The Housetops
In the East, all the houses have flat roofs. This is where people go to sleep at night, where they pray (because they want to get as close to God as they can) and where they go to watch any parades or see important people going by. The Housetops There is a verse from Isaiah which has great significance for me [Isaiah 22:1]: "What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to thou housetops?" In the East, all the houses have flat roofs. This is where people go to sleep at night, where they pray (because they want to get as close to God as they can) and where they go to watch any parades or see important people going by. Housetops are like public property in a way, because there is a way to go up from the garden. The custom is that others may go on the house tops to look down at the street without asking the permission of the house owner. Also, the family will sleep on the roof during most seasons, and there may be a little room built to hold the bedding. This is also used as a prophet's chamber. In II Kings 4:10 we read of the Shunamite woman who made a little chamber on the wall for Elisha to stay in when he passed that way. He could go up there and not disturb the rest of the family. You remember the story about the man sick of the palsy, whose companions let him down through the roof so he could see Jesus and be healed by him. Mark 2:4 says, "And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay." People read this Scripture and think that these people broke something to get through the roof, but it is not so. This place in the roof is made so that it can be taken apart and then placed back together again for people to go from the roof-top down into the house. "Broken up" in this case is like when someone says that they are going to knock down a tent or some other equipment which comes apart and then is put back together. The houses a
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the Eastern, Biblical culture. For over twenty years, Bishop Pillai taught these Orientalisms, bringing great enlightenment to the Christian world. His crusade of imparting this light of the Eastern Culture carried him to numerous universities and seminaries, as well as every major denomination throughout the United States, England and Canada. Still today, his teachings remain the foremost authority on the rare gems of Biblical customs and culture. Bishop K.C. Pillai’s conversion to Christianity is a witness of God’s heart, as well as a lesson in one of the most significant Eastern customs found in the Bible. The Bishop was raised as a Hindu. When a Hindu child of the ruling class is born, a little salt is rubbed on the baby who is then wrapped in swaddling cloth. This custom invoked one of the oldest and strongest covenants in the Eastern world, the “salt covenant.” In this particular i