Maurice's Questions

I received these questions from Maurice. This is very exciting to me to see this brother doing a little digging.

If the gate of Judah is for Christians, what are the other eleven gates for? There are twelve gates but only ten tribes, which leaves 2 blank gates. Were the other people slaves like the Jews were?

Maurice

My response...

Good questions.

First, the Judah gate is for all of the tribe of Judah PLUS Gentiles who have become believers in Jesus. The other eleven gates are for the other eleven tribes of Israel (There are actually 12 tribes--not ten). It is my belief that the nation of Israel will eventually come to faith in Jesus; therefore, they will enter the New Jerusalem through their appropriate gate.

That being said, there are several lists of the twelve tribes and, yet, they are not always the same. For example, the twelve sons of Israel are Ruben, Simeon, Judah, Zebulun, Levi, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin. But Jacob (Israel) appropriated (adopted) Joseph's first two sons--Ephriam and Manesseh--as his own. So, the Joseph tribe becomes two separate tribes. That now makes thirteen tribes. God claimed the tribe of Levi for Himself and gave inheritances to the remaining twelve in Canaan.

Now that we have that straight in our minds, we get a wrinkle in Revelation 7 when God lists the tribes again. This time he leaves out Levi and Ephriam and includes both Manessah and Joseph (remember Manessah was a sub-tribe of Joseph originally). Why? I don't know. But since he treats Joseph, Ephriam and Manesseh as three separate tribes, that now gives us 14 total.

Here's the connection I make with that. There are 12 New Testament apostles. Then Mattias is added to replace Judas Iscariot and Paul is added for the Gentiles. Therefore, there are 14 NT apostles.

Your last question regarding the ones who left Egypt with the Israelites--were they slaves? I expect some (most) were. However, I think they probably "picked up" some people along the way. Moses' father-in-law was not Jewish but seems to have spent at least part of the 40 years of wandering with the Israelites. For some reason, however, when it was time to enter Canaan, all of his people went back to Midian.

I don't know what difference any of this makes but it certainly is interesting and fascinating to me to watch how God works among His people.