Page 194 - Through New Eyes

The World of the Patriarchs 191
conquest” of the land. More important, we see from this what
true conquest is. The building of altars of evangelism preceded
the cultural conquest. If we wish to build a Christian civilization
in our land, we had best start with altars.
The pillar also becomes an important patriarchal symbol,
though only in one instance. When Jacob had his vision of the
True Tower of Babel (Babel= Gate of Heaven), he awoke and

took the stone that he had put at his head-place and set it up as
a pillar, and poured oil on its top. And he called the name of
that place Bethel (House of God); however, formerly the name
of the city had been Luz (Genesis 28:18-19).

This means that whenever we read of Bethel in Genesis, the peo-
ple of that day called it Luz. Jacob stood outside the city and
renamed it Bethel by faith, faith that someday Luz would indeed
be a House of God. When Jacob came back into the land, he
went again to Luz, and God again appeared to him.

Then God went up from him in the place where He had spoken
with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where He had
spoken with him, a pillar of stone, and he poured out a drink
offering on it; he also poured oil on it and once again named
the place Bethel (Genesis 35:13-15).

God’s ascension from this spot is clearly to be associated with the
ladder to heaven.
Thus, Jacob’s stone pillars” were symbols of God’s holy
mountain, the true ladder to heaven. In fact, Jacob explicitly
called the pillar the “house of God“: “And this stone, which I have
set up as a pillar, will be God’s house” (Genesis 28: 22a). Jacob
poured out wine at the pillar, just as he would have poured it out
at an altar (cp. Numbers 15:1-10). He poured oil over it, just as
the Mosaic House of God, the Tabernacle, would be permeated
with oil (Exodus 40:9), and just as God’s human house, His
priest, would have oil poured on him (Leviticus 8:12). This oil
represented God’s cloud coming down on the mountain, filling
the Tabernacle, anointing His new Adam. The Bible pulls this
imagery together in Psalm 133: