Bully’s Blog

or Insanity and Spiritual Songs

Van Gogh’s work has been regarded by some as “hallucinatory,” however his letters show that few artists were as intelligent and rational. His work was not the product of his dark times but of his struggle against them.

“I am feeling well just now… I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible—and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger and makes haste in what he does.” [1]

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or The Art of Noise

Must be wizards week!

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (NKJV) Hebrews 4:12

But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. (NKJV) James 2:18

The firmament was a veil to hide God’s throne from Man until he was ready to see God face to face. Of course, we see types of this throughout the Bible, Job, Jacob and Moses being notable examples. But no man had seen God until after Christ ascended and was presented as Facebread.

Your face is a veil of flesh that hides your brain, the source of your intentions. Your head is a microcosm of the Tabernacle at one level, and your entire body at another. You are a Garden and a Land.

Deceivers mask their true intentions with facial expressions and body language. Good spies can even pass a lie detector test. Between their true intentions and the flesh that is supposed to be communicating it, there is a deliberate disconnect. As in the Garden, it is the mind of a beast speaking with the eyes and mouth of a man.

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Ending the False Dichotomy of Blood and Spirit

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.

The Land is always bought with blood. Sitting around John Piper’s eschatology round table recently, the premillennialist (Jim Hamilton) and the amillennialist (Sam Storms) had problems understanding that postmillennialism is not about a sudden Utopia on earth. It is about buying the world with blood—this world. Yes, there is martyrdom, but then there is Christian culture. Following the example of Christ, it is being willing to die because you have one eye on the glory that can be bought for God. Like Wycliffe’s prayer from the stake that God would open the King of England’s eyes, it is Visionary Suffering. (See also Postmillennial Suffering.)

But blood is only ever a foundation. Spirit follows. The Law kills but the Spirit gives life. The slaughter of saints actually disarms the old worship, and Christianity fills the void. The atrocities of communism in China and Mongolia cast the ancient demons out of the house and the Holy Spirit finds it swept and garnished. He fills the vacuum like a mighty, rushing wind.

So, the Reformers didn’t need to keep dying. The firstfruits church didn’t keep dying. The “last days” are only ever the last days of the old order. A New Jerusalem is formed on the blood of the apostles and prophets—but then it is also filled! My friend Matthew recently posted:

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“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.”  Matthew 24:21-22

The context of Matthew 23-25 is very clearly first century. Many interpreters are forced to put gaps and parentheses and qualifiers into Jesus’ warnings because they won’t recognise what happened in the last years of the Old Covenant.[1] 

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by Colin Phelps  

There can be few people who know anything about missions in the 20th Century who have not heard the story of the five young men who died, January 8th, 1956, in their attempt to reach the Woarani [1] Indians of Ecuador. Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Roger Youderian were cut down in the prime of their lives as they waited on a sand bar in the Ecuadorian jungle; waited for further contact with a people unreached with the Gospel and hostile to anyone from the outside world. The Christian world, particularly in the West reeled as it tried to make sense of this incredible tragedy. “Why would God allow such potential to be destroyed?” Even the secular press couldn’t ignore this tale. LIFE magazine ran a 10 page article featuring journal entries from the men themselves. Their headline? … “‘Go Ye and Preach the Gospel’ - Five Do and Die.”

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“Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.  
—Genesis 15:5-6

Abraham didn’t sleep in on the day he was to take his beloved son, his only son, to Moriah, kill him and offer him as an ascension. He got up early. By this stage in the narrative, Abraham had been tried and tested many times, but this seems just a little too keen.

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Daily Dose of Doug:

Yesterday at church I saw a bumpersticker on a friend’s car that summarizes a lot of things wonderfully. “Never trust a theologian who hasn’t been executed.”

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