While Jesus clearly did many signs throughout his ministry (2:23; 6:2; 20:30), most scholars agree that there are seven signs that are emphasized in the Gospel of John, but only six are universally identified.

1) Water into wine (2:1-11)
2) Healing the official’s son (4:46-54)
3) Healing the paralytic (5:1-18)
4) Feeding the 5,000 (6:5-14)
5) Healing the man born blind (9:1-7)
6) Raising of Lazarus (11:1-45)

When it comes to the seventh sign, some scholars suggest that walking on water [1] is the seventh sign:

Option 1

1) Water into wine (2:1-11)
2) Healing the official’s son (4:46-54)
3) Healing the paralytic (5:1-18)
4) Feeding the 5,000 (6:5-14)
5) Walking on the water (6:16-24)
6) Healing the man born blind (9:1-7)
7) Raising of Lazarus (11:1-45)

Others suggest that the cleansing of the temple [2] is the seventh sign:

Option 2

1) Water into wine (2:1-11)
2) Cleansing of the temple (2:12-22)
3) Healing the official’s son (4:46-54)
4) Healing the paralytic (5:1-18)
5) Feeding the 5,000 (6:5-14)
6) Healing the man born blind (9:1-7)
7) Raising of Lazarus (11:1-45)

Both of these options founder on the same fact: neither possesses the characteristics of the remaining undisputed signs:

Signs are 1) public, supernatural acts 2) performed by Jesus himself that 3) show the glory of Jesus to the disciples (2:11) and crowds (6:2; 12:18), 4) are designed to bring about faith in Jesus as the Son of God (2:11; 4:48; 6:14; 7:31; 20:31) or 5) to harden the unbelieving (12:37-43), 6) are explicitly identified as signs within the gospel, 7) confirm his identity as the one sent by God (2:23; 3:2), and 8 ) emphasize that Jesus brings life to the world through physical signification. [3]

Walking on water was not performed before crowds, is not identified as a sign, and does not demonstrate that Jesus brings life to the world through physical signification. Cleansing the temple is not a supernatural act, is not identified as a sign (though it does provoke a request for a sign), and does not demonstrate that Jesus brings life to the world through physical signification.

What then are the remaining options for the seventh sign? The two most likely options are either the cross or the resurrection. Because both options lend themselves to a chiastic analysis, I’ve displayed both options as a chiasm:

Option 3: The Cross

A Turning water into wine (2:1-11)

B Healing the official’s son who is near death (4:46-54)

C Healing the paralytic who sat near the pool at Bethesda on a Sabbath (5:1-18)

D Feeding the 5,000 with bread (6:5-14)

C’ Healing the man born blind in the pool of Siloam on a Sabbath (9:1-7)

B’ Raising Lazarus from the dead (11:1-45)

A’ The Crucifixion of Jesus (18:16-30)

A The Resurrection of Jesus: the beginning of a new creation (cf. John 1:1, 20:1, 19)

Option 4: The Resurrection

A Turning water into wine (2:1-11)

B Healing the official’s son who is near death (4:46-54)

C Healing the paralytic who sat near the pool at Bethesda on a Sabbath (5:1-18)

D Feeding the 5,000 with bread (6:5-14)

C’ Healing the man born blind in the pool of Siloam on a Sabbath (9:1-7)

B’ Raising Lazarus from the dead (11:1-45)

A’ The Resurrection of Jesus (20)

The strength of these chiasms is as follows:

1) B and B’ both have to do with life and death: the official’s son is about to die and Lazarus dies as a result of Jesus’ intentional delay. Jesus tells the official that “your son will live” (4:53) and then raises Lazarus from the dead. In both cases, it is Jesus’ word that is efficacious in producing life.

2) C and C’ both revolve around the healing of a disability on a Sabbath (5:9, 9:14) with reference to a pool of water. The paralytic is lying near the Pool of Bethesda and Jesus tells the blind man to wash in the pool of Siloam.

The strength of Option 3 is primarily the connection between A, D, and A’: Wine, Bread, and Cross. Such a structure emphasizes the strong sacramental theology of John’s gospel. Additionally, given that John’s gospel is introduced as a new Genesis (“In the beginning…” John 1:1), it is significant that John 20 emphasizes that Jesus was raised “on the first day of the week” (20:1, 19). Thus, the resurrection is not the seventh sign of the old creation, but the first sign of the new creation. The chief weakness of this proposal is that the cross is not identified as a sign within the gospel nor is it a supernatural act like the remaining signs.

The strength of Option 4 is that the resurrection is identified as a sign in John 2:18-22. In response to the Jews’ request for a sign, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Significantly, Jesus portrays himself as active in his resurrection (see also 10:18), a feature that is unique to John’s gospel. The reason for this anomaly is that signs are performed by Jesus’ himself. Additionally, the resurrection is a fitting final sign because it is the pre-eminent demonstration of Jesus’ bringing life to the world through the transformation of his own body.

It is possible that Option 3 and 4 can be combined so that the seventh sign is the death and resurrection together. Support for such a reading lies in the fact that the request for a sign after the temple cleansing is met with a statement about both the destruction and raising of the temple of Jesus’ body. Likewise, in John 10:17-18, Jesus claims to have authority both to lay down his life and to take it up again. Additionally, while mention of “signs” ceases after 12:37, 12:33 records that Jesus “signified” (semaino) what kind of death he was going to die (cf. 18:32; 21:19). Thus, a type of signification continues in discussions of his death, so that both his death and resurrection are identified as ‘signs.’ [4]

Well, that’s a meticulous analysis. Thanks to Joe for sharing it. Here’s my go at it, based on the Bible Matrix (which is presented here for your interest and not to detract from Joe’s analysis in any way).

Identifying Lazarus with Trumpets (resurrection) also has the extra benefit of making sense for us of the inclusion of the comment from the crowd, “by this time he stinketh”! The response of the corpse of Lazarus to the voice of Jesus is a “bridal” response (so much for a strictly “objective” New Covenant).

Ascension is often two-fold in the pattern (Altar and Table) but sometimes it is presented as a three-level house, which it seems to be to my mind in this case. It allows us to include Jesus’ walking on the water, which, as Joe points out, is not identified as a sign. It was only witnessed by the disciples. It also ties the end of the “Head” section of the structure to the end of the “Body,” which is Peter’s dominion over the same “Gentile” waters as a fisher of men. Jesus takes dominion over the nations in heaven (as Head – waters above) and the disciples take dominion over them on the earth (as Body – waters below).

________________________________________

[1] Mark Strauss, Four Portraits: One Jesus.
[2] Kostenberger.
[3] These characteristics are based in Nick Nowalk’s criteria set forth in his paper. I have modified and supplemented Nick’s criteria with my own.

[4] This was an excerpt from Joe’s teaching notes on the Gospel of John. Regarding attribution, he writes: “I forget which scholars adopt which view, but I know that I drew from Kostenberger’s commentary, Carson, and Strauss’s Four Portraits: One Jesus. The section about the definition of the signs is a slight modification of a friend’s categorization based on a paper he wrote in seminary arguing for the resurrection as the seventh sign. His name is Nick Nowalk, and he blogs here. The actual argumentation about which view to adopt is also a conglomeration of my own and Nowalk’s. I’m the one who noticed the Eucharistic possibility (I think), and he argues strongly for the resurrection view (though he’s open to the both-and solution).”

“Matthew understands Jesus to be the rightful heir of the chieftaincy who instead volunteers to become the Victim at the tribe’s feast. But by being the voluntary victim, he becomes the first victim in the world who can speak.”

An excerpt from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s “Fruit of Lips”:

“…as oral as Peter the fisherman must have been and as much as he probably detested ink, Matthew certainly was familiar with paper work and written records, only too well. Since we do not expect him to be employed inside his old activities, where he had used writing for superficial purposes to say the least, we may expect him to fight elsewhere…”

Now, we read that he was not received in good society. And on the other hand, he begins with Jesus’ place in the social register of Israel. He stresses this fact that his master belonged in the very best society, as the son of kings. And he goes on to show that there were privileges connected with this social place which Jesus abandoned. “The son of kings should be scotfree” (Mt. 17.26). He should not pay customs duty nor any tax, be it capitation tax or the half shekel tax, as Jesus smilingly says (Mt. 17.27). But, Matthew goes on to say, the reverse happens.
He expresses the whole meaning of Jesus’ life in terms of an account, and I am sorry to grate the refined feelings of the suburban reader, but he does say: He gave his life as the price for buying back many (Mt. 20. 28).

This is not a figure of speech with Matthew. Matthew understands Jesus to be the rightful heir of the chieftaincy who instead volunteers to become the Victim at the tribe’s feast. But by being the voluntary victim, he becomes the first victim in the world who can speak. Nobody had ever spoken in this role. But victims, though mute, were essential. The association between the ancestors and the living was based on the common meal at which the dead partook as though alive, and the whole burial and funeral rite was based on this association between the dead and the living. The spirits of the dead asked for food, and these ghosts were bloodthirsty if they were not fed, according to the faith or superstition of all tribes. We accomplish the same by high entrance fees into clubs or fraternities. In this manner, we become members. Sacrifices were the core of ritual since they alone incorporated the group and gave it a legal status as a public corporation, beyond the grave, beyond the accidents of birth and death. Sacrifice, then, was the only means of establishing order and of creating legal persons.

“The price of a good dinner party is the complete silence kept by those who serve and by the food which is served.”

And to speak the proper names, to make the proper movements at these sacrifices was essential. They were that which we hold essential as table manners. To how many people of our own time table manners are the yardstick of promotion, membership, fellowship! The table manners of antiquity were equally strict. With us, a waiter at table is not expected to join the conversation of his own accord. Even less do we expect the roast-beef and the fish to talk. The price of a good dinner party is the complete silence kept by those who serve and by the food which is served. And my whole paragraph will be condemned by any reader of good taste because I mention the remote possibility that the roast-beef might speak. And this is Matthew’s whole point. The verdict ‘bad taste’ – how often had he heard it turned against himself and his bad company – he knew to be more murderous for a man than any other crime.

Society expects us to play the rules of the game. It is inexorable if we break this etiquette. And yet, I had to commit this breach of etiquette myself if I wished to introduce Matthew at all. For herein lies his real achievement. He is the only Evangelist who tells of Jesus’ escape to Egypt when Herod murdered the children of Bethlehem. The whole point of Matthew is that though Herod could not murder him, he was murdered by good society for his breach of etiquette because he insisted on giving or lending speech to the victims of society. That Jesus spoke as the victim, made him impossible. Matthew scandalized the Jews. After all, they had nothing but burnt offerings since Abraham did not slaughter Isaac. They were highly civilized. In Sweden it could still happen a thousand years later that a king butchered six of his sons to placate the spirits. When he turned to his seventh son, the people saved the child, became Christians and gave up human sacrifices.

But Israel, after all, was the nation of Abraham and Moses. To this day, all Jews think that the Gospel is in bad taste. We read the word “scandal” in our texts, but “bad taste” would really convey better the whining under the Gospel. The ritual of any society – and I am afraid, we lose sight of this more readily than of anything else – protects itself by this violent recoiling. It does so at all times and in all places. Matthew: “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the Elders by not washing their hands before meals?” the Scribes asked. “Why do you,” Jesus retorted, “transgress God’s command and deny your own parents something they need because it is ‘consecrated’?” “You have made futile God’s words for the sake of your table manners.” (Mt. 15. 2-6). “Eating with unwashed hands does not make unclean.”

Against the taboo of table manners, Matthew “sins” and Jesus “sins.” For, Matthew shows Jesus as the speaking victim, as the meat and wine who begin to speak, in the midst of dinner. The shock administered by Matthew is wonderfully formulated by a modern critic:

“The reference to eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood is impossible in an Aramaic Gospel in Jerusalem in the first century; nothing could be more repugnant to Jewish ways and feelings. Words such as these would horrify Jewish residents of Jerusalem, then or now. The Jews were and still are, utterly opposed to the drinking of blood which the Law repeatedly forbade. It would be difficult to imagine a sentence less likely to have been written in a Jewish Christian circle anywhere at any time. No Jewish evangelist could have recorded it.”

This is an eloquent paragraph and the feeling of vomiting is probably well nigh aroused in many a reader. The humor of this passage lies in two facts: first, that the critic deals with John who in this matter simply affirms Matthew. The critic tries to refute the Jewish origin of John. And he ignores the case of Matthew, who obviously wrote for Hebrews. The second humorous fact is the modern assumption that every scandal can be avoided. The Jews stoned Stephen, killed James, jailed Peter because they were furious. The lamb, the blood, the bread, all these terms, of course, were blasphemies. But the whole history of the Church was based on this fury. Paul in Athens when he for once tried to be adaptable, was a complete failure. Matthew was abhorred and the Gospel was abhorred and, be honest, is abhorred by all men of good taste today.

“Matthew knew that the pudenda of life were real. That it was less bad taste to speak as the victim, as bread and wine, than to do the act of Condemning the Just.”

The price of all ritual is sacrifice. When we bind ourselves to a ghost of the past, to a piece of paper, to a house, to a grave, we are apt to spill somebody else’s blood for the purpose. And so it is to this day. This is all right if it is in our consciousness which price we pay. But Jesus created a brotherhood where before the victims had been drafted. But the Eucharist is still a scandal to a Jew. It makes him vomit, quite literally, as it would any man of etiquette. Matthew knew that the pudenda of life were real. That it was less bad taste to speak as the victim, as bread and wine, than to do the act of Condemning the Just. He [Matthew] was immune against the mortal disease of good society. He knew that everything has its price. And that nothing is more expensive than freedom from the taboos of good society. And so he ceased to call the first man who had spoken for the victims and as a victim, by his name in society, son of David, Son of Abraham, as he had begun in Chapter One. This taboo was broken, Matthew, in his last chapter found himself in the infinitely more exciting society of sinners who no longer were bound together by high entrance fees but by the name of the first victim who had spoken out loud.

It is not impossible, by the way, that Matthew went to Ethiopia. Now, the point of this mission would be that the Ethiopians, to this day, observe the whole Jewish ceremonial as well as the New Testament liturgy. They circumcise and baptize; they observe the Sabbath as well as the Sunday. One cannot tell; but it would be in accordance with the Word of the Gospel if this duplication happened because of Matthew. Because the only disease which he fought was the superstition of ritual. Manners must be; but manners are not more than manners.

Matthew, by illuminating the breaking of table manners, went over primeval ground. In primeval days, table manners had. been the creative elements from which the body politic sprang. Instead of snatching food from each other – in our C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps of the unemployed this beastly snatching was not rare and always indicated the loss of camp morale – like the animals, the introduction of common meals created a new peace of mind. Around the meal for the dead, or perhaps more exactly, with their dead, the new incorporation took place. Food was placed between the living and the dead, and both partook of it, in one spirit and in one name. Hence, sacrificial meals were the first constitutions of mankind. Here it was that the community was enacted because the stomach’s enlightened “self”-interest was forgotten when the best pieces were reserved for the dead and later, the gods. Permanency eclipsed the interests of the living generation. The accidents of birth and of being alive were overshadowed by the eternity of the dead.

In the cooling shadow of this permanency and eternal order, peaceful arrangements were made between friend and foe; hospitality, the right of the enemy to eat with us, was introduced and became possible because ritual showed man his place in the succession of endless times. Here, people did not eat like the animals but they toasted each other by their full name. The salutation at meals is primeval. Men greeted each other and thought of each other at meals as “convivials,” id est, as co-livers, as now the other fellow’s life counted more in one’s own eyes, than the “self.”

To these primeval foundations of society Matthew takes us back. John spoke to peoples who knew the arts and sciences. Luke spoke to the greatest religionists and puritans of the ancient world. Mark spoke to the civilized inhabitants of the temple state. But Matthew penetrated, by his “bad taste,” to the most archaic layer of all society, to the tribal layer of ritual. Hence, Matthew gave a version of the Gospel which had to become the most universal and the most fundamental feature of the new Way of Life. The Mass and the Eucharist, the inner core of all divine services is written up in Matthew.

Since he made it clear that Christ bought, by his sacrifice, the salvation of the sacrificers, it was now written that the victim of every meal, that [namely] bread and wine, spoke to the dining communion and invited them to shift with their master to the other side of the counter, so to speak, to the side of the victim. In the Mass, every member is invited to be sacrificed or to be ready to be sacrificed for the salvation and the renovation of the world. In the Mass, the first victim invites the others, the partakers, to a service in which they themselves are the offerings. In the dullness of the average mind, this fact rarely makes a dent. People have degraded the divine service to a church parade or a social gathering. But the Church was built on the faith that from now on, no divine service was permitted unless the people considered themselves as the sacrifice offered. The whole expression of a Body of Christ, with the head in Heaven, meant exactly this, that we who would crucify the Lord every day, in our rage and envy and indifference, now, with our eyes opened once for what we have done and are doing, declare solemnly: We now, together with our Head, step on the side of the silent victims and offer ourselves to our Maker so that he can remake the sacrifice as he pleases. How else could ever a new inspiration befall us as a people unless we offer ourselves as the body for this inspiration? Time and again, man has to be ripped open by the ploughshare of suffering and open himself like a dry and desiccated earth to dew and rain. And ever since one men did this manifestly all alone and by himself, his congregations relieve the members of the total pressure of absolute loneliness. In every generation, the group which may be remodeled, may increase, until the whole of markind will be allowed to fall silent and to cleanse themselves from the chatter and clatter of the day, and to listen to the Spirit, simultaneously…

“The minds which scorn the sacraments as myth or obsolete, never fail to frighten me by their childishness.”

Matthew, the most drastic, the least mannered, also is the most elementary evangelist. Through him, we have received the ritual in writing. Our era would otherwise have been without any dress for its nakedness. It is very nice to leave obsolete clothing behind you, but our era needed dress, some dress, just the same. Now we received the power of ritual free from superstition or myth or magic. Everybody can understand Matthew — child and genius, warrior and farmer — unless his heart is alien to self-sacrifice. The minds which scorn the sacraments as myth or obsolete, never fail to frighten me by their childishness. What an ignorant and uneducated heart they must have; how the gristmill of their brain must have crushed all serious experience of life and of their own deepest hopes! Usually, these same people expect to be adored by their family, read by the public, paid by their endowed institution. How can they expect it unless man’s nature is fulfilled by his entering the ranks of the offerings? It is our highest nature that we should be offerings. “Liturgy is only another name for Almighty God’s table manners.”

The victim made eloquent, the world heart crested by responses, the No of God turned into an intermediary medicine of suffering on the road to a new incarnation, the human soul God’s newest poem — these were the four glad tidings. The blind alleys of ritual, temple cult, Israel, Greece opened up to each other. And these four men succeeded because they were immune to the specific disease of speech which their tidings deluged. This is the reason why it is faulty to call John Hellenistic, Mark Egyptian, Matthew Judaizing, Luke Pauline. The restoration of free speech by the Gospels proceeded by a matching of opposites. Neither does the prophetioal John write for the Jews, nor does the learned Luke write for the Greeks. The fisherman Peter writes for the scientific world. And it is not a man of good taste and good standing who by his first Gospel matches the Old Testament, but the in-no-way venerable publican.

(Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Fruit of Lips, pp. 66-74.)

Ritual is powerful stuff. Much of modern evangelicalism prides itself in rejecting liturgy and being “open to the Spirit,” and then turns this “openness” into an uninspired (and very uninspiring) human formula, in place of the inspired Divine one. Instead of following a pattern found in every part of the Bible (worship is literary architecture), we are stuck with either erroneous traditions or off-the-cuff rambles which, although “open to inspiration,” somehow sound exactly the same each week. Human beings love repetition in every area of life, and ritual is a prime method of teaching truth and holiness.

The power of ritual is illustrated in its amazing ability to preserve things such as archaic language and symbolic dress “in amber.” Old parishioners love their traditional Church service. If things aren’t done in the way to which they are accustomed, and in the same order, there is a deep feeling of insecurity. The tradition must be preserved. The motivation for this is often as wrong-headed as that of the moderns who want to update everything: a sense of security found in a common identity. The old people identify with the a human culture that is past, and the young people identify with a human culture that is present. It is the tradition, whether old or new, which gives us our identity. Very often, neither group is actually identifying with the Bible.This brings me to the point of this post: I don’t believe the maintenance of the rite of paedobaptism has much to do with the Bible.

Now, before you brainy paedobaptists tune out, this post is probably going where you think it’s going, but there is a surprising twist in the plot. This week, Peter Leithart writes:

One of Paul’s arguments for the resurrection is baptism for the dead: “What will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?” (1 Corinthians 15:29). Paul is referring to Numbers 19, where those who are defiled by contact with dead bodies. They are sprinkled with a concoction of water and ashes to raise them from their ceremonial death. Paul sees an analogy between that rite and Christian baptism that cleanses from dead works.

If this is Paul’s argument, then it provides some insight to persistent debates concerning the mode of baptism. The rite of Numbers 19 involves sprinkling (vv. 13, 18, 20), and if Numbers 19 is a figure of Christian baptism, then we may be able to draw the inference that Christian baptism for the dead should also be in the mode of sprinkling.

For those used to hearing that Paul is referring to a contemporary pagan ritual, which is in itself a plausible theory, an appeal to the Torah most likely comes out of left field. One thing I appreciate about the Biblical Horizons crowd is their focus on the “self-referential” nature of Scripture. If an allusion is a mystery, the first place we must look is not the contemporary culture but in previous Scripture. Almost invariably, that is where the answers are found. So, how then would I, a credobaptist, deal with this assertion concerning the mode of baptism? I’m glad you asked.

Firstly, Dr Leithart has to ignore all the evidence for immersion as the mode of baptism in actual New Covenant baptismal texts (arguments which, though nothing new, are still potent arguments) and go looking for support in obscure Old Testament rites. Like him, I don’t believe these rites should be obscure to us at all, but surely we shouldn’t be looking to these rites to defy the obvious appearance of New Covenant texts but instead to support them. This practice is just another example of the textual weaseling that goes on to present paedobaptism as biblical rather than merely traditional.

Secondly, this appeal to Numbers 19 does have some merit. James Rogers expounds upon it for us on the Biblical Horizons site here. He writes:

Clearly the writings and practice of the Old Covenant economy are authoritative for the Christian Church. This is why the Old Testament is part of the canon of the Church. The practice of baptism, however, is not an invention of the New Covenant Church (nor of Near Eastern mystery religions). There are a number of ritual baptisms described in the Old Testament, and prescribed for the Jews.

Thus, the New Testament author of Hebrews writes of Old Covenant rituals:

The Holy Spirit is signifying this, that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed, while the outer tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the time then present, according to which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they related only to fool and drink and various baptisms, regulations for the flesh imposed until a time of reformation. (Heb. 9:8-10)

The “various baptisms” in verse 10 is often translated as “various washings.” Nonetheless, the Greek word used there is “baptisms” (cf., “instruction about baptisms” in Heb. 6:2).

Now which baptisms is the author of Hebrews writing about? These baptisms are detailed in the immediate context of the passage. Specifically, in verse 13, the author refers to “the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling” as examples of the Old Covenant baptisms that he is writing of.

I agree with him almost 100 per cent and recommend reading the entire article. So, if I agree with him, and thus with the foundations of Dr Leithart’s observation, where do I go from here? What I do is this: I read Numbers 19 without wearing the one-eyed paedobaptist goggle. And what do I discover? I discover that there is another “washing” which is crucial to every stage of this rite which Rogers and Leithart apparently deem to be irrelevant. With their typological cross-hairs focussed solely on evidence for sprinkling, they’ve missed the component which is ripsnorting evidence for immersion. I don’t know how they missed it. A similar command appears four times:

Verse 7: “Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. But the priest shall be unclean until evening.

Verse 8: “The one who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water and shall be unclean until evening”

Verse 10: “And the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening.”

Verse 19: “And the clean person shall sprinkle it on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day. Thus on the seventh day he shall cleanse him, and he [the clean person] shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and at evening he shall be clean.”

This evidence is not exactly subtle, is it? It exposes the paedobaptistic exegetical monacle for what it is: the insight of a one-eyed man.

So, thirdly, the next logical question to ask is this: What is the difference between these two uses of water? Which of these types finds its antitype in New Covenant baptism? Again, the answer is found in Numbers 19. [2]

Verse 9: “And a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place. And they shall be kept for the water for impurity for the congregation of the people of Israel; it is a sin offering.“

The text makes a clear distinction between the clean and the unclean, that is, between the pure priesthood and the impure and contaminated people. This “water of impurity” was not purely water. It contained the remains of the heifer (“…its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung”), and the cedarwood, the hyssop and the scarlet thread. It seems to me that the heifer signifies the Bronze Altar, the hyssop (possibly the aromatic herb, “ezov” [1]) signifies the Incense Altar, the scarlet thread signifies the Table of Showbread (which alone was covered with an extra scarlet veil under the common coverings [Number 4:8]), which would leave the cedarwood, a source of medicinal oil, as the signification of the Lampstand, a holy tree of Pentecostal (kingly) anointing. [3] The “water of impurity” is thus an outflow of the ministry of the Tabernacle. The entire humaniform (and cruciform) house itself was symbolically cursed, slain and incinerated, both its earthly and heavenly altars, to free the people from a contagious death, a death spread by a touch of the skin. [4] But note that this water was for the cleansing of those outside the Tabernacle. It was applied to the people by ministers from inside. It was mediated by those who washed their bodies and clothes by immersion (unless the ancients used dry cleaning).

I have used the architecture of Exodus 24 as support for credobaptism, and we see the same idea here. All the people are sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice, but only those on the mountain, the leaders and elders, eat with God as representatives of the people of Israel. After this, the Levitical priesthood is established, with the Tabernacle as a portable Sinai. There is a line between the priesthood and the people. The crystal sea was seen on the mountain. The water is mediated by those who may ascend as model citizens, images of maturity.

The entire point of the transfiguration of the Covenant was to create a priesthood of all believers. All believers are to be witnesses carrying the testimony of Jesus, mediators of the Gospel. We are to be sources of living water, not merely its recipients, which is why our whole bodies and robes are washed. This means that the washing of the body and the clothes in Numbers 19 is far more likely to be the type of New Covenant baptism, and even the New Testament says as much, with its references to “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.” (Revelation 22:14)

All the cuttings and sprinklings were related to sin offerings and thus were fulfilled in Jesus, who was all Israel in One Perfect Offering. The impure water containing the remains of the Old House was the water which flowed, with blood, from the expired flesh of Christ. It is not a testimony of life but of death, a sign that the Law has been satisified and nothing more. The desire of paedobaptists to link the sprinkling in Numbers 19 is entirely logical, because their errant baptism amounts to nothing more than a strange new circumcision, and since the resurrection, circumcision and uncircumcision are nothing. Paedobaptism is nothing more than a testimony of death. It is not a testimony of life.

Paedobaptism is nothing but the washing of a sacrificial corpse, a body which awaits the fire. Credobaptism is the robe of ministry for one already clean, temporarily removed in humility to provide cleansing for others (as the High Priest on the Day of Atonement and as Christ when He washed the disciples’ feet) but replaced as an eternal robe of glory, of continuous resurrection, from glory to glory. Baptism is for the gatekeepers, those who are able to discern the spirits because they are of the Spirit. The waters of baptism do not contain the curse, the remains of the Old Tabernacle, but are pure waters rushing out in chariots from a new Bridal Temple.

It is highly ironic that those who speak so much of “the baptized body” limit the ministry of the water to an Old Covenant sprinkling on the head.

_________________________________________
[1] See the wikipedia entry.
[2] For the position of Numbers 19 in the structure of the book, see The Beauty of Numbers – 3.
[3] Note that the cleansing of lepers in Leviticus 14 contains similar ingredients, and includes 2 sacrificial birds, which from our study of Genesis 15 the other day, would symbolize the “holy head,” or the Ark of the Covenant. Also, cedarwood has to do with the  Temple of Solomon.
[4] On leprosy as “snakeskin,” see Scales of Justice.

“He said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.’ And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.” (Genesis 15:9-11)

When Abram asked for a sign concerning the Lord’s promise concerning an heir, the Lord carried it out with animals slain and displayed upon the Land. In the Covenant-literary structure of Genesis 15, the animals were slain and laid out at “Pass-over,” and the Lord’s chariot (as a Head and Body) “passed-through” at Atonement, (matching Pass-over” chiastically) picturing Joshua and Israel entering Canaan. (See Pass-over and Pass-through, and compare the charts on pages 93 and 115 of Bible Matrix.)

What is also interesting is the “architecture” of the sacrifice. We do not know which animals were considered “clean” by the Lord in Noah’s time, but the number of sacrificial animals was now limited to five. They correspond to the architecture of the Tabernacle. If we include Abram in his deep sleep (as a “covering”) and the birds of prey representing the curse of the Law, in the following diagram we have the complete “footprint” of the humaniform house made entirely out of birds and beasts.

You need to be logged in to see the rest of this post. Log in using the link in the sidebar. Not registered? Click on the REGISTER button in the sidebar to register.

____________________
See also Half-Man, Half Beast.

ART: Transfiguration – Lewis Bowman

According to James Jordan, the seven churches are presented as a sort of “decentralized” menora, that is, seven lamps instead of a single seven-branched lampstand. Once this way of thinking is pointed out, it amazes me how much of what is obvious in the text we miss entirely.

This image suggests that we are supposed to take the Church as a new Israel, a conclusion which would not be so popular with dispensationalists, but one that seems unavoidable. The Bible teaches “replacement theory,” or at least, “transformation theory.” Like Jesus, Israel was about to pass through death and resurrection and come out of the grave renewed and as different from old Israel as a butterfly is from a caterpillar.

The Romans would remove the Lampstand from Herod’s Temple, as is predicted later in the Revelation (18:23). The new “decentralized” worship would not be centered on earth but in heaven, on the true Zion (Paul says as much in Galatians 4).

Further support is found in the fact that the seven letters are a brief retelling of Old Israel’s history (following Israel’s festal calendar). Once this is observed, the use of the names of Old Testament characters suddenly makes perfect sense.

Following the seven letters, the rest of the Book of Revelation is an eighth letter, John’s “little book.” [1] The budding sins which Jesus critiques in the fledgling church are shown to be full grown in the worship in Jerusalem (the harlot and false prophet are a Jewish Jezebel and Jewish Balaam, ruling and cursing Jerusalem). The Lampstand was made to look like an almond tree, literally a “watcher tree.”

The word of the LORD came to me saying, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” And I said, “I see a rod of an almond tree.” (Jeremiah 1:11)

These New Covenant “watchmen” watch on as she is destroyed. So, the letters are a prophecy of future Church history, but a history of the “Firstfruits” Church, leading up to AD70, with only a brief glimpse of “the age to come” in chapter 20.

The meanings of the names of the cities also seem significant in identifying the “dominion” pattern:

As Jordan observes, the Church pastors are the seven stars in Jesus’ right hand. Jesus is the new Tabernacle, and His right hand is the new Lampstand, one whose light multiplies and reaches every corner of the earth.

____________________________________________
[1] See The Eighth Letter. For more on Revelation, get James Jordan’s lectures or his summary The Vindication of Jesus Christ.

What is the referent of “body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 11:29?

“For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.”

Is it the members of the Church, as Doug Wilson supposes?

A few years ago, when one of my grandsons first came to the table (he was one year old), he was beside himself. His parents had taught him a basic catechism with signs because he could not really talk. He answered the question “Are you baptized?” by patting his own head. I was administering the Supper, and he was sitting in the front row with his parents and grandmother. When he got his bread, he held it up to show me. Now all this could be dismissed simply as a grandkid doing a cute thing, not really understanding it. But he also turned and pattern his mother’s head and his grandmother’s head. We are all baptized. He was discerning the body. To the extent he understood the Supper, he was discerning the body. To the extent that he did not understand the Supper (as the rest of us do not either), he was learning, just as we are. [1]

Why do paedobaptists always play the “cute” card? Is it not obvious that the corollary to “We are all baptized” is that Christianity is tribal and/or hereditary? That discussion is for another day. I just thought this was a great quote to illustrate what is often understood by this verse. But then what is the meaning of the verse? Its Covenant structure might shed some light on it.

It should be clear from this structure that the Communion table, a place of the kind of self-examination which leads to repentance and faith, is not for infants. It is not intended for the training up of children, except by observation. The “bread” they require first is the hearing of the Gospel. But the main point here is that the context of “discerning the body” is not about figuring out who is in and who is out.

The Lord’s supper is a combination of Israel’s Levitical priesthood eating the sacrifices before God, and Israel vowing to keep the conditions of the Covenant. Before the Mosaic Covenant, all sacrifices were whole burnt offerings. God ate the lot, as a consuming fire. The Noahic priests did not eat with God. To do so required a greater ceremonial cleanliness, a blameless people with “Levitically spotless skin,” as living sacrifices.

Moreover, Israel’s priests only ate before God, they never drank with Him. Between the first Melchizedek bringing bread and wine to Abraham (to vindicate him as a priest-king) and the last Melchizedek bringing bread and wine to Abraham’s children (the disciples), the wine was always to be tipped out as an offering. [2] The symbolism of the cup is tied to the jealous inspection of the bride in Numbers 5. In the big picture, the true priest-king was Christ, the only one who could rightly drink wine before God as a qualified Adam, the true Son of God.

So the distinction here, the “discernment” of the body is not the gathered saints but the act of judging rightly between sacred food and common food, between the house of God and the homes we live in, between the priestly table and the kingly table. When we eat at home, our food is not the body of Christ, and our wine is not the blood of the New Covenant. This is only the case when the saints gather together for self-examination, worship and Covenant renewal.

He whose god is his belly does not discern the Table as the flesh and blood of Christ but merely as food and drink. His outflow is not sacrificial blood and a river of living water but the filth of the bowels of King Eglon of Sodom. Those who discern what the bread and the wine actually are in God’s eyes will rightly discern themselves. Those who see  the Son of God on the Table, judging Jesus as righteous and themselves as unrighteous will, by eating and drinking, humble themselves and exalt the Saviour. His pure words are intended for our hearts, not our bellies (Mark 7:19). For those who love this world, Jesus’ pure words are Ehud’s left-handed (priestly) blade.

For Israel, this discernment was related to the difference between Passover and Tabernacles. At Passover, Israel was set apart for purification. At Booths/Tabernacles, a purified Israel was called to minister to, to “feed” the other nations. [3] For the Christian, this is the difference between the Lord’s table and the love feast. We examine ourselves, eat with God, and will then eat with the unconverted with the right heart, ministering out of God’s abundance.

So much for the basic argument. As always, the identification of the Covenant structure gives us even more information.

It is helpful to note that divisions in the assembly are often instigated by God for the purpose of purifying the church, as painful as this may be. It is not always simple, but in this case, gluttony exposed the swine.

At the Levitical step, we have saints acting like the sons of Eli, who treated the house of the Lord as if it were their own house, and the food of God as their own food. They exalted themselves instead of humbling themselves as God’s butlers, His faithful servants.

At the centre of the passage, Jesus is under the curse of the Law, drinking the cup in the place of the adulterous Bride. Even now He was covering their disobedience through His own death, just as He was still covering the sin of the Jewish leaders who were yet celebrating Passover and building the Temple in kingly (“Cainite”) disobedience to the Gospel.

The “Sanctions” part of the passage reinforces the idea that the Lord’s Supper is for the regular public renewal of the public profession of faith made by each saint at his or her baptism. Baptism puts the saint into the resurrection body, as one who has been slain by the Gospel and now possesses new life by the Spirit. The Table is the place of self-discipline for God’s knights, who judge themselves that they may not be judged, something which is insane to expect from a one-year-old unless one has an erroneous tradition to protect.

Notice that those who will not discipline themselves are disciplined by the Lord. This is exactly what we see in the letters to the seven churches in Asia, as Jesus “passes over” them on His way to destroy Pharaoh/Herod. He comes to tend His garden, the children of God (spiritual, not physical children), to feed them with righteousness and holiness. Those whom He finally removes (as He threatens to do in Revelation 2 and 3), are judged that the church might be preserved from being entirely “snuffed out.”

The final section, like the first, mentions the gathering (Booths). The Table is the place where the saints sit as elohim, heavenly rulers, those who are purified and are now fit to sit enthroned with Christ in heavenly places as His elders, His court, His advisors, and judge the wicked and advocate for the helpless by their prayers. The Lord’s Table is for the maintenance of the two-edged sword of the Gospel in our lives. It is a place of death and life, where we eat and drink Jesus, the priest-king, and then become life-giving food for the world.

____________________________________________
[1] Doug Wilson, in his foreword for The Case for Covenant Communion, edited by Gregg Strawbridge.
[2] See “The Forbidden Feast” in God’s Kitchen for more discussion and a diagram.
[3] See “Eat Local and Die” in God’s Kitchen for more discussion.

ART: The Death of Eglon via Sarah Louise 

Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 NKJV) [1]

What was this “gathering together” of the saints, and how does it relate to the gathering mentioned by Jesus in Mark 13?

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. (Mark 13: 24-27 ESV)

This period in history would bring about the end of “Israel according to the flesh,” the nation which was elevated above all the nations of the world upon an earthen altar (the Land) as a living sacrifice. Israel was a firstfruits to God, but her own entire history follows the pattern of her annual feasts (see Bible Matrix p. 191).

Israel’s festal calendar has its structural origin in the testing of Adam, the first “high priest.” Day 6 of the Creation week (land animals and Man) corresponds to the sixth feast (as they are listed in Leviticus 23). The Day of Atonement involved Land animals and Man. Only once Israel was purified could she minister to the nations through hospitality in the Feast of Booths.

The four decades between AD30 and AD70 would finish this process with the Atonement of Jesus and the fulfillment of Booths (Tabernacles), the bringing in of both Jews and Gentiles in a union of “Land” and “Sea.” This final feast, the one in which a purified Israel is ready to minister to the other nations, was also referred to as Ingathering.

Ingathering comes after Atonement. The end of the Old Covenant (and inauguration of the Church) would culminate in the first resurrection. [2] But this could not happen until the unfaithful priesthood was dealt with.

This reasoning is based on the first atonement, the shedding of blood to cover the first Man of Sin, Adam. [3] Just as Adam and Eve were refused entrance into God’s rest, so Israel’s Day 7 could only happen after Israel’s Day 6 was done with. The Hebrew Christians were exhorted not to turn back, but to enter into this new rest. Reading Hebrews 4 and 10 in this light is a real eye opener.

Only once the blood of the prophets was avenged could the sleeping faithful, including Abel and Abraham, receive their inheritance. Just as the High Priest approached the veil twice with blood, once for the priesthood and once for the people (as Head and Body), so Jesus, who had ascended as Head, would return “in like manner” to purify the body, and accept her into the place which He had prepared. This is the “ingathering” to which the apostles refer. It is prefigured in Old Covenant language.

“Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.” (Genesis 25:8) [4]

This gathering of the Old Testament faithful in Abraham was only temporary. Christ was the first Man who would not be gathered but instead become the gatherer.

“For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption.” (Acts 13:36-37)

To gather faithful Israel, He would also have to scatter His enemies, that is, false Israel. Paul’s statement, in the light of Covenant structure, means that the new order cannot have begun if the Day of the Lord, the day when the Overlord turns up to administer the Sanctions of the Covenant, has not yet occurred. The entire New Testament takes place not only in the shadow of the cross, but in the shadow of Herod’s Temple and its claim to divine authority. The God-fest of all nations could not be enjoyed until after the rival priest-kingdom was demolished.

Only a logical reference to the Covenant structure allows us to see all the promises to Abraham fulfilled finally in a heavenly country (though they were certainly fulfilled completely by the end of the conquest of Canaan under Joshua). Before the old Temple would be turned into ashes, all the saints, the “cloud of witnesses” (as sacrificial incense filling the house) would finally find their rest in Christ, a better Adam, in heaven. Daniel saw a vision of their ascension (Daniel 7) and Josephus records the appearance of armies in clouds over Jerusalem, just before the Roman siege, that is, after days of the tribulation of the saints. The saints under the altar, the “grateful dead,” would discover that the promises to “corruptible seed” would all be fulfilled in ways incorruptible (1 Peter 1:23). The courts of God in heaven are now the halls of fame.

____________________________________________________
[1] For the literary structure of this passage, see The Breath of His Coming – 1.
[2] See The End is Not Yet and The Last Trumpet.
[3] See also The Man of Sin.
[4] This is much more to this. See What Lies Beneath.

What Is Revelation Really About?

Although Revelation is said to give blessing to those who read it and hear it (Revelation 1:3), it often results in confusion as well. Any reader is thrilled by the pictures of God’s triumph over His enemies and His vindication of His saints, but as regards the specifics—well, who knows?

Revelation is applicable to all times and occasions in the Church, and because of that it has been interpreted as predicting many different events in history. Naturally, these interpretations all contradict one another, which leads many believers to decide that the book is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, and that efforts to understand it are a waste of time.

In fact, however, Revelation is not all that difficult to interpret if we use the Old Testament as a guide to its symbols. The book was written to the apostolic church to help her in a time of coming persecution at the hands of the Romans, the Jews, and the Judaizers. It completes the history begun in the book of Acts, and is closely tied to everything else that is going on in the apostolic age. It deals with the end of the Old Covenant and the full arrival of the New, and then looks forward to the final return of Jesus and the bodily resurrection at the end of history.

• 204 MP3 files | 1.94 GB
• Total time: 6 days, 9 minutes
• Lecture Notes – 304 pages (MS Word)
• Revelation: A Brief Reader’s Guide

USA: Downloadable set from www.wordmp3.com for US$29
Australia: MP3 DVD with stunning design by yours truly available from Michael Bull for AU$39 incl. shipping (US$49 for USA customers) Payment is by Paypal to mbull [at] bullartistry.com.au. (You can use your credit card. Please include your postal address.)

Untouched Flaws

Mercury Rising

Liturgy As Prophecy

Matthew’s Antidote for Gnosticism

Tokens of Virginity