[I]t is Israel’s high priest who bears the biggest burden, whose ministry carries the fate of us all. Once per year, Israel’s high priest representatively carries all humanity into the Most Holy Place, the tabernacle’s inner sanctum where God himself dwells. In so doing, he symbolically effects humanity’s return from exile back into a typological garden of Eden.

Historical optimism about Christ’s kingdom on earth means that we believe—because the child was born two millennia ago—that since that time, the increase of His government and peace has been unceasing. We believe that the government is on His shoulder, not that it should be. Jesus believed the same thing, because when He sent His disciples out, it was with this truth as the basis for the commission. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt. 28:18, NIV). 

“For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (1 Cor. 15:25–26) 

In the common assumption shared by many Christians, at the Lord’s return the first enemy to be destroyed is death. But the apostle here says that it is the last enemy to be destroyed. The Lord will rule from heaven, progressively subduing all His enemies through the power of the gospel, brought to the nations by His Church. And then, when it would be easy to believe that it just couldn’t get any better, the Lord will come and deliver the kingdom to His Father, and God will be all in all. 

But there is something else. What will it be like as His kingdom grows and expands? What will happen to our sin-plagued world as His government and peace increases? 

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse,  which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.” (Is. 11:6–10) 

Now this language is admittedly over the top. It is so over the top that most Christians just relegate it to some time after the Lord comes again. That is the only way they can see that a fulfillment could ever be possible. 

But there is a slight problem with this view. The glorious language, the too-good-to-be-true language is in the first half of this passage: predatory beasts become herbivores, and little kids are playing with the cobras. This has to be after the resurrection, right? This has to be after the close of history, doesn’t it? No—because verse 10, the one that begins with the words, “And in that day,” is quoted by the apostle Paul in Romans 15, justifying his mission to the Gentiles two thousand years ago: 

“And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust.” (Rom. 15:12) 

The great apostle Paul is appealing to Isaiah as a justification for his preaching to the Gentiles. And since then, we have had two thousand years of the Lord’s government and peace increasing.

The enigmatic 666 fits very well with the construction of Nero’s name, his beastly character, the time he ruled, and his anti-Christian edicts leveled against the church. Keep in mind that we need more than a plausible candidate; we need a relevant candidate. The first readers of Revelation were told to “calculate the number of the Beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six” (13:18). Since the book of Revelation was written to a first-century audience, we should expect the first-century readers to be able to calculate the number with relative ease. They would have had few candidates from which to choose. The Roman emperor would have been a likely political choice. 

As was explained earlier, ancient numbering systems use an alpha-numeric method. This is true of the Latin (Roman) system that we still use today: I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, M = 1000. The same is true of Greek and Hebrew. Since the book of Revelation is written in a Hebrew (Aramaic) context by a Jew with numerous allusions to the Old Testament, we should expect the solution to deciphering the meaning of 666 to be Hebraic. “The reason clearly is that, while he writes in Greek, he thinks in Hebrew, and the thought has naturally affected the vehicle of expression” (R. H Charles). 

Is there anything in the Bible, especially in Revelation, that hints at this use of both Greek and Hebrew? The “angel of the abyss” is described in two ways: “His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek he has the name Apollyon” (Rev. 9:11). Something similar is done with “Har-Mageddon” (Hill of Megiddo) or “Ar-Mageddon” (City of Megiddo) (16:16). In John’s gospel, the place where Pilate sat down to judge Jesus was called “The Pavement.” John calls attention to its Hebrew name “Gabbatha” (John 19:13). In the same chapter, John writes how Pilate had an inscription placed on the cross above Jesus’ head written in “Hebrew, Latin, and in Greek” (19:20). Going from Greek to Hebrew was normal. Americans who try to find a contemporary solution to the 666 problem often use English. 

When Nero Caesar’s name is transliterated into Hebrew, we get Neron Kesar (nrwn qsr: Hebrew has no letters to represent vowels). “It has been documented by archaeological finds that a first-century Hebrew spelling of Nero’s name provides us with precisely the value of 666. Jastrow’s lexicon of the Talmud contains this very spelling” (Kenneth Gentry). When we take the letters of Nero’s name and spell them in Hebrew, we get the following numeric values: n = 50, r = 200, w = 6, n = 50, q = 100, s = 60, r = 200 = 666. “Every Jewish reader, of course, saw that the Beast was a symbol of Nero. And both Jews and Christians regarded Nero as also having close affinities with the serpent or dragon (Farrar) … The Apostle writing as a Hebrew, was evidently thinking as a Hebrew…. Accordingly, the Jewish Christian would have tried the name as he thought of the name—that is in Hebrew letters. And the moment that he did this the secret stood revealed. No Jew ever thought of Nero except as ‘Neron Kesar’” (Farrar). Those who read John’s account of the beast probably had come to this conclusion even before they made their calculation. 

Subsequent Christian history supports the view that Nero was the Beast. “All the earliest Christian writers on the Apocalypse, from Irenaeus down to Victorinus of Pettau and Commodian in the fourth, and Andreas in the fifth, and St. Beatus in the eighth century, connect Nero, or some Roman Emperor, with the Apocalyptic Beast” (Farrar). 

There is a curious variation on 666. Some manuscripts read 616. Why would a copyist make such a number change? “Perhaps the change was intentional, seeing that the Greek form Neron Caesar written in Hebrew characters (nrwn qsr) is equivalent to 666, whereas the Latin form Nero Caesar (nrw qsr) is equivalent to 616” (Bruce Metzger). Keep in mind that there were no copy machines in the first century. If you wanted a copy of a scroll, it was done by hand. No matter how carefully a scribe worked, mistakes were inevitable. Some mistakes occurred when a scribe was making a copy of a known copy. He might have thought the copy was mistaken and that it was up to him to correct it. A Greek or Latin copyist might have thought that 666 was an error because Nero Caesar did not add up to 666 when transliterated into Latin. He then changed 666 to 616 to conform to the Latin rendering since it was generally accepted that Nero was the Beast. In either case, a Hebrew transliteration nets 666, while a Latin spelling nets 616. Nero was the “man” and 666 was his number.”

We need a man God listens to who can be our priest to bring us to God. There is one man God listens to and only one. In John 8 Jesus gives sight to a man born blind. In speaking to the Pharisees later, the man says this: “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him” (John 9:31, possibly echoing Psalm 66:18: “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, / the Lord would not have listened”). He is absolutely right. He is also right to deduce that Jesus has healed him because Jesus has prayed to the Father for this man to be healed and the Father has heard Jesus’s prayer. He rightly deduces that Jesus is the “worshiper of God [who] does his will.” If we may put this reverently, Jesus does not heal this man merely because Jesus is God; Jesus heals this man because Jesus is the God-man whose prayers are always heard.

This understanding of the miracles of Jesus is explicitly confirmed in John 11, where Jesus calls Lazarus back to life four days after he died. Standing at the tomb, Jesus publicly says this: “Father, I think you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me” (John 11:41-42). Jesus brings Lazarus back to life because he asks the Father and because the Father hears his prayer. Again, Jesus does not do this merely because he is God but because he is the God-man whose prayers are always heard. This is a remarkable and wonderful truth: there is one man who can pray and whom the Father always hears and grants his every request.
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Before thinking about our prayers, we must ponder the prayers of Jesus Christ the Son of God to the Father: “If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible, and especially the Psalms,” writes Bonhoeffer, “we must not…first ask what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ.”

Buying and selling are controlled by the temple leadership and are used to regulate access to the temple (Matt. 21:12). Buying and selling, properly understood, are worship-related rituals (Isa. 55:1). “This is established in [Revelation] 3:18 (and compare 21:6). When those who refuse the mark of the Beast are not allowed to buy and sell, it means that they are expelled from the synagogue and Temple. The merchants of the land in Revelation 18 are those who worshiped at the Temple and synagogue” (quoting James B. Jordan). Jesus foretold this: “They will make you outcasts from the synagogue; but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God” (John 16:2). 

Early in the church’s history the disciples went to the temple to preach the gospel (Acts 5:20-21, 24, 42; 24:12). At first, they were welcomed (Acts 2:46). Peter and John frequented the temple during “the hour of prayer” (Acts 3:1). Jewish Christians continued to use the temple, even participating in some of its rituals (Acts 21:26). After the temple officials learned that these Jews were preaching that Jesus was the Messiah—the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—they were shut out of the temple (21:26-30). 

These events help explain the theological meaning of buying and selling in Revelation 13:17. During Jesus’ ministry, the temple officials were “selling” and worshipers were “buying” access to the temple (Matt. 21:12). Their “buying and selling” turned “God’s house” into a “robbers’ den” (21:12-13). Only those Jews who aligned themselves with the priests, the sacrificial system, and the temple would be allowed to enter the temple for worship. If they did not have the mark of the beast, that is, if they did not align themselves with what the temple represented as an antichrist ritual (Rev. 2:9; 3:9), they could not “buy or sell” in order to offer the appropriate animal sacrifices that were required before the coming of the “lamb of God.” To take the “mark of the beast” meant a person denied that Jesus was the Messiah, the true temple of God, the only sufficient sacrifice. Of course, Christian Jews avoided the mark of the beast and showed their true allegiance to Jesus, “having His name and the name of his father written on their foreheads” (Rev. 14:1).

In Revelation 11, the seventh and the last trump of the angel celebrates the victorious, never-ending reign of the enthroned Lord Jesus Christ. It is a celebration of the new creation which starts with the expansion of the Spirit-baptized church. This is good news, for once the seventh trumpet, the last trump, is sounded it means that no power, Satanic or otherwise, can stop the expansion of the glorious reign of the Lord Jesus Christ on earth. That is why we can be certain the year will come that Communism will fall in China, just as the Berlin wall came down and the USSR came apart – the trump has sounded and evil systems that seek to stop the expansion of the gospel will eventually fall. That will be the case with Islam, which seems so powerful with all its oil money and wishes to use it to stop the gospel. Down it must go, because the seventh trump, the last trump, has sounded at the glorious reign of Christ: he will be victorious over all his enemies. 
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So it will be with the secular humanism (really atheism) that is largely in charge of America and the Western world. It has rejected the Christian faith, and seeks to exclude every influence of Christianity from the public forum. Secular humanism, for all its strength and pride, will break apart; it will come down because the last trump has sounded, announcing that Jesus is victorious. The working out of his final victory in space and time in on God’s timetable, not ours, on God’s clock and God’s calendar, not ours. But victory is on the way.

In summary, the light of the lampstand represents the life-giving Presence of God, his blessed glory, while the twelve loaves represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Aaron’s role of regularly arranging the lamps so that they shone upon the loaves summarizes the role and function of the priesthood to mediate God’s blessings to his people. One might say, in short, that these references to Numbers summarize the role of the cultus for Israel’s relationship with God, as it relates to the goal of the covenant. Numbers 6:23-27 and 8:1-4 present the blessing of God upon the people of God, mediated by the priesthood of God.

​The arrangement of the holy place of the tabernacle, therefore, portrayed the ideal of Israel basking in the light of the divine Presence in the house of God, abiding in the fires of his glory. As we will come to understand in the following chapters, this cultic symbolism depicted the Sabbath day in particular, as Israel entered the renewing Presence of YHWH through the Levitical way he had opened for them – a foretaste of life at the consummation of history. Indeed, this glimpse into the glory of the house of God may be more fully appreciated when we recall that the panelled walls of the holy place were overlaid with gold, a feature that, together with the golden lampstand and golden table, would have caused the light of the seven lamps to be reflected in a wondrous manner. And so this symbolic picture of Israel abiding in the blessed Sabbath-day Presence of YHWH is one that portrays life in the house of God, a prospect foretasted in Israel’s Sabbath day worship.

Life with God in the house of God – this was the original goal of the creation of the cosmos (which, as we will see, may be thought of as a house), and which then became the goal of redemption, the new creation.