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.

Someone made the comment that the “Bible Matrix” is something mystical. While it is certainly typological, it is not mystical. And it is only typological because it is the process of maturity God has built into everything under heaven. Trees and men grow up and bear fruit. That’s typology.

The next step is to understand each cycle as a stage of greater maturity that leaves a legacy. Adam’s faithfulness in the Garden would have won him dominion in the Promised Land, and so on…

Jesus was tested three times in the wilderness. The wilderness is the place where God’s people are sifted like wheat under the Ethics of the Law. This is where the 5 point Covenant pattern expands to the 7 point New Creation. The test is, “Will I be a living sacrifice?” There are three tests within the Ethics, and they relate to the process of sacrifice: Flesh, eyes and life. [1] To combat the lust of the flesh, we put the flesh on the Altar. To combat the lust of the eyes, we submit to the eyes of heaven, the seven Spirits before the throne. To combat the pride of life, we trust God for resurrection. In the ascension rite, this is meat, fire and smoke. In the Tabernacle this is Bronze Altar, Lampstand and Incense Altar. The process of transformation has three stages.

Jesus’ victory over Satan qualified him to come out of the wilderness and cast demons out of others. He had beaten Goliath, one-on-one, so He could now chase the rest of the Philistines away. What most commentators fail to see is this process repeated in the church after Pentecost. James Jordan notices three strikes against the church: Jewish persecution (the flesh on the Altar), false doctrine (strange Fire, seven demons), and then Jewish-Roman persecution (the final legal witness of a “resurrected” Israel, leaving the house “filled with smoke”). This explains the various bindings and loosings of Satan recorded in the Revelation before chapter 20. The church dealt with each temptation, but the Lord allowed another one that required greater maturity. The church was being sifted like wheat and purified. Just as the persecution took on a temporary Jew-Gentile body against the Church, the Church was a Spirit-filled Jew-Gentile body that would actually last.

But the final binding, the one in Revelation 20, is not a recapitulation of this period. (Jim Hamilton thinks this is the case, and so do hyperpreterists). Not only does the Covenant structure of Revelation make this impossible, [2] but it means the baby church learned nothing during this foundational time.

The righteousness or unrighteousness of an individual always leaves a corporate legacy (this is the Covenant Head and Body). Jesus’ “Garden” victory left the legacy of the Spirit for those in the Land. It was the inverse of the legacy which Adam left for Cain. Just so, the “Land” victory of the Apostolic church left a legacy of kingdom wisdom for the conquest of the World. As Jordan observes, the chain in the right hand of the Angel in Revelation 20 is the Church. It is an application of the seven stars of the New Covenant Lampstand in Jesus’ right hand. Satan’s fall was due to Jesus’ “gravity.” [3] But is is the gravity of the Apostolic church’s legacy that keeps him bound from “deceiving the nations” until Jesus has finished His own work of gathering the nations. [4] Hyperpreterism, premillennialism and amillennialism, the inept recapitulators, leave no hope for the nations. Only postmillennialism gives Jesus what He came for as an inheritance, as a Covenant legacy: a corporate holiness of, not one (AD30-AD70), but a thousand generations.

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[1] See Satan’s Synagogue.
[2] See Moses vs. Hyperpreterism.
[3] Notice that Satan’s anti-Covenant “mission” was Garden-Heaven-Garden (his last stand being in Herod’s Temple, poisoning the “springs” of Edenic waters), but Jesus’ mission was Heaven-Garden-Heaven.
[4] On the “thousand years”, see For A Thousand Years, and the comments following.

Ending the False Dichotomy of Blood and Spirit

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

The Old Testament is a bloody book. Beginning with Adam’s “dissection” to build Eve and the animals the Lord made into tunics, it culminates in Revelation with the massacre of saints under Herod/Nero (Revelation 14) and then the massacre of Jews under Vespasian and Titus.

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[1] I highly recommend James Jordan’s Crisis, Opportunity and the Christian Future.

“We are witnessing the end of Western Civilization. The present crisis in our culture is the greatest since the first century. Many commentators on the present scene believe that the entire world is moving into a period of “neo-tribalism.”

In this striking book, theologian James B. Jordan argues that this cultural change is part of God’s ongoing plan for humanity, the plan by which the Holy Spirit grows God’s daughter, humanity, into a fit bride for His Son.

The present crisis provides a tremendous opportunity for the Christian Church to challenge and transform the world as never before. Here, Jordan points to how this can be done.

While many view the present crisis with dismay, and are looking backwards to older traditions, Jordan argues that God is calling us forward, and that the Bible points the way.”

Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda est.

“Reformed theology should be reforming theology, for the Church – finite, sinful, not yet fully glorified – always stands in need of God’s reformation, by his Spirit, through his Word taught, trusted, and obeyed. And so, Ecclesia Reformanda exists to assist the Church in the ongoing task of listening to Scripture in all its depth and richness. It will seek to be truly theological, distinctively Reformed, and prayerfully reforming.”

An “ongoing theological conversation” cannot be tolerated by the academy. James Jordan writes:

“We looked last time at the problem of academic theology. Systematic theology tends to become paramount, a “Greek” discipline that specializes in comparison and contrast… what the academic guards is not the woman, not the Bride, but rather ideas. Loyalty to ideas, and sometimes loyalties to the men who came up with the ideas, is more important than loyalty to the Church and to the Spirit. Does N. T. Wright not say things exactly they way Geerhardus Vos did? Then we might fight him. He must be put down. A spirit of churchly catholicity, of humility before the infinity of the Word and the long future of the church ahead of us, is simply absent, or certainly seems to be.

We come full circle now, for the timelessness of systematic theology, and its accompanying arrogance, is naturally reinforced by amillennial theological perspectives. Postmillennialism should lead to humility, since we know that 10,000 years from now people will do theology better than we do. The amillennial perspective, though, since it has a blocked future, is naturally inclined to believe that pretty much all truth has been grasped and enshrined in the arcane and often unBiblical language of its confessions of faith. It is this, not the Bride of Christ, that must be guarded. Or perhaps, since we know that only a handful of people are going to be saved, guarding the Bride of Christ means condemning everyone who does not say things just the way we do.

The conflict in the churches right now is over this very issue. The Federal Vision Conversation, of which I am happily a part, is postmillennial and catholic in its orientation. We don’t think we have it all sorted out, which is why we are a Conversation. We are within historic Calvinism, but not in the amillennial and sectarian part of it. We are attacked for reading too widely. We are attacked for not saying “shibboleth” the right way. We are attacked for being way too conservative when it comes to the Bible. Those attacking us have it all sorted out. They know it all. It’s all settled. There is no future. There’s nothing to discuss. Our Conversation is a scandal to them. Clearly, with our catholic outlook, we are on the road to Rome, or somewhere bad.”1

Surely we can guard against heresy and still progress in our understanding of the Bible. But many will not permit an “ongoing conversation.” There is a new journal for pastors, theological students, and scholars, that seeks to serve the Church in its ongoing reformation according to God’s Word.

“Ecclesia Reformanda is distinctively Reformed, with a contemporary cutting edge. It presents some of the best in British Reformed thinking and writing to serve the Church, her teachers, and her Lord. The journal covers all of the theological subdisciplines, and early issues will include articles on intertextuality in Romans 2, poetry in James, the place of children in the new covenant according to Jeremiah 32, Jim Jordan’s hermeneutics, Herman Bavinck’s theological method, and John Owen’s doctrine of justification. Future editions will contain articles on ethics, public theology, and pastoral counselling. Editorial Board: Matthew Mason, Ros Clarke, Neil Jeffers, and David Field.”

www.ecclesiareformanda.org.uk

Outside the U.S. most optimistic (postmillennial) Christians are in churches that aren’t, so it’s good to see some Brits getting together and I look forward to seeing where this goes. The lineup for the first issues looks interesting.

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1 James B. Jordan, Biblical Horizons Newsletter No. 197: How To Do Reformed Theology Nowadays, Part 6.