The first altar mentioned in the Word was the one built by Noah after he came out of the ark, after being saved from the great flood. On that altar, he sacrificed clean animals to the Lord.

Mountains represent the Lord because of their height; we need to raise our thoughts above worldly things when "talking" with the Lord. An altar is a small artificial mountain. When it's used in worship, it can call to mind this raising of thought. The fire and smoke that rise from an altar are symbolically being sent to the Lord.

Most altars were made from unhewn stones. Stones represent truths. Unhewn stones - ones that have not been shaped by men - represent truths from the Word, truths that have not been adulterated.

The clean beasts to be sacrificed represent good things, charitable acts done because they are right. The clean birds represent thoughts about doctrine and actions, and about what is right. Presenting these things is an acknowledgment that we have them from the Lord, and a giving thanks to Him for them.

In the Israelitish Tabernacle, the altar of burnt offering represented the acknowledgment of good and the altar of incense that of truth. For this reason this larger altar, which was outside by the door, was made of brass which signifies natural good, while the altar of incense was made of gold, which signifies love to the Lord from whom comes truth.

94. It is common practice in to-day's Christian churches to call the Lord our Saviour the Son of Mary, but only rarely the Son of God, unless that is, they mean the Son of God born from eternity. This is because the Roman Catholics have made Mary, His mother, greater than all the other saints, and set her above all their saints as if she were a goddess or a queen. The truth is that when the Lord glorified His Human, He put off everything of His mother's, and put on everything of His Father's, as will be fully proved in the following sections of this book. This common practice, when His title as Son of Mary is on everyone's tongue, has been responsible for introducing many erroneous notions into the church, especially with those who have not allowed their judgment to be swayed by what the Word says about the Lord; for instance, that the Father and He are one, that He is in the Father and the Father in Him; that all things of the Father's are His; that He called Jehovah His Father, and Jehovah the Father called Him His Son. The erroneous notions, which have invaded the church as the result of calling Him the Son of Mary instead of the Son of God, are that the idea of divinity is destroyed when thinking of the Lord, and this leads to the loss of all the statements in the Word about Him as the Son of God. Also, this leads to the introduction of Judaism, Arianism, Socinianism, and the original form of Calvinism; and finally to nature-worship, accompanied by the fantastic idea that He was the Son of Mary by Joseph, and that His soul came from His mother, so that He is called the Son of God without being so. Everyone, clergy as well as layman, ought to ask himself whether he has formed and fosters any other idea about the Lord as the Son of Mary except as an ordinary man.

[2] Since an idea of this sort had already become prevalent among Christians in the fourth century with the rise of the Arian heresy, the Council of Nicaea, in order to claim divinity for the Lord, invented the dogma of the Son of God born from eternity. This invention at the time raised the Lord's Human to the Divine level, and this still has the same effect for many to-day. It did not, however, have this result for those who understand by hypostatic union a union between two, one of whom is above and the other below. What else can result from such a belief but the destruction of the whole Christian church, the sole foundation of which is the worship of Jehovah in the Human, that is to say, it is based on God-Man? The Lord states in many passages that no one can see the Father, nor know Him, nor come to Him, nor believe in Him, except through His Human. If this is not so, all the noble seed of the church is turned into worthless seed, the seed of the olive into the seed of the pine, the seed of the orange, citron, apple and pear into the seed of the willow, elm, lime and holm-oak, the vine into a marsh reed, wheat and barley into chaff. All spiritual food in fact becomes like the dust that snakes eat. In the case of man, spiritual light becomes first natural, and finally sensual and bodily, a light which regarded in itself is delusive. A person then in fact becomes like a bird which has its wings clipped while flying high, and falls to the ground; once on the ground it can only walk and see around it what lies before its feet. Then a person's thoughts about the spiritual side of the church, all the things that favour everlasting life, resemble the ravings of a clown. All this is the result of a person regarding the Lord God, the Redeemer and Saviour, as only the Son of Mary, that is, nothing but a man.