Understanding the Two Tables

Another thought on Jesus’ “joke” in Matthew 24. In Menu for the the Dirty Birds, I wrote:

“For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.” Matthew 24:28

Tabernacles, as the final harvest of the year (grapes and olives), was also called “Ingathering.” Matthew 24 also follows the feast structure (twice), and Jesus uses this factor to make a terrifying joke.

As a holy priesthood, we are to be eaten by the world. But there are two Tables and we often confuse them.

The Aaronic priesthood was authorised to make sacrifices and to be sacrifices, standing face-to-face as mediators, as Facebread, the broken Adam, in the very presence of God. They were then to be bread to the nations. Mostly, they horded the bread.

Passover was a Table for Jews only. The Gentiles could only look on. [1] Tabernacles, however, was a Table for the nations. 70 bulls were sacrificed for the Gentiles (picturing the original 70 nations listed in Genesis 10)[2]. Gentiles were invited to join in the celebrations, picturing the body unified in the process leading up to AD70.

The Jewish leaders abused the “talent” God had given them. The very purpose of their nation from the beginning, besides carrying the promised “seed”, was to be a witness to Gentiles, a priesthood to the human race. Every year was to end in a combined Jew-Gentile “Godfest.”

However, the Herods had turned this on its head, just as the kings did before the exile. In Jesus’ time, the satanic Jewish leadership forbad eating with Gentiles (the same way the Closed Brethren will not even eat with other Christians today, let alone unbelievers). In their twisted thinking, they thought the very ministry God had given them would defile them. Instead, their refusal to eat with Gentiles was the outflow of what truly defiled them.

The defining feast for Herod’s “renewed” Judaism and finished Temple was “the biggest Passover ever” in AD 65. Millions of lambs were sacrificed. It should have been the biggest Tabernacles ever, so Jesus brought that about in AD70, turned on its head…

Bursting the elitist bubble

This other aspect of Jesus’ Tabernacles irony in Matthew 24 concerns the nature of this Holy Table that had become “a snare.” Since the Jews would not invite Gentiles to eat at this Table that God had prepared, God brought Gentiles to the Table anyway. The walls of Jerusalem held them at bay for three and a half years, during which Jews starved and some even resorted to cannibalism. Finally, the Gentiles broke in and totally consumed the city. The Old Covenant curses fell for the last time and brought about its end—forever. There is no longer Jew nor Gentile.

How does this apply to us? The Lord’s Table is exclusive. All are invited to eat on His terms. Repentance, baptism and membership of a church (accountability) are required. It is a call for judgment upon us, for fire to fall upon us as sacrifices. We are slain and resurrected for the world every week. This is not the time or place to sit around informally at cafe tables. “Cafe church” brings confusion and invites destruction. Church, liturgy and church music are supposed to be different from the world.

But outside of this, we must be eating with unbelievers. We eat with them in their houses and ours “on their terms”. That’s the place for “Cafe Church.” As the Lord is food on our Table, we are the food on the godless tables of the world. This age is leading us to the final great Tabernacles, the end of the believer/unbeliever division, just as AD70 was the end of the Jew/Gentile bipolarity. [3] We are the bridge. But the two Tables must not be confused.

Even in their proselytising, the Jews got their two Tables mixed up, and very often we do too. Jewish exclusivism always brought barrenness, scarcity. It left the righteous begging for bread, so God “injected” believing Gentiles as new blood, epitomised in Caleb, Rahab, Ruth and others. When Israel was faithful, the kings of the world brought their glory into the kingdom. (Note this exact scenario in Acts 11:28-30).

Either way, we are eaten

If we insist on a policy of “Eat Local”, and confuse the Lord’s Table with the Love Feast, the Gentiles eventually come not as guests but as scavengers. They tear up the Temple stones looking for melted gold. Our church buildings become cafes, B&Bs and hair salons.

We are not to be simply sheltered (Passover), but to be a shelter (Tabernacles). Snobbery never attracted anyone humble, did it? [4]

Comments invited.

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[1] See Looking in Faith.
[2] This followed the single bull sacrificed for the priesthood at Atonement.
Bull – High Priest /  Goats – Israel / Bulls – nations. Again perhaps this is Word, Sacrament, Government.
[3] See Three Babylons.
[4] For a fantastic illustration of this principle applied to commerce, see Ben Merckle’s Buy Local.

Ending the False Dichotomy of Blood and Spirit

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

The Old Testament is a bloody book. Beginning with Adam’s “dissection” to build Eve and the animals the Lord made into tunics, it culminates in Revelation with the massacre of saints under Herod/Nero (Revelation 14) and then the massacre of Jews under Vespasian and Titus.

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[1] I highly recommend James Jordan’s Crisis, Opportunity and the Christian Future.

“We are witnessing the end of Western Civilization. The present crisis in our culture is the greatest since the first century. Many commentators on the present scene believe that the entire world is moving into a period of “neo-tribalism.”

In this striking book, theologian James B. Jordan argues that this cultural change is part of God’s ongoing plan for humanity, the plan by which the Holy Spirit grows God’s daughter, humanity, into a fit bride for His Son.

The present crisis provides a tremendous opportunity for the Christian Church to challenge and transform the world as never before. Here, Jordan points to how this can be done.

While many view the present crisis with dismay, and are looking backwards to older traditions, Jordan argues that God is calling us forward, and that the Bible points the way.”

Acacias, not Mulberries

So, acacia wood is at the heart of the Holy furniture. The Tabernacle is a wilderness world glorified by Spirit-filled men and brought into the tent of God,[1] under the wing of Boaz, under the friendly firmament of a new Covenant, under the great tree that grows to shelter the nations.

As this tree, the Tabernacle was cruciform and daubed with blood. Jacob’s ladder was a bloody tree to heaven.[2]  It is the cruciform man, Jesus. As with His mother, Israel, He has a crown of stars, warrior children. Angels are the stars of the Old Testament; the saints are the stars (“lights”) of the new (Daniel 8:10, 12:3; Phil. 2:15).

In the book of Numbers, the tribes were arranged around the Tabernacle, the door to God’s throne, in twelve constellations. They moved across the wilderness like the stars across the night sky. With their campfires around the Shekinah, they were a crown of glory for their King, a Pentecostal Eve army for a blood-covered Adam.

This adds another level both to 2 Samuel 5 and to the warnings to Israel before the Jewish war. In 2 Samuel 5, it was a stirring in the tops of the acacia trees. In Luke 21, it was a stirring above the Holy City. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Ernest L. Martin:

“Christ Jesus told the apostles that when they (or any of the saints) would see Jerusalem surrounded by armies then let the people of God flee from Jerusalem and Judea. ‘When you shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh’ (Luke 21:20).

The meaning of this verse has puzzled many people. How can it be that when Jerusalem is completely surrounded (encircled on all sides) with armies, then the people of God are told to flee the whole area of Judea (of which Jerusalem is a part)? If this is the strategy, then it seems that Christ is saying to surrender to the armies. But this is not what Christ meant in his warning.

In actual fact, this prophecy of Christ Jesus was fulfilled to the letter in the period just before the war that destroyed Jerusalem from A.D.67 to 70. We have the eyewitness account of Josephus himself (he was the Jewish historian who accompanied the Roman armies to Jerusalem and saw or reported all that occurred in Judaea within that three and a half year event that occurred in the heavens that could not be identified as having its origin on earth. This was clearly a ‘sign’ from heaven and I have not the slightest hesitation in stating that it was an exact fulfillment of what Christ Jesus said would occur that is recorded in Luke 21:20. Note what Josephus said happened just before the war with the Romans commenced.

On the twenty-first of the month Artemisium [the last day of the 2nd Passover season In A.D.66, there appeared a miraculous phenomenon, passing belief. Indeed, what I am about to relate would, I imagine, have been deemed a fable, were it not for the narratives of eyewitnesses and for the subsequent calamities which deserved to be so signalized. For before sunset throughout all parts of the county [everywhere throughout Judea] chariots were seen in the air and armed battalions hurtling through the clouds and encompassing the cities (War,VI.5.3 or Loeb VI.298, emphasis mine).

This is the very thing that Christ Jesus said to watch for. And then (about two weeks later) Josephus tells us:

Moreover, at the feast which is called Pentecost, the priests on entering the inner court of the temple by night, as their custom was in the discharge of their ministrations, reported that they were conscious, first of a commotion and a din, and after that of a voice as of a host, ‘We are departing hence’ (War, VI.209,300).

With these two signs what did the Christians in Jerusalem and Judea do? Eusebius tells us that this is the time they began to leave the region because of the command of Christ and went to a city called Pella on the east side of the Jordan River (Ecclesiastical History, III.5). They and the apostles obtained safety from the holocaust that soon enflamed Jerusalem and Judaea.

Chariots and armed forces seen in the skies all over Judaea and encompassing the cities of the Jews was similar to times recorded in the early history of Israel. Angelic powers (in this case, good angels) accompanied the armies of Israel when it was the normal period (in ancient Times) for hostilities to occur. The Bible says: ‘And it came to pass, after the year had expired, at the time angels go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon” (II Samuel 11:1). The King James translators (and most modern ones) read the Hebrew as ‘kings,’ not ‘angels.’ But there is no reason whatever for reading the text as ‘kings.’ The verse was intended to show that angelic powers were there to aid Israel in their battles when they went to war.

A further reference (which even corroborates angelic connections with wars or the preparations for wars on earth) is 11 Samuel 5:23-24. God said to David that when he heard “the sound of a going [forth] in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you [David] shall bestir yourself [to war].” This swishing sound in the tops of the trees of a turbulent waving action of the wind was recognized by David as caused by the Lord and his angelic hosts going to battle with David (see also Genesis 32:1.3 and II Kings 6:17 about angels accompanying God). But in A.D.66, instead of helping Israel win the war with the Romans that the people of Judaea were about to start, the angelic hosts were seen in the clouds in chariots and as armed soldiers encompassing the cities of Judaea and enclosing them on all sides for capitulation. This is precisely what Christ Jesus said to watch for in his Olivet prophecy.”[3]

A stirring in the tops of the acacias meant the Incense Altar army, the fragrant cloud of the Lord of Hosts, was on the move to scatter God’s enemies.[4] After AD70, the end of the Old Covenant and the installation of a human government in heaven [5], it is the saints who are the cloud of glory.[6]

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[1] See Unashamed Artisans. 
[2] See Servanthood Dominion.
[3] From Are UFO’s Real?
[4] This is exactly the same picture as David’s five smooth stones going before him. See The Holy Headbutt.
[5] See Jesus’ New Broom.
[6] The word Shekinah is feminine. The city of God, greater Eve, is a tent for the light of the Lamb. For more on long hair as “female” glory see Power on Her Head. and for the New Jerusalem as a robe see Healing in His… Tassels?

“It is most remarkable that not only in Revelation do we find large patterns of evidences befitting the AD 60s era, but also even many smaller details. It it surely no accidental similarity that allows us to find not only particular personages (Nero), cultural structures (the Jewish Temple), and historical events (the Neronic persecution and the Jewish War) that harmonise well with the Neronic era, but even time-frames for these that fill out the picture of the era of which John wrote. It can be no other than in the mid- to late AD 60s.”

Kenneth Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell, p. 255-256