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“What is the meaning of ”one is taken and the other left’? This is commonly thought to refer to the rapture — one taken up into heaven, and the other left on earth to kick himself for not praying the sinner’s prayer when he had a chance. On the bright side, there will be a lot of free, unmanned cars available” (Heaven Misplaced, p. 104).

Matthew 24 is a prediction of the Covenant curses falling upon Judah for the last time. One being taken and the other left has to do with displacement. Titus enslaved the best Jews and took them in ships to Egypt.

“And the Lord will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you, ‘You shall never see it again.’ And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.” (Deuteronomy 28:68)

It’s one thing to get the historical fulfilment correct, but there’s a whole lot more going on here. In His speech, as the fulfilment of Israel, Jesus is working through the Bible Matrix, a combination of the Creation week, the weekly and annual Feasts, and the process of Dominion. This means that He is using examples of all the previous historical Covenant structures to make His point. The Covenant cycle has snowballed through history and picked up a lot of events on its way.

At this point, He’s using Atonement symbols (Covenant Sanctions). So (if you have a copy of Bible Matrix) you can see how He’s linking many previous Sanctions events together to describe the oncoming storm. [1] Visually, it looks like this:

Atonement concerns the distribution of the Covenant blessing and the Covenant curse. It is a two-edged sword, vengeance and redemption, two goats. Jesus’ words looked forward, but they also looked backwards in time. Based on that, what can we see beyond the (now) historical fulfilment?

Who were the first two men working in the field? One slew the other, but only the slain one was left behind. The other was exiled as the second goat. The blood of Abel would finally be avenged — and on that generation.

Then we have two women grinding at the mill. This is often a euphemism for sex (as is the threshingfloor – Pentecost. At the first Pentecost, Israel committed Covenant harlotry.). The question is, who is the true Bride? Lamech failed to decide. Jesus, like Solomon, wasn’t going to fail to pick the true mother.

We have a choosing of the true Adam (working the Land) and a choosing of the true Eve (the childbearer), head and body, the two approaches of the High Priest on the Day of Coverings. God was coming to judged the Temple, and, as in Eden, there was nowhere to hide.

It’s architectural, too. Adam is outside the house, Eve is inside. All these types are wrapped up in Jacob and Esau. Esau took two wives (“daughters of men”) and he worked outside. Jacob, who did not despise the Covenant, was inside the tent: Esau the bloody bronze altar and Jacob the fragrant golden altar, who had to wear goat skin to smell like… the field.

Matthew 24 is about the end of Herodian, that is, Idumean (Edomite), worship. It was the end of Cain, the end of Lamech, and the end of Esau. Jesus would return as the True Husband to single out the true mother and the true brothers.

Structure and architecture aren’t everything. But for Moses, the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, and their audiences, they were the first thing to be aware of not only when composing a text but when hearing a text. Sadly, often it’s the last thing we look at, so we have trouble figuring out what room we’re in and whether something is a bed or a table.

It’s the reason many speeches are so long. The prophet is building a house. Here, Jesus is tearing it down.

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[1] Another example discussed elsewhere on here is Jesus’ reference to vultures gathering. It is an ironic take on the Feast of Booths (aka Ingathering). Because Israel would not put food on the table for the nations, she would be the food on the table. The Gentiles would be unclean scavengers instead of footwashed guests.)

But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?” (Matthew 12:25)

ACT I – An End to Sacrifice

“In AD70, the ‘office’ of Jew was finished forever (there are no more Jews in God’s eyes) and the “office” of Gentile was also finished. The middle wall was broken down. Any distinctions now are merely human distinctions.”

All Christians know that, in the death of Jesus Christ, God put an end to animal sacrifices, at least legally.

“Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.” (Daniel 9:27)

Although Jesus’ death made animal sacrifice redundant, this wasn’t fulfilled in the “week” in the middle of which Christ died. Jesus’ forgiveness of His murderers left that week at a three-and-a-half. In God’s longsuffering towards Israel, they were not cut off “like Sodom” but given another generation. As this prophecy played out in the first century, the week in which the Covenant was “ratified … with many” was the final seven years, in the middle of which a “firstfruits” of martyrs left Sodom without any righteous remaining in it—ripe for judgment. [1]

In their rejection of the atonement achieved by the Son of God, the Jews kept the sacrifices going for another few decades. But as He had done with the previous Temple, God brought the hordes in as a flood to wipe out the sacrilege.

Revelation shows the Herodian harlot (a corporate Herodias) being destroyed by the Roman beast. But then the empire beast is destroyed. This confuses conservative commentators because they don’t understand the four empires as corners of God’s throne, four guardians for God’s people who turn bad, one by one, and are replaced. Rome didn’t attack the Church “outright” (as the Church) until Nero’s reign. In the Revelation, after failing to destroy the firstfruits Church with Jewish persecution and then false doctrine, this is the point where Satan calls up a new beast from the Sea. [2]

So, Rome was not destroyed in AD66-70, but it was most certainly all shook up. Four emperors in one year ended the old system. Jordan observes that the subsequent emperors were of a different nature. The empire’s office as a guardian for God was finished. In AD70, the “office” of Jew was finished forever (there are no more Jews in God’s eyes) and the office of Gentile was also finished. [3] The middle wall was broken down. Any distinctions now are merely human distinctions.

In Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom, Peter Leithart makes the crucial observation that the first Christian emperor “desacralized” the pagan world through, among other things, a “baptism” of public space.

Paganism still had its place, but temples were increasingly overshadowed by large, and numerous, churches. (Leithart, p. 125)

As is ever the case, cultus is the foundation for culture. The unjust vengeance of Lamech led to the massacres in the days of Noah. The bloody rites of the pagans led to institutionalized bloodshed in the arena.

Combats in the arena reenacted the founding sacrifice of Remus by Romulus. According to Rome’s founding myth, Romulus “killed his brother for jumping over the walls which would define Rome and separate it from the non-Roman.” (Leithart, p. 192.)

The arena was also an instrument of imperial policy in the provinces. The spread of Roman power was marked architecturally by the spread of  amphitheaters. Not only were the arenas — built in a distinctively Roman style — visual reminders of the sometimes distant power of the emperor, but the bloody combats that took place on the sands reminded viewers of Rome’s willingness to use violence and gave restless provincials pause. Arenas embodied the empire; the gladiatorial shows and their amphitheaters were the “imperial process in microcosm.” (Leithart, p. 194).

Constantine’s discouragement of pagan offerings, and his promotion of the teachings of Christ, also put an end to the human sacrifices in the arenas. Criminals would no longer be punished by “serving” in the amphitheaters, but through a bloodless exile to the mines. (p.196.)

Constantine’s laws were more often Christian in effect than in intent. Outlawing gladiatorial shows struck down one of the main institutions for the propagation of Roman values, culture and power and was more transformative than Constantine could have known. (p. 304.)

So, the end of sacrifice in the Garden (through Jesus), led to an end of sacrifice in the Land (the final “Old Covenant” martyrs, the apostolic Church). This is what eventually led to an end of sacrifice in the oikoumene, the first century World.

[In Galatians 4,] Paul radically flattens out the distinction between Jew and Gentile. Unlike in Romans, here he does not say that all are under “sin” but rather that all are in bondage to the stoicheia. For Gentiles, as much as Jews, this bondage meant adherence to animal sacrifice, the keeping of days, the avoidance of contamination. (Leithart, p. 325.)

The “baptism” of Jesus and the “baptism” of the firstfruits church led to the “baptism” of Rome.

ACT II – The Baptism of Rome

“This ‘baptism of Rome’ was not in fact the investiture of Rome at all but an investiture of the Church.”

Through Constantine, Rome was baptized, and sacrifice in all these senses either came to an end or began to. Constantine stopped the slaughter of Christians. He refused to sacrifice at the Capitol during his triumph in 312. He ended sacrifice for officers of his empire, thus opening imperial administration to Christians, and eventually outlawed sacrifice entirely. He closed a few temples where sacrifices were being offered, though he permitted various forms of divination to continue… With Constantine, the Roman Empire became officially a desacrificial polity. If he did not entirely expunge sacrifice, Constantine displaced sacrifice frrm the center of Roman life and pushed it to the margins and into dark corners. Constantine’s reign marked the beginning of the end of sacrifice. He took away the smoky food of the not-gods (Galatians 4:8), and the demons began to atrophy. (Leithart, p. 328).

Leithart’s argument is that the Church did not “fall” in the fourth century, seduced by the principalities and powers. The principalities and powers that structure the world are not simply temporarily useful, potentially dangerous and ultimately doomed. Instead, they are there to be transformed from within. In effect, Constantine replaced the old sacrificial system with a new one. In a cultic sense, Rome was “decivilized” and “recivilized.” It was indeed the death and resurrection of an empire at its very heart. Leithart observes that Constantine welcomed into his city another city.

Christ’s is the founding sacrifice of the new city, the eschatological city. But that sacrifice is perpetuated by the body in mutual love and service… By virtue of this sacrifice, the Church does justice… When the Roman world passed through its “baptism” from bondage to the stoicheia, Constantine eliminated sacrifices to the gods in the earthly city and thereby renounced any claim that the Roman city was just a city. (Leithart, p. 330)

Through Constantine, the death of “brother Jesus” as a better Abel at the hands of the Cainite Herods exposed and usurped the death of Remus as a foundation for identity. The deaths of the apostles eventually exposed and usurped the arena as a foundation for culture. Identity and culture no longer needed appeasement. For Constantine, the future no longer needed to be constantly “bought.” The price was paid once and for all. The city could exist because the New Jerusalem was unassailable.

The baptism of Rome was indeed supposed to lead to the baptism of Romans, but not simply because they were Romans. While I agree with Dr. Leithart’s eye-opening reassessment of Constantine, I believe his adherence to the erroneous practice of paedobaptism causes him to misunderstand the baptism of Rome.

In the end it all comes round to baptism, specifically to infant baptism. Rome was baptized in the fourth century. Eusebian hopes notwithstanding, it was not instantly transformed into the kingdom of heaven. It did not immediately become the city of God on earth. Baptism never does that. It is not meant to. Baptism sets a new trajectory, initiates a new beginning, but every beginning is the beginning of something. Through Constantine, Rome was baptized into a world without animal sacrifice and officially recognized the true sacrificial city, the one community that does offer a foretaste of the final kingdom. Christian Rome was in its infancy, but that is hardly surprising. All baptisms are infant baptisms.

Yoder is famed for his patience, but in dismissing Constantine and the world he left behind, his patience failed. For Yoder, Rome was not radically Christian, Rome’s adherence to the faith was infantile, and because of that, he reasons, it was not Christian at all but apostate. He failed, as Augustine said against Pelagius, to give due weight to “the interim, the interval between the remission of sins which takes place in baptism, and the permanently established sinless state in the kingdom that is to come, this middle time [tempus hoc medium] of prayer, while [we] must pray, ‘Forgive us our sins.’” He failed to acknowledge that all—Constantine, Rome, ourselves—stand in medial time, and yet are no less Christian for that.

What can we expect in this middle time? Not much, Yoder thinks. He says that the project of Christianizing the state is doomed. The time when that could happen has long ago passed away. If he is right, we are facing nothing short of apocalypse. I believe that here too Yoder is wrong, and that we can escape apocalypse. But this can only happen on certain conditions: only through reevangelization, only through the revival of a purified Constantinianism, only by the formation of a Christically centred politics, only through fresh public confession that Jesus’ city is the model city, his blood the only expiating blood, his sacrifice the sacrifice that ends sacrifice. An apocalypse can be averted only if modern civilisation, like Rome, humbles itself and is willing to come forward to be baptized. (Leithart, p. 341-342)

Dr Leithart is, to some degree, longing for “the good old days.” He sees the future of Christianity in a “purified Constantinianism,” with infant baptism as the sacramental key. Yet it was precisely infant baptism that led to its failure.

Baptism is a new beginning, but it is not a birth “according to the flesh.” It is a second birth, an investiture with authority following submission to the Law of the Gospel. The end of sacrifice was only the baptism of Rome’s cultic heart, and Rome’s sacred heart was now the Christian Church, which had submitted to suffering and was now being exalted. This “baptism of Rome” was not in fact the investiture of Rome at all but an investiture of the Church.

What the investiture of the Church did, under Constantine, was put the entire empire officially under the sound of the Gospel. It condemned the entire empire to the death of repentance. But that is not submission to the gospel. It was the label of regeneration without the regeneration. This meant that Christendom eventually ran out of steam, out of Spirit. The culture is dying because it lost its cultic heart. And it lost its sacred cultic heart because paedobaptism distorted the very definition of what a Christian is. It confused culture with cultus because it replaced the walls of the New Jerusalem with the walls of the old one. It used baptism as a carnal, hereditary division (culture) rather than as the mark of repentance and faith (cultus). It introduced a new circumcision, invented a new version of the wall which the Son of God eradicated in His death and resurrection.

Worse, the conflation of citizenship with baptism through paedobaptism actually replaced the true Christian cultic heart with a false one. God is in control of history, and, as Dr Leithart demonstrates, Constantinianism was the need of the day. But what the invention of paedobaptism brought about was a reintroduction of pagan sacrifice in a very subtle way. It was, in fact, an apostasy, a falling back into the old ways, a “resacralizing” in a way that is entirely foreign to the New Testament. Paul called the first century Circumcision “the mutilation,” possibly referring to the self-cutting of the priests of Baal (Philippians 3:2). They attempted to make themselves acceptable to God without obedience to God. Although human sacrifice was never commanded by God, circumcision was always a symbolic child sacrifice, the real blood being shed by a substitutionary “innocent” victim, a redeeming animal. The priests of Baal sacrificed children to secure the blessings of their lord upon their culture. It was a “stimulation” of the natural order to achieve the supernatural. The Ethics of the Covenant are replaced with Magic. [4] Dr Leithart sees infant baptism as a “cutting off” of the flesh by water, but it is in practice an offering of flesh, an attempted “stimulation” of the natural in plain disobedience to God. [5] What our children need is the gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17).

In Christ, circumcision or uncircumcision, that is, hereditary divisions, became nothing (1 Corinthians 7:19). According to Paul, heredity is a pile of shit (Philippians 3:8). Paedobaptism, like circumcision, is a hereditary distinction, and heredity is nothing, unless that heredity brings with it the hearing of the gospel. But hearing is not believing.

In Christ, all hereditary divisions, all genealogical divisions, were wiped away. In Christ, Jew and Gentile became one new Man, but not through generation. It is only through regeneration. A Christian nation is a great blessing, but, contra Leithart, a Christian nation is not one where everyone is baptized. A Christian nation is one under the sound of the Gospel, ruled by the baptized, the “invested.” The goal is not worldwide baptism. The goal is worldwide regeneration-and-baptism.

I have argued recently that paedobaptism is “another gospel.” [6] It usurps the place of the gospel as the “first contact.” There must be the bloody death of a cut heart, and repentance, before there can be the resurrection of water. In the approach to God, the outer border is always blood; the inner/upper is always water. By placing the “water” boundary at the edges of the empire instead of at the boundary of the regenerate within the empire, Constantine’s Christian state sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

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ACT III – The Corpse of Constantine

“…the nations that adhered to Christendom as tribes rather than as individuals never forswore their love for their own ethnicity. On the contrary, they longed for eternal life in their own Gentile skin rather than in the Kingdom of God promised by Jesus Christ.”

Since AD70, any “holy” distinctions now are merely human distinctions. The boundaries of the New Jerusalem are defined not by flesh but by faith. We can see this within Israel at the microcosmic level: priesthood and people, with a boundary of water, the Laver. What Christ did was expand this “Land” model to encompass the World. Outside of credobaptism, there are to be no other boundaries recognized by the Church of Christ.

Paedobaptism is a fundamental misunderstanding of this act. It sees no fundamental change in the nature of the Covenant community, and so, seeking the same “Baalistic” carnal security of a boundary of blessing that is visible to the naked eye, it ties the boundary of Spirit to the boundary of family. Instead of “going viral,” the Gospel is locked up in Adamic family cells. Or worse, it is locked up in the boundary of the state. But the Gospel won’t be restrained. It not only transcends all human boundaries and distinctions (because the eyes of God no longer recognize them) it destroys them.

The body created by Constantine was only ever another boundary to be crossed. The investiture of Christ at His ascension led to the death and resurrection of Israel (the firstfruits, the first resurrection). The investiture of Israel led to the death and resurrection of the Jew-Gentile Church under Roman power: Garden, Land, World.

But God works in fractals. The investiture of the Christian Church under Constantine would inevitably lead to the destruction of Constantinianism. The Spirit is always working to break the old wine skins. How does He do this? He does it virally, that is, through regenerate individuals, the true baptism.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to see things objectively. I have quoted an atheist concerning baptism. [7] Now it’s time to hear from a Jew. In It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations, David P. Goldman writes:

Neither Christian nor Jew cares much about the logic of salvation. The soul stands in fear and trembling, sick unto death—which is the same as sin—and reaches out for grace. The Jews do this as a kinship community—Blutsgemeinschaft, in Franz Rozenzweig’s world. Christians must do so as individuals, because as Christians they abandon the doomed ties of Gentile kinship and instead join the assembly (ekklesia) that calls them out from among the nations.

The remnants of Christian state religion rot and stink on the dying continent of Europe. Christianity cannot persist except as a continuing revival, a recurring conversion—as a sequence of singular events rather than as an orderly process.

Awaiting execution in Hitler’s prisons, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that, in a world come of age, the Christian religion no longer could exist as organized practice but only as an expression of individual conscience. America was created for precisely this purpose, to replace state religion on the European model with a religion of individual conscience. Such a religion must be schismatic, multisectarian, short on doctrine but long on inspiration. America’s kaleidoscope of Protestant denominations, so bewildering to Europeans, constitutes the only type of milieu in which Christianity has flourished during the past generation. Although Christian communities are burgeoning throughout the world, they seem to succeed best in emulation of the American version. With right the Vatican may defend the record of the Spanish inquisition [on the premise that, under state religion, heresy implies disloyalty to the state], but it alters not a jot or tittle of the awful sentence—oblivion—that history has passed on European Christianity…

All nationalism worships God in the carnival mirror of its own reflection. The exception is the Jewish nation, which understands itself to exist because God called it to his service. As Franz Rosenzweig observed, once the Gentile nations embrace Christianity, they abandoned their ancient fatalism regarding the inevitable extinction of their tribe. It is the God of Israel who first offers eternal life to humankind, and Christianity extended Israel’s promise to all. But the nations that adhered to Christendom as tribes rather than as individuals never forswore their love for their own ethnicity. On the contrary, they longed for eternal life in their own Gentile skin rather than in the Kingdom of God promised by Jesus Christ.

After Christianity taught them the election of Israel, the Gentiles coveted election for themselves and desired that their own people be the chosen people. That set ethnocentric nationalism in conflict both with the Jews—the descendants of Abraham in the flesh—and with the Church, which holds itself to be the new People of God.

Christian universal empire, from Charlemagne in AD800 to the Habsburgs in 1914, was by definition multinational, if not antinational. The Christians were the ekklesia, those called out of the nations, and only a truly universal elite could rule them…

Nationalism was to be suppressed. That is why the sixteenth century church did not tolerate translation of the scriptures into the vernacular… [But] Catholic universal empire, the “prison of the nations” in its nineteenth century Habsburg expression, ultimately was a failure. By contrast, the United States, a melting-pot nation of immigrants, achieved a transcendent kind of universality and thereby became the world’s dominant power. (pp. 42-49)

Bonhoeffer’s “expression of individual conscience” is anathema to the Federal Vision. On the one hand, we have Yoder decrying state religion, and on the other we have Leithart calling for a return to it. We have Leithart promoting the Church on earth as “one” and Yoder asserting it should only ever be a sort of underground “many.” What if they are both right and both wrong?

What it boils down to, possibly, is the failure to understand the sacred heart of the Shekinah, the incarnation, the glory of God dwelling in flesh. Leithart believes in a carnal (hereditary) baptism, a “one” in flesh, a unity based on blood. It clumsily identifies itself with Covenant at the cost of a true identification with Christ.. [8] Yoder, I assume, believes in a “one” that is only one in Spirit that cannot, or should not, ever achieve a governmental status.

The truth is that “Rome” itself cannot be baptized until the final day, the day of the “investiture” of the World. But until then, the Church is indeed already one, despite appearances, working like yeast within the nations. There will indeed be “growth rings” along the way, such as the fourth century, but they will only ever be an incomplete picture of the final reality. There will always be an “us and them” demarcation, a baptism, and it must never be confused with a human distinction of any kind, whether familial, national, cultural or international. That sort of baptism is the kiss of death to whatever parasite it was attached to. This is because human distinctions cannot by definition be universal.

Yoder doesn’t have a vision, let alone a federal (Covenant) one. Dr Leithart’s Federal Vision, being practically ethnocentric, simply isn’t big enough. If the Federal Vision doesn’t get “de-sacralized” at some point, it will take its place in the abyss relegated by the death and resurrection of Christ to all the “stoicheian” institutions of history.

A Constantinianism that is truly purified would be a Constantinianism without paedobaptism. In the long run, all paedobaptism can do is delineate another doomed tribe.

But the truly catholic Church marches on, and there is no locked door through which it cannot pass, no human institution it cannot transcend, and no boundary it cannot cross.

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[1] See The End of Shadows.
[2] See James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel.
[3] See The Future of Israel Re-examined.
[4] See Ray Sutton, That You May Prosper, Chapter 3, “Ethics” (p. 59ff) [PDF] and Baal’s Stimulus Package.
[5] See Cutting Off Flesh by Water.
[6] See Another Gospel – 1.
[7] See also An Atheist ‘Gets’ Baptism.
[8] See Another Gospel – 2.

Some readers of Bible Matrix get it straight away. Some get it after a while. Some will never get it. I was thinking it’s a bit like those “autostereograms” that were really popular a few years ago. I was one of the people who stared and stared and stared for years and couldn’t see the 3D images. When I finally did see one, it was a medium-to-large brontosaurus. How did I miss that?

Identifying the Bible Matrix is the same. You have to look at the text cross-eyed. If there is enough of a correspondence, your literary mind will align the two structures. The text of the Bible is architecture. It is a temple built row by row. This is not eisegesis. It is simply a definition of exegesis you hadn’t previously been aware of. It is systematic typology.

Reader Dan Isadore wrote me:

Your book Bible Matrix came in the mail yesterday.  Some things rattling around in my brain:

1.  P.32-33.  I’m not making the connection between these pages and some of the chiasms you draw out in other parts of the book. For instance, p.73: You begin talking about Adam in Creation and then move to Abel and Cain in Division. Fair enough. But then you speak of Lamech, Enoh, Seth and Enoch in Ascension.  I’m not tracking how you connects these guys with Ascension, especially because Lamech does not ascend to God. And how do Seth and Enoch bringing the law connect to Ascension? I get even more confused as I move on in this chiasm with Testing, Maturity, Conquest, and Glorification. It just seems like the simplicity that you present on p.32-33 falls through in many of these examples you give throughout the book. Could you help me to understand these terms more fully? And maybe make more explicit the way in which they logically relate to each other?

2. How deep and wide do you see this “DNA” that you speak of?  You seem to see it all over the place in Scripture. I can see your big picture: that postmillenialism is written all over Scripture in a typological way. But some of these more minute patterns that you are seeing just seem to be forced to me. Perhaps that is because my eyes are untrained in this method.  But if someone like me, who is familiar with theological work ranging from R.C. Sproul and John Piper to Leslie Newbigin and Tom Torrance, is having a hard time grasping this very introductory book, how is the average Joe on the street supposed to be able to see these intricate connections that you are seeing?

How do you know where these patterns are in Scripture and where they are not? Where do they start and where do they end?  At how many levels of the text (whole scripture, testaments, books, characters lives, events, etc.) are they found?  And how do you know if they are there?  Is it more of trial and error than anything else?

Thanks for the interaction!

My reply:

The best way to understand Adam to Noah is to see it as an expansion of the initial ministry of Adam. That original “word” has taken on flesh. Eve’s “harlotry” with the serpent becomes race-wide.

So the ascension is the set-up of new worship. Ascension is the approach of the Covenant “head” to receive the Law on the mountain and build a new house. But the kingdom is divided. Seth replaces Abel as head of the true Covenant. Lamech is the head of a false covenant. It takes more than one person to cover all the themes attached to Ascension until we get to Jesus.

To tell you the truth, initially I didn’t understand the significance of Lamech etc. until I had seen later structures (although Enoch’s ascension was obvious, of course!) See the articles on Genesis here.

If you think these are minute, wait till you see Totus Christus! Yes it is all over the place. A few are quite subtle, but I think that when 5 or 6 parts of the seven fall into place, one can quite confidently say it was the author’s intention. In Revelation, the entire book follows the structure as a whole. But then 1-5 and 1-11 and 12-19 and 20-22 also follow the structure. Then each of these sections has the same structures within it. I found I was just ticking the boxes after a while. It explains the order of the subject matter perfectly — beyond question as far as I am concerned.

Most theologians work like engineers and technicians. The Bible simply isn’t built that way. This method is the analysis of repeated themes in a repeated structure. It is more like music or movie or literary analysis. But it takes a while to get used to the symbol language of the Bible. Perhaps get into some Jordan lectures, but more simply, get really familiar with the one on page 35. That’s the key.

I’ve found that some people struggle with it and others get it right away. Depends on how your brain works I suppose.

After a while you do get to recognise them easily. Sure, there are some in Totus Christus that are a bit iffy, but not in Bible Matrix. As you go through it you should become more familiar with the process, and all the common themes that repeatedly get attached to each point. There is a consistency — it is not scientific but poetic. However, it is consistent.

Daniel again:

I sure do appreciate all of this help! It was funny… today after writing you I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had written. So I spent some time going back over the first 6 chapters.  And then something just clicked. I started to see it! This is right on: “Most theologians work like engineers and technicians. The Bible simply isn’t built that way. This method is the analysis of repeated themes in a repeated structure. It is more like music or movie or literary analysis.” Something just snapped into place and I started to realize just that fact (something that I’ve known for a while now but haven’t be able to quite get into my system).

It also helped when I figured out that Division, Ascension, and Maturity were primarily about the “Mediator” (singular) and not necessarily about the ones who came out of the Division. Didn’t pick that up until the second time through though, and reading much more slowly. I assumed too much the first time.

Anyhow, after reading earlier today I have to admit that I really do believe you are onto something significant. Looking forward to digesting more of your text, and then diving into Totus Christus afterward. That is much more in-depth I imagine?

Thanks again!

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Click on the picture above for the large version. You may see the Tomb of Cyrus. If not, this is what you’re looking for.

See also:
Jordan’s Musical Hermeneutics
Downsampling the Word
Technicians and Intuitions
Hermeneutical Asperger’s

Part 1 here.

One thing the Bible Matrix demonstrates is the nature of history. Sure, it repeats itself. Everyone knows that. But our personal histories are microcosms of the lives and deaths of families, churches, nations and empires. Reading the Bible is like looking through a glass onion.

The structure of events in the primeval Garden are replayed in Cain and Abel, then in the sons of God. Garden; Land; World. Most Holy; Holy; Courts. Word; Sacrament; Government. Heaven; Mediator; Earth.

The pattern of creation was repeated in Adam and Eve, Word becoming flesh, but instead of the building of a greater Tabernacle out of raw materials, the dust devil of sin grew into a tornado, multiplying in speed and size, collecting material and taking on a body of its own—the entire race but for Noah.

Jesus reversed the pattern in the Garden. But it took all of the Old Testament to teach us what Jesus would actually do. We need to analyse all the occurrences of the pattern, all the different ways in which it was played out in history, to comprehend His redemptive achievement in all its glorious facets.

Just as death entered the world by the act of one man, it literally took a cast of thousands to portray the work of the Second Man. Cain slew Abel at the cross. Eve bore Seth as a replacement son in the resurrection. Enoch walked with God and was not at the ascension. Jonathan abdicated the Old Covenant and was resurrected as a New Covenant robe in David. Jephthah and David conquered as “Conquest” Land kings but had to die and be resurrected as “Glorification” World kings in Samson and Solomon respectively.

By the time of Jesus, the sin that was dealt with in the exile had again taken on a corporate body. God had divided and then scattered Solomon’s kingdom in judgment, but as God does, He scattered the people like seed. This enlarged His field. Jesus came to harvest this greater field. But the body of sin was also now much larger. The compromise between the Jewish sons of God and the Gentile daughters of men was empire-wide. Just as Lamech’s sin became institutionalised and ended the race, Ahab and Jezebel had again become a draconian church state under the Herods.

Jesus dealt with the cyclone by standing in the eye. His ministry itself took on a body, but in the gospels we see Him whittle it away until He stands alone and rejected. The crowds abandon Him, and then even His band of brothers is scattered. His seamless robe, a symbol of His kingdom, is taken away. It also symbolised the Covenant—the firmament. The firmament is a garment for God, filled with governing lights. No lights (disciples), no robe. Jesus is torn from the Father, and then, more alone than anyone until the final judgment, Jesus’ body itself is torn. All glory, all identity was gone, right down to the most personal, the most precious, the Most Holy.

He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him,
there is no beauty that we should desire Him.

“The guards came again, handing out coats. I could not understand at first why they took away all of our clothes only to give us in return garments that must have been worn by other women entering the [concentration] camp. But as I looked around at the women beside me withdrawn into their meagre, worn rags, I saw that we were no longer the strong women who had been able to endure hard labour, wartime conditions, and separation from our family and friends. The shearing of our heads and vulvas, the stealing of our clothes and everything we had owned, took from us the last traces of who we had been. My knapsack on the train, my mother’s chains and rings, would never be given back. I felt their loss almost as much as the loss of my hair. All I had left was Samuel’s ring.

When the guard reached me she held out a long gray coat. Without thinking I took it from her with my right hand. Immediately the guard circled the ring with her fingers and thumb, giving it a hard yank. My finger felt as if it were being pulled from me. The ring would not come off. Her grip tightened; the flesh around the ring was squeezed tightly. I cried out in pain.

‘Quiet!’ she hissed.

Again she pulled, spitting on the ring twice while she wiggled it back and forth. Finally, in one smooth movement, she scraped it over the ridge of my knuckle and slipped it off the end of my finger and into her pocket. Satisfied that no one had seen her, she shoved her crate of coats forward and moved on.” [1]

Crowds torn away. Family torn away. Disciples torn apart. Robe torn off. Beard torn off. Body torn … veil torn … torn … torn OPEN. And in the most exquisite plot twist in history, the plunderer was plundered. In the eye of the cyclone, in the Most Holy Place, the Gordian knot was cut.

In the eye of the cyclone, in the tomb, Jonathan became David. A new history, begun with this one-Man liturgy, was spoken into the Garden. Over the next forty years, the kingdom of the father of lies began to unravel in the Land. Like the climax of Peter and the Wolf, the more the Cunning Edomite Fox struggled, the tighter became the Apostolic rope around its neck.

Over the next forty years, Jesus took on a new body by His Spirit, and David became Solomon. Both John’s Old Covenant decrease and Jesus’ New Covenant increase became institutional. The headless Jonathan/John had a new Head. [2]

When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed.

The Word that tore open the Garden door began to tear open the Land. Revelation 14 shows Jesus again at the eye of a cyclone. This time He is an Angel with a sickle. The literary structure puts Him right at the centre, between the grain and the grapes [3]. It was time for His new “Land” body to follow Him through death and resurrection. The sickle swings and He harvests the saints as bread and wine. Now it was not just the eye but the whole Roman/Herodian cyclone that was red. What He accomplished on the cross was reenacted—filled up—in a cast of thousands. The empire was filled with violence and the corrupted sons of God disappeared beneath a flood of troops. [4]

The band of brothers we join is one of blood brothers. More Christians were martyred in the twentieth century than in the previous 19 centuries combined. As the victory in the Land continues to tear the World in two, the cast of thousands is now a cast of millions. Thankfully, the blood is always foundational. Spirit follows. [5] But we must be ready with our blood.

Could it take anything less than a cast of millions to picture the work of Christ? And perhaps we are still in the early days.

He shall see the labour of His soul and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant
shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.

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[1] Sarah Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress, A Memoir of Survival, pp. 198-199.
[2] King Saul, Jonathan’s “head,” was beheaded.
[3] See Totus Christus p. 557.
[4] See Jewish War by Peter Leithart.
[5] See The Whole Bloody Bible.

“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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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.