1241. Concerning Eber as the founder of the second ancient church, and his symbolism as that church, this is the situation: The first ancient church, as noted [§1238:2], spread far and wide throughout the world, especially in the Near East. Over time it deteriorated, as all religions everywhere do, and subverters in various places adulterated both its outward and its inward worship. Their main offense was to take all the symbolic and representative lore that the ancient church had received from the mouth of the earliest church — every bit of which focused on the Lord and his kingdom — and make it idolatrous. Some nations even turned it into magic. To prevent the entire church from perishing, the Lord allowed symbolic and representative worship to be restored in some places, and this was done by Eber, whose worship consisted chiefly in external things. The externals of the religion were high places, groves, pillars, and anointings, not to mention priesthoods and the traditions governing them, along with many other rules, which were called statutes.
The deeper aspects of the religion were doctrinal precepts dating back to the time before the Flood, received principally from the people referred to as Enoch. These people gathered together the perceptive knowledge of the earliest church and out of it constructed doctrinal precepts that formed their Word. 1
The internals and the externals just described formed the worship of this religion. The style of worship was founded by Eber but later enlarged and also changed. In particular, its worshipers started to consider sacrifices more important than other types of ritual. Sacrifice was unknown in the true ancient church. It existed exclusively with certain idolatrous descendants of Ham and Canaan and was tolerated among them to prevent them from sacrificing their own sons and daughters.
These descriptions illustrate the nature of this second ancient church, founded by Eber and maintained among his descendants, who were called the Hebrew nation.
Footnotes:
1. For the process of gathering insights and constructing doctrine, see §§518-522, which discuss Enoch's genealogy in Genesis 5:22-24. [LHC]
