Bully’s Blog

or The Crash of AD70

Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.  (Genesis 2:10-14)

After the Herod and Shylock post, I had one complaint that the Worship as Commerce tag didn’t really do what it said on the tin, so I hope to capture it (briefly?) here. Now, where to start? As James Jordan explains, the idea begins in Eden.

“Eden is the land of food, and the outlying lands are lands of other raw materials. The Bible conceives of commerce between these lands, so that those of Adam’s descendants who lived in Eden would have to engage in trade with those who had moved downstream to Havilah. In this way, precious stones would be brought from Havilah back to Eden to adorn the sanctuary. When Israel came out of Egypt, she sojourned in the land of Havilah while the Tabernacle and the High Priest’s garments were made (Genesis 25:18). Here in this land of rocks were made many items of gold and onyx. Indeed, the only reference in the Bible to the onyx stone, outside of Genesis 2, is in connection with the High Priest’s garments. The shoulder stones of the “ephod” were made of onyx, and had the names of the twelve tribes put upon them (Exodus 25:7; 28:9-12).” [1] 

When the worship of God is both central and elevated, the priests of God carry the Spirit to the nations. In return, the nations bring to Eden the gold and precious stones of the surrounding lands. Because of Solomon’s request for wisdom instead of wealth, the Lord honoured his selflessness, his godly rule, with wealth from the surrounding nations. The kings of the world brought their glory into the Temple. As Israel’s kings continually disobeyed the Lord, the wealth was stolen away. The Lord was like a thief in the night. The gold shields stolen by Egyptian invaders were replaced with bronze ones. Nebuchadnezzar made Judah a vassal kingdom and taxed it the way Solomon and Rehoboam had taxed the tribes. Finally he took everything. 

But this “wealth for wisdom” is not only typological. God is not against wealth per se. He wants a church that is glorious both inwardly and outwardly. It is when the church becomes a shell, as Judah did, a false witness with false whiteness, that God cuts it back to Adams in animal skins. [2] The letters to the Asian churches in Revelation 2-3 recapitulate Old Testament history, [3] which makes Herod’s Judah parallel with Laodicea. Well, not so much a parallel as the same sin but fully grown.

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Revelation is laced with the Dominion pattern like brandy through a Christmas pudding. As a literary structure, its identification highlights some interesting things.

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or Daniel’s 70th Week Postponed

“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”  Isaiah 9:2

A great deal of time has been spent on the chronology concerning Daniel’s seventy sevens. Quite frankly, chronology is not my strong point [1], but perhaps the solution for this enigmatic problem is not chronological but theological.

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Matthew 23:15 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourselves.”

They cross Land and Sea to make one disciple for their corrupted religion, and make him twice the child of Gehenna as themselves. “Ge-Henna” is Greek for the despised Valley of Hinnom southwest of Jerusalem, the previous location of Tophet’s child sacrifices that became an open, mass grave during the Babylonian seige. It became the rubbish dump, full of maggots, with the refuse continually burning. Jesus quotes Isaiah 66:23-24 to describe it. The Roman siege would begin when Jews from all over the empire were in Jerusalem for Passover. Their “Table” was made a snare, and Gehenna was filled with the bodies of these deceived “children.”

During the Creation week, there were three days of forming new “empty spaces” by dividing the original watery deep (the Abyss), then three days of filling them. A ‘world model’ develops with God’s throne at the top and the Abyss at the bottom, the place furthest from the throne. The architecture of the Tabernacle follows this model, laid out upon the ground.

When the priesthood - the Land-mediators - disobeyed God, the Abyss was dredged up to cover the Land (holy place). We see this first in the flood, and later in the invasions of Assyria, Babylon and Rome.

The Valley of Hinnom became a symbol of the ‘Abyss’ below the true mountain of God. As an evil twin of the holy place, it was an ‘Adamic’ clay pit with no glorious metal. It was also the place where Judah sacrificed their infants to false gods. It was counterfeit worship in the tabernacle of hell, and the Lord said He would fill it with their bodies. Their dark ‘table of showbread’ became a snare. [Read Jeremiah 19]

After the Babylonian captivity, Zechariah saw the church in “the deep” (often translated valley or glen). A new Land-altar was rising out of the ‘waters’ - a new mountain of God, with a new Eden-temple to mediate for the world.
TAOTA

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave the pattern for a new Tabernacle. The sermon follows the pattern of the Tabernacle furniture, which in turn follows the pattern of the Creation week.1 At ‘Day 3′, Altar and Table, are His commands concerning Covenants (divorce and oaths), and the Lord’s prayer.

“Leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” Matthew 5:24

Interestingly, these blessings are mirrored by the curses upon the saints’ evil twins in Matthew 23, the Jews who sat in Moses’ seat of judgment.2 The “woes” follow exactly the same pattern, and climax with Christ’s prophecy of the destruction of the Old Covenant Temple. And what do we find in this passage at Day 3?

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“And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the Land, for its grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung his sickle across the Land and gathered the grape harvest of the Land and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia.” Revelation 14:18-20

Like Pharaoh, the “plagues” Trumpet warnings only hardened the hearts of the Jewish leaders. Like Pharaoh, he had raised up the Herods only to demonstrate His power in their destruction (Romans 9:17). Continue reading