This morning I had a vision and I saw chains around many of God’s people’s feet. What I noticed about these chains is that they were LONG and they were were a HEAVY WEIGHT to drag around.
Instantly, I knew that they “chains” represented “areas of struggle” on multiple levels. Physical, emotional, spiritual and mental where there has been an “affliction” (google defines it as: the state of being in pain. “poor people in great affliction” synonyms:suffering, distress, pain, trouble, misery, wretchedness, hardship, misfortune, adversity, sorrow, torment, tribulation, woe, cross to bear, thorn in one’s flesh/side) of sorts that has been with them for years upon years. A weight that has been in their lives that has just refused to move. No matter what they have done, or how much they have prayed, it has felt like the chain just got ‘heavier’ instead of breaking.
Suddenly I saw the words change. They went from:
LONG, WEIGHTED, CHAINS
to
LONG AWAITED CHANGE
For many it has been a long journey, and the chains of the WAIT have been WEIGHTY in heaviness but take heart those long WEIGHTY chains are about to turn the LONG AWAITED CHANGE OF BREAKTHROUGH!!!!! Chains were breaking everywhere!!! God is breaking LONG battles with afflictions and bringing healing, restoration, freedom, provision and increase through radical breakthrough in Jesus name. No more “pauses”, no more “stops”, no more going round and round and round the same mountain, THIS is the season for breakthrough of LONG BATTLES with afflictions of many kinds as the people of God have remained positioned.
I then saw another line appear…
WEIGHTY – THE AREAS WHERE THESE CHAINS HAVE HELD YOU DOWN ARE NOW BEING TURNED AS YOU MOVE INTO BREAKTHROUGH TO YOU STEPPING FURTHER INTO “WEIGHTY” AUTHORITY TO GO OUT AND RELEASE BREAKTHROUGH AND IMPARTATIONS TO OTHERS.
The greater the WAIT, the greater the BREAKTHROUGH AND WEIGHT! Nothing is wasted. The Lord is turning it all. Not only will your breakthrough be greater than you imagined, but what will be released TO YOU and THROUGH YOU will be EXPONENTIAL.
Don’t give up! The Lord has seen those heavy chains and the weight they have placed upon you in the long long wait, but now in this season the weight of His Glory and breakthrough is going to rest upon you heavier than ever before. There will be SO MUCH breakthrough, it is just going to overflow and spill out onto people wherever you go. A new level of living in the overflow. There is a radical release of a breaker anointing being released all over the body of Christ in this season.
You are moving into greater days of AWE of His beautiful nature and wonderful works! What you are going to see Him do in and through you in these areas of long awaited breakthrough suddenly turning to long awaited change is going to leave you in a place of deeper awe of Him, which is going to raise you up onto a whole new floor and position you before many new doors.
Can you hear the chains breaking in the atmosphere? He is releasing long awaited breakthrough and change!
“But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day,” says the Lord. ” I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be there God, and they will be my people.”
Observation
The first covenant with not perfect, and so the Lord brought a new covenant. He foreshadowed this through the prophets.
The new covenant would be different to the old. Instead of a written law telling people how to behave, the Lord would write his laws on their hearts and minds. He will be their God, and they will be His people.
Nobody will need to teach their neighbours or relatives, or exhort them to know the law. Everyone from the youngest to the oldest will know Him already.
Application
When we walk with the Lord, there is no reason for laws, rules and regulations. If we all love the Lord, we will all love one another.
There is a tendency in every move of the Holy Spirit to codify what is happening, so that new converts know how to honour the Lord. That is not a bad thing. The trouble is that, over time, we may start to elevate the rules above the Holy Spirit. Eventually, what started as a life-giving move of God is stifled by legalism.
God has written His laws on our hearts. If we keep desiring to please God, He will show us what is required in every situation.
Prayer
Lord, I thank you that you do not require us to learn rules and live by laws. I have a living relationship with a living God and I can trust you to lead me. Amen.
As we will see, in modern times, global Christianity is inconceivable except in terms of the role played by women, as spiritual leaders and prophets, as hymn writers and key converts. Philip Jenkins
They serve in a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven.
Observation
Jesus, our High Priest, sat down in the place of honour beside God’s throne in heaven. He ministers there in the true place of worship.
Jesus offers gifts and sacrifices in heaven. The priests on earth serve in a system of worship that is just a copy of the real one in heaven. When Moses was constructing the Tabernacle, the Lord warned him that it must be made according to the pattern He revealed.
Jesus, our High Priest, has a ministry superior to the old priesthood, for He mediates a better covenant with God.
Application
There are christians who argue that we should worship according to the Old Testament model – the feasts, singing psalms, and so on, but no animal sacrifices because that would be yucky.
That is the old priesthood and the old covenant. We have a new priesthood in which Jesus is our High Priest as well as our sacrifice. All believers are priests in God’s Kingdom, a royal priesthood that is eternal because the kingdom is eternal.
The new covenant, and the new priesthood are superior to the old. The old was just a shadow of the new. the old worship was just the shadow of the heavenly worship.
We all have the Holy Spirit communing with our spirits, teaching and encouraging us to worship in spirit and in truth. When the church gathers to worship, it is a part of the heavenly worship.
The old covenant was the prototype, but the new covenant kingdom is the real deal.
Prayer
Thank you, Lord, that we have this privilege of worship. Please help me to worship you in all that I do. Amen.
The red heifer story is back in the news. “The delivery of five red heifers to Israel has sparked a worldwide debate about its significance in biblical prophecy, particularly among Christians who believe a third temple will be built during the End Times,”[1] of which the New Testament says nothing. You will search the New Testament with a fine-tooth comb, and you won’t find any mention of another temple being built or the necessity for animal sacrifices to be performed.
The red heifer claim isn’t new. Here’s a story from 2018:
Last week in Jerusalem a baby cow was born. Watch the adorable infant scamper around her mother in a short video released on YouTube by the Temple of Israel, below. Why is this worth your attention? Because—according to some Jewish and Christian scholars—this tiny red calf may be ushering in the end of the world.
The reddish-coloured female calf was reportedly born in Israel on August 28 [2018] and is being raised in accordance with the Jewish laws of the Torah, according to the Temple Institute. (CBN)
This is more about Jewish mythology than biblical theology. Even CBN News, a network that is heavily invested in end-time speculation, ended its article on the topic with this comment: “Meanwhile, there’s a verse about that heifer and purification in the New Testament of the Bible, and it’s all about salvation.” The author then quotes Hebrews 9:13-14. The sacrifice of the red heifer is about Jesus, and Jesus is the endpoint of its fulfilment. Christian interest in the red heifer sacrifice is an affront to the finished redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
The Bible mentions the details of the red heifer in Numbers 19. An “unblemished” red heifer, that is, a cow of a reddish colour, with “no defect” that had never worn a yoke was to be taken outside the camp and sacrificed. Water was added to the ashes and applied to anyone who had contact with a dead body. This sacrifice required a cow, a female, to point out the life-giving element in the sacrifice.
The red heifer sacrifice is like one of the oldest food laws in the Bible, the command against boiling “a kid in its mother’s milk” (Ex. 23:19; 34:26; Deut. 14:21). A kid could be boiled in the milk of another mother but not in its own mother’s milk. This is not a health regulation or a food regulation whereby meat and dairy can’t be mixed. It has deep theological significance. James B. Jordan writes in his book The Law and the Covenant:
How awful if the mother uses her own milk to destroy her own seed!… Jerusalem is the mother of the seed (Ps. 87:5; Gal. 4:26ff.). When Jerusalem crucified Jesus Christ, her Seed, she was boiling her kid in her own milk. In Revelation 17, the apostate Jerusalem has been devouring her faithful children: “And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus.” Her punishment, under the Law of Equivalence, is to be devoured by the gentile kings who supported her (v. 17).[2]
These laws point to Jesus and His redemptive work and the end of the Old Covenant that was in full display when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans in AD 70 and the temple system destroyed.
Don Preston makes an interesting observation of some of the other elements related to the red heifer sacrifice and how they point directly to Jesus and not to some end-time temple:
Jesus’ passion prayer occurred in Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 26:30) [where the red heifer sacrifice took place]. The entire heifer was to be consumed. Jesus gave himself completely in sacrifice. The ashes of the heifer were to be collected by one that was clean and stored in a clean place. Joseph of Arimathea, a devout man, collected Jesus’ body and placed it in a new tomb, one that had never been defiled (John 19:41). The heifer’s ashes were to be stored outside the city; Jesus’ body was laid in the tomb outside the city.
There are other elements involved in the sacrifice, but nothing is said about how the red heifer is a prophecy about the return of the Messiah. The sacrifice of the red heifer, like all the animal sacrifices, point to Jesus as their fulfilment. It’s not a prophecy; it’s a “type of Christ” with Jesus as the “antitype,” the fulfilment. As Jesus said, “It is finished.”
Here’s the most important part of how the sacrifice of the red heifer points to Jesus: It is the only sacrifice that took place “outside the camp” (Num. 19:3, 9). Like the red heifer, Jesus was slain “outside the gate” (Heb. 13:12), that is, “outside the camp” (13:13).
They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha (John 19:17).
James Jordan comments:
The heifer took upon itself the future uncleannesses caused by corpse contamination. Thus the heifer and its ashes became powerfully unclean, and are fountains of uncleanness. Yet, the sacrifice did not become effective until it was sprinkled upon an unclean person. Just so, Jesus was “made sin” for us, yet His sacrifice does not become effective until we are sprinkled with it (by faith, and symbolically by baptism). The only difference is that Jesus completed the task, and thus ceased to be unclean, while the heifer’s task was never done, and so the ashes remained unclean. (Studies in Food and Faith)
Consider how the book of Hebrews relates all animal sacrifices, including that of the red heifer, to the finished work of Jesus as the Messiah:
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? For this reason, He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance (Heb. 9:13-15).
The Bible couldn’t be any clearer. Jesus is the fulfilment of the red heifer sacrifice. In fact, all the Old Covenant was in anticipation of Jesus as He Himself stated:
Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, [Jesus] explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27).
Now [Jesus] said to His disciples], “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44; cp. 21:22).
Notice that all sacrificial animals were to be “unblemished” and “without defect.” This requirement is not unique to the red heifer sacrifice:
Whatever has a defect, you shall not offer, for it will not be accepted for you. When a man offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord to fulfill a special vow or for a freewill offering, of the herd or of the flock, it must be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no defect in it (Lev. 22:20-21; also, Deut. 15:21; 17:1; Mal. 1:8, 14; Heb. 9:14; 1 Pet. 1:19).
Like so much of rabbinic oral tradition (Mark 7:1-13), several additional requirements have been added to the red heifer biblical inspection:
The heifer must be three years old and perfect in its redness. Even its hooves must be red.
The presence of even two hairs of any other colour will render it invalid.
In 1800 perhaps 1 percent of all Protestant Christians lived outside Europe and North America. By 1900 that number had risen to 10 percent, and this proved enough of a critical mass to support further expansion. Today, the figure stands around two-thirds of all Protestants. Philip Jenkins
But because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lives forever.
Observation
The priesthood of Jesus was established by an oath made by God. The descendants of Aaron became priests without any oath.
Under the old system, there were many priests. But Jesus lives forever and does not need to give up his status as Priest. He is able once and forever to save those who come to God through Him.
Jesus is holy and blameless, unstained by sin. under the old covenant, the priests had to offer sacrifices everyday for their own sins and the sins of the people. But Jesus never sinned so He does not need to make a sacrifice for His own sin. He is also the perfect sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world.
Application
Jesus lives forever and He continues to act as a kind of priest for all humanity.
He intercedes with the Father on our behalf. This is not to suggest that the Father needs persuading. No, the presence of Jesus in heaven is an eternal sign that Jesus has offered himself as the sacrifice that takes away every sin.
Jesus also represents the Father to us. His death is a sign of God’s perfect love. God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish. This is our God!
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you are my perfect High Priest. Thank you for your eternal intercession on my behalf. Amen.
The Catholic missions in China can be regarded as one of the great might-have-beens in world history. If China had been converted in the seventeenth century, the impact on the future history of Christianity would have been incalculable, as would the effects on the religious balance in Europe itself. Philip Jenkins
