1:16.

The fact that the rest of the world is not being saved today does not mean there is nothing to rejoice over; the fact that they live, and that they have hope, is itself a reason to celebrate (Ecclesiastes 9:4). They have a future – and Tabernacles is about that future, even though they will not enter into God’s rest... yet!

And because of this, the seventh day of THEIR Holy Day season is not holy! No one rests on the seventh day of Tabernacles since none of them will be resting with Christ during the millennium! But what happens on the next day? John 7:37-39.

Today we are in a famine of the hearing of the word of the Lord, and a drought of the spirit of God (Amos 8:11-12). But what does God say will happen in the future? Isaiah 43:15-21. Right now, if they are thirsty for the water of life, it’s because their own sins have kept God far from them (Isaiah 59:1-2).

So God turns a deaf ear to their pleas for water because they have rejected what water He has offered them in the past. If someone asks God for water today, and millions do beg God for understanding daily, most of the time God simply ignores them (Micah 3:4). Because only those whom God CALLS can drink of His spirit (John 6:44-45, 1 Corinthians 12:13)!

But the Last Great Day pictures a day when ANYONE who comes to God can drink freely of the waters of life! (John 4:10-24). It is about the day when ALL who desire to hear God can hear Him clearly, without the false spirit, the wine of Babylon, confusing them!

Yet this Holy Day, for all its greatness, is only the BEGINNING! The job of saving unsaved humanity will BEGIN on this day, but will not be completed! Hold on to that thought.

EXTRAPOLATING FROM THE WEEK

When Adam was created, God gave him six full days to rule himself and “do all thy work” (Exodus 20:9). The seventh day is God’s, which means the 7th day is a Sabbath, which of course is the millennium of rest in our future. Which means on the thousand-year scale, Sunday corresponds to the first day of Unleavened Bread, and to the beginning of Adam’s six work days.

Putting this information together with the information from the chronology lessons, the first millennial day, the first day of Unleavened Bread, the 15th day of the first month, should have “3968-2968 BC” written on it. Continue to put the appropriate dates on the other six days and the Last Great Day. Don’t go forward past that right now, we’ll work on that later.

Then extrapolate the dates back to the Feast of Shouting on the 1st day of the first month which should be 17,968 BC. Bear in mind that our dates might be wrong by a few years; it doesn’t change the overall meaning of the days which are told on a scale of thousands of years.

PASSOVER

What this means is that Passover, on the millennial scale, falls just before the first day of Unleavened Bread – it lasted from about 7,000-6,000 years ago. Genesis 1-2 describes the events of that day, but I want to call your attention to Genesis 1:2, in particular the last part “the Spirit of God, WAS BROODING on the face of the waters” (Rotherham).

Who was this “spirit of God”? John 1:3. So Jesus was brooding over the waters before He lifted a finger to actually do anything. You remember from earlier lessons that Earth had become waste and wild, and it was no longer in the form God originally created it. So Jesus was getting ready to save the Earth and restore it to its original condition! A type of salvation!

...But Jesus knew there was a price for this, a terrible price. Not only His own suffering, which was extreme; nor His own risk, which was equally extreme; but the untold suffering of all mankind, the sins and misery which would either happen, or not happen, based on His next move.

So what did He decide? Romans 8:18. He finally judged that the result – the salvation of the sons of God and the creation of a family of Elohim – was worth the investment. So He made the choice and prepared the Earth and then created Adam, as the last moments of the 14th millennial day came to a close.

This fact allows us to draw a lot of apparently disconnected thoughts together and present them as a single idea – and you’re about to see just how serious Jesus was when He said “the scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35), because we’re going to stretch it as far as we can!

Revelation 13:8 tells us the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. We now have a realistic time during which that would happen – on the symbolic, millennial Passover that came JUST BEFORE the foundation of the world!

Did we receive the promise of salvation BEFORE Adam’s sin ever happened? Titus 1:2, 1 Peter 1:19-20. Did God plan to give the saints salvation before He began to create Adam? Ephesians 1:4. We have access to salvation by the Passover. Without that, there is no salvation (John 6:53). Therefore the Lamb was slain at the Passover service before the foundation of the world – the 14th day of the millennial month!

Now you’ll recall the three sacrifices of Jesus – once giving up His coequal position as God; once, giving up His immortality and becoming human; and finally giving up His mortality and dying. We now have several reasons to date His first sacrifice as just before the creation of Adam – when He “died” as a coequal God and became “Melchizedek”, priest OF the Most High God!

So literally, the spiritual Lamb was sacrificed on the 14th day of the millennial month! But we can add other connections to this idea, for we’ve already seen how the Being who became Jesus felt on that day – broody and unhappy at the prospect of the suffering about to happen.

How did the human Jesus feel on the 14th literal day of His last month? Matthew 26:36-46, Luke 22:41-45, Mark 14:33-34. Was Jesus troubled that last night? John 12:27. Do you see the connection? On the day of the Passover, in different layers of the same symbol, the SAME Being felt the exact SAME way!

As a man, Jesus’ soul was “troubled”, “gloomy and distressed” (Murdoch), “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”, to the point of sweating blood... and as a spirit Jesus “brooded over the waters” before committing Himself to make the FIRST sacrifice by potentially tainting Himself with the future sins of His creation!

These patterns are perfect. They cannot be broken. If things don’t add up, you’re adding them wrong. Every line over every “t”, every dot over every “i” fits perfectly! (Matthew 5:18). So as you think about things we KNOW happened in one layer of the pattern, you will find – or can extrapolate – the exact same thing in all other layers!

For example, the beginning of the Passover ceremony – the promising of the blood and body – happened at the beginning of the 14th day. We have no information on what might have happened at the beginning of the 14th millennial day to fulfill the pattern, at least not yet – but we know at the end of the day Jesus created Adam. Just at the VERY end of the day.

And Jesus died in the early afternoon, but wasn’t buried until JUST as the sun was going down at the end of the 14th day – just before the feast of ULB was to begin. Jesus’ sacrifice was completed hours earlier (John 19:30), but the prophecies were not fulfilled until He was sealed in the tomb (Isaiah 53:9), which was at the very end of the day (Luke 23:50-54, John 19:40-42).

Jesus had to promise eternal life to the saints by giving up His position early in the day; but it wasn’t until He actually made Adam live that there was someone worth dying for – not until then was He committed, for until then there was no one to whom He had actually MADE a promise!

Now think about this: how did Jesus characterize His burial? Matthew 12:40. This is the only term Jesus ever used to describe His tomb – “the heart of the Earth”. Were both Jesus’ body AND His soul in the grave? Acts 2:31. So at the very end of the 14th day, Jesus’ soul was placed IN the heart of the Earth, and moments later the 7 days of Unleavened Bread began.

Here’s the cool part – what was Adam made from? Genesis 3:19, 23. What did Paul say man was made of? 1 Corinthians 15:47. And what happened to make that Earth – Adam – alive? Genesis 2:7. And where exactly did that spirit go? 2 Corinthians 1:22.

Get it? Jesus, in order to create man, had to place His spirit into the Earth! Literally, into the HEART of the Earth! This gave man life in the first place! That statue of clay, made from the Earth, had to have Jesus breathe His spirit into its heart for it to become a living soul!

And on the SAME symbolic day, and at the exact same TIME, relatively speaking, Jesus breathed life – eternal life – into all of mankind by placing His soul ONCE MORE into the heart of the Earth! But there’s more!

What was the environment like before Jesus began to create man? Genesis 1:2. And was there something similar before Jesus put His soul into the heart of the Earth? Luke 22:53, Psalms 143:3, Luke 23:44. Did Jesus come to end that darkness? Colossians 1:13. After His resurrection, had that darkness ended? 1 John 2:8-11. Can we connect that to the time of the millennial Passover before Adam? Of course! Genesis 1:3-5.

There is NOTHING in the Bible that doesn’t have a meaning. ALL the words of God are profitable, and ALL of them can be fit into the big picture of God, and each one is just as important, just as meaningful, as Jesus’ single offhand reference to spending 3 days “in the heart of the Earth”!

So on the 14th day of the month, write “Passover”, “Jesus troubled”, “Jesus’ first sacrifice”, “beginning of salvation”. At the very end of that day, write “creation of Adam”.

ATONEMENT

The Lamb had to be separated from the flock on this day when Satan sinned. Why? Haggai 2:12, Amos 3:3. So what did God do? Leviticus 10:10. To maintain His own purity, Jesus had to be separated from the sin of the flock – Habakkuk 1:12-13.

Jesus was separated, but not sacrificed until four days later, on Passover. Why? Hebrews 1:13-14. Jesus had made no promises of salvation to the angels, nor to any other living being. But now that sin existed in the universe, a potential need for redemption existed and with it the possibility of Jesus’ death!

It is that possibility that required a contingency plan to be spelled out, which is what the sacrifices on the Day of Atonement show us. The only way to bring about that redemption was through the death of Him who had created the sinful house (Hebrews 3:1-6).

But there was another reason the cycle that ended in Jesus’ death began on this day. You remember Satan’s argument – that God is unreasonable, and cannot be obeyed. In order to conclusively prove him wrong, Jesus would have to present a man at the trial who DID obey God – which unsurprisingly, turned out to be a job He had to do Himself (Isaiah 59:16). But other men who obeyed God perfectly, even after an initial life of sin before repentance, would help to make the case airtight.

So on the original millennial day of Atonement when Satan and other angels sinned, Jesus did not immediately pass judgment on them. Instead, He waited for all the evidence to be in. Thus, He reserved judgment on them (Jude 1:6)! All this happened on Atonement, on the day the Lamb was set apart – about 10,000 years ago, or 8,000 BC.

ANALOGIES

Again I need to emphasize just how pervasive these patterns are in the Bible. We’re not talking about two or three transparent layers, we’re talking about HUNDREDS, even thousands of separate layers. You’ve already seen some of this in the lessons on prophecy. The idea is the same, but instead of limiting these patterns to prophecy, we are going to expand it to include every word in the Bible.

First, remember how in 1 Corinthians 10:11 it says “All this kept happening to them with a figurative meaning” (Weymouth), and it was “written down for our instruction” (RSV). The things that happened to Israel in particular, and in the OT in general, were written down with a reason. Not simply to say that so-and-so did something, and we can learn such-and-such moral lesson from it, but to show a much deeper insight into the plan of God!

There are lots of strange things in the Bible, like Paul’s statement that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:9-10) (despite that happening over 100 years before he was born); or how Paul compared Sarah to Jerusalem and Hagar to Sinai, and in turn compared them to the New and Old Covenants, respectively (Galatians 4:22-26).

To be honest, had Paul told me these things, I would have been pretty skeptical. But the Bible was inspired, so I’m sure he was right – it just seemed like he was stretching the facts a lot to get there. But Paul had a reasoning process, and he did have proof, he just didn’t share that with us. I understand how he arrived at those conclusions now, but it took a long time for me to understand it.

So to begin to open up a much larger world to you, let’s look at some more of those layers involving the 10th and 14th days of the month. For example, as we mentioned a few lessons ago, Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time on the 10th day of the month, and was killed the 14th.

Then Paul in Hebrews said that Isaac was a type of Christ – see Hebrews 11:17-19. Not only that, but he said that Abraham was a type of God the Father. They both sacrificed their only begotten son, and in a manner of speaking, both received them back again from the dead. This is easy to see, but what is not so obvious is how far-reaching that connection is.

It means that what happened to Abraham and Isaac, as recorded for us, is a layer of a pattern that shows us what happened, or will happen, between the Father and Christ. And since the scripture cannot be broken, it means the details of that pattern will ALL match when we fully understand it. What happened to Isaac, in some way, pictured something that happened to Christ; and vice versa.

For example, where was Isaac offered? Genesis 22:2. So what does it matter that it was a “mountain of Moriah”? 2 Chronicles 3:1. The temple was built on Mt. Moriah, and Isaac was offered on “one” of the mountains of Moriah – so clearly nearby, on a place that God specifically picked out. Like maybe... Golgotha?

Next, when exactly was Isaac offered? If it follows the pattern of the Passover, as it must, it should have been the 14th of the month. We can fill out the details a bit by reading Genesis 22:3-4. God told Abraham to take Isaac to the place of sacrifice. So he woke up (the next day) and went three days and saw the place “afar off”.

Now if they arrived on that place the 13th of the month, had traveled for 3 days, and the day before is when God spoke to Abraham... that puts Isaac being separated from the flock on the 10th day of the month! Then arriving at the mount the 13th and going up it to begin the sacrifice that night, the beginning of the 14th!

We also know Isaac was less than 37 when he was offered, because when he was 37 his mother died (Genesis 23:1), which happened after this sacrifice. There is no lower limit on his age given, but if he was a type of Christ, then it stands to reason that he was 34, as Jesus was.

In another layer, Israel – under Jesus/Joshua – entered the Promised Land on what day of the month? Joshua 4:19. Exactly when Jesus entered the city of promise for the last time! (Galatians 4:26-28). What happened next? Joshua 5:2-5. Then they waited in the camp until the 14th (verses 8-10).

It took this long for the pain of circumcision – the “cutting off” of part of the body – to heal. Satan was cut off from among his people on the 10th millennial day, when iniquity was found in him. Jesus apparently did nothing to repair the Earth until the pain of that separation was healed three days later!

Back to Joshua, on the 10th, they were circumcised – separating them from the rest of the uncircumcised world (Colossians 3:11), which symbolizes circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:28-29). So on the 10th, they were separated from the rest of the flock! And on the 14th their sins were forgiven! Only then was Joshua cleansed of the sins of Egypt! On the day of Passover!

And on the 15th, they rejoiced and ate the fruit of the Promised Land! (Joshua 5:11). And then the manna ceased (verse 12), for they no longer needed to eat that bread that came down from heaven (John 6:58), for now – by being spiritually circumcised – they had Christ living IN them! They would never hunger again!

But there’s another layer! Someone asked me once, “what is the ideal time to begin cleaning your house for unleavened bread?” It had never occurred to me – I usually started preparing a few weeks early with the peripheral things, then worked on it more and more until it was mostly done by Passover, with just a few rooms to finish up on the daylight portion of Passover.

But is there an ideal time? There must be. So I started thinking about it. And asking the obvious question – this is all a pattern of heavenly things. Getting leaven out of your house means getting sin out of your house. God certainly has done it in the ideal so when did God get the leaven out of HIS house? 

Then it was obvious, of course. God started getting the leaven out of HIS house on the tenth day of the month! And finished cleaning up just before sundown, at the end of the 14th day of the month! This is another example of why you must KEEP these Holy Days to understand them, for without keeping them this question would never have occurred to anyone!

There are many other layers of this pattern, but the point is made. You can’t see it all now, but this is a gateway into a truly astounding amount of understanding that dwarfs everything you’ve understood so far, all put together. Anyway, back to the point of this lesson...

FEAST OF SHOUTING

I have little to add on this day that wasn’t already in Lessons 15-16. This was the beginning of months, the time when the angels shouted for joy at the glory of their new playground, the habitation of the future sons of God. The birthday of the universe.

But now you can see it the timeline, and you can see that if any of this is correct, it means the universe was created in 17,968 B.C. – about 20,000 years ago. That will shock most people, because you’re either used to hearing that the Earth is billions of years old – an idea that exists solely to make evolution seem less impossible...

...Or else you’re used to the 6,000 years believed by fundamentalist Christian types today. They believe that the sun, stars, angels, and everything else was created in six days, including Lucifer. They base this on the idea that since God said His creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31), EVERYTHING in the universe was very good. Therefore, they reason, Satan could not yet have sinned.

Of course, the basic flaw in that logic is that God said everything He had created here, everything He was then LOOKING AT, was very good! He did not mention the creation of angels anywhere in this chapter. The fact that THIS job was very good, did not mean that elsewhere was ANOTHER, earlier creation that was not good!

The science that shows you how to interpret observed geological and scientific facts into a framework of thousands, not billions, of years is called creation science. It shows that God as a creator is not so unrealistic as the world wants you to think. Of course, the world sneers at it, but a lot of it is common sense and shows how silly evolution really is.

Naturally a lot of creation science is flawed, but a lot has merit, too. They are trying to refute evolution, which is great. But they’re not keeping God’s laws, His Sabbath, or His Holy Days so they cannot find the REAL answer – they stumble around, if not in total darkness, at least in a deep gloom.

So the fact is, the creation of the heavens and the Earth is not mentioned in Genesis except for Genesis 1:1, which is clearly outside the scope of any of the six days of creation. The time that elapsed between verses 1 and 2 is not stated there but God left us the Holy Days to tell us how much time did pass – exactly 14,000 years.

There is no question that is not answered in the Bible, if you think about it logically, clearly, and long enough. There are some answers that are buried very deeply however.

THE MILLENNIUM AND THE 8th DAY

Many times now, we’ve talked about the millennium as a proving ground of God’s law, and a training time for God’s firstfruits. You may prove to God you are worthy to rule cities in this life by simply being a very good herder of sheep. But the fact that you are worthydoes not mean that you’ll know HOW to rule cities!

So there must be an internship as a king and a priest ruling WITH Christ a thousand years. With Him looking over your shoulder, and keeping you from making TOO many mistakes in this sandbox called Earth.

God chose the firstfruits, dating back to just after the exit from the Garden of Eden, to be His priesthood (1 Peter 2:9). Righteous Abel was probably the first human firstfruit (not counting Jesus of course) (Matthew 23:35, Hebrews 11:4, Hebrews 12:24). And God has never let His church die out – there have always been SOME firstfruits on the Earth (Matthew 16:18, 1 Kings 19:18).

For seven thousand years God has been training His priesthood on the Earth, which is one of many types of the temple, as you already learned. For six of those millennia we were physical, and the seventh we will be reigning on the Earth. So for seven days, we were not allowed to leave the temple! (Leviticus 8:33-35).

But on the EIGHTH day... then what? Leviticus 9:1, 6, 23-24. After seven thousand years of being trapped in the temple as part of our internship, only on the EIGHTH day will the glory of God appear to the people! Because only then will we truly be a FINISHED Elohim, both qualified and trained to rule in God’s name, and TRULY be a light to the world!

On the 8th day, the second resurrection begins – their chance at salvation, our first job as an Elohim! This is the Last Great Day – the day when Christ shall lead them to fountains of living waters (Revelation 7:17) – that is to say, Christ will be leading them to US! (Revelation 7:17).

At least, that’s the meaning of the day as seen from the perspective of the secondfruits! For THEM, it’s the LGD. But for US, it will be the Wavesheaf Day. On this day the first harvest was waved before God to be accepted! (Leviticus 23:10-14). No other harvest could be eaten, no fruit of the land was used, until THIS was offered. Why? Hebrews 11:39-40, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17.

Do you start to understand what I mean when I say that EVERY little detail fits together? It’s also why firstborn clean animals (which represent us) were allowed to be with their mother (the church) seven days, but on the eighth day they were given to God as holy things (Exodus 22:29-31)! Oh, and also why all Israelites were circumcised on the eighth day! (Leviticus 12:1-3). These all tie together, back and forth, all keep repeating the same beautiful picture!

Until the Wavesheaf on the 8th day, no fruit of the Promised Land could be eaten. No one – not David, Elijah, nor Enoch – can be resurrected and waved before God until we are ALL ready to be waved together after the millennium!!

Remember I said Joshua 5 was part of a pattern? In Joshua 5:11, it says they ate only the OLD grain on the 15th. In verse 12, it says on the 16th, they ate “the fruit of the land of Canaan that year”. This is a difficult translation only because the translators don’t understand God’s laws.

It was illegal to eat the new grain from that year until after the Wavesheaf (Leviticus 23:14). But two days later, they DID eat “the fruit of the land of Canaan from that year”! (Joshua 5:12). They ate the NEW crop, because it had now been offered on the Wavesheaf Day, and now it was free for all to enjoy!

And now the manna stopped falling, for these symbolic firstfruits had manna inside of them now! The NEW bread had been baked, offered, and it was ready for the consumption by the rest of the unsaved world! But no one could eat any of this bread until after it was ALL ready, after ALL had been waved!

Only after the 1,000 year internship with Christ will we be ready to be given our office in the house of God. But to get it, we must first be waved before the Father, just as Jesus was waved on this same exact day before HE received His appointment as High Priest forever! (John 20:17, Hebrews 7:21).

Jesus had to ascend to heaven – be waved – before He was given “all power in heaven and in Earth” (Matthew 28:18), and so must we be waved, ON THIS SAME DAY, before WE can be invested with all power in heaven and in Earth, and given OUR assignment in God’s temple!

A THOUSAND GENERATIONS

But what is our assignment? We know, in general, that we will be helping to save the secondfruits, but it’s so much more than that! But before we get into that, we have to ask a different question: how LONG is our assignment? How long will God keep His covenant with men? Deuteronomy 7:9, 1 Chronicles 16:15. How long will He remember His covenant? Psalms 105:8. How long will He show mercy? Exodus 20:5-6.

So you see a recurring theme – a thousand generations. According to these words, if God does not keep His covenant with a THOUSAND generations, God is a liar. He HAS to have 1,000 generations of people to show mercy to, or else He is not a faithful God. Why is that so important?

One generation is the time between the birth of a child, and the time his first child is born. The earliest realistically possible generation is 14-20 years or so. It varies with culture, religion, and ethnicity, but it can’t be much less than that on average. Currently the average is between 26 and 30 for most western countries.

Now, for there to be 1,000 generations at 26 years per generation we would need 26,000 years! When people think about God’s plan, they think so small! They think their own ephemeral lifespan is significant, and try to fit all of God’s plans into their lifetime, or some small multiple of lifespans like theirs. But God sees a millennium as we see a single DAY! That means the way we think of a year’s work is the way He looks at 365,000 years!

Those few – very few – people who understand the second resurrection at all, try to fit it all into a hundred or a thousand years. Why? Because they think too small! God has eternity to play in; it would be silly to cram all the work on the foundation of His family into a few years when He has infinity to spend on it!

But just because He has infinite time, it doesn’t mean that He’s going to use it all on this. He said He needs a thousand generations – so how long is that? Between Adam and Christ, in 4,000 years, there were 62 generations (count them – Matthew 1:17 and Genesis 11:10-26 and Genesis 5).

That means the average generation, as recorded in the Bible, was 64.5 years. Granted, many of those people lived a long time and had children late. But when God said “a thousand generations”, He didn’t have to mean the FIRST generation.

Remember what He said in Genesis 15:16. That was fulfilled by Levi – who had children at about 70 years old, on average. That’s 70 years per generation in the line that led to Moses and Aaron, who were the fourth generation from those who went into captivity. Of course, Ephraim was cranking out kids to the tune of nine generations in the same amount of time (averaging about 25 years to a generation)!

And it turned out, for the purpose of that prophecy, that God had meant Levi’s generations – the longer ones. This left most people, who were figuring from Ephraim’s generations, saying “where is the promise of His coming?” (2 Peter 3:4). But God was not slack concerning His promise (verse 9)... it just looked that way because they were counting the wrong generations! 

Point is, God has some leeway. If we used the Ephraim-Levi generations as our basis (and it is perhaps the only place where generations are prophesied and fulfilled in the Bible), then a thousand generations could be anywhere from 25,000 years to 70,000 years. Regardless, it is obvious God needs a LOT of time to fulfill His promises to a thousand generations. The Holy Days will prove just how much time that is in a minute.

But God ALSO has to have direct, physical survivors from this age to continue having children in a direct physical line from Adam, far into the second resurrection age, alongside of them. Which means, as we’ve already proven, that many physical people survive the events of Revelation and live on into the millennium (Isaiah 6:11-13), where they form the population that the saints practice ruling.

Will there be children born during the period of the second resurrection? Psalms 22:27-31. This prophecy of the time AFTER His return, AFTER all nations are worshiping Him, promises salvation to a people that SHALL be born THEN! Physical descendants of today’s population must continue having children, finding salvation, and living on the Earth until at least 1,000 generations have passed!

But here’s a thought... if the plan of God is to last for so many thousands of years into the future... shouldn’t there be a day of rest every so often? Say, every seven (thousand) years?

SEVEN SABBATHS

From the Wavesheaf Day, seven Sabbaths were to be counted. You already have them on your chart. Seven work weeks, each of which have six work days and one day of rest. Think about that. Start with what we know, and work forwards. What happens at the beginning of the first work week after the millennium? Revelation 20:11-13.

The LGD foreshadows the second resurrection, just as the Wavesheaf foreshadows our part in it. But I said above that the LGD was not the ending, but just the beginning of the job! That’s because it happens on the beginning of the week, not the end of it – it leaves us with six full days to work and then a Sabbath!

Skipping over the events of the week for a moment – we’ll come back to that – let’s think about an apparently unrelated question. Let’s say a person is resurrected at the beginning of that period. Let’s say they live 50 years, pass all God’s tests, and deserve salvation. What happens to them?

At the moment God sees the final correct thought He was waiting for them to have, does He instantly POOF them into Godhood? Is that how He saved us? Is it enough for us to merely figure things out, and do things right... or must we DIE in faith WITHOUT receiving the promises?

If God treats us that way, it’s only logical that the same requirement will be made for them. Ok, so they have to die like we do. Does this mean that at the instant of their death, as their spirit is freed from their body, it immediately gets transplanted into a new spirit body?

Again, is that how WE received our spirit body? Or did we have to die and WAIT for something? For what? For the rest of our brethren to be saved! (Revelation 6:10). In other words, they, without their fellow second-saints, shall not be made perfect! (Hebrews 11:40).

And – here’s the most important question of all – when were we resurrected? At the beginning of the Sabbath!! We were resurrected after the work week was over, after everyone from this age was saved, when God was sweeping up after the week’s work was finished!

And what will happen to us on that Sabbath? We’ll be trained for a thousand years! And what happens the next day? We’ll begin to rule with our elder Brother in the family business as fully qualified Elohim! Logically then what else could they start doing on Sunday, the 29th millennial day from creation? Ruling with THEIR elder brothers!

All this flows inevitably from a knowledge of the plan of God as it applies to us. But now we can tie these thoughts directly back to scriptures to secure them to a real foundation. What happens on the yearly Sabbath? Leviticus 25:2-7.

God is going to gather fruit from His vine – saints, second-fruit saints in this case – six years. On the seventh year, the second millennial Sabbath, the land will rest. What else happens? Deuteronomy 15:1-2, 12.

So every seventh year all debts are forgiven, and all Hebrew slaves go free. Were not those brought up in the second resurrection, by definition, slaves to sin? They paid their wages with their deaths in this life, but their habits will certainly carry through to their new lives where they will promptly repeat their old mistakes and once again fall under the dominion of sin – otherwise, why do they need saving?

And those who are to be saved, are they not grafted in to the family of God – becoming Hebrews? Romans 11. Those, then, who have successfully become Hebrews during that work week will be freed from their bondage to sin, just as we were freed!

And it is on the SEVENTH DAY that these next slaves will be freed from sin, just as it is on the seventh day of this first week that all OUR debts were forgiven, and WE will be freed from slavery to sin!

...but all of this leads us back to our original question, of why there must be SEVEN such cycles after the firstborn saints are resurrected. I led you here this way because I want you to be prepared for the next shocking – inevitable, but shocking – conclusion...

SEVEN RESURRECTIONS?

Are there seven resurrections mentioned in the Bible? No. In fact, the Bible never even mentions the second resurrection by name. But it’s an unavoidable fact, simply from the fact that we have a first resurrection (Revelation 20:5-6), and then another one after it. But the Bible does not say the rest of the dead all have to be resurrected at once!

Remember John 5:28-29? Taken by itself, this scripture appears to say that everyone, righteous and wicked, will be resurrected at once. Matthew 25:32-33 says pretty much the same thing. But then Revelation 20:5 says, in a way that cannot be misunderstood, the righteous dead were resurrected a THOUSAND YEARS earlier than the unrighteous dead!

Clearly we were meant to “rightly divide” the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). Looking more closely at John 5:28-29, while that passage does not give us any reason to insert a division, another passage REQUIRES us to insert one – and you can see that John 5:29 allows room for a gap between “the resurrection of life; [1,000 years pass] and... the resurrection of judgment”.

Matthew 25:31-33 is a little harder, but again – we know, without any possibility of error, there must be 1,000 years between the two resurrections. So how can that fit this scripture? Rather easily, actually – when you look at time the way God says He does!

Have you ever watched anyone separating a flock of sheep and goats? It takes time! So rather than happening in a few hours, as the world imagines, what if this process of separating the sheep from the goats takes thousands of years? 

Christ returns and sits upon His throne looking at the Earth and sees the grasshopper-like humans on it (Isaiah 40:22), and WATCHES their actions, and intervenes periodically, and thus separates those who should receive salvation from those who just don’t love the truth.

See, now there is no contradiction at all – in fact, this passage, understood this way, actually helps to illuminate Revelation 20:11-15, which also tends to imply a single judgment moment! This shows that the Bible allows for the “second resurrection” to be a period of several resurrections over a much longer period of time than you’ve understood up until now.

ALL AT ONCE?

In 6,000 years, there have been something like 70 billion people. Estimates vary, but it’s something on that scale. 144,000 of those will be saved in the first resurrection, which makes no significant dent in the number that must be resurrected in the second resurrection.

When you think about the logistics of it, it leaves one first resurrection saint to roughly half a million unsaved second resurrection people, or a ratio of 1/500,000. Elohim with the power of God or not, that’s an intimidating number of people to manage by yourself, even with the help of angels at a ratio of – if our estimates are correct about their numbers – about 1 angel to 500 unsaved people.

In addition, these people will be, at best, in a confused state of mind. They will have iron clad proof that their lifelong beliefs were in a false God. Their last memories were of gasping for breath in a hospital, seeing a gasoline tanker smash into their car, or having a Mongol hacking various body parts off.

Some of this I’m sure God could make easier than I imagine it. Maybe He could play some soft music in the background? Seriously, think about the realities of this! God has a thousand generations’ worth of time – time He HAS to use anyway! – so why WOULD God resurrect everyone all at once? 

What’s the advantage of getting it all out of the way at once in 50 or 100 years, when it’s just as easy to spread it out over a longer period of time – and you’ve got at least 25,000 years before the thousand generations are up anyway!

On the other hand, think of the great disadvantage of spreading your forces so thin – forces which are supposed to be helping these people find salvation and leading them to the truth, yet who can’t have time to do so effectively when spread out among a half million stubborn people who ALREADY didn’t get it right the first time!

The concept of the seven Sabbaths means there must be seven separate second resurrection periods, and seven separate Sabbaths for each of them. Each Sabbath will have that week’s saints resurrected as younger Elohim and trained to work for God as priests. And you know what? Now that we know what to look for, that’s exactly what the Bible said all along!

WORKING IN THE TEMPLE

One of the last things Jesus said to us was in John 14:2. In the Father’s house are many mansions/
 rooms. Many places to live and work. In the OT, we can see a lot of the agonizing details God went into to describe His house, and the people who work in it. Boring, yes – until you understood what it means.

Now we can understand something you could not have understood until you understood the Holy Days! Precept upon precept, remember! Turn to Numbers 3:6-20. Make any sense? It should. Remember how we understand things – ask questions! You already know the answers, you just haven’t asked the right questions. Whom does Levi represent? Hebrews 7:11-13, 21.

Jesus replaced Levi. So the priesthood of Levi/Aaron BECAME the priesthood of Melchizedek, or Jesus. We are to be part of that priesthood of Melchidezek with Him (1 Peter 2:5). But we, as first resurrection saints, specifically correspond to the sons of Aaron – as you learned in Lesson 57. Not Levites in general, but Aaronites in particular.

Now back in Numbers 3:17-20, here is another key to understanding the Bible – learn to count things. For example, how many people are mentioned? Not how many names – the Bible is confusing sometimes that way – but how many unique families of people? The correct answer is 8 – Libni, Shimei, Amram, Izehar, Hebron, Uzziel, Mahli, and Mushi, grouped into three separate families.

Among these people were divided the services of the temple. Some of them took care of setting up and taking down the tent, some carried the holy things, some carried the altar, and so on. You can – and should, for reasons that will soon become clear – read the details in the rest of Chapters 3 and 4.

So there were eight priesthood families in charge of the temple. Why is that important? Because in the last section, you just learned there would be eight separate resurrections! The first resurrection, and seven resurrections after that! Does this match Numbers 3? Absolutely! Because Amram was Aaron’s Father!

Amram wasn’t a separate tribe of priests doing something different – Amram’s service was the high priesthood! And remember, Aaron inherited the name of Levi; he spoke for the tribe, at God’s specific choosing (Numbers 17:3-8)! Which means that the right to the name “Levi”, and also “Amram”, was inherited by Aaron!

So the house of the high priest, the house of Jesus, had sons; sons of Aaron. We are of the household of Christ, and so we are of the family of the High Priest, and will have a right to go to the altar and touch the holy things (Hebrews 13:10, Hebrews 4:16, etc).

But those in the second resurrection, not being as righteous nor, therefore, as holy, will not be allowed to be quite so close to God! So what will the job of, for instance, the family of Kohath be? Numbers 4:4-20. (Kohath included the families of his children Libni, Shimei, Izehar, and the non-Aaronite sons of Amram – roughly one-third the priesthood).

The Kohathites are holy enough to approach and move the holy things, but not to see them, nor to touch them. Aaron must first PREPARE those things, and cover them “lest they die”. Just as the second resurrection saints are holy enough to work for God, and help God in many ways – but not holy enough to enter the most holy place without having a sheet over the throne of God.

What this means is that, if you study the jobs of these seven families, you will be able to see exactly what the jobs will be of those saved in each of the seven periods of the second resurrection, and you will be able to see exactly how holy each group will be compared to the others. This is a truly amazing link that shows you, once more, how deeply all these layers of patterns are connected and interwoven.

WHY SEVEN RESURRECTIONS?

...But we’re only scratching the surface, because you remember last lesson and the seven church eras? This shows that the idea goes even deeper, and that in fact the seven eras are a pattern for the seven resurrection eras! 

The question is, how will God group people for resurrection; if they are divided seven ways, who is in which group? Is it arranged by time – the first millennium’s unsaved dead resurrected in the first week’s batch? Or is it reversed – “the first shall be last, and the last first”?

Or is it arranged by levels of evil – the most wicked first, then slightly less wicked, up until we get to the basically good people? I’ve considered many different options over the years. But the only way that makes sense is to resurrect people in terms of the seven church eras.

The attitude of the era seeps into everything, defining the weaknesses and strengths of the people within it. The basic problems with the average man on the street in A.D. 300 are not at all the same as the basic problems with the average man in A.D. 1200. Despite similar living conditions and technologies, the attitude of the people was different between different eras.

Furthermore, this has always been the case – even before the time of Christ, the pattern of church eras has always existed. This is why Laodicea describes perfectly the Pharisees; because the Pharisees were the “Laodicea” of the previous series of church eras. But that’s another article.

Resurrecting people in terms of which thousand-year day they were born in makes little sense; after all, I have no more in common with an Ottoman peasant or a Prussian soldier than they have with Abraham.

On the other hand, if you resurrect people in terms of the ATTITUDES of the era in which they were born, it makes a great deal of sense; I understand the Pharisees. I GET them. Technology aside, the world that John the Baptist grew up in makes SENSE to me. Because it’s much like the world I grew up in!

A world that was “rich, increased with goods, having need of nothing”. A world of pride, of people who tell God (though not in so many words) “stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou” (Isaiah 65:5). And if you’re undertaking to convert a massive batch of people, what makes more sense than to resurrect people who have similar flaws at the same time!

On the other hand, I couldn’t relate to someone from medieval Europe; living in a time of persecution? Fiefdom? Where witch hunts and burning at the stake is commonplace? How can I, who have lived in a time of such pride, security, and relative safety identify with someone like Peter Waldo? Or for that matter, he with me?

I have grown up in a society that glorifies its tolerance for blatant sin, with legalized homosexual marriages, false churches on literally every corner, and technologies to make every aspect of life more comfortable and to give you every excuse not to do what you should do.

I cannot relate in any way to a time of persecution, nor can I relate to the Victorian era where men and women were chaperoned and never allowed to be alone before marriage. Where a handshake was as good as a contract, and a woman who showed her ankles in public was considered a tramp.

So the only way that makes sense is to resurrect people in groups from the same church eras. So which is first? Well, considering this is a training ground for the saints as well as a plan to save mankind, it makes sense to start with the easier ones first; Laodicea is going to be HARD to save.

Laodicea isn’t all that bad, they think; sure, they sin, but no one is perfect; but they don’t murder people, they don’t do things TOO bad. They’re not like those evil people from the fourth century! They don’t burn people at the stake like they did in the Middle Ages! They will be the hardest to save of all. Plus, consider this scripture: Matthew 12:41-42.

The queen of Sheba has sins of her own to deal with; she won’t be rising up and ten seconds later be bashing the Pharisees. But if she comes up, with the men of Nineveh, and FINDS SALVATION, then she will be in a position when the Pharisees finally come up (last) to CONDEMN them!

But to do that she must be resurrected BEFORE they are! So God must resurrect all of the Ephesus eras since Adam, as part of the first second-resurrection period, then the other eras in order, culminating with the Laodicea eras resurrected last.

This way, God can present each group with lessons, challenges, and hurdles to overcome that are uniquely designed for their weaknesses. If they overcome them, they will by worthy to inherit an office in His Kingdom, where they will help their older brothers to bring their younger brothers to salvation!

SECOND PASSOVER

You may have noticed on your chart earlier there is no separate viewpoint for the second-resurrection people on the 14th day of the 7th month. That’s because that Passover was not for them. It was for the firstborn, exclusively (Exodus 12:29, etc.). Everyone will have access to the sacrifice of Christ... some will simply have access sooner than others.

And that brings us to the second Passover. For people in the second resurrection to be saved, they need to receive the Passover. The Passover in the OC was not enough to give eternal life; while the Passover in the NC was reserved for the firstfruits.

Those who, today, are not interested enough in the truth to make it to the Passover – is there hope for them? Numbers 9:6-12. So if you were unclean, or in a journey, or... well, read Luke 14:16-24. Sound familiar? Like the excuses so many students make for not keeping the Holy Days, tithing, keeping unclean meats, or even the Sabbath? The second Passover is for them.

If you were too BUSY to take the Passover – that is, too busy to repent and apply the blood of Christ to your sins – if you were unclean, or in a journey, or just got married, or had bought some land, and JUST COULDN’T TAKE TIME for God today... you will not partake of His supper, and you will NOT be a part of the first resurrection.

BUT! There will be a SECOND Passover for all of those people who didn’t have time for God today, and that Passover was set up for the very PURPOSE of saving those who didn’t make time for God the first time around! Of course, their reward won’t be as great, and that is as it should be – but they will still be children of God, just... younger children. Always subservient to their elder siblings, the firstfruits.

We know there will BE a Passover observed in the Kingdom, at least one, because Christ said so in Luke 22:15-18. He promised that He would not drink the “fruit of the vine”, or eat the bread of the Passover, UNTIL the Kingdom of God COMES! But the very word “UNTIL” means that AFTER it DOES come, He WILL take it again, and that proves there WILL BE a second Passover service! So on the 14th day of the second month, write “Second Passover”.

THE SEVEN RESURRECTIONS OF LEVITICUS 16

I said there was a lot of proof of the seven resurrections in the OT, but I’ve only used one proof so far. In reality, the rituals of Leviticus and Numbers are simply full of things that are screaming SEVEN RESURRECTIONS at the top of their lungs, but we’ve never “had ears to hear”, because you can’t understand one thing until you understand all the things it is built upon!

We’ve gone through Leviticus 16 many, many times in these lessons. But we keep finding more in there. It’s like David said, “I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad” (Psalms 119:96).

I’ve seen a place where all human metaphors break down; but God’s laws are so well designed I have not been able to peer into them deeply enough to find a place where they don’t perfectly fit with each other, and with every word in the Bible.

Remember, Atonement is about cleansing mankind. ALL of mankind. And this chapter shows EVERY sacrifice that is applied to mankind over the 70,000 years of this plan. We’ve gone through it many times, so I’ll just focus on the parts we’ve missed, or that need to be fitted into the millennial plan.

After the separation of the goats and the offering and death of the bullock, Aaron brings the bullock’s blood within the veil (Leviticus 16:12-14). But then notice carefully what he does! First, he takes the blood and sprinkles it on the mercy seat EASTWARD. Once!

Then he sprinkles it BEFORE the mercy seat SEVEN TIMES! Get that, SEVEN TIMES, plus the first time when it was sprinkled EASTWARD! And who encamped on the east of the tabernacle? Numbers 3:38!! And where will the water of life come from? Ezekiel 47:1. And who will give the water to the secondfruits? John 7:38, Revelation 7:17. And how does the glory of God get into the Holy City? Ezekiel 43:1-7.

The answers are all there, and they’re OBVIOUS, if you just ask the obvious questions!! Remember Numbers 3-4? The blood was sprinkled once for Aaron – on the east – and seven times for the rest of the families of Levi! Once eastward for the first resurrection saints, and seven times for the seven periods of the second resurrection!!

So what does the sprinkling represent? How does that sprinkling help us? 1 Peter 1:2. When we are resurrected, we must have our sins PAID for – and so Jesus, at our resurrection, will sprinkle the blood ONCE on the mercy seat. What does sprinkling represent? Hebrews 12:24. So it’s a symbol of the covenant? Exodus 24:8.

The blood of bulls and goats “sprinkling the unclean” purifies the flesh; likewise, the blood of Christ purifies your conscience (Hebrews 9:13-14). To enter the Kingdom of God, we MUST have this blood of sprinkling! But not just of ONE sacrifice – we need both the blood of bulls AND goats!

That’s why in Leviticus 16:15-17 Aaron does all the same things with the holy goat. We need both the God-death AND the man-death sacrifices of Christ, pictured by the bull and the goat, respectively, in order to be saved. We need the sacrifice of Jesus’ spirit AND the sacrifice of Jesus’ flesh – again, respectively, we need the BREAD AND THE WINE – again, respectively! These are all different layers of the SAME PATTERN!

In verses 18-19 he then sprinkles the blood of both the goat and the bullock on the altar outside the tabernacle seven times. This is happening outside the temple – at the altar, representing the Earth. This is not a spiritual thing, which would happen in heaven, inside the temple; this is a physical thing.

So if the sprinkling inside represents spiritual resurrections, that is, of rewarding the righteous in the first and second resurrections with spiritual bodies... then wouldn’t it stand to reason that the sprinkling outside of the tabernacle pictures the physical resurrections of those same people?

Notice that He doesn’t do it 1+7 times outside! The firstborn saints don’t NEED a physical resurrection! He only sprinkles the outside SEVEN times, once for each physical resurrection – once for each time the Earth must be cleansed for the sins of each millennial week!

But remember, all this time the evil goat was still alive, still not cast out of the camp, still not dealt with! We’ve now passed over periods representing over 60,000 years! Don’t forget to look at your calendar chart occasionally! Each time the blood was sprinkled represented a millennial WEEK in God’s plan!

In the things pictured in the Day of Atonement, starting no later than the tenth day of the month with Satan’s sin, we passed over 4,000 years from Atonement to Passover, then 7,000 years of this current age, and then 49,000 years – seven weeks of 7,000 years each – and this other goat is STILL hanging around! But now we reach an end!

Read Leviticus 16:20. Notice that the high priest – Jesus – had made an END of reconciling everything. The altar, the temple, the objects in them – everything is reconciled (2 Corinthians 5:18, Hebrews 2:17). The firstfruits, all seven batches of secondfruits, the Earth – everything. Except this one wicked goat. Guess who?

THE REAL MEANING OF AN AGE

Remember from earlier lessons that “forever” is mistranslated in most Bibles, and should mean simply age. In Revelation 20:10, when it says “for ever and ever”, it would be more literally translated as “for age of ages”. However, the most accurate translation would be “until the end of the age of the ages”.

In other words, the smoke of Satan’s torment will ascend UNTIL the AGE, or the plan, that consists of smaller ages, or plans, is FINISHED! Until the age of the ages! And the AGE of the AGES is laid out from beginning to end in the plan of the Holy Days!

If we’d truly understood Revelation 20:10, it told us all along that there were many ages, and hinted strongly at this understanding of the Holy Days you’ve studied today! When you look at your chart and see each week as another age, and you see a week of weeks – seven Sabbaths – you see that Satan’s torment will continue until the week of weeks is finished!

LOAVES OF SPIRIT

The more you understand of the plan, the more those mundane details in Leviticus make sense. For example, Leviticus 23:11-14 describes the offerings made on the Wavesheaf Day – the first day of these seven weeks, as it applies to the firstfruits.

The offerings are an armload of the firstfruits of the grain harvest – us. And a male lamb without blemish as a burnt offering – Jesus’ successful life without sin. This is not a sin-offering, those having been taken care of long before this point in the plan. It’s a burnt offering, a “sweet savor”, as the “reproach of Egypt” is rolled off of Jesus when He brings in the first harvest of firstfruits across into the Promised Land, proving that all of this was indeed worth the sacrifice.

To go along with that Lamb, there is a bread offering of two tenth portions – two omers (Exodus 16:36). Omers were tenths of an ephah, and the ephah was something like a bushel. Now manna/bread represented Jesus, according to almost any verse in John 6.

Actually, that isn’t precise enough. The bread represented Jesus’ spirit (Nehemiah 9:20). And the amount of manna/Jesus’ spirit that we get is defined as one omer in Exodus 16:32-33. Actually, that’s not quite right either – the amount of spirit that typical Israelites received was one omer. Why is that? Because they were under the Old Covenant! 

And one of the defining characteristics of the Old Covenant was that they did not have access to the Father’s spirit! (2 John 1:9, John 1:18, John 17:26, Luke 10:22, etc.). So they only had ONE loaf of bread, not two! 

But what are the firstborn worthy of? Deuteronomy 21:17. So then it stands to reason that firstfruits have TWO omers’ worth of spirit, just as Elisha received a double portion over Elijah (2 Kings 2:9)! The spirit of Christ AND the spirit of the Father!

With that understanding, we can make sense of why the Lamb was offered with TWO tenth deals of flour, for the Lamb had both spirits! But so do ALL the saints, for we must have both the spirit of the Father and the Son to be saved! (Romans 8:9-11).

This allows us to explain the showbread as well – for look at the recipe! Leviticus 24:5-8. Twelve loaves – each representing the spirits of a tribe of second-born saints. Each of those loaves made of TWO omers of flour, signifying their acceptance of the spirits of both God and Christ!

And these loaves are displayed before God’s face for ONE WEEK, and frankincense is burned on them, as a memorial or representation of the whole loaf! Representing the TESTING of these loaves by fire during this week! And at the end of the week, on the Sabbath, they are CHANGED out, replaced with NEW loaves to be tested in a NEW week! (1 Chronicles 9:32).

When the second-resurrection saints are brought back to life, they are displayed before God’s face for a week per batch until they have been tested and found satisfactory! Then ON THE SABBATH, the millennium of that week, they are taken off the table and they BECOME holy bread ready to use, just as their elder brethren did before them!

And a new batch, fresh baked, is put on the table just as the day ends and a new week of testing begins! Now these loaves, as you learned in Lesson 58, represent the book of life in Heaven. The book God uses to keep track of everything that has the breath of life or the spirit of God – two layers of the same exact thing!

So these second-resurrection people are written in the book of life on a trial basis, just as all of us are now, for a week; at the end of that week, those who have passed the tests and have not made God use His eraser are resurrected, interned with Christ, and “eaten” – consumed, used – by the sons of Aaron.

Just as we eat the body of Christ, taking His spirit inside of us, we will take their spirits and make them a part of us, a part of the priesthood, and give them a job helping to bring their younger brethren into the family of God!

Which reminds me, how often did Jesus say repentant sinners should be forgiven? Indefinitely, forever? See for yourself in Luke 17:3-4 and Matthew 18:21-22. Jesus said not seven times, but seventy times seven – 490 times. Not an infinite number either – a specific, exact number of times Jesus said to forgive your brother.

Now remember how in the temple, a cubit represented a century. A century is also the idealized lifespan in the second resurrection according to Isaiah 65:20. Using that information, treating this as a day-for-a-century, we conclude that Jesus does not forgive man seven times, not just in this seven-thousand-year week – that would not be merciful enough.

Instead, He forgives man seventy TIMES seven – 490. Not 7,000 years, but 49,000 years as well! And we are to follow His example! But that leads me back to another time the Bible used these same numbers, in Daniel 9:24-27. Seventy weeks is also seventy times seven – a time to “make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness”.

In the highest type of this symbolism, what is true “everlasting righteousness”, if not the arrival of the holy city on the day of Pentecost after 49,000 years of resurrections!

THE LAST ATONEMENT

Back to the concluding verses of Leviticus 16. Only after all this is done does Aaron/Jesus cast the goat/Satan out by the hand of a strong man/Michael. Then Aaron/Jesus changes his clothes, washes his flesh, and offers two burnt offerings – we’ll come back to that.

A curious fact which I’ve noted before is that after the seven weeks of years, the Jubilee year officially began on the day OF ATONEMENT in the 49th year of the 50 year cycle (Leviticus 25:9-10). This was hard to explain – until you understood the plan of the Holy Days, now it’s absurdly easy to explain.

Why the Day of Atonement? Why not the first day of the fiftieth year? Why not at least the first day of the seventh month? Why start the Jubilee on the Day of Atonement? Why start your Jubilation on the saddest day of the year?Because the Jubilee truly begins on the Day of Atonement! Because on Atonement SATAN IS DEALT WITH AT LAST! How fitting that on the very day sin entered the universe, sin leaves it forever!

Look at the overview: Satan sinned on the Day of Atonement, and the goats were both called before the Father to be heard. Satan was cast to Earth, and Jesus was set apart for the sacrifice. The pain of the separation lasted three days before Jesus prepared to create Earth and man on the day of Passover.

Six literal days of creation later, man was finished; the seventh literal day, man was trained in the law on the first literal Sabbath; just as six millennial days later, the first batch of saints were finished, and the first millennial Sabbath is spent in training them for their future ruling at Christ’s side enforcing that same law!

When they are resurrected, the blood is sprinkled on them before the throne of God to purify them, and the next day (the Wavesheaf Day/LGD) the first batch of the second resurrection is brought up; and blood is sprinkled once on the altar for their physical resurrection. Then they live their lives, die, and the worthy are resurrected at the end of the sixth day of that week, just as we were, using one of the sprinklings in front of the mercy seat, then the seventh day is spent training them as we were trained.

But the saints of the second resurrection will never have the same honor or glory as those of the first – so they are not ON the mercy seat, but “in front of it”. They don’t get to sit with Christ IN HIS THRONE, on the seat, but in FRONT of it! (Revelation 3:21). They are still immortal, still sons of God, but not with the same level of authority as the firstborn. They are not sons of Aaron, but they’ll still be Levites.

Then another sprinkling, and another, and so on until seven sprinklings – resurrections – have happened. Then, when ALL have been reconciled (1 Corinthians 15:24-28), and He has “put down all rule and all authority and power”, on the 49th millennial year of this Jubilee cycle, on the Day of Atonement, God brings the other goat back!

And He shows him all that the way of God has produced, the happiness and health and harmony of God’s realm without Satan to muddle it up. Then Satan spits in God’s face, metaphorically – or perhaps literally, who knows – and is finally destroyed (Ezekiel 28:18).

Thus on Atonement, the same day that sin began... after all this time has passed, finally sin and the father of it are destroyed – along with death and the grave, for without sin there is no need for them – and God at last proclaims a JUBILEE for the universe, for now ALL captives to sin have been completely freed and all property that has been stolen will be returned to its rightful owner!

“And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10) – no wonder it’s called a holy Jubilee! Because that day the destroyer of nations is himself destroyed! Surely that is just cause for the greatest jubilation in history! So great that the celebrations carry over into the next day, the day of Pentecost!

And on the next day, Pentecost, the New Jerusalem comes to Earth and God at last dwells with man for good! As He has wanted for so many years!

FINAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: PENTECOST

It’s appropriate that this is the last summary and conclusion, because that’s precisely what Pentecost is, in every sense – the last summary and conclusion. We mostly call it Pentecost, but the Bible also calls it by another name “the Feast of Weeks”.

The Feast of Weeks is, quite literally, a feast made to celebrate these weeks which you now know commemorate the seven resurrections – the seven harvests (Deuteronomy 16:9), the “appointed weeks of the harvest” when God is going to save faithless Israel by pouring out His spirit on them! (Jeremiah 5:24, Joel 2:28-29). Pentecost is the day when the FRUIT of those weeks is celebrated!

Knowing so much about that day now, we should be able to explain a lot of the sacrifices God commanded Israel to offer on that day – the pageant they enacted blindly, but those of us who “have eyes to see” can use to understand the plan of God!

Remember, Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks is about the weeks! It is about the WHEAT harvest. The barley harvest was celebrated during ULB, concluding at the Wavesheaf Day. These symbols are not about the salvation of the firstfruits, but the salvation of the secondfruits!

Leviticus 23:17 seems to contradict that, but think about it! “Firstfruits” is not a title, it is a term. It means the firstfruits of that particular harvest! (Numbers 18:12, 2 Chronicles 31:5). These loaves represent the firstfruits OF THAT WEEK OF WEEKS!

There are two loaves because they are divided into two groups, just as the priesthood in Numbers 3-4 is divided into those who work inside the tabernacle under Eleazar, and those who work on the building itself under Ithamar. Put in different terms, they are divided between spiritual and civil leaders, or priests and kings (Revelation 1:6). That, too, is another article.

But they are also portrayed as two loaves because the firstfruits of the second harvest have both the spirits of the Father and the Son. They are baked with leaven because unlike the firstborn saints, they died in their first life with their leaven inside of them! 

Children are born neither good nor evil (Isaiah 7:15-16). But in the resurrection, although people will be resurrected sinless – their sins having been paid for with their deaths – it will be with a lifetime of sinful habits and a mind that has been trained to sin (Jeremiah 9:5).

They did not repent before they died the first time. So unlike babies, when they are resurrected to their second life, it will be with their leavenous natures baked inside of them! Thus these loaves are baked WITH LEAVEN and yet many, if not most, will still find salvation with the help of their extended family!

The rest of the sacrifices offered on this day, in Leviticus 23:18-20, can also be completely explained. I am close, and could make some guesses... but I won’t. It’s time to wrap this up, and I want to do so by showing you one last layer, one that encompasses the entire plan – as of course, it should. The symbol of man.

Look at the plan of the Holy Days in your hand. From the creation of the universe on the Feast of Shouting to the day of Pentecost at the conclusion of the plan is 70,000 years. But a thousand years is as one day. And a day is as a year. And so the plan of God lasts seventy years. What else does? Psalms 90:10.

I already mentioned this plan, and its application to the length of the temple – which itself portrays this same time frame as the plan of the Holy Days, for its 70 cubits corresponds precisely to a 70,000 year plan. But we’re going to see that the human lifespan is much more detailed than that.

Twenty days after the beginning of the plan the first humans join the family of God. At that point, what happens to them? Deuteronomy 30:6. So you could easily say that the heart of man is circumcised at 20 years old. What does God say happens at that point in a man's life? Numbers 14:29, Deuteronomy 1:39.

So at that age, 20 years old, children are given the right to decide good from evil – and should, of course, circumcise their hearts and let God help them decide. This is spiritual circumcision – happening to every man at the same age as it happens to the Family of Man.

But before that, at about 10-14 years of age, the physical foreskin begins to stretch naturally and uncover the tender flesh beneath. This natural, physical circumcision corresponds to the same day that men healed from the circumcision on the 14th in Joshua 5.

On a larger scale, the Devil, who seeks to hide God from men, and thus in a sense is a foreskin, was cut off and separated from heaven (universal age 10), and then on the Passover (universal age 14) Jesus set out to heal this breach.

Physical circumcision, the revealing of the tenderness to the outside world, therefore happens at the SAME TIME to every man as it happened to the Family of Man in the plan of God. First physical, then spiritual, circumcision.

Preferably in the natural way, but with a knife if necessary – God would prefer you to soften your heart, but he will cut out your old heart and put a new one in if He must (Ezekiel 11:19). If artificial circumcision is necessary, He will wait until universal age 20 to perform it, giving you every opportunity to circumcise yourself before He does it for you!

After universal age 20 comes 50,000 years of the plan of God to raise a family. Then what happens? The average human gets old and starts to get weaker. What happens to the universe at 70 years old? Isaiah 51:6. The very same thing!

What happens to things that are old? Hebrews 8:13. So will God destroy them? Hebrews 1:11-12. No! Like the men whom they represent, God will merely CHANGE them – give them a NEW life. When? Revelation 21:4-5. Which happens right after what? Verses 1-3.

The New Jerusalem, God dwelling with man, new Heavens and new Earth – this is ALL the fulfilling of the symbol of Pentecost, when the weeks are finished! All the saints, firstfruits and secondfruits alike, will have been saved! The Devil will have been destroyed, and freedom jubilantly broadcast throughout the universe!

Only then will God finally dwell with man in the ultimate, literal sense. And then, because all those who inhabit the universe are without sin, it is appropriate that their old universe be wiped away for they no longer need it! Like God Himself, the heaven of heavens will no longer contain us! (2 Chronicles 6:18). The 70,000-year-old body of the Family of Man will have grown old and, just like our old man, be flushed away in the fiery waters of baptism so that we can be a NEW MAN!

Put another way, the tabernacle was a temporary tent, made of cloth curtains which were stretched out (Exodus 40:19). The universe is exactly the same to God (Psalms 104:2). Both grow old, and must be replaced (Hebrews 1:11-12). God CHANGES both into permanent structures – just exactly as He does to our bodies – which of course are also called temples (2 Corinthians 5:1-4)!

Layer upon layer upon layer of the same symbol, woven throughout the fabric of the Bible! Back on topic, at the end of this plan the heavens are folded up like the tabernacle was and replaced with a temple. Just like the body of each man must fold up one last time and be resurrected with a body which will never fold up again. Just as the 70,000 year old body of Man must do.

I could quote a lot of scriptures which apply to this concept, like 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 but by now, you know most of them. The question you’re going to be asking is... then what? Is that the end? No! Just like this course, what you thought was the end of a monumental job turns out to be the tiniest BEGINNING! 

This whole lifetime, and now I mean the 70,000 year lifetime of Man, is ALL spent in training the FIRST GENERATION of God’s family! The firstborn saints are the elder SIBLINGS of the second resurrection people, not their parents! This 70,000 years is just a GENERATION, a tiny lifetime, in the span of eternity!

How long will God’s government grow? Isaiah 9:7. What will we do when the Earth will no longer hold us? Isaiah 51:16. How exactly will we do that? God doesn’t know! Whose decision will it be? Daniel 7:22.

Just as you do not know what your unborn children will do for a living, who they will marry, how many children they will have, or where they will live, neither does God! Because those are decisions each of us must make for ourselves! 

God COULD NOT KNOW unless He forced the decision upon you, and that is the absolute last thing God would do – for the whole reason He created this universe, the whole reason you were born, was to create people who would do right things that He didn’t tell them to do! 

The one thing that any omnipotent being wants is someone to surprise Him! Someone who will do something He would want done, but that He hadn’t told them to do! And better yet, to do it in a new way that He hadn’t yet thought of! 

God wants a family, a constantly growing family of incorruptibly righteous beings whom He does not need to control! Beings whose actions He cannot predict, except to know that whatever they do, they will never do anything to hurt any other being.

That is the only rule – the only rule that there ever has been. The one highest law of all space and time: treat all beings as you would want them to treat you. In that one law is summed up all of the Bible, and indeed every true word ever said in Earth or Heaven.

If you learn that, if that rule becomes YOUR highest law, then you will have conquered the only thing standing between you and a place in this Family.

Amen.