| THE SECRET POWER OF THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB Perry Stone I AM REVEALED B. Childress June 10 2012 For the life of the flesh is in the blood. (Leviticus 17:11) THIS NIGHT WOULD GO down forever in history. As darkness settled across Egypt, the Hebrew people were roasting lamb, sprinkling blood on their doorposts, and preparing for a visitation from God. Tonight God would send the tenth plague, the death of all the firstborn cattle and firstborn sons of the Egyptians. Only the homes marked by the lamb’s blood would be passed over. God sent ten plagues against Egypt. These plagues were an attack against ten major gods of the Egyptians. For example, Ra was the Egyptian god of the sun, who was powerless when darkness covered the land (Exodus 10:22). Apis was a god shaped like a bull. However, Apis could not prevent the Almighty’s judgment on the cattle in Egypt (Exodus 9:6). When the Nile turned to blood (Exodus 7:20), the Egyptian crocodile god was helpless to intervene. Two chief gods of the Egyptians were named Amon and Khnum. The god Khnum had a human body and a ram’s head. He was lord of the first cataract and presided over the annual rise of the Nile, which emerged from two caverns in Elephantine. Egyptians believed that this idol controlled the water, half of which flowed north and half south. When the Nile turned to blood (Exodus 7:20) and the Almighty smote the river with frogs (Exodus 8:3), all the prayers to the stone idol Khnum were useless. EGYPTIANS HATED SHEPHERDS According to Joseph’s statements to his brothers, the Egyptians despised shepherds (See Genesis 46:34). When Jacob moved the Hebrews to Egypt, Joseph told his brothers not to say they were shepherds, for fear that the Egyptians would not allow the Hebrews to move from Canaan to Egypt.
occupation has been with livestock from our youth even till now, both we and also our fathers,” that you may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians. (Genesis 46:33-34, NKJV) and destroy the entire nation! The lamb’s blood on the door of the Israelites’ homes was contempt for these two idol gods. SATAN’S TWO STRONGEST FORCES Just as these two gods were the chief idols in Egypt, Satan had control of the power of sin and sickness. God used the blood of a little lamb to defeat Satan’s two strongest agents. This Passover was a future of what would come.
It was important for the Israelites to remain in the house as the destroying angel passed by:
you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. (Exodus 12:13, NKJV) And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. (Exodus 12:22, NKJV) faithful to Him to receive the full benefit of the new covenant. THE MYSTERY OF THE BLOOD How can a small lamb’s blood have such authority over death? How can the blood of one man, Jesus Christ, have such power over the enemy? What is so special about the blood? When God created man in His own image, He breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and Adam became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). The Hebrew word for life is plural, meaning lives. This is because the “life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11) and all the DNA for future generations is in the blood of the father. Many future “lives” are found in the bloodline of just one man. When God created blood for Adam’s body, He placed a life substance that Satan and the angels were not familiar with. Angels are spirits without physical bodies, and man is a spirit being with a physical body. The angels had never known of blood until the creation of Adam. There is also the unusual passage where Cain killed his brother Abel, and the “voice of [Abel’s] blood [cried out]…from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). The Hebrew word for blood in this passage is dam, which is plural. When Cain murdered Abel, he killed not only his brother but also every child and descendant who would in the future come out of Abel’s loins. Blood has a voice – an ability to speak to God. Speaking of Abel, the writer to the Hebrews said, “He being dead yet speaketh” (Hebrews 11:4). Without blood you would instantly die. All nourishment for your body comes through your blood, and most diseases can be traced through blood tests. This mysterious liquid was God’s gift to mankind. It was so important that when sin originated in the garden, it required blood to cover man’s sins.
When the tabernacle and the temple were constructed, continual sacrifices were offered. Some were sin offerings, others were transgression offerings, and others were offerings of thanksgiving. Only the priest could offer the animals, and only the priest could catch the blood in gold and silver vessels. The atoning blood was sprinkled on the sacred vessels and upon the altar (Leviticus 3:2), before the veil (Leviticus 4:6), and before the ark and the mercy seat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:15). Human and animal blood could not mix. If a priest accidentally cut himself, he would exit the temple through a special escape route to keep from mingling the blood. After Adam and Eve’s confession of sin, God slew two animals and covered the first couple with the fresh skins of the slain animals. From that moment certain animals were marked for sacrificial offerings. Each animal in some manner would serve as a picture of the ultimate sacrifice of Christ. The amount of blood was astonishing. The blood of three oxen could fill up a modern bathtub. Consider the following. In Egypt there were 600,000 Hebrew men. If there were 4 men in each house, there could be up to 150,000 lambs offered the night of Passover. In the days of Moses’ tabernacle, a lamb was offered in both the morning and the evening for forty years. This would total 28,800 lambs. In the time of Solomon’s temple, the fellowship offering consisted of 22,000 cattle; 120,000 sheep; and 120,000 goats. This would be 262,000 animals with over 290,000 gallons of blood on the altar. King Hezekiah sacrificed over 10,000 sheep, and each Passover in Jerusalem there were as high as 300,000 lambs a year, bring 310,000 gallons of blood a year on the altar of the Lord. After fifteen hundred years of endless and countless blood offerings, the final Lamb was offered in Jerusalem. Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. Since the blood type of a child comes from the father’s seed, Christ’s blood would not have been linked to His earthly father, Joseph, but it was directly connected to God Himself. The same original blood in the first Adam, breathed into Him by His creator, was also breathed into Mary’s womb, into the body of Christ. Christ’s blood was never tainted by Adam’s original sin. Christ was sinless and perfect. This is why it took His blood to redeem mankind. THE HILL OF A SKULL The concept of Christ being the Lamb was a fulfillment of the events of Passover. However, there is a lesser-known aspect of His redemptive plan. It concerns the location of Christ’s crucifixion. John’s Gospel says:
they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center. (John 19:17-18, NKJV)
The Mount of Olives is the most famous mountain in the Old Testament, but Golgotha is the most famous in the New Testament. The Gospel writers name the hill where Christ was led away to be crucified. At that time in Jerusalem, three languages were spoken: Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. For this reason, Pilate placed an inscription on the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews,” in all three languages. The site of the execution was on a hill called Calvary (in Latin) or Golgotha (in Hebrew). The Gospel writers reveal the name of the hill and also one strange fact: it was the hill of a skull. The statement “hill of a skull” has created much speculation about the meaning of that phrase. Whose skull? Why was this area called the place of a skull? Traditionally, there are three possible explanations. The first tradition dates back through Jewish history and is briefly mentioned by the early father Origen. Jewish legend teaches that prior to the Flood, righteous Noah took the skull of Adam (which would have been over seven hundred years old) and placed it in the ark. Legend states that after the Flood, Noah’s son Shem, who would later gain the title Melchizedek, the king and priest of Jerusalem (Genesis 14), buried the skull of Adam in Jerusalem. Thus Origen believed that the name Golgotha alluded to Adam’s skull being buried in the same location where the Lord was crucified. The second tradition is linked to the idea of an ancient stoning ground. Christ was crucified and buried outside of the city gate, since burial tombs were not to be located within the walls of the Holy City. It is believed that the ancient stoning ground was located north of the city, just outside the present Damascus Gate. The first martyr in Jerusalem was Stephen, a deacon in the early church (Acts 7). This godly man was stoned to death at a stoning ground outside the gate of the city. Some suggest that the hill of a skull would refer to the bones of the victims who were stoned. The two negatives of this theory are:
2. There were new tombs and a garden where Christ was crucified. A stoning ground would unlikely have a garden or be near the burial place of a member of the Sanhedrin, such as Joseph of Arimathea. Christ was placed in his tomb after His death. Arab bus station just outside the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. In the late 1800s, a British general named Gordon was visiting Jerusalem when he noticed a hill that appeared to have eye sockets, similar to a large skull. He suspected this was the hill of the Crucifixion. Archeological excavations unearthed evidence of an ancient tomb, as well as evidence of a garden located very close to the hill itself. Gordon noted where Scripture mentioned that the place where Christ was crucified had a garden and, in the garden, a new tomb. Scripture placed the tomb and the garden in the same vicinity of the hill of the skull. In Jerusalem, the traditional site of the Crucifixion is called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This location dates back to the time of Helena, Emperor Constantine’s mother who traveled throughout the Holy Land attempting to mark the actual holy sites connected to the ministry of Christ. There is a controversy over this location, because it may actually be located inside the walls of the old city, which would immediately eliminate it from the true location. Nobody could be crucified or buried within the walls of the city. To do so would defile the sanctity of Jerusalem. So why was the hill identified as the hill of a skull? Was it linked to the first man Adam? With Christ being the second man Adam, was it necessary that the blood of the cross drip from the old rugged cross into the ground where the bones of the first man was buried? This theory was propagated by an early father named Jerome, who suggested that, during the earthquake at the Crucifixion, the blood of Christ dripped from the cross into a crack in the ground and fell on Adam’ s skull. This sounds dramatic and very spiritual. However, it would take a huge amount of blood to drip deep into the ground and cover a skull that was buried there eighteen hundred years before the Crucifixion. THE POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION To understand the probable meaning of Golgotha, one must go back to the time of Noah when a strange race of giants once roamed the earth. When Moses reported the days of Noah, he indicated that there were giants on the earth in those days. Moses further revealed that these giants were the offspring of the sons of God coming in unto the daughters of men, who bore these mighty men of renown. According to numerous Jewish and early church sources, the giants were born when angels were sent down from God in the form of humans to teach men righteousness and reveal the mysteries of God. Some, however, became enamored with the virgin daughters of men, fell into lust, and had physical relations that birthed an oversized person, often nine to fifteen feet in height. According to Scriptures, there was once a race of beings called giants who roamed and even ruled parts of the earth. They existed prior to the Flood and were present in the time of David. This race of giants perverted the earth before the Flood. They caused fear in the Hebrews who desired to enter the Promised Land, and they controlled mountains in Hebron when Joshua and Caleb led Israel into their inheritance (Joshua 15). By the time of David, the last five giants in biblical record were living in Israel. They are listed in I Samuel 17:4; II Samuel 21:16-22; and I Chronicles 20:5. Their names are:
As a teenager, David slew Goliath and used the giant’s own sword to cut off his head:
slew him, and cut off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled. (I Samuel 17:51) happened to the head of the giant? The Bible reveals what David did after he defeated the high Philistine champion:
(I Samuel 17:54)
the head of the giant over eighteen miles to Jerusalem. Why did David travel so far with the head of his enemy? 2. At that time Jerusalem was controlled by a Canaanite tribe called the Jebusites. Years later when David became king, he captured the city of Jebus. Why did young David take the skull of Goliath to Jerusalem, when at the time Hebron was considered the capital of Israel? 3. David took the armor of Goliath and put it in his tent. Which tent was this? He lived in Bethlehem at the time and later built a tent on Mount Zion to worship God. We read where the sword of Goliath was in the tabernacle of Moses at Nob, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod: And the priest said, The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod: if thou wilt take that, take it: for there is no other save that here. And David said, There is none like that; give it me. (I Samuel 21:9) referring to, or was it a personal tent David was living in? Since the Jebusites controlled Jerusalem and were enemies of Israel, did David take the head immediately, or was the Bible indicating something David did at a later period, after he became king of Israel? We know that David was aware of the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Melchizedek. He had the Torah (first five books in the Bible) and was aware of Abraham’s prediction concerning Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, that, “In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen” (Genesis 22:14). David is identified as a prophet in the New Testament (Acts 2:29-30). Peter stated that David saw a preview of the resurrection (Acts 2:20-31); therefore, he gave various predictions related to this future event. Apparently, the Holy Spirit inspired David to take the skull of Goliath to Jerusalem, understanding that this giant represented the seed of the serpent (Genesis 3:15) and his defeat represented triumph over all of Israel’s enemies. The skull would have been buried in Jerusalem as a reminder that God was with David and had promised him a kingdom there in the future. The fact that David constructed a tent and set up continual worship is significant. The sword of Goliath was wrapped in a cloth in the tabernacle of Moses and placed near the ephod. The linen ephod is what the priest wore when ministering. Years later, after defeating Goliath, David led a procession of priests bearing the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem wearing the special ephod!
(II Samuel 6:14) The meaning of Golgotha being the hill of a skull could be linked to Adam, but more likely it is linked to Goliath. I believe it is possible that David took the head of the giant to Jerusalem and buried in a certain hill that would be recognized as skull hill. Centuries of history caused the original meaning and intent of this hill to be lost, but the clues are still hidden in the word Golgotha. We read in the Bible that Goliath was from Gath. He would have been identified as Goliath of Gath, just as Jesus was known as Jesus of Nazareth and Saul as Saul of Tarsus. A person was often identified with the area where he was from. Goliath from Gath could be abbreviated to read Gol-Gath-ha! Thus the word Golgotha alluded to a skull – a very famous skull that was buried at the base of a hill later named in Hebrew the hill of Golgotha! If this theory is correct, it adds another dynamic dimension to the purpose of Christ being crucified at the hill of a skull! Here is the picture. As Christ is hanging from the cross on the top of the hill of a skull, His blood is falling on the ground, perhaps in the very area when the skull of the ancient enemy of Israel is buried. Christ’s feet were over the head of the enemy. Just as God predicted, the seed of the woman will bruise his (the enemy’s) head (Genesis 3:15). The Hebrew word for bruise means “to overwhelm, to break, and to cover.” As Christ the Lamb was slain near Passover, it appeared that Satan had won. However, Christ broke the power of sin and death and sickness, and put His enemies under His feet! After Satan’s defeat by Christ, we can now proclaim as Paul did to the believers in Rome:
you. Amen. (Romans 16:20) Source: THE MEAL THAT HEALS, by Perry Stone, Copyright 2008, Charisma House. |
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