For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.  And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:14-18)

So, the New Jerusalem—at least the way it is described in Revelation 21—is the culmination of all the “Day 6s” since the original in the Garden of Eden. And, like the walls of water at the Red Sea and Jordan crossings, this entire, miraculous arrangement is held together by the Mediator-Man, the Lamb standing at the centre.

What’s interesting is that Old Covenant Israel’s Day 6 was seen by Daniel as a giant metal man. As Jordan brilliantly describes, this man was a Tabernacle made of the Gentile empires within which Ezra and Nehemiah’s New Jerusalem would act as a priestly advisor. When this structure got down to earth, however, this Old Covenant man got cold feet, feet of clay. The red dust of the Esau/Edomite Herods would not “intermarry” with the Roman metal however hard they tried. Revelation gives us the next episode in the story of this man. [1]

In Revelation 10-11, Christ stood with one foot on the Land (Israel) and one on the Sea (the Gentile oikoumene) until Jew and Gentile were a complete body. [2] What the Herods failed to do by might and power, Jesus did by His Spirit. Jesus commanded John to measure (test) the Temple and gave him a little book containing seven verbal thunders that would bring this decayed old worship construct tumbling down—DE-Creation. [3] The single man of Israel’s Day 6 (Atonement) was replaced with a married man at her Day 7 (Booths). Totus Christus, the complete Jew-Gentile man, replaced the Gentile kingdoms’ metal man in AD70. [4]

But Israel’s Day 7 was only the beginning of the World’s Day 6, as we have described. The Totus Christus is a Great High Priest of Whom we are a part. Now, from head to foot, He reaches—we reach—from the highest heaven to the lowest pit. [5]

“If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” (Psalm 139:8)

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[1] See The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men 1 and 2.
[2] I won a bottle of plonk at trivia for guessing what the Mercedes Benz logo means. Thanks to JBJ, I guessed right. The three-pointed star symbolises dominion over air, land and sea.
[3] It’s interesting that in Revelation 11 we have the Christ who has begun to reign, and in 12 we have the Woman and the dragon. As in the Creation Week, the rulers are at the centre. As in Genesis 3, the rulers at the centre are Adam, Eve and the serpent. See also Seven Bowls of Wrath.
[4] VERY interestingly, the 666 passage in Revelation is the sixth stanza in a “Creation Week” pattern. This occurs many times in Revelation, only with this passage, THE SEVENTH STANZA IS MISSING. As far as I can tell, this is the only place in the Bible where this occurs. This signals the end of the Herods’ attempt at rebuilding Solomon’s kingdom with borrowed Roman power. See my book Totus Christus for more detail on this structure. 666 denotes the beginning of Solomon’s corruption through his amassing of gold. The same sin in the Herods brought down the metal man of the oikoumene. When tested—threshed/sifted—the failed Adam returned to the dust (Daniel 2).
[5] On the church’s new relationship to the Abyss, see Touch Not, Taste Not, Handle Not and The Greatest Consumer.

All the names and the numbers in Revelation are symbols based on historical facts. The names are easy. Jezebel, Antipas, Balaam… But we mathematical moderns have trouble taking numbers as symbols. We are only interested in descriptions, not relationships. In the Bible, symbols describe relationships. As David Chilton observes in The Days of Vengeance [PDF], the symbolic value of someone or something is not a description of its nature, but a description of its relationship to someone or something else. Hence, as Jordan observes, Satan is both a dragon and a serpent in Revelation 12. He is a serpent to the Woman and a dragon to her children.

The debate over certain numbers in Revelation is amazing. For the meaning of 666, see here.

The thousand years of Revelation 20 is to be understood in the same way. It’s no more tricksy than any allusion to the number 42 being the answer to life, the universe, and everything in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You have to have read the book to “get it.” [1] As Peter Leithart illustrates in Deep Exegesis, the text, among other things, is a joke.

It was a thousand years from the offering of Isaac to the day David purchased the threshing floor of Aruanah. These events occurred on the same site. It was the end of mobile worship. James Jordan’s Bible chronology shows that from the completion of the construction of Solomon’s Temple to the destruction of Herod’s Temple, it was, again, a thousand years. It was the end of Temple worship.

So, based on these beginnings and endings, what does this number mean for the gospel age, governed from heaven by the Son of God and His ascended saints? Once all this has been pointed out, it ain’t rocket science.

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[1] The answer “42″ was so funny because it was totally bereft of any meaning other than a scientific description.

The Bible is big on mediators. Adam’s role as faithful Showbread would link heaven and earth. He would be a god-man. Fulfilled by Christ, this is the liturgical role of a minister. He faces God as representative of the Bride, and faces the church as the representative of the Bridegroom. He is Solomon at the completion of the Temple dedication.

The ‘hell’ hybrids are the Land-beasts of the Bible. This is what Adam became, conspiring with Satan. It was an unholy alliance between God’s mediator and the Creation, in which the Creation called the agenda. The resulting peoples are hunters like Nimrod and Esau, wolves instead of shepherds, bloodthirsty children of the daughters of men.

Revelation shows the unholy alliance between Herod and Pilate (as heads) matured into full-grown bodies. The Land Beast is allied to the Sea Beast (Nero’s Satanic Rome) with Rome calling the shots.

The Bible is big on intermarriage. The Herodian line was an attempt at intermarriage between the Temple and the Roman State. Solomon’s marriage to an Egyptian was godly, because Solomon called the shots. His later marriages were ungodly, because he was no longer calling the agenda according to the Law of God.

Herod’s Jew/Gentile intermarriage was a counterfeit parallel of the one being painstakingly sewn together by Paul. Revelation is about the marriage of Paul’s ‘Esther’, and the despatching of ‘Greater Herodias.’ It portrays the Herods as a false Solomon with the symbol of 666.

The Bible begins with waters above and waters below. Symbolically, this becomes the crystal sea above, and the Gentile nations below. The rulers on the crystal sea call the agenda concerning the nations.

The mediator is now Christ’s crystal city. Totally faithful, since AD70 she is beyond reproach. Her pattern is being measured out on the earth by faithful churches.

Churches down here, however, are not beyond reproach. Churches are always mediators, for heaven or hell. They are always spiritual doorways. If, like the Pharisees, they close the door to seekers, there is still a door open–the one to outer darkness.

What is the nature of your church’s alliances? Who is calling the agenda in your church? Is it coming from above or below? Is it a flow of living water or Wormwood? Is it distributing the broken bread and poured out wine of the Man-Table, or a false promise of Dominion without sacrifice? Are the elders fathers or manipulators, Abrahams or Nimrods?

Intermarriage is God’s plan for the world, but it is the marriage of Joseph, Boaz and faithful Solomon, heavenly hybrids that produce godly warriors through the daughters of men.