The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright 2021 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 91

Old Ark or New Ark?
Old Temple or New Temple?

The Ten Commandment tablets, Aaron’s rod that budded, and a golden pot of manna —

Why were those things in the Ark of the Covenant?

Why not Moses’ sandals that he took off on holy ground? Or a branch of the bush that wouldn’t burn up? That was kinda different.

The Ten Commandments, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the manna were in the Ark because they pictured what would be in the new Ark of the new covenant.

This new Ark is not a chest of wood but a living being. This living being, the King of the Jews, the Word of God, the Messiah, and the new Ark of a new covenant, contains those things which were in the old Ark.

The Commandments, the rod and the manna.

How clever to design the old Ark that way!

Let’s look at how those three things in the old Ark are in the new Ark.

1. The manna —

Heb 9
1) Now indeed even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service, and an earthly sanctuary.
2) For a tabernacle was prepared. In the first part were the lampstand, the table, and the show bread; which is called the Holy Place.
3) After the second veil [curtain] was the tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies,
4) having a golden altar of incense, and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which was a golden pot holding the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant;
5) and above it cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat, of which things we can’t speak now in detail.

A golden pot held the manna, which was the bread that kept Israel alive on their journey to the Promised Land.

John 6
31) Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. As it is written, ‘He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.’”
32) Yeshua therefore said to them, “Most certainly, I tell you, it wasn’t Moses who gave you the bread out of heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread out of heaven.
33) For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.”
34) They said therefore to him, “Lord, always give us this bread.”
35) Yeshua said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not be hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

47) Most certainly, I tell you, he who believes in me has eternal life.
48) I am the bread of life.
49) Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
50) This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, that anyone may eat of it and not die.
51) I am the living bread which came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. Yes, the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Did you catch what Yeshua is trying to get across there?

He is the bread of life!

This man is the manna. This food came down from heaven and gives life to those who believe in Him.

2. The rod that budded —

Aaron’s rod budded to show Yahweh’s choice as His priest.

Num 16
1) Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men:
2) and they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred fifty princes of the congregation, called to the assembly, men of renown;
3) and they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said to them, “You take too much on yourself, since all the congregation are holy, everyone of them, and Yahweh is among them: why then lift yourselves up above the assembly of Yahweh?”
4) When Moses heard it, he fell on his face:
5) and he spoke to Korah and to all his company, saying, “In the morning Yahweh will show who are his, and who is holy, and will cause him to come near to him: even him whom he shall choose he will cause to come near to him.
6) Do this: take censers, Korah, and all his company;
7) and put fire in them, and put incense on them before Yahweh tomorrow: and it shall be that the man whom Yahweh chooses, he shall be holy. You have gone too far, you sons of Levi!”
8) Moses said to Korah, “Hear now, you sons of Levi!
9) Is it a small thing to you, that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of Yahweh, and to stand before the congregation to minister to them;
10) and that he has brought you near, and all your brothers the sons of Levi with you? and do you seek the priesthood also?

Yes, they did seek the priesthood also.

The question was –

Whom had Yahweh chosen to be His holy priest?

Korah and his clan thought anybody could be priests, that they themselves could make themselves holy. And I suspect that Korah would humbly have suggested himself as the high priest, don’t you?

Two-hundred-fifty of the Korah clique offered incense. Aaron the high priest offered his incense. Aaron’s was accepted, theirs was rejected, and they who tried to make themselves holy were instantly buried in a hole in the ground.

But –

Then the people complained about what God had just done!

Did they not see what had just happened to those 250 men who complained?

So God performed another miracle to again show the people whom He had picked for His priest.

Num 17
1) Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,
2) “Speak to the children of Israel, and take of them rods, one for each fathers’ house, of all their princes according to their fathers’ houses, twelve rods: write every man’s name on his rod.
3) You shall write Aaron’s name on the rod of Levi; for there shall be one rod for each head of their fathers’ houses.
4) You shall lay them up in the Tent of Meeting before the testimony, where I meet with you.

So the rods were laid out before the Ark.

Num 17
5) It shall happen, that the rod of the man whom I shall choose shall bud: and I will make to cease from me the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against you.”
6) Moses spoke to the children of Israel; and all their princes gave him rods, for each prince one, according to their fathers’ houses, even twelve rods: and the rod of Aaron was among their rods.
7) Moses laid up the rods before Yahweh in the tent of the testimony.
8) It happened on the next day, that Moses went into the tent of the testimony; and behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and put forth buds, and produced blossoms, and bore ripe almonds.
9) Moses brought out all the rods from before Yahweh to all the children of Israel: and they looked, and took every man his rod.
10) Yahweh said to Moses, “Put back the rod of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept for a token against the children of rebellion; that you may make an end of their murmurings against me, that they not die.”

Aaron was the priest Yahweh chose to intercede with Yahweh for Israel. His rod grew almonds.

Aaron was not a perfect high priest, though.

Heb 5
1) For every high priest, being taken from among men, is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
2) The high priest can deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, because he himself is also surrounded with weakness.
3) Because of this, he must offer sacrifices for sins for the people, as well as for himself.

As for Aaron’s sins, remember that little deal with the golden calf?

Hebrews goes on —

Heb 5
4) Nobody takes this honor on himself, but he is called by God, just like Aaron was.
5) So also Christ didn’t glorify himself to be made a high priest, but it was he who said to him, “You are my Son. Today I have become your father.”
6) As he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”
7) He, in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and petitions with strong crying and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and having been heard for his godly fear,
8) though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered.
9) Having been made perfect, he became to all of those who obey him the author of eternal salvation,
10) named by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Yeshua was picked by the Father as priest to intercede between the people and the Father, just as Aaron was. Yeshua learned obedience by the things which He suffered, and was “made perfect.” He didn’t need to offer a sin offering for Himself, since He didn’t sin, and He could therefore be a blameless sin offering for us.

With Yeshua as king and high priest, there would be no gradual decline, as there was with the Ark, the Temple, King Saul, the Kingdom of Judah – and the high priests. The earthly high priests went from Aaron, the first, to Caiaphas, one of the last. Aaron was certainly imperfect, but Caiaphas was the one who said, “It is better if one person dies for the people,” John 18:14, CEV.

Aaron’s rod was in the Ark to show Yahweh’s pick as high priest. Yeshua, however, bears far more fruit than Aaron’s almonds. His fruit is the flock of Christianos who, with Christ’s spirit, overcome themselves.

John 15
1) “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer.

5) I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

3. The Ten Commandments –

The Ten Commandment inscribed stones were in the Ark of the old covenant. As Hebrews 9:4 said, they are the “tablets of the covenant.” That is what Israel agreed to obey.

Are the Ten Commandments in the new Ark?

Ps 40
6) Sacrifice and offering you didn’t desire. You have opened my ears. You have not required burnt offering and sin offering.
7) Then I said, “Behold, I have come. It is written about me in the book in the scroll.
8) I delight to do your will, my God. Yes, your law is within my heart.”

Hebrews quotes this as referring to the Messiah.

Heb 10
8) Previously saying, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you didn’t desire, neither had pleasure in them” (those which are offered according to the law),
9) then he has said, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He takes away the first, that he may establish the second,
10) by which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Yeshua Christ once for all.

“I have come to do your will,” Yeshua said. What is God’s will? God’s will is to obey the Ten Commandments.

Where are the Ten Commandments?

In the heart of the new Ark – “your law is within my heart.”

So the new Ark, in the person of the perfect Messiah, contains manna, the rod that budded, and the Ten Commandments. This new Ark is in the center of the new Tabernacle or Temple. This Tabernacle/Temple is built by God, not by guys.

Heb 8
1) Now in the things which we are saying, the main point is this. We have such a high priest, who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,
2) a servant of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.

The original tabernacle or tent was built by people, built according to God’s plan, but still with men’s hands. The true Tabernacle or Temple is built by God, displacing and replacing the man-made sanctuaries.

As Paul told the learned, ignorant Athenians —

Acts 17
24) The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands,
25) neither is he served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things.

With the new Ark and the new Temple, there is a new covenant.

Heb 8
6) But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry, by so much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which on better promises has been given as law.
7) For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.
8) For finding fault with them, he said, “Behold, the days come,” says the Lord, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah;
9) not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they didn’t continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them,” says the Lord.
10) “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days,” says the Lord; “I will put my laws into their mind, I will also write them on their heart. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
11) They will not teach every man his fellow citizen, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from their least to their greatest.
12) For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more.”

The old Ark had the Ten Commandments, the tables of the covenant. Israel agreed to keep those Commandments, but they had no heart to keep them. What’s more, they had no way out of the death penalty when they broke them. The Ark had a mercy seat, but Israel had no way to claim that mercy.

But that was the deal they agreed to. That was the old covenant.

The new covenant, the new agreement, still contains those Commandments. All 10 are the same as written by Yahweh’s very tough finger. But now there is a way out of the death penalty for breaking a Commandment – “I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more” – through the intervening service of the new High Priest. The top of the Ark is the mercy seat, and repentant Christianos can claim that mercy.

That’s what the mercy seat is for –

Mercy!

Plus – and this is a BIG plus – those same Ten Commandments are put right into the minds and hearts of the flock, as they are in the heart of the flock’s high priest.

What a great deal!

A way to have Commandment breaking forgiven and a way to have Commandment breaking overcome!

Heb 8
13) In that he says, “A new covenant,” he has made the first old. But that which is becoming old and grows aged is near to vanishing away.

That was written a short time, historically speaking, before the physical Temple did vanish away. The physical Ark had already vanished more than six centuries earlier. The Temple and the Ark had become old and aged, their time had passed, they were superseded. The temporal yielded to the spiritual.

Matt 12
5) Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath day the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?
6) But I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.

What a shocking statement that must have been to those Jewish ears!

When Yeshua said that one greater than the Temple is here, the second Temple was still standing, still functioning, and still had a bit more than 40 years left in its existence. After all, that five hundred year old building, refurbished by Herod the Ingrate, was just a building. What set it apart from all other buildings on earth was not the paneling but the presence of God in its heart.

And God was moving on to the hearts of the new Temple.

Matt 21
12) Yeshua entered into the temple of God and drove out all of those who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the money changers’ tables and the seats of those who sold the doves.
13) He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers!”
14) The lame and the blind came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

This contrasts the two Temples. The physical Temple had become a Jewish business, a “den of robbers.” The lame and the blind went to Yeshua in the physical Temple, not realizing they were also going to the Ark of the Covenant in the new Temple – that is, Yeshua the Messiah and His flock.

Eph 2
19) So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God,
20) being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Yeshua himself being the chief cornerstone;
21) in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord;
22) in whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.

“…a habitation of God in the Spirit.”

Just as He came down and dwelt in Solomon’s Temple, so God dwells in this new Temple.

2 Cor 6
16) What agreement has a temple of God with idols? For you are a temple of the living God. Even as God said, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Obviously those corrupt high priests appointed by the Romans every few years don’t serve in this new Temple. This new Temple has a new high priest, the opposite of Annas and Caiaphas, who oversaw Yeshua’s trial and execution.

Heb 5
8) though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered.
9) Having been made perfect, he became to all of those who obey him the author of eternal salvation,
10) named by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Heb 8
1) Now in the things which we are saying, the main point is this: we have such a high priest, who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,
2) a servant of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man.

Hebrews tells the flock to give their gifts to this new Temple.

Heb 7
8) Here people who die receive tithes, but there one receives tithes of whom it is testified that he lives.
9) We can say that through Abraham even Levi, who receives tithes, has paid tithes,
10) for he was yet in the body of his father when Melchizedek met him.
11) Now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people have received the law), what further need was there for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, and not be called after the order of Aaron?
12) For the priesthood being changed, there is of necessity a change made also in the law.

The change, naturally, was that the tithes did not go to the physical Temple, but to the spiritual.

1 Cor 9       
11) If we sowed to you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we reap your fleshly things?
12 )If others partake of this right over you, don’t we yet more?  Nevertheless we didn’t use this right, but we bear all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the Good News of Christ.
13 ) Don’t you know that those who serve around sacred things eat from the things of the temple, and those who wait on the altar have their portion with the altar?
14 ) Even so the Lord ordained that those who proclaim the Good News should live from the Good News.

We have a new Ark, a new Temple and a new high priest. The old priesthood is no more, the Temple that the priests served in is long gone, and the Ark they visited once a year on Atonement has long been missing.

The spiritual reality has replaced the physical illusion.

This physical life that we lead is just a temporary apparition, destined to inevitably disappear in the tick-tock of time. The reality is the spiritual life that is to come, where there is no pain or death. When Christ’s redeemed are resurrected in the spirit, why would we want our old physical bodies?

Young people are good looking, handsome or pretty. A half-century ago I reveled in my Absalomic hair, wavy and full on my head. Now I no longer have hair. I still have my head, but it’s heavily marked with wrinkles, scars and skin cancers. Someday soon, as I press toward the mark of the high calling in Christ, my temporary tent will rot away. (it already has a number of rips.) At the second coming of the King, I will be made a spirit being, unaffected by disease or cancers or death.

At that point, why would I want to go back to the way I am now? Spirit don’t wrinkle.

I won’t want to go back! Why will I need a decaying physical body when I’m a spirit being?

In the same way, followers of Yeshua have a new Temple, with a new Ark of the Covenant, holding the Ten Commandments, the rod that budded, and the bread from heaven. We no longer need the physical apparitions of the temple and the Ark of the Covenant when we have the spiritual reality.

So now the question is –

Since we have a new Ark, will the old Ark of the Covenant be rediscovered?

Maybe, maybe not.

Since we have a new Temple, will another Temple be built?

Looks like it.

So what’s going on here? We have a new Temple with a new Ark, yet another physical Temple is being prepared for construction, and the old acacia wood Ark is being spied out.

What can this mean?