PEOPLE, EVENTS, PLACES AND TIME HAVE SPIRITUAL MEANING
Bible stories always mention where an event happens and often when it happens. Typically, these events are in cities, kingdoms or nations. They may also be in obscure, general locations such as a desert or wilderness. Whatever the location, it is necessary to understand the spiritual significance of each location if the scripture is to be useful for training in righteousness.
Furthermore, every Biblical character has a spiritual meaning. It is a great mistake to think of these characters as unique, historical figures or that the events happened at unique times in history. In order to apply stories about these characters in ways that train us for righteousness, we must see ourselves in each of these characters and see them in us. Their story is our story. This is true for all characters — even those whose behaviors are considered sinful. Most people like to identify with the heroes but are too proud to identify with the villains. This attitude is also is a big mistake that will keep people stuck in Old/First Covenant religion and block spiritual growth that leads them to becoming New Covenant disciples.
Things that happened to one person, Abraham at Bethel for example, create a spiritual context for that city that aids in understanding future events for other people at the same location. If we do not know the significance of the first event we will not know the significance of future events in that location. It is beneficial, therefore, to take time to study the spiritual history of cities and to understand the symbolism of kingdoms and nations. Doing so will enrich your understanding of scripture and will contribute to your spiritual maturity.
Another example is Israel’s journey in the desert. Normally, we think of deserts as dry, barren physical landscapes, but God uses this imagery to represent spiritual dryness and lifelessness. Israel spent time in the desert wilderness under the law to represent that we also spend dry, lifeless time in religion. The Bible chronicles the travels of Israel in dry spiritual places where spiritual events occurred to symbolically represent the spiritual journey of all who are in a covenant relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is critical, therefore, to understand what happened to Israel at each physical location along the way if we are to understand our own personal walks with God.
When we bother to notice, we see a remarkable number of scriptures that reference days, times of days (i.e. morning and evening/night) months, years and ages. These words are not incidental references for historical context. It is a great mistake to ignore the personal applications of each of these indicators of our personal spiritual movement from Old/First Covenant religion to New Covenant discipleship. We learn from them that spiritual growth is very much a process that occurs over time and not a single, unique event (e.g., baptism, prayer, anointing, etc.) as taught by religion.
STUDY TIP: See Time: Hours, Days, Weeks and Ages for more about how to interpret Biblical references to time.
Application of Biblical stories to our personal lives is complicated by the fact that they are written as unique events that occurred in particular locations at particular times. Even in the time of Jesus, events continue to be referenced to time and location. This all contributes to a tendency to interpret the stories literally and not symbolically. Nevertheless, it is good and necessary to investigate the spiritual meaning of those events and the spiritual meaning of the places they occur.
It is a Biblical principle that the meanings of places are associated with events that occur there. But, but the meanings of those events may be obscure and hard to apply to our personal lives. When they are obscure, some work, perhaps a lot of work, may be necessary to get to the spiritual intent. Faith is required to do the digging to get to that understanding.
STUDY TIP: The best way to do this work is on the internet, but it can also be done with a concordance and dictionary of Hebrew and Greek words. Strong’s Concordance is indispensable for this task. It will help you find key word Bible references and then give you short word definitions. There are several Bible dictionaries that can help with expanded word definitions.
Readers who have been following the many links we have suggested in this web site, you are familiar with www. biblestudytools.com. We strongly recommend that readers learn how to use this resource to discover the meanings of place names as they study their Bibles. See Study Tips for more about using www. biblestudytools.com to dig for meaning of Symbols, Signs, Types, Copies, Shadows and Patterns found in Biblical references to times and places.