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Tag: bethel

  • A Temporary Throne – 40

    A Temporary Throne – 40

    CHAPTER 40

    Genesis 35:1 God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”

    The LORD then showed me a heap of stones that reminded me of the stone fireplace my grandfather had built with my father and uncle when they were boy scouts; however these stones were as tall as a man standing on the ground beside it.

    As I looked closer it looked like a small pyramid, but the loose pile of stones was not held together by anything other than the careful placement of each uncut stone by its shape.

    Inside the small stone pyramid was a place where a man could stand completely within the confines of the rising sides. In the center, next to a walk of smaller stones within the stone walls, smoke rose from a fire build lower in the center, fed by the wood placed near the man inside the wall, but away from the pit of fire (much like we had done at my grandfather’s fireplace).

    “What is this?” I asked the LORD.

    IT IS AN ALTAR.

    This altar of uncut stones had no resemblance to the pristine polished marble of our whitewashed sanctuaries glowing through the artificial light of crystal churches and cathedrals. It was rather an altar of sacrifice – a place of the blood of animals and the ashes of burnt offering.

    As I looked upon the man preparing the place with high reverence and low humility of his task before him, I pondered to consider the Blood of the Cross and without it, the grave of our hopelessness.

    To be continued…

    A Temporary Throne is an original work of Roger Harned,

    © Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved by the author.

  • A Temporary Throne – 39

    A Temporary Throne – 39

    The LORD lifted me slowly above the hills of Gilead. I say ‘slowly,’ by comparison to my instantaneous placement from the clouds of glory to the Throne and transport to places near and far. Yet beneath us I observed the place in a way not visible in the print of Genesis.

    As the families of Esau and Jacob parted, with Jacob and his escort traveling slowly west toward the Jordan, Mahanain and caravans of fading specks of dust diminished into pixels of a topical view of the Jordan River, flowing north and south. Then as in now-familiar scenes of man rocketing above the earth, the great Mediterranean Sea quickly appeared beneath us through the clear blue to the west. I looked to the north briefly and caught view of an inland Sea of Galilee, then turned my gaze to a southern view of a larger Dead Sea.

    Bethel rose as a place high in the high mountain range between the Mediterranean and the eastern foothills of Gilead, west of the valley of Jordan from where I was taken up. Edom, home of Esau was now visible to the south and west of the Dead Sea as I could now look also with amazement on the curve of a calm Mediterranean against the contrast of a desert shore to the south and to my west. I noted two fingers of water to the south pointing one toward Goshen and the other toward the Dead Sea. I recalled that it must be the Red Sea.

    Though we were high above the earth, I was more in awe of the scene below while in the presence of the LORD, than fearful of how the LORD held me in this atmosphere of His creation above a time and place of which I had only read.

    Time also passed, days quicker than the seconds of which I was aware. Then the LORD said to me:

    WE WILL RETURN TO WHERE ISRAEL FIRST FLED FROM HIS BROTHER.

    We were now suddenly near the range of mountains once more.

    To be continued…

    A Temporary Throne is an original work of Roger Harned,

    © Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved by the author.