The Gold Plaque

11/23/25

Tabitha is back!  After a long time of personal reflection, she began traveling again, this time as an archaeologist!  She was inspired by a discovery that she stumbled upon in an ancient cave that appeared to have had a house built into it and an opening in the rock above, likely once covered by a roof.  For centuries, the cave preserved artifacts covered in sand because it was in a desert.  Now, a climate change has brought rains that have washed away the sand and revealed something marvelous!

Tabitha was with several archaeologists that were coming and going, and on this day, she re-entered the house in the cave on her own.  I say it was a house because a floor was coming into view, which was made of planks of wood and enough of a gap between each plank that heavy rains could wash away the sand that had been covering it.  Having come into view, it began revealing marvelous artifacts.  Each time Tabitha came into the place, she saw a pile on the floor that sparkled gold, and she marveled, but it was still covered with some of the sand, so she did not disturb it.  She could tell it was a treasure of great value and of highly refined gold.  Other archaeologists on other days had already removed some of the artifacts scattered about.  At last, on this day, she came in, and all that had covered the golden artifact had been washed away, so she stooped down and picked it up.  It was a large gold plaque that was shaped about two-thirds of the way from the top down as the body of Aaron, the High Priest of Yahweh, and was labeled “Aaron.”  He had very black hair that was coarse and straight and silky and fell just above his shoulders like a black fountain that flowed round his head but not over the face.  He was young and strong looking, with an expression of pomp and authority.  His upper body was unclothed, and a skirt was around his waist with a ribbon decorating it from the waist down in the center below his stomach.  He looked very Egyptian.  Ornate decorations were molded into the gold at Aaron’s wrists, and these gleamed in a way that caused the gold to sparkle.  This is what Tabitha had been seeing sparkling underneath the remaining sand before it had been washed away.

As she examined it closely, something supernatural happened, as the plaque of pure gold was transformed before her eyes, becoming something of a life-like figure.  She saw that the skirt was designed with marvelously rich fabrics that were full of vivid colors that looked iridescent.  She was amazed because she had never seen such rich colors.

At the bottom of the gold plaque was an epitaph with writing that she could not read, but it was written with rich, iridescent colors in the ink that were as other-earthly as the colors in the fabric of Aaron’s skirt.

As Tabitha was musing over what to do with the plaque, which was clearly priceless, she noticed two others had already been found and were hanging from a rope that had been strung up like a clothes line along the wall of the cave.  Therefore, she decided to put her plaque among them, and as she did, she noticed that her plaque was just one of dozens, even up to one hundred of such plaques, for something else supernatural was happening.  An invisible hand had given to her several rich parchment papers with a vivid outline of how to understand the plaque, its number among other plaques yet to be found, and how it was related to an archeological journey on which God was taking Tabitha.  However, in this cave, there were only three plaques.  As Tabitha was musing over these things, she realized that somehow the place had already leaked out to people of the public, and a woman came in who was marveling at the plaques and kept touching the writing.  Tabitha was horrified because of the value of the artifacts and their antiquity, so she kept yelling at the woman not to touch, but she would not listen, as she was so engrossed with the beauty of the ink.

Later, as Tabitha began examining the notes given to her about her “Aaron” plaque, she began to understand important details that were meant to provide a survey of redemptive history as recorded in the Scriptures.  The reason Aaron was dressed like this on the plaque (since Scripture clearly explains that the High Priest was dressed from top to bottom and fully covered), was because it was an illustration of how much understanding was being given of God’s full plan of salvation through the Aaronic priesthood.  It was a highly ornate time period in which much vivid description was given through symbols of what God’s salvation plan entailed.  These symbols were like the vivid, colorful fabrics or inks used for the clothing and writing on the plaque.  These colors appeared iridescent because God’s revelatory light needed to shine on these symbols to provide understanding.  Aaron’s sparse clothing showed that the Aaronic priesthood was a sparse revelation of the full intention of the redemptive story.  Aaron and the Levitical priests sacrificed countless animals, none of which could take away sin.  They were parables of the one Lamb of God, Jesus, God’s Son, who would be sent from heaven as the sacrifice for all who put their trust in Him.

On the plaque, Aaron looked Egyptian because the Egyptians were slavemasters, and in the same way, the Aaronic priesthood was something like a slavemaster to the Israelites, showing them again and again the horrific requirements of their sins and the heavy burden they had to bear for them in sacrificing their animals.  The law was meant to reveal the need of an advocate (Romans 7, Galatians 4).

Now Tabitha realized that even the woman who entered the cave was ordained by God as an illustration.  The reason she kept touching the writing is that she represented the religious system that could not hold sacred the true meaning behind the Aaronic symbolism; instead, its ornate detail became a stumbling block and distraction to its true meaning to reveal the need for God’s saving intervention and the coming of the Messiah Jesus.

2 Cor 4:6-7, NLT:

“For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.”

Tabitha’s parchments even explained the setting, further reiterating the frail human element of God’s redemptive story.  The floor of this “museum” cave was built with wooden planks.   Trees in Scripture represent two divine kingdoms that rule people groups: the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan (“The Tree of Life”/”The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” the fig tree representing Israel who was meant to represent the Kingdom of God on earth, the two olive trees representing the Two Witnesses of God’s elect, and even the peoples of the world as prophesied in symbolic language).  “And all the trees of the field will know that I am Yahweh; I bring down the exalted tree, exalt the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am Yahweh; I have spoken, and I will do it” (Ezek 17:24).  “For you will go out with gladness and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Isa 55:12).  People’s choices affect which spirit God gives them: the Holy Spirit or the devil’s spirit.  The latter results in suffering and death, which is represented when Adam and Eve chose to eat of the Tree of Knowledge or when God cut down the arrogant king of Babylon, being described as a huge spreading tree (Daniel 4).  The flooring of Tabitha’s museum being made of wooden planks speaks of how God arranged all this human history to display His glory as revealed in these two kingdoms: God and Satan.

Tabitha’s parchments also explained why so many of the plaques were missing in this “museum,” and why there were only three, when there were a hundred elsewhere.  Three is the number of resurrection (three days and three nights Jonah was in the whale before being spit out to preach a warning to Ninevah, and it was the third day that Jesus resurrected from the grave).  When Tabitha thought about the plaque of focus that she herself found, the Aaronic priesthood, she considered what it signifies: the realization of how dead in sin we are.  We have to realize we are dead to God in and of ourselves before we can see anything about what God is doing in redemptive history.  So this “museum” is where that happens–the place where God shows us our sinfulness and impotence apart from God’s resurrection power.  We cannot be made alive in Christ until we have learned the lessons of our sinful heart.

The rain was significant in God’s illustration to Tabitha.  It was water coming down from heaven that revealed the memorial of the Aaronic priesthood and thereby the memorial of the awareness of sin.  Num 5:27-28: “So he will have her drink the water, and it will be that, if she has defiled herself and has been unfaithful to her husband, that the water which brings curses will go into her to cause bitterness, and her abdomen will swell and her thigh will fall away, and the woman will become a curse among her people. 28But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, she will then be free and conceive a seed.”

The water in Numbers 5 is a parable.  Scripture tells us that water refers to the Word of God (“so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” - Eph 5:26).  The Word is also considered the foundation of our faith: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17).  John makes clear that Jesus is the personification of the Word: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

When we come to Jesus, He cleanses us, starting with making us aware of the depths of our sin.  We are like the adulterous woman of Numbers 5 who is cursed by the Word, because by the law, we are condemned; however, Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, so that this same Word in Christ becomes to us our cleansing and deliverance, making us as if we were not defiled.

Using the Aaronic priesthood, God gave to us vivid imagery of the extent and extreme consequences of sin in all its colors (many forms and idiosyncrasies).  The trouble is that the people of God began to think that the religious system–meant to create awareness of the hopelessness of sin and to cause the people to look forward to the true once-for-all sacrifice in the Messiah Jesus–actually gave them false religious security.  They thought that by performing rituals, they were making themselves right with God (even Christians do this by following Christian traditions without going deeper to really know Jesus personally).  This is why the message Jesus gave them of who He was as the fulfillment of the Aaronic priesthood and Levitical law was so offensive to them.  They didn’t want to admit their need for a heart transformation and their impotence in and of themselves to be right with God, so many rejected Jesus at His coming and ultimately crucified Him!

God showed Tabitha through her first archaeological journey that we have to start with our misunderstanding of sin and what God was trying to show Israel about sin, before we can embrace our Savior.