The manna in the wilderness was white (Exo. 16:31). This means that it was clean and pure. No earthly food is as white as manna. Manna is the purest food. The more we feast on Christ, eating of Him as our manna, the more we are whitened. We are not only cleansed and purified; we are whitened. To be white means to be absolutely without stain. As we feed on Christ, all our stains are eliminated. Although we may be good in certain respects, we are not white. Although we may be loving, our love is not white; it is colored. Our humility is also colored. In fact, none of our human attributes is white; every one of them is colored. But the more we take in Christ as our life supply, the more our color will be reduced and the whiter we shall become.
An excellent Chinese food is sea cucumber. But because it is black in color, the American brothers are unwilling to eat it. Although I have tried my best to convince them to eat it, they are all afraid of its black appearance. Manna, on the contrary, is white and does not frighten anyone. Rather, it gives us the feeling of peace.
The manna was eaten as bread (Exo. 16:15), as cakes (Num. 11:8), and as wafers (Exo. 16:31). As our manna, Christ has different aspects and nourishes us in different ways. When we eat Him as our manna, sometimes He tastes like bread and at other times He tastes like a cake or like a wafer which is thin and easy to eat and digest.
The manna was also like coriander seed (Exo. 16:31; Num. 11:7). This food is a seed. When we eat Christ, He comes into us as a seed. The coriander seed, unlike corn, is very tiny. A seed is something of life which brings the life element into our being. As such a seed, Christ will grow within us.
In Exodus 16:31 we are told that the taste of manna was like wafers made with honey. Honey is sweet and is the produce of two lives, the animal life and the vegetable life. Honey is the mingling of these two lives. The honey bees which produce honey receive the supply from flowers, from the vegetable life. As our manna, Christ has this element of the mingling of the animal life with the vegetable life which becomes our sweet nourishment.
Numbers 11:8 says of the manna that “the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.” Oil typifies the Holy Spirit. When we eat Christ as our manna, we taste the Spirit of God. The oil here is the fresh oil. The Spirit we taste when we enjoy Christ as manna is always fresh. As our manna, Christ tastes like fresh oil and has the flavor and nourishment of honey.
According to the original Hebrew, Numbers 11:7 says, “The manna was as coriander seed, and the eye thereof as the eye of bdellium.” It is difficult for anyone to translate this verse properly. The King James Version says that the color was as the color of bdellium. Bdellium is a pearl produced by the resin from a tree and is very much like the pearl produced by an oyster. The color of manna is the color of bdellium. Other versions use the word appearance instead of color. However, the Hebrew word here is eye. Manna has an eye, for its appearance is like that of an eye. A pearl somewhat resembles an eye. If you examine a pearl, you will see that it is like an eyeball. An eyeball has the appearance of pearl, and this appearance is its color. In other words, the appearance and color of bdellium are like an eye.
When we eat the manna, we eat many eyes, and all these eyes get into us. As the manna, Christ resembles an eye. The more we eat of Christ, the more eyes we shall have. The four living creatures in Revelation 4:6 are “full of eyes before and behind.” At the front and at the rear, within and without, they are full of eyes. If you go to a greenhouse, you will see that none of the walls is opaque; every side is transparent. An eye means transparency. With the exception of our eyes, which are transparent, our whole body is opaque. If we do not have Christ, we do not have any eyes, and we are absolutely opaque. When we were saved, we began to be transparent. Now the more we enjoy Christ, the more transparent we become. Whenever we are with a brother who truly enjoys Christ, we can sense that he is transparent. Standing before him is like being in a transparent greenhouse. However, anyone who is not in the enjoyment of the Lord is altogether opaque. If you are with four such persons, you will feel like you are in a dungeon surrounded by opaque walls. But if you are surrounded by several brothers who love the Lord and feed on Him, you will sense that everything is transparent. As the manna, Christ is transparent. When we eat Him, we eat eyeballs and we become transparent.
This transparency will eventually become our appearance. If we enjoy Christ day after day, eating Him as the eyeball, we shall have the appearance of Christ, the appearance of an eyeball, and this appearance will become our color. By eating Christ, we are colored with the transparency of Christ. In this way, transparency becomes our appearance and color.
Finally, as the manna, Christ is not legal. Numbers 11:8 says, “The people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it.” Christ can be ground, beaten in a mortar, or baked in pans. He is not legal. Nearly every Christian, however, is legal. If you experience Christ in a certain way, you make that a legal way. But Christ would say, “To you, I am ground. But others prefer to beat Me. I feel quite good when I am beaten in this way. Still others bake Me and put Me into an oven. I also feel good about this. Why are you so narrow and legal?”
What a wonderful record we find in the Bible regarding the manna. If we are asked what it is, we must simply say that it is manna. It comes with the dew and is like the frost on the ground. It is small, round, white, and like a coriander seed. It can he eaten as bread, cake, and wafers, it has the taste of honey and fresh oil, and its appearance is like an eyeball. Although we might have read Exodus 16 and Numbers 11 many times, we probably have never noticed all these aspects of the manna. We need to eat more eyeballs that we may have the transparent sight.