“Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.”
(Genesis 9:6)

James Jordan’s contribution to the study of any particular book of the Bible is invaluable, but the most important is very likely his work on Genesis. Because spineless modern theologians are unwilling to stand for its complete veracity, and yet very willing to jettison basic logic, they often miss the significance of its early chapters for the rest of the Bible and of history.

The themes of the early chapters of Genesis are brief and tightly bundled, and all subsequent Scripture unpacks them in greater and greater ways. When the issue of capital punishment is brought up, the Church rightly looks first to the New Testament, then to the Old, but rarely gets as far as Genesis. To answer the question from the Bible, one must first ask what a human is, what death is, and what a sword is. The problem for most Christians who take their theological lead from western culture rather than God is that the humans, the death and the sword in Genesis 3 are not historical events but ideological symbols.

In a recent online discussion with some atheists, I mentioned that my biblical worldview determined my answers to some crucial questions. If one believes the Bible, then one believes that the killing of unborn infants and of old people is wrong, but the killing of animals for food and of murderers to atone for their crime is right. Of course, there was the usual response of “the sanctimony of hell.” The response to my view on capital punishment? “How can you reconcile such a view with your beliefs?”

It amazes me how secularists think their moral code is the obvious conclusion to come to. I’d call it abject stupidity but it’s the result of years of evil in universities and legislative bodies. For our youth, it is the darkness of intellectual slavery. We are now at the point where good is evil and evil is good. Subsidize sin at home and abroad with public money, and ridicule or demonize our best and most faithful citizens. Pander to murderers and hack the unborn to pieces. And enforce this demonic “moral code” on society through unjust laws, manipulation, deceit, fraud, intimidation and eloquent speeches.

Jordan observes that Noah was the first man to be given the authority to kill another man. Moderns see this as an isolated fact (well, an isolated mythical fact), but it is a fact that is part of a process. The Testing of Adam was designed to bring him to the point of judicial maturity. He was given the Law not merely that he might not be a lawbreaker, but that he might become the Law, and execute lawbreakers. Who was the lawbreaker? The serpent, who intended to use the Law to bring about the deaths of Adam and his wife. As Jesus said, “He was a murderer from the beginning.”

Adam was to judge the serpent, perhaps to crush its head. He would have brought death into the world through his faith and righteousness, rather than through his faithless unrighteousness. This judgment and death were part of God’s plan. Adam was to judge between ethical light and ethical darkness, and mortify sin in his own members and those of his household by dismembering the serpent. (The Lord does take off its legs in a limited way, just as the curses upon Adam are limited.)

So, instead of going boldly from the Garden with flaming sword in hand as God’s representative, Adam was cast out of the Garden, and kept out by the sword. As we have discussed elsewhere, he was under the sword in chapter 2 but intended to be over the sword in chapter 3 as a minister of God, with the heavenly government of the angels upon his shoulders. We see the same thing in Israel, where the new nation is under the angelic sword at Passover, but wielding the angelic sword upon Jericho. It is a process of judicial maturity. The process of Israel’s maturity was intended to lead to an entire state of self-governing people, an entire nation of judges, of elohim. Instead, we have the book of Judges, with only its twelve stars.

The murder of Abel by Cain led to the “ministry of murder” of Lamech, and then a world filled with violence. This is often assumed to be anarchy but it was more likely a kingdom without mercy, a barbarism-by-law. The same manipulation of the law as a weapon against the weak was evident in the Pharisees and Herods, and is alive and well today. The curse of death was always intended to be transferred from the hand of the angels to the hands of men, but faithful, merciful men — men like Noah, the first judge, the first true “image of God.”

All saints have been under the sword in Christ. Our hearts are circumcised, and we have been slain and resurrected ethically in Him. We are to judge rightly in all our dealings because we will one day judge angels, as Adam was supposed to, and our better Adam did. In the Church, it is excommunication ministered with mercy, that serpents might be crushed. In the State, it is execution administered with mercy, that serpents might not gain members and become dragons. [1]

We also mortify the sin in our members that God might mortify sin in the hearts of others. The Word of God in our mouths is a sword that brings life to some and death to others. But there is another death in the hand of every saint, one that we fail to identify as a weapon, and that is our own martyrdom, the witness of Abel. This too is a sword to be wielded.

As the canker devours western culture, we will be called upon to take a stand. Real pressure is mounting not on the issue of same sex marriage but on the right of the Church to speak against it and reject it, discerning between light and darkness. The saints have a weapon that the opposition does not even suspect, and that is the willingness to make this “a hill to die on.” Communism was a real threat because its true believers were often willing to die for their cause. This is not the case with same sex marriage. The persecution of our society’s best citizens has already begun but the fight will not be long. Our opponents are not willing to die for their cause. They hide behind twisted legislation, as did the Pharisees and all their children throughout Church history.

The curse of death is ours to use as a weapon, just as Jesus did. When a dragon dismembers the Church, the Church multiplies its members. Jesus’ death means martyrdom is the pruning of a fruitful tree. This is Satan’s worst nightmare.

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Genesis 50:20)

The willingness of saints to suffer and die always brings the sword of the cherubim down upon God’s enemies and divides them, then the fire of the seraphim upon them to consume them. [2] It is the ministry of the two angels at the gate. But under the New Covenant there is a third element. As the body of Christ, with the testimony of the apostles, this “sacrifice” is now achieved through the government of heavenly men upon earth: cherubim (knife) and seraphim (fire) in the hand of the elohim.

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[1] See Serpents and Dragons.
[2] See Snakes and Chains. A government that promised to pass legislation for same sex marriage in Australia has been divided and consumed… for now.

“For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” 2 Cor 11:2

Women are Complex

In Eden, as priest to Eve, Adam’s role was to continually bring her to the Father. She was put “below” Adam in the hierarchy. As the first approach of the High Priest on the Day of Covering — with the blood of a bull — Adam would present himself, standing before God as Mediator (head):

F A T H E R  > <  S O N  +  B R I D E

Adam’s job was to bring Eve “between” as the fruit, the evidence, of Covenant relationship. By being faithful to the law, he would open and maintain a clean, safe, Holy Place — a firmament — a house for the bride. The second approach of the High Priest was to cover the body, the nation. In this, he presented the blood of the first goat as the faithful bride (goat hair, symbolising the Lord’s cloud of “bridal” glory, covered the Tabernacle). Like the glory between the Father and the Son in heaven, a glorious Eve was both the fruit of Adam’s obedience, and her future fruitfulness a gift from Father to Son:

F A T H E R  >  B R I D E  < S O N

We see this imaged in the search for and presentation of godly Covenant brides in Genesis. Eliezar and Jacob seek brides for presentation to the Covenant fathers.

Adam’s obedience to the Covenant law would have filled the world with godly offspring as a New Creation. Adam’s commission was to keep the Garden and to be fruitful and multiply, to maintain the “field of Covenant fruitfulness” through to and fro with God. The test in the Garden was to image the faithfulness within the Trinity. Maintaining the “creative equation” of the Covenant would eventually fulfill the commission.

Chaos

When the angelic minister distorted the message, the Covenant law, Adam would have recognised this false spirit.

F A L S E   F A T H E R  >  B R I D E  < S O N

But he failed to restore the image of the Father for the sake of Eve. He did not step in as guardian:

F A L S E   F A T H E R   ||   S O N  +  B R I D E

Like Esau, Adam despised the Covenant and the inheritance. Instead of being brought into the Covenant, Eve became a “foreign wife” with her own gods. Like the wives of Esau, she became a bitter spring in the eyes of Adam’s Father.

F A L S E   F A T H E R  >  F A L S E   B R I D E  <  F A L S E   S O N

At Conquest, the Holy Ones, God’s governing elders, rejoice over the destruction of the Covenant breakers. Later, this is the song of the various Covenant women. In the Revelation it is the song of the firstfruits church, the chaste bride, and army of virgins presented to the Father by Christ. But in Eden there were only the angels, and one in particular. Following the pattern, Satan’s joy was the presentation of a harlotrous bride, a corrupt “church,” to the Father for destruction. This is exactly what we see in Numbers 5, the “jealous inspection.” And of course, this is the exact plan we see in the “presentation” to Jesus of the woman caught in adultery. [1] The answer here was the same: substitutionary blood.

Instead of making the first couple “the meat on the table,” God provided substitutes. Due to this intervention — a covering of blood — the “fractal equation” of humanity did not die, and the corrupt “Holy One” did not get to rejoice for long.

Instead of sinners, innocents (animals) were put in the place of the Adam as head and Eve as body: the first Day of Covering. The blood was evidence of the satisfaction of the fulfilment of the demands (ethics) of the Covenant, just as Adam’s blood on the ground would have been evidence of the origin of Eve. This maintained the “creative equation” but only in an imperfect, temporary and pedagogical way. This imperfect Covenant required frequent renewal by blood.

A Flaming Sword, To and Fro

The process from Adam’s anointing to his expulsion follows the Creation week. It also follows the journey of Israel from Egypt to Canaan. In his deep sleep, Adam was under the sword (Passover – Circumcision). At the Lord’s assessment of his captaincy, he was to be given the sword — as Israel was — to enter the Land as vindicated conqueror (Atonement – Pass-Through). Baptism is about presenting oneself to be a mediator, a sword-bearer. [2] But, of course, Adam hid.

An Eve filled with light was the host of Israel, the flaming sword, entering the Promised Land and wiping out — to and fro — the cursed children of the Canaanites. But instead of wielding the sword (baptism), Adam was still under it (circumcision), and Eve would be the mother of the cursed children. (In this case it was the potential for cursed children that needed wiping out, obviously.) This, too, is the scenario that plays out in the Revelation. Herodian worship hid behind circumcision and the bride was not tranfigured. This false bride was destroyed.

Like Saul, Adam had submitted to a different spirit, a counterfeit Covenant. He stepped outside the fruitful field of Covenant with God — the infinite equation — and became barren. Instead of imaging the Father, this son of God imaged the father of lies. [3] As Covenant head, barrenness was symbolised by the sweat on Adam’s brow. As Covenant body, multiplier, Eve’s barrenness was symbolised by difficulty in childbirth. And the to and fro between them, between Covenant head and Covenant body, was also accursed. Covenant marriage disintegrated into bitter subjection: exploitation by the head and insubordination from the body.

Fruitfulness, like resurrection, is an instantaneous act of God, as it was on Day 5. Neither Jesus nor Adam came out of the earth bit by bit over millions of years. Chaos is not the source of fruitfulness. Chaos is fruitfulness gone awry. It is previous order suddenly devoid of the integrating Spirit, the faithful to and fro. There is scattering instead of gathering. Following faithfulness to the Covenant, the Ark of that Covenant gathered Israel in ranks around it, and when in battle it scattered the ordered ranks of their enemies. This is true bride versus false bride.

Two faithful cherubim were deployed as substitute guardians, but there was only one flaming sword between them, flashing to and fro. Back to simple binary. No complex rainbow. Adam was expelled from the fruitful field, the Holy Place, the infinite room.

Next: Infinite Room – 4, Smoke and Mirrors.

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[1] See Emancipation of Eve.
[2] See Pass-over and Pass-through and The Angels of Death Are We.
[3] See Fighting Over the Children.

Infinite Room series links here.
INFROOM

The Insiders

“For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” 1 Chron. 16:9

The Bible was written to be understood by word-search software, or by believers who think that way. There are many expressions and phrases that are used repeatedly—very deliberately—so that the reader makes connections.

Unfortunately, modern translations often disregard the literal meanings of words to soften the “clunkiness” of the original, or they use a number of different English words to translate a single Hebrew word used in different contexts. On top of this, modern Christians aren’t trained to read the Bible in this way. It is presented as a linear stream of “Herh-ly Data” and the recognition of literary allusions is discouraged or even anathematised. (Why is it that Christians are either too dumb to read the Bible as literature, or too smart to read it as literature?)

One of the repeated phrases is “to and fro,” and when combined with eyes it has the idea of a radar dish rotating back and forth. It is the 20/20 vision of the Holy God and His ministers.[1]

The Spirit of the Lord traverses the garden on Adam’s Day 7, His flaming eyes darting to and fro, scanning the topography line-by-line, “looking” for Adam. After the judgment, the singular flaming sword also moves “to and fro.” Like the eyes of God, it misses nothing. Its discernment is perfect.

After the flood, the raven flies to and fro, most likely surviving on floating corpses until the waters recede. As a symbol of the accuser, the demons as dirty birds are also servants of God, ministers of the curses of the Covenant. Scavengers feed on death, and their ravenous eyes, too, miss nothing. As a minister of God (on Adam’s usurped throne) Satan roamed to and fro on the Land, accusing the people of faith as a legal witness.[2]

At Pentecost, the accuser was thrown down and the people of God became the eyes of God, the seven flaming Spirits of the Lampstand before the throne. The battle against Gog and Magog prefigured this, fulfilled in the two day Jewish war in the book of Esther. Every Jew from India to Africa was a legal witness and executioner against those who sought to wipe them out. The people of God were fire from heaven (Ezekiel 39:6).

The world is under constant surveillance. With a human government now in heaven, the saints are the cherubim before the throne, the wheels filled with eyes carrying the throne of God to and fro across the Land, as Abraham claiming the territory, as Moses’ and Joshua’s spies eyeing off the cake of the Canaanites. Christians are legal witnesses against those who rebel against God, and Christians are Advocates for those rebels, like Rahab, who obey the Word from the spies and display the secret signal.

As the Eyes of God, we don’t get to blow stuff up, but we do get to do surveillance, present evidence and petitions before the King of Kings as His Covenant executives and work with Him to topple godless regimes. For the saints, the receding night is as the coming day. As spies for the crown, He requires unquestioning loyalty, constant sobriety, lightning reflexes, complete familiarity with the Law and a willingness to lay down our lives for the heavenly country. He also deals harshly with double-agents by handing them over to the enemy (1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Tim. 1:20). Consequently, as the kingdom grows, the staff turnover is very high.[3] However, to the chagrin of the enemy, this only seems to increase the annual recruitment.

As Abraham was, and as David was, the New Covenant holy priesthood is tried and tested and given miraculous wisdom, then included in the council of God. Though single cells are often compromised or destroyed, the operation centre, since the ascension of Christ, is totally beyond the reach of the enemy, unassailable, impenetrable and incorruptible.

Next episode…  Behind Closed Doors.

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[1] The phrase is also combined with drunkeness a number of times, picturing a total lack of judgment.
[2] Satan hatches lies to tempt, then spouts truth to condemn. He carried both these roles out at the door (Genesis 4:7). The Lord also stands in the door to make a judgment (Exodus 12:23; Ezekiel 9:3; James 5:9, Revelation 3:20).
[3] The main character body count is even higher than on Spooks. More Christians were martyred in the 20th century than in centuries 1-19 combined. As one Christian writer recently put it, “If you’re a Christian and you’re still alive, you’ve some got explaining to do.” See Postmillennial Suffering.

“And she saw two angels in white sitting,
one at the head and the other at the feet,
where the body of Jesus had lain.”
- John 20:12

Two Witnesses

The father of the English backpacker who was lost in the Blue Mountains wrote in the visitors book at the hotel where he stayed. He wrote that he was going briefly back into the bush to carve a memorial to his son into one of the rockfaces. Thankfully, as he waited for his flight home to the UK, his son walked out of the wilderness yesterday suffering from hunger and exposure, but alive. As I have discussed in this series [1], the Bible is full of memorials to important events.

Getting God’s people out of the wilderness is a legal procedure. A minimum of two witnesses is required. First, there are two preachers who spy out the enemy and warn them of impending judgment. The feast pattern consistently puts this at “Trumpets”, which helps us identify some of its more subtle appearances:

- Abel’s blood and the Land against Cain

- Noah’s two faithful sons against Ham

- The Lord as the plural elohim against Babel

- The two angels sent to Sodom

- The witness who guides Joseph to his brothers and then Joseph himself as a martyr

- Moses and Aaron sent to Egypt

- Joshua and Caleb’s courageous testimony

- the two spies sent to Jericho

- The Lord and His ‘son’, Ezekiel, whom He continually asks to “see” as a witness against Jerusalem

- the apostolic (firstfruits) church as two witnesses against Herod’s Temple. The literary structure implies they were like the two cherubim at the garden gate with the flaming sword of the gospel. [2]

These are the speaking witnesses. Unlike those who accused Christ, their testimonies do not conflict.

Ten days after Trumpets comes the Day of Atonement. After the ‘ten plagues’, the Lord separates the two goats. His people ascend and the wicked are sent to oblivion. Again there are two witnesses, two memorials.

A Silent Witness

The Bible never teaches that all will eventually be saved (universalism). We see this in Lot’s rescue from Sodom. In this case, the ‘first goat’ was Lot and his daughters. The second was Lot’s wife who looked back. She became a pillar of salt, a ‘whited sepulchre’. Lot became (incestuously) fruitful, but his wife became a silent testimony to the barrenness of the judged cities of the plain.[3] The New Testament repeatedly warned Jewish Christians not to look back like Lot’s wife, like those whose bodies fell in the wilderness. The pattern was happening again.

“…there were two lime-washed pillars that Joshua set up as a memorial to his church’s river crossing. At the church’s crossing of the crystal sea into the promised heavenly country, Herod’s Temple was the second pillar. What was the first?”

The High Priest had ‘holy to the Lord’ written on his forehead. The harlot of Herodian worship also had words written on her forehead. Saints and sinners were marked like the urim and thummim, Ebal and Gerazim, yes and no. The saints were sealed with the mark of the High Priest with the inkhorn. The sinners were sealed with the mark of the beast. Both saints and sinners were written on as memorials to the goodness and severity of God.

Paul speaks of bearing in his body the marks of Christ. The literary structure puts these stigmata at the same position in the structure that gospel witness appears many times before. He was a living epistle [4], a tree cut down, engraved as tablets of flesh with the Torah of Christ by the finger of God, and erected as a pillar in a new Temple.

Of the two stones that witness the church’s exit from the carcass of Judaism, the first was the martyrdom, witness, of saints described in Revelation 14. The old city could not be destroyed until this ‘first goat’ ascended to the Lord as an offering. Like the head, the body became bread and wine, the bread of obedient priesthood glorified with the robe of kingdom.

“I was watching; and the same horn was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them, until the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favour of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom.” (Daniel 7:21-22)

Paul refers to this judgment as the “revelation of the sons of God”, ie. who were the true sons of God, the Jews or the Christians. Which goat was which? Like the earthly High Priest, Christ came down and judged Herod’s Babel in AD70. He took the urim and thummim and decided between the ‘identical’ goats, fulfilling the Day of Atonement.

A Singing Witness

Herod’s white house was made a silent witness forever. The apostolic church now rules from heaven, robed in white in a bridal city. She still gloats over the death of her enemies and sings the songs of Moses and David, the Lamb. Her testimony, carved in the apostles’ flesh, speaks across the globe in every language. To us, the firstfruits church is a permanent token of faithful wilderness priesthood, a manna memorial. We feed on her New Covenant words and are marked by the Spirit for the final Day.

Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?” And I said to him, “Sir, you know.” So he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Revelation 7:13-14

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[1] A White Stone – all articles.

[2] See Slavery to Sabbath in Revelation 5-11

[3] See Don’t Look Back

[4] See Paul the Epistle

One major difference between Jordan and other preterists is his identification of Paul’s “man of sin.” Jordan is correct in naming the Herods rather than Nero because he understands biblical typology better.

The pattern during the Restoration era was that God’s representative, a Jew, would sit at the right hand of the power, like Daniel, like Mordecai. In this, like Joseph, they prefigured Christ. This man would first qualify by passing God’s tests of obedience. Daniel passed with flying colours. Mordecai fumbled the ball and Haman was given the post instead. Haman was an Amalekite.

In the first century, instead of a ‘Jacob’ on this throne under the Gentile emperor, it was an Edomite, an Esau. One of Esau’s grandchildren was deliberately named Amalek (Genesis 36), a compromise with a Gentile power from “the Abyss” that God had specifically named as an eternal enemy.

Here’s the biblical pattern. With the circumcision of Abraham, God tore the world in two. The Bible uses creation symbols to denote his descendants as the mediatorial “Land”, and the Gentile nations as the “Sea.” A Gentile power is a Sea beast. A Jewish king compromised with Gentile political power is a Land beast.

In Revelation, the Sea beast is Nero’s Rome, called up by Satan after his failed attempts to destroy the embryonic church with Jewish persecution and false Judaising doctrine. This is the serpent. But there is another “beast” with the horns of a lamb and the mouth of a dragon–a false prophet, a lying Adam (High Priest). This is not a Gentile power. It is a Jew who names his offspring after a hated enemy of God. It is a Haman sitting at the right hand of the Gentile power, a little horn with the eyes and mouth of a man (a Jew), the human face on the faceless beast of Rome, steering the empire against the people of God.

So the reference to the number of this man, 666, becomes easy to interpret. The first rule for Israel’s kings that Solomon broke was the one against amassing gold. Solomon received 666 talents of gold in one year. Gold was so abundant that silver was just about treated like refuse. 666 simply denotes a corrupt Jewish king. Yep, that’s it. (See my book Totus Christus for further support of this from the structure of the passage. Nero isn’t even in the picture. Judgment begins at the house of God. As Jordan points out, the references to wisdom and understanding are ironic references to Solomon also.)

Paul refers to this man of sin sitting where he ought not to be sitting, in a seat of judgment, the temple of God. The Herods styled themselves as Solomons, sitting in Moses’ seat and judging wisely. They were certainly street-wise, cunning foxes, like Emperor Ming–excelling in government by manipulation for their own bestial ends. But by God’s standards they were fools.

The Spirit of Jesus’ coming in judgment against a Judah that had hardened her heart beyond repair destroyed this false Joseph/Daniel/Mordecai. Revelation shows the saints, already slaughtered or still under threat, praying for deliverance from the “justice” of this counterfeit messiah (anti-Christ) in his shiny new Temple. Who else deliberately and repeatedly denied Jesus’ incarnation at this level of government PR?

And this scene from Flash Gordon (a cheesy movie, but gourmet cheese) captures the drama of the return of Christ for his firstfruits church perfectly. Go Flash go.

“He’ll save every one of us.”

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In The Handwriting on the Wall, Jordan notes the progression of authority in Israel’s mediatorial history, from Land under David and Solomon, to empire-Land under Esther and Mordecai, to true world power under Christ, who steers, or Advocates, at the right hand of the true Power. The four empires were  pictures of the cherubim under the throne of God. This included Nero, as a beast from the Sea (Daniel 7). Each time one of these guardian beasts went bad, it was swiftly replaced by God, beginning with the fall of Belshazzar’s Babylon.

See also Jordan’s article The Abomination of Desolation.