“That very day Pilate and Herod became friends with each other, for previously they had been at enmity with each other.” (Luke 23:12)

“Secular humanism and Islam are merely the bipolar moods of Christless Christianity. They can be united only in suicide.”

Getting a grip on the Tabernacle layout helps us understand the architecture of Creation, the history of mankind and the structure of the entire Bible. After reading Mark Steyn on the Islamic/secular conflict in Europe, I was thinking that the same “Tabernacle” categories can be found in the world today. Whatever we do, however much we distort the truth, we are still bound by the walls and furnitures set up in Genesis 1. And, in my humble opinion, the light this sheds on the current conflict is not only revealing concerning its true nature, but it also helps us to predict its future.

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[1] See Priest, King and Prophet and Great Prophets.
[2] See Half Man, Half Beast.

“…sprinkling or pouring conflates the Covenant head with the Covenant body.”

Doug Wilson writes:

“God, in baptizing the disciples with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, did so by pouring out His Spirit upon them. Pouring is therefore very clearly described as a biblical mode of baptism” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 102).

God poured out the Spirit, certainly. But can we then assume that the apostles poured water on new believers and their babies? Single words are clues, but they can be misleading. The effectiveness of word studies is limited because context is crucial. And the context of the Bible is most importantly structural. Structure is the answer.

The reason is that all of God’s new creations follow the structure of Genesis 1. It’s almost like, when God speaks, the Spirit will pick up anything available, anything lying around, and arrange it into the familiar pattern. This means that the Bible Matrix is crucial in identifying the meanings of many Bible symbols. Baptism and the Day of Atonement might not look anything like each other to us, but the Bible keeps tying them together, along with some other things, to tell us the same part of the Creation story. If we have eyes to see, this method also gives us hints as to the correct mode of baptism. It’s not about the motion of the water. It’s about the motion of the one being baptized. [1]

Although Days 1-6 have a 1-2-3 1-2-3 correspondence, the full pattern is also chiastic. There is a relationship between Day 2 and Day 6.

Day 2 and Day 6 both concern water, and it’s not immediately apparent. The rest of the Bible is a commentary, or the outworking, of the Creation.

On Day 2, God divides heaven and earth with a veil of water. On Day 6, the qualified mediator is to stand, with his redeemed/avenged bride, upon the waters. On Day 6 it was the spring of Eden, a foretaste of Christ and His bride on the crystal sea. [2]

The best examples are Joseph, and the feast structure.

Day 2 is Passover. Jacob “spreads out a garment” upon his favored son, like a veil separating him from his brothers (Covenant Hierarchy).

Day 6 is Pass-through, or Atonement. The robe is torn and bloodied with a substitutionary goat. The High Priest passes through the veil.

…..1 – Word

……….2 – Veil installed (nations divided – Circumcision)

……………3 – Old Israel lifted up

………………..4 – Pentecost

……………5 – New Israel gathered

……….6 – Veil torn (nations united – Baptism)

…..7 – Succession

Have you got that now? Passover installs the veil. Pass-through tears the veil. At Passover, God separates His people by installing a veil (darkness) and at Pass-through, it is the veil itself that is divided, to bring His people before Him, united.

We see this in Abram’s sacrifice. Abram is passed over in darkness (Day 2), then the Lord passes through the sacrifice as a fiery head and a smoky body, Ark and Incense. [3]

I hope you are still with me. The payoff for baptism is coming.

This passage actually prefigures the next stage in Israel’s history. The birds are not divided because they are the anointed head (as the dove descending upon Jesus), but the body is torn into Jew and Gentile (the animals that walk upon the Land). Priests were anointed with oil and the blood was applied to right ear, thumb and toe – a Jew was half a man, a priesthood yet to be given true kingdom. [4]

The passing through was Joshua and Israel, head and body, “walking on water” as dry land into Canaan.

So, sprinkling or pouring conflates the Covenant head with the Covenant body. Adam’s head was cursed (his brow, or literally his nose) and Eve’s body was cursed. The Head is anointed to carry out the mission, the Law, and that mission is to gather a new body.

So debating the meaning of baptizo isn’t the solution. The key is the context. All the baptism passages in Acts follow the same structure. The “passing through” of the golden High Priest, into the Most Holy Place, with a fragrant cloud of smoke, the Covenant body.

The High Priest made two approaches on the Day of Atonement: one for the priesthood (blood of a bull) and one for the people (blood of the first goat). After he presented His own blood as High Priest, Jesus would return “in like manner” for the firstfruits church for the second approach. You will see this all in Daniel 7. (See Jordan’s commentary, The Handwriting on the Wall.) [5]

Spirit baptism anoints the head. It puts us into the Head, into Jesus. You can pour all you like onto the head as long as it’s only the Spirit. Baptism is a “passing through” into government of the Land, as part of the body of Covenant elders, who stand before the throne with bowls of incense and advise God as Abraham did.

Also, concerning Paul’s mention of “all Israel” baptized in the Red Sea (1 Cor. 10:1-4): Israel’s baptism was as a single body of flesh. But the New Israel’s baptism is a group noun. It was not a single passing through but many passings-through, one for each individual. They are markedly different. Individualism is not anti-Covenant, at least not as far as the New Covenant is concerned, because the individuals are united by the Spirit of God.

The structure mentioned above is also found in the acsencion rite. The holy fire is poured upon the sacrifice (the final seal in Revelation refers to Pentecost), but the clean head is burnt by the Spirit before the unclean body is washed and offered. [6]

So, totus Christus structures the entire Bible, and it’s against pouring or sprinkling upon the head. Baptism is the body passing through the waters with clean feet into priestly government from the Holy Place.

Circumcision installed a veil (Hierarchy) and baptism brings the Tested, Matured and Redeemed/Avenged qualified mediators before God for Succession. Babies cannot be mediatorial elders.

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[1] Jesus uses this structure ironically in the parable of the good Samaritan. The story has seven stanzas, and each stanza follows the Covenant/matrix pattern. I the first cycle, the robbers leave the man for dead at Atonement. But at this point in the priest’s and Levite’s stanzas, they “pass by on the other side” instead of “passing through” as mediators. Both of their stanzas are missing the last line: Succession/Sabbath/Booths. They not only fail to enter into rest, they fail to carry anyone else into it under their shelter/shade as a true Tabernacle. See Tavernacles.
[2] See Walking on Water.
[3] See Pass-over and Pass-through.
[4] See Half Man, Half Beast.
[5] Available here. See also One Taken, One Left Behind and The Last Trumpet.
[6] See High As the Horses’ Bridles.

or Raising Up the Temple

An analysis of the literary structure of Day 5 of Creation and passages that are apparently parallel.
Here are links to Days 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Day 5 contains some surprises. It mirrors Day 3 in the chiasm:

1
…..2
……….3
……………4
……….5
…..6
7

and yet Day 5 fills the space created on Day 2:

Forming the spaces
1
…..2
……….3

Filling the spaces
4
…..5
……….6

Stanza 1

As with Day 3, it contains 2 stanzas (or cycles). What is really surprising is that I can only get this first stanza to fit the Creation pattern if I run it BACKWARDS. Sure, the water of 2 and 6 is still mirrored, and the Lord is at 1 and 7, but 3 and 5 are very different.

Then God said, (Day of the Lord)
…..“Let the waters abound (Laver – Mediators)
……….with an abundance
……….of living creatures, (Incense – Swarms/Clouds)
……………and let birds fly (Lampstand – Heavenly Rulers)
……….above the [Land] (Altar – Land above Gentile Sea)
……….across the face (Table of Facebread – Grain and Fruit)*
…..of the firmament (Veil – Firmament)
of the heavens.” (Ark – In the beginning)

*Notice that the Altar and Land are a self-contained unit, and so their order is not swapped, even though the whole process runs backwards. The plants still follow the ascension of the Land as glorified Adamic soil.

Now, the Creation pattern only runs backwards when God is deconstructing the world (or its microcosmic tent or Temple). But we are in the brief time before sin entered through Adam. What is going on here?

If you look carefully, you can see that the stanza works its way up from the deep, through the fish, out of the water to the birds, up to the sky and then into heaven. Day 5 is Step 5, and Step 5 is the resurrection of the body. It seems that the Author is communicating resurrection as both creating something new, and also a turning back of time.

Step 3 is the Ascension of the Covenant Head to receive the two stone witnesses of the Law. Step 5 is those stone Laws written on two tablets of flesh, the Covenant Body as Two Witnesses. The Law is written on resurrected hearts, and unlike the silent Head (silent as a Lamb), they speak and sing. It is the difference between Sinai and Deuteronomy.

This step is also military; it is ten plagues, or two witnesses marching 5 abreast. It is ten backward steps of the scorching sun of Day 4 on the stairway of Ahaz as a witness to the promise of healing:

(2 Kings 2:8-11)

(Creation – Day 1)
Hezekiah had asked Isaiah,

…..(Division – Day 2)**
…..“What will be the sign that the LORD will heal me

……….(Ascension – Day 3)
……….and that I will go up to the temple of the LORD
……….on the third day from now?”

……………(Testing – Day 4 – Pentecost – Law opened)
……………Isaiah answered,
………………..“This is the LORD’s sign
…………………….to you
………………..that the LORD will do
……………what he has promised:

……….(Maturity – Day 5 – Two Witnesses)
……….Shall the shadow go forward ten steps,
……….or shall it go back ten steps?”

…..(Conquest – Day 6 – Day of Coverings, open Veil
…..Man divides morning and evening at Atonement)
…..“It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps,”
…..said Hezekiah. “Rather, have it go back ten steps.”

(Glorification – Day 7 – Rest and Shelter)
Then the prophet Isaiah
…..called upon the LORD,
……….and the LORD
……………made the shadow (death defeated)
……….go back the ten steps (Day 5)
…..it had gone down
on the stairway of Ahaz.

**Division is Sanctification, a setting apart of God’s man.

Stanza 2

So God created great sea creatures (Genesis)***
…..and every living thing that moves, (Exodus)
……….(Land rulers and Sea rulers divided – Leviticus)
……….with which the waters abounded,
………. according to their kind,
……….and every winged bird
………. according to its kind.
………………..(Numbers – Judgment of Body)
………………..And God saw that [it was] good.
……………(Deuteronomy – Blessings/Curses upon Body)
……………And God blessed them, saying,
……………“Be fruitful and multiply,
…..(Joshua – a new body of Jew and Gentile)
…..and fill the waters in the seas,
…..and let birds multiply on the [Land].”
(Judges – rulers in the Land)
So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

***Only three created things are described as wonderful: the heavens and earth, the great sea creatures, and Man. Here, the sea creatures are “at the head” of the stanza as wonderful.

I can only surmise that Day 5 has two stanzas because the first forms the “Bridal” Covenant Body and the second fills it, which is exactly what we see in Ezekiel 37, just before the Conquest of Haman and Persia in Ezekiel 38 and 39. So Day 5 is a microcosm of the entire week as a whole, and also in its two parts. Wheels within wheels indeed.

Throughout the Bible, there are good swarms and bad swarms, good armies and bad armies, fragrant smoke and sulphur, at “Day 5.” One is the offspring of the Incense Altar, and the other is the offspring of the Altar of the Abyss. In Revelation, the Judaizers are described as this offspring, a smoke from the abyss that turns into locusts that devour. But what does Jesus do later in the book for the martyred Firstfruits church? He turns back time for the faithful, the “two witnesses” church which is also an army from the east (literally, from the Sunrise). In fact, for all those who died at the hands of Cainites under the Old Covenant, Jesus restored the years that the locust had eaten. He brought about The End of Shadows.

“Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation!”
Philippians 3:2 (NKJV)

Jeff Meyers copped flak for his take on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. He says the tax collector was justified for his Covenant faithfulness, and the Pharisee was not. Was it not the Pharisee who was faithful? And, either way, is this not justification by works? Has Jeff got night and day around the wrong way?

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Adam couldn’t face God. Cain’s face fell. Moses’ face shone with reflected light when he returned from the mountain of God. Bezalel and Aholiab constructed the Table of Facebread, which corresponded in the cherubim to the Face Of The Man. David and his men ate the facebread. Saul feared Goliath, but David’s face was red, literally “filled with blood,” before he bloodied Goliath’s face and the usurper fell facedown. [1]

What is interesting is that all these and other references to “the face” appear at exactly the same position in the Matrix structure (Ascension). It refers to a worthy Adam, someone who can face God. Throughout the Bible we have Cains and Abels. All the Cains usurp the Abels through oppression and bloodshed.

The book of Daniel, as a unit, follows the pattern. At Ascension, the Herods take control and throw the stars (godly priesthood) down. But by the end of the book, new godly rulers have taken possession of the kingdom and they shine like stars. As Jesus predicted, the first century fake sun, moon and stars were cast down, and the Herods were deposed.

So, what is the face of the deep in Genesis 1? The face reference is again at Ascension.

Creation In the beginning (at the head) (Ark)
…..Division God created the heavens and the earth. (Veil)
……….Ascension The earth was without form, and empty;
……….(Bronze Altar)
……….and darkness was on the face of the deep.
……….(Table of Facebread)
……….And the Spirit of God was hovering
……….over the face of the waters.

What happened when Jesus rose out of the Jordan as a new mediatorial “Land”? He was anointed by the Father as the Man who could face God.

This process is also the pattern of sacrifice. So far, God has taken the sacrifice (Creation), torn it in two (Division), placed it as “facebread” on the empty Altar (Ascension). Then, He puts fire on the Altar.

……………Testing Then God said, “Let there be light”;
……………and there was light.
……………(Lampstand)
……….Maturity And God saw the light,
……….that it was good;
……….(Incense)

At Maturity, in later patterns, we often find the two witnesses. They symbolise the faithful church. They are the body. It is plural. It is smoke. The smoke is a witness in God’s nostrils. It is a pleasing aroma or it is a stench. In later references, we find both, and they are (as far as I have looked) always at this point. When two or three witnesses are gathered together, there is Yahweh in the midst. It is a legal process. We see this when Jesus is flanked by Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets who are witnesses against unbelieving Judah. In Revelation, the firstfruits church is pictured, among other things, as two legal witnesses having exactly the powers of Moses and Elijah. They are slain as sacrifices and ascend to heaven as smoke, a pleasing aroma.

…..Conquest and God divided
…..the light from the darkness.
…..(Mediator)

Here is the Day of Atonement. The High Priest takes the Urim and Thummim, a white stone and a black stone. He uses them to choose which goat will ascend to God, and which goat will descend to the abyss. This is the separation of the Covenant body under the Covenant sanctions. At Ascension, it is a face-off between Aaron and Korah, David and Goliath. Here, it is about their sons, the warrior bride.

So, this division between day and night, evening and morning, corresponds to the Day of Atonement, when God renews the Covenant for another year for the sake of the Body. The evening is the Old Covenant, the Lunar (nighttime) festivals. The morning is the New Covenant.

These were contained all along on the bosom of the Man Who Could Face God, the High Priest. At Atonement, the Facebread-Man is vindicated. He chooses a faithful bride, and the harlot is expelled for another year.

Glorification God called the light Day,
and the darkness He called Night.
So the evening and the morning
were the first day.
(Shekinah)

At Glorification, we always find Judges (the seventh book) and judgment. It is the throne of Solomon and his bride. Even when Adam could not face God and he and his wife hid themselves, God still asked him to judge wisely. He asked Adam to call what he had done “Night.” Adam failed again. He called good “evil” and evil “good.”

Here, God judges His work. It is not yet “very good,” because it is not yet mature. Only God is good. Jesus was not “very good” until He had a Covenant body, until He was condemned under the Pentecostal fire of the Law and resurrected as body of fragrant smoke that could pass-through Atonement doors. Even He was perfected by suffering.

The darkness is about forming (Moses); the light is about filling (Christ). Only after this first-day heptamerous pattern is expanded into a full week will it be “very good” because the world will be formed and filled.

God then forms and fills Adam (which is described separately in Genesis 2 because it follows this pattern independently of the greater, not because it is a myth, despite what over-educated, yellow-bellied theologues tell us), and then He forms Eve, a Covenant body, as the filling of Adam.

So, what is the face of the deep? It is the face of Goliath. It is Adamic meat, uncut by the sword of the Word (uncircumcised) and without the Spirit.

As mentioned in Deus Ex Machina, in Revelation 5, John wept because the deep, the Gentile abyss, was once again ready to sweep across the disobedient Covenant people (the Land), and there was no one worthy to face God.

Until John saw the missing table, the Lamb. As New Covenant Head, Jesus opened the New Covenant scroll, and there was Pentecostal Light. Only those in the ark, in Christ, survived the flood of Rome (Daniel 9:26) that closed the Old Covenant scroll.

As long as Jesus stands before God, that New Covenant scroll remains open. In Him, we cannot lose face.

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Art: Crossing the Red Sea by Justin Gerard, 12stoneart.
[1] See The Holy Headbutt and Horns of Moses.

“And whanne Moises cam doun fro the hil of Synai, he helde twei tablis of witnessyng, and he wiste not that his face was horned of the felouschipe of Goddis word..” —Exodus 34:29, Wycliffe

Perhaps you’ve seen those bumper stickers that say, “If we’re not meant to eat animals, why are they made of meat?”

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN. 

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[1] See Omega Males.
[2] Jordan notes that the “pulse” that Daniel and friends ate in Daniel 1 is literally “seeds.” But he did eat the king’s food later on. See Touch Not, Taste Not, Handle Not for the biblical theology behind this.
[3] This might explain the three tusks/horns in the mouth of the Persian bear in Daniel 7:5. Jordan suggests that are they Daniel, Nehemiah and Mordecai—remnants of the throne of Solomon enabling Persia to devour the world. In the Bible, it’s the good angels (cherubim) that have the horns, and Daniel’s four beasts surrounded the throne of a resurrected Jew-Gentile kingdom, the oikoumene. This, of course, predicted “the age to come”, the gospel age, in which satan not only has no horns, but as the accuser he is now toothless. We have the teeth and the horns, the gospel.
[4] That is why it is mentioned in Revelation 18:12. Its position in the passage also supports this interpretation. See Totus Christus.
[5] Exodus 25-31 corresponds the Bronze Altar with the “four-cornered” Land of Day 3. Later, Canaan became the Altar. When Israel sinned, God basically turned the horns inward against those on the Land to scatter them. Zechariah shows the craftsmen rebuilding the Altar of Incense, not the Bronze Altar. This too had four horns, but it was a higher altar that Israel now represented. The Incense Altar (Day 5) is a Bronze Altar (Day 3) that has been slain under the Law (Day 4) and resurrected. Revelation also shows four angels ready to judge Herodian worship, thirsty for blood to atone for the murder of the prophets and the saints.
[6] In Exodus 24, Moses feasted with the elders and the Lord on the “crystal sea” (Exodus 24:10). Here, Moses was a “Solomon,” a king. It was the end of the “Egypt” cycle. However, when Moses ascended Sinai to receive the Law, he fasted. He was “eaten” as a priest. See Fasting as Sacrament. It was the beginning of a new cycle of creation and maturity.

or Smells Like Holy Spirit

A friend recently gave me a unique gift. With some difficulty and great expense, he sourced the ingredients for the anointing oil of the Aaronic priesthood and I was the grateful recipient of a small, blue vial.

The scent of the oil is intoxicating. You breathe it in and in some strange way you can “taste” it as it goes down. It is extremely complex and yet a single fragrance. The recipe is in Exodus 30:

Moreover the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: “Also take for yourself quality spices — five hundred shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much sweet-smelling cinnamon (two hundred and fifty shekels), two hundred and fifty shekels of [calamus], five hundred shekels of cassia, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, and a hin of olive oil. And you shall make from these a holy anointing oil, an ointment compounded according to the art of the perfumer. It shall be a holy anointing oil. With it you shall anoint the tabernacle of meeting and the ark of the Testimony; the table and all its utensils, the lampstand and its utensils, and the altar of incense; the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the laver and its base. You shall consecrate them, that they may be most holy; whatever touches them must be holy. And you shall anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may minister to Me as priests. And you shall speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘This shall be a holy anointing oil to Me throughout your generations. It shall not be poured on man’s flesh; nor shall you make any other like it, according to its composition. It is holy, and it shall be holy to you. Whoever compounds any like it, or whoever puts any of it on an outsider, shall be cut off from his people.’ “

James Jordan observes that there are a number of “holy mixtures” prescribed for the Tabernacle, including the High Priest’s robe of a combination of linen and wool. The Law of Moses consists of boundaries, divisions. In God’s house, however, everything is integrated. It is a house of resurrection; of bread and wine, flesh and blood, heaven and earth (and of course, eventually even Jew and Gentile) recombined in a way beyond the skill of mortal men. Just as the Tabernacle would eventually be torn apart and “resurrected” as the Tabernacle of David, even the Law of Moses itself would be torn apart, taken to the grave, and resurrected as the Law of Christ.

“For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.” 2 Corinthians 2:15-16

Incense is the most complex symbol in Scripture. It begins in Genesis 1, as clouds of birds and fish created on Day 5. They symbolise an army consisting of many but combined as one. Five is a military number. Israel marches five abreast. David chooses five smooth stones. The oil of anointing had five ingredients. All the Bible’s Covenants have five parts. The fragrant clouds from the Incense Altar are the “bridal” hosts of God.

The symbol is used constantly. Israel’s obedience is fragrant to God, but He also tips the symbol on its head when she betrays Him. In the prophets, the literary structure often puts the “smoke” of her destruction at this point. Ezekiel’s reference to Judah as a stick that is burnt at both ends and good for nothing also appears at step five. Her burning of incense became a cloud to hide her disobedience. It became a stench in God’s nostrils.

The Tabernacle not only follows the form of the Creation week, but also of the human body. Even more interesting is that the human head is a mini-Tabernacle itself. Your brain is the Ark, hidden behind a veil, with your eyes as the cherubim, two witnesses. I figure that since the priests’ right ears were daubed with blood, this refers to the Table of Showbread, and the left ear is the Law/Lampstand. The nose is in the centre, the place of the Altar of Incense. And vegetarians, please note that your mouth as the Bronze Altar is where the animals are consumed! [1]

According to Jordan, just as gold is “solid light” (Day 1 is the Ark), so holy oil is “liquid light.” It is the Word from heaven that begins something new. Peter Leithart writes:

No human being gets anointed in Genesis; only pillars (Gen 28:18; 35:14). The pillars represent the “house” of Yahweh, the cornerstones of the future temple.

It’s not until Exodus 29 that we read of a human being anointed with oil. Aaron is the first Christ. He is also Bethel, the gate of God, the living house of Yahweh. [2]

Imagine being Saul or David, anointed with this wonderful oil that had been restricted to use by the Aaronic priesthood since its inception.

The Tabernacle was a place filled with sensory experiences, from the fragrance of the anointing oil (Day 1) to the delightful aroma of roasting meat (Day 3) to the air of the Holy Place perfumed by the Altar of Incense (Day 5). This is the transition from blood to Spirit, from the old creation to the new. Like Esther, the church puts Herself on the Altar and ascends to stand on the Emperor’s pavement of gemstones and mother-of-pearl. She has spent a year under a regime of oils and perfumes, and presents herself boldly before him as a fragrant myrtle, robed in His own righteousness.

This sample oil of anointing is a unique possession, and a fantastic teaching aid as well. Memories are very often connected to smells. Smells are things we never forget. But does this have any relation to our worship today? We are to anoint our sick with oil, but is the Lord concerned about the recipe?

In his lectures on Zechariah, Jordan observes that the new oil flowing from the two olive trees is not the same word as the holy oil of the Tabernacle. It is ordinary household oil. What this signifies is an expansion of holiness. It corresponds to even the pots and pans becoming as holy as Temple vessels. This progression continued, and by the work of Christ, everything is sacred. The Holy Space has grown larger than any of the Old Covenant territories, and will keep growing until it encompasses the world.

Back to Zechariah. This ordinary household oil expands the Lampstand into a blaze, squared from seven to forty-nine lights. This is a picture of the Restoration era. The two witnesses that flanked the now missing Ark no longer keep Adam from the gate with flaming sword. The symbols here are all agrarian. The angels have actually beaten their swords into plowshares. Israel would no longer be a nation of warriors but a nation of priests. She had been transfigured from an earthly body to a spiritual (but just as physical) body. Like Jesus, she could now walk through doors.

This is the nature of resurrection. It is a harvest. The seed has fallen into the ground and there will be a bumper crop. This harvest of what was planted at the beginning of the Restoration era is the white field Jesus referred to. Israel’s national death was not only a judgment for idolatry, but also a scattering of seed. It resulted in the Gentile God-fearers who very often shamed the limited faith of Jews in the New Testament.

Jesus’ death made Him into a door: Passover. Jesus’ resurrection enabled Him to pass through doors: Atonement. The apostles’ biggest challenges in the book of Acts concerned this new requirement to pass through doors, passing through the Land of the Canaanites and taking it as an inheritance for Christ.

Revelation 9:17 “…and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone.”

The Old Covenant concerned the fragrance of covered sin: perfect blood that founded a new house. The New Covenant concerned the fragrance of a new body (Eve), the filling of that house. It completes the story of the entire Bible as a full extension in human history of the perfect Creation Week.

In Revelation, both the resurrected bride and the unfaithful wife are pictured as smoke, ie, elders who rule in worship. Both are sacrificed in the first century and final fulfilment of Yom Kippur.

Revelation 15:8    The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from His power, and no one was able to enter the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed.

As with Saul and David, the end of the old administration meant the vindication of the new.

Revelation 19:3    Again they said, “Alleluia! Her smoke rises up forever and ever!”

For the Christians who had suffered at the hands of apostates for a full generation, the death of state-compromised Herodian worship was a sweet-smelling savour.

The truth is bigger than symbols. But modern evangelicals are so cerebral that they don’t teach the symbols. To understand the truths, we still need the symbols. Their withholding of these potent Scriptural elements, things that appeal to our “five senses,” is possibly the main reason the average modern Western Christian — and even those with theological degrees — still has baby teeth when it comes to much of the Bible.

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[1] This seems to make the palate the dome-like “crystal sea.” Perhaps then, seeing as we now know that the Revelation shows a change in administration from angelic elders for human ones, can we speculate that the created heaven has lost its baby teeth? The first century becomes the teething period of a more adult creation. Tooth and ivory concern judgment. This is the symbol behind the great white (ivory) throne of Solomon.
It is also interesting that if the right ear is the Table, it is Adam’s face facing “upwards” towards God, as an earthly mediator communicating with heaven. But with the Tabernacle as a complete body, Jesus has the seven stars of the Lampstand in His right hand. He is facing “downwards” as our heavenly Mediator. The minister, during worship, faces the front as part of the congregation, but faces the congregation as he brings the Word from heaven. The blood goes up and the Spirit comes down. Both are Christ.
[2] Peter Leithart, Living House, www.leithart.com

Day 1
So, Adam fouled the first Sabbath. He failed to be Light.

Day 2
Cain made a false exodus (with Abel as the Passover lamb) and went to “worship in the wilderness.” God marked him as a “covering.” Being “barren”, Cain built a city as a covering, but it was just like Adam’s figleaves. It was a phony firmament, a fabricated Covenant, a city built on the wrong sort of blood.

Day 3
His offspring built a counterfeit Tabernacle – in opposition to the worship at the Gate of Eden. This was a false Land, a false mountain, like Mount Gerizim became to the Samaritans. Lamech, as a false Moses, “ascended” not as a Lamb slain, but as an accuser, the incarnation of the serpent. But someone true ascended as Firstfruits: Enoch.

This brings us to Day 4. As in the Garden, and as in Israel’s wilderness, the test was harlotry.

Day 4
Satan was false “governing lights” in Eden. Due to Adam’s failure to judge the serpent as a ruler, Eve committed “harlotry.” It was unity with godlike power that bypassed death and resurrection. That is what we have in Genesis 6. Lamech ascended and sent the wrong spirit. It was not the spirit of comfort but the spirit of disobedience, an anti-Pentecost.

Adam’s divided kingdom consisted of the worship of Seth (Abel’s replacement) and the worship of Cain. This division should have brought death in the “wilderness.” Just as Jesus was divided into bread and wine and united again with greater government, Satan tried to put these two kingdoms back together without reference to death under the Law. Even though Lamech took capital punishment as a legal right, there was as yet no Phinehas with a spear to deal with the “intermarriage.” The resulting mighty men – ungodly rulers – were a greater government, for sure. They were a government of wolves, not shepherds. They were a Law unto themselves, the law of Lamech.

A similar death, the death of Israel in Babylon, finally reunited the northern and southern kingdoms as “Jews.” This was prefigured by the reformation under Josiah. The iconoclasm covered both kingdoms.

Jesus, as Josiah, “liturgically” united a divided world in his own body through death. Then He united Jew and Gentile, men and beasts, in that body.

The only way to truly leave Las Vegas, the fertile plains made barren through bloodshed, is by death. No wonder John refers to Herod’s Judah as Sodom and Egypt. We drink the cup of death willingly, as Christ did, or we drink it by coercion under God, as the Canaanite nations and Babylon did, and as the harlot of Judaism did. Either we fall down as dead men before God like the prophets, or we stagger and fall or are knocked down like the soldiers who arrested Jesus and guarded the tomb.

No one leaves Las Vegas without passing through the sanctions of the Covenant.

Day 5
The first cup brings unity, the Incense Altar, a multitude acting as one, flocks of birds and schools of fish. The second cup, unity without the death of obedience, always brings scattering. Noah, as Moses in Deuteronomy, repeats the true Law. In Noah’s day, the mighty men of “Trumpets” refused to heed his summoning call, and animal substitutes were taken instead. This Law was a cup of staggering, a rock of stumbling.

Day 6
The world passed through the Laver. As High Priest at Atonement, Noah represented the world as he passed through the veil. He was a branch from the old world to be replanted in a new earth, a Land washed clean of blood.

Day 7
“Noah” means rest. Tabernacles.

“And he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed.” Genesis 5:29

Compromise makes us “strong” but brittle. It is not the strength of integrity. The world should be united, but not on the world’s terms. The dominion of Cain, the kingdom of beasts, must submit to the Covenant first. Every knee shall bow.

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See also Blood and Soil.

One of the best things you get from James Jordan is a big handle on the Tabernacle.[1] It was a miniature of the creation. It was also a further development of the Garden of Eden, being more glorious than the Garden itself (the trees were now worked timber, and the wood was covered in precious metal).

Jordan’s theory that Satan was to be a tutor to Adam and Eve, but fell in the moment he deceived them, finds support in the Tabernacle layout. (Angels tutor God’s people throughout the Old Testament.) Satan was the secondary lightbearer, the Lampstand, facing north.

Adam was to be broken bread and poured out wine, the Face of the Man, facing south, the Table of Showbread (the facebread).

Between them, Eve, the mother of all living, was the Altar of Incense. As element 5, Day 5, she is a “multitude” in one body. She is awesome as an army with banners. Women possess all their ova from birth.[2]

So, we have Eve between the serpent and the Man in a tug-o’-war where Adam doesn’t even pick up the rope. It is victory by default for the serpent.

What is even more interesting is that the pillars the Lord told David to build at the Temple entry correspond to the Table and the Lampstand. Priests were anointed by Jachin, the northern pillar. Kings were anointed by Boaz, the southern pillar. Jordan points out that over time these bronze pillars would have weathered and become a shade of green. Here are the two great trees at the centre of the garden. Adam was given access to the Tree of Life (Jachin, priestly bread), and Satan offered access to the kingly Tree of Judicial Knowledge (Boaz, a king’s “decree” cup of wine). [3]

What was at stake was the future of humanity. Nazis, Communists and the radical left understand that education is the future. The future is stolen when children are removed from their believing parents (as happened recently in Sweden, I believe) to indoctrinate them.

Children are the future. Satan understood this. Through Adam’s failure as Covenant Head to judge Satan, the future was filled with widows and orphans. And in Adam’s place, Satan became the corrupt tutor of all living, the father of lies.

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[1] Jordan’s Garden of God lectures available here.
[2] The High Priest reflected this structure as well, with the 12 gemstones (tribes) on his chest. As a “better” Adam, he carried the children before God—on his bosom— as an advocate. For more on the High Priest as Tabernacle, see Gold, Onyx and Bdellium. For Greater Eve as a “Trumpets” army see Ish and Isha.
[3] The laver symbolised the “springs of water” under the garden, and the bronze altar the outlying land. At a more complex level, the Tabernacle layout also symbolised heaven and earth. See the diagram from Totus Christus in Trinitarian Judgments.

I saw in my dream, that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand again, and led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage. Now the man seemed very sad. He sat with his eyes looking down to the ground, and his hands folded together, and he sighed as if his heart would break.

Then said Christian, “Who is this?”

“Talk with him and see,” said the Interpreter.

“What used you to be?” asked Christian.

“I was once a flourishing professor, both in my own eyes, and also in the eyes of others,” answered the man. “I was on my way, as I thought, to the Celestial City and I was confident that I would get there.”

“But what did you do to bring yourself to this condition?” Christian asked.

“I failed to keep watch,” the man replied. “I followed the pleasures of this world, which promised me all manner of delights. But they proved to be an empty bubble. And now I am shut up in this iron cage—a man of despair who can’t get out.”

No further explanations were given. No one said who put him there. But the Interpreter whispered to Christian:

“Bear well in mind what you have seen.” [1]

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Another thought related to the ideas in Behind Closed Doors.

The whole aim of the construction process, whether in sex, foetal development, education, business, art, music, family or state government, is the ultimate revelation of a mature glory. We are given the opportunity to create, and that involves certain God-given freedoms. If the freedoms are abused, what we construct for ourselves is a cage. Lust is a cage. A dysfunctional family or state is a cage. Enforced egalitarian socio-economics is a cage. Undisciplined children are a cage.

Jesus laid down His life for this world, and the freedoms of western culture have been a direct outcome. In its final stages, we have rebelliously inverted each of these freedoms (including the economic ones) and turned both our Christian protection (including our God-given wealth) and Christian mandate into a cage. Ancient Israel did the same. Why does this inversion process seem such a logical path for fallen human nature?

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