The World and the Word

                         The Wheat and the Chaff

The Bible (KJB) further illustrates the dual nature of man in the story related in Numbers 16:1-50. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, with 250 other men, rebelled against Moses and Aaron in their attempts to become priests. They actually rebelled against God because He had established Aaron and his descendants to be the priests of the Israeli people.

These rebels represented the spiritual death that exists in the being of every human which can cause them to rebel against God. God gave Moses a test by fire to separate these evil men from God's people. This test by fire symbolized the burnt offerings by which God will separate the good nature of every human not saved by grace from their evil natures. I Corinthians 3:11-15.

God threatened to consume the entire congregation by fire, but in Numbers 16:22, Moses and Aaron reminded God that He had given a good spirit to every one in the congregation. God had inspired Moses and Aaron to pray this truth, so He was actually reminding Himself. God wanted Moses and Aaron to learn the truth that He had put into their prayer.

God then ordered Moses and Aaron to separate the congregation from the tents of Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and the other 250 rebels. God consumed these rebels with fire and opened the earth to swallow them into Hell. God's fiery wrath in this event symbolizes the fact that in the end of the world He will separate the evil spiritual deaths of all humans within the regions of the dead from their good lives and cast their spiritual deaths into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:15; Revelation 20:5.

God then ordered Moses to tell Eleazar the priest to recover the brazen censers that had become hallowed to the Lord because they had put fire into them as God had commanded. Eleazer recovered these censers from the fire and used them to make plates for the altar of God. These censers symbolized God's use of His fiery wrath to separate the good spirits that He has put into every human within the regions of death from their spiritual deaths so that He can recreate these good humans to live on His recreated earth. God will recover and recreate even the diminished souls and spirits of all who rebel against Him. Revelation 21:1-5. When Jesus told the rebel Pharisees in Luke 17:21 that "the kingdom of God is within you," He referred to the small image of God within them that He would recover and recreate in the last judgment in the end of the world. II Timothy 4:1.

The next day, the whole congregation of Israel rebelled against Moses, Aaron, and God Himself. They blamed Moses for the deaths of the 250 rebels. This rebellion symbolized the fact that every human possesses an evil, spiritual death within them that can overcome their good souls and spirits and cause them to rebel against God.

God then appeared as a cloud over the tabernacle and told Moses and Aaron to get out of the way because He was going to consume the whole congregation with fire. But God directed His fiery wrath against the evil that had overcome the people, not against their living souls and spirits that He had put into them.

God demonstrated this fact when He inspired Moses to tell Aaron to take fire from the altar and burn incense in a censer and run among the people to make an atonement for them. God inspired Aaron to make a kind of burnt offering for the people to separate the living from the dead. The living and the dead subsists in every human who ever lived except Jesus who had no death within Him. God's living souls and spirits in all humans never permanently dies. Luke 20:38. God caused 14,700 of the congregation to die as a prophecy that He will separate the living from the dead in the end of the world. God will recover and recreate even the diminished souls and spirits of the 250 and the 14,700 rebels in His final Judgment in the end of the world. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5.