Psalm 102: 7-8

Three Wondrous Birds in the Bible

Lamed    ל   a shepherd's staff;

Koph       ק   the sun on horizon;

Aleph       א   an ox;

Taw         ת   two woods lying crosswise.

A Child of the Reed

Isaiah 42

לקאת - The Interpretation of the Bittern

1. ל The shepherd, our bridegroom, makes the yoke gentle on us from the engagement time; from afar he teaches us from heaven.

2. ק Because his sun is on the horizon; the crimson sunset that fascinates the observer points to the last rays before the night of the Great Tribulation.

Today, HaJom - היום - is drawing to a close. Lord stay with us, the two separate ones who have migrated to Emmaus, the brothers, will proclaim and finally return to Jerusalem with the others.  

3. א Jesus says: I am the Alpha, first letter of the Greek alphabet; the letter points to the beginning of the Church, that was at Pentecost 2000 years ago; the letter points to the laying of the foundation stone of the temple.

4. ת Jesus also says: "I am the Omega, last letter of the Greek alphabet; the letter indicates the completion of the heavenly Jerusalem; it is also God's temple; the letter points to the headstone of the temple. (Hebrew הראשה it means the Head (of a body)); Zechariah 4:7

With the taw Jesus sets the headstone. The third temple is finally completed (see also: Structure of the Bible)

A sparrow or another bird?

The mysterious sparrow

Do you really think the lone bird is a sparrow? We examined it as best we could. We found no clear explanation for the Hebrew word, especially since the Hebrew Zippor is only translated as "small bird" in the relevant dictionaries. The way it moves when on the ground is described as "jumping" in the root word. It could therefore be a sparrow, but we consider it is completely impossible that this jumping little bird should be a pigeon because pigeons do not jump.

The Hebrew related to the Arabic and so we asked for it at Prof. Google. His translator told us that the German word Sperling and also the English word sparrow, correspond to the Arabic atzpheron - عصفور -. We now compared the consonants of Hebrew with the consonants of Arabic. (Both languages are reading from right to left.)

Arabic   : tz - ph - r - n

Hebrew : tz - ph - r

Watchman, how far is it in the night? Watchman, how far is the night? Isaiah 21:10

The watchman says, "The morning is coming, and so is the night. Isaiah 21,11

 

The chapter speaks about the Messiah, who compares himself to a pregnant woman who is about to give birth at dusk, whom he loves so much. When the watchman asked in verse 10: "What of the night, how far is the night," then this night is the night after the Rapture. When the watchman then says in verse 11: "The morning comes", then the morning speaks of the first three and a half years of the last seven years before the Messiah returns. If the watchman then adds in verse 11: "And also the night", then he wants to tell us that this night is the night of the great tribulation. These are the last three and a half years before the Messiah visibly returns.

In the first night, the one from verse 10, many Christians will experience with dismay because the Lord did not bring them to Him because their relationship with Him was a pure encounter relationship. They did not live with the Lord, but visited him once or twice a week in the church hall. That is tell by Lea. (see script: The Letter to the Hebrews).

The bittern has stopped singing his song. However, suddenly, into the darkness, another sound reaches the ear. The owl of the night. The tawny owl raises a lamentation song with his howling cries. What has happened? The day is missed and now it is time to stand together and drink the bitter cup together, says the barn owl, who now falls from his eyes like sheds. But the promise is that the day will dawn. Once again, the sun rises before the Messiah personally appears, once again the gospel will preached, to all nations for a testimony and then the end will come.

 

 

We come back to our bittern and why? Because we live in the time of the bittern. The heron hibernates in the breeding area only if the waters do not freeze over. May our hearts not cool down and freeze to ice and in this way the winter will come to us and the bittern will leave us, because we, who are the bittern, even if no one sees it, would be greatly dismayed. Even now, the events have plunged us into depression because we was been persecuted, shunted and silently excluded. It is getting cooler and thus stormier, because the temperatures have dropped rapidly in being together. Autumn has arrived. Everything looks more colorful but this blaze of color is deceptive. It is not talking the life of spring that they speak of, but the death of autumn.

 

 

In the next picture we simulated autumn by imitating a fog; we made the original photo transparent. If we can hardly recognize the bittern even when the weather is nice, as only when the first fog wafts over the waters. The fog as a metaphor for our diminishing ability to see clearly.

 

 

 

The veils in front of our eyes point to various diseases and one has finally got old and does not feel his ailments anymore. The only thing that helps is the eye ointment from the Messiah's medicine chest. It is not free; we have to pay for it. One is only prepared to do this if one recognizes his suffering and the pressure of suffering becomes so great that one takes professional help from the Lord.

Jesus says: Blind Pharisee! First, clean the inside of the cup and the bowl, so that the outside of them may also be clean. The cup is a metaphor for the body. The heart of the scholars is not pure. The bowl stands as a metaphor for judging, especially for judging and condemning one's neighbor, but also for judging the correct understanding of the Bible.

Can a blind person lead a blind person? Jesus once asked. No, all in Laodicea are blind, all, without exception. Because we live in the time of Laodicea, we all beaten with increasing blindness, especially the scholars and leaders among us. Now one or the other reader could ask himself or herself: Am I blind too? Let us hear what Jesus answers such a questioner: If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now you say: We see ... how the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, the exclusive brotherhoods, the Jewish scholars, even to remain silent about the sects, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Adventists and so on and so forth. We have to see a specialist as soon as possible and get therapy.

If the following text is too foggy for you, mark it.

Doesn't nature teach you?

 

The fog

 

In autumn the days become noticeably shorter and the nights longer and in the early morning hours we see how the fog wafts slowly cross our country. The fog is also used metaphorically in the Bible. God wrapped himself in a fog in the autumn of the Christian era. Why did he do that? Because our sin made a separation between him and us. The fog as a metaphor for separation, but also as a metaphor for sin. We can no longer recognize the Lord in His Word, either because an illness has indirectly impaired our vision or because we are directly suffering from an eye disease.

 

Let us take a closer look at some causes. When someone sees the environment in the nebula with his eyes, he takes everything veiled and blurred. Normally, there is no eye disease in itself, but another cause restricts his eyesight. If the symptoms ignored, it can still lead to complete blindness.

 

One of the causes could be toxins that blur our eyes. What poisons do we need to think about? These are, for example, consciously manipulated Bible translations. How can we recognize these poisons? By using the Hebrew and Greek texts and equipping ourselves with good encyclopedias. Another poison dims our eyes and that is the doctrine of dispensationalism, because it contains a deceitfully hidden anti-Semitism. Another poison clouds the view for the brothers and sisters, that is the poison of refusal. Brothers and sisters who are strangers is not allowed to take part in the Lord's Supper.

 

A special poison is the sacrifice of the Mass of the Catholic Church. Their bread (figuratively "Leaven"), in itself unacceptable to the Lord, is causally responsible for the most dangerous disease and its devastating consequences; it is spiritual diabetes mellitus. How does the disease develop? Quite simply: too many carbohydrates are eaten, i.e. the daily intake of sugar is too high. Those who consume too much glucose in the long term overtax their pancreas, which is responsible for both the production and supply of insulin. Such overload leads to an elevated blood sugar level and a permanently elevated blood sugar level damages the cell walls of the blood vessels. This has serious consequences for the smallest capillary vessels of the eye because they can no longer supply the retina sufficiently. In the worst case, the retina detaches and the affected person goes blind. In a metaphorical sense, it indicates that the daily multiple sacrifice of the priest is too much and thus leads to over-saturation. A little sweetness is sweet for the palate, too much of it causes disgust. Just try it out with honey yourself.

 

Paracelsus (1493 - 1541) once said: "All things are poison and nothing is without poison. Only the dose makes that a thing is not a poison."

 

We are not, like Paracelsus, of the opinion that all things are poison, but what we agree with him is that it depends on the quantity to act as a poison. There are many other poisons, each in itself causing a consumer to wear a veil sooner or later. None of us can say that he does not wear a veil, but if we say it, we make God a liar, because Jesus says to the end-time church: I advise you to buy eye ointment and anoint your eyes so that you may see? The man who ignores the medical advice of the Lord, will be struck by God, after the rapture.

P.S.: Apropos eye ointment: It is oil, it is used as an image for the Holy Spirit and as an image for the burning liquid of an oil lamp.  Oil for the eye? Yes! Let us hear what Jesus says: The lamp of the body is the eye, i.e. we need oil to be able to see clearly again. Let us read the next part of the verse: if now your eye is simple - What does simple mean here? It means that the listener should be filled only with one spirit, only with the Spirit of God and not with a strange, e.g. charismatic spirit. Now we read the last part of the verse: in this way your whole body will be light. If the whole body is light, must it be of glass or not? And this is exactly what the author of these lines experienced personally.

Do we recognize the Bittern in the New Testament?

We should talk a third time about the bittern. We know that this bird species can hardly be spotted in the reeds. But do we all know that the bird is mentioned in the New Testament? It is not mentioned by name and yet the passage to which we are about to speak talks of the same thing, of not being able to recognize or, in other words, of "blurred vision".

 

It is the mirror from 1 Corinthians 13 of which Paul says that we recognize indistinctly when we look into it. The mirror must briefly explained for this purpose and James, the half-brother of the Lord, does this for us. Why James? Because his letter is the first letter that addressed to those who are still up to date, to the stragglers who have to complete a third round on the post-route of Asia Minor (Owl - Lea - Esau). They had already been encouraged in Paul's Letter to the Hebrews to look at the one who is their faithful high priest. Some, quite a few will be, have only glimpsed Paul's admonishing words. Now James, after the Rapture, continues the encouragement of his colleague. He turns to the same group, but a smaller number. James also writes to the Hebrews, using a different name. He writes to the 12 tribes in scattering (diaspora).

James writes: If someone is a hearer of the word - even when we are reading we hear inwardly - and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. What exactly did this man look at? We don't really need the Greek term now, because we can conclude here independently: He looks at his appearance, more precisely, only at the surface. Because he looked at himself and went away and he soon forgot what he was like.

To look at oneself in the morning, after getting up, is indispensable, because at the morning toilet (kosmeo) we arrange our appearance; make cosmetics (from Greek kosmeo). Those who only glance briefly into the morning mirror will soon hear this from friends and colleagues: Well, are you fell out of bed? Or something similar.

If we order things daily in the mirror of the Lord, he gives us a good feeling in every respect.

James does not only encourage the morning grumbler: "But whoever has looked closely into the perfect law, that of freedom, and remains in it, will be blessed in his deeds." What does "looked in close" mean? The reader should bend over the text, deepen himself in it. He should also consider the adjoining texts and then examine parallels.

 

Our Next question: What is the law of freedom? We will only be able to answer the question if we take the adjective, the word "perfect". The perfect law of freedom points to the Bible as a whole. When Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, where we began our explanations, spoke of the complete which will come, then he gives us an indication of a time at which the complete will be revealed more and more. Moreover, who is the perfect one? It is our Lord, who is revealed to us more and more in the mirror, that is the Bible, and with him also we.  

 

But when Christians look into the mirror called the Bible, they often recognize themselves the least. The female bittern also speaks of us, but we do not recognize it. Our mirrors, these are our favorite translations, we read with special glasses. They often have a very special filter, such as prefabricated opinions and thought patterns. There are brothers' glasses, Adventists' glasses, Jehovah's Witnesses' glasses, Roman Catholic Church glasses, Jewish scholar’s glasses and so on and so forth. The more expensive glasses are the glasses of the scholars.

If we really want to recognize the bittern, then we have to take time for the Lord and have patience in doing so, in which we leave everything else aside and in this time alone occupy ourselves with him, that is his word, the naked word.

Do not misunderstand what we say, as if we wanted to recommend something dishonorable. However, in the language of the Bible naked and naked does not mean the same thing. Adam and Eve were naked before the fall and yet not naked because they lived in the truth. Only, when they was been seduced by the deceitful serpent did they, as it were, take off the truth and put on the lie, consequently, they realized that they were naked.

The high priest goes to the sanctuary. Aaron shall put on his holy garments before he makes sacrifices before the people. Where shall he change? In the sanctuary and so the high priest goes into the tent and undresses. He shall bathe his body first. Where should he do this? In the sanctuary.  The priest, after he has undressed, takes a full bath. He then gets out of the bathtub and puts on his service clothes. After the high priest had finished his service, he went back into the tent of the Sanctuary and changed there. When we read this text carefully, we realized for the first time what is described in Genesis 16. Slightly irritated at first, but then oriented.

The high priest undressed himself in the temple. Was Aaron pure at that time? After he had undressed, he bathed in the temple. Was Aaron clean after the bath?  In the shrine lay his everyday clothes and also his holy clothes. After bathing, he put on his white dress and left the tent to do his high priestly work. After the service, he went back into the tent of the meeting, put off the holy clothes, and put on the street clothes again. The priest's nakedness in God's presence points to the nakedness before the Fall in Genesis 2. Aaron did not have to hide from God like Adam and Eve.

Next we look at a nudity that is described long after the Fall and also some centuries after Aaron's priesthood. From the prophet Isaiah the Lord says: "Just as my servant Isaiah walked naked and barefoot, for three years a sign and example concerning Egypt and Ethiopia." - Isaiah 20. The chapter has only six verses, but they have it in them. One could also say: The spice lies in the brevity. For some to joy and for others to torment. Isaiah walked around naked for three years.

What does that mean, what describes his nakedness? If we look at the Hebrew word, we see that it is the same word as in Genesis 2:25: "And both Adam and Eve were naked, man and his wife and they were not ashamed." Here, in Genesis 2, the word arom - ערום - is used in the plural, i.e., not being ashamed refers primarily to the two to one another, but then also to God and as we see, also to the animals and even to the serpent. In this state Isaiah walked around for three years. The literal level of the text describes an unclothed prophet. The figurative translation tells us that Isaiah was like a book rolled up - naked, read by all people, because the book of Isaiah is rolled up - naked, the inside pages described can be read by all people.

Now, the texts of Tanakh still written today on scored goats or sheepskins, which produced it in a long production process, and give us a vivid picture of how God describes us as living letters with His law. Our lifestyle can and should be read by all people when we, like the prophet Isaiah, walk around naked. This also means that our nakedness tells us that we have nothing to hide from people, because we walk in the truth. As Christians, we have put off the lie and put on the truth.

Let us go back to the first human couple and take a closer look at their condition after the fall so that we can better understand the connection between nudity and animal skin. Adam answered God and said, "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, for I am naked, and I hid." Adam reacts with fear to the voice of God, so he is on the best way to return to fellowship with God, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Adam recognized his condition when God began to speak with him. He did the only right thing, confessing his sin, for he says, "I am naked."

Adam and Eve had believed the lie of the serpent, and so had drawn out the truth and drawn in the lie. We all know the saying: 'Clothes make people´, but what kind of clothes do they make? You can tell by Adam's clothes that he had become a liar because he had put on the lie. Only when we have understood this fact, our eyes actually opened. Then we really realize, just as the author of the 116th Psalm sees it and exclaims "I said in my dismay: All men are liars!"

Have you ever had the disturbing experience of everyone lying to everyone? In his horror, the Messiah looks for a solution and vows that he will keep his vows. The fulfillment of his promise is seeing repeatedly in the cup of salvations. The cup is the body of the Messiah and the content points to his blood; this is the rescue cup. The Messiah fulfilled what he had promised Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: I will crush the head of the serpent, but the serpent will cause me to make the necessary blood sacrifice to atone for sin and redeem you who have now become liars.

The Lord had killed an animal for Adam and Eve and had covered their shame with the fur of the slaughtered lamb, because a sheep does not give more fur in material. (See also "The Torah of the Messiah", in which the facts are described in more detail). The fur of the dead animal served humans as clothing. Adam and Eve by their confession of sins before God pulled out the lie and put on the skin of the sacrifice, which speaks of truth. And now we understand what Paul means when he says to the Galatians in 3:27: "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ." Through baptism, we confess to have died with Christ and because we ascend again out of the water after our immersion, we rose again with Christ. This is how is explained to us repeatedly and is correct.

However, Paul wanted us to read even more precisely, to immerse ourselves even more deeply in the Word. The apostle actually wanted to say that, when we were baptized, we were surrounded by water and so we dressed Christ.

We died in the water, new life came out of the water, and now, we are surrounded with the water, so we have put on Christ. What do we now carry on our body? Christ. What does our Lord proclaim, what does he say about himself? I am the way - into water - and the truth - that is the water - and the life - that comes out of the water.  The lie has been judged in the water and the liar has died, but the truth has risen to eternal life.

Isaiah has been walking around with this truth for three years. This point to the Christian testimony since Golgotha. The historical Isaiah, his name means "God has saved", we can interpret on the figurative level on the Messiah. Jesus will have saved two groups, Ephraim and Manasseh-West, on the post-route of Asia Minor after three tours that are the three years of Isaiah.

Similar things happen to the Egyptians and the Ethiopians. Egypt stands for the Greeks, and points to the nations and Ethiopia - Kush - stands for Benjamin and thus for the remnant of the Jews, the lastborn of Rachel.

And so that the circle of our descriptions may be closed, we come back to the beginning. We have explained the bittern, the owl and the sparrow. Now it should also be easier for every reader to assign the birds on the figurative level.

1.  The bittern stands for the Christian age, from Pentecost to the Rapture. These are the believers from Jews and Greeks, represented by Ephraim.

2.  The owl represents the Christian testimony after the Rapture. These are the Jews and Greeks represented by Manasseh West.

3.  The sparrows are the remnant of Israel, which repents shortly before the return of the Messiah, with the beginning of the second festival cycle, on the feast of the trumpet sound. Leviticus 23