Timothy Albarino (35:15)
Within the context of, of prophetic iconography, within a prophetic perceptual experience. Okay, so that's where those references come from. And I, and I, it has to be that way, though. But I told you that there's two different descriptions of cherubim in the Bible. They're not the same. And I was just about to use the cherubim as an example. So you take the cherubim and you look at the four faces of the cherubim, or if you're reading the verse in which it's a composite of four creatures, same four creatures, it doesn't matter. Let's take the, the description where the four faces are different. So you have, you have the face of a man, then you have the face of an eagle, then you have the face of a lion, and then you have the face of an ox. Okay, so is there a correspondence to something in ancient, in the, in the, in the ancient near east, in the iconography of the ancient Near East? Do we have a correspondence because the Bible was written by people from the ancient Near East. It was written in that culture, to that culture using the symbology of that culture and the ideas from that culture. And that's abroad. We're broadly speaking of Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean in general. The ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks, Greeks and the Persians and so forth. That's what I mean when I invoke the ancient near east and the Canaanites and within the midst of that, the, the Israelites themselves. And remember, Abraham came from Mesopotamia. That was his culture. So in the, as it pertains to cherubim, we have to ask the question, are cherubim unique to the biblical text? Are they unique to the Bible? The answer is clearly no, they're not. They're. The, the cherubim are prevalent all over the ancient Near East. You have, to this day, depictions of cherubim on the ancient walls of Babylon and temples of Babylon. These are ubiquitous across the ancient Near East. They're symbolic of throne guardians. That's what the cherubim represent, not just in the, in the Bible, but in the ancient near east con Eastern context. Generally speaking, they're throne guardians. That's how they're depicted in, in sometimes they're, they're depicted as a different composite of, of creatures. But in many cases, they're literally what the Bible describes in Babylon. And in there's some Sumerian depictions of this kind of thing as well. So we have to concede that these creatures are symbolic. In the ancient near east, this is iconography. And in the Bible it's very specific in both references to cherubim, in the multiple references to cherubim, these four composites. I mean, the composite of these four creatures. So when we take a look at the four creatures, we realize that there is a correlation to what we call today the zodiac. And when I invoke the zodiac, people think immediately that we are now, we are now in a pagan arena. Not so. The Hebrews have the zodiac. They called it the matsaroth. In fact, were you to go back in time, during the time of Christ, many, if you were to enter a synagogue, many of the synagogues had a depiction of the, of the zodiac on the wall, which is called the Matzaroth. And the Matzaroth appears in the Bible in several passages, a couple in Job and elsewhere. In fact, there's, there's many passages that reference the signs of the Matzaroth, the signs of the zodiac. Those appear all over the place. And I would contend that the depiction of the cherubim is an invocation of the zodiac. Why? Because again, you have the face of the man. The face of the man is representative of, is representative of the sign of Aquarius, which is a man carrying a pitcher of water or pouring out a pitcher of water. That's the sign of Aquarius. That's the man. Then you have the face of, of the eagle. And by the way, these are the cardinal directions of the zodiac. These aren't just random, random zodiacal constellations. These are the cardinal constellations of the zodiac. Aquarius is the man, the eagle. The eagle is Scorpio. Now, Scorpio, most people think Scorpio is a scorpion. And it is, but it's also an eagle. It's one of the only, it's the only zodiacal constellation, the only zodiacal sign that, that has a dual aspect. It's a scorpion and an eagle. You can find it represented as both a scorpion and an Eagle in the, in various places throughout the middle, throughout the ancient Near East. So the, the face of the eagle is Scorpio. Then you have the face of the lion. Well, that's Leo. That's the zodiacal constellation of Leo, the house of Leo. Then you have the face of the Ox, which is of course Taurus. Those are the four cardinal directions of the zodiac. That's not coincidental. That is not coincidental. That is intentional. Furthermore, the cherubim are covered in eyes all around. It says, well, the word for eyes in. And I don't have it in front of me here, but the word for eyes, see if I can remember, if it pops into my brain. The Hebrew word for eyes is used interchangeably with the word for stars because the eyes twinkle, the eyes glisten like the stars. So those words, the idea is interchangeable between eyes and stars. Again, your eyes glisten, they glean. And so if you, if you think of the eyes as stars, then if you look at the zodiacal constellations, if you look up at the night sky, at the, at the constellation of Leo, what is it full of? What is that constellation full of stars? In other words, it's full of eyes. These, this is a clear indication that we are, this is astrological information being conveyed. And when you invoke astrological information, what you're talking about is time. So the zodiac is a clock. And it's a clock that I could prove from the Bible was created by God. And we know that the heavenly bodies were created for signs and seasons. The zodiac is very ancient. It goes back to the antediluvian world. I believe the knowledge was given to Adam. And what it does primarily is it calculates cyclic cataclysm. So it's very, very important. The ancients thought of it as the great mill in the sky. It is ubiquitous across the world. And what we've just, we've forgotten this information, but it was very well known in the ancient Near East. So an ancient Near Eastern astrologer, if they were confronted with a, with the symbology of a chimeric creature. Again, let's use the, let's use the cherubim as a reference here. They would, they would automatically interpret that chimeric creature in astrological terms. And they would derive from that interpretation a very.
