spoke 5 and sitting in heavenly places

[gilgal]

What does it mean to sit in the heavenly places?

We have that both in Ephesians and Revelation 5.

[Victor]

That is a true link between Ephesians on Spoke 5 and Revelation 5.

Note that "heavenly places" appears five times in Ephesians. It depicts the saints as already being in Heaven:

Eph 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
And Revelation 5 gives us a glimpse of the heavens.

Rev 5:11 And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;
The above verse is uniquely linked to Daniel on Spoke 5.

Dan 7:10 A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.
Spoke 5 gives us a unique view of Heaven. The pattern is established from the very first verse of Scripture: in Hebrew, the fifth word of Genesis 1:1 is... Heaven! And in the Torah, the word Heaven is maximized in Deuteronomy on Spoke 5!

There's so much to say! The glory of God's Word never ends!

[gilgal]

That is a true link between Ephesians on Spoke 5 and Revelation 5.

Note that "heavenly places" appears five times in Ephesians. It depicts the saints as already being in Heaven:

Eph 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
And Revelation 5 gives us a glimpse of the heavens.

Rev 5:11 And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;
The above verse is uniquely linked to Daniel on Spoke 5.

Dan 7:10 A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.
Spoke 5 gives us a unique view of Heaven. The pattern is established from the very first verse of Scripture: in Hebrew, the fifth word of Genesis 1:1 is... Heaven! And in the Torah, the word Heaven is maximized in Deuteronomy on Spoke 5!

There's so much to say! The glory of God's Word never ends!

Yes. My point is that are there saints in heaven at the moment? Peter said that David is still in the grave. It would be nice to derive doctrines from studying the spokes. Ephesians doesn't seem to literally claim that there are saints in heaven (bodily). What do you think?

[Victor]

Well, I think we should be very careful about "deriving doctrine from the study of the Spokes". The Bible Wheel is just the Bible viewed in an integrated way. What I think is that the study of the Spokes can illuminate our study of biblical subjects that are blind spots in our minds. We can be reminded of conections that would take much longer to surface if it were not for the alphabetic structure of Scripture to point them to us.

And if from the Bible Wheel study we ever derive new ideas (cf. Mat 13:52), they will obviously be integrated with the plain doctrines of the Bible.

:focus:

I agree with you about Ephesians. It doesn't say that we are literally with Christ in the heaven. But we are symbolically "in the heavenly places" because of our condition as believers saved by Christ's blood. We are already living eternal life.

But Ephesians doesn't say that there are saints in the heaven at the moment. Nor does it say the opposite. And the link to Revelation 5 doesn't help us in that regard too, because it doesn't say much about the timing of that event.

The point should be pursued taking into consideration the greater body of evidence, which happens to be the Bible in its entirety. From what I can get from Scripture, I really feel like both the OT and NT saints are in heaven now. What do you think?

[gilgal]

The point should be pursued taking into consideration the greater body of evidence, which happens to be the Bible in its entirety. From what I can get from Scripture, I really feel like both the OT and NT saints are in heaven now. What do you think?

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

There are spoke results which bind two passages together.

There are spoke results which show the contrasts of two passages but still have a few words found in both passages.

If doctrine cannot be derived from studying this then this becomes irrelevant, pretty much like the biblecodes which left with a tangent from the original purpose of the bible.

It's good to know for example where certain words appear more like torah or law in Deuteronomy. In case you search anything related to that you know where to look.

[Victor]

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

There are spoke results which bind two passages together.

There are spoke results which show the contrasts of two passages but still have a few words found in both passages.

If doctrine cannot be derived from studying this then this becomes irrelevant, pretty much like the biblecodes which left with a tangent from the original purpose of the bible.

It's good to know for example where certain words appear more like torah or law in Deuteronomy. In case you search anything related to that you know where to look.

Oh yes, I do agree. I'm just being careful about what "deriving doctrine" means. In other words, the plain Bible doctrines can be found in the Bible without any 'study of the Spokes'.

They can help us a lot but they usually won't produce any doctrine new to the Faith. But of course they often point us to many relevant biblical doctrines. The Bible doctrines are enshrined by the structure of the Bible. Viewed this way, we can say that we can "derive doctrine" from the study of the Spokes.

So they are completely different from the pop ELS Bible Codes stuff. They can shed much light into our understanding of Bible doctrine.