Part III – The Feast of Clouds“But Peter said, ‘I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you.”’ (Acts 3:6)
Israel consistently failed to keep the final feast, the Feast of Sukkot, because she took her calling to be elitist rather than priestly. She thought her calling, gifts and purification were for herself, rather than for the healing of the nations.
“The Lord’s Table is for dangerous people.”
If you are going to baptize infants, it makes sense that you would also allow them to take Communion. Baptism brings one into the priesthood (through the Laver) to the court of God, and Communion is fellowship in the priestly kingdom. To unite the two is consistent—as consistent as the two pillars flanking the threshold of Solomon’s Temple.
“And as he prayed, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his clothing was white and glistening.” (Luke 9:29, King James 2000 Bible)
The Tabernacle was covered in three layers: linen, red-dyed ramskin, and a third layer of tachash. What’s tachash? The word is a mystery, and there have been many suggestions concerning its meaning, from unicorn to dolphin. But perhaps that mystery has now been solved. And the glistening solution is nothing like you’d imagine in a million years.
Born from AboveI’m currently working hard on Bible Matrix III: The House of God. This third volume is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It really is. Being so engrossed in the shape and processes of the Bible (yes, even more than usual), it has struck me how foreign the various theological schools’ thinking and speech is to the actual text.
The debates about “Pauline Theology” are the perfect example, especially the focus on narrow (yet important) topics such as justification. An academic divides and redivides the text in the way an expert in any science overspecializes. He ends up knowing everything about nothing. After spending a few hours each day wandering and describing the halls of biblical architecture, I am more convinced than ever that the only way to fully understand Scripture is architecturally. This is because, for our glorious God, architecture is ethics, and ethics is architecture. Divorced from the biblical mud map, the Edenic grid, modern theologians are discussing less than a dim distorted reflection of the book God has given us. They are feeling their way around the house with their eyes shut. Continue reading
That day Moses charged the people, saying, “When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. (Deuteronomy 27:11-13)
Paul now moves into the Deuteronomy section of his epistle to the Galatians, and it becomes clear that, structurally-speaking, Galatians gets no further than Moses. The epistle is fivefold in nature, a recapitulation of the Torah, and thus it ends on the wilderness side of the Jordan. Like Moses, Paul will not live to see the new order, except from afar.
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed… Blessed…”
(Matthew 5:2-11)
Part 1 is here.
“The Spirit consistently puts earthly Succession to death, dividing families, communities and entire countries, as we see today. To claim otherwise is to work against the Spirit in the world. My heredity, my household, my culture, is the target of my ministry, not its source.”
It’s time to get back into Galatians. To recap, the epistle follows the Covenant structure, but gives the central point, the Ethics, its own Covenant structure. If this thesis is correct, what we should expect in the next “cycle” (Gal. 3:26-4:7) is a discussion of Covenant Succession. Lo and behold, this is exactly what we find.
A Guest Post by Chris Wooldridge
Hi Mike,
I’ve been looking at the usual places in the Old Testament from where Paedobaptism is normally defended and I think I’m leaning fairly solidly in the credobaptist direction now. Here’s why:
There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,
but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind,
and the glory of the earthly is of another.
(1 Corinthians 15:40)
Did Adam receive the Spirit of God? If he did receive the Spirit, was the Spirit taken away when he sinned?
Continue reading
And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained upon him.” (John 1:32)
“Efficacious paedobaptism is maintained at the tragic cost of the efficacious work of the Spirit…”
See the Baptism links page for all articles in this series.
Dr Leithart says that the sign of baptism is not merely symbolic of a personal encounter with God, but is actually the personal encounter. I concluded, based on the process of maturity found throughout Scripture, that although his observation is correct as far as it goes, what he has observed goes even deeper. “The sign” is not merely the baptism, but actually includes the human being in personal relationship with God. The one being baptized is the sign, and the sign is ethical maturity.
