623. 'The first-fruits of God and the Lamb' signifies the initiament of the Christian heaven acknowledging the one God in Whom is the Trinity, and the Lord as being that God. By 'the first-fruits' is understood what is born first, also what is first gathered, thus an initiament, here the initiament of the New Heaven out of Christians. By 'God and the Lamb' here, as above, is understood the Lord as to His Divine from which [are all things] and as to the Divine Human, also as to the Divine Proceeding, thus the one God in Whom is the Trinity. Here something shall be said concerning 'first-fruits'. In the Israelitish Church it was commanded that:-
The first-fruits of the produce of the fields, of all grain, oil, and must, of the fruits of a tree, also of wool, should be given to Jehovah as holy, and they were given by Jehovah to Aaron, and after him to the high priest Exod. xxii 29 [H.B. 28]; xxiii 19; Lev. xxiii 10; Num. xiii 20; xv 17-21; xviii 8-20; Deut. xviii 4; xxvii seq.
Also that:-
They should celebrate the feast of the first-fruits of harvest and of bread Exod. xxiii 14-16, 19, 26; Lev. xxiii 9-15, 20-25; Num. xxviii 26 to the end.
The reason was because 'the first-fruits' used to signify that which is first born, and afterwards grows, as a child into a man, and a shoot into a tree; and consequently they used to signify everything following until it was made complete, for everything following exists in the first, as the man in the child, and the tree in the shoot; and because the first comes into existence before the things following, in like manner in heaven and in the Church, therefore 'the first-fruits' were holy to the Lord, and 'the feast of first-fruits' was celebrated. Similar things are signified by first-fruits' in Jer. xxiv 1, 2; Ezek. xx 40; Micah vii 1; Deut. xxxiii 15, 21.
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