“God’s word is His presence, when delivered in a true setting.”

by James B. Jordan. Biblical Horizons No. 245

“And hearkened Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel,
and Joshua son of Jehozadak, the great priest,
and all the remnant of the people,
to the voice of Yahweh their God,
and to the words of Haggai the prophet,
just as Yahweh their God had sent him;
and the people feared the presence of Yahweh.
“Then Haggai, the messenger of Yahweh, said
in a message of Yahweh to the people,
saying,
“I am with you — a statement of Yahweh.”
And Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel
son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah,
and the spirit of Joshua son of Jehozadak, the great priest,
and the spirit of all the remnant of the people;
and they came and did work on the house of
Yahweh of Armies, their God,
on the twenty-fourth day
of the sixth month,
in the second year of King Darius.

(Haggai 1:12-15)

While it makes for a bit of an awkward English sentence, it is important to see that the first word in verse 12 is “hearkened.” The obedience is instantaneous. We read at the end of the verse that the people feared, or respected, the presence of Yahweh, which in this case means the words of Haggai.

God’s word is His presence, when delivered in a true setting. God had placed his “Name” in the Temple built by Solomon: “My Name shall be there” (1 Kings 8:29). When carried to Babylon, the Levites asked “How can we sing Yahweh’s song in a strange land”; how can we sing the Temple psalms away from the Name in the Temple? (Psalm 137:4). In Psalm 138:2 David gives an answer:

I bow down to Your holy temple,
And I give thanks to Your Name,
For Your lovingkindness and for Your faithfulness,
Because You have magnified Your Word over all Your Name.

Indeed, as David continues in Psalm 139:8, “If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.” Wherever God’s Word is, His Name-Presence is.

In verse 13, Haggai is called “the messenger of Yahweh.” This is the same word as “Malachi,” My Messenger. It is also the word translated “angel” when referring to spirit-beings. In Genesis 28:12 Jacob saw angels moving between heaven and earth. Similarly, God’s prophets are consulted by Him and carry His words to earth (Amos 3:7; 7:1-8; Genesis 20:7; 18:20-33). In Acts 6:15 the Jews saw the face of Stephen as the face of an angel, which means that when they killed him they were killing God’s messenger, killing the manifestation of God’s very presence in their midst. The Jews should have “feared” the Lord through Stephen as their forefathers had feared Yahweh through Haggai, Yahweh’s messenger/angel.

In verse 9 the “statement of Yahweh” had been one of judgment, but now in verse 13 it is one of blessing. “I am with you” is Immanuel, God With Us, God’s presence among us.

Verse 14 tells us that “not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit” the Temple is built (Zechariah 4:6). In Zechariah this is the message to Zerubbabel the Davidic Temple-builder. Here it is a blessing to all the people. Interestingly, in Exodus 31 :3ff. it is only Bezalel and some associates of his who are filled with the Spirit to build the Tabernacle. Now in this more glorious time it is all the people who are stirred by the Spirit.

What does this mean for us today? We should consider that before Solomon built the first physical Temple in Jerusalem, a generation earlier David had set up a temple of psalmody around the house(s) of God. (Ark and Tabernacle were separate at this time.) God was enthroned on the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3). Those praises were the psalms.

Uh, yes. The psalms.

In heaven, right now, Jesus is singing the psalms to God the Father. He is not singing metrical paraphrases. He is “chanting” the psalms as they are written.

The gift of tongues is given to the Church to enable us to translate the Bible into all languages, improving those languages over time. We can chant the psalms in English or in any other language in union with Jesus.

So-called “metrical psalms” are fine as sermons based on the psalms, but they are not psalms. You have to be a in a strange mental state to think that they are the same as actual psalms. Anybody with half a brain can tell that they are not.

So, if God’s true temple is a house of music, where is it today? I attended Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and also Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pemisylvania. There was chapel every day. Not once was there any psalm singing. And these places advertised themselves as conservative and orthodox! (Which is some ways they were, but not at this point.) Historically, chanting the psalms along with Jesus has been central to Christian worship. In historic monasteries, all 150 psalms are sung every week!

So Haggai asks us: Is now the time for you to have your 35-inch flat-screen television and your microwave, while the house of God is lifeless and desolate? Do you not care about all the suffering Christians around the world who need you to stand before God during the Lord’s Day and chant the psalms, especially the imprecatory ones? Should you not be building the house of God, that house of prayer and psalms?

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“And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (Genesis 6:6)

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:36-37)

The relationship between the Father and the Son is an eternal to-and-fro. It is this primary “chiasm,” a “there-and-back-again,” a forming and a filling, which gave shape to the Creation Week and every facet of the Word of God and of human life.

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

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“…of the angels He says:
‘Who makes His angels spirits
and His ministers a flame of fire.’”

God is the source of all things, and He identifies Himself as such in His speeches. Every speech is Covenantal, and every preamble within His speeches is a statement of transcendence. “I am the Lord your God.”

After the initial call comes delegation, Covenantal Hierarchy. A man, a Moses, an Abraham, receives the Word with meekness.

We know that angels are God’s messengers, the sent ones. They administered the Old Covenant as our tutors, Satan becoming the first false teacher, the first corrupt ambassador, or, if you will, the first publican.

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]

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Acacias, not Mulberries

So, acacia wood is at the heart of the Holy furniture. The Tabernacle is a wilderness world glorified by Spirit-filled men and brought into the tent of God,[1] under the wing of Boaz, under the friendly firmament of a new Covenant, under the great tree that grows to shelter the nations.

As this tree, the Tabernacle was cruciform and daubed with blood. Jacob’s ladder was a bloody tree to heaven.[2]  It is the cruciform man, Jesus. As with His mother, Israel, He has a crown of stars, warrior children. Angels are the stars of the Old Testament; the saints are the stars (“lights”) of the new (Daniel 8:10, 12:3; Phil. 2:15).

In the book of Numbers, the tribes were arranged around the Tabernacle, the door to God’s throne, in twelve constellations. They moved across the wilderness like the stars across the night sky. With their campfires around the Shekinah, they were a crown of glory for their King, a Pentecostal Eve army for a blood-covered Adam.

This adds another level both to 2 Samuel 5 and to the warnings to Israel before the Jewish war. In 2 Samuel 5, it was a stirring in the tops of the acacia trees. In Luke 21, it was a stirring above the Holy City. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Ernest L. Martin:

“Christ Jesus told the apostles that when they (or any of the saints) would see Jerusalem surrounded by armies then let the people of God flee from Jerusalem and Judea. ‘When you shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh’ (Luke 21:20).

The meaning of this verse has puzzled many people. How can it be that when Jerusalem is completely surrounded (encircled on all sides) with armies, then the people of God are told to flee the whole area of Judea (of which Jerusalem is a part)? If this is the strategy, then it seems that Christ is saying to surrender to the armies. But this is not what Christ meant in his warning.

In actual fact, this prophecy of Christ Jesus was fulfilled to the letter in the period just before the war that destroyed Jerusalem from A.D.67 to 70. We have the eyewitness account of Josephus himself (he was the Jewish historian who accompanied the Roman armies to Jerusalem and saw or reported all that occurred in Judaea within that three and a half year event that occurred in the heavens that could not be identified as having its origin on earth. This was clearly a ‘sign’ from heaven and I have not the slightest hesitation in stating that it was an exact fulfillment of what Christ Jesus said would occur that is recorded in Luke 21:20. Note what Josephus said happened just before the war with the Romans commenced.

On the twenty-first of the month Artemisium [the last day of the 2nd Passover season In A.D.66, there appeared a miraculous phenomenon, passing belief. Indeed, what I am about to relate would, I imagine, have been deemed a fable, were it not for the narratives of eyewitnesses and for the subsequent calamities which deserved to be so signalized. For before sunset throughout all parts of the county [everywhere throughout Judea] chariots were seen in the air and armed battalions hurtling through the clouds and encompassing the cities (War,VI.5.3 or Loeb VI.298, emphasis mine).

This is the very thing that Christ Jesus said to watch for. And then (about two weeks later) Josephus tells us:

Moreover, at the feast which is called Pentecost, the priests on entering the inner court of the temple by night, as their custom was in the discharge of their ministrations, reported that they were conscious, first of a commotion and a din, and after that of a voice as of a host, ‘We are departing hence’ (War, VI.209,300).

With these two signs what did the Christians in Jerusalem and Judea do? Eusebius tells us that this is the time they began to leave the region because of the command of Christ and went to a city called Pella on the east side of the Jordan River (Ecclesiastical History, III.5). They and the apostles obtained safety from the holocaust that soon enflamed Jerusalem and Judaea.

Chariots and armed forces seen in the skies all over Judaea and encompassing the cities of the Jews was similar to times recorded in the early history of Israel. Angelic powers (in this case, good angels) accompanied the armies of Israel when it was the normal period (in ancient Times) for hostilities to occur. The Bible says: ‘And it came to pass, after the year had expired, at the time angels go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon” (II Samuel 11:1). The King James translators (and most modern ones) read the Hebrew as ‘kings,’ not ‘angels.’ But there is no reason whatever for reading the text as ‘kings.’ The verse was intended to show that angelic powers were there to aid Israel in their battles when they went to war.

A further reference (which even corroborates angelic connections with wars or the preparations for wars on earth) is 11 Samuel 5:23-24. God said to David that when he heard “the sound of a going [forth] in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you [David] shall bestir yourself [to war].” This swishing sound in the tops of the trees of a turbulent waving action of the wind was recognized by David as caused by the Lord and his angelic hosts going to battle with David (see also Genesis 32:1.3 and II Kings 6:17 about angels accompanying God). But in A.D.66, instead of helping Israel win the war with the Romans that the people of Judaea were about to start, the angelic hosts were seen in the clouds in chariots and as armed soldiers encompassing the cities of Judaea and enclosing them on all sides for capitulation. This is precisely what Christ Jesus said to watch for in his Olivet prophecy.”[3]

A stirring in the tops of the acacias meant the Incense Altar army, the fragrant cloud of the Lord of Hosts, was on the move to scatter God’s enemies.[4] After AD70, the end of the Old Covenant and the installation of a human government in heaven [5], it is the saints who are the cloud of glory.[6]

_______________________________________
[1] See Unashamed Artisans. 
[2] See Servanthood Dominion.
[3] From Are UFO’s Real?
[4] This is exactly the same picture as David’s five smooth stones going before him. See The Holy Headbutt.
[5] See Jesus’ New Broom.
[6] The word Shekinah is feminine. The city of God, greater Eve, is a tent for the light of the Lamb. For more on long hair as “female” glory see Power on Her Head. and for the New Jerusalem as a robe see Healing in His… Tassels?

An important tenet of James Jordan’s interpretation of the Revelation is that it shows the Old Covenant angelic government vacating the premises and a human government moving in as a new administration – in AD70. This sounds strange to our ears, but I have found that it does play out in many ways, which it should if it is the correct interpretation.

Now, this handover of heavenly government was a gradual process in the first century, but consummated at the marriage feast of the Lamb. But its outworking in history is gradual. Interesting stuff. Here’s some thoughts.

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The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.

Christ refers here to Psalm 2. It had been fulfilled in the “head” at His ascension. At this point, it was yet to be fulfilled in the “body.”

“Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.””

Jesus’ reference to this Psalm here is striking for two reasons. Firstly, it settles the matter of whether or not earthly Jerusalem is the city of God. Christ was set on the holy hill (the throne of David) at His ascension, and it was in heaven, not in Palestine. Secondly, this promise of divine authority over the nations is opened to the faithful saints:

“I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me,
“You are my Son; today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.””

Any faithful saint, as one like the Son of Man, should now be feared by the rulers of the Land:

“Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the Land.
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”

This organic sharing of Christ’s authority is demonstrated when the church prays part of Psalm 2 in Acts 4:25-6. They identify the nations, kings, peoples and rulers as “Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel” (v. 27). However, they go on to identify the “Anointed” as Peter and John, who are suffering from the same “threats.” Again, in Acts 9:1, Saul was “breathing” murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples, yet in v.4, the Lord asks of him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” This might explain the identity of the “glorious ones” whom the false prophets reviled in 2 Peter 2:10. Peter Leithart comments:

“The condemnation of the false teachers for blaspheming “glories” is a continuation of the example concerning Sodom… in second Peter 2:10-12, what we have is a charge that these false teachers revile or blaspheme the “glories,” the angelic messengers, the apostles, in literal terms, who are warning them as the angels warned Lot to escape from the city of destruction. In 2:11, angels who are greater in might and power do not bring reviling judgments against them before the Lord. That simply repeats what Peter says in his first letter. When reviled, Jesus did not revile in return, which is an example for us. The “glories” that are reviled and blasphemed by these false teachers don’t respond in kind.” 1

This identification of the apostles with the angels who rescued Lot is more important than it may seem at first. As we observed earlier, the angels were “two witnesses.”

1  Peter J. Leithart, 1999 Biblical Horizons Conference lecture on 2 Peter 2. www.wordmp3.com

“I could never believe a book that starts with a talking snake!”

The fourth beast was stronger and more terrifying than the others. Its huge teeth were made of iron, and what it didn’t grind with its teeth, it smashed with its feet. It was different from the others, and it had horns on its head – ten of them. Just as I was thinking about these horns, a smaller horn appeared, and three of the other horns were pulled up by the roots to make room for it. This horn had the eyes of a human and a mouth that spoke with great pride. Daniel 7:7-8

The Bible begins with Adam, Eve and a serpent in the garden, and ends with a false prophet (Adam), harlot (Eve) and beast (serpent) squatting in God’s house. The seed of man’s rebellion was now a fullgrown tree – a tree of death (James 1:14-15).

Animals are the tutors in the Old Testament. Man was created in God’s image, but instead imaged a beast. Adam was covered in animal skins and their blood temporarily covered his sin. The law was administered by angels, and the symbols God uses are mostly animals. As mentioned in a previous post, the three major covenants were symbolised by an ox, a lion and an eagle. The New Covenant symbol is the Man who is bread and wine. The New Covenant era is administered not by angels but by men, Christians.

But as this New Covenant era arrived, so did a false man: a being who had the eyes and mouth of a man but was really a man-mask for the Roman beast. Revelation refers to Jews as ‘men’ because, like Noah, they were the mediators. The gentiles are the ‘beasts’ who are called to submit and enter the ark of Christ (Acts 10:11-12).

As Israel’s history completed Day 6 (the Land animals and the Man predicted in Daniel 7), this false man, a beast who spoke like a man, was squatting in God’s garden. The Herodian line was a talking snake.

You can trust the Bible. There is always method in any apparent madness. God doesn’t do or allow anything without a reason.

(Balaam the false prophet was also a ‘talking snake.’ He was blind to God’s word, so God used a talking donkey to get through to him.)