Two Camps - Genesis 32:1-2

"Jacob went on his way, and God’s angels met him. When he saw them, Jacob said, 'This is God’s camp.' So he called that place Mahanaim" (Genesis 32:1-2, HCSB).

After spending twenty years in Aramea, God commanded Jacob to return to his homeland. As Jacob entered the country God promised to Abraham and his father, Isaac, he was met by the angels of God.

Jacob called the place where he met the angels, Mahanaim, which means in Hebrew, two camps.

Jacob may have designated the place as Two Camps because he was acknowledging the convergence of two realities at that place—the unseen world of God as represented by the angels and his own physical and material world consisting of his family, servants, and livestock.

Jacob consecrated and memorialized the place as Two Camps because he recognized God's providence in his return to the Promised Land.

And the appearance of the angels authenticated that Two Camps was the place where the Divine Will crossed the path of human history.

Two Camps was a point in time where God's plans for the future intersected with the everyday affairs of Jacob's life.

Once Jacob encountered God, it was like he now lived in in parallel universes.

A new perspective had been superimposed on the old!

Like Jacob, when you encounter the unseen world of God’s reality, which is personified by Jesus, your perspective becomes drastically transformed.

Suddenly, your expectations for the future begin to impact how you live in the present!

When you encounter Jesus, you begin to live at at the crossroads of time and eternity:
 ...the place where the Divine Will crosses the path of human history!
 ...the point in time where eternal life begins!

When you encounter Jesus, eternal life becomes activated in your life. You begin to live in this present reality because of the way things will be in the future.

Now you live in two camps! Now you live for the future in the present!

"You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God (the heavenly Jerusalem), to myriads of angels in festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to God who is the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus (mediator of a new covenant)" (Hebrews 12:22-24, HCSB).