MANNA
For those who attended Sunday school, manna in the Wilderness is one of the first Bible stories we read. It has great imagery and, along with the crossing of the Red Sea, is one of God’s great miracles. Through this teaching, the concept of manna was and is wrongly represented as miracle in which God provided daily, physical food to Israel. This interpretation misses the symbolic meaning of bread.

Only two kinds of food are important in the Bible: Good spiritual food and evil soulish food. Literal interpretations of the Bible always interpret bread and manna as a natural food. When it is interpreted as a natural food that is eaten for religious purposes (e.g. communion/Eucharist, etc.), bread becomes an evil food because the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking natural food. But, when interpreted spiritually, it is good spiritual food.

The Bible differentiates between good spiritual food and evil soulish food with the terms clean and unclean. God instructs people to discern between the two kinds of food.

In Biblical symbolism, food that is gathered by others and distributed by others is unclean food. Religious teachers (i.e. false prophets) gather, chew up and regurgitate unclean food for mass consumption. Such food comes through a human mediator through speech and writing and does not come directly from the mouth of God. The reason it is unclean is that physical work is necessary to obtain it and that man — not God — has produced it.

Clean food, on the other hand, is not handled or manipulated by others. It comes directly from God without a human mediator — unless that mediator is a true prophet. Clean spiritual bread contains God’s spiritual laws. It is New Covenant food because no man is involved in the teaching.

As the story in Numbers reports, Israel was not satisfied with manna and pleaded to have meat because meat was readily available in Egypt. God gave them meat, but he also brought a plague on Israel because it was not satisfied with the spiritual food that came from God’s mouth. The lesson in this story is that we should be satisfied with the spiritual food that God provides. We should not want for heavy meals (i.e. quail)  that are offered by religious institutions and teachers. Such food is unclean because it is gathered by others and distributed by others. They have chewed it up and regurgitated it for mass consumption.

Clean food, on the other hand, is not handled by others. It comes directly from God through true prophets who speak for God.

Many scriptures appear to equate The Law of Moses, Jesus, and indeed the entire Bible, to life. When these are interpreted literally, however, they become a stumbling block to true, spiritual life. The message to us from these scriptures is that God’s word spoken to our ears (i.e. heart) is critical to a healthy, productive spiritual life.

Spiritual adults (i.e. New Covenant disciples) are responsible for feeding themselves. Unlike spiritual children (i.e. Old/First Covenant religionists), they do not depend on someone else to feed them spiritual food. Because it is life-giving for them, they want to share what they learn with others.

Spiritual children, on the other hand, are dependent on someone (e.g. Pastors, Priests, Rabbis, Apostles, Bishops, Elders, Deacons, Overseers, Popes, Missionaries and Evangelists authors, musicians, prophets, etc.) to feed them warmed over, regurgitated, religious food. If they want to mature spiritually, they must repent of being dependent on others who effectively function as other gods to feed them. For most people who are firmly rooted in the cultures of Judaism and Christianity, maturity depends on separating from their religions and all other proxy spiritual leaders who have been their source of religious food.

Manna is a tricky concept to understand. There are actually two kinds of manna. The first manna was introduced to Israel while in the wilderness:

Although desert manna did not have any similarity to natural bread that is mixed up, kneaded and baked, it is typically equated with natural bread. But, even though manna is also called spiritual food, neither the colorful Sunday School books nor the teachers, nor the pastors for that matter, ever get around to explaining the symbolic meaning of manna.

Therefore we tend to think of manna as the miraculous physical bread God provided for Israel in the desert where people were instructed to get out of their tents and go search for manna every morning. We get the impression that it was the only food Israel had, even though the Bible clearly tells us that it had a variety of animals and grain and grapes for offerings. It is not clear if Israel ate these other foods regularly or if they were just available for offerings, but we do know that Israel brought animals and grain from Egypt and raised them while in the wilderness.

Even if we allow that Israel had these other foods to eat, we assume that Manna was spiritual food for Israel. They needed it for a healthy spiritual life — not for their physical bodies. It was the model for the Bible as a source of spiritual food. Therefore, just like Israel in the desert, we are trained to regularly (preferably daily) get out of the relative comfort of our lives to search for it and work with it to make it into something that is tasty and spiritually nourishing.

Good as this common manna may be, however, we must remember that the people who made it through the wilderness of religion to the promised land stopped eating this kind of manna when they entered the Promised Land. The reason they stopped gathering it and manipulating it so they could eat it is that common manna symbolically represents the kind of food found in the literal Bible. As a symbolic reference to the Old/First Covenant, common manna is good enough, but it is not the best. The best manna, the hidden manna, comes directly from the mouth of God and is available only to New Covenant disciples.

When Israel entered the Promised Land, they did not need to work for their spiritual food any more because they had learned to rest from their religious activity. When they entered the Promised Land, God fed them himself through his spirit speaking to their hearts. He fed them with hidden manna.

Hidden manna that is only available to New Covenant disciples who receive their instruction about God from the spirit of God:

When we recognize the significance of hidden manna, we must not make the mistake of thinking that the manna we find in the Bible is the ultimate spiritual food. The ultimate, perfect source of spiritual food is the spoken word of God — not the written words of the Bible. The differences between everyday manna and hidden manna are clear: Common, everyday manna can be seen and manipulated by anyone, while hidden manna is invisible and heard only by people who have clean, pure hearts. These distinctions are discussed in detail in God’s Written Word and God’s Voice.