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Subject 11 : The Tabernacle
[11-8] The Color of the Gate of The Tabernacle’s Court (Exodus 27:9-19)
(Exodus 27:9-19)
"You shall also make the court of the tabernacle. For the south side there shall be hangings for the court made of fine woven linen, one hundred cubits long for one side. And its twenty pillars and their twenty sockets shall be bronze. The hooks of the pillars and their bands shall be silver. Likewise along the length of the north side there shall be hangings one hundred cubits long, with its twenty pillars and their twenty sockets of bronze, and the hooks of the pillars and their bands of silver. And along the width of the court on the west side shall be hangings of fifty cubits, with their ten pillars and their ten sockets. The width of the court on the east side shall be fifty cubits. The hangings on one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits, with their three pillars and their three sockets. And on the other side shall be hangings of fifteen cubits, with their three pillars and their three sockets. For the gate of the court there shall be a screen twenty cubits long, woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen, made by a weaver. It shall have four pillars and four sockets. All the pillars around the court shall have bands of silver; their hooks shall be of silver and their sockets of bronze. The length of the court shall be one hundred cubits, the width fifty throughout, and the height five cubits, made of fine woven linen, and its sockets of bronze. All the utensils of the tabernacle for all its service, all its pegs, and all the pegs of the court, shall be of bronze. And you shall command the children of Israel that they bring you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to cause the lamp to burn continually. In the tabernacle of meeting, outside the veil which is before the Testimony, Aaron and his sons shall tend it from evening until morning before the LORD. It shall be a statute forever to their generations on behalf of the children of Israel."
I, too, was disheartened by this for a while. Because I was truly born again by encountering the truth, and truly thankful to God for using me as an instrument for His works, and because my heart yearned for the truth of God to be spread far and wide, when I saw so many people leading their religious lives deceived by lies, I could not but become deeply saddened.
Nevertheless, what is clear is that the Holy Spirit is in my heart, and that despite my shortcomings, my heart has no sin. In my heart, therefore, is found thankfulness, and I have no shame over the gospel that I believe in. When I preach this gospel to people throughout the whole world, if they hear this Word of truth and believe in it, they, too, can have no shame before both God and people, for when they believe in this truth, they all really become God’s children.
You too can surely have the same blessings by faith. Even though you have not studied theology, if you just believe in the truth of this gospel of the water and the Spirit, you will receive the remission of your sins, become the children of God, and receive the Holy Spirit into your hearts. And with the Holy Spirit, you can also walk with the servants of God. This is the clear truth, and believing thus is the true faith.
Although I am living in a world that is filled with lies, because in my heart is this true faith, I have been able to keep preaching the gospel of truth until this very moment. Since I began to preach the Word on the topic of the Tabernacle, I came to know more clearly about the schemes of the liars, and thus I came to discern the truth from the false. This is the reason why I have been testifying this truth of the Tabernacle. It brings me an immense joy that with the spreading of the real truth through the Tabernacle, people are enabled to discern between the truth and the false.
In writing this book on the Tabernacle, the most difficult task for me was trying to deal with its terminology. I have devoted a great amount of attention to this issue, looking up the original texts, to make sure that the difficult glossaries associated with the Tabernacles would not result into any conveying of wrong information, nor to such mistaken reception by the readers. Despite my own understanding and knowledge of the Tabernacle, because the modalities of the Tabernacle and its hidden spiritual meanings had to be explained to those whose knowledge is very limited, I was somewhat concerned about the task, unsure of how precisely and definitively I could really explain the significance of the Tabernacle.
It would be nice, of course, if people could understand and believe as soon as they first hear it. But Rome was not built in a day; likewise, and as in all matters, the spreading of the truth and the true faith is not accomplished in a day, either, but it is achieved gradually, as we dig deeper into the core little by little. I was therefore particularly concerned about digging too deep from the beginning, for not everyone would then be able to understand it, and this was one of the most formidable challenges that I faced in writing this book.
Nevertheless, with God’s help, the book has finally come out without too much trouble. Needless to say, I am very happy and thankful for it. Through this book, and by discerning the truth from the false, I will reveal just how preciously, clearly, and undoubtedly today’s believers of the gospel of the water and the Spirit have been saved, and how, in contrast, religious and vain the faith of the believers of the other gospels other than this gospel of the water and the Spirit really is. I am therefore thankful to God, above all, for saving me from my sins.
Today, there are many so-called evangelicals, who claim unconditionally that they are sinless just because they believe in Jesus. Their hearts are filled with all kinds of unfounded and delusional faith. While studying the Tabernacle, I have come to realize even more clearly just how vain and false their faith really is, and because of this realization, I thank God even more with all my heart for my salvation.
The Gate and the Fence of the Tabernacle’s Court
From the main passage, we can find out the fact that the length of the rectangular court of the Tabernacle was 45 m and its width was 22.5 m (75 feet), as a cubit is a unit of length equal to 0.45 m (1.5 feet); that the court of the Tabernacle was surrounded by 60 pillars on all sides, the height of each pillar was 2.25 m (7.5 feet); that to its east was the gate, measuring 9 m in width; and that the rest of the entire fence (about 126 m (115 yards) out of 135 m (123 yards)) was surrounded by the hangings of white fine linen.
The gate of the court of the Tabernacle was woven with blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen, and it measured 9 m in width with 2.25 m (7.5 feet) in height. These four different threads, in other words, were woven to make a screen measuring 9 m (30 feet) by 2.25 m (7.5 feet). Blue thread was first woven in full length and width into the fine white linen, and then purple thread was woven 2.25 m high, and then scarlet thread was woven 2.25 m (7.5 feet) high, followed by the weaving of white thread, making a thick and sturdy screen, woven like a carpet, that was 2.25 m (7.5 feet) high. In this way, a screen woven to measure 2.25 m (7.5 feet) in height and 9 m (30 feet) in width was put up on four pillars of the court of the Tabernacle to its east.
To enter into the Tabernacle’s court, as such, people had to pull the carpet-like screen up. Unlike most other gates, the gate of the Tabernacle was not of wood. Although its pillars were made of wood, the gate that was hung on these pillars was a screen woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen.
You might have been to a circus show on tour before, and seen how a circus tent is built. Its door is usually made with thick fabrics. The gate of the court of the Tabernacle was somewhat similar to this kind of door. As it was made of thick fabrics, it was not opened by pulling or pushing, as in hard doors, but it was pulled up instead to enter. This was the case not only for the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, but also for the gates of the Holy Place and the Most Holy inside the Tabernacle.
Why did God tell the Israelites to make all three gates of the Tabernacle’s court, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy by weaving them with blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen? We need to find out clearly what the will of God was behind this command. The Book of Hebrews tells us that all the good things of the Old Testaments are the shadows of one real substance to come, that is, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 10:1).
Likewise, the gate of the court of the Tabernacle is intricately related to the baptism of Jesus Christ, His death on the Cross, and His own identity. As such, when we have trouble understanding the Old Testament, we can reach this understanding by looking at the New Testament. Without seeing the actual substance, it’s hard to figure out its shadow, but when see what or who is casting the shadow, we can realize what it is all about. We must all realize clearly who the Savior of sinners that God has prepared from the Old Testament really is, know Him as the actual substance of the Tabernacle, and believe that His works have saved us from all our sins.
Who, then, is the real substance of the Tabernacle, the One who has become the Savior of sinners? It is none other than Jesus Christ. When we examine how Jesus Christ, our Savior, came to this earth and how He has saved us from our sins, we can then find out the sure truth that He has saved sinners through the blue, purple, and scarlet thread.
In understanding Jesus’ salvation of sinners, knowing and believing in the truth manifested in the colors of the gate of the Tabernacle’s court is the most important. When delving into the Tabernacle, the first thing we must realize is that the gate of its court was made of four threads. And when we solve the mystery of this gate, we can then come to a firm grasp of all the works of Jesus Christ. By looking at the screen gate woven of these four threads, we can also understand clearly just how we must know and believe in Jesus, and exactly what kind of faith is wrong faith.
The outer court of the Tabernacle actually reminds us of a sheepfold. Jesus, our Messiah, is in fact the door of the sheepfold of God, and has also become the good Shepherd (John 10:1-15). When we think of the pillars surrounding the court, we are actually reminded of the Messiah, who has become the door and the good Shepherd of His sheep, the born-again saints.
The Shepherd has actually put up posts around the sheepfold to protect His sheep and has made a door there, and through this door, He is guarding His sheep. Through this door the Shepherd has close fellowship with His sheep and protects them. As a matter of fact, all those who are not His sheep are not permitted to get in through this door. The Shepherd differentiates between sheep and wolves. This is why sheep need the Shepherd.
Yet it is possible that there are some among these sheep that are refusing to be led by the Shepherd. Such sheep may enter into the way of death, thinking that it is a beautiful and good way when it is, in fact, a treacherous and dangerous one, for they have not listened to the voice of the Shepherd and refused to be led by Him. These sheep can actually have their lives spared and be fed well by the Shepherd, and live their lives beautifully because of Him. Our Shepherd, in fact, is Jesus Christ, who has become our Messiah.
Jesus Christ Showed Us the Four Colors of the Gate of the Tabernacle
The screen that was put up as the gate of the Tabernacle was woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen. This thread of four different colors was used to make the gate of the Tabernacle. They symbolized the four ministries that the Messiah, coming to this earth, would have to fulfill to save the lost sheep—that is, the spiritual Israelites all over the world—from their sins and to turn them into the sinless people of God.
If we actually know who our Messiah that came to us with His four ministries is, then, the unequivocal truth is that we have been washed of all our sins by this faith, have dedicated our remaining lives to preaching the gospel of the water and the Spirit, and will enter Heaven through this very faith. Therefore, everyone must in fact know the Word of the truth that the Messiah has come to us by the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and has saved us from all our sins.
Do you want to receive the remission of your sins by believing in the four ministries of the Messiah? Let us, then, learn about the Tabernacle. Those who know these four ministries will in fact become the righteous by receiving the remission of sin woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen.
The people of Israel, looking at the gate of the Tabernacle woven of four different colors of thread, had to actually believe that the Messiah would indeed come in the future and fulfill these four ministries.
The Truth That Every Sinner Must Believe
Had we looked at the white linen hangings of the court of the Tabernacle, we would have recognized our need for the Savior by realizing just how holy God really is. Everyone who came to know God’s holiness, in fact, could not help but admit, saying, “God, I recognize that I am bound to hell because of my sins, for I am just a big mass of sin.” Looking at the white linen draping over the pillars of the court, because its cleanness and majesty would be so great, people would have recognized the sins found in their hearts and realized that they are completely unfit to live with God. Whenever those whose hearts are not straight try to go before God, their sins are always revealed. As such, people have been reluctant to go before God, for they are afraid that their sins would be revealed.
But when such sinful people realize that their Savior has solved their problem of sin with His blue and scarlet thread, they can confidently go before God with a great conviction of salvation and hope in their hearts.
The four-fold truth shown in the gate of the Tabernacle tells us that the Messiah came to this earth in the flesh of a man, took all the sins of the world upon Himself with His baptism received from John, and shed His blood on the Cross. Those who, through the gospel of the water and the Spirit, know exactly and believe in the truth of the four colors of the gate of the Tabernacle’s court can then receive the eternal remission of sin. The baptism of Jesus and His crucifixion, the truth that Christ wholly saved us from all our sins with His baptism and His blood on the Cross, are salvation like the four colors of the gate of the Tabernacle’s court.
The blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and the fine woven linen actually show us the Messiah’s ministry that has saved sinners from all their sins. The truth of salvation that God has given to the mankind is revealed in these blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and the fine woven linen. Those who have sin in their hearts, in fact, are forgiven of all their sins by believing in the truth of salvation revealed in the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
Countless religions have sprung up in this world. All these worldly religions have come up with their own doctrines made up with their own thoughts, all making people try to reach holiness. But not even a single person has ever been washed of their sins through these worldly religions. The reason is because they had made up and believed in their own doctrines of salvation based on their own thoughts, without realizing that they are just filled with sin. Because everyone is a big mass of sin who can never become holy by him/herself, no matter how hard one tries to get rid of his/her fundamental nature of sin, no one can ever achieve this. This is why everyone absolutely needs the Savior who can deliver him/her from sins—that is, why everyone needs Jesus. You must realize that human beings have no true Savior apart from Jesus Christ.
Because the Law of God does not allow sinners to enter the House of God, we must know and believe that the Messiah has actually blotted out all our sins.
The gospel that has forgiven the sins of mankind once for all is none other than the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Placing one’s faith in the worldly religions’ doctrines will only lead him/her into great difficulties on account of his/her sins, for our Holy God condemns, without fail, every iniquity of sinners.
The truth revealed by the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen was fulfilled by the gospel of the water and the Spirit in the age of the New Testament. Have you ever heard someone claiming that the gate of the court of the Tabernacle was made with only scarlet thread or only purple and scarlet thread? If so, you must now realize, from this moment on, that the gate of the Tabernacle was actually woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen. God clearly commanded the Israelites to make the gate of the Tabernacle’s court with a screen woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen made by a weaver.
Yet because many people have mistakenly thought that the gate of the court of the Tabernacle was woven of only scarlet thread, they could not solve the mystery of the true four ministries of our Lord. This is why they had sin in their hearts even when they believed in Jesus. Realize now that Christ took away all your sins through His ministries of blue, purple, and scarlet thread and of fine woven linen, and believe in this truth. The work of salvation fulfilled by these blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen has indeed wholly saved you from all your sins. You must realize that Jesus took away all your sins with these four ministries. Setting your own standard of the remission of sin while remaining ignorant of this truth, in other words, is simply wrong.
Some people, even as they remain oblivious to what the meaning of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread used for the gate of the Tabernacle’s court is, mistakenly claim that one can be saved unconditionally just by believing in Jesus as the Savior. In fact, when we ask the leaders of Christian communities about the four ministries of Jesus, we find out that many of them are ignorant of them. They say that they believe only in the ministry of the scarlet thread. If they believe in one more thing, they might say that they believe in the ministry of the purple thread also. However, our Lord actually completed all the tasks for the salvation of mankind with the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. As such, we must believe that our Lord carried out for us His four ministries of salvation. Whoever has a heart that desires to know the truth revealed in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen of the Tabernacle’s gate can in fact know it and believe in it.
“How should I understand the true meaning of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen?” If you were to ask this question to someone in search of the truth of these thread and linen, you might be rebuked in return, “You must not try to know the Bible in too much depth and detail; it may bring harm to you,” and your curiosity might be ignored. Disheartened, many people may then lose their curiosity of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. And you would never meet the Messiah ever, who is revealed in detail through the gate.
Those who try to meet the Messiah without realizing the role of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and of the fine woven linen are, as a matter of fact, only religionists who believe in Christianity as one of the worldly religions. To enter into the House of God, we must know properly the truth of the four ministries of God’s salvation revealed in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen used for the gate of the Tabernacle’s court. And those who have found this truth must realize that the Lord fulfilled them with the gospel of the water and the Spirit in the New Testament’s time.
God commanded Moses to weave the gate of the Tabernacle’s court with blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and with fine woven linen. What, then, is the spiritual meaning of this? Each color of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and of the fine woven linen used for the gate of the Tabernacle’s court is the work of Jesus that He did for us to make our sins disappear. These thread and linen therefore are intricately related to one another. As such, those who pay attention to and believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit can believe in their eternal remission of sin as the four ministries of Jesus.
Despite this, not trying to know and ignoring the truth of salvation manifested in the colors of blue, purple, and scarlet are, therefore, the expression of one’s complete indifference to the Messiah and the same as becoming the His enemy standing against Him. Many people, in fact, remain indifferent to the truth manifested in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen, and are turning Christianity into only one of the many worldly religions. If these people regard Jesus’ four ministries with indifference, then this is the evidence that they are the fruits of the worldly religionists who stand against Christ. Fortunately, however, there is still hope for us, for in this world many people are still looking for the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
When people have the knowledge of the spiritual truth of the remission of sin revealed by the gate of the court of the Tabernacle, they can receive all the spiritual blessings of Heaven. Because this faith is actually the required faith that one must know and believe in to meet the Messiah, we must dwell on it not only once, but forever. If you truly are a Christian, you must pay attention to this truth.
Whoever wants to enter into the House of God must discover the truth manifested in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen, and praise God accordingly.
The Messiah Who Came as the Fulfiller of the Prophecies
God prophesied with His Word that the Messiah would be born through the body of a virgin. Isaiah 7:14 says, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” Micah 5:2, on the other hand, states that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me, The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting.” The Messiah did indeed come to this earth exactly as prophesied by this Word of the Old Testament. He came to this earth in the flesh of a man as the fulfillment of the prophecies in accordance to the Word of God.
At which point in human history, then, did the Messiah come? When did Jesus Christ come to this earth? He came to this earth during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus (B.C. 27-A.D. 14). Jesus came to this earth to deliver you and me from all our sins and condemnation by receiving baptism from John and being crucified and bleeding on the Cross.
Jesus came as the Savior of mankind when Israel had been turned into a colony of the Roman Empire and when Augustus was reigning as its emperor. Because Israel was a Roman colony, it had to follow Rome’s decrees. At this time, the Emperor Augustus had decreed everyone in the entire Roman Empire to return to his/her hometown and to register for a census. Following Augustus’ decree, this census was immediately begun. Because the census sought to account for each and every person living in the Empire, including those living in Israel, all the Israelites had to also return to their hometowns. From this moment, Jesus Christ was already working in the history of mankind.
Look at the Fulfillment of the Word of the Old Testament!
At the time, in the land of Judea, the Messiah was already conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This Mary was engaged to Joseph. Both Mary and Joseph were from the tribe of Judah, just as God promised that of the twelve tribes of Israel, kings would continue to be born only from the tribe of Judah.
So when the Roman Emperor Augustus decreed for a census to take place, Mary, of the tribe of Judah, was already carrying a baby in her womb. When her time came near and she was about to give birth, because of the Emperor’s decree, she had to go to Joseph’s hometown and register for the census. Mary therefore headed to Bethlehem with Joseph even as she was expected to give birth at anytime. When Mary went into her birth pain, they had to find a room for her, but they could not find any in town. They therefore had to use whatever place that was available to them, even as they ended up in a stable. And Mary gave birth to her baby Jesus in the stable.
On A.D. 1, Jesus was born and placed in a manger. The Almighty God came to this earth in the flesh of a man. To the place where animals once stayed, the Savior of mankind came. This means that Jesus was born in this lowest place to become our Messiah, and all these things had been set and planned by God even before the creation. Though people might have known that Yahweh God moves the history of mankind, none could ever realize that God Himself would actually come to this earth to save them. God, therefore, made it possible for anyone to realize that He would save him/her by lowering Himself to be born unto this earth in the humble body of a man to deliver all human beings from their sins.
Why, then, was Jesus born, of all places, in Bethlehem? We may also wonder why He had to be born in a stable, and why, of all times, when Israel was subjugated by Rome as its colony? But we can soon find out that all these things came under His elaborate providence carefully drawn to deliver His people from their sins.
When Joseph and Mary registered for the census in their hometown, they had to provide evidence proving that they indeed were from this town, and document their exact identity. They could register for the census only when they could provide the necessary evidence to prove that their ancestors had indeed lived in Bethlehem for generations. So they had to disclose who their ancestors were and in whose houses they belonged, and record all such details of their family lineage on the census. As none of these could be invented or omitted, by historically recording the exact identities of Joseph and Mary, God made sure that the history of mankind would also testify to the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1:1-16, Luke 3:23-38). All these were God’s works that He did to fulfill the prophecies of the Word of the Old Testament.
Micah 5:2 states, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me, The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting.” That the day of birth came and the Savior was born in the prophesied town of Bethlehem precisely by making Joseph and Mary arrive at the very town means that God did this work to fulfill the prophecies of His prophets. This is for sure God’s planned achievement in order to blot out all the sins of mankind. That Jesus had to be born in the little town of Bethlehem was to fulfill the Old Testament’s Word of Prophecy.
Hundreds of years before Jesus Christ was born in the small town of Bethlehem, God had already given His Word of prophecy through His prophet Micah, as quoted above (Micah 5:2). As well, the Prophet Isaiah had also prophesied about 700 years before the coming of our Lord how the Messiah would come to His people to become the Savior of sinners (Isaiah 53). As Jesus Christ was indeed born in Bethlehem exactly as God prophesied through the Prophet Micah, He always fulfills all His Word of prophecy.
This prophecy was fulfilled as a historical fact when Mary and Joseph went up to their ancestor’s hometown to register for the census. God fulfilled His Word by making sure that the time for the baby to be born would come just when Mary arrives at Bethlehem, so that she would have no choice but to give birth in this town.
Here, we discover that our God is the God who speaks His Word of prophecy to us and fulfills all such Word accordingly. From this, we can find out that the “fine woven linen” used for the gate of the Tabernacle’s court implies the fineness and wholeness of God’s Word. God had elaborately planned the salvation of mankind even before the Creation, and He has fulfilled this without fail according to His Word of prophecy.
We can therefore realize that the Word of the Old Testament is surely the Word of God, and that the Word of the New Testament is also the Word of God. We can also realize, as well as believe, that God indeed rules over and moves all the history of the entire universe and this earth. We can find out, in other words, that just as God created the whole universe, He has shown us that He reigns over all peoples, all histories, and all conditions of everyone thoroughly. God therefore shows us that nothing can be achieved according to one’s own will, no matter what it is, unless He allows it.
When the Baby Jesus was born unto and came to this world, He could not but be born in the resting place of animals, for there was no room in the inn. And He Himself was indeed born in the town of Bethlehem. We must realize that all these were the wonderful achievement of God’s prophesied providence according to His faithfulness.
Therefore, we must believe that the One who moves the history of this universe is our God, the Savior who has delivered us from our sins. This truth is the Word of God that shows us that He rules over all, for God is the Lord of all.
It thus has now been proven that the birth of Jesus in the small town of Bethlehem was not an accidental incidence, nor something that was arbitrarily invented by manipulating the Word of the Bible. This is what God Himself said, and it is also what God Himself fulfilled through Jesus.
We must know this and believe in it. We must take it to our hearts and believe that the salvation of our Messiah is the truth that is fulfilled by the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. God has shown us that the remission of sin, too, is not something that is accidentally achieved, but it is achieved through the four ministries of Jesus prepared in God’s providence.
This also shows, in addition, that Christianity is not just one of many worldly religions. The founder of a worldly religion is a mere mortal, but the founder of Christianity is our Savior Jesus, and God has shown us that the truth of Christianity starts from the fact that this Savior of ours is God Himself. God is testifying to us, in other words, that the Christianity that we believe in is not merely a worldly religion. Unlike all the other earthly religions, Christianity is established on all the grace given by God. As it is written in Romans 11:36, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever,” He gave us His only begotten Son as our Savior, the gospel of the water and the Spirit for the remission of our sins, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, we must all know and believe in our hearts that we should fear and obey God and His Word with all our hearts.
The birth of the Messiah on this earth was according to the plan of salvation determined by God the Father even before the creation. Our salvation had been perfectly planned within this. God has allowed us to clearly realize that this truth is the actual substance of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. Therefore, we must recognize the salvation that has come to us through the gospel of the water and the Spirit as the remission of our sins, and believe so. It is through this faith that you and I could be saved from all our sins. We must believe that this truth of the four colors, too, is made whole by our faith in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit.
Jesus Christ, the Savior Who Has Saved Us with His Blue, Purple, and Scarlet Thread and Fine Woven Linen
The works by which Jesus Christ saved sinners from their sins are four-fold: the blue thread (Jesus’ baptism); the purple thread (Jesus as King of kings—God Himself, in other words); the scarlet thread (the blood of Jesus); and the fine woven linen (the completion of the salvation of all sinners from their sins through the elaborate Word of the Old and New Testaments). Jesus has become precisely the Savior with the blue thread, the purple thread, the scarlet thread, and the fine woven linen.
We must realize that unless we believe that Jesus, who came to us through the water and the Spirit, saved us from our sins with the blue thread (the baptism of Jesus), the purple thread (Jesus is God), the scarlet thread (the blood of Jesus), and the fine woven linen (Jesus who achieved salvation with the Word of the New and Old Testaments), we can never be delivered from our sins and the condemnation of these sins. Without thus saving us from our sins and condemnation, our Lord could not have become the perfect Savior.
We must realize spiritually the reason why the curtain of the gate of the Tabernacle’s court was woven with blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen. The gate of the Tabernacle’s court was made with these blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen so that everyone could obviously recognize the gate and easily find it. Through this gate, God allowed anyone to enter into His shining House.
The Tabernacle itself is the shining House of God. No one who wished to enter the House of God could do so without realizing the truth of salvation manifested in the fence and the gate of the Tabernacle’s court. God said that those who, ignoring the holiness of the white linen curtain draping the Tabernacle, do not enter into the Tabernacle by the gate, but climb over some other way, are all thieves and robbers. The gate of salvation refers to Jesus Christ (John 10).
When the Bible says that this gate is woven with blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen, God is showing us clearly, through His true Word of the Old and New Testaments, that Jesus Christ came to this earth as the Son of God, was baptized by John, died on the Cross, rose from the dead again, and thereby has become our Messiah. We can thus find out the mystery of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. We must believe that God has allowed us to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to save us from the judgement of the sins of this world, and that He is the Savior who has now achieved the salvation of mankind through the Word of the Old and New Testaments.
We must be able to actually realize why the gate of the Tabernacle’s court was woven with these blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen. What does the blue thread tell us? And what do the purple thread, the scarlet thread, and the fine woven linen tell us? When we realize God’s plan, we can also realize that the works of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and of the fine woven linen are all God’s plan of salvation for us and the truth of eternal life, and we can thereby enter into His Kingdom through our faith of the remission of sin.
When we say that we know and believe in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, it means that we know well the reason why Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and shed His blood on the Cross, who the Messiah is, all the mysteries of the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, and the gospel of the water and the Spirit of the New Testament. In short, the truth implied in the gate of the Tabernacle’s court is essential to all the believers who earnestly seek the truth to be eternally saved.
It may seem that many people are well knowledgeable of the Tabernacle, but in fact, this is actually not the case. People are actually quite ignorant of what is meant by the blue, purple, and scarlet thread woven into the gate of the Tabernacle’s court. As the mystery of these blue, purple, and scarlet thread and of the fine woven linen are difficult to understand, many people have a true desire to learn and believe in them. However, because this mystery cannot be understood just by anyone, many of them have ended up interpreting it erroneously based on their own opinions. Many religious leaders, in fact, have misinterpreted and misunderstood this truth in whatever way they felt like, only using it for their own religious ends. But God could no longer allow Christians to continue to be deceived by these liars. He thus had to explain clearly the meaning of the truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen used for the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, and thereby save them from all their sins.
1 John 5:6-8 from the New Testament states, “This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.” This passage explicitly states that our Lord came to this world in the flesh of a man, took upon our sins with His baptism, and saved us by shedding His blood. This is why the gate of the Tabernacle’s court was all woven of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen.
First, what does the blue thread show us? It shows us a part of the truth on Jesus, who became the actual Messiah of sinners, coming to this earth and taking upon the sins of the world by receiving His baptism from John. In fact, this baptism that Jesus received from John at the Jordan River is the truth of Jesus taking upon all the sins of the world once for all. Jesus actually bore all the sins of the world on His shoulder by being baptized by John the Baptist, the representative of all mankind. Because the sins of all human beings were thus passed onto Christ’s own head, those who believe in this truth have no sin in their hearts.
Second, what is the actual meaning of the purple thread woven into the gate of the Tabernacle’s court? It tells us that Jesus is the actual King of kings. Jesus, in fact, did make the universe, is the Creator Himself, not a creation, and is the actual Messiah who came to this earth. He, the Messiah, actually came to this earth already in the likeness of a human flesh. And by bearing all the sins of the world on His own body through the baptism that He received from John, and with His sacrificing death and resurrection, Jesus has saved all His people, who have recognized, feared, and believed in their Messiah, from all their sins and their judgment of sin.
Jesus is in fact our absolute God and absolute Messiah. He is the absolute Savior. Because Jesus took all our sins of the world upon Himself with His baptism, by bleeding and dying on the Cross and resurrecting from His death, He not only cleansed away all our sins, but He also received the vicarious judgment of sin in our place.
The scarlet thread, thirdly, refers to the blood that Jesus shed on the Cross, and its meaning is that Christ has given new life those of us who believe. This truth of the scarlet thread tells us that Jesus Christ not only received the judgment of our own sins by taking the sins of the world on Himself with His baptism received from John, but He also gave new life to believers by bestowing the life-giving faith to those who had died to sin. To those who believe in His baptism and the blood that He shed, Jesus has indeed given new life.
What, then, does the fine woven linen mean? It manifests that with the New Testament, God fulfilled His promise of salvation written in the Old Testament. And it tells us that when Jesus took all the sins of the world upon Himself with His baptism and was judged for our sins on the Cross in the New Testament, He fulfilled the salvation that God had promised to the Israelites and us with His Word of covenant.
Yahweh God said in Isaiah 1:18, “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ Says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.’” Also, the Old Testament’s sacrificial system governing how the sacrifices are offered in the Tabernacle, under which the sins of the people of Israel were passed onto the sacrificial lamb with the laying of hands, was the promise that God made to the Israelites and us. This was God’s revelation of the promise that He would save all the people of the world from their daily sins and yearly sins through the Lamb of God in the future.
This was also the sign of the promised Messiah to come. So in the New Testament’s time, when Jesus Christ took all the sins of the world upon Himself all at once by receiving His baptism according to the way of the Old Testament, it was the accomplishment of God’s covenant. Having given us all His Word of promise, God has shown us that He has actually fulfilled them all, exactly as He had promised. The baptism that Jesus received manifests this truth, that the God of covenant has fulfilled all His covenants.
Jesus Christ Who Came by the Water, the Blood, and the Spirit
Why was Jesus baptized by John? The reason was to take upon Himself all the sins of mankind, and to receive the judgment of sin on our behalf. To make all the sins of the entire mankind disappear, and to become our true Savior, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, went to the Cross, and bled and died on it. By doing so He not only washed away all our sins, but He also received all the judgment of these sins in our stead, and has thereby become our eternal Savior. All our sins were passed onto Jesus when He was baptized by John, and He carried these sins of the world to the Cross. It is because Christ bore all our sins with His baptism, and because He carried these sins of the world to the Cross, He could be crucified, shed His blood, and die in our place.
Isaiah 53:5 says, “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.” Through our Lord’s baptism, our original sins that were inherited to us from our common ancestor Adam and our own actual sins that we commit throughout our lives were all passed onto Him. And He was judged for all these sins. By thus coming to us by the water and the blood, our Lord has made all our sins disappear (1 John 5:5-8).
Who, then, is this Jesus Christ, our Savior and Messiah who took care of all our sins and made them all disappear? Genesis 1:1 states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Who was this mighty God that created the universe with His Word? He was none other than the Messiah of sinners, He who came by the water of His baptism to save you and me from all the sins of the world, the One who came as the Savior who bled on the Cross to be judged for all the sins of the world. Through the water, the blood, and the Spirit, Jesus has delivered us from our sins and judgment. Our Lord came to us as our Savior to take upon all our sins and be judged of these sins in our place.
Jesus Christ, in fact, is the Son of God and God Himself, for the Messiah actually is our God. The name “Jesus” means “the Savior who will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). “Christ,” “Basileus” in Greek on the other hand, means “King of kings.” Jesus is the Creator who made the whole universe, the absolute ruler of all, the Savior of sinners, and the King of kings who judges Satan.
This absolute God actually created man after His own image. As we, His own creation, fell into sin and became doomed to destruction because of our weaknesses, this King of kings promised us to save us from our sins, and to fulfill this promise He came to us. And to make us the whole people of God and sinless, our Lord Himself came to us by the water, the blood, and the Spirit.
The Messiah, who is the Creator, actually came to this earth in the flesh of a man to make all our sins disappear, and took all our sins upon Himself by receiving baptism from John at the Jordan River. And by dying on the Cross, He was judged for all our sins in our place. Because Jesus was in fact the very Messiah for us, because He is our Savior and the Lord of our life, we could earn new and eternal life by believing in Him. The Messiah therefore has indeed become our God. This is why the gate of the Tabernacle was woven of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, for this was the mystery of the water and the Spirit that delivers us from all our sins and the judgment of our sins.
The truth that the Lord has indeed saved us from our sins is not vague. Our Lord did not promise us His salvation ambiguously, did not achieve it roughly, and cannot approve the faith of those who believe in Him arbitrarily, apart from His concrete truth that He has actually saved us through His water and blood. Our Lord therefore said to those who nominally believe in Him, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).
False teachers insist that they actually did make people receive the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, cast out demons in His name, and did many wonders in His name. But God has said to them in Matthew 7:23, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” This tells us that among Christians, there actually are many who still remain sinful, who would be judged for their sins on the Day of Judgment, and then be cast out to hell.
There are, in fact, many Christians who clearly confess, “Jesus is our Savior. Jesus has unequivocally saved us from all our sins.” But despite making such claims, they actually do not even try to learn that the Messiah did indeed take upon their sins with His baptism, and that He did indeed bear their sins and the judgment of these sins by shedding His blood on the Cross. These people would all go before God while still remaining sinful, for they only believe nominally, as if they were merely practicing one of the many worldly religions.
As such, because they do not believe according to the truth that our Lord has said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” they have not been admitted by the Lord. Whether people believe in Jesus or not, those who have sin in their hearts cannot enter the Kingdom of God, where no sin is found, for they are not qualified to enter it. They must, therefore, make sure that they can be qualified to enter Heaven only by believing in the truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread while on this earth. Making the gate of the Tabernacle’s court by weaving its curtain with these blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen was the providence of the Messiah. Those who are headed to hell because of sin must believe in this.
Because these people are ignorant of the truth, and because they believe in Jesus with their mistaken knowledge attained on their own, they still remain sinful. They still have sin because they, instead of believing according to the truth hidden in the materials of the Tabernacle, have thought of their Savior on their own and made their own doctrines of salvation based on these thoughts, believing that salvation comes through their own efforts by offering prayers of repentance to God and trying to reach their incremental sanctification.
There are many in this world who claim to believe in Jesus as their Savior, and yet do not actually believe in the baptism of Jesus and His blood. There are many in this world who, instead of actually believing in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread as their salvation, think that they can enter the Holy Kingdom of God just by believing in the blood of Jesus, even if they still remain sinful.
The Matching of the Old and New Testaments
God tells us in Isaiah 34:16 that every Word of God has its matching pair. The Word of God, in other words, does all match up. God said to look and see for ourselves whether or not His Word of the Old Testament matches with His Word of the New Testament. What is written in the Old Testament has its corresponding Word in the New Testament. For example, whereas the Israelites passed their sins onto a sacrificial lamb with the laying on of hands in the Old Testament, in the New Testament this is matched by Jesus Christ being baptized to take upon all our sins of the world, and thus passing all our sins onto Himself.
Through His water and blood, Jesus came to this earth as the sacrificial offering and the Savior of sinners. Had He not taken upon the sins of the world by receiving His baptism, there would have been absolutely no need for Him to die on the Cross. Our Lord has clearly made all our sins disappear with the blue, purple, and scarlet thread. This, too, was promised by God with His Word, whereupon our Lord came to us through this Word and washed away our scarlet sins, turning them as white as snow.
Before realizing this truth, in fact, we were undoubtedly overflowing with endless sins. We therefore have nothing to boast of before God. Not only do we not have anything to boast of before God, but we have nothing at all to be confident of before Him. There is nothing, in other words, which would allow us to even pretend to be smart. Before God, all that we can say is, “Yes, You are right.”
If God says, “You are a seed of iniquities, bound to hell.”
“Yes, You are right; please save me.”
“I have saved you in this way, through the water, the blood, and the Spirit.”
“Yes, Lord! I believe!”
We can only say “yes” all the time. Standing before God, we cannot say to Him, “I did this and that; I served my church this well; I really believed in Jesus wholeheartedly; I defended my faith with a stubbornness that no one else can even imagine!”
How did the Lord actually make all our sins disappear? He has shown us that He made them disappear through the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and through the Word of the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, He made our sins disappear with the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, while In the New Testament, Jesus became our Savior by coming to this earth in the flesh of a man, taking all our sins upon Himself with His baptism received from John, and taking care of all our sins and the judgment of these sin by shedding His blood on the Cross.
By being baptized, our Lord took upon all the sins of the world all at once (Matthew 3:15). All our worldly sins were passed onto Jesus’ shoulder. After thus taking upon all our sins of the world with His baptism, He carried these sins to the Cross, was crucified, shed His blood, died on the Cross, rose from the dead again, and thereby made all our sins truly disappear. Jesus Christ has thus become our certain Savior.
The righteousness of God that we have received is the righteousness acquired by believing in this Jesus Christ who came to this earth through the water, the blood, and the Spirit. This is the very salvation received from God, not something that we achieved on our own. There is nothing that we can brag about before God.
In fact, we are saved from all our sins by believing in Jesus Christ who has become our certain Savior. We who had been sinners, in other words, actually received the remission of sin by believing in the baptism of Jesus and the blood that He shed for us. Were Jesus’ work of salvation to account for, say, around 70 percent of our salvation, and the remaining 30 percent to be accounted by our own efforts to not commit sin, for us to be gradually sanctified and for our salvation to be completed little by little, we would literally have to stay up all night praying fervently, spend every day offering our prayers of repentance, serving the community, or otherwise trying to do everything and anything possible!
But the Apostle Paul said in Romans, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 7:24, 8:1). Just as Paul thus confessed, we also must believe in Jesus Christ like he did. The Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ has fully saved us from this body of death, 100 percent. Who, then, can possibly condemn us? No one can ever condemn us, for Jesus Christ has already saved us 100 percent, regardless of our own infirmities.
You and I, Too, Were All Spiritual Pharisees
Some of you may have known and believed in Jesus a little bit for a long time. You had believed in Jesus as your Savior, in other words, even before you met the gospel of the water and the Spirit. I myself also had been a Christian, without being born again, for ten years.
When we first believed in Jesus as our Savior, it was a rather refreshing experience. This start was so refreshing that we thought we would be saved unconditionally just by believing in Jesus as our Savor, even if we remained ignorant of the truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread.
When I first believed in Jesus, my heart was in fact filled with joy. So I rejoiced greatly when I first believed in Jesus, but after about five years, I came to look at myself, and I saw that I had been bound continuously by the sins that I had committed, and came to the recognition that I was still not free. Do you think I committed sins, or not committed any at all, in those five years of my early Christian life? Whether you know me or not, the answer is pretty clear: of course I did. During this time, when I did not know the truth, I was tormented every time I committed sin, and to get rid of this agony I had to offer prayers of repentance, at times even fasting for three days. The burden of my heart then seemed to lift up a little, allowing me to praise God, “♫Amazing grace! ♫How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! ♪” But after this, of course, I would end up committing sin yet again. Because I had so many shortcomings and was full of blemishes, everyday I committed sin, even as I hated myself for doing so. Not once could I resolve all my problems of sin for good.
Under these circumstances, five more years went by, and when I thus had been a Christian for about ten years, suddenly, I was shocked to discover just how many sins I had committed over all those years. Looking at myself committing such great sins everyday, I was deeply saddened and utterly disheartened. And when I stood before the Law, I also discovered just how sinful I really was. It became more and more difficult for me stand before God, and I ended turning into a sinner who could not even claim, in good conscience, to know Jesus well and to believe in Him. So into my tenth year as a Christian, I could not but confess my sinfulness to myself.
When I first believed in Jesus, I actually thought that I was a fairly good Christian. But as time went by, I only realized more and more that I really had nothing to boast of before God. I recognized, “I am actually a Pharisee. Pharisees are not found just in the Bible, for I myself am a Pharisee of today!”
Pharisees are the kind of the people who pretend to be holy. Every Sunday on their way to the church with the Bible tucked at their sides, they shout out at their fellow Christians, “Good morning! Hallelujah!” And when they are worshiping, every time they hear someone speaking of the Cross, they end up crying. I myself, too, shed many tears, thinking of Jesus’ blood. I thought this is what giving the true worship was all about. But while living in this world, everyone eventually discovers one’s self, committing sin after sin. So people once again resort to giving the prayers of repentance. They might actually feel better for a while, but sooner or later, they would all run out of these prayers of repentance, for there are just way too many sins that they had committed. Some people even speak in tongues and see visions later on, but they are all useless. No matter what kind of attempt they might have tried, it was of no use for them to solve the problem of their sins in their hearts.
If they eventually realize that they are simply worthless beings before God and recognize that they are bound to hell because of their sins, even if this realization comes late, it would still be a fortunate outcome. In fact, the longer we have believed in Jesus, the more we realize just how awfully sinful we really have been. But the Pharisees are good at hiding this. They are so good at hiding the sins of their hearts and playing the hypocrite that they are even approved by those around them for their piety.
The religionists of this world greatly respect each other. But regardless of how much respect and approval they get from others, when they stand before God, they are just a big mass of sin.
When we did not know the truth, we, too, used to offer our prayers of repentance diligently. But after a while, we get tired, and so we end up praying, “Lord, do whatever you want to do. I have so many sins. I’ve sinned yet again. Now it’s become too embarrassing for me to even tell you about it.” Though it’s way too embarrassing, because we were told that God would be pleased whenever we confess our sins, and that He would forgive our sins with His righteousness and cleanse away from all unrighteousness, we continued to pray to Him, “Lord, I’ve sinned. Please forgive me, Lord!” And yet our sins, nonetheless, were still left in our hearts.
Whenever people bow their heads to pray to God, their conscience reminds them of their sins and eats away their hearts. Our conscience torments our hearts telling us, “With so many sins committed, how dare you to even pray to God?”
So, after a while, because we really had nothing more to say, we ended up just crying, “Lord, Lord!” More and more often, we found ourselves going up a mountain and shouting out the Lord’s name. To avoid the embarrassment of drawing people’s attention, we’ve climbed up a mountain late at night, entered in some cave there, and cried out the Lord’s name. But this, too, was just having a fit by ourselves, and our sins thus still remained with us.
We also tried to placate our conscience, telling ourselves that we are no longer sinful, “God is so merciful that He has made my sins disappear. I’ve fasted and prayed for three days. What is more, I think, I haven’t sinned that much. Wouldn’t our merciful God then forgive me?”
But could we really deceive ourselves, even if we were to praise God for His mercifulness? How could we ever deceive our own hearts when we remained sinful before God? We could never do so! No matter how high we climbed up into leadership positions of our churches, and no matter how much we were commended by others, as long as we still continued to commit sin on our own, we could never be freed from these sins, and thus ended up as hypocrites at last.
Sinful desires continued to rise up in our hearts. Though we spoke of Jesus’ blood on the Cross for countless times, though we shed many tears just by thinking of His blood of the Cross, and though we had been good Christians, we still remained sinful until we met the perfect gospel of the water and the Spirit. Despite living according to all the rituals of Christianity, we still had sin. This was the Pharisee’s religion. There are still many people on this earth who have this kind of faith, and they are found even in our Christian communities.
All Our Sins Disappeared by Believing in the Gospel of the Water and the Spirit
Before knowing the gospel of the water and the Spirit, and before believing in this gospel, we all had sin in our hearts. Before we believed in this truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen, our conscience was sinful. In all honesty, we were all sinful before God, and we were all bound to hell because of our sins, for the Bible tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” We were thus greatly tormented because of our sins. And we were bound to hell both physically and spiritually because of God’s judgment on us for our sins.
We had converted many people to Christianity and had taught them. But we had worked while we were unable to cleanse away even our own conscience. We could not deny this before God. We recognized before God that our hearts are sinful and that we are bound to hell.
I had always had an unsolved question: “Why was our Lord baptized when He came to this earth?” I wanted to find out why Jesus had received baptism. Why, and for what purposes did Jesus have to be baptized? I could understand our own water baptism as the mark of our faith in Jesus, but I could not understand at all why Jesus had been baptized by John the Baptist. Why was He baptized? Why?
So I asked some leaders in Christian communities, “Reverend, I have a question. Do you mind if I ask?” They told me to go ahead, and so I asked them. “It’s about the Bible. It is clear that Jesus did receive baptism from John in the New Testament. But, I’m not sure why He was baptized. Do you know why, Reverend?” They then smiled, saying to me, “You don’t even know that? It’s something that even our kids in the Sunday school know! It’s found in the original Scriptural texts, and in the Bible dictionaries as well. Wasn’t Jesus baptized to lead us by example, as a model, and to show us His humility?” So I said, “But Reverend, if the answer was so simple, even the kids in our Sunday school would indeed know it. I’ve examined it both in the original text and historically, but His baptism did not mean that. Wouldn’t there have been a reason why Jesus really was baptized by John?”
I continued to ask. I began to search for the answer right after I became a Christian. I had no choice but to devote years in search of the answer to that question. I looked up all the scholarly works on this question. Even though I thus searched, asked, and investigated everything, nowhere could I find anything that explained Jesus’ baptism clearly and definitively. I had struggled to find out the final answer until the Lord enlightened me on the gospel of the water and the Spirit manifested in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen.
While I was captured by the unsolved puzzle of the baptism of Jesus, I then came upon a chance to peruse Matthew 3:13-17: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. And John tried to prevent Him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?’ But Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he allowed Him. When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’”
Reading this Word, I finally realized, “So this is it! The reason why Jesus was baptized was because He was the sacrificial offering of the Old Testament! This is the truth of His salvation hidden in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen!”
John the Baptist was actually Elijah whom God had promised to send in the Old Testament. God said in Malachi 4:5 that He would send Elijah before the day of judgement, and Matthew 11:14 tells us that this Elijah whom He promised to send us is none other than John the Baptist. So I found out about Elijah, but I still was not sure why Jesus had to be baptized by John the Baptist. Then I went back to Matthew 3:13-17 and perused the passage again, “‘Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ …When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water… ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’” All my doubts were then dissolved. “To fulfill all righteousness,” He did actually receive His baptism. Jesus did indeed fulfill this righteous work of saving all people through His baptism.
Baptism is the same as the Old Testament’s laying on of hands, as when hands were laid on the heads of the sacrificial offerings in accordance to the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle. For sinners to bring forth these sacrificial offerings before the altar of burnt offering, to lay their hands on them and thereby confess their sins and pass them onto their sacrificial offering; for high priest to confess all the sins of the people of Israel and to pass them onto the sacrificial offerings for the Israelites and for themselves; and for Jesus to be baptized by John the Baptist in the New Testament’s time—all these things match with one another. I finally realized that Jesus thus received His baptism (laying of hands) in order to take upon Himself all the sins of the world and to make everyone’s sins disappear.
So I looked up the original Scriptural texts. I looked up how the phrase, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness,” is written in Greek “Ἄφες ἄρτι, οὕτως γὰρ πρέπον ἐστὶν ἡμῖν πληρῶσαι πᾶσαν δικαιοσύνην.” In this phrase, “for thus” and “righteousness” are equivalent to “hoo’-tos gar (οὕτως γὰρ)” and “dikaiosune (δικαιοσύνην)” in Greek. The former means “in this way,” “appropriately,” “only by this method,” “the most fitting,” or “on this fashion.” And the latter means, “righteousness, justification or equity acceptable to God.”
It told us that Jesus saved sinners from their sins. It told us that Jesus fulfilled the righteousness of God by being baptized and shedding His blood. It means, in other words, that He took upon all our sins with His baptism. All our puzzles were thus solved, for we now realized the true meaning of what had caused us so much confusion and wandering. It is because Jesus took upon all our sins with His baptism that He went to the Cross and died on it as the judgement of these sins. This was the truth found in the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
We, the born-again, came to realize, in other words, that the baptism that Jesus received from John was the indispensable constituent of our salvation, and that He took upon the sins of the world onto Himself all at once with this baptism. You also have to realize the same truth in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Only then your souls can be lighted.
We cannot, in fact, ever forget the day when Jesus received baptism from John. We cannot ever forget the day when we realized that all our sins were actually passed onto Jesus. We have seen the changes that occurred in our hearts with our realization of this truth. They spread throughout our hearts like waves fanning out in a lake. Piercing through the darkness, the bright light of dawn entered us, allowing us to know the truth of salvation.
The Baptism that Jesus Received Passed the Sins of the World onto Him
After reading Matthew 3:13-17, I could not utter a single word for a long time. Though I was in fact sinful, Jesus received His baptism, and said, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Therefore, the reason why He had to shed His blood on the Cross (the scarlet thread) was Jesus’ baptism (the blue thread). This Jesus was God Himself (the purple thread). And with the Word of the Old and New Testaments (the fine woven linen), He has taught us the real truth of salvation. Jesus, in other words, took upon all our sins.
“Do we, then, still have sin or not? When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, everyone’s sins were passed onto Him. Were our own sins passed onto Him as well? Were the sins of the world passed onto Him at that time? Are the sins that we already had when we were still in our mothers’ wombs worldly sins or not? What about the sins that we committed when we were just a year old? Are they not also the sins of the world? What about the sins that we committed in our childhood? Do they not also belong to the sins of the world?”
We have to ask ourselves these questions to make sure that we are on the right footing. Like this, faith is all about making sure that we are standing on the right ground with the Word of God. The sins that we committed in our childhood are indeed the sins of the world, as the sins that we committed in our teens are also worldly sins. All the sins that we commit in our lifetime, not to mention in our adulthood, are the sins of the world. All such sins of the world were passed onto Jesus already. Were they not? Of course they were! It is written that our Lord took upon not only our sins, but all the sins of each and every human being. So we realized, “All our sins were indeed passed onto Jesus. Do we then still have sin? No, we no longer have any sin left in us!”
It is because Jesus was actually baptized by John that John the Baptist testified, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) Jesus took away all the sins of every person who ever lived and will ever live, from the very beginning of mankind to its end. All the sins that anyone ever committed throughout the entire life, and even the sins of everyone’s children, were all taken away by Jesus. No matter how long this world lasts, whether for thousands of years or even billions of years, our Lord took upon the sins of all its people with His baptism, carried these sins on His shoulder to the Cross, was crucified, and thereby received all the judgement of sin for our sake—this is what we realized.
As we, the born-again, actually realized that Jesus rose from the dead again and became our Savior because of this, and as we believed so, all our questions were answered.
With the baptism that He thus received and by shedding His blood on the Cross, our Lord took care of all our sins. This is why the Bible speaks of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen on the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, and why it tells us in 1 John 5:4-6 that Jesus came to us not only of the water, but of the water and the blood. We thus came to realize, “So this is why the Bible tells us that our Savior Jesus fulfilled all God’s righteousness by receiving His baptism. This is the truth! However, Christian leaders didn’t teach us this truth because they were all ignorant of it!”
We become sinless only when God’s truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen tells us that we are sinless. No one can approve the salvation of another soul. It is of no use to gain the good word of others. How could what people say to us—that we are pretty good Christians, or even grading us A+ Christians—ever constitute our salvation from sin? We become sinless not when people approve us, but only when the Word of God tells us Christ made all our sins disappear with the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen.
The Word of God tells us that Jesus made not only my sins disappear, but also your sins. It tells us that because Jesus Christ the Messiah has made all the sins of all the people disappear, we would all receive the remission of sin if we would only believe. This is how we could enter into the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, by receiving the remission of sin through the water and the Spirit.
What Is the Perfect Faith?
The gate of the Tabernacle’s court was woven with blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and with fine woven linen. Everyone must have this perfect faith that believes that our Lord came to this earth and thus saved us from all our sins. When we believe that the Lord was born unto this earth in the flesh of a man, was baptized by John, died on the Cross, rose from the dead, and thereby became our Savior, we can all become God’s children. Though our deeds fall short, and though our flesh is worthless, by believing in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen in our hearts, we have become sinless. Therefore, to become the righteous is only possible through faith. By believing in the salvation manifested through the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen, we have been clothed in God’s righteousness. By believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, in short, we have become God’s children.
Some of you still may not understand fully. If so, all that you have to do is just continue on perusing this book or attend God’s church. So far we have discussed only the general aspects of the Tabernacle, but once you begin to read the detailed explanations, you will all be able to reach the complete understanding of the Tabernacle. It is so easy that even a child can readily comprehend.
If people were to base their faith on their rough knowledge of Jesus, they would never be saved from their sins, no matter how long they believe in Jesus, for a thousand or ten thousand years to come. They would still have sin everyday. They would then cry everyday, for they cannot be escape from the curse of their sins. When things start go okay for them, these people think that God is helping them. But when things go bad even slightly, they wonder, “Is it because I didn’t give tithe? Or is it because I missed church last Sunday? I’ve sinned and failed to serve God properly, and I think He is actually punishing me for them.” In this way, they end up dying locked up in the Law, for the Scripture tells us that “the law brings about wrath” (Romans 4:15).
To really have the kind of faith that is whole, we must know correctly and believe in the four ministries of Jesus Christ who came to us through the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. We must realize the truth given by Jesus Christ. Only when we have a clear understanding of this four-fold truth and believe in it, we can have faith that is whole before God, and we can truly become His perfect children. Because we have become sinless by believing in these four ministries of Jesus, we are always the sinless righteous, even without our own struggle to free ourselves from the bondage of sin; we are the sinless people of faith, even without exerting our own willpower; and we are the perfect children of God whose sins were all washed away as white as snow, even without our own good deeds or trying.
Like a baby playing and resting in peace under the watchful eyes of the parents, by believing in this truth, we in fact have peace and tranquility in our hearts before the merciful eyes of God the Father. Even though your deeds may be insufficient, all that you have to do is believe in the Lord’s works, for the more insufficient you are, the more you would feel the love of our Lord.
Are you clamoring to receive the remission of your sins, still unable to have the faith that believes in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen? Now those who know this truth do not have to clamor to receive the remission of sin, but just believe quietly. The ones who have become the children of God by faith are those who truly know and believe in Jesus Christ, He who came to us through the water, the blood, and the Spirit. They serve God not with their superficial acts, but they love and serve Him with their faith first. Because we believe, God grants us His audience and walks with us. Because we believe in Him, He helps us. And because we believe in Jesus who has saved us with the baptism and the blood in which we place our faith, we have become God’s servants who serve His righteous works.
We must now all realize the truth that God made the gate of our salvation in the Tabernacle’s outer court, weaving it with the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen, in order to give us the salvation of the definitive remission of sin. The Scripture tells us that Jesus came to us through the water, the blood, and the Spirit, and that He has saved us from our sins with the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen of the gate of the Tabernacle’s court in the Old Testament. Our Lord has become the gate of our salvation from sin. We must believe, and believe yet again, in these four works of the Messiah who has actually and factually delivered us from all our sins.
The Baptism that Jesus Received from John Is the Real Substance of the Blue Thread Manifested in the Gate of the Court of the Tabernacle
Let’s turn to Matthew 3:13-17 again: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. And John tried to prevent Him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?’ But Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he allowed Him. When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’” At this time, when Jesus was baptized, it had been 30 years since He was born of the Virgin Mary. The word “then” here refers to the time when both John the Baptist and Jesus had turned 30.
John the Baptist, born 6 months prior to Jesus, was the representative of this earth’s mankind who were giving them the baptism of repentance (Matthew 3:11, 11:11). When Jesus turned 30, He came to this John, who was baptizing people at the Jordan River, to be baptized. But John the Baptist tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?” Jesus then replied, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” John then allowed, and Jesus was baptized by him. The Scripture also records that when Jesus was thus baptized, heaven was opened to Him, and a voice came from it, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
In Matthew 3:15 here, Jesus tells us the reason why He was baptized by John. This truth refers to the blue thread of the Tabernacle’s court: “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” The purpose of the baptism of Jesus received from John was to forgive the iniquities of sinners through His works manifested in the Tabernacle’s blue, purple, and scarlet thread—“for thus it [was] fitting for [them] to fulfill all righteousness.”
That Jesus Christ would take everyone’s sins upon Himself by being baptized by John the Baptist was the righteous love of God and the fulfillment of His work of salvation of all sinners. As John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus was baptized to save us from the sins of the world, so that we may not be condemned because of our sins. This is why Jesus took all the righteousness of God and all the sins of mankind upon Himself by being baptized by John, for thus it was fitting for them to fulfill all righteousness.
What is “all the righteousness of God?” The passage above tells us that the reason why Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist was to fulfill all the righteousness of the Father.
Here, we need to find out exactly what all the righteousness of God really is. “All righteousness” refers to the fact that Jesus Christ, by being baptized by John, took all the sins of mankind upon Himself. With His baptism, He took all the sins of the world upon Himself, all at once. As the purpose of His birth was to blot out all the sins of the world at once, the baptism that Jesus received from John was clearly righteous. To fulfill all the righteousness of God meant to fulfill the righteous works that make all the sins of the world disappear—that is, it was to fulfill salvation.
The baptism of Jesus was the indispensable method by which God would deliver us from our sins. God set in the Old Testament that to blot out our sins, He would raise John the Baptist as the representative of mankind, make him baptize His Son Jesus Christ, and thereby pass all our sins onto His Son. None other than this was the work of God’s mercy. Because God has loved us so much, God made Jesus be baptized by John to turn us into His own children and to complete the righteous work of blotting out our sins. This is why God said, when Jesus had been baptized and came up from the water, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God the Father, in other words, said, “With His baptism, My Son has taken all your sins upon Himself.”
Jesus Christ, in other words, came to this earth, and through this method of being baptized by John, He bore all our sins all at once, in the most appropriately way, and thus became the sacrificial offering to make our sins disappear.
It was because the Son of God was baptized for our sake, and because He thus accepted all our sins onto Himself, that He carried these sins to the Cross, was crucified and shed His precious blood, and thereby became the Savior of all of us. Jesus has saved us who believe, in other words, by being baptized for our sins, sacrificing Himself with His blood on the Cross, and rising from the dead again. And after rising from the dead and completing His works of salvation, He now sits on the right hand of the throne of God, and when His time comes, He will most surely return. This truth is the gospel of the water and the Spirit and the core of salvation.
On the gate of the court of the Tabernacle, Exodus 27:16 records, “For the gate of the court there shall be a screen twenty cubits long, woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen, made by a weaver.” So the gate of the court of the Tabernacle was woven of these blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen. This tells us the truth that we enter the Kingdom of Heaven by believing in the gift of salvation.
The blue thread woven into the gate of the Tabernacle’s court refers to the fact that all our sins were passed onto Jesus when He came to this earth and was baptized.
The purple thread tells us that Jesus Christ, who was baptized for our sins, was fundamentally the Creator Himself who made the whole universe and everything in it, the Lord of you and me. Purple is the color of kings (John 19:2-3), and therefore it tells us that Jesus Christ is the King of kings and the Lord of all. The word “Christ” means “the anointed,” and only kings, priests, or prophets could be anointed. As such, although Jesus Christ came to this earth in the flesh of a man, His true identity was actually the King of kings. Jesus, in other words, was the Lord and the Creator who made the whole universe. Jesus was the Almighty God Himself and the only begotten Son of God the Father.
The scarlet thread woven into the gate of the Tabernacle refers to the sacrifice that this King of kings made when, after coming to this earth in the flesh of a man and taking our sins upon Himself with His baptism, He was crucified and shed His blood on the Cross. Jesus Christ paid the wages of our sins on our behalf, by being baptized, shedding His precious blood, and thus sacrificing Himself for our sake. The scarlet thread manifests the sacrifice of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Lastly, the fine woven linen refers to God’s intricate Word of the Old and New Testaments. The Bible tells us of our salvation through the Word of the Old and New Testaments. From the Old Testament, God promised that He would come to us as the Savior of sinners, and in the New Testament, just as He had promised, Jesus Christ, God Himself, did indeed come to this earth, was baptized, and shed His blood on the Cross—all give Himself up as the sacrifice for our sins.
With the blue thread, God manifested the Word that Jesus Christ came to this earth to save us from our sins and took these sins of ours upon Himself with His baptism; and with the purple thread, He manifested that this One who was baptized was in fact God Himself. And with the scarlet thread, God manifested that He has saved you and me from our sins by coming to this earth as our Savior, being baptized, carrying the sins of the world to the Cross, and shedding His precious blood.
That this salvation came by the Word of God promised from the Old Testament, on the other hand, was manifested with the fine woven linen. This is why the gate of the court of the Tabernacle was woven with these blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen. When we look at the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, this gate manifests and shows us clearly just how God has saved us from our sins and made us His people; as such, we must all believe in the spiritual meaning of the four threads used for the gate of the court of the Tabernacle.
Speaking of the colors of the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, the Bible first mentions its blue thread. We usually think in the order of purple, blue, and scarlet thread, but the Bible actually lists in the order of blue, purple, and scarlet thread. This shows us the importance of the blue thread. While Jesus Christ indeed came to this earth as our Savior, had He not been baptized by John, we would not have been able to be cleansed of our sins. This is why Jesus, to save us from the sins of the world, was baptized by John and crucified, all in obedience to the will of the Father.
Jesus is the Lord of the universe who created all things, and He is our God. He is God Himself who has made us be born unto this earth, who has given us new life, and who rules over our lives. For Him to save us from our sins, He had to be baptized by the representative of all mankind and thereby take all our sins upon Himself. It is by being baptized by John, in other words, that Jesus Christ has become our true Savior.
It was to deliver us from our sins that Jesus Christ came to this earth, and it was to take all our sins upon Himself that He was baptized. Were it not for His baptism in the first place, Christ would never have been able to be crucified. This is why the gate of the court of the Tabernacle is showing us clearly just how exactly Jesus Christ has saved us from our sins—that is, the precise method of His salvation.
The colors of the gate of the court of the Tabernacle tell us that Jesus Christ would come to this earth, take all the sins of mankind upon Himself with His baptism received from John, and be crucified—that He, in other words, would take care of all our sins by Himself. When Jesus was baptized, the door of Heaven was opened, and God the Father spoke, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Jesus Christ is our Messiah and Savior, but He is also the Son of God, the very God the Creator who made the whole universe with His own Word. As being the Holy God, Jesus could bore all our sins by being baptized in order for Him to become our true Savior.
Jesus Christ who created the whole universe and rules over it has shown us the clear salvation from our sins. It is because Jesus Christ, to blot out our sins, came to this earth, took all such sins upon Himself with His baptism and died on the Cross that you and I have been truly saved. Jesus Christ is the Creator who rules over our life and death, who created the whole universe, and who brought our forefathers and the entire mankind out onto this earth. He was the very substance of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen.
God Himself came to this earth as the sacrificial offering of sinners. Jesus who has saved us was this God, the Almighty and the God of mercy. It is because Jesus Christ took all sins upon Himself with His baptism that He fulfilled all the righteousness of God, and this is why He carried the sins of the world to the Cross, was crucified and shed His precious blood. Just as it is manifested in the gate of the court of the Tabernacle, Jesus Christ became our own sacrificial offering to blot out all our sins.
This is why not only the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, but also the gate of the Holy Place, the gate of the Most Holy, and even its covering of the House of God were all woven with blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen. It is because Jesus Christ was baptized for your sake that you and I are washed of all our sins by believing in it. Jesus was baptized to fulfill all righteousness, and this righteousness was accomplished by taking the sins of all people upon Himself through His baptism. What we must do, therefore, is to realize that all our owns sins were also passed on Jesus at that time, and believe so.
However, there are so many Christians who believe in Him arbitrarily and recklessly. They are too stubborn to abandon their own religious faith of lawlessness, challenging God from the very beginning. We have to believe in Him according to the way of salvation He has given us. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He is telling us, “I am the way. I am the way that leads you to Heaven. I am the Shepherd, the way and the truth. I am indeed the life that saves you.” By saving us from our sins, Jesus Christ has become the Lord of new life to us.
When We Believe in Jesus, How Should We Understand and Believe in Him?
We can be saved from all our sins only by believing in the exact way that He came to this earth and has saved us. The word “faith” includes such meanings as “to rely on,” “to hold on to,” and “to entrust.” Seniors often rely on their children when they grow too old, as they find it too difficult to live by themselves. Likewise, the reason why we live by entrusting ourselves to God is because we simply cannot make our sins disappear on our own. Even if we try not to sin ourselves, we still end up living our lives always sinning. It is because we cannot free ourselves from our sins that we believe in God and place our trust in Jesus Christ our Savior by believing in what He has done for us.
This is why when we believe in Jesus and seek our salvation, we must first know what kind of faith is the right faith. Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus came to this earth to save you and me—indeed, each and every human being of this world—from our sins. Turning 30, He then was baptized by John the Baptist and thereby took all the sins of the world upon Himself. We must all believe in this fact. We must believe that when Jesus accepted not only your and my sins but all the sins of the world onto Himself with His baptism, every sin, of the past, the present, and even the future, was all taken up by Jesus Christ already.
However, many people are still ignoring this fact that not only all the sins of the world but also all their own sins were passed onto Jesus when He was baptized, and continue to believe only in the blood of the Cross. That’s why none of them can easily discern which faith is the right one, even though they all see that all the gates of the Tabernacle were woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen.
When Jesus Christ came to this earth to save us, He did not save us in a slapdash fashion. It is because He actually took all our sins upon Himself with His baptism and bore all the condemnation of our sins with His crucifixion that you and I have been wholly saved. This is how Jesus Christ has saved the entire mankind. This is why our Lord said, “The one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:37).
When we say that we believe in Jesus, we do not believe only in His character, nor only in His omnipotence. Rather, we are saved by believing that Christ, despite the fact that He is God, came to this earth, took all your and my sins upon Himself with His baptism, and was sacrificed on the Cross for our sake. When we look at the salvation manifested in the Tabernacle, it becomes crystal-clear to us just what exactly is the right faith that we must have when we profess to believe in Jesus.
Today, there are many people who believe only in the blood of the Cross, incessantly chanting, “♫ Would you be free from the burden of sin? ♪ There’s power in the blood, power in the blood ♫,” and blindly shouting out, in their own eagerness, “Lord! I believe!” No matter how ardently they believe in Jesus, they can never be freed from their sins just by believing in the blood of the Cross alone.
Because we are such that we can never be freed from our sins throughout our entire lives, we absolutely need the Savior, and this Savior is none other than Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ who came to deliver you and me is the Savior, the King of kings, the Creator who made the whole universe and everything in it, and the Lord of our lives. He came to this earth, took our sins upon Himself with His baptism, and cleansed us of our sins by dying on the Cross. We are saved, in other words, by believing in Jesus Christ, who bore all the condemnation of our sins with His baptism and Cross, as our Savior. This is what the gate of the court of the Tabernacle is clearly and definitively showing us.
People Who Believe in Jesus Only Religiously
In these days, people claim that they can be saved just by believing in the blood of the Cross alone. Making such empty claims is nothing more than a display of their religious faith. These people say, “When I gave my prayers of repentance to God, the Holy Spirit spoke to me in my heart, ‘My child, I have forgiven your sins.’ How thankful I was when I heard His voice!” They make such claims saying that such beliefs are their testimony of faith.
But our salvation does not come by our own emotional feelings. Rather, we are saved through the entire dimensions of our personality: knowledge, emotion, and will. We must be saved, in other words, by first knowing just how God our Savior has saved us, and then believing in it. But what about religions? What are they? Religions are nothing more than man-made institutions built on people’s own thoughts.
Long ago, in my family, my mother was the chef. I used to be her assistant, following her all around the kitchen, asking what help she needed—sort of like Jacob from the Bible. When my mother was busy in the kitchen preparing the meal, I was busy setting the table in the dinning room. My mother and I used to make a fantastic combination. Getting up in the morning, we got the fire going, prepared the table, and after the meal, brushed the kitchen floor with a broom. All the morning’s chores were finished with this broom.
This was not a peculiar scene in Korea those days. But the more interest thing was that this very broom that was used to clean the kitchen floor would all of a sudden turn into a god that would ostensibly give us anything we ask for. There were, in other words, people who actually prayed to this worn-out broom. Such absurdities were frequent in our lives; not only this, but whenever there was some misfortune in the family or the neighborhood, we used to call in a shaman to perform witchcraft. Because people at the time held pantheistic beliefs and believed that gods were everywhere, not only this broom that was used to brush the ground could turn into a god, but also ancestral tablets on which their forefathers’ names were written, a large rock up in the hill, or practically everything else seen by their eyes could turn into a god.
Nowadays, with the passing time, people have gradually come out of this kind of ignorance, but at that time, it was a frequent happening that just about anything would turn into a god. So one of the most brisk businesses of the time was none other than witchcraft. I remember seeing witches reciting incomprehensible spells while performing witchcraft. I used to mimic the witch’s way of chanting a spell, saying, “Abracadabra Abracadabra, may the daylight come, may the daylight come, everything is mine when the daylight comes. The pumpkin barrel was broken because of the lack of devotion. Abracadabra Abracadabra.” I had no idea, of course, what they meant.
When such witchcraft was performed in one of the neighborhood’s houses, everyone from the whole village used to gather together to see it. The highlight of such an occasion came when bills were stuffed into the head of a dead pig, smiling without a clue. How many bills were stuffed used to determine the witch’s spells and her potency. This witchcraft would continue throughout the whole night until the daylight breaks.
Among my acquaintances of old, there was someone who claimed to be possessed by a virgin ghost. He used to claim that he could drive away pretty much all demons, because he was possessed by a virgin ghost—virgin ghosts presumably held more power than others. He said that if he ends up facing a more powerful demon, he himself could be strangled rather than driving out this demon, but he nevertheless claimed that he could drive out all the garden-variety demons. He was none other than a sorcerer.
He spent his usual times ordinarily, just like anyone else. But whenever someone asked him to perform his exorcism, he changed his clothes in a sorcerer’s outfit and performed his spectacular show. It is because people’s hearts are occupied by such superstitious minds that they follow this kind of primitive religions that have nothing to do with the Word of God and end up believing in all kinds of crazy and shameful things.
People, in other words, have made up their own religions. As in the above story, they have invented their gods on their own. Because people have this kind of instinct, even as Christians, when they are told that Jesus was crucified for them, they can also be easily overwhelmed by their own emotions over this, and end up obsessing over and blindly believing in Him. And when they are told that Jesus is the Son of God and the Creator who made the whole universe, they just love it, and once again believe unconditionally. They also love to hear, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me,” and, yet again, believe in it unconditionally without any real understanding. Because no Word of God is erroneous, even when they hear the good Word for the first time, all that they say is that they just love Jesus.
But Jesus will come to judge these people whose hearts still remain sinful despite professing their faith in Jesus. He will also come to take away those who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Most of the people who are ignorant of the truth of the gospel of the water and the Spirit and believe in Jesus only based on their own thoughts will eventually realize, in about 10 years since the beginning of their religious lives, that they are really sinners unable to live according to the Law of God.
I, too, used to believe in Jesus arbitrarily. I used to sing praises all the time, simply overjoyed to have encountered Christ. But after knowing Jesus, I came to know the Law, and after knowing the Law, I came to know my sins. After knowing my sins, I then came to realize that there would be eternal judgment of sin, and, as a result, the suffering of sin followed.
To solve this suffering of sin, I therefore offered my sincere prayers of repentance. However, such faith was just like the superstitious beliefs with which people prayed to all things to be blessed. Because my heart was so troubled after I came to know the Law written in the Word of God and realized my sins, I thought I had to give my prayers of repentance, and such prayers of repentance did bring me some emotional relief. But sin still remained in my conscience, and discovering that my soul was still in the bondage of sin, I continued to suffer.
In this way, it was not because I had been bound by my sins that I came to believe in and love Jesus, but it was because I had believed in Jesus that I came to realize my sins, and it was after I thus realized my sins that suffering came to me. “I must have believed in Jesus too early,” I even thought, and ended up even regretting that I came to know and believe in Jesus so early in my youth. Yet I could not simply stop believing in Jesus. And so to break away from this bondage of sin, I gave my prayers of repentance, but to no avail, for these prayers did little to solve the problem fundamentally.
Ordinary people are not aware of what sins they have committed even as they are committing them, but when they start attending church, they hear about the Law and come to realize their sins, and therefore become locked in their sins. They then first try to solve the problem of their sins by giving their emotional prayers of repentance, but the more time passes by, the more they realize that they are bound in their sins and they must be forgiven of them.
No matter how much they offer their prayers of repentance, the more they pray, the more they realize that their sins, far from disappearing, become even more clearly revealed and remind them even more of their presence. From this point and on, such people’s religious lives turn tortuously painful and they continue to suffer. They wonder, “I felt so good when I first believed, but why do I feel so much worse now than 5, 10 years have passed by? Why am I more troubled?” They realize that even their conviction of salvation, which had been held so firmly when they first believed, is no longer there. Thinking that they became sinful after believing in Jesus, they resort to fitting all kinds of doctrines to their beliefs, and end up become such religionists.
It is because these people are ignorant of the truth that Jesus has saved them from their sins with His blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen that they ultimately end up becoming mere religionists. Though they profess to believe in Jesus, they are still troubled, for their hearts have no peace. Such people cannot even resort to changing to a different god, for even if they try, they know already that believing in anything other than God Himself is committing idolatry. Because they know clearly that only Jesus is the Son of God, that He alone is God Himself, and that only He is their Savior, they cannot even believe in a different god. And yet because they do not know the truth, they live in suffering, always troubled by their sins.
This is why they must know and believe in the Jesus Christ that came through the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. These Christians who ended up turning into religionists also know that Jesus is the King, that He shed His blood on the Cross, and that the Word of the Bible is the Word of God.
What they do not know, however, is that Jesus took not only their sins but also all the sins of the world upon Himself with His baptism, and this ignorance is the reason why they are living as sinners even as they profess their faith, and why they will all end up going to the place reserved for sinners. Because such Christian religionists have no idea just how exactly Jesus took care of their sins, they believe in their own emotions whenever they spring up. As a result, the actual reality does not coincide with what they believe, like a blind trying to make out an elephant by touching its parts. This is why they are completely oblivious to what is wrong with their faith, and this is why then up in confusion once again.
What Would Happen to Us If We Do Not Believe in the Truth of the Blue Thread?
What would happen if we were to believe in Jesus as our Savior while leaving the blue thread out of the gate of the Tabernacle’s court? When God commanded to build the gate of the Tabernacle’s court by weaving it with blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen, what would He have said had Moses instead told the Israelites to build the gate with just purple and scarlet thread and fine woven linen, and had the Israelite indeed completed the gate in this way? Would God have approved it as the gate of His Tabernacle? He would have never approved it as such. Because God told the Israelites to build the gate of the Tabernacle with four threads of different colors, if it was not built accordingly, it could never be called as the gate of the Tabernacle. Not a single one of the four threads can ever be left out.
The gate of the Tabernacle’s court had to be woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen. Because Jesus, God Himself, came to this earth as our Savior in the flesh of a man, took all the sins of the world upon His own body, died on the Cross, rose from the dead, and has thereby washed away our sins as white as snow, it is by trusting and believing in this Jesus Christ that we have been delivered from our sins. The colors of the gate of the Tabernacle tell us how we have to believe in Jesus to be saved from our sins. Those who believe in the truth manifested in the gate of the Tabernacle have all been saved from their sins. They have all received the remission of their sins, as white as snow. Jesus Christ has washed away your and my sins, turning us as white as snow. Jesus Christ has become the actual Savior of you and me.
This is the very truth manifested in the gate of the Tabernacle. Yet there are many people today who do not believe in the implication of the blue thread, even as they profess to believe in the purple and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen.
To do preliminary research for this book, I once went to a Christian bookstore. There I found some books on the Tabernacle written by some of the most famous Christian leaders. However, some did not even address the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, while others made such unfounded assertion as the following: “What do the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen of the Tabernacle’s court tell us? Blue is the color of the sky, and it therefore tells us that Jesus is God. Scarlet refers to the precious blood that Jesus shed on the Cross when He came to this earth. Purple tells us that He is King.”
This kind of interpretation is way off the mark. That Jesus is God is told to us through the purple thread. When God has already told us through the purple thread that Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, why would He repeat this with the blue thread again? It is because these people do not know the mystery of the blue thread that they have failed to interpret it properly.
Because they know only the blood of the Cross, they place a great emphasis on the scarlet thread. When we see their drawings of the gate of the Tabernacle, we see that it is dominated by white and red colors. When the four colors of blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen must be clearly shown in the gate of the Tabernacle’s court, their drawings only show scarlet and white thread, with some purple thread, but no blue thread at all.
There are so many people in this world now who speak of such untenable faith without even realizing the truth of the blue thread. There are so many in today’s time who claim that they can be saved just by believing in Jesus’ blood on the Cross alone, even as they do not even realize that Jesus took our sins of the world upon Himself with His baptism all at once to bear our condemnation. Such people’s hearts always remain sinful. For today, tomorrow, and beyond—in fact, until they die—such people remain tormented as they cannot be freed from their sinfulness. So some people confess, “I am a sinner before God until I die.” But is this really the right faith, that they would remain as sinners until their death, even as they believe in Jesus?
After believing in Jesus, when exactly do we become righteous then? Is Heaven not a place reserved for those who have become sinless by believing in Jesus’ baptism and blood? Heaven is indeed a place for the righteous, not for the sinful. Only the righteous who have been definitely saved from their sins and who have become sinless can enter Heaven.
Those who declare themselves to be sinners until death even as they believe in Jesus have no conviction of their salvation no matter how many times they have confessed their faith in Him, because they are ignorant of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. Even as they believe in Jesus and pray to Him, they have no conviction that their prayers would be answered. Though they believe in Jesus, they are neither helped nor loved by Him. They might feel loved while they show their devotion, but when they slacken off their devotion, they feel as if they have been abandoned by God, as if they are hated by Him. They think that God loves them and blesses them only when they give their offerings and devotion to Him, and that He no longer loves them when they fail to give Him their offerings. When they encounter some hard times, they think that God hates them, unable to understand why they must go through such hard times, and ultimately end up blaming Him for their misery and no longer believe in Him.
In the end, the trust between such people and God gets broken. Because their faith is a product of their own thoughts and emotions, it is very arbitrary, precarious, and wrong. When we go to God, we must cast aside our emotions. When we to go God, we must go only with our faith that clearly believes in the truth that Jesus Christ has saved us, who were bound to hell because of our sins, with His baptism and blood. Before the Word of God and the Word of the Law, before the gospel of the water and the Spirit, and with our consciences also, we must clearly recognize that we were the ones who could not but be doomed to hell without exception. Only when we know, learn, believe, and trust in what sinful beings we really are and how God has saved us from our sins can we all realize that Jesus Christ has already become our true Savior.
Only by True Faith Can We Receive the Gift of Salvation
Therefore, you and I must realize that we are saved from our sins by believing in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen, not by doing virtuous deeds of our own. And we must know and believe that to save us from our sins, Jesus Christ came to us clearly in this four-fold truth. He promised in the Old Testament to come as the Messiah, and just as this promise, He did indeed come to this earth, and with His baptism, took our sins and the sins of the entire mankind upon Himself all at once. He then carried these sins of the world to the Cross, was crucified, shed His precious blood, and died after uttering, “It is finished!” (John 19:30) Rising from the dead again in three days, He testified for 40 more days and ascended to the right hand of the throne of God, promising to return. We must believe these.
“I have saved you definitely with My ministries of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. And I will come back to take away those who believe in this truth of salvation. I will also give them the right to become God’s children. For those who believe in this truth in their hearts, I will cleanse their sins and make them white as snow, I will give them the Holy Spirit, and I will make them My own children.” This is what our Lord has told us.
We must believe in this Word. Our Lord has already fulfilled these promises, and He is actually working in the lives of those on this earth. He protects those who believe in this truth and bears witness for them. This is how we have been saved through our Lord’s works of baptism and blood, dwell in the grace, protection and love of God, and live the life of the righteous. It is because He has saved us that we have been delivered from our sins by believing.
When this book on the Tabernacle is translated into all the languages of the whole world, I am sure that people of the entire world would be saved from their sins through their faith in the truth. Those who claim that the remission of sin comes only by the blood of Jesus will no longer be able to make such claims, but they will instead come to realize just how false their claims had been. They will no longer be able to hold on to something false and claim that this is salvation. They will never be able to say that they can be saved just by believing in the blood of Jesus alone.
In the gate of the Tabernacle’s court is found the gospel of the water and the Spirit, the clear Word of salvation of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen. Because this is the Word of God promised and prophesied from the Old Testament, and because God has kept this promise in the New Testament by fulfilling salvation from all sins with His baptism and crucifixion, if we just believe in this gift of salvation in joy and thankfulness, we can all receive the eternal remission of sin.
This is the Word that is so easy and perfect, but it also is the truth that cannot be understood even with all the knowledge of the entire universe, if you do not have the pure faith in His Word. That’s why we must believe in His Word as it is. Because it is such a precious truth that we cannot afford to be remain ignorant of, you and I must most certainly believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. By teaching us the truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen manifested in the Tabernacle freely and easily, God has allowed us to have this priceless gift of salvation with our faith.
You and I alike, who believe in this truth, we all give our thanks to God for His love of truth. Yet there are many who remain ignorant of the real truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and are teaching and leading people to their false ways. To them also, we want to spread this truth. To those whose hearts are tormented by their ignorance of the truth, we preach this gospel of the truth of the water and the Spirit, wanting them to be freed from their sins and enter into the door of salvation. When we preach the truth of the Tabernacle, those who believe in it will be saved, but those who do not believe will be condemned of their sins. If we have decided to believe in Jesus, we must believe in Him knowing the truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread.
No one knows the truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread from the beginning. God told us, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). What is the truth? The truth is the true gospel (Ephesians 1:13), that is, the gospel of the water and the Spirit manifested in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread. Knowing the blue, purple, and scarlet thread properly and believing in them is the correct faith in the truth.
Why did God say that the truth will make us free? How have you been saved from your sins? By believing in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, have you been not only saved from all your sins, but are your hearts also dwelt by the Holy Spirit? From both your hearts and consciences, have your sins clearly disappeared? Do you really believe and can you really confess from the depth of your hearts that God is indeed your Father? Because God recognizes only those who are sinless as His children, He approves only the faith of those who know and believe in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen weaved into the gate of the court of the Tabernacle. Sinners are not God’s children; only the born-again who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, the only gospel that God has given us, are the children of God the Father.
Though we face many difficulties, hardships, and sufferings while living in this world, because God dwells with us, we are happy. Though we are insufficient, we are living our blessed lives, believing in the righteousness of God and preaching throughout the whole world the gospel of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, the gospel that bestows us the righteousness of God.
I am thankful to God, above all, for the blue, purple, and scarlet thread. When I first believed in Jesus, regardless of how devotedly I believed, my heart had still remained sinful, and I was greatly tormented because of this. No matter how sincerely I had professed to believe in Jesus, sin was clearly present in my conscience. One can find out whether he/she is sinful or not before God by looking at his/her own conscience. In other words, those who still have sins written in their consciences are those who still have not been able to receive their remission of sin. If their consciences have even the smallest of all sins, this is the evidence that they have not received the remission of sin.
However, when I could not know the truth that would solve all the problems of my sins, even the tiniest of all, and when all kinds of questions and wonderings arose in my heart as a result, God met me through His Word of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread.
This Word was found in the passage from the Gospel of Matthew that we have read previously. While reading Matthew 3:13-17, I came upon the passage, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). I then realized and believed that when Jesus was baptized and came up from the water, God testified His righteousness, and all righteousness was fulfilled as all sins were blotted out through this baptism of Jesus.
When Jesus Christ was baptized by John, all my sins were clearly passed onto Him, and at once they were all solved on the Cross. The very moment I realized and believed in the reason why Jesus was baptized, all the problems and questions about my unsolved sins were answered, as all my sins were at once cut off from me. I was so thankful for this truth of the remission of sin, for the fact that I received this remission of sin by knowing and believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, the true Word of God.
The Lord came to me through His written Word, and I received the remission of my sins through this Word of the water and the Spirit, by believing in it in my heart. From then on, through the Word of the Old and New Testaments, I have been testifying the gospel of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread to many people, and even now, I am continuing to spread all these truths and mysteries of salvation. The true gospel is not something made of the human beings’ own thoughts, doctrines, or emotional experiences.
With the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen, our Lord has blotted out our sins. Through the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, everyone throughout the entire world will come to realize the truth of salvation clearly and to recognize that this truth is none other than the gospel of the water and the Spirit. This is also the truth that is absolutely needed in this end times. Countless people will come to believe in this truth.
Today’s era is an era where the righteousness of people is all breaking apart and their evilness is running rampant. When surrounding conditions deteriorate, people spill out all the evilness that were fundamentally lodged in them. Yet despite this, our Lord has saved you and me from our sins through the gospel of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread. How thankful and priceless is this blessing? I thank our Lord for this clear salvation, for I am overflowing with joy and happiness.
The world is now heading toward the end times foretold by God, and has already entered into this era. In times like this, when there are fewer and fewer people who serve God devotedly, and when even the faith of the believers are weakened, if you try to devote yourself to something other than the truth of the water and the Spirit, you will only end up with wounds in your hearts. When believing in God, if you do not believe in the gospel of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, you will only be disappointed, for it would neither leave anything meaningful in your hearts nor produce any tangible fruits.
Because the truth of the gospel of the four colors of the Tabernacle—of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen—is the clear truth, it is the only, best gospel for this dark world. That we live our lives having received the remission of our sins by knowing and believing in the truth manifested in the Tabernacle is a priceless blessing, a precious gift, and great happiness for us.
Because those who know and believe in the truth of the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen manifested in the gate of the Tabernacle are serving the truth, not the false, a great joy is found in their hearts forever.
Do you also know and believe in this truth revealed in the gate of the court of the Tabernacle? You must know it, and you must believe in it.
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