Dear friends:

In his weekly TV show last night, Manna-Fest, on TBN, Perry Stone and a guest, Doc Miller, provided some totally fascinating insights into the manna in the wilderness and its symbolism of Jesus and the atonement.

As a reminder, manna was the miraculous substance God gave to the children of Israel to feed them for 40 years in the wilderness. "Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat" (Exodus 16:15).  Little did they know what profound significance this had on God's long-term plan of redemption.

Some 1,500 years later, Jesus referred to Himself as that bread, "I am the bread which came down from heaven" (John 6:41), confirming that the manna symbolized Himself.  He later referred to "eating" that bread, or His body, that we observe in the Lord's supper.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which literally means "house of bread."

We know that bread symbolizes healing, because when the woman from Canaan asked Jesus to heal her daughter, He said, "It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs" (Matthew 15:26).  People have been known to actually have been physically healed while taking communion, or eating the bread of life.

Here are some fascinating facts concerning the manna:

Manna has always been a mystery, but the Bible reveals what it looked like: "The manna was as coriander seed, and the colour thereof as the colour of bdellium" (Numbers 11:7).

Perry's guest said that he researched the coriander seed, and found that it is an ancient herb used in the Middle East, white, about the size of a B-B, and with stripes!  MANNA REPRESENTS JESUS, WHO RECEIVED STRIPES FROM THE ROMAN SOLDIERS!  "By His (the bread of life's) stripes, we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5, 1 Peter 2:24).

But that's not all:  "And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar" (Numbers 11:8).   Like the coriander seeds, JESUS WAS BEATEN  AND PULVERIZED as part of the atonement!

The Bible further describes manna as, "a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground" (Exodus 16:14 -- modern translations are dubious here).  The Hebrew root word for hoar is kaphar, which Strong's Concordance says means: to cover, purge, make an atonement, make reconciliation, propitiate.  This is incredible! LIKE MANNA, JESUS' BLOOD COVERS OUR SINS, PURGES US, MAKES AN ATONEMENT FOR US, AND IS THE PROPITIATION FOR OUR SINS!

And this was all spelled out symbolically in the wilderness with Moses!

Have you ever seen such beautiful and pointed symbolism?  No doubt this was one of the things the Lord explained to His disciples on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, when it says, "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27).

At the end of the program, Perry said to his guest: "This is the greatest nugget I have ever heard you give.  I have been in church over 40 years and I have never heard anything like this."

You can watch the entire 30-minute TV show at http://www.perrystone.org/video.cfm .  I encourage you to watch the program on Sunday nights, TBN, 10:30 p.m. ET (possibly repeated during the week).  You will also see some actual coriander seeds.  Highly recommended.

Be blessed!

Jim