Debrecen Messages #11 – The River of Life Within: Christ as Living Water (Genesis to Revelation)

We looked a little bit at the tree as food to eat. When you get into the book of John, all of these things become real. Well, it’s like Genesis 1 and 2 are a great bridge, and John gets you halfway there. And what do you call that when a bridge has something, some kind of support? You know the bridge in Budapest? Right in the middle of the river, there is the great big pillars. It swings like that, it gets you halfway across the river. The pillars are there, and then it goes on over to Revelation, and there are many things holding up this bridge, but John sits right in the middle, and holds it up, and then Revelation. So much of Genesis 1 and 2 and Revelation 21 and 22, especially about the tree and the river and the city, are hidden in John, beginning in John 4 and 5 and 6, oh, also in 3, but especially in 5 and 6, it’s really open for him, for he speaks to you of things that are spirit and life, His life, divine life.

Alright, there’s a river of life flowing out of you, sir. In chapter 7, he speaks about many rivers. Yes, a cataract. There will be flowing out of you. Four, at least. praise the Lord.

Alright, I just want to point out three other things, and that’s all, very simple. Gold, bdellium, and precious stone. I didn’t know any of this; these are not things that I can even tell you God showed me this, these are things that were passed on to me as I passed them on to you. The bdellium is something that comes out of a tree that has a sweet aroma. And it is very pearl-like in color. Now, the bdellium of Genesis 2 becomes pearl in Revelation 22.

There is not gold and silver and precious stone as in Corinthians. There is gold and pearl and precious stone in Revelation, and gold and bdellium in Genesis. The gold remains the same in all three places. The precious stone remained the same in all three places, but it starts as bdellium in Genesis 2, turns to silver in Corinthians, and becomes pearl in Revelation 22. Now, Jonathan, would you explain to everybody why that is?

I don’t know. I don’t either. Well, all I can say is it looks like a pearl in the beginning, and it is a pearl in the end. I’m real clear about the silver. When you get into Genesis 3, you need redemption, and silver is always redemptive, but when you’re in Revelation 22, redemption is finished, completed, over, and even beyond us in our backgrounds, and our glory is no longer in salvation, our glory is in Him alone, not as Savior, but simply Him for what He is, all that He is.

Well, we’ll take its pearl-like feature, and we will notice that the tree is injured in order to make the bdellium. Now you all know how a pearl is made, but I’m going to tell you anyway, alright, I’m even going to illustrate it because we have a camera. Here’s an oyster, let me see if I can put that on the camera, oops, there’s an oyster. Shucks, there’s an oyster somewhere. And it’s a shell. And there’s a living creature in it. And that’s okay, John. I’m not real good at this. Kind of like that, maybe. And there’s a living creature in it. Now, does anybody know what happens next? Sand gets in that thing, and this oyster that’s living inside is wounded because of the foreign object, and in order to heal, it builds a pearl around the injury; it’s actually wounded, and it transforms the sand and the injury into one of the most exotic of all things in the world. Now, today, a pearl is fairly common because they’ve learned to injure the oysters, but a real, uncultured pearl is still a rare and precious commodity.

Silver is redemption, but not pearl. I’m going to take them one at a time. Gold. Gold throughout Scripture stands up and cries out to us. God made gold because he wanted you to understand that gold is something divine. And there is nothing like gold. Nothing in the universe like gold. Let me tell you something. I read this. I know you’re not going to believe it. I don’t want you to believe it. I’m just going to tell you anyway. You can take one ounce. One ounce. Oh, shucks. One ounce of gold. And you can take a hammer and begin to beat it. And beat it. And you know how big you can make that thing without it ever cracking in any place. You know how thin it can get? You’re not going to believe this, but I read this.

Does anybody want to even try to guess? It’s so thin, it’s unbelievable. You know, you always wonder. You put gold on your Bible, and you think, I wonder how I got that, and it was so inexpensive. Well, I’m going to tell you. You can take an ounce of gold and beat it so thin, and it never breaks. It will cover an entire football field. One ounce, one entire football field. It can get so thin. And sometimes, if you see a gold dome, in America, we have a number of them; sometimes, there’s only one or two ounces on it. And you think, oh, it’s gold. It must be, wow, wow. No, an ounce of gold is not a lot of money. We had a bank that went bankrupt, which had a gold-covered balcony, banister. They didn’t spend much on it. It was so thin. And the gold that they press your Bible with, very cheap, because it can be made so thin.

Now, at the same time, it cannot rust, and it will not oxidize. If you make a beautiful bronze or brass dome, it will shine exactly like gold, but after a while, it will turn a color. We could take a gold dome and put it out in the worst jungles of Africa or South America, and 20,000 years from now, it would still be shining just like it does today. Nothing will take away its brilliance.

You can take gold and throw it in acid, and the acid will eat it, and it will disappear. But when you neutralize the acid, that gold will all reappear and settle to the bottom. You can pour out the acid, and every bit of that gold is still there. It is indestructible. When we sent something off, the first thing we ever sent out of our own little universe of nine planets, and one star and nine planets, and we put it on something called Voyager, there was a plate and they made it out of gold, and they said it doesn’t matter if this thing goes for millions of years or billions of years, that piece of gold is still going to be there.

Did you know that gold existed before creation? His name is Jesus. That is not real gold. That is just a picture of gold. Now tell me. I want you to think with your spirit for a moment. I want you to go to the book of Revelation. This is so wonderful to me. Go to the book of Revelation. And the gold was in the garden, now it’s still in the garden. Only the garden is a city. Now don’t answer me out loud, but answer to yourself, What’s gold in that city? The New Jerusalem. What’s made out of gold? Peggy?

The streets. That’s right. Peggy? Do you know where those streets go? Throughout the city, I suppose. That’s right. Do you know where they all end? At the throne of God. That’s one direction, the other direction? At the twelve gates that are open.