A few years ago I spent two separate weeks at Bethel Church in Redding, California. I can honestly say that I glimpsed something there which has niggled at me ever since. Something of the vision which God put in me the day I was saved connected with things I observed and enjoyed at Bethel. Twice I sat in a classroom with 30 other church leaders and listened to the apostle from Bethel, Bill Johnson, share his heart for the kingdom and for the church. The two lots of five days I spent at Bethel were filled with classes where members of their team poured their insights for church and ministry into our hearts and minds. They were very powerful and provocative times, but before leaving, I picked up a book by Bill Johnson called ‘When Heaven Invades Earth’. I am much indebted to that book for the next few blogs and am convinced that you would do better to read Bill’s book than my précis and subsequent thoughts.
Its no coincidence that Bill Johnson’s church is called Bethel. In Hebrew ‘Bethel’ means ‘House of God’ and comes from its first use in Genesis:
Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it." And he was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."
Gen 28:10-17
Flippin’ da house of God
Now I don’t know about you, but I have never been too keen on the term ‘House of God’ for a church building. I’m sure it has something to do with my weird experiences of church as a small child. I have half memories of people getting very angry with our school class because we weren't being reverent enough in one of our long church assemblies. They would say things like “Don’t you know this is a house of God?” Even as a child I wanted to say “well, if its God’s house, why doesn’t he get the heating fixed?” But, if God was lurking somewhere in the dark corners of the building I didn’t want to annoy him so I stayed quiet. Nevertheless, something stuck in me about this phrase ‘House of God’ and I just hated it.
A few years ago, on my day off, my wife and I went to Hampton Court. It was originally built by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in the early 16th century and then in 1529, as Wolsey fell from favour, the palace was passed to King Henry viii. Our visit was on a cold winters day and was very enjoyable until we went into the chapel when a steward stopped me and, with a very disdainful air, asked me to remove my hat because this was a house of God. Sometimes Ruth intuitively knows I’m about to blow, she grabbed my arm and steered me to a stained glass window commenting on how beautiful it was. But, as a sign of how much a man of God I am and how you shouldn't mess with me when it comes to church, I kept my hat on for another 15 seconds before quietly removing it.
Well, I might not have liked the phrase ‘house of God’ but God loves it. And he wants us to understand something of huge significance about it when it comes to the church today. Often when we read scripture, the first mention of a subject is the blueprint for other references to build on. Its a beautiful feature of the Bible that God reveals something and then continues to build on that theme without contradicting himself throughout the Old and New Testaments. No other book written by so many different people over such a huge period of history comes close to this phenomenon. But then again, this is God’s book and as Paul says:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. 2 Tim 3:16
So back to Genesis 28 where we find that God introduces us to ‘The House of God’ where angels ascend and descend, in other words they come and go from heaven to earth.
The question we must ask ourselves is what are the angels coming for? And our answer is, they are coming for what they came for throughout scripture and history for that matter, to do the works of God on earth as they do in heaven. As the writer of Hebrews says about angels:
Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? Heb 1:14
Celtic Christianity in the early Middle Ages identified places like this, where they felt God was especially near, as ‘thin places’. I like the idea that there are places where the membrane between the kingdom of heaven and earth are especially gossamer like. So the house of God is the place where the supernatural of heaven comes down to earth. Its a thin place and its what we pray for in the Lord’s prayer when we say:
‘Let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven’
Gen 28 tells us that there is a place where this happens and its Bethel – The house of God. In fact the first thin place was really the Garden of Eden. But since the fall there hadn’t been a house of God on earth.
As we read through the Old Testament we see this house of God developing as first, the tabernacle tent of meeting and then the stone temples are built. Thin places are also found in scripture in the story of the burning bush on Mount Sinai in Ex 3 where again an angel ministers to Moses, and possibly when later in Exodus, Moses again goes up Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of stone and hears the voice of God. Commonly the house of God is full of his shekinah glory and angels ascend and descend there. We could see it as the the kingdom of Heaven having a portal, an open heaven.
When the tabernacle was consecrated, God came in in a most striking way. His glory filled the tent to such an degree that Moses couldn’t enter (Ex 40:34-36). The pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire rested on the tabernacle, signifying the powerful presence of God. The Israelites would remain in a given location until the pillar or cloud would lift from the tent as a sign that it was time to move on. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament story God occasionally sends angels through the portal, and into the House of God.
God began something recorded in Gen 28, but in the next blog we will see what happens in the New Testament a few thousand years later.
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