In the second chapter of the Book of Numbers God commanded Moses and Aaron how to layout the camp of the Hebrews, and how to organise the tribes around the Tabernacle of meeting. In the middle is the Tabernacle and the tribe of Levites camps around it. The rest of the tribes are grouped into four groups, three tribes in each group, camping at some distance towards the East, West, North and South from the Tabernacle. Nobody was to place his tent in the regions of Northeast, Northwest, Southeast or Southwest from the Tabernacle.
If you take into consideration the number of men, mentioned in this chapter for each of the tribes (which doesn’t number the women and children), and you estimate the size of the tribal groups, you would realise that the biggest group is on the East of the Tabernacle (with 186,400 men), the smallest group is west of the Tabernacle (108,100 men), while the groups on the North (157,600 men) and South of the Tabernacle (151,450 men) are of a similar size.
If you could be translated in that ancient time and would have a bird’s eye view of the camp, coming from the East and looking towards the West, you would see that the camp has the shape of a cross, as it is shown below.
The point is that even a smallest detail in the Bible, which you may be inclined to skip as insignificant (like for example, the layout of the camp around the Tabernacle of meeting), points to Jesus and what He did for us. So we don’t have to be surprised when Jesus said that Scriptures testify about Him (John 5:39) and that, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.” (John 5:46).
The above image is taken from Chuck Missler’s expositional commentary on the Book of Genesis, from the last episode in the 24-part series. You can watch this episode via the Youtube link below, where he talks about the Israeli camp around the 64th minute.
Are you intrigued by the fact that there is a cross in the Bible and it was put in there centuries before Jesus actually died on one? He did that in order to pay the penalty for all sins, including yours and mine, as it has been prophesied by the Old Testament prophets? Bible is not corrupt like some would say, but is in fact the most accurate book in the world! It contains prophecies that all came true. No other book has the track record of being 100% correct like the Bible.
For example, did you know that the current conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is described in several chapters of the Bible and the outcome of the same has been also predicted/prophesied? To find out how peace will be established see this post. To read more about the end time prophecies in general check out this list of articles.
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