God loves architecture. He starts with a Garden, moves to stone, then to flesh. Should it surprise us that the Nativity and the events surrounding it follow the same patterns as the Tabernacle and the Creation week?
Along with many other academics — and many hymnwriters — J. R. Daniel Kirk believes the advent ended the Babylonian exile. He writes: “The exile was insufficient to pay for the people’s sins. So not only did the exile endure, so did the sins which were its cause.” Is really this the case? Israel never again worshiped the Canaanite gods. However, he still has a lot to say that is good:
“So I commended
…..enjoyment,
……….because a man
……….has nothing better
……………under the sun
…..…..than to eat,
…..drink,
and be merry…”
(Eccles. 8:15)
If you love the chiasmi of the Bible, why not arrange a “Covenant” Christmas banquet using the Bible Matrix?*
A Christmas sequel to Joseph Gets Passed Over.
I believe the writers of the New Testament fully employ the literary structures of the Old, to a degree far beyond the level discussed by modern scholarship. [1]
Matthew begins his gospel with the Genesis of Jesus, a genealogy summarised as a 7 x 7. He then demonstrates the Exodus of Jesus with a similar 7 x 7. The destroyer at the original exodus was angelic. In Joshua (matching the exodus chiastically), the Lord gave the sword to a human messenger, an Adamic redeemer/avenger. Herod is a corrupted Joshua, a mediating head willing to sacrifice (ironically) his own body, his own future, his own true succession, on the Altar of the Abyss. Herod had become a murderous Pharaoh, and he turned first century Israel into Canaanite child-killers.
(For the skeptics of this process of analysis, I am using the New King James, and my previous experience of the Bible Matrix made it obvious to me where the English word order did not follow the Greek. Each instance was verified with a Greek-English Interlinear. The best example would be the end of verse 12.)
Jews, Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses have a big problem with the Son of God. How could God, a Spirit, take on human flesh and become a man? When we understand the significance of humanity being made in God’s image, and then being estranged from God by sin, the only mediator possible between the warring parties had to be both 100% God and 100% Man.
.
Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born
Of the Virgin Mary — rejoice!
The time of grace has come—
This that we have desired,
Verses of joy
Let us devoutly return.
God has become man,
To the wonderment of Nature,
The world has been renewed
By the reigning Christ.
The closed gate of Ezechiel
Is passed through,
Whence the light is born,
Salvation is found.
Therefore let our gathering
Now sing in brightness
Let it give praise to the Lord:
Greeting to our King.
Just watched The Nativity Story with our seven-year-old son (the girls have seen it). Bawled my eyes out at many points, particularly now that I have a better understanding of the typological significance of many of the events since I last saw it.
When Ahaziah, king of Judah died, his mother Athaliah wanted to be queen. She ordered all her grandsons to be slaughtered. Only one escaped. The nanny Jehosheba hid baby Joash in the Temple of God for six years.
When he was seven, Jehosheba’s brother, the High Priest, called the royal bodyguards and escorts and showed them the king’s son. Athaliah was executed and the temple of Baal was torn down (2 Kings 11).
The Bible gives us a family tree, with a single “royal” bloodline from Adam to Jesus (see Matthew 1). If Joash had died with his brothers, that bloodline would have been severed, making impossible the fulfilment of God’s promise in Genesis 3: the offspring of Eve would crush the serpent’s head.
King Herod also slaughtered innocent children. One escaped: Jesus. He too would be anointed King and tear down all false worship by dying as payment for the sins of mankind. This task continued with the destruction of Herod’s Jerusalem in AD70 and will continue until all His enemies are under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).
“And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight — if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven…” (Colossians 1:21-23)
Merry Christmas from the Bulls. Thanks for reading! Catch you in 2010…
“And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?” Isaiah 8:19
I remember reading this verse for the first time in the KJV and wondering what it was exactly that the wizards were peeping at!
