Due to a recent occurrence, which led the voice inside my head to tell me, “This is taking too much manna. Write about the manna.” I am writing this. In Exodus 16:4-5 we read (NIV): “Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”’
Keep in mind that manna only fell where the Israelites were, and Jesus only became manna where the Jews of Judea and Galilee were, so manna in these days of everybody living in mixed neighborhoods and everybody being a hodgepodge of religious mythology means manna is restricted to only being available to those who God chooses. [God’s chosen people.] You can’t buy manna at the grocery store or pick it up at the drug store.
Manna from heaven now falls selectively and individually, not en masse. The call from God, through His Son, is to be likewise filled with the manna of the Christ, so one becomes a new jar that is Jesus reborn. Collectively, those are called Apostles [also Saints] and those are few and far between these days. Second, Exodus says the Israelites asked, “What is it?” which is the Hebrew meaning of the word we English speaking people know as “manna” [“man hu “]. That was not a statement that expressed a lack of visual ability to see something unknown, but a question relative to their Spiritual hunger needs. The Hebrew that immediately follows says, “for they did not know “man hu.”
That says manna was food for thought, not food for bellies. That food was relative to ‘medicine for priests of Yahweh’ and very similar these days to writings like this you are reading. Take a dose of this everyday and maybe, after forty years?, you will become a priest of Yahweh. In the wilderness with Moses, the Israelites recited his orders from God from rote memory [before they had paper and pens], but then (just like all times since) the Word brings up the question, “What is it?” as a question about what the words mean.
After Moses died and after the manna stopped falling from heaven [and paper and pens were obtained], the Spiritual answers to those questions were only found in true Prophets of the Lord. The judges, and people like Samuel and Elijah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, they became the manna from heaven for the Israelites. Jesus would become the manna from heaven for the lost children of Israel. Jesus offered the same Spiritual answers, but on a more direct – teacher-to-student – manner, where those offered that Spiritual food were those who voluntarily sought to be fed manna. The Jews of Jerusalem and elsewhere gave Jesus the same reaction: “We did not know ‘man hu.”‘ Third, there are several places in Exodus that tell how many animals [livestock] the Israelites took with them from Egypt. When they bellyached about not having water, they said to Moses, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” (Exodus 17:3b) In a forty-year school of learning, at the Moses Camp for Israelites in the desert, they could have practiced sacrificial burning of livestock on altars [a good priestly duty back then] and as a result had plenty of belly food to keep them alive. The water kept them alive so they could make milk and cheese and chicken stew, et al. However, the Israelites were not in the wilderness like they were on some episode of Survivor. They were being trained to be God’s priests. Therefore, in addition to belly food, they needed mental food that fed their spirits (souls). That is what manna from heaven is, with “mental” health [knowledge of God] going well beyond book learning.
In today’s world where it is fashionable to grab as much as you can when something is freely offered, it is important to realize that is what Gentiles do. By “Gentiles,” I means those who are run of the mill worldly sinners, who know what the laws are, but they break them none the less, as the only thing their pea brains understand is “Me! Me! Me!” The Israelites had been no different when they lived in Egypt, thus they had a lot of stuff that they took with them when they followed Moses out of town. It would take forty years of ‘expanding their minds’ as to what God expected out of them, before they were prepared to enter the Promised Land of Canaan.
Of course, after they got that reward of land, it was Katy bar the door, as far as forgetting everything they had been taught and reverting to “Me! Me! Me!” until their lack of faith had the Gentiles on the verge of killing all the Israelites. That is a lesson that never goes out of style: Without God’s help IN YOU you will always revert to being a selfish little brat that could not care less for the wants and needs of others.
Guess what? [Read that as a “man hu” question.] God knew that human flaw was in His chosen people, so He laid down the “one day at a time” law [ with the only exception being “two at a time on Fridays”]. As soon as Moses passed that restriction on, the fools were doing the “Me! Me! Me!” again and ending up with maggots crawling around their huts and the tent stinking to high heaven.
When Jesus walked the face of the earth, his disciples asked him to teach them to pray. For all those Christians today, those who consider themselves disciples of Jesus, who put a lot of belief in the power of prayer, I wonder how much of that prayer today is not saying, “Me! Me! Me!”, as in “Give me what I want, even if what I want is for someone I love to stay healthy and with me!” I bet few Christians today recall [even though they say the words many times a week, perhaps] how Jesus told his disciples, “Pray to the Father, ‘Give me this day my daily bread.'”
Don’t let the plural pronouns “our” and “us” fool anyone. Jesus told the collective collective pronouns, but they meant “You pray singularly to God, so when I say, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’, I mean each of you says to the Father, “Give me today my daily bread.'” That was an instruction from the Father through the Son that says, “If you want to call Me your Father, then you best be reborn as My Son. The only way to even begin to get there is to pray daily to Me, saying, “Please Sir, give me my Scriptural lesson.'”
Now, there might be lots of well-intending Christians who understand that, clear as day. Look around the Internet, using the search term “Our Daily Bread” and see for yourself how many blogs and websites come up. There are lots of “Christians” offering “manna from heaven,” from having been given a daily helping (an omer) from God. This then leads to that preponderance as being explanatory and interpretative, because “manna” means asking God, “What is this?” in reference to something in Scripture. An “omer” is then the measure of understanding one is given by God. That probably is not all that can be understood, but it is enough for one day.
That then leads to the realization that snarfing up as much Scriptural meaning as one can, when one is taking more than one can conceivably grasp mentally, within one’s soul-brain connection, grasping is only necessary for priests of God. That action of taking more than needed in one day stinks of profiteering, rather than seeking to know the truth. Is smells like the point is not to gain Spiritual insight, but to sell it to someone else, making monetary gains from nothing more than snarfing actions. Daily bread (manna from heaven) is only intended for those who are being trained as priests of Yahweh, who will then pass on understanding to others seeking to become priests of God (children and maybe livestock).
So, one taking the “Me! Me! Me!” approach to writings about the meaning of Scripture makes, when the next sunrise comes around, one be identified by God as being “full of maggots and [beginning] to smell.”
Keep in mind that maggots and bad body odor come when one is dead; and being born mortal means being born to death. So, trying to misuse the meaning of Scripture is bad for one’s bodily health and a soul seeking to escape the failure of repeat and repeat again [reincarnation] can forget about it!
Once a day means what it says. It means not as much as can be freely grabbed and not only once a week … for a couple of hours … if the mind does not wander during that time. Daily bread from heaven helps save the soul and keep the flesh from stinking the place up.
If you think you might have come down with this terminal illness [selfish human-itis] and would like someone to pray for you, just comment below. Also, let me say that liking this post first will go a long way towards the sincerity of my prayers for you.
R. T. Tippett
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