"I am that Bread of Life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the Bread Which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the Living Bread Which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this Bread, he shall live forever: and the Bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." John 6:48-51

"And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoarfrost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat. This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded, Gather of it every man according to his eating, an omer for every man, according to the number of your persons; take ye every man for them which are in his tents.
And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning. Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses was wroth with them. And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted. And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man: and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses.
And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which ye will bake today, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. And Moses said, Eat that today; for today is a sabbath unto the LORD: today ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall be none.
And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep My commandments and My laws? See, for that the LORD hath given you the Sabbath, therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day." Exodus 16:14-16,19-29

Greetings, my dearly beloved! Today I bring you happy tidings of Bread from heaven: even of the Living Bread Which comes from God that a man may eat thereof and never die (Jn. 6:48-51)! So, if you didn't get up this morning with a shout of joy, it is high time that you start singing, because we are children of the King; and we are fed on Living Bread, Which lives for evermore!

Today I have in mind to bring a message running heavily to prophecy, and there will be a lot of numbers involved, so may I suggest that you have paper and pencil convenient. You will need not less than a full-size sheet of paper to jot down the numbers I give you, as well as the Bible references. My message will be founded mostly in Exodus chapter 16, and also in the 3rd chapter of the book of Numbers. So at your convenience you can hunt up those two books and chapters; then a little later on you can read the passages for yourself, that you may better understand.

In the 16th chapter of Exodus we are told principally about manna, which the people found every morning except on the Sabbath mornings. It was found on the ground about the camp of Israel, and the people had to gather it early in the morning before the sun became warm enough to melt it. First I want to quote verses 19 and 20, where Moses said to the people:

"...Let no man leave of it till the morning. Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses was wroth with them."

May I remind you that in the days of the Lord Jesus, when the Jews asked Him to give them a sign, they reminded Him that Moses had given them bread from heaven (Jn. 6:30-31). To this the Lord replied that Moses gave them no bread from heaven, but that it was from God, Who had provided for them the true Bread: that is, the Living Bread Which comes down from heaven (verses 32-33).

We cannot very well escape the conclusion that in those words Christ likened the manna unto Himself. In the clearest of words He said that He was that Living Bread Which cometh down from God out of heaven. I frequently state that all events out of the past which befell His Chosen People were prophecies God wrought for us through living drama. The truth of that statement I demonstrate time and again through prophecy, using numbers involved in those episodes, then showing how they have been fulfilled according to history. I have now similarly in mind to show how this manna upon which the Israelites fed became a super prophecy of several different events, but all in harmony with the Biblical Record. But before I go into the prophetic details, I wish to stress the importance of what Moses said according to verse 19, which I just quoted, that the people should gather only enough for the day, and use it that day; for if they left of it for the next morning, it would be spoiled.

That was the lesson that God was endeavoring to impress upon the mind of His people: that He, the Living God, was their Supply and absolute Keeper. He wanted them to realize that He was rich and possessed an abundance for them, so that every day He would give them a fresh supply for their needs that day. God wanted to impress upon them the folly of being greedy, or "laying up for a rainy day," because if they did that with what He supplied them, it would only spoil and create a stench. Therefore, Moses emphasized that they were to gather only their daily needs, because every morning it would be there for them except on the Sabbath morning. Therefore had God promised them that on the morning previous to the Sabbath, He would give them a double portion, and that extra portion did keep for them throughout the Sabbath day (Ex. 16:22-24,29).

Now, we are not living three-and-a-half thousand years ago, and so we are not gathering any manna in that wilderness; but again I state that Christ said that He was that Living Bread, Which cometh down from out of heaven. Therefore, the laws obtaining unto Israel of old in connection with that manna equally apply to us today who have accepted the Son of God as our Living Bread. It is right and proper that we seek deeper meaning out of the words of Scripture, but we enter into serious error if and when we deny the facts of the case, and say that the apparent facts must be interpreted away to mean something entirely different. To be sure, we must interpret them, but in doing so we must not deny the first and basic reality of the situation. As for instance, God fed His people with this bread from heaven: it was the means of their subsistence. It is right if we interpret it according to the words of Jesus as having been symbolically prophetic of the Living Bread Which should come down from God into the wilderness; that is, unto the entire world. But we enter into serious error if we say that the manna of old which fed their bodies of flesh and bone and blood must be interpreted to have solely a spiritual significance. Let us get its spiritual significance; but we have no right to deny its material reality: it nourished their physical bodies.

Therefore, although it is right that we see its spiritual significance and connection with the Christ, we have no right to repudiate the material, or earthly, correlation: that is, that those of us who have come into the wilderness after accepting the Lamb of God, Which liberated us from the "Egypt" of this world, can with absolute confidence look to God through Christ every morning for our every material requirement of that day. That is what Israel of old did, and their God fulfilled their expectations. Therefore do I repeat that we have no right to repudiate its material significance and applications to ourselves of today.

Note again: if you have truly and fully accepted the Lamb of God to liberate you from the thralldom of this world's Egypt, and as a result you find yourself in the "wilderness" on your journey to the Mount of God (which was a symbol of the Kingdom of God), then I say you have the absolute right, in fact, not merely a right, but your duty, to look unto God through Christ, early every morning before your day commences: expecting and asking Him to supply your every material need for that day. I do not mean that you should limit it to material needs; we have spiritual needs as well. But if you think that you can look to God only for some spiritual blessing, and pie in the sky for your soul after you die, then you are in terrific error. As God was the Supplier of every need for the earthly bodies of His Chosen People during their wilderness trek, so similarly is Christ Jesus our Lord, even the very Son of God, our great and abundant Sufficiency for every physical and material need which we have from day to day in this world of hard facts! That is why I keep stating – and, God helping me, I shall never cease to repeat – that we should start the day with a shout of joy!

We are the children of the King of this universe: we are not paupers, we are not outcasts, we are not of lower rank, we are not servants of servants, we are not dogs to look hungrily for a crumb from the Master's table; we are the children of a King and we have a right to sing; but if we don't, it is high time we take stock of ourselves. And I mean it: we should analyze ourselves very seriously. We should know who we are; we should know where we are going and how to get there. We should know Who our Father is and precisely what He expects of us. Since, spiritually speaking, we are only little children as yet, that means Father is prepared to look after us.

I want to quote another verse from the same 16th chapter of Exodus, but verse 4:

"Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in My law, or no."

We have already been considering this manna, but what I wanted to draw to your attention in this 4th verse is the precise wording of God. Observe what He said: not that He would rain this bread so that they could live without working, but He would supply them this bread in order that He might prove them, to see for Himself whether or not they would be fully obedient unto His Law while in the wilderness.

Observe, the manna was received a full month before they came unto the Mount of God, and more than two months previous to their receiving the detailed Law from Mount Sinai. But we see by the account which I quoted from verse 20, that no sooner had they received this manna, than some of them broke the rule by trying to lay in sufficient for tomorrow's needs as well. Whereby we see that even from the beginning, and in the simplest of ways, they commenced breaking the injunctions, which were the simplest of all to keep. Maybe some said to themselves, "If we grab off enough today, we won't have to come out here tomorrow." But whatever their thoughts or intentions, they broke that simplest of injunctions and thus proved to God, from the beginning, that they would not walk according to His commandments. Therefore did those people all die away in the wilderness, except for two persons: Joshua and Caleb (Num. 14:29-32, 32:10-12). The rest of them who lived to enter the Promised Land had been children when they left Egypt, ranging from mere infants to youngsters less than 20 years of age.

All of that was a prophetic type for ourselves – that is, for Christendom, which is end-time Israel. As the fathers in the wilderness proved themselves to God to be unfit to enter upon the Promised Land, so similarly did the early fathers in Christendom and their children ever since: we have disobeyed the commandments of our Lord. By and large everyone has refused to recognize that Christ our Lord is also our great Sufficiency from day to day, and that in Him and Him only are we to place our confidence! When we do, then will He gloriously undertake for us!

Now it appears that I shall not have the time to set before you all the prophecy I had in mind, but I will get around to some and show you the balance of it in my next message. Now let us turn to the Book of Numbers and its 3rd chapter. In verse 39 we see that the Levites had been numbered in the amount of an even 22,000 men. But before they left Egypt, God had said that all the firstborn were His; so we jump to verse 43 in this 3rd chapter, where we see that the firstborn males numbered 22,273. Write down that number 22,273 as the number of the firstborn. Underneath write down the number of the Levites, which was an even 22,000, and subtract, and you will see there is a difference of 273. Then we see by verse 47 how this excess number 273 of the firstborn had to be redeemed at the price of five shekels per head. So, write down that number 273, multiplying by 5, and you will get the result: 1,365 shekels of silver. That was the redemption price; for, God had decided that He would take the Levites for Himself instead of the firstborn. And so, lest God get gypped in the amount of those 273, He decreed that they had to be redeemed at 5 shekels apiece, which amounted to 1,365 shekels, which money had to go into the Tabernacle treasury as the possession of the Levitical priesthood.

If sometime you have the patience to figure out from the books of Genesis and Exodus, you will find that according to the numbers God gave us, the Exodus of Israel took place 2,666½ years after Adam's Fall. I have double checked on that count, so I know it is correct. Write down that figure 2,666.5. (That number .5 represents half a year.) Underneath, write down the number of shekels; that is, 1,365 being the redemption money; and you will have a total of 4,031.5: that is 4,0312 years after Adam.

Ordinarily, the birth of our Lord is believed to have been at the opening of our Christian era, while others believe it was several years earlier; but according to my own Pyramid chronology (which I personally consider to be the only reliable), the birth of our Lord was later than believed; therefore, the Cross of Calvary also much later. Now, according to my Pyramid Chronology, that year you have written down, represented by 4,0312 – which was the spring of 32 A.D. – was the precise time that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God, came into the Temple at the Passover and cleaned house (Jn. 2:13-16). Aside from its other symbolic significance, that housecleaning typified riddance of the old rubbish and the beginning of the new. Do you get it? The redemption price for the firstborn: that firstborn typified "the Law" (which was before Christ). It had run its course precisely (up to 4,031 1/2), at which pinpointed time the very High Priest of God Almighty walked into the Temple and cleaned house! He cast out the old, and He announced the new! The Law had served its purpose, but then commenced the priesthood of Jesus Christ! The manna in the desert had been eaten, but there in their midst stood the Living Bread (Which had come down from out of heaven)! I want you to consider these things carefully, that you may see for yourself how God foreordained everything to fit with great precision into the events of subsequent history, and to dovetail with God's master-plan of love for man.

Having seen with understanding, man is expected to believe. Believing, he is expected to be UP and DOING.

Thereto may God lead, bless and strengthen you!