There is an inexhaustible wealth of truth and beauty in the Bible which bewilders us more and more as we advance in the knowledge of it. We shall never find but a tithe of its full meaning till we study it through a glorified vision. I believe that every noun and verb and person and place and incident mentioned in the Word of God has an ocean depth of meaning which to us in this life is fathomless. And then the blending and interblendings of persons and places were divinely arranged, so as to set forth a universe of fascinating truth which was utterly unknown to the persons while acting their part, just as God uses millions of raindrops in an afternoon shower to be so shone upon by the sunlight as to form the magnificent rainbow, and each drop is unconscious of the part it plays in that entrancing picture. Abraham is God’s photograph of faith, and Isaac of ideal sonship, and Jacob a picture of religious experience. Thus faith begets sonship, and out of sonship comes religious experience, with its struggles and victories. And as from Jacob come the twelve patriarchs, so out of religious experience come the manifold forms of virtues and graces, and this corresponds with what the Holy Ghost says, “that the tree of life,” that is, Christ living within us, bear twelve manner of fruit. This twelve manner of fruit was prophetically set forth in the names of the twelve sons of Jacob.

St. John describes the city of God built of transparent gold, and tells us that this same city is the Bride of the Lamb, composed of the sanctified believers in all the ages, and typified by the hundred and forty-four thousand; and he tells us that the twelve gates are the twelve names of Israel’s sons, and the twelve foundations are the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.

With God, a name always represents character. The “gate” is the covenant through which we enter into the Bridehood of the Lamb, and that covenant is an absolute consecration to God, and the covenants were made with the patriarchs. The “foundations” are the doctrines of God’s Word, and these doctrines were set forth in their ultimate and perfect form by the twelve Apostles of Jesus, and upon these doctrines the sanctified soul is to stand firmer than the mountains stand on the earth. Hence in the names of the twelve patriarchs we have a list of experiences through which the perfect believer is to pass to qualify him for a place in the Bridehood of Jesus for, be it remembered, the Scriptures do not teach that all who are saved compose the Bride of the Lamb, but only those who have the three qualities of being converted, sanctified, and tried in this present life; and John tells us that the nations of those who are saved will walk in the light of that city and that that city is the Lamb’s Bride. Now look at the panorama of graces set forth in the names of the twelve patriarchs.

1. “Reuben,” which signifies behold a son. “Reu” means “to see,” and “ben” means “a son.” From this we learn that the first step to being a member of the city of God is the new birth. We are to become sons of God by repentance and faith in Jesus, and this sonship is to be so distinct that we can see it, and others can see it. The new birth lies at the basis of all spiritual experiences. It will be intensely interesting to notice that these twelve names describe a spiritual biography, not only of the elect saints, but of our Lord Jesus as well. Thus when Jesus was born the proclamation went forth in all worlds. “Behold my Son . . . and let all the angels of God worship him.” See Hebrews 1:4–6. And in like manner, something analogous to the birth of Jesus takes place when we are born of the Spirit, and the melodious news circulates in Heaven, “Behold, another son is born.” This is our entrance through the Reuben gate into the city.

2. “Simeon,” which means “hearing;” that is, God will hear and answer prayer. To get the beautiful shades of meaning of these different names, we must not only consult a good Hebrew lexicon, but carefully read the account of the births and naming of the children, in which we will find special providential reasons for each name. And this gives us an insight into the motives of the parents in giving the names which opens a spiritual vision to us, even much larger than the literal meaning of a Hebrew root. Hence Simeon typifies a life of prayer, which we begin to live immediately after we see that we are sons of God. In our natural birth the first thing we do is to breathe in the vital air, and the next act is to cry. So in the new birth, we first receive the Spirit, the vital breath of God, and the next act is to cry, Abba Father, and begin to pray as a child and to receive answers from having been born, the child hears his Father, and the Father hears His child.

So we pass through the gate of hearing and answering prayer.

3. “Levi” signifies “joined,” united as in marriage. Leah knew that Jacob loved Rachel the best, and she prayed that by giving Jacob a third son, she would win his heart to love her as he did Rachel; hence she named the child Levi which had in her mind the significance of the union of hearts. This typifies the complete sanctification of the believer, by which the heart becomes the spouse of the Lord Jesus. Thus we see the fruit of prayer is to bring us into holiness or perfect heart union with God’s will. In all the typology of Scripture which set forth the steps in grace, the work of sanctification is always made to come soon after the new birth. Now to prove that this third name represents the believer finding the experience of holiness and heart union with Christ, we find that Moses in pronouncing the blessing on the twelve tribes follows the same spiritual order, though not the same literal order, for he says that Levi was God’s holy one, who was to bear the Thummin and Urim, and the word Thummin means perfection in the plural number, and the word Urim means light in the plural number; that is, Levi typified holiness with multiplied perfection and multiplied light, Deuteronomy 33:8.

Thus when we get to be Levi we pass through the sanctification gate.

4. “Judah,” which signifies “praise.” How true this is to experience, after the heart has been washed from every sinful affection, and joined in sweet wedlock to Jesus, then there breaks forth a life of praise. And Leah said, “Now will I praise the Lord.” Therefore she called his name Judah. We cannot praise the Lord from the depth of our soul, and all through our being, until after the whole will has been joined by the Holy Ghost to the will of God, and then when we see things in the clear light of purity and love we can praise God, and even when the voice is silent, the very thoughts that ripple out from under the red throne of the heart go softly singing in the ear of God. When David said, “Let all that is within me bless his holy name,” he certainly could not have had any depravity in him. Thus it is by praise out of a holy heart that we enter the Judah gate of the city of gold.

5. “Dan,” which signifies “judging.” The word as used here is not of condemning, or criticizing, but of honorable fair dealing, of the proper balancing in matters of equity. Dan was the first son of Rachel’s maid, and Rachel said, “God had judged her cause,” hence his name. Now see how true it is that we are not fit to judge in a real true Scripture sense, until we are filled with purity and praise. Thus out of the happy, praiseful Judah state can come forth the capability of rightly judging between man and man, and between cause and effect, and between places and things. Judah was the kingly tribe, and as soon as the king was enthroned he sat in judgment over the people, as in the case of young Solomon judging between the mothers who came to him.

All this is wrought out, not only in Jesus but also in His elect saints, for the Holy Ghost affirms that the elect saints shall judge the angels, and those who compose the Bridehood of Jesus are to reign with Him for a thousand years on the earth. And, again, Jesus says that they shall judge the twelve tribes of Israel. But a moody, melancholy, bias-minded person is not fit to judge.

Hence we must be Judahs in praise before we are fit to be Dans in judgment. It is by impartial, loving discrimination that we enter the Dan gate.

6. “Naphtali,” which means “wrestlings of God.” This was the second son by Rachel’s maid, and she wrestled with God in much prayer for him. But there is another side or meaning to it, for in her spirit she was wrestling in competition with her sister. When we get into advanced experiences of grace we have seasons of conflict with the spirits of other people, just as conscious and distinct as if we wrestled with them physically. Sometimes they may be hundreds and thousands of miles from us, but the Holy Ghost annihilates space in spiritual experiences, and through the operations of the Spirit we can feel the moral condition of souls far away from us, and in burdens of prayer for them we can feel their antagonism, or their pride, or bitterness, or their yielding as the case may be. Madam Guyon speaks of this with great clearness. This also implies wrestling in prayer against evil spirits and powers of darkness. God’s true elect ones, after having passed wonderful states in grace, are sometimes permitted to undergo awful temptations, and dangerous trials, and heart-rending conflicts with demons that are absolutely appalling. The greatest things in every Christian life are never put in biography. The best biography ever written, except such as God writes, gives only the outward shell of one’s life. Shallow-minded people think that if one goes through appalling conflicts with temptation and evil spirits that such a one is always to blame for it; but God allows some of His best loved children to navigate lonely high seas of stormy sorrow, and wrestle with cyclones of difficulty, for reasons which He does not explain in the present. It is always the outcome of one’s life in the end that demonstrates the root of his character. It is these deep, lonely wrestlings of soul in the upper ranges of grace that is represented by Naphtali. It takes a soul that will wrestle its way through regiments of Satanic bayonets to enter the Naphtali gate.

7. “Gad,” which signifies a “troop” or “company.” It implies a vision of an army of soldiers, or a great company in a festival procession. Gad was the first son of Leah’s maid, and she saw in his birth the prospect of raising another large family of sons, hence his name. Just as Dan or “judging” is a delicate and dangerous office to fill, and that state is succeeded by the awful conflicts and wrestlings of the Naphtali state, so after the stormy trials of the Naphtali period the soul is led forth in a calm, sweet place of extraordinary illumination, where it discerns the fellowship of saints and companionship of angels and glorified ones in such a supernatural way that very few Christians have any conception of, and of which even sanctified souls in their earliest stages will hardly accredit.

The Apostle Paul speaks positively of being brought by the Holy Ghost, where the soul has real communion with the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, with the members of the Bridehood of Jesus, and with an innumerable company of angels, and with those of the church of the firstborn, and with the Judge of all, and with the spirits of just men made perfect. This corresponds exactly with the Gad state in Christian experience, and St. Paul was not a modern spiritualist. Many teachers of holiness are hardly willing to accept of the extraordinary statements made in Scripture concerning the revelations of the Holy Ghost to a perfectly crucified soul for fear it may resemble fanaticism.

But God does give to us, when we are perfectly dead to self, spiritual apprehensions of heavenly companionships and visions of the coming glory and reign of Christ on this earth, in which we apprehend myriads and myriads of jubilant ecstatic beings, such as Isaiah saw in his vision, Isaiah 6; such as Jacob saw on his way to Canaan, Genesis 32; and such as John saw in Revelation. When we enter the Gad gate, we begin to apprehend our fellowship in the Bridehood of the Lamb as never in any previous state of grace.

8. “Asher,” which signifies “happiness, joy.” But in the sense in which Leah gave the name, it signifies a prophetic vision of the inexpressible happiness which will come to us in the future from the benedictions that are showered on us by the heavenly host. “And Leah said, happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed; so she called his name Asher.” She had a vision of the blessings that would be poured upon her from the lips of millions of Hebrew mothers in the years to come. This agrees exactly with what David and Solomon describe in their writings about the elect woman, that is, the Lamb’s Bride, being lauded by her companions, and praised as the fairest among women, as the most beautiful company among the saved ones.

It is possible for us to have in this life a remarkable insight through the Holy Ghost of the extraordinary happiness which will accrue to those who are counted worthy of the first resurrection, and of reigning with Christ in His kingdom. This happiness is the Asher gate.

9. “Issachar,” which signifies “wages or reward.” The soul that has followed Jesus thus far in His life will begin to realize, even in this world, many of the rewards which come to a perfectly humble and obedient heart. It is as if the government bonds issued from the Holy Ghost treasury were already beginning to yield a fine interest, and that with sweet fruition we were getting the cash from the celestial coupons, for in keeping of them there is great reward.

10. “Zebulun,” which signifies “dwelling, abiding,” but especially the being domesticated in a happy home. This thought harmonizes with that wonderful prayer which Paul prayed for sanctified believers, that they might be rooted and grounded in love; rooted like a tree in the soil of love, and as the Greek has it, “foundationed” like a house in love, with the view of dwelling in infinite love forever, for Paul’s prayer implies a dwelling house with deep foundations, surrounded by beautiful shade and fruit trees, amid which the perfect believer is to keep house forever with God. This is the Zebulun stage of grace, and emblematizes the gate through which we pass into eternal fixedness in God.

11. “Joseph,” which signifies “adding, increasing, unlimited progress.” This name is wonderfully commented upon by the Holy Spirit in many places in Scripture. Jacob, on his dying bed, beautifully expounds the meaning of this name by saying, “Joseph is a fruitful bough, a bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall.” He compares him to a fine grape vine, planted by a well of water, not only supplying grapes for those in the family, but running over the garden wall and abundantly feeding the strangers who lived outside the wall. And how truly Joseph fed not only his father’s house, but whole nations of Gentiles as well. Thus this name reveals to us that state of abundant, overflowing, tender, boundless love that leaps all boundaries, and runs over all partitioned walls, over all sectarianism, over all race distinctions, over all national boundaries, and pours itself out to the poor, the needy, the fallen, the crushed, the heathen, and sets no limit to its sacrifices for the saving and blessing of others. There are many, even among holiness people, who seem so narrow in thought, and love, and generosity that they apparently are a good ways yet from passing through the Joseph gate of limitless love and unmeasured increase. But there is a place in the Holy Ghost life where the charity, and sympathy, and tender love is simply boundless, and the whole soul is a fruitful bough that runs over the wall.

12. “Benjamin,” which signifies “the son of the right hand,” that is, the son lifted and crowned at the Father’s right hand, to share in the Father’s government as a prince. All the other sons were named by their mothers, and this last one was named by his dying mother “Ben-oni,” that is, the “son of my sorrow.” But Jacob changed the name to Benjamin, the son of my right hand.

All this was fulfilled in Jesus. When Christ hung on the cross He was “Ben-oni,” the son of sorrow. But a few days after, when He was raised and enthroned at the Father’s right hand, he was Benjamin. He was the only son who was born in the land of Canaan, the other eleven were born in Syria.