The word apocalypse does not denote the end of the world. It is literally a revelation, a revealing.

In his Pauline Theology paper, It’s the end of the flesh as we know it! A comparison of circumcision & apocalypse (2010), Steven Opp provides support for the identification of the book of Revelation as a Covenant lawsuit. Christ was circumcised, then Christ Himself was cut off. Israel was circumcised in Christ, then, in AD70, after decades of apostolic gospel witness, unbelieving Old Covenant Israel and its Temple worship, overseen by “the mutilation,” were cut off. On the final Day of Coverings, the flesh was exposed.

Opp makes a helpful connection between the “uncoverings” of circumcision and apocalypse in Galatians:

First, what is circumcision, and what does it mean? It is, of course, the removal of the foreskin of the penis, a cutting, resulting in blood [Exodus 4:24-26]. James Jordan suggests that this ritual simultaneously symbolizes three realities:

1. A sign of death and resurrection. Circumcision is a symbolic castration. To cut off part of your penis signifies cutting off the whole thing, yet the circumcised man is still fertile. Peter Leithart explains in a blog how in the ancient world, patriarchs were depicted as being endowed with enormous genitalia. [2] The bigger the member, the more fatherly/fertile the man. By removing part of his genitals, Abraham was thereby entering into death by losing part of his life-giving organ, and resurrected by being able to reproduce.

2. The removal of shameful clothing. This “implies that the man who is naked before God is truly clothed.” [3] Jordan provides the example of Adam and Eve creating coverings of leaves which God removes. Men must confess their sins and be naked before God in order to be covered and glorified.

3. The removal of a block or hindrance. The example given for this is Abram not being able to have children until the hindrance is removed through circumcision. His circumcision also removes Sarai’s hindrance as his circumcision is imputed to her.

Jordan goes on to explain how these three meanings of circumcision also apply to the ear, hand, and foot, which are all symbolically circumcised by blood being applied to each place on the priest (Leviticus 8:23). Finally, Jordan tells how Jesus was ultimately cut for us via his crucifixion, where his body was torn, and this action fulfilled all three meanings of circumcision in the atonement…

Two of the main themes in Paul, and especially in Galatians, are the ideas of circumcision and apocalypse. [4] But is there a connection? Are the two concepts opposites? Is one a fulfillment of the other? Or are they not related at all? I am suggesting that apocalypse is in some sense a new sort of circumcision, a circumcision of the old order of circumcision/uncircumcision.

Let us use Jordan’s three-part definition of circumcision to structure our discussion of the connections between circumcision and apocalypse.

The first definition of circumcision which he gives is that it is a sign of death and resurrection. In the first chapter of Galatians, Paul speaks of his revelation which he had which saved him. In verses 11-12 he says, “But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation (apokalypsis) of Jesus Christ.”

A few verses later in 15-16 Paul explains how “…when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal (apokalypto) His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh (sarx) and blood…”

Paul uses apokalypsis again in 2:2: “And I went up by revelation (apokalypsis), and communicated to them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles…”

Paul’s defense of his ministry is his revelation of Christ. This is what saved him and what legitimizes his apostleship (1:12), message (1:15), and itinerary (2:2). In chapters 3 and 4, Paul lays out an argument contrasting the gospel against circumcision, using the “oppositional columns” [5] of law vs. Spirit, Jerusalem below vs. Jerusalem above, Ishmael vs. Isaac, and works vs. faith. In all of these dichotomies, Paul places himself and his gospel on the side of Abraham. Abraham, of course, is the first circumcised man (at least mentioned in the Bible). He is the poster boy of circumcision, the grand archetype. Paul, the man whose trademark is not circumcision but apocalypse, nevertheless associates himself with Abraham.

G. Walter Hansen explains the similarities between Paul and Abraham in Galatians:

“Paul’s story (1:11-21) and the Abraham story (3:6-4:11) present parallel paradigms to prepare the way for the request in 4:12. As Paul’s life was transformed by his faith in the gospel, so Abraham was characterized by his faith in the gospel given to him in the promise (3:6-9). In both stories the same features of the gospel are disclosed: the revelatory origin of the gospel, the blessing for Gentiles in the gospel, and the exclusion of Jewishness as the basis for the inclusion of Gentiles. At the center of both Paul’s own story (1:11-2:21) and the story of Abraham (3:6-4:11) is the story of Christ.” [6]

Paul’s command to the Galatians is to become like him, in contrast to the false teachers who are commanding the Galatians to become like them. The latter demand circumcision, while the former calls for faith. And Paul’s whole argument about the legitimacy of his message is that he had an apocalypse.

Returning to Jordan’s first definition of circumcision being a death and resurrection, what we find is that just as Abraham’s circumcision resulted in a new man (with a new name) and a new nation, so Paul’s apocalypse results in a new man (also with a changed name) and a new church, comprised of both Jew and Gentile, a whole new system. Abraham symbolically died when he was circumcised; as mentioned above, he was symbolically castrated. Paul also died when he converted. The resurrected Paul says in Galatians 6:14 “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

If you’d like to read the entire paper, contact me and I will pass on your request to Steven.

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[1] Peter Leithart. “Father Abraham.” November 9, 2010. http://www.leithart.com/2010/11/09/father-abraham.
[2] James Jordan, The Law of the Covenant (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), 78-84.
[3] James Jordan, The Law of the Covenant, 79.
[4] A third major theme in Galatians is table fellowship. This theme connects with the other two (circumcision of the flesh and apocalypse) as broken bread is the flesh (sarx) of Christ (John 6:51), and when bread is broken, eyes are opened and Christ is revealed (Luke 24:30-31).
[5] Martyn, Galatians, 449-450.
[6] G. Walter Hansen, “A Paradigm of the Apocalypse: The Gospel in the Light of Epistolary Analysis,” in The Galatians Debate, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.), 146-147.

William Booth’s eldest daughter, Founder of the Salvation Army in France and Switzerland, known later in life as “the Maréchale,” said, “Go for souls, and go for the worst.” So should we. After all, Jesus does.

Mark Driscoll posted on facebook last week about his meeting with a man who had once been a warlock, and recently almost died of a drug overdose. The man heard the Lord speak over Him, “This one is mine, and I love him.”

The Repentance and Baptism of Eustace Scrubb, Who Learned the Difference Between Sins and Sin: Shades of Daniel 4 in The Voyage of the Dawntreader

About six days after they had landed on Dragon Island, Edmund happened to wake up very early one morning. It was just getting grey so that you could see the tree-trunks if they were between you and the bay but not in the other direction.

As he woke he thought he heard something moving, so he raised himself on one elbow and looked about him: and presently he thought he saw a dark figure moving on the seaward side of the wood. The idea that it once occurred to his mind was. “Are we so sure there are no natives on this island after all?” Then he thought it was Caspian — it was about the right size — but he knew that Caspian had been sleeping next to him and could see that he hadn’t moved. Edmund made sure that his sword was in its place and then rose to investigate.

He came down softly to the edge of the wood and the dark figure was still there. He saw now that it was too small for Caspian and too big for Lucy. It did not run away. Edmund drew his sword and was about to challenge the stranger when the stranger said in a low voice, “Is that you, Edmund?”

“Yes, who are you?” said he.

“Don’t you know me?” said the other. “It’s me — Eustace.”

“By jove,” said Edmund, “so it is. My dear chap –”

“Hush,” said Eustace and lurched as if he were going to fall.

“Hello!” said Edmund, steadying him. “What’s up? Are you ill?”

Eustace was silent for so long that Edmund thought he was fainting; but at last he said, “It’s been ghastly. You don’t know… but it’s all right now. Could we go and talk somewhere? I don’t want to meet the others just yet.”

“Yes, rather, anywhere you like,” said Edmund. “We can go and sit on the rocks over there. I say, I am glad to see you — er — looking yourself again. You must have had a pretty beastly time.”

They went to the rocks and sat down looking out across the bay while the sky got paler and paler and the stars disappeared except for one very bright one low down and near the horizon.

“I won’t tell you how I became a — a dragon till I can tell the others and get it all over,” said Eustace. “By the way, I didn’t even know it was a dragon till I heard you all using the word when I turned up here the other morning. I want to tell you how I stopped being one.”

“Fire ahead,” said Edmund.

“Well, last night I was more miserable than ever. And that beastly arm-ring was hurting like anything –”

“Is that all right now?”

Eustace laughed — a different laugh from any Edmund had heard him give before — and slipped the bracelet easily off his arm. “There it is,” he said, “and anyone who like it can have it as far as I’m concerned. Well, as I say, I was lying awake and wondering what on earth would become of me. And then — but, mind you, it may have been all a dream. I don’t know.”

“Go on,” said Edmund, with considerable impatience.

“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly towards me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it — if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it.”

“You mean it spoke?”

“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I don’t think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I’d have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I’d never seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden — trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well.

“I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells — like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.

“I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sorts of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So, I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

“But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on under the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

“Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh hear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

“Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — “You will have to let me undress you.” I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure off feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off — just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt — and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there I was as smooth and soft as a peel switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me — I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phoney if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared to Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.

“After a bit, the lion took me out and dressed me –”

“Dressed you. With his paws?”

“Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes — the same that I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.”

“No. It wasn’t a dream,” said Edmund.

“Why not?”

“Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been — well, un-dragoned, for another.”

“What do you think it was, then?” asked Eustace.

“I think you’ve seen Aslan,” said Edmund.

“Aslan!” said Eustace. “I’ve heard that name mentioned several times since we joined the Dawn Treader. And I felt — I don’t know what — I hated it. But I was hating everything then. And by the way, I’d like to apologize. I’m afraid I’ve been pretty beastly.”

“That’s all right,” said Edmund. “Between ourselves, you haven’t been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia. You were only an ass, but I was a traitor.”

“Well, don’t tell me about it, then,” said Eustace. “But who is Aslan? Do you know him?”

“Well — he knows me,” said Edmund.

“For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh…” Romans 9:3

Andrew Katay commenting on an article by Don Carson:

“Carson tells the account of a Jewish-Christian believer on a radio panel, who was asked whether anyone could be saved apart from Christ. His ethnic background was known, and so when it was his turn to speak, the radio program host baited him by asking if he thought his fellow Jews could be saved apart from Christ. Carson tells of how “This Christian brother began to weep, and then to sob quietly, uncontrollably. After a minute or two, the host said he had never heard a more compelling reason to become a Christian.”

Christ became willingly “accursed” for us. As “Covenant delegate,” Paul was willing to be accursed from Christ for his brethren. He succeeded. The flesh was cut and the holy fire fell as promised.

Jews, Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses have a big problem with the Son of God. How could God, a Spirit, take on human flesh and become a man? When we understand the significance of humanity being made in God’s image, and then being estranged from God by sin, the only mediator possible between the warring parties had to be both 100% God and 100% Man.

Jesus Christ, the ‘new Adam,’ was the only person to keep perfectly all the laws of God from cradle to grave. That qualified Him to become a human shield for mankind. His resurrection was the first of what awaits all who claim legal protection under His obedience. He deposed the legal witness for our prosecution, Satan (‘Accuser’), and is now our legal Advocate before the Father.

Those who believe they can justify themselves in God’s courtroom through their own law-keeping have no hope. God sees every corrupt thought, word and deed. These people become just like the Accuser. But those in Christ become Advocates in prayer.

Outside of Jesus Christ, we are God’s enemies and irretrievably condemned under His law. Inside of Christ, we are not only justified and pardoned, but made joint-heirs with His Son who is—quite legally—inheriting the earth.

New Adam is building a new humanity by His Spirit, and nothing can stop Him. If you haven’t done so already, it is high time you claimed your legal pardon and made peace with God through His Son. Your new legal status had an unimaginable price, yet it is offered to you as a gift.

“Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens…” Hebrews 8:1

Conservative Christian people know and understand that we deserve to be brought low. We know and understand the Law of God. We know our own sinfulness. We are very aware of how we fall short in many ways. We know that the holiness of God casts us down. This is all good, as far as it goes. This is healthy, as far as it goes. This is much needed in our day, as far as it goes. But we need to follow God’s purposes all the way out.

We need to understand what God is up to. We need to understand the narrative arc. We need to understand the story, and the story is: death and resurrection; humiliation and exaltation: ascension to the right hand of God the Father.

God humbles us, which we deserve. But He also exalts us, which we do not deserve at all. And this is often the point where we stumble. This is the point where we don’t go along with God’s purposes. This is the point where we often rebel against the Good News, where we kick against the Gospel.

In his great hymn to the obedience of Christ, the apostle Paul urges us to have the same mind in us that Christ had in Him. When this is presented to Christians, many think, “Jesus humbled Himself, so we need to humble ourselves. Jesus was brought low; we must be willing to be brought low.” This is true, but Jesus, as it says in Hebrews, did all this for the joy that was set before Him, for the exaltation that was coming. But we don’t want to have that mind in us, and that’s the problem.

If you don’t understand the process of death, resurrection, ascension and enthronement, you don’t understand the Gospel. When Paul says the mind of Christ should be in us, he is talking about the whole thing. We can’t just take a snapshot of Christ doing one thing and make it a screensaver. You must have the mind of Christ in the whole story.

We do not just follow Christ to Jerusalem to die with Him, as Thomas was willing to do. But Thomas did not yet have the mind to follow Jesus to life. Death is the doorway to life. Thomas did not understand what Jesus was talking about, and many Christians do not understand what Jesus was talking about. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son. God is up to something, and He is taking us all the way through.

Christians tend to say, okay, I admit that I’m a sinner, God has forgiven my sins, I’m cleaned up and now I’m back to square one. We are like the prodigal who wants to be forgiven and restored, but only to the level of a servant in the house. The prodigal son was not expecting the fatted calf to be killed. He was not expecting a party to be thrown. He was not expecting his father to hire a small jazz band… and neither was his older brother. He wasn’t expecting to be exalted. He was expecting to be restored at the bare minimum.

This is where our faith staggers. We expect to be forgiven. That’s God’s job. But even though we read and sing about it, and Christians have done so for two thousand years, we still don’t expect the robe, and the ring still surprises us.

Adapted from Doug Wilson, Christkirk sermon podcast May 18, 2010.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” (Ephesians 2:4-9)

“Can it really be so simple?” That is the feeling we have about the church. She has been given a mission of global conquest. As Rudolf Schnackenburg has explained, “Through the Church, Christ wins increasingly his dominion over all things and draws them ever more powerfully and completely beneath himself as head… the Church’s mission is necessary and willed by Christ to bring the world of men and with this the whole of creation under his rule.” One cannot conceive of a more astounding project. And yet, as we examine the tools the church has been given to accomplish this mission, we are prompted to ask, “Is that all there is to it?” Surely there has to be more to the church’s arsenal of weapons for world conquest than worship, baptism and the Lord’s supper, church discipline, preaching the gospel, teaching, prayer and service. Surely God expects the church to be doing more in the real world than that! We are inclined to think that God has provided us with a sharp rock for a construction project that requires power tools. We seem to have been given muzzle-loaders in a war that demands nuclear capability. The church is a mystery.

Though she is an “institution,” she is more than an institution. She is the assembly of the Father, body of Christ, the temple of the Spirit. Because the church is a mystery, she is grasped only by faith.

Likewise, the church undertakes her mission, and fulfills her mission, only by faith. In ways that we cannot fully understand, the mere presence of the church affects the world for good or ill. In mysterious ways, the public worship and feast of the assembly of God bring nearer the consummation of the kingdom of God. In ways that go beyond human comprehension, the preaching of the gospel has creative power. If we cannot understand precisely how this takes place, it is not because it does not take place. It is because the church, even in her mission of world conquest, is required to walk by faith, not by sight.

Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power, p. 193-194.

[I should note after my posts on baptism and quoting Jordan and Leithart either side of them, that they do practice infant baptism, and present a compelling case for it.] WEPOW

Centered on recent events, preaching inevitably loses most of its transformative power. From apostolic times, the task of preaching has never been a matter of providing a “religious insight” into what’s going on, a new slant on what everyone already knows. The purpose of apostolic preaching was to announce an event that, according to Paul, no one could know without a preacher. The point of preaching is not to answer questions that are already circulating. The point is to challenge the entire worldview that gives rise to those questions, and to announce the reality of a new world in which all the old questions have to be reformulated or discarded altogether.

Peter J. Leithart, Of Preaching and Newspapers.

The great argument advanced today in favor of such seeker sensitive worship is that we have to present the gospel to today’s unbeliever in a way that is relevant to him. But the word relevance, though it has a fine dictionary definition, really has to be understood as the battle cry of modern unbelief. This is not because the word itself is objectionable, but because liberals and their modern evangelical cousins have freighted it with a hidden system of weights and measures—in which the world, and not Scripture, determines the content of our faith and practice.

There are at least two kinds of irrelevance. One is the irrelevance of offering a bicycle to an oyster. But there is another kind of irrelevance entirely, and that is the practice of setting forth the gospel of light and righteousness to those who love their darkness and iniquity. We are commanded to be irrelevant in this second sense. We are called to worship God in a way that is pleasing to Him, and to which unbelievers will be attracted only if God moves them in a sovereign and mysterious way.

Read chapter 1, They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Schlock, here.

A new Adam (High Priest) ruled the wild animals of the Gentile kingdoms, but without a king this rule would be truly priestly. Daniel prefigured the nature of this new kingdom: obedience would bring persecution, and suffering as witnesses before the Gentiles would be the means of Gentile conversion. A new Israel would be the initial fulfilment of the despised, suffering priestly servant of Isaiah 53. When the Lord scattered His people for their sin, He also spread them to the four winds as witnesses to the empire.

Their initial failure was epitomised by Mordecai’s instruction to Esther to hide her identity. This resulted in Haman being exalted to the right hand of the Power instead of a Jew. It was Esther’s witness that dethroned the serpent, and allowed Mordecai, as a new Daniel, to steer the empire for the benefit of the people of God. This was Israel’s job during the restoration era.

By the time of Christ, their compromise with Greek philosophy and then Roman political power had rendered them slaves in Egypt. The new “Pharaoh” didn’t know Joseph (Mordecai). It took a new scattering of witnesses to complete the work of the Restoration era in the empire.

The gospels are four winds, four “living creatues” that carried the throne of God throughout the nations under Roman rule. Matthew presents Jesus as a new Moses, who flees Egypt, is baptized in the river, resists temptation in the wilderness for 40 days, and then preaches about the law from a mountain. Mark corresponds to the Davidic covenant. Mark shows Jesus as a man of action, a man on the move, a conquering king. Luke shows us Jesus in a more cosmopolitan setting, corresponding to the Restoration, when the Jews were scattered among the Gentiles and called to bear witness. John, the climax of the gospels, brought the church fully into the New Covenant. John shows us Jesus as the Son of God.1

“But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all [the] nations.” (Mark 13:9-10)

And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole [ruled land] as a [witness] to all [the] nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:3-14)

As a “witness to all the nations” of the Oikoumene, the preaching of the gospel was the fulfilment of the Restoration Covenant, the high priesthood of Joshua.

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1 See Peter J. Leithart, BIBLICAL HORIZONS No. 72, Covenant Recapitulation in New Testament History

Whenever the Word of God comes, it is an end to business as usual. Some people taste life, others taste death, and there is conflict between the quick and the dead. God sends confusion to those who have chosen death, and gives miraculous persevering strength to those who have chosen life. Eventually, the wicked are judged and the redeemed are gathered around God. God lets His Word loose among us to create new life, thresh out the husks and gather the wheat into His barn. He calls the sheep out from the goats and brings them home. He disturbs us to bring us true rest.

Jesus’ parables were a two-edged sword. They forced the believers to wrestle with spiritual truths. They also confused and incited the unbelievers to a showdown that would expose their true natures and hasten their destruction. The Bible is the same. It is living water or a cup of destruction depending upon who is drinking.