“I want to be like Doug Wilson when I grow up. My aim is to go full-Wilson in life. But to get there I must not go all-in Wilsonian…”

A guest post by Steven Opp

Doug Wilson is one of my heroes. I check his blog all the time, have read many of his books, and whenever a new interview or discussion with him appears on the internet, I tune in. When it comes to family living, cultural engagement, and politics he is probably the most influential person in my life. I love Doug Wilson and want to be like him when I grow up!

Wilson recently wrote a blog post titled “The Invisible Mainspring of Human Conflict.” It is a history of four major paradigm shifts in his theology over the years. They are:

1. Eschatology (he became postmillennial in 1985)
2. Soteriology (he became a Calvinist in 1988)
3. Covenant (he became a paedobaptist in 1993)
4. Girard (he became a partial-Girardian in 2006)

It was a fun read to see how the Lord has, over time, molded and sharpened Wilson’s views.

The article spends the most time on the fourth one on the list. The anthropologist/literary critic René Girard has a fascinating theory about the source of human conflict which Wilson says has helped him in understanding why clashes sometimes happen the way they do. He concludes, “Since I first read Girard, I have still gotten into conflicts. But I am not really mystified in the midst of them any more.”

While acknowledging Girard’s insights regarding desire and conflict as being extremely important in seeing what is really going on in the biblical text, Wilson also recognizes where Girard misses the mark. He says he finds Girard’s scriptural insights to be about 80% helpful, and where the good Frenchman falls short is mostly due to his views of the atonement.

Not only does Wilson only give Girard’s biblical analysis four out of five stars, he also warns of applying Girardian human conflict theory across the board lest it be abused. In other words, if you observe every motivation and discord through a Girardian lens you’ll miss the forest for the trees. Wilson explains, “perhaps you have absolutized the concept, which is another way of not grasping it. That is one of the reasons I don’t go all in with Girard—I find him too valuable, and don’t want to lose his insights. Going full Girardian means ceasing to be Girardian.”

I agree with everything Wilson says about Girardian theory, the fourth paradigm shift in his theological journey. What I would like to do in this essay is to show how in regards to Wilson’s other three paradigm shifts I am on board to a similar extent, about 80%. I find his views in these areas to be about 80% helpful. And where I believe he has gone 20% too far in each paradigm is where he loses its spirit. In other words, in these three areas going full Wilsonian means ceasing to be Wilsonian.

A Quick Stop in Narnia

Before doing this, let me first introduce a metaphor which I think will be useful in explaining what I mean.

In addition to reading much of what Wilson writes, I sometimes read what he recommends. One of the books he gives five out of five stars to in a review is Planet Narnia by Michael Ward. It is a very thorough and fascinating guide to seeing how C.S. Lewis intentionally themed each of his Chronicles of Narnia books after one of the “seven heavens,” the planets recognized by the medievals. I just finished Planet Narnia, thoroughly enjoyed it, and highly recommend it.

Ward explains how the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, takes place in the “world” of Jupiter. The themes and messages are all “jovial” (Jove is another name for Jupiter). Jupiter is the planet of merriment, royalty, and springtime. It is also the largest planet, and according to Lewis the most important, ruling the night skies. If you’ve read the stories, you know the first chronicle is about jolly Aslan bringing spring and enthroning the four children in Narnia.

The final book in the series, The Last Battle, has a Saturnine theme. Saturn, in contrast to Jupiter, is dark and cold. The positive word to describe the spirit of Saturn is “contemplative”. But Saturn is also regarded as the planet behind ugliness, old age, fate, irony, and death. All of these concepts are heavy in The Last Battle. An ugly old ape tricks the Narnians by covering a donkey in a lionskin in place of the real Aslan before one catastrophe follows another and eventually all the characters die.

Both Jupiter and Saturn are important and have their roles to play, but the contrast is sharp. Saturn is about contemplation. Jupiter is about play. Saturn is godly sorrow. Jupiter is godly joy. Saturn is Father Time. Jupiter is Father Christmas.¹Girard was born on Christmas Day and his middle name is Noël,  a fun foretaste of his wintery secularist anthropology in time converting and fleshing out so much of the Word of God. Girard’s work, which focuses on chronic envy, is ultimately a jovial gift.

The Last Battle, while being Saturnine, does not end with ultimate death. Rather, it ends with a beautiful eucatastrophe, Tolkien’s word for a surprise happy ending. Or, you might say, it ends with a Jupiter ending. The jovial tone of the final chapters of the story is more like the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The point Lewis makes is that though Saturn is big and important, he doesn’t get the final word. Rather Jupiter, king of the heavens, trumps gloomy Saturn and has the last laugh.

What I would like to do is to use Saturn and Jupiter to represent the difference between theology and the spirit of theology. Or, to put it another way, between the theology and the theologian.

Theology, like Saturn, is contemplative. When taken by itself, it is cold, dark ink on paper. Theology is important because ideas need to be presented in order to be understood. But for the words to truly be applied they must be transcended. They must be traced up to the spirit behind them, whether it be the deeper meaning or the character of the writer which the words fail to capture. This significance, the “take home”, is Jupiter above Saturn, what goes beyond the contemplation and has a life of its own.

Doug Wilson is a Jupiter. He is a jolly man. His theology is his Saturn, his contemplations. Where it is correct it is functioning in the appropriate Saturnine way, channeling truth and the character of Wilson himself in it so that others may jump on board. Where it is incorrect it morphs into things like oldness and fate and stillborn irony. Wrong theology is Saturn eclipsing Jupiter. Where I disagree with Wilson on his theology, the 20%, is where I see the contemplations becoming inflated and things going dark, hiding the real meaning and the real man. In other words, going full Saturn means ceasing to be Jupiter. Going full Wilsonian is ceasing to be Wilsonian.

I will now take you through Wilson’s first three paradigms and discuss where I see Saturn being contemplative and wise and where I see it hovering in the way of Jupiter’s spring.

Eschatology
Entering the Wardrobe

Wilson’s book Heaven Misplaced was the second book of his I ever read (after Persuasions) and it was like an oasis in the wilderness for me. It was also a big reason I started reading more of his work and began paying attention to what was going on in Moscow. The clear headed thinking in Heaven Misplaced that Jesus might not be back any time soon, and without any dream-killing disclaimers like “but no one really knows the day or hour so be ready (instead of going out and changing the world)” was wonderful to read.

In addition to learning about this positive eschatological outlook, I also saw it in action. Wilson’s church is full of people who believe in bringing Heaven to Earth in every capacity, and when I lived in Moscow I had the benefit of watching them do it, making schools, businesses, and families all with the kingdom building goals of dominion and legacy.

Too Much Chronicle and Not Enough Narnia

So why does Wilson’s postmillennial eschatology only get four and not five stars? Saturn refuses to give up his seat for Jupiter when the idea that the world won’t end soon extends into the assumption that it might not end for a very, very long time. I’ve heard Wilsonian postmillennialists use language like, “a hundred thousand years from now…” I find this to be irresponsible at best and unbiblical at worst.

First of all, it neglects to take nature into account. I understand that most environmental warnings today are hoaxes. But the oceans will fill with salt eventually, and the sun will one day burn out. To suggest that it won’t is making some of the same errors evolutionists make when they posit millions of years on the front end of things. This world is strong, but not invincible, and it cannot endure the beatings of Father Time for infinity in either direction.

From a more theological perspective, if the end comes when the world is discipled and the last enemy is death, to not put any sort of timeline on that limits the power of God. Just as atheists think they can hide the Creator Father behind a bunch of zeros when talking quantitatively about time past, so this sort of postmil thinking buries the Recreator Holy Spirit behind a bunch of zeros when talking about the future. God does not rush, but it will not take him a million years to wash the 10/40 Window (which is already much cleaner than it was twenty years ago), and we won’t be beaming to other colonies on other planets as we wait for peace in the Middle East. Syria will become Christian, Ceres will not.

Saturn has a Curfew

The spirit of postmillennial thought is wonderful. Let Christians be free and comfortable in this wonderful world. Let us faithfully endure death as we work to overcome all of the other enemies, building beautiful cities and cultures as we go. But let us not forget that Jove has the last laugh, and that Saturn’s old age will not define the future. Death must be with us for a time, but not for that long of a time.

Soteriology
Providence Picks a Picker

My friend David Salazar, now fifty, grew up a hard working kid filling baskets with the fruit that grew on the trees of central California. But when he wasn’t at work, he and his brothers did things their own way and his life was savage and base. One day when he was in his early twenties an evangelist came to his door and David bent the knee. The first book he read after that besides the Bible was Calvin’s Institutes, and it changed his life. He said that for the first time he understood what a loving father is, how he relates to his children, and that God himself is such a father.

My understanding is that this story of God’s grace and paternity encapsulates the “real Calvin”, so to speak. The Jupiter Calvin. The Calvin with no “ism” or “ist” attached. And when I think of Calvin, and reformed theology in general, I think of the sovereignty of God above all things, along with a rich and impactful church history.

Avoid all Isms Except for Prisms

Where I think Calvinists, Wilson included, fall short is in their “marketing,” so to speak. When the guy on the street hears “Calvinism,” he instinctually thinks of fatalism. He instinctually thinks of Saturn and not Jupiter. “But you don’t really understand Calvin” the Calvinist so often must explain. Well, is this a problem with the man on the street or with Calvinism itself? If the distinction is so important shouldn’t it be a bit easier to explain? A bit easier to understand?

One illustration Wilson uses to communicate the sovereignty of God is that God is writing history like Shakespeare would write a play. Can Hamlet challenge Shakespeare for how he wrote his part? Neither should man call out God for how he wrote his part. And the distance between God and man is infinitely greater than the distance between Shakespeare and Hamlet.

This is all true, but we also have to remember that the distance between God and man is infinitely smaller than between Shakespeare and Hamlet. Shakespeare never became one of the characters in his play. God did. To put it another way, as Mike Bull has tweeted, “Was Jesus a Calvinist or an Arminian? Both. The incarnation was the sovereignty of God and the will of Man united at last.”

Calvinism is helpful in emphasizing God’s sovereignty. But the Bible doesn’t speak in these sorts of terms much (predestination, reprobation, etc.) The Bible isn’t that Saturnine about it. But as long as they wear the label, the “ism”, Calvinists are being Saturnine about it, and those reformed beards start to look less like Calvin’s and more like the beard of Chronos. At a certain point this sort of contemplation bends towards fatalism and people don’t see the living Spirit of the Father in Calvin’s theology as Salazar did when he first read him. Rather, they just see a casket with tulips on top.

I Elect the Big Man

So I’m with Wilson 80% of the way on soteriology. But as for how to best communicate the mystery of the marriage of divine and human agency, I’ll fall for the gravitas of Chesterton every time. His cracks at Calvinism tickle my funny bone a little more than Wilson’s pokes at Arminianism. Jovial G.K., in this regard, takes the cake—and no one made him do it.

Covenant
Cair Paravel is for Real

Which came first, the king or his crown? Covenantal theology is wonderful because it emphatically says “Crown!” without any shame. Lewis’ goal in using planet imagery in Narnia was to emphasize that there are constant things going on beyond nature. You are born into something bigger than you.

Covenantal theology also makes sense of many other things as well, and is useful in debates regarding evolution, marriage, and politics, to name a few. It is very important for navigating one’s way in the world.

The fundamentals of the Federal Vision theology which Wilson agrees with affirm the connection between the sacraments and the covenant. This is important because it preserves the power of the sacraments. When someone is baptized into the kingdom of God, something objective happens. They are now enlisted, so to speak. And like a spouse in a marriage, they are in whether they like it or not. Union with Christ is real, and so are the means of entering into it.

Uncircumcised Application

So far so good. But when it comes to covenant theology administration, Wilson drives 100 where the speed limit is 80. And the lead (the Saturnine metal) in his foot is paedosacraments.

Wilson recently admitted on a podcast that at first glance at scripture the Baptists have a better argument when it comes to who to baptize than the paedobaptists do; you don’t see a bunch of babies being dunked, let alone sprinkled, in the New Testament. But, he argues, if you take the Bible as a whole you have a “juggernaut” of structural/typological evidence which supports paedosacraments.

Most Baptists can’t take down that juggernaut. They end up feeling outsmarted, shrug off the argument because they sense that paedobaptism is still weird, and go back to dunking converts. For me, I never wanted to be outsmarted so I took the paedobaptists’ conclusions on authority. But there was always a part inside of me that still thought it strange. It wasn’t until I started reading Mike Bull that I saw exactly why.

What appealed to me about Bull is that he didn’t try to fight the “covenant theology” juggernaut. He commandeered it. Standing on the shoulders of typological giants James Jordan, Peter Leithart, and Doug Wilson he actually took the juggernaut, figured out what a lot of the seemingly useless buttons and levers do, and showed how the paedobaptists had misinterpreted its trajectory. Furthermore, far from being the juggernaut itself, paedobaptism (what he calls “bapcision”, an ugly hybrid of baptism and circumcision) is in fact the rope tying the Federal Vision juggernaut to a stake and keeping it from being released and changing the world.

The main way Bull cuts the paedobaptistic cord is by acknowledging the similarities (covenantal juggernaut) between circumcision and baptism, but also the differences (Baptist horse sense). To understand these differences, you need to read more of Bull’s writing on baptism. You will need to immerse yourself in biblical symbols before it will begin to make sense but as you do, you’ll start to see how the pieces don’t just fit together, they fit in three dimensions.²See The Myth of Covenant Membership. As Bull says, “Bad theologians need to think in pictures. Good theologians need to think in moving pictures.” After reading Bull for a while, I started to see these moving pictures. And like Wilson says of Girard’s scriptural insights, “Once you see them there, you can never unsee them.”

Here is the main thing that those with a strong understanding of the covenant have a hard time wrapping their minds around because they still see it as flat: Every person on the planet, that includes Doug Wilson’s baptized grandchildren and the baby born to an ISIS leader, are born under the New Covenant. They are all born under the same King, Jesus Christ, and his circumcision, that is, his crucifixion, is the new blood boundary encompassing all people—not just Jews, and not just the baptized. Like the Jews under Mosaic Law, everyone within this boundary is under the same terms of faithfulness to the covenant: metanoeite and believe.³See Paranoia and Metanoia. To baptize a baby and say they are now in this covenant is therefore redundant. Christ is Lord of all, wet or dry, churched or unchurched.

So the covenant has to do with authority (the crown), and who wears it (Jesus Christ). But here’s the third dimension that makes paedobaptists go cross-eyed: to truly be baptized into Christ requires a confession. This confession is done in faith, which comes by hearing. It is not taken hold of by being born according to the flesh (Christian parents) but by being born according to the Spirit. It is not about being born into a Christian heritage (generations) but about being born again as a co-heir with Christ (regeneration). It is not about who your earthly father is, or your godfather, but who your Heavenly Father is, your Father God. Now you are not just under the New Covenant in Christ’s blood (like every child in the world since Jesus came), you are now an ambassador of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, washed on the inside by it and adopted into His family. You aren’t just at the event. You wear the staff uniform. You don’t go from being outside of Christ’s realm to then being under the crown (complete with expectations to behave as a Christian, a new form of law) as “bapcision” would have you do. No, a biblical baptism takes from being merely under the crown to wearing a crown of your own.

Covenant theology that veers toward paedosacraments creates an add-on to the Gospel: Christ plus covenant (a word rarely used in the New Testament). But Christ is the New Covenant.⁴See Jesus and Covenant – Part 1. This is the key to truly understanding the covenant. Everyone is under him. But only those who have heard him and have seen him, who believe, who share His Spirit, are in him. You have to go to Narnia and meet Aslan before you are given a seat on a throne in the castle by the sea. You have to encounter Jesus. He is the Jupiter that outshines Saturn. And that impersonal extra 20% Saturnine paedosacramental covenant theology is covering the face of Jupiter, the face of the King.

I will make one final illustration about the bleakness of paedobaptism which goes undetected by those who practice it but is obvious to those on the outside who see a donkey tail poking out from under the lionskin. Saturn is the planet of irony, and that is good and necessary. But it can also fall flat when unchecked by Jupiter. Paedosacramentalists think they are revealing a cute irony in the gospel, that Christ saves us before we even realized we needed saving, that little children who have no knowledge are as valuable as the wise old sage, for God is no respector of persons. True as it is, the joke itself is in poor taste because the butt of it is still in diapers and isn’t playing along.

What makes a biblical baptism jovial is that the sinner who the joke is on is laughing along with Jesus as he or she intentionally follows Him in slipping on the banana peel of recognizing one’s own fallen humanity and voluntarily dying with Him in baptism in order to rejoice with Him when brought back out of the water as a royal (jovial) priest-king. Since confession is laughing at the ridiculousness of your own sinful rebellion because you’re a new person and on the other side of it, running this play on those who do not understand what is happening is cruel, dark, and leveling. Sending these little ones to the baptismal grave without their “getting it” is the kind of black comedy Saturn gravitates to when left to himself.

False baptisms create confusion and place a burden of law and accountability upon the shoulders of those who not only cannot bear it – like child soldiers or child brides – but also did not choose it. This is Father Time eating away at his kids with a spiritual responsibility they didn’t sign up for. Baptism is life to the “twice-born” but it is creeping death to the “once-born.” In dark seasons when children need comfort they are encouraged to look at a cold theological abstraction instead of their gifts, lest they become self-reliant. But “leaning” on a baptism you never chose, a rite which basically spiritualises everything natural, removes the opportunity to discover personally that the flesh isn’t enough. So an exhortation to “remember your baptism” is about as helpful as finding coal in your stocking. There’s nothing you can do with it. The true gospel paradox is that sinful children don’t need contemplation (law). They need Christmas.

Wilson (Not his Tamed Juggernaut) is on the Move

Doug Wilson is the jovial king of Christmas. He knows how to be merry. He knows how to enjoy the good things of life with a full heart. He has a tribe of joyful children and grandchildren to prove it. But this has nothing to do with paedobaptism and everything to do with faithful Christian parenting. It is a result of saturation love, not saturation water. It is of the gospel falling on soft ears, not water sprinkled on soft cranial tissue. It is a legacy of celebrating Christ’s birthday with gifts, not celebrating what family or church family you were born into by good fortune.

Of course, Wilson is not consciously boasting in his own blood or society, but his 20% counterfeit Saturnine covenantal theology is. Wilson’s children and grandchildren (the ones old enough to have spiritual eyes of faith) are believers not because they have looked in the mirror and seen a fake lion skin (bapcision) that some apish theology told them was Aslan. No, they believe because they have seen Aslan himself. And they have probably mostly seen Him not on but in and through their confessing father and mother who wear the royal robes of Christian witness.

Reaching for the Stars

Like I said, I want to be like Doug Wilson when I grow up. My aim is to go full-Wilson in life. I want to be a jolly and contemplative man with a grand and glorious legacy. I want five out of five stars! But to get there I must not go all-in Wilsonian. I find him too valuable and don’t want to lose his insights. So I will continue to follow him, staying close to the spirit of his work and the spirit of his person, but steering clear of those Saturnine traps of old age, fate, and flat irony which would cause me to miss out on the good faith of Jupiter: Christ in Wilson’s paradigms, the hope of glorious theology.

“What does it look like when antiestablishmentarianism becomes the establishment?”

In July 2016, in a speech in Cleveland supporting the Republican party nominee Donald Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson highlighted the connection between Hillary Clinton and her mentor, Saul Alinsky.

Famous for his strategies for community organising, Alinsky dedicated his book, “Rules for Radicals,” to “Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.” Carson said:

One of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors, was Saul Alinsky. And her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone that she greatly admired and that affected all of her philosophies subsequently. Now, interestingly enough, let me tell you about Saul Alinsky. He wrote a book called “Rules for Radicals.” On the dedication page it acknowledges Lucifer, “the original radical who gained his own kingdom.”

Now think about that. This is a nation where our founding document the Declaration of Independence talks about certain inalienable rights that come from our Creator. This is a nation where our Pledge of Allegience says that we are “One Nation under God.” This is a nation where every coin in our pocket and every bill in our wallet says “In God we Trust.”

So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that. The secular progressive agenda is antithetical to the principles of the founding of this nation.

And if we continue to allow them to take God out of our lives, God will remove himself from us, we will not be blessed, and our nation will go down the tubes and we will be responsible for that. We don’t want that to happen.

Despite the continued mantra of Hope and Change, the Democratic agenda was nothing more than Alinsky’s “Eight Levels of Control” reheated, garnished with positive spin, and served up to a population now willing to trade true freedom to support an addiction to free sex and free money. Behind Obama’s (very selective) crocodile tears over tragic mass shootings were the cold eyes of Leviathan.

1. Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people.
2. Poverty – Increase the poverty level as high as possible; poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3. Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes and this will produce more poverty.
4. Gun control – Remove people’s ability to defend themselves from the government. That way you are able to create a police state.
5. Welfare – Take control of every aspect of people’s lives (food, housing and income).
6. Education – Take control of what people read and listen to; take control of what children learn in school.
7. Religion – Remove the belief in God from the government and schools.
8. Class warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take from (tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.

Throughout her college career, Clinton followed the community organiser closely, and even dedicated her senior thesis to his strategies for political subversion. Despite her public statements, it is clear from leaked emails and reports from staff that, like Lenin, she regarded her supporters as “useful idiots.”

However, the problem for those who gain power by subversion is that their strategy consists only of deconstruction, of negativity. Despite their empty promises, they are not really for anything but power. Once that power is gained, their incompetence is gradually exposed. The promised Utopia fails to materialise because dissatisfaction and entitlement are out of step with the way the world actually works. Robbery might lead to short term gains but always results in long term losses. This is exactly what the Man discovered in the Garden of Eden. The inability – or perhaps deliberate unwillingness – of even educated people, including the media, to consider the obvious connection between Obama/Clinton and Alinsky reveals just how keen human beings are to facilitate their own destruction for the sake of temporary trinkets and pleasures. Without Christ, even the wise of the world are no different at heart from our first father. So much for the “progress” in Progressivism. The apple never falls far from the Adamic family tree.

For Communism, Socialism, and Progressivism, the abstraction from reality of unworkable policies always becomes apparent in their bitter fruits. Hillary Clinton could not credibly promise any Hope because she offered no discernible Change. The silver lining in the dusty cloud of Obama’s second term was the opportunity it gave him to “reduct” his own agenda “ad absurdum.” Hope and Change turned out to be bribery and bullying, long running scandals, lack of transparency, a Supreme Court ruling that overturned democratic votes on marriage, unaffordable healthcare, gender neutral toilets and continued disasters in foreign policy. History has a habit of revealing what things – and people – really are, and the impotence of “Rabble-Rouser-as-President” has become plain. Woodstock’s laziness, promiscuity and lack of experience are fine until one actually has to produce something, whether it be GDP or the next generation of children, the modern equivalents of the “land” and “womb” curses in Genesis 3 and promises in Genesis 15.

What does it look like when antiestablishmentarianism becomes the establishment? One can only incite hatred between rich and poor in the name of generosity, between black and white in the name of unity, and work to excuse and empower bloodthirsty Islam under a banner of international peace, so many times, before the stench becomes undeniable even by a sycophantic mass media. The inspiring speeches of Obama and Clinton can no longer cover the red-handed evidence of their hypocrisy. Their pretty speeches tinkle emptily from mouths that are gaping, ravenous graves. What they sold as fairness and generosity was in fact the removal of personal, familial and national sovereignty – complete nakedness before enemies of every stripe and at every level. It is one thing to share America’s wealth and power with the world. It is quite another to cut America open, bleed it dry with parasites, expose it to predators and leave the remains for waiting scavengers. The death of America, as with the demise of all great civilisations, would be an inside job.

What follows here is an excerpt from Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved? by Richard Bledsoe, and a recent comment by the author which inspired this post, relating to the recent U.S. election result:

One of the great difficulties that theorists and practitioners are up against—from Blake, Shelley, and Byron to Alinsky—is what happens if their protagonists win? From Robespierre through Lenin to our current time, this becomes an insoluble dilemma. They now become the new Establishment. They have no doctrine of authority that does not see authority as oppressive and inherently evil. The only solution to this dilemma is to promote “eternal revolution,” endless chaos and endless opposition. That culture will masochistically undermine and destroy itself in orgies of self-hatred and self-contempt. Eventually, one reaches an inevitable point where chaos can only be completely destructive and nothing is left to rule. One reaches for the final possibility, which is simply to become an oppressive tyrant. Modern history is littered with terrible examples.

How remarkable that this entire election was an election that was in rebellion against The Establishment! Oh, how times have changed. Once upon a time, The Establishment meant Richard Nixon, Republicans, small businessmen, the mores and ethics of sexual prudes and the straight laced who condemned homosexuality, pre-marital sex, pornography, and promiscuity. It meant, above all, The Protestant Ethos and Churches. Things have completely turned upside-down since the 60s. We are the anti-60s now.

But alas, what happens when Leftists win, and they then become the Establishment? What follows is all that can follow. They have placed themselves in the same impossible position as Lucifer himself, who Alinsky very insightfully dedicated his Rules For Radicals to. What is that impossible position?

Michael Polanyi’s very great work, Personal Knowledge, outlines it all. Knowledge can never, never, never begin with doubt and rebellion as the first movement. All knowledge must begin by first believing something, and acting on that. All later doubt is built on a deeper belief. Lucifer wanted to make doubt and rebellion the first and foremost and even only foundation. After one has rebelled against all that is, there is nothing left, and one can only fall into the abyss. Alinsky is dead right. All Leftism is built on the rock solid foundation of ultimate doubt and rebellion. So what happens after you have won, and then become the Establishment yourself?

All that can happen is fake, fraud, and optical illusion. You become everything you originally claimed to hate and imputed and projected onto your enemy. You become a hypocrite.

The Progressive clatch has become the mirror image of the Ku Klux Klan. If you are a Klansman, you are righteous, and your enemy is the Jew and the Uppity Nigger. The righteousness of the Klansman is beyond doubt. There is no doubt, not about that. That is believed. One only believes in ones’ own outlook and righteousness. It is so beyond doubt that if anyone does doubt a Klansman, it is only because he is a traitor, a hater of all previous glories, a destroyer of civilization.

Now, the righteousness of the Progressive is so complete, so beyond all question, that to not agree with a Progressive can only be for the lowest of motives. To disagree, to vote otherwise, can only be because you are a racist, a homophobe, a misogynist. Riots are in order. Lynchings are in order. The enemy must be cleansed.

The hypocrisy is complete and total. One can only mimic the devil himself, who can be nothing but a hypocrite.

The rabble-rousing of king-of-the-trolls Donald Trump was poetic justice for the creeping death of the globalist “Nothing” of the Left. Just as Jacob outcrafted every serpent in his path, Trump turned the tactics of Alinskyites back upon themselves, and the “consensus” of the principalities and powers was exposed for what it really is – a lie. Trump is a man who has seen it all and done it all, and thus cannot be bought and cannot be shamed, like the world-weary but inevitably wiser author of Ecclesiastes. The major difference is that Shepherd-elect Trump and those with whom he is surrounding himself actually believe in Something. This is something beyond rabble-rousing which for Trump was a means to an end, and even beyond power, which for Trump means the power to serve. This something is a different solution to discontent, not a spiral of never ending revolution but an agenda of strategic construction. Unlike Obama and Clinton, the Washington DC swamp and the now-discredited mass media, the members of Trump’s dream team, despite their flaws, have a history of ingenuity, innovation and productivity.

However, as Voltaire famously said, “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” Turning around a big ship not only takes time, the ship has to really want to turn around. The next four years will certainly be interesting for the United States and for all of Western Culture. Christians know that the iron rod of Jesus, facilitating His agenda of not only salvation, but also of wisdom, among the nations, is the only true source of Hope and Change.

Richard Bledsoe’s Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved?: Jesus Christ in the Obama and Post-Obama Era is available here.

The beginning student should be aware that there are several distinct facets of biblical eschatology which while connected are distinct issues. Millennial discussions can be distinct from discussions of dating and timing of certain prophecies (preterism, etc.). Particular topics such as “the rapture” can be discussed and critiqued separately to a large degree. Nevertheless, all are connected in the organic whole also, so while we can distinguish them for discussion purposes, we cannot separate them for worldview purposes.

You can view the list here.

“What is in the nature of these materials?”

The Bauhaus, founded in Germany in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, had a profound influence in every area of design, from graphics and typography to clothing, furniture and architecture. The institution was not so much a style as a method, its philosophy based on the idea that if something is well-designed it will be beautiful of its own accord. The means to this end involved the founding of an art school where every student was also a tradesman, and every tradesman was also an artist. The Bauhaus manifesto expresses Gropius’ desire to unite the trades and the arts that their works might possess the grace of an inseparable marriage of function (design) and form (beauty).

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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“Things ain’t cookin’ in my kitchen
Strange affliction wash over me
Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire
Couldn’t conquer the blue sky…” [1]

Today, the Australian government’s carbon tax repeal bills cleared Parliament’s lower house. They will be voted upon in the Senate next year. To see this reported as an act of climate vandalism by the media isn’t a surprise. What is surprising is the consternation of many Christians.

One facebook acquaintance summarized some data from the national broadcaster’s “vote compass,” a site which was set up prior to the recent federal election. The voter enters their leanings on certain issues and the site tells them which party best represents their views. He writes:

Compared to other religious affiliations, Protestants are the least welcoming of asylum seekers, least concerned about climate, least supportive of foreign aid, most supportive of increasing military spending, least supportive of mining tax increases, least supportive of constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians, least supportive of a faster NBN, least supportive of public services, most supportive of CSG and least supportive of workplace protections.

NB Before anyone complains, the results have been weighted by census data, so with a huge sample size (1.4m), it is basically irrelevant that it was a self-selected sample.

This gentleman is concerned about the future of the planet, mostly for the sake of his young son. He has spent years reading the science concerning climate and is understandably worried. But for the Christian, there ought to be some biblical “pillars” undergirding one’s worldview. The first one is Bible history and the second one is Bible prophecy. That probably sounds boring, but if you’ve been around this blog long you should know by now that I rarely take the reader where he expects. Because that’s boring.

Bad Science

When it comes to climate science, we have more data than we know what to do with. As someone who loves to look for patterns in things, I can understand the desire of scientists not only to figure out what is going on, but also to predict future weather.

Looking for patterns begins with past records, and it is here that modern climate science is revealed as the victim of modern philosophy, that is, Darwinism.

We are told that 97% of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change. But 98% of palaeontologists believe in evolution, and they are wrong. What is more relevant is that these two consensuses are related.

I don’t deny the data used to support climate alarm, just as I don’t deny the stuff palaeontologists dig out of the ground, or pretend that the devil put it here. What I deny is the story of how it came about. The stories told by modern science are all based upon their deluded revision of the history of the planet. If we deny the historicity and reliability of the book of Genesis, all our science will be wrong. We will be basing our models upon a past that never really happened. How so?

The Creation event itself is fundamental, but the catastrophic global flood seems to have a direct bearing on climate data. Tas Walker writes:

I just listened to a podcast by climate scientist Murry Salby to the Sydney Institute entitled “Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources.”

During question time toward the end of the recording (55min 15sec) he says:

Just a historical note, the guy who started this was a Swedish chemist whose lab I used to work at Stockholm by the name of Arrhenius. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry and for his understanding of the temperature dependence of chemical reactions he got the Nobel Prize. He got into this and he started the whole global warming thing because he was actually trying to explain ice ages and he saw CO2 varied and temperature varied and he figured maybe CO2 caused the Ice Age. Now I don’t think anyone believes that anymore …

In other words, the whole idea that global warming is caused by CO2 came out of the need to explain what caused the Ice Age—a mystery that still eludes modern scientists.

In the Wikipedia entry on Arrhenius it says:

He was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming. Arrhenius clearly believed that a warmer world would be a positive change. From that, the hot-house theory gained more attention. Nevertheless, until about 1960, most scientists dismissed the hot-house / greenhouse effect as implausible for the cause of ice ages as Milutin Milankovitch had presented a mechanism using orbital changes of the earth (Milankovitch cycles). Nowadays, the accepted explanation is that orbital forcing sets the timing for ice ages with CO2 acting as an essential amplifying feedback.

Note the term “amplifying feedback”. This means that Milankovitch cycles are not enough to explain the Ice Ages, which is understandable considering the relatively small variations in orbital parameters for the earth. So, they added a positive feedback mechanism from CO2. A positive feedback means the system is unstable, which explains why many scientists today are concerned about global warming and the earth reaching an unstable tipping point.

The problem is that these scientists have ignored the huge climate catastrophe of Noah’s Flood. By ignoring the Flood they cannot explain the post-Flood (Pleistocene) Ice Age. The Ice Age was the earth’s thermal response to the massive climate shock caused by the biblical Flood. It was largely the volcanic activity during that year-long event that produced the necessary conditions—warm oceans and volcanic dust high in the atmosphere. But the earth returned to equilibrium in about 700 years, demonstrating that it is a stable system. The biblical Flood provides the only explanation for the Ice Age.

See how a wrong understanding of the true history of the earth leads to a misunderstanding of what is happening in the present. And a wrong understanding will lead to wrong decisions about what we need to do.

So, the stupidity of evolution and the stupidity of modern climate science are directly related. They both misinterpret the data because they both base their interpretations on uniformitarian assumptions.

Bad science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a result of something. Evolutionists constantly tell us that their science is constantly under review “because that’s how science works,” while they desperately protect their failing dogmas from real scientific criticisms. Bad science is the product of bad philosophy, which is in reality a bad religion, a religion which goes way back.

Bad Religion

98% of palaeontologists might be evolutionists, but 98% of westerners are now statists, and they, too, are wrong. Statism is believing the government is god, and in control of prosperity, and now it seems even the weather. A climate action rally in Sydney last weekend was rained on, creating a sea of colourful umbrellas. This action was most likely the peak of effectiveness for this endeavour, the weather equivalent of putting a paper bag over one’s head in a nuclear attack.

It is bad enough seeing Christians sucked into a “science” which cannot tell the future because it rejects the past. It is worse when these intelligent Christians believe the government can do anything about it. If Protestants are the least concerned about the left wing issues mentioned above, the reason might not be that Protestants don’t care about them, but because Protestants are far less likely to fall for statism and its pretenses. They know that government is rarely the solution, and usually the problem. There’s a reason that good government and prosperity flowed from Christianity, and then Protestantism. God blesses obedience. The entire world was blessed through the principles of the British Empire, which brought good government when it arrived and left it as a blessing when it departed. But Protestants understand that good government is an extension of Christianity, and not itself the spring of life. Without Christ, Western Culture cannot be “progressive.” It amazes me how incapable these progressives are of perceiving their progress as a reversion to paganism.

On a panel TV show on the national broadcaster recently, entitled “Dangerous Ideas,” one panelist jokingly said that abortion “until the age of 30″ might be a good idea. Without realizing it, these fools have become basically pagan, albeit in a new guise. Sacrifice your children and give your wealth to the weather gods. Whatever their “scientific” pretense, the only real option to true Christianity is baalism. Science without God promised to make Man into god, the manipulator of nature. Modern man got more than he bargained for apparently—anthropogenic climate change. Frustratingly, the weather is not a vehicle we know how to drive properly. It possesses a seemingly infinite number of variables. Like your average shopping cart on swivelling wheels, it seems to have a mind of its own. It does have a mind of its own but it is not mechanistic. The weather is the chariot of God, and He never takes His hand off the wheel. [2]

Covenant Science

As Gary North observed, “power religion” assumes control over nature through “stimulation,” whether that be oblations to the gods, infant sacrifice, or religious prostitution. Nature is Man’s to manipulate. Man makes the miracles.

“Dominion religion,” however, is a different process. The blessings of abundance, of “increase,” are to be gained miraculously, but at the hand of God, not through manipulation but through obedience. This is what we see in the life of Joseph. Wherever he served, his faithfulness resulted in abundance. His masters recognized that the Spirit of God was with him.

Modern science was the direct result of men who submitted to God. The amazing discoveries and advances we enjoy were all gifts to the minds of men by the Spirit of God. Because we were made in the image of God, we can use these gifts as blessings or as curses. Nuclear fission and genetic modification of food are prime examples. This is because every gift is intended to bring greater judicial maturity.

Our leaders do esteem “ethics,” but not God’s ethics. They intend to do what is right, but what is right in their own eyes, not the eyes of God, who can see much further and whose sight is far keener.

Watching commentators from the Right and the Left argue about how much taxation is right, and where those dollars should be spent to solve our problems, is frustrating. An example might be the current desire to spend untold millions on mental health. Nobody ever mentions sin. Why does no one ever mention that infidelity costs Australia between 3 and 6 billion dollars every year, not to mention the resulting delinquency of children and burgeoning mental health problems? If anybody, even jokingly, suggested that it would be good if we all tried to keep the Ten Commandments, they would be ridiculed and shouted down. Religion is a private matter, they would say. And what goes on in the bedroom is nobody else’s business.

Turns out it is everybody’s business. These educated people are extremely stupid.

Based on the blessings and curses of the One who rides a chariot of fire in a cloud of glory, anthropogenic climate change is indeed possible. In Deuteronomy 28, Moses gave Israel a great list of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. These cover the natural realm (the Land and the womb) as well as Israel’s economic status in relation to other nations. Land, womb and nations sounds very Abrahamic. That’s because it is, and it is also the reason Israel suffered so many famines in her history. It was always the result of the shedding of innocent blood.

And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God… Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord xwill cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven way. The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. (Deuteronomy 28:1, 6, 7, 12)

But if the Covenant, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, now includes all nations, is it beyond possibility that God would bless a faithful, obedient nation or culture with good weather, with rain in due season, with a decrease in mutating diseases or problems like food allergies, diabetes, autism and cancer? Is it beyond possibility that the reason for our food allergies may be deeper than we think, and related to the fact that we no longer say grace before our meals?

I am a postmillennialist, and thus an optimist. This is not only because of the way in which I interpret Scripture but also my faith in the character of God. Peak oil and a climate tipping point don’t seem to fit with Jesus’ plan for the world. He kept fingers off red buttons during the Cold War and He will continue to restrain evil until His work is done and His words are vindicated before all nations.

Things this side of the final judgment will never be perfect, but things are getting better, thanks to the many blessings brought about by the incarnation and resurrection, the Scriptures, and two millennia of Christianity. All improvement comes from the Spirit of Christ, whether it be in medicine, technology or even widespread literacy (another problem which the idiot statists believe can be solved with money). If we do not wish to lose these blessings, we need to humble ourselves and repent before God as a culture. Stopping the murder of the unborn, the shedding of innocent blood, is the first place to start. The goddess of “sexual freedom” behind these murders would be next. This cultural repentance can only occur if it begins in the Church, the source of all new spiritual life, and the guardian of the sacred heart of any nation.

Certainly, climate science is not a simple issue, and we must keep our wits about us, but we must not surrender to the baalism of the secular state, which calls us to sacrifice our children for prosperity and give our wealth to the weather gods. These people have unimaginable amounts of data at their fingertips, yet they interpret it all in the dim light of their naturalist fantasy. CO2 is a “Day 3″ blessing from God, oil (and other fossil fuels) is a “Day 4″ blessing from God. As history moves from Garden to City, who knows what our good God has in store for us next. The 20th Century brought blessings and curses which would have been unimaginable in the 19th. Like Joseph, we just need to trust and obey, let the Pharaohs be humbled by their bad dreams, and let God bring the increase. Our Joseph is always one step ahead of the weather.

________________________________
[1] The title refers to the song “Weather With You” by Crowded House.
[2] For some more thoughts on the weather, concerning “the sons of thunder,” see Jesus’ New Broom.

“But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:16)

The narrative of the Bible is fairly linear until we get to the kings. But once we hit the prophets the Scriptures turn into a box of puzzle pieces. The literature of the kings used Mosaic symbols to a certain degree but the prophets took all the concrete things we learned from the priests and kings and used them to make amazing promises that never quite materialized. Or did they?

One of the mysteries is the idea of the mountain of God. For everyone living before AD70, the promises were expected to be fulfilled upon the physical real estate of Mount Zion. God had appeared upon various mountains throughout history (which made Him unlike all other gods because He was not stuck to a particular territory) but for over a millennium His house had been in Jerusalem. When the Temple was destroyed by Roman armies and the entire landscape so defaced that we are still studying the “dental records,” the promises concerning the mountain seemed to evaporate. Did these promises become mere ideology? If they were not physical in nature, how are we to understand them?

As always, the many details given through the Bible appear to be random dots. But in hindsight, we are able to join them. The “seven mountains” in Bible history follow a pattern that is well-known around here. The seven points form a process of maturity which is Creational, Covenantal and also sacrificial. And once we trace the pattern, which happens to be a chiasm, some very interesting points begin to rise out of the clouds. The internal logic of the “mountain theme” becomes plain and we get the prophets as clearly as the writer of Hebrews did.

While there are seven in the complete pattern, the central three (as a three-cubed grid) illustrate Israel’s role in the ethical transformation of the world. On Israel’s first mountain the father offered the son —- the Most Holy. On her second mountain, the cloud appeared with blood, fire, smoke and trumpets — the Holy Place. Israel’s third mountain of God was Zion, into whose Temple the nations willingly brought their treasures.

What is interesting is that Moriah and Zion correspond chiastically, as the bloody Bronze Altar (Adam) and the fragrant Incense Altar (Eve). Zion was actually a different mountain in Judah until David’s purchase of the threshing floor for the site of a Temple. Moriah received “a new name.” Moriah (death) and Zion (resurrection) became one and the same. This also explains the strange reference to “1000 years” in Revelation 20. God mediated through “tent worship” for 1000 years, beginning with the offering of Isaac. Then He mediated through “house worship” for 1000 years, ending in AD70. The current administration from the heavenly mountain is thus for “1000 years.”

At Christ’s ascension, the role of Adam as the representative of the Physical world before God was finally fulfilled. He is the first five mountains, the Torah, combined into a single “fivefold” Old Covenant inheritance. Zion was the last “earthly” mountain and it ascended as sacrificial smoke. Jesus now advocates for the world until heaven (God owns…) and earth (…a thousand hills) are one (Psalm 50:10), just as Adam should have done.

ADDENDUM:

After some comments from friends (including Chris W. below) it needs to be stated that Jesus’ focus on the Mount of Olives pictured the true mountain of God in heaven. Christ ascended from it, yet the earthly version would be “torn in two” on the final “Day of Atonement,” divided between the blessed and the cursed, as predicted by Zechariah. The earthly mountain was opened like the veil to allow the Old Covenant saints to pass through into their heavenly country, just as Israel passed between Ebal and Gerizim into Canaan.

Also, Mount Carmel, which seems to be left out of the pattern, was a prophetic reminder of Sinai, a legal witness to the prophets of Baal.

If anyone has anything else to add, please feel free to comment!

From Pamela in the upper midwest, USA:

Just wanted to let you know that I’ve been gleaning what I can from your website, and I’m very grateful for what you’ve written, or rather, what I’ve been able to understand, so far…

I purchased your first Bible Matrix book for my husband after I read some of your comments on an American Vision blog post, but the concepts contained in it are so unfamiliar to both of us that I think it’s going to take us living with them and praying about it for a while before we can really dive in. It’s the same thing we had to go through before fully embracing postmillennialism.

In the meantime, I’m really enjoying your articles on baptism. So far they’re helping me understand why Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, needed to be baptized, and they’re helping me form a response to paedobaptism even while discovering the truth behind the need for our own believer’s baptism beyond, “We’re commanded to do it.” Sure, I guess, but I figure there’s always a reason for the commandment, and I’ve always wanted to understand the reason.

Anyway, I love the butcher and chef metaphor of your latest published book. I think my husband would also really appreciate it, but we both just need a little more time acclimating to the approach you advocate and gaining confidence in it before I order it. We’ll just keep praying for the Spirit’s discernment!

“Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded.” (Revelation 10:1-3)

Just a few notes on Pacific Rim, a movie which we enjoyed very much. It’s one of those films where you know your strings are being pulled, but they are doing it so well you don’t mind at all. There are some interesting deviations from the Hollywood formula, and they are worth identifying.

(Oh, and River says there’s spoilers ahead.)

Beasts from the Sea

The first difference is that the alien life is not from the stars — well, not directly. The monsters come from the deep and make their way to the Land, which is exactly what they do in the three-decker world of the Bible, beginning with the serpent (literally “shining one”) in Genesis 3. Of course, we are familiar with the four beasts which come from the sea in Daniel 7, and interestingly they all seem to be Land beasts. They rise up out of the nations as the four corners of a new mediatory Land, the oikoumene, within which the Jews will serve as a priesthood to the Gentiles until the Messiah comes.

The Metal Man

The first man to be “mined” from the ground was, well, the first man. It seems he was laid out on the ground just like the Tabernacle, with his feet pointing East (the order in which he would “walk” and take dominion). The Tabernacle is also humaniform, but the first obvious “metal man” is the one in Daniel 2. He is a “corporate man,” a Temple made of all nations, and a different way of looking at those four bestial guardians. He is “Church” and they are “State.” He is indeed glorious, but like all previous temples, has a use-by date.

The relationship between these two images, man and Land beast, is interesting. All the “beast kingdoms” (sea and land) are created before the Man, as they were on Days 5 and 6. Like the Jaegers in Pacific Rim, the Land beasts are humaniform but bestial: they are hunters and warriors. Like Nebuchadnezzar they must first be humbled to become the true corporate Man. They must be subdued by the God-Man, the fifth kingdom. But the fifth kingdom is also a “corporate man,” a state power ruling from heaven.

There is also a progression of dominion which moves from commission in the Garden to conquest of the Land and finally “walking” on the waters. Adam’s rule moves from crushing the serpent, to calling and naming (governing) the animals, and finally to dominion over the great beasts of the sea. [1]

Heaven and Earth

The Jaegers are carried from their hangars and dropped into the sea by helicopters. They are “lifted up between heaven and earth” as holy warriors, Nazirite mediators for mankind. Even though the beasts (the Kaiju) are from the sea, they can walk on the land, and one can fly. This one carries a Jaegar into the sky (false exaltation) so that it can drop it and destroy it. This war in heaven between the Man and the Dragon is witnessed by representatives of all nations.

The combination of giant men and giant beasts works well because these symbols come from the beginning of human history. They are already deep within our psyche.

Global Drift

The idea of the Jaegers requiring two pilots, two brain hemispheres, to be united in a “drift” makes for good storytelling. It means that every Jaegar is “Trinitarian,” that is, motivated by a single-minded relationship. The “hive mentality” is prominent in the story, in the Jaegars and also the Kaiju. It is corporate Man versus corporate Beast, as it is in the Revelation: the unstoppable “unity” of Babel (Genesis 11:6) versus the unstoppable “all of one mind” of the Church (John 17:22-23). But relationship also means vulnerability, and just about everyone who pilots a fighter has suffered, or will suffer, some sort of bereavement.

The combination of left and right brain in the hero Jaeger is also a combination of East and West, America and China, against a common enemy. The final shot is of the hero couple, thankfully not kissing, but forehead to forehead. Instead of a tired old nationalism (Team America, anyone?), a common enemy from the abyss unites the nations.

Relating this to Tabernacle imagery, it is the combination of Priest (standing, left hand closed) and King (enthroned, right hand open) that produces the invincible Prophet who walks the nations, both the Land and the Sea.

The focus, as with the New Testament witness, is on the cities. The Jaegers are corporate metal men defending bridal cities against reptilian attacks, which is the picture we are given in Revelation 8, where the Judaizers are pictured as sulphuric locusts and the apostolic warriors are presented as Man-Beast hybrids wearing fragrant “Tabernacle” armor. Like their Master, the saints have all the attributes of beasts because they are empowered to subdue them and incorporate them into the Body.

The Real Rift

The good thing about glory in Pacific Rim is that is not only linked with sacrifice, but unity. It is a corporate glory. However, there will be no united nations aside from the unity of the Spirit in the Church. It will be attempted again and again through war, economics and social engineering, and will fail every time, because the heart of the matter is not Social but Ethical. [2] The true Adam will not allow a false Eve (the harlot) to be constructed upon His sacrifice.

As with the Bible, movies use pictures and symbols. But the New Testament moves the action from the Social to the Ethical arena (more on this soon). The Beasts are still corporate Man, and the Rift is not a tear in the abyss but the “works” that spew from the human heart. We are called to slay our sins to take territory for Jesus. The serpent will be entirely “circumcised,” his “corporate” human flesh cut off, before he is finally cast into the lake of fire. [3]

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[1] See The Church As Colossus and Serpents and Dragons.
[2] See Global Glass Ceiling.
[3] See The Circumcision of Satan.

One interesting facet of biblical symbols is their identification by “use” and “motion.” Objects that have no link in the natural order of things can be tied together through their use in a similar purpose in the work of the house of God. This is not entirely strange. Diverse things which have no relationship in the natural order are brought together by man for use in “housework.” For the Author of the Bible, nature is “plastic.” This factor is one reason why the Bible is strange to modern ears and minds.

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]

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Pushing something to its logical conclusions is most often a wise thing to do. If you have good data to start with (unlike those pushing global warming) the resulting “computer model” can be very helpful. This is also the case with biblical doctrine. It is very helpful to push hyperpreterism to its logical conclusions, which damn it entirely. It is also very helpful to push biblical typology to its logical conclusions. This may sound harebrained to some, but if done within the constraints the Bible itself gives us, false doctrine should stand out like blood stains under ultraviolet light.

This is the case with the idolatrous worship of Mary. I have written about that here.

In putting together Bible Matrix III, I’ve been chewing on the threefold ethical process of Priest, King and Prophet. The priest hears the Law. He does not speak. The king meditates upon, incarnates and administers the Law (as a microcosm of the greater process) but the Law itself remains the mediator. The prophet speaks directly for God by the Spirit. With this authority, he rules over priests and anoints and disciplines kings.

The main point here is that God forms man, fills man and then multiplies man. The initial step concerns the physical. What follows is social, kingdom. The final step is “bridal,” which is the fruit, the ethical outcome in history. We see this in the first three chapters of the Bible.

Genesis 1: Adam as the capstone of the Physical world (Creation – Transcendence).
Genesis 2: Narrative “zooms in” to describe Adam’s “leaving and cleaving” (sacrificial cutting and Covenantal reunion) as a Social being (Division – Hierarchy).
Genesis 3: Narrative continues to describe the foundation of the final process, Adam’s QUALIFICATION as an Ethical representative (Ascension/Testing/Maturity – Ethics).

It is this threefold Ethical process which translates into the roles of Priest, King and Prophet. The Priest is the Covenant Head, the King is the fire of the Law openly displayed, and the Prophet is the Covenant Body, the Bride. It takes us from Forming (Head) to Filling (Body), which we also see in Genesis 1 physically and Genesis 2 socially. The single Adamic Law was to form Adam ethically. If he obeyed (demonstrating his faith in his Father) he would have been filled ethically, that is, qualified not only to rule for God but also to speak for God as plenipotentiary. [1]

We can see this process very obviously in Israel’s history. It moves from priestly to kingly to prophetic. Judges describes the failure of the priesthood, which leads to the kings, albeit before God’s time. The kingdom period gives us the “second testament,” from Judges to Chronicles, as well as the Wisdom Literature. As the kings turn from God, the prophets come to the fore, and the final phase of Israel’s role is her prophetic counsel to the world emperors (epitomized in Daniel and Mordecai). As Gentile Rabshakeh (“cupbearer of the prince”) served the cup of testing to Hezekiah, so now Daniel and Esther were serving it to the Gentile rulers. This “third testament” majors on the coming Day (Atonement/Conquest).

But in the big picture, Israel’s history in the Land is only “Ascension,” that is, priestly. The true kingdom came with the Christ: the Law meditated upon, incarnated and administered–perfectly. And as above, Christ’s threefold ministry as a new Adam is a microcosm of all Covenant history, in which we should find the physical, the social and the ethical.

Until Pentecost, Covenant Succession was physical. Of course it had social and ethical facets because God works fractally, so His Trinity shows up at every level. But the main character was physical. The truth was to be handed down to sons. Covenant was patriarchal.

Between Pentecost and holocaust (AD30 to AD70), the kingdom was inherently social. Adam, who had been cut and bloodied by God, was receiving His Bride. Yes, that means the wedding banquet in Revelation is history, at least concerning the faithful Old Covenant saints and the apostolic (firstfruits) martyrs. Like David, Jesus was enthroned at age 30 and ruled for 40 years over Israel. But he could not build the temple because he was a “man of blood.” Revelation shows us the beginning of Jesus’ reign as Solomon, the bridal king. This single generation brought an end to the Jew/Gentile divide. The flesh that was cut asunder has been reunited in a new and better way by the Spirit.

The primary facet of this current age is ethical. We do not speak with the authority of the apostles, but we have their doctrine. We are priests and kings but the character of the Church in the World is Bridal and prophetic. Jesus and His ministers are no longer visible, but we have access to them by the Spirit. The Church as a Body speaks, by the Spirit, for God to the World.

This explains the redefinition, or rather, the total transcending, of the definition of sonship under the New Covenant. Covenant sons are no longer simply physical sons. This happened in Jesus, who never married and had no children, which are unthinkable in Jewish terms. His Bride is spiritual (that is, a body bounded by personal obedience to God). His children, His family, are those who do the will of His Father.

I am very grateful to my “Federal Vision” friends for their revival of an understanding of Covenant. But they have imported the primary nature of the Old Covenant into the New. Their understanding of “Covenant children” finds no support whatsoever in the New Testament. This causes great confusion when expounding on events such as Jesus telling the Pharisees that the devil was their Father. God could raise up sons from dead stones because sonship was no longer physical. Covenant succession was no longer physical. And Covenant membership was no longer physical. It passed through a bloody “social” death and resurrection in the first century and is now fundamentally ethical.

When John says, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God,” he does not mean that the Church is simply another physical body, one perhaps more open to receiving “Gentiles” but nonetheless still patriarchal, or tribal, with Covenant Succession primarily a matter of physical descent. No. He speaks of not an Adamic Body, but a Married Body, a Bridal Church that is being and will finally be entirely qualified to rule, enthroned with those pre-AD70 saints who already rule with Christ as His counsel.

Priests are merely servants under the Law. Kings are rulers but still under the Law. Prophets are the Law. They possess the mind of the Lawgiver, which will reach full term in the eternal state at the second resurrection. Before then, every possible manifestation of serpentine falsehood will be exposed to the Church by Christ and crushed under foot.

To maintain that the New Covenant sign concerns physical offspring rather than Spirit-filled ethical offspring is to confuse the old body with the new one. It messes with the consistent typology of the Scriptures. It would be like Jesus coming out of the tomb and meeting a converted male prostitute instead of Mary. Or worse, it would be like Adam waking up from his deathly sleep and meeting Steve instead of Eve.

Shining the ultraviolet light of consistent biblical typology over the Federal Vision reveals its primary character, despite its best intentions. There is blood on the door. It says KEEP OUT. I have no doubt that its great strengths minimize the effect of this single weakness, but a primarily physical Covenant people with physical “Covenant children” is entirely Adamic. The words of the apostles and prophets, read rightly, put it to death long ago.

Next: The Sociology of the New Covenant

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[1] See Images of God.