Broad meadows

In the last installment, we examined the sun/goat character as being the main character of the seals, entering his earthly life in the first seal, the subsequent consequential events of his lifetime and his (first) death in the sixth seal fulfilling his promise to the saints under the altar in the fifth seal, finally reaching the number foretold.

In this installment we find that the next entry of this character appears in Exodus 16:21-23:

Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. He said to them, “This is what the LORD commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.’”

Exodus 16 is where the Israelites complain of having no food. God promises them “bread from heaven” that they call manna. He gives them specific instructions on when the manna is to be gathered and in these verses He tells them what they are to do about the manna, as it only lasts a day, as it relates to gathering on the Sabbath which is not available to them on the Sabbath.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier writings, when analyzing symbols, one thing we are able to do is use definitions provided elsewhere in the Bible, such as when Jesus gives meaning to the symbols of his parables, we can use them in other parts of the Bible to gain prophetic/spiritual meaning. In John 6, Jesus calls himself the “bread of life”. And if his body is symbolized by bread and the church is his body (Roman 12, 1 Corinthians 10, Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1), then verse 21 seems to be implying that the character symbolized by the sun has something to do with the disappearance (the Rapture?) of the church.

God goes on to tell them that they are to gather twice as much on the sixth day, for they are to rest on the Sabbath. The Sabbath, I believe, is meant to symbolize the millennial reign of Christ. As the body of Christ, we need to be gathering twice as much to, as God says in verse 23, “save whatever is left.” The saving of “whatever is left” seems to be also apart of this character’s mission. To this point, however, we don’t have many details on the how. All we know is that no one comes to the Father but by Christ (John 14:6).

The sun makes only one appearance in Exodus, although sunrise and sunset appears a total of five times in Exodus. That being said, another symbol that we added earlier to this character, pillar, appears quite often in Exodus as in “pillar of fire” and “pillar of cloud”, also alluding to the two witnesses.
In the next installment, we give meaning to one of the most enigmatic verses in scripture, ““Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.’” and tell you who this character is and what his mission appears to be.