Shadow Ministry
Excerpt from James B. Jordan, Babylon and the Babel Project, Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper No. 39. Available from www.biblicalhorizons.com
Excerpt from James B. Jordan, Babylon and the Babel Project, Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper No. 39. Available from www.biblicalhorizons.com
“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11)
This passage (or pericope?) retraces the Covenant pattern, which is also played out in the flow of the history of Israel. We’ll have a look at the structure of the passage and then I want to discuss the significance of the literary placement of “every tongue.”
WARNING: Weird ahead.

“…the only unity that will be allowed by the Father is the unity that Jesus requested from the Father in John 17.”
One of the interesting “universal themes” that James Jordan has uncovered in the Bible is that of Satan’s various attempts to “gather the nations” against the Church. You can read about that in a series of blog posts called Amalek Debunks Hyperpreterism (click here and scroll down).
We receive baptism, but is membership of the visible New Covenant body entirely objective? The Old Covenant church, “the Body of Moses,” was Adamic. The Tabernacle was a Babelic tower, a ladder to heaven, laid out prostrate on the ground. The New Covenant Body, the Body of Jesus, is Evian. As a Temple filled with the Spirit of God, it stands upright and walks on the Crystal Sea.
Psalm 114 is one of those weird passages of Scripture that makes you wonder if the author was high on something. Without an understanding of the significance of the place of this song among these seven Psalms, the lyrics appear to be either the overly-clever, sophomoric crypticism of an ancient Bono or the fragmented derivatory prattlings of a madman.

God had repeated His promises of land and people to Isaac, but it was to Jacob that God revealed He was going to build the true Babelic tower in the Promised Land. With his head on a rough stone, Jacob saw angels ascending and descending on a stairway to heaven, a ziggurat, a constructed holy mountain, between God and man. As with Eve, the Lord would build it out of flesh and blood—Jacob’s offspring—a living Tabernacle made of precious stones mined from the Land.

If we don’t get Genesis right, we’ll get much of the Bible wrong. In Through New Eyes (PDF), James Jordan identifies a three-level “cosmos” in the Creation, which is reflected on the earth. There is the Garden Sanctuary, the Land of Eden, and the Outlying Lands, or Garden, Land and World.
This is reflected, not only in the ark of Noah, but also in the Tabernacle. The image is dual, one in heaven and one on earth:

Andrew Katay posted a quote this week stating that when the church fails to emphasise the Ascension, a commitment to church programs instead of to Christ fills the vacuum. This should come as no surprise.