Apocalypse Revealed #623
623. Being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb. This symbolizes the commencement of a Christian heaven that acknowledges one God, in whom is the Trinity, and acknowledges that the Lord is that one.
Firstfruits mean something that is produced first, and something gathered first, thus a commencement, here the commencement of a new heaven formed of Christians. God and the Lamb mean here, as before, the Lord in respect to the Divine itself from which springs all else, and in respect to His Divine humanity, including the emanating Divinity, thus one God in whom is the Trinity.
We will say something here about firstfruits. In the Israelite Church people were commanded to give to Jehovah as sacred the firstfuits of produce - of every kind of grain, of oil and wine, of the fruits of trees, and of wool - and these were given by Jehovah to Aaron, and after him to the high priest (Exodus 22:29; 23:19, Numbers 13:20; 15:17-21; 18:8-20, Numbers 28:26-31).
The reason for this was that firstfruits symbolized something that is produced first and afterward grows, like a child into an adult, or a cutting into a tree, and thus it symbolized every subsequent development until the thing's completion. For every subsequent development is present in the initial one, like the adult in the child, or the tree in the cutting. And because this first development occurs before the subsequent ones, as is the case also in heaven and in the church, therefore the firstfruits were sacred to the Lord, and the people celebrated a feast of firstfuits.
Firstfruits have a similar symbolic meaning in Jeremiah 24:1-2, Ezekiel 20:40, Micah 7:1, Deuteronomy 33:15, 21.
Numbers 19
1
Yahweh spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,
2
"This is the statute of the law which Yahweh has commanded: Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without spot, in which is no blemish, [and] on which never came yoke.
3
You shall give her to Eleazar the priest, and he shall bring her forth outside of the camp, and one shall kill her before his face:
4
and Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle her blood toward the front of the Tent of Meeting seven times.
5
One shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn:
6
and the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
7
Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the evening.
8
He who burns her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the evening.
9
"A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up outside of the camp in a clean place; and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water for impurity: it is a sin offering.
10
He who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening: and it shall be to the children of Israel, and to the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them, for a statute forever.
11
"He who touches the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days:
12
the same shall purify himself with water on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he doesn't purify himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.
13
Whoever touches a dead person, the body of a man who has died, and doesn't purify himself, defiles the tabernacle of Yahweh; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet on him.
14
"This is the law when a man dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent, and everyone who is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.
15
Every open vessel, which has no covering bound on it, is unclean.
16
"Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain with a sword, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
17
"For the unclean they shall take of the ashes of the burning of the sin offering; and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel:
18
and a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, and on all the vessels, and on the persons who were there, and on him who touched the bone, or the slain, or the dead, or the grave:
19
and the clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify him; and he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at evening.
20
But the man who shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from the midst of the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of Yahweh: the water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him; he is unclean.
21
It shall be a perpetual statute to them: and he who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be unclean until evening.
22
"Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the soul that touches it shall be unclean until evening."
