Ez. 40-41
I am willing to bet that for anything described with this much detail, there is significance in all those details! Sadly, I have no clue as to what any of it means. I have learned that there is significance in numbers in the Bible. It seems the Hebrew language was truly a language of God. As I understand it, each Hebrew letter represents both a letter and a number as well as having a symbolic meaning. So both words and numbers in the Bible can have meaning beyond just what we read. I have mentioned the book series “The A.D. Chronicles”, by Brock and Bodie Thoene, before. They weave a lot of this deeper meaning into their stories and it is fascinating. Yet one more proof that all of this is indeed from God!
2 Pet. 3
Now there’s something I have never noticed or thought about before! Peter mentions that God formed the earth out of water and through water by His word. He then destroyed the earth with water. He then says, “But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (2 Pet 3:7). First there was water, then there will be fire.
Let me take that thought back to Luke 3:16, where John the Baptist told the people that he baptized with water, but One was coming who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire. Right – water and fire. Thinking about it further, there is likely quite a bit of significance with fire and water threaded throughout the Bible. For instance, Elijah and the false prophets of Baal on the mountaintop, when God consumed Elijah’s offering in spite of the fact that he completely doused and surrounded it with water. God’s fire overcame the water.
So to me, it seems that water somehow represents the Old Covenant that relied on us to obey God’s law. And the fire represents the New Covenant, which is built on Jesus as the Cornerstone – a firm foundation that will not fail or fall and will not be consumed by the fire of God’s judgment. All of this shows our path to salvation; to redemption with God. We are born first with water and must be born again with fire, just like God’s earth, because there will come a day when the fire of God’s judgment will either consume us or refine us for eternity.