The book of Revelation polarises Christians. Some become obsessed with ‘cracking its code’ while others throw it into the too hard basket. Thankfully, recent advances in biblical theology enable us to liberate this enigmatic book from both mistreatment and obscurity.

The prophecy is attractive to some because of its mystery, its beauty and its terror, and also because interpreting it promises access to divine knowledge about future events. But when it comes to its application in everyday life, most pastors are unwilling to venture beyond the letters to the seven churches in their preaching, since these offer some easily identifiable and practical moral advice.

Continue reading at ethos.org.au.

or Where Kenneth Gentry Is Wrong on the Revelation

Part 1 here.

I’ve been meaning to write this post since I wrote Part 1 (over two years ago). A friend’s recent question concerning Kenneth Gentry’s lectures on the Revelation encouraged me to bite the bullet and bust a gut and get it done. The question is this: Is the Revelation to be interpreted in the light of Josephus’ Jewish War, or in the light of the Bible itself?

Just as the Tabernacle rebuilt by David included Gentile worshipers, the reinstitution of worship in Israel after the exile likewise required the inclusion of Gentile sponsors. We saw in Esther in Ezekiel’s Temple that the oikoumene was a Jew-Gentile social architecture, with the city of Jerusalem itself serving as a kind of holy altar within a larger temple. [1] Just as the four-horned altar served as an image of the (symbolically) four-cornered Land (not earth; see The Earth Is Flat), so now the entire city was referred to as “holy,” and the genealogy of every Jew was considered “priestly.” This upgrade in holiness of what was once common was the result of Israel’s exile, a death-and-resurrection which purged her of idol worship. So, what could go wrong?

Of course, these new blessings could and would be twisted into curses. The holy city itself and the genealogy of every Jew would become Israel’s new gods.

This is the situation into which the Messiah was born. The outcome of this idolatry was the requirement for a new death-and-resurrection. In Israel’s place, Christ initiated it, and Israel followed Him through the process over the next generation. Like the bronze altar outside the Tabernacle, the entire city itself would be considered “outside the camp,” and even its sides would be splashed with the blood of the atoning sacrifices. As the law decreed, the crimes of the murderers would be atoned for with their own blood.

Consequently, it would be no surprise that the deep structure of the Revelation recapitulates the order of sacrifice. The Revelation is not a description of the Jewish war, though it is part of the outcome. It is a liturgy describing the sacrifice of the priesthood of Israel for the sake of the nations. Herod’s Jerusalem would be offered up in a spectacle of blood, fire and smoke. Any other reading of the final book of the Bible, using, for instance, uninspired second Temple literature, the works of Josephus, or the latest news headlines, to interpret it, is a gross misunderstanding of the purpose of the text.

Ordo Sacrificii sub Apocalypsis

In the book of Leviticus, the simple process of the whole burnt offering (“the ascension” [3]) blooms like a flower, revealing myriad parts with different purposes. Yet each of these remains a process of transformation, one whose pattern can be traced back to Genesis 1.

Creation – Day 1 – Called (Sabbath – “on the Lord’s Day”)

What is the correspondence between the choosing of the blameless animal and Day 1? The baptism of Jesus is a great help. The dove hovers over the water and identifies the Lamb from hundreds of His repentant brothers. We see a similar process at the anointing of David, the shepherd. In the Revelation, it is the vision of the glorified Jesus, the one who has already ascended.

Division – Day 2 – Sanctified (Passover)

In biblical terms, sanctification is not a growth in holiness but a setting apart. In sacrificial terms, it is the delegation of a purpose, much as one might set apart food for a special event. Thus, sanctification has more to do with election than the kind of practical holiness which the word brings to mind today. In Genesis 1, this is the parting of the waters. In Exodus, it is the parting of the Red Sea to set Israel apart from Egypt. In Galatians, Paul combines these two images in his use of Hagar and Sarah as symbols of Egypt’s river and Canaan’s rain, the waters below and the waters above (see The Shape of Galatians, pp. 155-165). In the Revelation, it is the Division of the New Israel, represented by the seven churches, from the Old Israel, the city of Jerusalem who now embodies the worst traits of Egypt, Sodom and Babylon, and worse, flaunts these in God’s face through her continued sacrifices, following the murder of Christ and most of His apostles. Jesus calls these new “sons of God” out of Egypt and “passes over” them, “trimming the wick” on each lampstand. He cuts off the leaven of the Pharisees in each church before He cuts off “Egypt” altogether (see The Eighth Letter and Living Menora).

Ascension – Day 3 – Presented (Firstfruits)

The Passover sacrifice could be a lamb or a kid, but the Firstfruits animal offering was a lamb. Revelation 4-5 reveal the Lamb, ascended to heaven as the firstfruits from the dead, representing all who believe. Since the work of Day 3 was twofold, Land and fruits, Altar and Table, Christ is the connection between the earth (His grave in Israel) and the heavens. Instead of grain and fruit plants, Christ is flesh and blood, bread and wine, offered upon the Table.

Christ opens the scroll, which ends His ministry in the Garden, and sends the four Gospel witnesses into the Land (or, in Tabernacle terms, moves the action from the Most Holy into the Holy Place). The seven seals follow the same sevenfold pattern in microcosm.

Testing – Day 4 – Purified (Pentecost)

Just as Christ is the Head of the sacrifice (offered without being washed), chapter 7 reveals the firstfruits Body: 144,000 believing Jews. Note that the Body is washed (v. 14). These are the sheep which Peter was to feed for the slaughter. The process of “counting” alludes to the book of Numbers. Only the men were counted, because men are sacrificial “heads,” hence circumcision for Israelite males. But there are Gentiles as well, yet these are not counted. They are numberless. Peter’s haul of fish was counted, an offering from the sea presented upon the “altar” on the beach (a fire of burning coals). The fact that these Gentile “human sacrifices” are not counted means the Covenant is moving from earth to heaven, from the Cainite ground to the “Abel” (hebel) clouds of heaven. This is a new heavens and earth, a new creation, and the description of the end of their suffering aptly follows the order of the Creation week (see Saved From The Green Horse). The centre of this promise concerns the striking and scorching heat of the sun, which leads into chapter 8. This is a description of the holy fire from heaven, the Spirit of God descending upon both Jews and Gentiles from the Day of Pentecost onward. From heaven’s point of view, salvation was a call to become a human sacrifice, since Christ has made us “acceptable” to God (in sacrificial terms). We no longer need animal substitutes.

Maturity – Day 5 – Transformed (Trumpets)

This is where our concept of “sanctification” comes in. It is spiritual maturity, so in biblical terms a better word for it might be transformation. The flesh has been consumed and is now fragrant clouds, able to pass through locked doors (as we see in John and Acts), following the High Priest who entered through the torn veil in clouds of incense on the Day of Atonement.

New Israel – Good Trumpets

Maturity corresponds to the Feast of Trumpets (see above), describing in “Mosaic” terminology the witness of the Apostles leading up to the destruction of the  Temple and its now obsolete – and corrupted – worship. The seven trumpets follow the same sevenfold “creation-through-sacrifice” pattern. As the Feast of Trumpets, they muster the troops of Israel. However, as is described by Paul in Romans, there were now two Israels. The Judiastic Israelites are described as Egyptian/Babylonian locusts, and the saints are described as human Tabernacles, temples of the Spirit.

In chapter 10, a part of the New Covenant authority is delegated to John, a son of thunder, who, as the Last Apostle, will speak the final words of judgment upon the rulers of the Land (“kings of the earth”). For a description of the angel, see The Church As Colossus and The Last Trumpet.

The two witnesses are the Law of Moses and the Testimony of the Prophets embodied in the Apostolic Witness as the testimony of Jesus, hence Moses and Elijah deferring to Christ at His transfiguration, and the Father vindicating Christ as He did at His baptism. Just as that act ended Christ’s personal testimony to Israel, so these two witnesses end the Apostolic testimony to Israel. Both Head and Body have now spoken and been slain.

What is interesting here is that the Word began in the Garden, worked its way out through the Land to the World. Here we have three pictures of the testimony of the Firstfruits Church, which reverse the order: A great army crossing the Euphrates into the Land (World), the witness of John as seven “Sinaitic” thunders (Land), and the Law and Prophets as two cherubim (Garden). These symbols follow the High Priest as He makes His way from the court, through the Holy Place and into the Most Holy, just as He does in Leviticus. So the final verse of this section referring to the Ark of God in His temple should be no surprise if we have a handle on sacred architecture. The blood of the human sacrifices is being offered by Christ as the “washed Body” (Leviticus 1:9 – supporting baptism by full immersion of the body). However, this brings a new fire from heaven, one which will be administered by the Roman armies.

Old Israel – Bad Trumpets

Following the pattern of Psalm 1, Maturity has both blessings (the Apostolic witness) and curses (the response of the rulers of the Land). This dual witness is the “Deuteronomy” of the book of Revelation (read Deuteronomy 28). In their warnings, the Firstfruits Church not only “filled up” (multiplied into an abundance, as Brides do) the sufferings of Christ, but also provoked unbelieving Israelites to harden their hearts like Pharaoh did, and to “fill up” their sins. Paul describes this Jew-Gentile ministry and the imminent judgement of Jerusalem:

For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last! (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)

I hope it is becoming plain how erroneous is most exposition of the Revelation, including that by many preterists. Throwing proof texts at each other is like arguing about jigsaw pieces without reference to the picture on the box, which is found in the Torah.

Anyhow, from Revelation 12, the pattern of the Trumpets (Maturity) is repeated. It begins with a negative Pentecost. Just as David received the Spirit and Saul received an evil spirit from the Lord, so false Israel became demonic after the “enlightening” of Pentecost (Hebrews 6:4). Satan was kicked out of his “legal” role in heaven and took up residence on the earth, or more specifically, on the Land, in the Temple of the Herods (the source of the Edenic “springs” described in the final chapters of Ezekiel). So, that’s the Herodian Garden corrupted. Notice it begins with the Woman and the Herodian Dragon, a clear reference to Genesis as the beginning of this legal pattern.

Next, he spewed this corrupted (“bitter” Wormwood) river into the Land, and the false Church sucked it right up. This was the false doctrine which the apostles had to battle against, referred to over and over again in the epistles (so much for the attempts over the centuries to identify this false doctrine as anything but anti-Christian Judaism).

Satan’s final attempt to kill the Bride was to turn to the World for aid, so he called upon the Sea Beast, Rome (see Three Strikes, Binding and Loosing, and Serpents and Dragons). AD64 saw not only the completion of Herod’s Temple (proving Jesus to be a false prophet) but also the burning of Rome, the first time Roman authorities recognised Christianity as separate from Judaism. Satan’s ploy was to attack this strange new Jew-Gentile Body with a Jew-Gentile counterfeit, just as Herod and Pilate became “friends” after the trial of Christ.

After a description of this false worship and its false kingdom (presented as an Aaronic golden calf, the image of a beast), the “transformed” sacrifices are seen as “holy smoke” on the mountain with Christ, Head and Body now united. Their flesh and blood was “harvested” as bread and wine. Like the blood of Abel, it cried from the ground and calls upon God for vindication and vengeance. However, unlike the first murder, this vengeance would not be delayed. The blood of all the prophets from Abel onwards would be avenged upon that generation. The Land is described as an altar overflowing with blood “as high as a horse’s bridle.”

Conquest – Day 6 – Vindicated (Atonement)

Jerusalem had been surrounded by saints with Gospel “Trumpets”, but the final day had come. As it was with Jericho, the firstfruits of the Land, “all flesh” would be cut off in Jerusalem, as the firstfruits of the World. The entire city would be cut around, or circumcised. This brings us to the seven bowls of wrath, which correspond to the seven sprinklings of blood from the hand of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. However, on this day, the Roman general Titus would step over the Body of the apostate High Priest (see End of the Abrahamic Rift and Jesus’ Caesars).

What is the source of the seven bowls? Only the structure of the text reveals this (which means exegetes with little or no poetic sense will write this observation off as speculation). Interestingly, it is the Lampstand, the light of the Law now available by the Spirit (see Seven Bowls of Wrath). The Spirit would no longer strive with old Israel. For a sample of the beauty of the “de-Creation” described under the image of these Temple bowls, see #41 in 50 Failed Predictions part 9. For a complete rundown, see James B. Jordan’s The Vindication of Jesus Christ.

Chapters 17-19 describe the separation of the harlot and the bride, corresponding to Hagar and Sarah (Israel as Egypt versus Abraham’s “heavenly Canaan”), and also the two prostitutes whose hearts were discerned by Solomon. Since this entire pattern recapitulates the Testing of Adam in the Garden, the Father is discerning the heart of the Bride (Numbers 5) whom Christ has presented to Him as a chaste virgin. Not only are her eyes open (Luke 24:31; Acts 9:8,18), but she is liberated by the obedience of her Adam.

Glorification – Day 7 – Sent (Booths)

The final section of the Revelation is also sevenfold. It describes the ministry of the now-enthroned Firstfruits Church in heaven during this current period (see For A Thousand Years and Altar of the Abyss – 7). The sacrificial process enacted in the Garden and re-enacted in the Land would now be recapitulated throughout the World through the testimony of saints from every nation.

I hope to write a complete “Shape of the Revelation” some time soon, but will wait for Peter Leithart’s 2015 commentary because he will no doubt present many insights I can rip off include! In the mean time, get a hold of James B. Jordan’s Revelation lecture series.

But I hope you can see that the Revelation is not a symbolic account of the Jewish War, as important as understanding that history might be. Of course, I do recommend Kenneth Gentry’s Before Jerusalem Fell, which is extremely helpful when it comes to dating the book and establishing its purpose in the biblical canon.

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[1] For an introduction to this subject, see Peter J. Leithart’s The Four: A Survey of the Gospels. For a more in-depth study, see James B. Jordan’s The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. And you can search for “oikoumene” here on the blog.
[2] See Peter J. Leithart, Skinned and Cut, Biblical Horizons No. 35 (March 1992)

ART: A souped up version of the original cover artwork for David Chilton’s The Days of Vengeance. Chilton makes a similar error to Gentry, but is still well worth a read for his many insights.

Jesus’ reference to Daniel 7 in Matthew 26:64 (and Mark 14:62) is a source of some confusion. To figure out what is actually going on in Daniel’s vision, we have to go back to Leviticus 16. James Jordan writes:

…when Jesus calls Himself “the Son of Man,” He is referring to Ezekiel, not to Daniel 7 (except perhaps indirectly). Jesus is the Greater Ezekiel. Christians are those who are “like the Son of Man,” like Jesus.

The Day of Coverings: Coming With Heavenly Clouds

Turning from Ezekiel, there is another passage in the Bible with which the Jews were very familiar, that is farther in the background of Daniel 7, and that is Leviticus 16. On the Day of Coverings (of “Atonement” in English Bibles), the High Priest took off his glorious garments and dressed simply in linen in order to remove the sins of the people once a year. Then, after finishing this work, he was reinvested with glory, and once again took up his position as spiritual ruler of Israel.

Two coverings happened on the Day of Coverings. First, the Ark-Cover was sprinkled and thereby covered with blood. This was a covering for propitiation, justification. Then the High Priest put back on his garments of glory and beauty. This was a covering for glorification.

Now, removing sins is not in view on Daniel 7, but other aspects of the ritual are. We have seen that Ezekiel was a kind of high priest, and it follows that in Ezekiel “son of man” is a title for the High Priest, the spiritual ruler of God’s people. Adam was priest in the Garden of Eden, and the “son of adam” is a new Adam, ruling in the symbolic sanctuary garden of the Tabernacle and Temple. Hence, “son of Adam” or “New Adam” is entirely appropriate as a title for the Chief Priest of God’s sanctuary.

An examination of the ritual in Leviticus 16 will clarify aspects of Daniel 7 for us, aspects that would have been much clearer to Daniel and his friends who “meditated on the law day and night” and who had observed this ritual annually before they were deported to Babylon.

The ritual is delineated in Leviticus 16. We read in verses 12–14 that the High Priest was to take coals from the fire of the Bronze Altar in the Courtyard. Then he was to fill the hollow of both his hands with incense, place it upon the coals, and carry this incense into the Holy of Holies directly before Ark-Throne of Yahweh. This incense was most holy, or “holy of holy” (Exodus 30:34–38). Its ingredients were prescribed by God and it was used only in the Tabernacle/Temple, which was a symbolic model of God’s heavens. The cloud of incense, thus, was a symbolic cloud of the heavens. Being “most holy” this incense could travel into the Most Holy room. [1]

As the High Priest walked from the Altar on the earth upwards (symbolically) through the heavens and into the highest heavens, he did so accompanied by this heavenly cloud. Inside the Holy of Holies, the High Priest held the incense pan in one hand, and a bowl of blood in his other hand, from which he flicked with his finger blood toward the Ark-Throne. This blood was to cover his sins and those of the other priests (Leviticus 16:11).

After this, as a second ritual, the High Priest did the same thing with a goat slain for the sins of the people, taking incense into the Holy of Holies and sprinkling the blood of the goat before the Ark-Throne (Leviticus 16:15).

After all the rituals were completed, the High Priest took off the garments he had been wearing, and put back on his garments of glory and beauty (Leviticus 16:23–24). These garments included the twelve tribes engraven on his shoulder stones and also on his twelve-stoned breastplate. In other words, the High Priest was given the kingdom on the Day of Coverings — he put the kingdom back on himself.

Now if we look back at Daniel 7:13–14, we see the same sequence. We see someone like Ezekiel, who was a kind of high priest for the exilic community. This High Priest approaches Yahweh with the clouds of heaven. Then he is given a kingdom that will never pass away.

We must remember that the High Priest represented the people. The High Priest is the son of man, and the people are those who are like this son of man. In Leviticus 16, the High Priest comes with heavenly incense clouds first for himself, and then he comes a second time for the people. Thus, there are two cloudy ascensions in Leviticus 16, the first of the son of man, and the second of those who are like the son of man.

In Daniel 7:13, the one like a son of man does not come riding upon heavenly clouds. He is not a cloud-rider. He is not a “divine figure.” No, he comes with heavenly clouds, and can be recognized as the High Priest, or rather, as those who are like the High Priest. In Daniel 7, the Ancient of Days, the Cloud-Rider, has already arrived.

We are not surprised, then, to read that the one like a son of man is identified not with any particular person, such as the coming Messiah, but with the saints (Daniel 7:18, 22, 25). Now, Daniel would not have been aware that the Messiah would be the incarnate Yahweh. Hence, he might well have seen the one like a son of man as the Messiah coming to Yahweh to receive the kingdom. That is, Daniel could have seen this figure as both the people and their Messianic head. At the same time, as we have seen, the clear allusions to Leviticus 16 might have complicated things for Daniel, because there are two ascensions, one of the son of man and one of the people of the son of man. We, however, cannot be confused. The Ancient of Days is Yahweh, and taking his seat must be the ascension of Jesus and the opening of the books seen in Revelation 4–7. The one like a son of man, like Jesus, is the saints, who ascend to receive the kingdom in the year AD 70.

For Christians today it is not so clear, because the background of Daniel 7 in Ezekiel and in Leviticus 16 is not well understood. They see Jesus ascending to heaven in the clouds (Acts 1:9) and they think that is all there is to it, forgetting the second cloudy ascension in Leviticus 16. But Leviticus 16 makes clear that first the High Priest ascends in a heavenly cloud, and then afterwards the people (represented by the goats and the High Priest) ascend.

Similarly, Christians have been too quick to read the various statements in the New Testament about the “son of man coming in/with clouds” to refer to Jesus Himself. In some passages this may be the case, since Jesus is the Son of Man and He did ascend in the clouds. But in other passages, it seems that it is the second ascension, that of the saints, that is in view. We shall conclude this chapter by examining these passages.

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[1] Frankincense in the system was “holy,” but compound incense, being a mixture, was “most holy.” Mixtures are always holy, which is why the layman was to avoid them. I have treated this matter fully in James B. Jordan, The Law of Forbidden Mixtures. Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper 6 (Niceville, FL: Biblical Horizons, 1989).

(James B. Jordan, The Handwriting On The Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 337-340.)

Jordan’s discussion of the “cloud-coming” passages in the New Testament is enlightening, as is the rest of his must-have commentary on Daniel, available here.

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed… Blessed…”
(Matthew 5:2-11)

Part 1 is here.

Just so, the first natural words formed a testimony given before the first natural audience. They follow the structure of the Ten Commandments. [1] This was the first prophecy.

Reading the Ten Words back into the first speech by the first human Lawgiver also shows a movement from the natural to the ethical. It recapitulates the movement from the “sacrifice of blood” to the “sacrifice of praise,” from the Tabernacle of Moses to the Tabernacle of David, etc. Eve is not spoken to. She is referred to in the third person. Her naming is a legal blessing and witness before God. You might notice that this stanza is the Sanctions of the greater pattern, and Succession follows in vv. 24-25, with the requirements for the foundation of a new household, a new “delegation.”

You might also notice that each horizontal row moves from Adam to Eve, and the entire process also moves vertically from Adam to Eve. Adam is protology (Genesis) and Eve is eschatology (Revelation). The Woman is always the “at last.”

The Veil of Flesh

Adam did not need to learn to speak (or presumably, to write). He was physically (naturally) mature. But now (“at last”) for Adam, the natural was also bifurcated. It was Social. Adam was now corporate. For the Physical to become Ethical, there must be a Social in between, that is, a veil of flesh. Bone is to flesh as law is to love. Adam is structure and Eve is glory. The spiritual/ethical words spoken by God were to become the “environment of fire” between them, for good or ill, blessing or cursing.

We see this triune order in the architecture of the first three chapters of Genesis.

In Genesis 1, Adam is a Physical creature, part of the created order. In Genesis 2, the focus zooms in on Adam to tell his story as a Social being. This involves cutting flesh and reuniting flesh, something which did not occur with the animals, whose law is earthly, tied to the blessing or cursing of the ground. Genesis 3 tells the story of Adam as an Ethical creature, one who is not only to represent the created order to God above, but to represent the heavenly order to the creation below. The movement is from being, to knowing, to loving. Of course, loving (of God and of Eve) is where he fails.

This brief history of Adam (the individual) becomes the history of corporate Adam. As discussed, the first Covenant was tied to nature, thus all nature which had “breath” was destroyed. But after Noah, Covenant history moved from the Physical to the Social. The cutting of circumcision avoided another “natural” destruction by creating a microcosmic “world model” in Abraham. Just as it was for Adam, this was a time of promises and foreshadowings. The subsequent history deals with a Social creation, that is, Israel and her Tabernacle as a microcosm of the Physical world. The revelation at this point is fundamentally Social. The expectations of the Law concern external obedience. The fight against evil is a fight against its expression in the flesh, both within Israel and through holy wars with other nations. When Israel sins, the flood that comes is not water, but the restless sea of the nations, first Babylon, then Rome. This explains why the prophets use “creation” language in their “social” judgments. The wrath against all flesh would fall upon a “firstfruits,” Israel as God’s firstborn. [2]

The final world model was Christ (“Now is the judgment of this world” [John 12:31]). In Jesus’ baptism and the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost (head and body), history moved from a Social architecture (based upon circumcision) to an Ethical revelation. Consequently, the Law also changed. The “external” Laws of Moses were replaced by the indwelling Law of Christ, expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.

The serpent was finally crushed, and the revelation given to us now is the mind of Christ, not an inflexible moral code but an organic, living, adaptable one (which is why the Pharisees had so much trouble with Jesus — they did not understand the Spirit of the Law). Jesus fulfilled the ethical demands of the “Social law” and began the age of a different kind of Ethics, the era of obedience in the Spirit. [3]

History in Adam

Jesus, as a blameless Adam, became the mouth of God, The Prophet Like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-19; John 1:20-21). He breathed on His disciples with natural breath, a liturgical act prefiguring their reception of the breath of the supernatural Spirit after His ascension. He was the first “Angel of the Lord” who not only took on human form, but took that human form, that flesh, justified, into heaven, to represent the entire earth in the heavenly court (see Part 1). He then shared that Spirit with the disciples who would be a new kind of “heavenly visitor,” founding a new microcosmic Social model, the Church.

So, the pattern of the history of mankind follows the shape founded in the creation of Adam.

Now, although the process is chiastic, it is also a progression. As with all good chiasms, the correspondences in the second half are developments upon their counterparts in the first half. Eve is a “development” beyond Adam. He is protological. She is eschatalogical.

So the original Physical world of Adam and Noah was not as glorious as will be the final Physical restoration. Moreover, and here’s the rub, the Social world of Israel-according-to-the-flesh was not as glorious as this fragrant new Social world of the Church. If we overlay this “all history” cycle upon the process we observed in Genesis 2:7, we can see that Israel is to the Church as the formed shape of Adam in the dust was to Adam breathing, speaking, naming. Of course, the same pattern is found in Adam’s qualification for the heavenly breath.

Since the process in the cycle above is cumulative (as is the entire Bible), we should modify it to express this.

The Spirit becomes the heart of a new society, then that new Spirit-filled society becomes the heart of a new physical order. We see this prefigured in God’s Ethical preparation of Israel before her inheritance of the Land of Canaan. But the first Pentecost was a Pentecost of death. It was much like the disqualification of Adam, who like Aaron, failed to speak against the shiny beast and his strange fire. The Last Pentecost changed everything.

The new social body is not like the old social body which concerned the cutting of flesh. It is a body of those indwelt by the Spirit because their hearts have been cut. It is not about the cutting of Adam to construct a bride (circumcision). This New Covenant body does what Adam was supposed to do. It does not represent the Physical creation to God, nor represent a “forming” Social moral code to its counterpart. Filled with the Spirit, it represents God to the Social and Physical orders with plenipotent authority — the mind of Christ. [4] Baptism is about mediation and representation as a co-regent with Christ. The New Covenant sociology is entirely different to the Old. It works from within, not from without.

As mentioned, to complete the chiasm the physical order must be restored. This is not what we are working towards because it is beyond our power. Those who want to argue about “Natural Law” are confused about the triune construction of reality. Natural Law is still corrupted, as reflected in our own bodies, in the animal kingdom, and in the corrupting autonomy of certain “natural” processes, which have become laws unto themselves. Our domain is Social. It is the transformation of individuals and culture. The natural laws themselves, and indeed the “natural breath,” are still instruments of cursing, which is why the last enemy that will be destroyed is death, when every natural mouth will be stopped. AD70 was only the end of the old Social order, not the end of the corrupted physical order, although each level is a type of the other. (The “Covenant Creationists”, confusing the “social” flood of AD70 with the “physical” flood of Noah, want to cut the beginning and end off this chiastic process. [5])

History as architecture

The difference between the Abrahamic social model and the Christian one is the difference between the Bronze Altar (earthy – sacrifice of blood) and the Incense Altar (heavenly: elders – sacrifice of praise). It, like Adam’s prophecy, is the move “from silence to song” which we see prefigured in the breaking up of the Mosaic Tabernacle and its reconstruction as the Tabernacle of David.

Between these two altars is the Laver, water contained in bronze, a purifying “lake of fire.” All this leads to my point, which concerns the definition of what a Christian is in the light of the architecture of the Scriptures. If baptism defines the Church as a “slightly upgraded” Abrahamic body, so that it includes infants, what did Pentecost achieve? Is the Church just a corpse washed? Or is there also an Ethical transformation, a new nature received as a gift and heralded by faithful confession?

If the Church is basically the same kind of body as Old Covenant Israel, then Pentecost did nothing. Membership of the “body” begins with faithfulness to a moral code rather than with the indwelling of a moral life, the Spirit of God. Paedobaptism makes nonsense of the architecture inherent in every passage, at every level, of the Bible.

If we follow the order intended in Eden, the gift of the Holy Ghost can only be received by those who have taken the first step of obedience, the one upon which Adam stumbled. This is exactly what we see in Jesus’ baptism. The Father’s pleasure was due to His prior obedience. He was certainly blameless before then, as Adam’s children would have been, but the actual gift of “representing God to others” is for those who truly image God and are subsequently given the authority of God.

In the Old Testament, we see the Spirit “coming upon” certain people to gift them for service, but never an “indwelling” of their flesh. The only indwelt house was the one which was truly clean, the Tabernacle, beginning with its foundation in the sacrifices of Abraham for the Land of Canaan [6]. Not only was the Law external but lawful cleanliness was external. Jesus was the first clean human, and the first permanently clean house. Israel, on the whole, fixated with the externals based upon circumcision, a Social divide, rejected Him, blaspheming the Spirit, and she was filled with demons instead.

To claim that New Covenant conversion and baptism does not follow the same pattern found in every other “forming and filling” process found in the Bible is to ride roughshod over the ways of God. Fire and water, baptism and the Spirit, are for mediators between heaven and earth, for the elders, prophets, witnesses, musicians who are not only welcome in God’s court, but welcome the nations (including infants) into God’s court that they may minister to them.

So when you are tempted to baptize an infant, it is the flesh lusting against the Spirit. It the claiming of a spiritual inheritance through fleshly, unethical means: prophesying “peace” when there is no peace. The New Covenant is about those who are indwelt by God, not those who “set apart” and cut the flesh in mere anticipation, as did the Jews.

Those who maintained an allegiance to the first Pentecost over the second, and held onto an an obsolete genealogical inheritance from an earthly father, also rejected peace with God and true sonship. Because they were unwilling to be a blessing to all nations, the other promises, the open Land and the open womb, were taken away (Matthew 13:12). Contrary to the delusions of paedobaptists, the New Covenant is not about a pregnant Woman but a resurrected, ascended, prophetic Man.

While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3)

What peace there is, is not fundamentally Social. It is fundamentally ethical, spiritual. It is announced, by the Gospel, from God in heaven to the ears of our children on earth from our own clean lips as baptized mediators, those who are hybrids of heaven and earth, New Covenant “angels.” [7] All the Lord’s people are now prophets, as Moses desired. The true Church is not only visible and tangible, it is audible. It is not only formed but filled and prophesying the future. The Scriptures never confuse or conflate the speakers with the hearers, and neither must we. Paedobaptism is the carnal expression of carnal thinking, confusing bone and flesh with witness, protology with eschatology, Delegation with Vindication.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:8-9)

We must not be like those who confused their Physical, Social circumcision with the Ethical circumcision, the repentance required by God.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
(Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11)

Art: Bryan Ahn, Sermon on the Mount
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[1] See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key for the reasons behind this architectural arrangement of the Ten Words. See also No Common Ground for their systematic (architectural) reversal by the secular state.
[2] See Cosmic Language.
[3] See The Ethics of the New Testament.
[4] See Images of God.
[5] See Covenant Creationism.
[6] See A Man of Beasts.
[7] See Shekinah People.

There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,
but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind,
and the glory of the earthly is of another.
(1 Corinthians 15:40)

Did Adam receive the Spirit of God? If he did receive the Spirit, was the Spirit taken away when he sinned?

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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Revelation was written to seven first-century churches as a spiritual wake-up call because of events that were “about to take place upon the whole world [oikoumenē]” (Rev. 3:10). The use of oikoumenē instead of kosmos indicates that the events that were about to unfold were confined to the Roman Empire. The same word is used in Matthew 24:14, Luke 2:1, and Acts 11:28.

Revelation is not describing a worldwide apocalyptic conflagration. Revelation is a prophetic symbolic description of what Jesus prophesied would happen to the temple, the capital city of Israel, and the old covenant world made of things that were destined to pass away. Jesus is the new everything. He’s the better temple, sacrifice, priest, and guarantor of a new covenant:

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption (Heb. 9:11–12).

The book of Revelation is not a warning to what was going to happen to Israel. Jesus had made that clear 35 years before in the Olivet Discourse. Revelation was delivered to seven churches made up of Christians as a wake-up call. They would suffer the same fate as Israel if they followed in the theological moral footsteps of Israel. The indictments that are leveled against the seven churches drip with Old Covenant judgment language — even the threat to come in judgment if they didn’t wake up (Rev. 2:5, 16; 3:3) — pervades the two chapters. They were “about to suffer,” these things were “about to happen” (2:10).

Revelation was not a five-year warning (if it was written around the year 65); it was an ongoing warning. Anybody reading Revelation after the destruction of Jerusalem could have said, “Jesus warned us. He showed us. Everything He said would happen did happen. It could happen to us. Revelation is a lesson for every generation. We can look back and say that what God said would happen, did happen, and we’re not exempt.”

The question is, had some of these churches fallen from the faith in such a short time after their founding? Dr. Simon J. Kistemaker,[1] Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary and co-author of the completed New Testament Commentary series that was commenced by William Hendriksen, argues that there was not enough time for the Asia Minor churches to fall from the faith so quickly if Revelation is describing events around the mid-60s. He writes

Even a cursory reading leaves the impression that the recipients were second-generation Christians. It does not appear that the people in the seven churches had only recently received the gospel. . . . Paul . . . wrote two epistles to Timothy, who was a pastor there in the sixties. Nothing in Acts or Paul’s epistles relates to the conditions prevalent in the church of Ephesus when John wrote the epistle that Jesus dictated.[2]

A few comments are in order. On the day of Pentecost, Luke records “that there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men, from every nation under heaven. . . . Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,” (Acts 2:5, 9). The reference to “Asia” (Acts 6:9; 16:6; 19:10; 20:4; 21:27; 24:18; Rom. 16:5; 2 Tim 1:15; Rev 1:4), the west coast province of Asia, is the area where Revelation’s seven churches were located, including Ephesus.

There’s a good chance that by the time Revelation was dictated to John (around AD 65) that the churches listed in Revelation 2–3 could have been operating for 30 years (Rom. 16:5) started from the testimony of Jews returning to their Asia Minor homeland and telling family and friends about what had been going on in Jerusalem. The message of the gospel could have also come by way of travelers by ship since Ephesus was a coastal city. “Ephesus has been estimated to be in the range of 400,000 to 500,000 inhabitants in the year 100, making it the largest city in Roman Asia and of the day. Ephesus was at its peak during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.”

A Jerusalem-wide persecution took place after the death of Stephen that scattered many believers: “those who had been scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:1, 4). It wouldn’t have taken long for the gospel to reach Asia Minor. Albert Barnes writes:

The Jews at that time were scattered into almost all nations, and in all places had synagogues. [John 7:35; James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1]. Still they would naturally desire to be present as often as possible at the great feasts of the nation in Jerusalem. Many would seek a residence there for the convenience of being present at the religious solemnities.

According to Dr. Kistemaker, Paul ministered in Ephesus from AD 53–56. At Paul’s departure, he gave this warning to the Ephesian elders: “savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30). “These words, in respect to Ephesus and several of these churches addressed in the Apocalypse, were now fulfilled; the ‘grievous wolves’ had come; these ‘perverse men’ had arisen.”[3] The first of Revelation’s seven churches in Asia is Ephesus (Rev. 2:1–7). Ephesus hadn’t completely apostatized but it was compromised.

There were constant attacks from Judaizers from Ephesus. Paul could not escape them even in Jerusalem:

When the seven days were almost over, the Jews from Asia, upon seeing him in the temple, began to stir up all the crowd and laid hands on him, crying out, “Men of Israel, come to our aid! This is the man [Paul] who preaches to all men everywhere against our people and the Law and this place; and besides he has even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place. For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with him, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. Then all the city was provoked, and the people rushed together, and taking hold of Paul they dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut. While they were seeking to kill him, a report came up to the commander of the Roman cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion (Acts 20:27–31; 2 Cor. 1:8).

The spiritual condition of the churches in Asia Minor were threatened. Paul wrote the following to Timothy: “You are aware of the fact that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes” (2 Tim. 1:15; see 1 Tim. 6:10; 2 Tim. 4:10–11, 16). This description seems to fit what was revealed to John. So whether first-generation or second-generation churches, there was spiritual decline.

Second, it didn’t take long for theological and moral problems to develop in churches. In the Corinthian church, Paul writes, “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst” (1 Cor. 5:1–2). If the church elders wouldn’t do the removing, then God would (cf. Rev. 2:5).

In his second epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes words similar to what John was told to write in Revelation:

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. “Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” says the Lord. “AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; and I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:14–18; cf. Rev. 2:14, 20).

Paul wrote the following to the Galatians, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:6–7; cf. Rev. 2:4).

Paul confronted Peter “to his face” over a doctrinal issue “because he stood condemned” (Gal. 2:11).

The writer to the Hebrews says of the recipients of his letter that they “have become dull of hearing,” that by this time in their faith they “ought to be teachers.” Now they “need again for someone to teach [them] the elementary principles of the oracles of God” so that they “have come to need milk and not solid food” (Heb. 5:11b–12).

John mentions “false prophets” that had already “gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1; cf. Rev. 2:2) and even “many antichrists” (1 John 2:18). These antichrists, John writes, “went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us” (v. 19). He writes similar descriptions in his second epistle. “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist” and “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds” (2 John 7, 10–11). Could these antichrists be the ones that make up Revelation’s “synagogues of Satan” (2:9; 3:9)?

Peter writes, “But false prophets also arose among the people just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves” (2 Peter 2:1). All of these things happened before Revelation was revealed to John. It’s interesting that six of the seven churches did not receive letters from the New Testament writers, at least none that we are aware of. Like Corinth and Galatia, Revelation was their spiritual wake-up call.

So it shouldn’t surprise us that some people (not all: Rev. 3:4) of the seven churches had succumbed to false teaching and even immorality within a short time of their founding as evidenced by so much material found in Acts and the epistles.

Dr. Kistemaker dismisses the pre-AD 70 date for Revelation because, as he writes:

We are never told that John was a pastor in Ephesus before the demise of Jerusalem. The church fathers related that John settled in Ephesus after the Jewish war of A.D. 66–70. But even if he had been in Ephesus before that period, his time of service prior to his exile would have been short. But according to the seven letters to the churches in Asia, John was well acquainted with the spiritual status of each one of them. This hardly seems possible if John was there but briefly.[4]

John wouldn’t have had to be present at any of the seven churches to know their spiritual condition since what he wrote was revealed to him by God (Rev. 1:1–2, 11, 19).

The more I dig through the New Testament, the more convincing evidence I see that it was written prior to Jerusalem’s destruction, not as a warning to Old Covenant Israel (that had been done already) but to New Covenant Israel made of Jewish and Gentile believers so they would not suffer a similar fate (1 Cor. 10:1–11; Heb. 12).

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[1] I learned what I know of NT Greek from Dr. Kistemaker. He would say that I should have learned more. He is right. But I keep learning. I also took a number of NT courses from him. He was a great teacher; I just think on several points he is mistaken.
[2] Simon J. Kistemaker, “Hyper-Preterism and Revelation,” When Shall These Things Be? A Reformed Response to Hyper-Preterism, ed. Keith A. Mathison (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing), 232.
[3] James MacDonald, The Life and Writings of St. John (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1877), 156.
[4] Kistemaker, “Hyper-Preterism and Revelation,” 233.

or Bible SatNav

The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” refers to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly. (Wikipedia)

It struck me this morning, as I read one of my regular theology blogs, that theologians don’t much use diagrams. The blog post in question used over a thousand words to describe something that is inherent in the architectures (both literary and spatial) found in the Bible.

What this means is that, for the most part, the way we communicate theology is foreign to the way our God does it.

One drawback of listening to James Jordan lectures is the fact that the listener misses out on his whiteboard diagrams. I have no idea if they are any good, but Jordan thinks “spatially.” As I’ve become familiar with the “domains” described in the Bible, and how the literary structure follows the same pattern, it has become apparent that a great deal of theology is blind men feeling their way around an elephant. Not only do they not realize it is an elephant, what they also fail to see is that the elephant is in a room.

I’m sure this all sounds a bit arrogant. I’ve been gifted with the ability to think visually and musically. Please note that this has come with many disadvantages. I don’t understand people very well, I’m terrible at team sports, and I have a tendency to be obsessive. But it does mean I am able to think outside the box. This is generally because the one thing I cannot see, however hard I try, is the box. If I can see the internal logic in something, the boxes built by well-meaning scholars become irrelevant.

Here are two examples:

Hyperpreterism

As I commented to a hyperpreterist friend recently, the reason I agree with HP interpretations of certain texts are the very same reasons I am not a hyperpreterist. The internal logic of the Bible makes plain to me where the “partial” preterists are wrong, but it also knocks hyperpreterism on the head. The HP is holding the trunk and the PP is holding the tail. They are both right and they are both wrong. They blindly hurl proof texts back and forth at each other with no regard to the architecture of the Bible. And when I point this out, they ridicule “structure” as an unnecessary ornament.

Paedobaptism

The best theologians are paedobaptists. Yet, once again, the internal logic of the Bible shows this doctrine to be erroneous. It can only be maintained by destroying the spatial and literary architecture of the Scriptures. I know I have written over a thousand words about paedobaptism, but what they describe is a relatively simple picture which develops through Bible history. Objections come from the monk holding the foot, or flipping the tail, or lifting the eyelid, and I am struck by their inability to understand the integrity of what I am describing. They seem to have all their doctrines filed in separate boxes and in many cases are unable to see how they relate to each other. For me, it is a single picture, and paedobaptism does far more than merely mess up the feng shui. One online friend said the Bible Matrix was the best argument against paedobaptism. Another commented that there are other ways of looking at Scripture. Well, sure there are, but surely these different ways of looking at it shouldn’t contradict each other. Internal logic is internal logic.

The Lord is obsessive about structure, and we now have thousands of books on theology without any thought of it whatsoever. I come into a debate with all my chess pieces in place and my objectors are still trying to figure out what material their pieces are carved out of.

Once again, I’m sure this sounds arrogant. Things that are obvious to me are not obvious to others. When the idea of the Bible Matrix hit me a few years ago (after listening to James Jordan on the Revelation), its implications and possible advantages were obvious. It was plain that this was the Bible’s SatNav, and the authors of the Scriptures seem totally aware of it. It came fully formed, fully connected, and its implications simply needed to be worked out. When I explain it, the response is usually, “that’s nice,” or “how interesting.” But a handle on the internal logic of the Scriptures has the potential to answer every theological debate.

Apparently, Albert Einstein was a frustrating lecturer. He would jump all over the place with little explanation, just like the authors of the New Testament (and James Jordan, for that matter). The reason is possibly that connections that were obvious to Einstein needed to be explained to his students. I’m no Einstein, but when I started writing about this stuff, what I wrote was extremely “dense.” I’ve learned to spell out every step, to “show my workings.” I’m hopeless at math, but this is the problem facing a 13 year old math prodigy in the UK. He can simply “see” the answer, but the system requires him to show how he got there, which is a good discipline.

The advantages of biblical eidesis, or “fracto-spatial” thinking, are becoming more apparent to me as I work through Bible Matrix III. I am drawing diagrams I have had in my head for over five years, yet, once they are drawn, I notice further connections within them which vindicate their veracity. It feels like somebody has been here before me. I can’t wait for you to see the complete book.

Anyhow, apologies again for the apparent arrogance. And I have written an entire post to explain a single observation. WordPress tells me it is 1000 words.

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See also The Eye of Sound. Please note that my “Bible mind map” will not appeal to the Blind Monks.

Alan Kerr (The Temple of Jesus’ Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John (Library of New Testament Studies), 71) offers this comment on Jesus’ statement that Nicodemus had to be born of the Spirit before entering the kingdom: “It is almost universally accepted that Spirit here refers to the Spirit of God. But at this stage in the Gospel there was no Spirit (7:39), because Jesus was not yet glorified. It is not until Jesus is risen and appears to the disciples and breathes on them and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ that the Spirit is given (20:22). So from the point of view of Johannine timing what Jesus says to Nicodemus should only be realized in a post-resurrection setting. Properly speaking he can only be reborn from above when Jesus is glorified.”

This obviously affects the use of John 3:5 as a proof text for the doctrine of regeneration.

Is this support for the ‘giving of the Spirit’ in paedobaptism?

Read Bowing the Heavens.

Firstly, we must make a distinction between the Spirit “coming upon” people and “indwelling” people. The world is sacrificial in nature. The process of sacrifice is a recapitulation of Genesis 1. The process begun in the physical Creation (Genesis 1) is repeated in the social Creation (Genesis 2) and then the spiritual (ethical) Creation (Genesis 3). Flesh is cut, the Spirit comes down (upon it) and the flesh is transformed into a smoky (spiritual) body, a one-and-many.

When Jesus breathed on His disciples, they didn’t receive the Holy Spirit. That happened at Pentecost. All they received was His physical breath (as did Adam in Genesis 2). But the physical breath was a “liturgical” promise of spiritual, that is, ethical breath. Adam would not only have life, but “abundant life,” that is, life in the Spirit, life that reproduces not only the form of God in flesh, but the filling of God, making men of one mind with God and with one another. Only one this threefold process was complete would Adam be a “living sacrifice.”

So, generation (flesh) and regeneration (fire and smoke) are part of the same process, but they are not the same events in that process. With that sacrificial process in mind (flesh, fire smoke), we can get down to business.

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

This is a reference to God’s cloud, the one Jesus was taken into just before He sent the Spirit. Jesus was taken up in the flesh (take note hyperpreterists), He sent the fire of the Spirit, and His disciples, the true Jews, became a cloud of fragrant smoke (note that the Judaizers are describes as a ravenous cloud of sulphur in the Revelation).

Nicodemus speaks of a second earthly (earthy?) birth. Christ says the second birth is from above. Water and Spirit refers to His baptism, at which Jesus was the same as all John’s previous clients according to the flesh (just like Samuel working his way through all Jesse’s sons before the Lord chose David. See A King Among Sons). What was different about David (“Beloved”) and the Beloved Son? Not the flesh.

Jesus turned John’s “waters below” baptism into a “waters above” baptism, which is exactly what the first Elijah did on Mount Carmel. [1] The baptism of John was the water Elijah tipped over the altar. Physically it was the same as the altar of Baal, only wetter — until the Spirit descended and heaven met earth. Then it became prophetic. Elijah “bowed the heavens” — calling them down so that God’s will would be done on earth as in heaven. As in the days of Noah, the waters below came up and the waters above came down, and washed the Altar-Land clean. The end came with a flood and the wicked were washed away.

Elijah’s twelve-stone altar, like Jesus’ body, was the holy mountain in miniature, a representative of all Israel. Because it was a faithful reproduction, God honored it and reproduced it at full-size. What Elijah did as “liturgy,” God then performed in reality.

Then the whole mountain became Elijah’s altar, and the blood of the priests of Baal was the blood in the brook at its base. The singular descent of the Spirit turned God’s people into fiery chariots. Elijah “bowed the heavens”, which is what John did at Jesus’ baptism. Eyes were opened, men were suddenly in the heavenly court, and the truth was exposed. Jesus was vindicated from heaven. Unlike John’s earthly model, Jesus’ “waters above” baptism designates us as representatives upon the crystal sea, the place of vindicated elders who eat and drink with God on the mountain and come down as flaming swords.

John 3 is certainly a reference to Pentecost. Even though the events had not yet taken place, every event in the Old Testament prefigured what was about to take place at the centre of history: the descent of the fire upon all flesh. Some men would be smoke. Others would be ashes. Jesus is talking about every individual becoming a glory cloud, a chariot, a mysterious prophet motivated by unseen things, marching to God’s drum — a miniature of the whole New Covenant prophetic body.

So, regarding regeneration, it’s not either/or. The process of regeneration begins with santified (set apart) flesh on the altar, but the “watershed” moment is the descent of the fire.

What was the result of this fire? Seeing the kingdom of God. To “see” the kingdom is to “perceive” or “discern” it — like the prophet opening the eyes of his servant to the spiritual war behind the flesh and blood.

And Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes so he may see.”

Being “born again” makes one a spiritual warrior. The fire that came upon now indwells, and God’s people become His body. This means Baal and the other flesh-cutters are goners, as they were in AD70.

Even at its best, paedobaptism could only ever be a baptism of John, and that was only for the twelve stone Altar, for repentant Jews awaiting the Spirit, like Nicodemus. The sacrificial body was washed and placed on the altar. But it wasn’t alive.

As a corollary to this, once the body was transformed by fire, there was no going back, no apostasy possible. There are certainly pretenders to regeneration, but over time the saints get a whiff of sulphur and have to drag them back to the Altar and the knife of the Gospel.

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[1] Interestingly, for Israel, the Nile was the “waters below” and the rain of Canaan, the “waters above.” Now that Herod had slain infants, the Jordan was a new “waters below.”

The dreamtime is over.

The Bible teaches us that flesh is temporary. This is bad news for those who distrust God. Flesh is all they have.

Throughout the millennia, families and tribes have recited the genealogies of their past, and struggled to produce enough children to secure a cultural future. The bloodline of unseen ancestors and bright-eyed offspring, past and future, was reinforced, thread by thread, in stories around the fires of “now.” This was not the romantic picture so often painted for us. The struggle for cultural survival also involved blood and fire outside the camp.

David P. Goldman observes that in the ancient world a continual state of conflict would account for a loss of two per cent of the population every year, and that this would also explain the proliferation of languages and dialects. He writes that even in Christianity’s darkest hours (which were simply tribalism on a grander scale), it failed to kill a small fraction of the proportion which routinely and normally fell in primitive warfare. He quotes Nicholas Wade’s Before the Dawn, “a survey of genetic, linguistic, and archeological research on early man”:

Even in the harshest possible environments, where it was a struggle enough just to keep alive, primitive societies still pursued the more overriding goal of killing one another… casualty rates were enormous, not the least because they did not take prisoners. That policy was compatible with their usual strategic goal: to exterminate the opponent’s society.¹David P. Goldman, “The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity” in It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations, 90-91.

Of course, we see a similar emphasis on succession in the Old Testament. The fulfillment of the promises to Abraham was directly related to Israel’s continuity.

Goldman’s point is that the “primitive authenticity” taught in modern Western institutions is a fraud. In an attempt to avoid further damage to the environment, our children are being indoctrinated with the idea that aboriginal cultures worldwide, left to themselves, would have been self-sustaining, perhaps indefinitely, in an eternal cycle of life and death:

You have noticed that everything an Indian does is a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything and everything tries to be round.

In the old days all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.

Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were.

The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.

Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, 1863-1950

Without exception, European migration around the world devastated tribal peoples. Colonists committed many atrocities, but our children are taught that the cultures in the conquered lands were somehow pristine, natural, balanced, sustainable—eternal.

With a worldview informed by biblical history, and indeed secular history, these “eternal cycles” are exposed as a downward spiral. The gradual degradation of ancient cultures and the loss of even primitive skills within these cultures has been well-documented. Paganism moves in circles, but if the fact of sin and the necessity of redemption are rejected, there is no eternity, not even a carnal “cultural” one. A civilization is a corporate Man. All men die. All civilizations die.

No culture is all good or all bad. For instance, despite its spiritual darkness, there is much traditional wisdom in native American culture. Huguenot adventurer Jean de Lery had great admiration for the natives, who seemed to be more virtuous than Europeans. In many ways the “primitive” worldviews of native Americans in the both north and south are more biblical than that of modern Christians, containing many elements which can be easily traced to their origin in the book of Genesis. However, spiritual history has moved on, and these cultures are merely ancient minds “preserved in amber.” The continuing work of God often leaves our “timeless truths” in the dust.

History moves in cycles, but there is always either regress or progress. Culture moves forwards or it moves backwards. All the indigenous cultures of the world, at the point they had reached when white men arrived, were “backward,” but backwardness is not a solid state. Life was a constant battle to avoid extinction. We can learn from the wisdom of any culture, including the tribal ones, but left to themselves, indigenous cultures would have continued to degenerate to the point of oblivion.

The idea of growth, progress and dominion is a Christian one. The Biblical history moves from family, to tribe, to people, to nation, to kingdom, to empire. When the enormous granite wheels of empire came into contact with the slowing spinning tops of tribal life, there could be no “cog wheel” correspondence. The results were tragic.

Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn’t have any kind of prison.  Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.

We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn’t afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.

We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn’t know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.

We had no written laws laid down,  no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape  before the white men arrived and I don’t know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.

John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota, 1903-1976

When colonists arrived, with their greed and diseases, things changed forever. These were deep cuts, but perhaps the most fatal was the change in philosophy. Cycles were out, and progress was in, a mindset which was born, arguably, of the “marriage-made-in-heaven” of Roman imperialism and the Great Commission. “Modernity” had arrived, and there was no way back. Despite the desperate efforts of tribal elders worldwide, attempts to revive and maintain the ancient animisms and languages have resulted in little more than nostalgic historical records, ornamental subcultural identities, and tourist exhibits.²Goldman also argues that Islamic fundamentalism is not offensive but defensive, a futile attempt by religious leaders to stem the inevitable secularization of modern Muslim nations. The old spirits are gone.

After a backlash by indigenous Australian cultures in the 1970s against the Christian missions, and a return to animism, the more objective Aboriginal leaders are facing the fact that this was a backward step for their people. Whatever the crimes of the colonists, and whatever the excesses of the missions, the leaven of Christianity which they brought with them forces any culture, any people, to rise, to grow up. It calls us from animistic childhood to adulthood, from a world ruled by animals to a world subdued by men. Our eyes are opened in a greater way to both good and evil and a judicial maturity is forced upon us. In many cases, indigenous people were not ready, but a return to the “childish things” of animism is impossible. The Gospel destroys tribal divisions and animistic thinking. Once the Gospel wakes you up, the Dreamtime is over.

John Lame Deer certainly has a case against civilization, but he is judging civilization through eyes opened by civilization. Worse, he is looking through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. John Wesley made a survey of human societies to see if any had overcome the effects of sin. Thomas C. Oden writes:

Among native American cultures with whom he had some immediate experience, [Wesley] observed as evidence of sin their constant intertribal warfare. He was especially disturbed by their practice of torturing defenseless victims. As one of the few English writers of his day who had actually spent time in the immediate environment of native American Indians, Wesley did not share the distantly conceived inflated picture of the noble savage that prevailed among enlightened French literati of the 18th century. Wesley punctured this picture mercilessly, providing a graphic depiction of how these natives were as deeply embedded in sin as the avaricious colonial British.³Thomas C. Oden, John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity, 163.

The preciousness of tribal life, in truth, rendered all life cheap. Tribes were cultures bent on self-preservation through bloody rivalries. A similar insanity might be observed in modern cultures, where the deaths of endangered species make the news but the culling of human lives through various means is considered a matter of survival. Goldman believes the fraud of primitive authenticity, the modern nature worship of environmental “animism,” is the environmentalist projecting his own presentiment of death onto the natural world.

Fear for the irreversible destruction of the natural world … substitutes for the death anxiety of the individual. Post-Christian Westerners confound their own sense of mortality with the vulnerability of the natural world. Sadly, it is not the end of the world. It is just the end of you.⁴Goldman, 183.

There is a perverse logic to this projection. In God’s wisdom, the flesh of the world and the flesh of Man are bound together by Covenant. Environmentalists believe their own flesh is a cancer upon the flesh of the otherwise “eternal” world, but the Bible tells us that Man and World are bound together for a purpose. The voyage of discovery is also a process of self-discovery. Subduing the world, however destructive it might be, is a positive feature of Man. Man and World are bound together not only for death, but also for resurrection.

By showing us that true eternity transcends cultural longevity, the Gospel of Christ removes the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). This means that, since the resurrection, the fear of mortality for both the individual and the culture (and indeed, the planet) is now a “drawing back” from God’s desire for us. This is a lesson which Christendom failed to learn, and the factor which subsequently tore it apart.

Goldman observes that many minor cultures facing extinction found cultural transcendence in Christianity. However, their failure to leave pagan superstitions entirely behind perpetuated the old fractures, and led to a desire for nationalistic transcendence in a Christian veneer. Every European culture considered itself to be “the eternal people” to some degree. The American experiment succeeded because the old paganisms and nationalisms were deliberately left behind.

For all its flaws and fecklessness, America remains in the eyes of its people an attempt to order a nation according to divine law rather than human custom, such that all who wish to live under divine law may abandon their ethnicity and make themselves Americans.⁵Goldman, 372.

America is unique. It is not a redeemed culture but a melting pot of cultures. For Americans to backslide, they had to invent somewhere to slide, hence the liberal agenda and its historical revisionism (including naturalism). It is a manufactured pagan past disguised as a future.

America is not eternal. To keep His promises, God cannot allow it to be. For the sake of greater glory, the American vision is fading. However, the unmistakable success of the American experiment reveals it to be a microcosm for the future of the world—all nations submitting willingly to the Divine Law.

Goldman sees the continued historical perseverance of the Jewish identity as evidence of God’s promise to the rest of mankind, and here is where we part ways.

There cannot be an eternal people, not according to the flesh, because the flesh is obsolescent. Goldman’s God is Yahweh, yet He is a Yahweh of the past, a “Yahweh trapped in amber.” The Yahweh of today is not only the God who was born as the child promised in Eden, but the Man who never married or had children. The blessing promised to all nations through Abraham was not the merely the removal of the curse upon the Land and the womb (territory and offspring) but the removal of the fear of death in the promise of resurrection. These blessings were all poured out in Christ.

How then do we interpret Israel’s stubborn refusal to disappear? Goldman notes that while the Arab Spring will become a Winter (demographically-speaking) within one generation, Israel currently has the only increasing birthrate in the entire Middle East.

America is no longer the future, but the preservation of Israel is most definitely a testimony to something historical, not a glimpse of the way forward. Judaism serves as an antidote to gnosticism for Christianity, a miraculous testimony like the body of Lot’s wife a white, leprous memorial to a judgment in the past. Israel exists only because she is protected by the once dominant Christian nations who drew her under their wings. She too must eventually succumb to the Gospel of Christ or return to the dust.

Flesh is not transcendent. Flesh was designed to be transcended by fire. Israel, and indeed America, will be transcended. All God’s darlings end up on the altar. The promised child—whether it be European Christendom, the American vision, or the hope of Israel—is ever offered on Mount Moriah for the sake of greater promises.

There is no eternal people. All nations are destined for a larger melting pot, a hotter fire. Every tribe, every circumcision, every culture, every nation, every tongue, every familial baptism, every distinction founded on the old birth, is doomed. Hidden in every cultural and lingual extinction, every brutal war, every abundance, every natural disaster, every economic collapse, every trade agreement, every technological advancement, is the leaven of the Gospel. The yeast that continues to consume and assimilate every other culture, every blood, ancient or modern, is the fire from the unseen mountain, the Spirit of Christ. Here, at last, is the eternal people.

This is an essay from Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes by Michael Bull.

By evil age, I do not mean the “terrible twos,” or even terrible teens. Many Christians believe they are living in the “evil age” Paul refers to in Galatians 1. They are wrong.

Paul, an apostle
(Creation – Initiation)

(not from men nor through man,
(Division – Delegation)

but through Jesus Christ
(Ascension – Presentation [Firstfruits])

and God the Father
(Testing – Purification [Rulers])

who raised Him from the dead),
(Maturity – Transformation – Trumpets)

and all the brethren who are with me,
(Conquest – Vindication – Atonement)

To the churches of Galatia:
(Glorification – Representation – Booths)

Grace to you and peace
(Ark – Sabbath)

from God the Father
(Veil – Passover)

and our Lord Jesus Christ,
(Altar & Table – Firstfruits)

who gave Himself for our sins,
(Lampstand – Pentecost)

that He might deliver us from this present evil age,
(Incense Altar – Trumpets)

according to the will of our God and Father,
(Mediators – Atonement ["Pass-through"])

to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
(Shekinah – Booths)

Firstly, Paul aligns their deliverance with the first resurrection, that is, the entry of the Firstfruits Church, along with the Old Covenant saints, into the heavenly country. This occurred some time between the middle and end of the Jewish War. These saints in God’s court called down the Covenant curses upon the city, just as Daniel called them down from his seat in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. This deliverance has past.

The second stanza seems to highlight the Tabernacle more than the other matrix strands, and this allows us to see the seven seals here as well. The fifth seal is the martyred saints under the Altar (from memory, James Jordan thinks it’s the Incense Altar and Peter Leithart recently commented that it was the Bronze Altar due to the blood splashed around its base. They are basically the same Altar. The first is the Adamic body, the natural body, and the second is the Evian body, the spiritual body: ashes and smoke. One sits “above” the other).

Secondly, it’s clear that Jesus believed the last generation of Israel-according-to-the-flesh was an evil time. The Veil between Jew and Gentile had grown irreparably old and was ready to pass away (and as a side note, notice the beautiful symmetry in stanza 2 [bolded]). The face of the Father was about to be revealed to the Old Covenant saints and the New Covenant Firstfruits. Galatians is also a fractal, so where stanza 1 is the Initiation of Paul’s letter, stanza 2 concerns Delegation, the Veil as the robe of Greater Joseph.

Dispensationalists, amillennials and historic premillennials do not believe this current age will see a growth in righteousness. But Jesus was postmillennial. He tore down the Veil, then He tore down the Temple, casting them away like an egg shell to allow a new age. But what is an age, biblically defined?

It’s probably best to swap “age” for “era.” The term seems to mean a Covenant administration. All the Old Covenants were cut “inside” each other, Noah within Adam, Abraham within Noah, etc., God cutting deeper and deeper into Adam till He found the righteous rib, the Christ. Each of these Covenant administrations was an age, but together they were all Adamic, flesh without indwelling Spirit (except for a few exemplary prototypes, such as David).

Amillennials generally aren’t preterists, so all the AD70 warnings are mistakenly applied to our future. This is where they get all their dark expectations from. They are mistaken.

This age is Evian. No cutting required, except for hearts. It’s about binding up, joining, networking, uniting by the Spirit. Eve is about multiplication, growth. So things can only get better and bigger as the nations are transformed and united in Christ. This age is no utopia, but neither is any construction process. And, like yeast, the kingdom of light grows better in the dark. As with any good story, the clues are piling up and the denouement is coming.

The passage of time has a habit of exposing people and ideas for what they are. Every false -ism (Naturalism, Communism, Socialism, Islamism, Zionism, Secularism, etc.) that gets exposed and debunked is one more lie we are very unlikely to fall for again, one less magic trick in Jannes and Jambres’ repertoire. Sure, some mistakes get repeated, but we do learn. This process of cutting away is incredibly costly, but the only one being corporately “circumcised” in the flesh in this age is the devil. It’s only an evil age for Satan. Like Peter’s wolf, the more he struggles, the tighter gets the rope, or in this case, the chain. It must be terribly humiliating for him, and it’s only going to get worse. As with the cross, every blow he strikes turns into a victory for the Church.

As the wheels eventually come off every other philosophy and the Church watches them crash and burn, the gospel of Christ is vindicated and shines in greater and greater glory. Slow and steady…

See also Circumcision and Apocalypse.