Bully’s Blog

or Meat to Eat - 2

[From last time] …Under this new Levitical Law, a new “Garden” would be constructed, and a great many animals would be slaughtered and offered within its insatiable boundary. It was a King’s Table. Yahweh was already Omega, already Solomon. But Israel, not yet humble, desired Omega food, the food of “ascension.” Not satisfied with the bread of “priestly” obedience, they lobbied for meat to eat.

“So it was that quails came up at evening and covered the camp, and in the morning the dew lay all around the camp.” —Exodus 16:13

We mentioned that bread is Alpha food. Wine, and sometimes meat, are Omega foods. Firstfruits and Pentecost are about grain. Tabernacles is about the grape and olive harvests. This final feast is also the one where the Lord says if you want to carve up an ox or feel like strong drink, knock yourself out (ie. spare no expense).

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God took on a body, from the dust, in Adam. A trillion particles of inanimate, dead stuff pulled together and organised into the most complex system in the cosmos, an organic machine capable of feats we are yet to discover.

Adam, as Covenant head, also took on a “body.” A Divine Handful of flesh and bone, dead or dying by any human measure, organised into a being more palatial and lavish than any male eye is worthy to behold.

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Here’s the last installment of my answers to Brian Simmon’s 50 objections to a first century “coming in judgment” of Christ. You can find a link under Featured Articles that will list them all for you.

46. Abraham still hasn’t inherited the land God promised him (Gen. 13: 15; Acts 7: 5).

Joshua 21:43 “So the LORD gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it.”

I don’t see the relevance of Acts 7:5. The Land was promised to his descendants.

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Here’s the first of my replies to Brian’s contentions. I’ve put a 50 Failed Predictions? link under featured articles so all posts in this series are easy to find.

1. The bodies and souls of the wicked were not thrown into Gehenna (Matt. 10: 28).

Gehenna was the Valley of Hinnom. It was the site of the child sacrifices before the exile. The Lord atoned for this shedding of innocent blood to false gods by filling it with the bodies of the idolaters—a mass grave. Then the Land was ceremonially clean. Fittingly, Ge-Hinnom was the site of Jeremiah’s terrifying threats in Jeremiah 18, which Paul draws upon in Romans 9:21.

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“Peter came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’” (Matthew 18:21-22)

Genesis 4 seems to contain two “feast” cycles. Near the end of the first, at “Atonement”, the Lord set a mark upon Cain to protect him from vengeance. As on the Day of Covering after Adam’s sin in Eden, the full weight of the law was withheld. Cain complained that his “liability” was greater than he could bear. Cain was covered but he still went from the presence of the Lord, as the goat which carried the sins into the wilderness. It seems Cain despised mercy.

Just as the Lord and the Land were two witnesses against his crime, he now fled from the face of the Lord and the face of the Land. Only the High Priest could face God, standing in the Veil, the firmament between heaven and earth. Abel was the true facebread, the authorised priest. [1]

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or Zedekiah and the Dragon

“…if the Lord creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord.” (Numbers 16:29-30)

Daughter Jerusalem kept up an outward show of respectability, but under her Temple veils and military skirts her legs were open for anyone. [1] In a vision, Ezekiel dug a hole through this wall of “whitewash” as a legal witness to her crimes against the Covenant.

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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.

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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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or Cooking the Golden-Egg Goose

Gary North has a free course on reducing your debt. Part of the plan is an application of the 5-point Covenant structure. Basically, God calls a man, gives him a job to do, and returns at the end to assess the man’s work. North refers to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:

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I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, ”LORD, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life”? But what does the divine response say to him? “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace.  Romans 11:1-6

Romans 11 is one of those watershed passages. How one interprets it depends on one’s “plan of the ages” paradigm. If you haven’t read James Jordan’s The Future of Israel Re-examined, you need to. Due to its ramifications for interpretation of much of the New Testament, I believe it should be recognised as one of the most important writings of our time. It puts Romans, and especially chapters 9-11, fairly and squarely within a first century context. All would be fulfilled before AD70. God would make “a short work” in the Land. And He did.

It also helps with the interpretation of Revelation. Christ was a new Moses, just as Elijah was. He ascended and gave a double portion of His Spirit to the church as Elisha. The new body witnessed to Gentiles to provoke the hard-hearted Jews to jealousy. This has nothing to do with our day. It was a process confined to the end of the Old Covenant.

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