Part 1 here.

One thing the Bible Matrix demonstrates is the nature of history. Sure, it repeats itself. Everyone knows that. But our personal histories are microcosms of the lives and deaths of families, churches, nations and empires. Reading the Bible is like looking through a glass onion.

The structure of events in the primeval Garden are replayed in Cain and Abel, then in the sons of God. Garden; Land; World. Most Holy; Holy; Courts. Word; Sacrament; Government. Heaven; Mediator; Earth.

The pattern of creation was repeated in Adam and Eve, Word becoming flesh, but instead of the building of a greater Tabernacle out of raw materials, the dust devil of sin grew into a tornado, multiplying in speed and size, collecting material and taking on a body of its own—the entire race but for Noah.

Jesus reversed the pattern in the Garden. But it took all of the Old Testament to teach us what Jesus would actually do. We need to analyse all the occurrences of the pattern, all the different ways in which it was played out in history, to comprehend His redemptive achievement in all its glorious facets.

Just as death entered the world by the act of one man, it literally took a cast of thousands to portray the work of the Second Man. Cain slew Abel at the cross. Eve bore Seth as a replacement son in the resurrection. Enoch walked with God and was not at the ascension. Jonathan abdicated the Old Covenant and was resurrected as a New Covenant robe in David. Jephthah and David conquered as “Conquest” Land kings but had to die and be resurrected as “Glorification” World kings in Samson and Solomon respectively.

By the time of Jesus, the sin that was dealt with in the exile had again taken on a corporate body. God had divided and then scattered Solomon’s kingdom in judgment, but as God does, He scattered the people like seed. This enlarged His field. Jesus came to harvest this greater field. But the body of sin was also now much larger. The compromise between the Jewish sons of God and the Gentile daughters of men was empire-wide. Just as Lamech’s sin became institutionalised and ended the race, Ahab and Jezebel had again become a draconian church state under the Herods.

Jesus dealt with the cyclone by standing in the eye. His ministry itself took on a body, but in the gospels we see Him whittle it away until He stands alone and rejected. The crowds abandon Him, and then even His band of brothers is scattered. His seamless robe, a symbol of His kingdom, is taken away. It also symbolised the Covenant—the firmament. The firmament is a garment for God, filled with governing lights. No lights (disciples), no robe. Jesus is torn from the Father, and then, more alone than anyone until the final judgment, Jesus’ body itself is torn. All glory, all identity was gone, right down to the most personal, the most precious, the Most Holy.

He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him,
there is no beauty that we should desire Him.

“The guards came again, handing out coats. I could not understand at first why they took away all of our clothes only to give us in return garments that must have been worn by other women entering the [concentration] camp. But as I looked around at the women beside me withdrawn into their meagre, worn rags, I saw that we were no longer the strong women who had been able to endure hard labour, wartime conditions, and separation from our family and friends. The shearing of our heads and vulvas, the stealing of our clothes and everything we had owned, took from us the last traces of who we had been. My knapsack on the train, my mother’s chains and rings, would never be given back. I felt their loss almost as much as the loss of my hair. All I had left was Samuel’s ring.

When the guard reached me she held out a long gray coat. Without thinking I took it from her with my right hand. Immediately the guard circled the ring with her fingers and thumb, giving it a hard yank. My finger felt as if it were being pulled from me. The ring would not come off. Her grip tightened; the flesh around the ring was squeezed tightly. I cried out in pain.

‘Quiet!’ she hissed.

Again she pulled, spitting on the ring twice while she wiggled it back and forth. Finally, in one smooth movement, she scraped it over the ridge of my knuckle and slipped it off the end of my finger and into her pocket. Satisfied that no one had seen her, she shoved her crate of coats forward and moved on.” [1]

Crowds torn away. Family torn away. Disciples torn apart. Robe torn off. Beard torn off. Body torn … veil torn … torn … torn OPEN. And in the most exquisite plot twist in history, the plunderer was plundered. In the eye of the cyclone, in the Most Holy Place, the Gordian knot was cut.

In the eye of the cyclone, in the tomb, Jonathan became David. A new history, begun with this one-Man liturgy, was spoken into the Garden. Over the next forty years, the kingdom of the father of lies began to unravel in the Land. Like the climax of Peter and the Wolf, the more the Cunning Edomite Fox struggled, the tighter became the Apostolic rope around its neck.

Over the next forty years, Jesus took on a new body by His Spirit, and David became Solomon. Both John’s Old Covenant decrease and Jesus’ New Covenant increase became institutional. The headless Jonathan/John had a new Head. [2]

When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed.

The Word that tore open the Garden door began to tear open the Land. Revelation 14 shows Jesus again at the eye of a cyclone. This time He is an Angel with a sickle. The literary structure puts Him right at the centre, between the grain and the grapes [3]. It was time for His new “Land” body to follow Him through death and resurrection. The sickle swings and He harvests the saints as bread and wine. Now it was not just the eye but the whole Roman/Herodian cyclone that was red. What He accomplished on the cross was reenacted—filled up—in a cast of thousands. The empire was filled with violence and the corrupted sons of God disappeared beneath a flood of troops. [4]

The band of brothers we join is one of blood brothers. More Christians were martyred in the twentieth century than in the previous 19 centuries combined. As the victory in the Land continues to tear the World in two, the cast of thousands is now a cast of millions. Thankfully, the blood is always foundational. Spirit follows. [5] But we must be ready with our blood.

Could it take anything less than a cast of millions to picture the work of Christ? And perhaps we are still in the early days.

He shall see the labour of His soul and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant
shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.

__________________________________________________
[1] Sarah Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress, A Memoir of Survival, pp. 198-199.
[2] King Saul, Jonathan’s “head,” was beheaded.
[3] See Totus Christus p. 557.
[4] See Jewish War by Peter Leithart.
[5] See The Whole Bloody Bible.

Elijah’s twelve stone altar “died” in the place of Israel, paying the debt for her idolatries, burned to nothing as a priest’s daughter who had committed harlotries. That passage follows the Bible matrix, with the prophets of Baal slaughtered as the scapegoat (washed from the Land in the “Laver” of Kidron, no less).

Did Ahab and Jezebel repent? No, they filled up their sins.[1] So Elijah made an exodus to Sinai. This, too, follows the pattern. Elijah is a new Moses, and he makes a new Covenant for the remnant which will bring about the destruction of Ahab’s dynasty. His “new creation” will be built on the corpse of the old.

This chart from Totus Christus: [2]

Genesis/Light – Ahab brings the word to Jezebel of Elijah’s execution of her prophets, and she threatens Elijah’s life

Exodus/Veil [Passover] - Elijah heads for the wilderness and prays that he might die. He falls asleep under a broom tree

Leviticus/Altar & Table [Firstfruits] - The Lord miraculously feeds him with bread and water. He walks forty days and nights and like Moses, ascends Sinai. Unlike Moses, he pleads with God to judge Israel

Numbers/Lampstand [Pentecost] - As a new Moses, he stands in exactly the same cave Moses did as the Lord’s glory passes by

Deuteronomy/Incense [Trumpets] – Elijah is told to build a new house by anointing Hazael king of Syria, Jehu king of Israel, and his very own “Joshua”—Elisha

Joshua/High Priest [Atonement] – The Lord tells Elijah that He has “separated” for Himself seven thousand faithful prophets

Judges/Shekinah [Tabernacles] – Elijah’s “dynasty” is extended as he throws his robe over Elisha

Notice:
Jezebel’s word is “light” only in irony.
Elijah, as is usual for the prophets at Step 2, falls on his face, humbled so he can be exalted and given a new task.
Moses begged the Lord to spare Israel. Elijah begs Him to destroy them!
The “tomb” at the centre of the pattern. [3]
Step 5 is Moses’ last book. He hands the leadership to Joshua.
The “seven thousand” faithful men are the seven sprinklings of the Day of Covering.
Step 7 involves Covenant succession [4]. Elisha later called Elijah his “father”.

Being a Jew was never a matter of bloodline, but of Covenant. Think of Abraham’s servants circumcised in Genesis 17, the Egyptians at the Exodus, Caleb the Kenizzite, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah, etc. It seems the Old Testament keeps throwing us examples of people “grafted in.” The only actual bloodline of any importance is the one we are given, the family tree from Abraham to Christ.

Israel’s captivity and Restoration gave us a perfect picture of the New Covenant events. The Temple and walls of the old Israel were ‘de-created’ and God Himself (the ark) died in Babylon for the sake of a new Jerusalem with impregnable walls.

Christ was the human ark. Judaism, intermarried with Roman political power, became Babylon.

My point is, the captivity was a death-and-resurrection of first century Israel (the resurrection as predicted in Ezekiel 37) in type. The first century was the antitype. Thus, whatever remains of Judaism today is like exhumed idols from the eras of Jeroboam, Ahab*, Omri and Manasseh.

It is not about blood. It never was. It is about Covenant, and there is only one of those. Despite its various death-and-resurrection renewals, there has only ever really been one covenant. There is no replacement of God’s people, only transfiguration from glory to glory.

*Remember it was Jezebel’s daughter Athaliah that almost DID destroy this single bloodline that mattered. Jehoash was the single son who escaped, an echo of Moses and a type of Christ.

God calls His people to represent Him to others who don’t know Him. When, through unbelief, these mediators forget that God is in charge, not them, they become ‘squatters’ in God’s house. They act like they own the place and mistreat God’s true children.

God sends messengers, prophets, to warn them. If they don’t listen to the warnings, He replaces them altogether. We observe this situation with Ahab and Jezebel, whose seizing Naboth’s family property by murdering him described their national sin in microcosm. This was Naboth’s children’s inheritance, and Ahab’s job was to protect it, not seize it. Shades of Eden.

Of course, Jesus called first century Judah a ‘Jezebel’ because she was oppressing those she was supposed to shepherd, and stealing their land. Eventually they would kill Christ as Naboth outside the city, and their own words would be applied to them in judgment:

The chief priests and leaders answered, “He will kill them in some horrible way. Then he will rent out his vineyard to people who will give him his share of grapes at harvest time.” – Matthew 21:41

The Babylon of Revelation was this Jezebel. Just as God spared Ahab and let the judgment fall on the next generation, so He would do the same in the first century. “This generation” was given one more chance.

The Reformers called the Roman Catholic church the “mother of harlots.” Their interpretation of Revelation was wrong, but their application was right on target. The church leaders were lording it over God’s people for their own gain, and there was another Exodus from a church that became Egypt.

Do we see this today? I have heard that established but dying churches in Britain are making it tough for new evangelical churches, refusing to allow them to use their buildings and facilities, and accusing them of undertaking “unauthorised” worship within their parishes. To these Ahab’s and Jezebels, “parish” means a territory they control, not one they are responsible to serve.

This is hardly persecution, but the principal is the same. Once these squatters have had their chance to repent, God will deal with them. We have already seen one very large denomination here in Australia ‘implode’.

Babylon’s children are always cut off, and the true Jerusalem is always rescued from barrenness.