8.3 The Pillar of Fire
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The Pillar of Fire, our God a consuming fire, Fire as the entrance of God into His creation, is the whole purpose of the Tabernacle of Moses and of everything else. The transformation brought about by that Fire we will investigate inside each piece of furniture. Here, however, we want to understand a bit more this Pillar of Fire as it enters the knowledge of creation through us upon the Mercy Seat.
You shall put the Mercy Seat on top of the Ark, and in the Ark you shall put the Covenant that I will give you. And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the Mercy Seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the Ark of the Covenant… (Exodus 25:21-22).
The Cloud and the Glory. So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the Tabernacle of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the Tabernacle of Meeting, because the cloud rested above it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. – Whenever the cloud was taken up from the Tabernacle, the children of Israel would go onward in all their journeys. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not journey till the day when it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was above the Tabernacle by day, and fire was over it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, through all their journeys (Exodus 40:33b-38).
Notice that here it is called the Tabernacle of Meeting – for there I will meet with you.
An Appointment with God. Remember, of course, that everything in this Tabernacle layout is designed to fit both covenants, the old, as well as the New. The reality of Christ is what transforms everything from the old to the New. Indeed, the Tent of Meeting is Christ, for in Christ, you and I come together with the Father. And there is so much more in that word “meet” than we have ever understood. The word translated “meet” in Exodus 25 and “meeting” in Exodus 40 is the Hebrew yaad, which means “an appointed time, place, or meeting,” with the emphasis on the word “appointed” and with time or place or feast determined by the context.
And here we see a verse making its way with strength into this part of our Covenant with God. – You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain… (John 15:16).
Fruit. Do you see how this Covenant is working. We are in this thing for LIFE. God is in this thing for a Body. Our bearing fruit that remains is simply the evidence that God has the Body He entered this Covenant with us to obtain.
Just as we seize hold of God as our life, so God seizes hold of us as His Body, His entrance into His creation.
Fruit is God and us working all things together. Fruit is the oil become light for others, the bread become provision for others, and the incense become the favor of God in every place. Fruit is the testimony of Christ in the midst of creation and the authority of mercy that sets creation free.
Cloud and Fire. I am sure you have noticed that the pillar touching down upon the Mercy Seat was primarily a pillar of cloud by day; that pillar showed itself as fire only at night. Look again at pages 2-3 of The Rose Guide to the Tabernacle to see the larger picture of that pillar of cloud and then at page 19 to see it resting upon the Mercy Seat.
One of the prophets states that God hides Himself in clouds of darkness. This is simply a metaphor for the invisibility of God. God cannot be seen or known by any created being in heaven or earth. But notice that during the daytime when Israel could see by the light of the natural sun and when everything also filled their view, then God appeared to them in the cloud. But at nighttime, when all else had disappeared from view, then the fire inside the cloud became seen.
This fire is always there inside the cloud, even during the day. But even the fire is, itself, a metaphor, and not actually God Himself. God fills all things with all of Himself, including there and then.
With Father. And so, this Pillar of Cloud and Fire is none other than a representation of Father. And all the truths regarding Father that we learned in Purpose, Essence, and Kingdom apply here. Yet in this picture that we are rightly applying to Covenant, Father places Himself in Covenant as Fire.
And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the Mercy Seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the Ark of the Covenant.
To a separated mind, this is the human facing the Ark, God saying something, and the human responding with little more than, “Yes, Lord.” But as we are filled with all the fullness of God, everything inside of God represented by this massive pillar of fire and far more besides, then we see these words quite differently. You and I are filled full with that entire pillar of fire. And in the Covenant, the first WITH means symmorphy, sharing the same form, and the second WITH means homologia, speaking the same word together with the same breath.
Seated. We must pair two New Testament verses, two verses that should never be separated. To Him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with Me on My throne (Revelation 3:21). – together with – and made us sit together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). Most assume that the line in Revelation is a far bigger deal than the line in Ephesians and thus reserved for a future date, with the line in Ephesians meaning, actually, very little.
We know that these two uses of “sit” are one and the same, that John's vision is just the gospel in a third form. And we know that the throne upon which we sit is this very Mercy Seat upon the Ark of the Covenant where God enters into the knowledge of His creation.
The Entrance of God. This, then, is the point of truth for which we are searching in this lesson. God enters into Covenant with us so that He might be seen and known in, by, and with His creation. To accomplish this desire, God must have a body. Yet God can obtain for Himself a body by only one means; any other form by which God might appear would be only idolatry.
And God does not enter His creation through the Blood. God does not enter His creation through the Mercy Seat. God enters His creation through us, you and me, who are seated upon that Mercy Seat, seated upon that Blood. Only AFTER God shares the same form with us and only AFTER God is speaking the same word together with us, do all the other elements in this Covenant transaction come into play as they turn this Fire, a Fire of which we are very much a part, into the fruits of life coming forth to all.
Energeia. Now, I would suggest that you read back through Lesson 4.3 Energeia. Notice the many powerful New Testament gospel verses in which energeia appears in any of its forms. Consider this line from Colossians 1:29: Striving according to His energeia which energeoes in me mightily. Every occurrence of energeia in all of its forms along with all synonyms of energeia or dunamos, power, in the New Testament are all referring directly to this Pillar of Fire in the Covenant that is God now in and through us. Thus, as you read these verses again, think of the tip point of the Pillar of Fire upon the Mercy Seat.
And we consider ourselves as that tip point only in this manner, that through us God makes Himself known. All of God fills us full; the “tip point” refers to God becoming known through us, that is, Christ.
The Expectation of Faith. More than that, the picture God gives us as Himself inside this Covenant represented by the Tabernacle convinces us that the ONLY thing that is the LIFE we entered this Covenant to obtain comes forth inside the Covenant ONLY by Fire, only by the energeia, the working of God, which is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bond of the Covenant.
Our part is the expectation of faith. We have this treasure in earthen vessels – We believe, therefore we speak (2 Corinthians 4:7 & 13). This we know, but what is critical in our present study is that we in no way “deify” anything in this Covenant picture, that is, place it as high and lofty and far above the likes of us.
In the end, this Pillar of Fire is nothing other than God in us. And the working of the Covenant is God through us.
Seeing Further. Now, a number of things are happening to my understanding right now, things I was not actually expecting. And I see that this topic of the Pillar of Fire coming into creation through the Holy of Holies is what is changing my view, that is, enabling me to see further than I have before.
First, this picture of the Holy of Holies goes in two directions at the same time. It's not partly one direction and partly the other, but all of one and all of the other always. The first direction we must take this picture is that, even though the Holy of Holies appears as a small extension at the back of the Tabernacle, and even though we have placed it in our diagram of the New Creation as small and attached to the Holy Place, yet it is not really so. The Holy of Holies is the ENTIRETY of the New Creation and of God IN the New Creation. The Holy of Holies is infinite and contains inside its perfect cube All that is God among us.
A Second Direction. But the other direction is just as important. And that is that the entirety of the Holy of Holies, it's boards, its coverings, the Ark and the Mercy Seat, and including the entirety of the Pillar of Fire, not just its tip point, is speaking in its entirety of you and me, each one of us as members in particular, as individual expressions of Christ Jesus.
Now, this truth is about to become, in the next session, a much bigger deal. You see, the Holy of Holies is the same thing as the Pro-Knowing of God as Paul referred to the Heart of God in Romans 8:29. The Holy of Holies and the Pro-Knowing of God and the Heart of God are all three exactly the same thing. There is never the one without the other two in full; never does any one go beyond the other two. They are the same thing.
And thus when I say that this Holiest of All is also speaking of you and me as individual persons, I am continuing to make the single most beyond-all statement I make, a four-word phrase that to most must be the greatest blasphemy ever uttered, but to us has always been the deepest desire of our own hearts – SHARING HEART WITH GOD!
The Holy Place. More than that, the Holy Place, that is, all of us together as the many-membered Body of Christ, a family of people walking together in love, belongs entirely inside the New Creation, inside that larger circle of sunshine and light, with the Holiest as its beating Heart. The reason we first place the Holy Place in the old creation is that is how our brethren see themselves, not yet able to enter into full faith in God. The first thing we will do, as God through us bursts through that Veil again, now our flesh, flesh of His flesh, will be to seize all who are hesitant in the Holy Place and bring them quickly into the Holiest in the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles in the life of the Church, the ingathering of the Tabernacles Harvest.
And as we see the Holy Place as the outer expression of ourselves together with each other and including all of our brethren who desire to enter in, but are presently afraid to do so, we see that the Holy Place is every bit as much a part of this Covenant as the Holiest.
Another Change of View. But then, something else is now changing drastically in my seeing. You see, I approached the writing of this course believing that I would be exploring and establishing God's Covenant relationship with me, the interconnections between the Father and myself that are Christ Jesus (and “myself” you take as yourself). Yet our position upon the Mercy Seat, that we are the tip point of that Pillar of Fire before it touches the Blood and the Mercy Seat itself, along with the fact that we see that all this Fire is nothing other than all the wondrous statements in the gospel of God working in us, changes our understanding of this Covenant.
You see, we are talking about God. And God is something different from what we have known. God changed drastically in my sight in the fall of 2011 out from which seeing I wrote my first book on the Kingdom, The Kingdom Rising. Here is my own description of God as I began to see Him then, seeing God through the human Jesus laying down His life for us. And as we describe God, remember, that we are describing this Pillar of Fire that generates through us all that is Covenant.
Descriptions of God. – God always reveals Himself though weakness, swallowing up into Himself all that we are including our sin and rebellion, becoming us in our present state, limiting Himself by our weakness. Thus, carrying us inside Himself, stumbling and falling along the way, He arises out of death and into life, ascending on high, and we inside of Him. –
And then, here is how Paul describes this same God, this same Pillar of Fire. Father suffers long and Father is kind. Father does not envy; Father does not parade Himself, is not puffed up; Father does not behave rudely; Father does not seek His own, is not provoked; Father thinks no evil. Father does not rejoice in dishonesty, but only in the truth. Father bears all for all; Father believes all for all; Father hopes all for all; Father endures all for all. Father never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 – modified).
The Covenant. And thus, as we see that God is one with us before ever God goes out from us through all the terms of the Covenant, we see that this Covenant that God is making known to us is not “for us,” but through us. God through us is entering into Covenant with all of His creation. And now we know that as we put the Lord Jesus Christ upon all that we are, we are also putting this very Covenant upon ourselves. You and I are the Covenant that God is entering into with all created things. We are the visible form of that Covenant. We are the Body of Christ.
And thus, since this Pillar of Fire fills us with all that He is and is quite happily energeoing away inside of us, we can alter the words of 1 Corinthians 13 a bit more. Put your own name in the blank and speak it out loud. Daniel suffers long and Daniel is kind. Daniel does not envy; Daniel does not parade him(her)self, is not puffed up; Daniel does not behave rudely; Daniel does not seek his(her) own, is not provoked; Daniel thinks no evil. Daniel does not rejoice in dishonesty, but only in the truth. Daniel bears all for all; Daniel believes all for all; Daniel hopes all for all; Daniel endures all for all. Daniel never fails.
How Can We Speak With God? How can we say such a thing? How can we speak with such certainty together with our Father speaking? We can do so BECAUSE whatever Father is as Covenant through us, He is first that as Covenant inside of us, personally together with us.
This is what Fire is and what Fire does; Fire draws into itself all that is offered freely to it in the full confidence and expectation of faith. We walk utterly with Father as Oone Pperson together, sharing all of life together. And as we know the Father, only so do we know ourselves. AS HE IS, so are we in this present age.
Do you see Father and yourself bearing all for all? So you are seeing the Fire upon the Mercy Seat.
We share Heart with God.