“and their faces were backwards so that they did not see their father’s nakedness” (Gen. 9:23)

James Jordan has some fascinating comments on Ham’s sin in Genesis 19:

The situation is just like that in the Tabernacle. God is enthroned naked in the Holy of Holies, but the priests are never to see Him. When they move the Tabernacle, they unhook the Veil and carry it backwards to cover the Throne. When they set up the Tabernacle, they pull off the Veil carefully and walk forward and hook it up without looking. On the Day of Coverings (Lev. 16), when Aaron does go into the Holy of Holies, God wraps Himself in His cloud. God is not to be seen in His tent, but God does speak from His throne. The same is true of Noah: when he awakes, he speaks.

James Jordan, The Sin of Ham Revisited.

Looking at the illustration above, we get the picture. The Master resting behind the Veil (“Noah” means “rest”), two cherubim witnesses, and the serpent in the garden.

The dietary Laws given to Moses were an expansion of the command given to Adam. It is the self-denial of priestly obedience to God. Adam wasn’t ready for the tree of judicial responsibility (kingdom) but he seized it.

In the greater Bible picture, Israel’s history (from Moses) is this period of priestly obedience. But Jesus came and reversed Adam’s failure. Consequently the dietary laws are revoked, and with greater maturity, the people of God (through the first century death of Israel and her resurrection as the church) now, like Jesus, have the judicial wisdom of the Spirit, and the power to eat unclean things (Gentiles), consume them and make them clean. Only the power of resurrection can enter a room with a corpse in it, touch lepers and feast on Gentile meats and not be made unclean, but instead make the unclean clean by consuming it. This is the power of the New Covenant. 

This power only comes after obedience (in this case, obedience to the gospel). Fasting, then feasting.

Under the Old Covenant, scavengers were unclean demonic “servants” of God. Under the new, the church Herself becomes the greatest “scavenger” of all time, the body of Christ eating the dead and incorporating them into His life by resurrection. Only those who will not die, will not judge themselves, those who are neither fire nor water, hot nor cold, are vomited out as unclean. Lukewarmness is the old life refusing to die. No death (fasting), no resurrection (feasting). Jesus is our food, and we are His. We in Him, and He in us. Greater Solomon reigns, and the world is His table. Unlike Adam, He didn’t seize the kingdom, so the Father gave it to Him on a platter.

Just as the unclean birds carried out the Covenant curses for God, now the church of God is the great clean bird situated between heaven and earth, brooding over the abyss, devouring the corpses of those dead in transgressions and rendering them alive as they pass through her Laver gates. The crystal sea still dispenses angelic government, but now it is the crystal city, and the Advocate has replaced the Accuser.

Greater Daniel fasted, and now eats anything Babylon presents to Him. Greater Esther proclaimed a fast, but now devours even the twisted monsters of the deep and makes Gog and Magog fit for God. No nation is too unclean for resurrection. And no nation is too strong, for she devours them from the inside.

Little by little, the world passes through the tabernacle of Jesus, dismembered, washed, burnt and ascended, until all is a Holy aroma pleasing to God. 

So fast and pray, then go out and eat (with) the unclean, remembering that Jesus always keeps the best till the end.

There are two kinds of whiteness in the Bible, and an understanding of this explains a great deal. There is the whiteness of covering and the whiteness of uncovering. And, as mentioned, the Bible makes a great deal out of the concept of covering.

Bone Collector

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Touching a corpse made an Israelite unclean. The remains of those slain in battle were marked with lime for two reasons: so that they could be avoided by the clean, and so they could be gathered up and burned to lime by the bone collectors. Jesus said that the righteousness of the Pharisees was like a whitewashed sepulchre. Not only were they full of the ceremonial uncleanness of broken Covenant, their so-called righteousness was actually a mark from God upon them. They would be gathered to their people not by the Father sending His angels to the four corners of the Land, but by the father of lies and his scavengers sent by God to clean the wound.

This image goes right back to Genesis. Like the angels, the Covenant scavengers, though demonic, are also God’s servants. They are the raven of Noah surviving on floating corpses until the water goes down; they are the scavenging dogs that lick up Jezebel’s blood; they are the maggots in misused manna and abandoned grapes (false bread and wine); they are the unclean birds and animals that screech and howl inside the corpse of a defeated Babylon; they are worms inside Herod ‘enthroned’ as a human Gehenna.

The whiteness of the Pharisees was the whiteness of Miriam’s and Gehazi’s skin-plague. It is the whiteness of flesh and bones exposed as unclean to the eyes of God. Satan himself appeared as an angel of light, but like the Pharisees, he was a false lightbearer, a tutor guiding his children the wrong way.

Vindicated by the Redeemer/Avenger

‘To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’

Jesus says this at the end of the letter to the church in Pergamum. As James Jordan observes, the imagery in the seven letters takes us through Old Covenant history, beginning with Eden, and ending with Herod’s ‘Laodicea’. Pergamum is the church in the wilderness, hence the references to Phinehas’ sword, Balaam and Balak, testing by temptation to sexual immorality and the mighty men (Nicolaitans).

The white stone speaks of a faithful priesthood publicly vindicated, the wilderness manna transfigured into glorious metal by resurrection.

“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died…”
(John 6:48-49)

The Hebrew word for redeemer is the same as avenger. A kinsman redeemer not only rescued his brother’s widow and inheritance by marriage, but was charged with avenging and vindicating her over her enemies. Like Boaz, he was to bring her in from the wilderness, cover her, and give her ‘a new name’ by adoption (like Ruth). Resurrection always involves a judgment, a division between those who are covered (Ruth) and those who love their widowhood and choose to remain uncovered (barren) and return to the fields of Moab (Orpah). The choice is between the bread of the Covenant and the bread of Moab, Covenant children or the children of Lot’s incest.

Beth-lechem Ephratah (fertile house of bread)

The Revelation is Jesus’ judgment between two women like Ruth and Orpah, and in fact, as the story is expanded it becomes a judgment between two prostitutes. Each has a son, but one is dead and one is alive. The woman who lies is uncovered by the words of wise Solomon as the destroying angel of Passover. She is left barren like Egypt.

There are the harlots and tax collectors who come into the kingdom and take up the Messianic line as Rahab. Then there is Judah herself, the greatest of all tax collectors, riding the Roman beast and saying in her heart “I sit a queen. I am no widow.” She was indeed married, but not to Boaz. She had returned to the incestuous bread of Moab like Orpah, a wicked and adulterous generation who shunned a Bethlehem (House of Bread) restored (after the sins recorded at the end of Judges) and made fruitful again by Greater Boaz.

A false house of bread is a false resurrection, a whited sepulchre. It is bread made glorious with the leprous leaven of the Pharisees. It is a phantom pregnancy, a ‘rising’ that turns out to be a mere breaking of wind. But Jesus as Boaz has His children (Hebrews 2:13).

Big White Stones

At the centre of the Creation matrix that runs right through the Bible is the wilderness. It is the burning bush, the Lampstand eyes of God’s Law judging–threshing–His people. The annual feasts follow the same pattern. In that case it is the harvest of Pentecost and its tongues of fire.

The wilderness is God’s threshing floor. It is the place where Boaz covers Ruth as the foundation for a later Temple. And the grinding of the millstone is a euphemism for sex.1  The Old Testament helps us make sense of Revelation 18. Not only would Judah’s Temple no longer enjoy the light of the lampstand filled with olive oil (the Spirit), the fruitfulness of the millstone would be taken away. No more bread.

The face of the unfaithful Old Covenant ‘baker’ would be uncovered as the bread in white baskets was eaten by ravens under the Covenant curse. He would be executed by Jesus as Pharaoh. The cupbearer was resurrected from the ‘tomb’, but the baker was not. The Old Covenant priesthood was exposed, but the New Covenant oil and wine would not be harmed.

Jesus as wise Solomon built His new house on the rock of obedience. The Herods ignored Jesus’ warnings for forty wilderness years and built a great and glorious house–on sand. Even in Jesus’ day, long before its completion, the disciples admired it. At the end of the Restoration Covenant, it was the ultimate form of Zerubbabel’s white capstone, covered in gold and white marble. When it reflected the early morning or afternoon sun, people had to avert their eyes from its brightness. It should have been a house for Eve built upon the sacrificial obedience of Adam, but it was a pretense, a covering of leaves. Jesus saw its future.

Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more.”

Herod’s house of bread was submerged under the Gentile sea, a big white stone sinking to the bottom like Pharaoh’s armies. It was not Ezra’s Resurrection Temple as he had hoped. Zerubbabel’s white stone, the Restoration Temple, had been the outcome of a priestly people who put their pagan wives away. But Herod’s kingdom was built on the intermarriage of red Edomite clay and Roman iron–sex with the beast in the wilderness. It was not a capstone but a gravestone.

After the end of the Roman siege, not one stone of this white house remained upon another. Roman soldiers tore up the masonry to retrieve the gold that melted in the fires and ran into the cracks. As the Man of Sin, the Herods had spoken as though they were God, sitting in Moses’ and Solomon’s seat of judgment where they ought not. But their house was left desolate, uncovered and eaten by scavenging maggots. As anti-Christ, Herod was the living dead instead of the dead living–the manna of disobedience. It was not another restoration of Ezra’s Temple. It was the whiteness of a false resurrection, a leprous house that would be torn down.

And he shall break down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, and all the mortar of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city into an unclean place. (Lev. 14:45)

Herod’s house pretended to be the top of the mountain of God, but it was filled with corpses like the Valley of Hinnom, covered with bones like the altar of Jeroboam, unclean and outside the true city of God.

Jezebel was indeed thrown down, and all that the dogs left were her head, hands and feet, a cruciform memorial for the bone collectors. The angel had said, “He is not here. He is risen” and the apostles and prophets rejoiced. Now the angel said, “She is not here. She is eaten,” and the apostles and prophets rejoiced again (2 Kings 9:37; Rev. 18:20). Her whited bones remain as a memorial to the leaven of the Pharisees, a faith that is a collection of unclean bones. Only the breath of Jesus can resurrect a Jew from the dust.

But there were two lime-washed pillars that Joshua set up as a memorial to his church’s river crossing. At the church’s crossing of the crystal sea into the promised heavenly country, Herod’s Temple was the second pillar. What was the first?

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1. Samson’s adultery condemned him to a symbolic harlotry, pushing the millstone, grinding grain in the house of a foreign god. But his repentance made him ‘fruitful’ again, and the once adulterous and barren ‘warrior-bride’ rejoiced to see the destruction of that house.

WHITSTON-5

Moses listened on the mountain as God spoke. He digested the law, and repeated it to the next generation in Deuteronomy, partly in a song that he taught them.

Moses’ tabernacle was silent. It was misused and dismembered, then reconstructed in the ‘next generation’ as the Tabernacle of David, with music and Gentile singers.

Christ ascended and silently received the New Covenant scroll as a lamb. He opened it upon Israel and the blessings and curses followed. Then He gave part of it to John to bring about the end of the age in the next generation. John listened, and as a son of thunder repeated it as seven thunders, played out in history as seven rejected Temple bowls. And the avenged saints – Jews and Gentiles in the Tabernacle of Greater David – sang in anticipation of the Bridegroom and His permanent Temple, the church.

So, Adam listens silently as God gives him the law. When tested, he repeats his ‘digested’ wisdom to Eve. And she sings the law in response and satan is defeated. Except we know that’s not what happened in the first garden.

So hear, think, speak, sing.

As a ‘priesthood of all believers’, all God’s people now have access to the Holy Place. Yet within that government there are still different roles to fulfill – there are still Chief Priests. Due to the abuse of male authority (exploitation of women) in western culture, we have tried to rectify it with more exploitation. Only God’s model will work, and that is men taking their God-given spiritual responsibilities as husbands, fathers and pastors seriously – self-sacrificial leadership. Men initiate, women respond. In this, we image Christ and His church. ‘Opening the scroll’ is still foremost the responsibility of men, imaging the Bridegroom.

“There are judgesses, queens and prophetesses in the Bible, and though there are not many, nobody seems to be surprised about it. But there are no priestesses. The reason for this is found (as usual) in Genesis 2 and 3. The one thing that is excluded from women is the central liturgical function of imaging the Groom.” James B. Jordan, Judges: God’s War Against Humanism, p. 77-78. Download from www.biblicalhorizons.com

Christian men follow the blind when we should be leading. This begins with taking dominion in our own hearts and homes as the spiritual “prime movers”. As Adam, a man silently receives the law from God, digests it (swallows the scroll), it judges him first (bittersweet—like communion), then he “comes down from the mountain” and shares the light of the law with greater Eve: wife, children, church. The law is then sung in response as liturgy, a song of victory over the crushed enemy, in every family, every church.

The Synod of Dort

If you’ve ever been to a Synod, you’ll quickly find out that “truth” is determined by numbers.

So remarked a Catholic contributor on a Protestant forum recently. Is this a fair criticism of Protestant disunity? How should we Protestants reply? Thanks to James Jordan’s teaching, I think I can offer an answer.

One of the greatest themes of the Bible is of growth to maturity. The Old Testament priesthood was about simply obeying the rules. They didn’t have to think, just obey. This period peaked with Solomon’s wise but perhaps culturally limited reflections on the Law.

After the captivity, applying God’s Law in new situations and under new conditions (Gentile emperors) required greater wisdom. Not only did scattering Israel enlarge the mediator-nation’s sphere of influence, it was a move from the simplicity of priestly ‘bread-making’ (follow the rules) to the tricky process of kingly ‘wine making’ – ie. tough decisions.

This culminated in the last supper, when men were finally invited to drink wine before God as kings.

Now, the Catholic church might create ‘unity’ through its central system of doctrine (and I would argue that this is unity in error), but the Protestant system is a brave application of this process of maturity. We have to work things out under new conditions, and in many situations which would have been unimaginable in previous generations. Not everything is spelled out for us in the New Testament. We are commanded to ask God for the wisdom of Christ, our Greater Solomon.

Perhaps this is the reason Catholics were denied wine at Mass, congregational participation was kept to a minimum, and in a recent survey among all Christian denominations, Catholics dragged the “Bible knowledge” average down. It was the logical result of their revived Old Covenant priestcraft.

This is the New Covenant, and we are required to think. The time of spoon-feeding is over, and every believer is expected to learn to feed themselves. This is a glorious, albeit at times messy, process.

Ezra took a great risk to bring Levites and riches to the Temple from Persia. Mixed marriages were suddenly of more concern, which poses a difficult question. Things seem to be heading backwards—away from the New Testament rather than towards it.

In the accounts of the Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple, the priests’ genealogies were central. Peter Leithart writes:

“When the people as a whole begin to show a concern for genealogy, it’s a sign of their enhanced priestly status. Priests were apparently permitted to marry converted Gentiles, but the high priest had to marry a “virgin from his own people” (Lev 21:14). It’s no doubt too strong to say that the people as a whole have to conform to the marital requirements of the high priest, but there may be some move in that direction.

Two comments on all this. First, at the heart of Pharisaism is precisely this upgrade of holiness to all Israel. Every Israelite is to be holy as the priests are holy, since the land and city are like the forecourt of the temple. Pharisaism is a perversion of the restoration arrangements, but it is clearly working within the framework of Ezra-Nehemiah.

Second, if it is true that a conception of genealogical holiness takes shape in the post-exilic period, why is that? How is that part of the maturation of Israel that we see throughout the Old Testament? It would seem that as Israel approaches the New Testament, we’d see a clearer sign of the extension of Israel to encompass the Gentiles, rather than a tightening of regulations and a closing of gaps in the boundaries between Israel and the Gentiles.”1

Ezra’s “closing of gaps in the boundaries” between Israel and the Gentiles, a “priesthood of all Jews,” prefigured the New Testament’s Jew/Gentile “priesthood of all believers.” Nehemiah constructed a virgin city of living stones, a kingdom of priests. Jerusalem was no longer a loose woman. She was a bride-city again, purified by death and resurrection.

1  Peter J. Leithart, Ezra-Nehemiah: Purity and Holiness, www.leithart.com

Peter Leithart points out that the very early verses in John’s gospel can be corresponded with the Creation week:

DAY 1: The Light of the World (1:1-18)
DAY 2: The Baptism of John (1:19-28)
DAY 3: Jesus’ Baptism (1:29-34): dry land emerges from water, “the next day.”
DAY 4: John Points Disciples to Jesus (1:35-39)
DAY 5: Disciples Bring Brothers (1:40-42)
DAY 6: Jesus and Nathanael (1:43-51): “the following day,” the first day
DAY 7: [nothing]: Sabbath; the second day
DAY 8: The Wedding at Cana (2:1-11): “the third day”

More detail here.

It seems to be the case with many Bible books that they start off with a small seven, which is part of a larger one, which is then part of a great seven that structures the book (among other internal structures).

As with Matthew’s gospel, the next level in John covers the first few chapters, and might even solve a textual difficulty:

Jesus is presented as the Word (Light – Genesis); He is baptized by John and John’s disciples make an “exodus” (Waters parted – Exodus); Jesus builds a new priesthood, Nathaniel will see the heavens opened and Jesus turns water into wine “on the third day” (Land & Sea, Grains & Fruit – Leviticus); Jesus cleanses the Temple (Governing Lights – Numbers); Nicodemus, like Israel, must be resurrected (born again) (Army/Swarms – Deuteronomy); John baptizes converts in the Jordan (Animals/Man – Joshua); Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman and many Samaritans believe, then He heals a nobleman’s son (Sabbath – Judges).

Finally, and here’s where it gets really interesting, after an angel “stirs the waters” (Genesis), Jesus also stirs things up by healing a man on the Sabbath. The first 6 chapters of Daniel also follow this Creation week pattern. In Daniel 7, the breath of God stirs the waters of the nations and it raises monsters! I guess, here, in John, the monsters raised from the Abyss are the Pharisees.

So it seems that verse about the angel stirring the waters should perhaps be included after all, as the beginning of the next cycle. The hovering angel represents the Spirit of God come to part the waters for a new exodus.

“And I cut off the three shepherds in one month…” Zechariah 11:8

Who are these mysterious three shepherds?

Theories abound, most prominently that the Lord refers to the offices of prophet, priest and king in first century Judah. Perhaps, as with Zechariah 14, the pattern of Israel’s feasts (as outlined in Leviticus 23) structures Zechariah 11. If you look carefully you will also see the Creation week.

Sabbath
Peace is taken from the Land as the destruction of the Temple (house of cedars) and Land are foretold. The cedars are the priest-elders and the lions are Judah’s kings.

Passover
The wolf shepherds who trade in Israel’s offspring will themselves be slaughtered without pity.

Firstfruits
The three ringleading wolf shepherds are cut off as the un-covered firstborn of Egypt instead of being redeemed at “one month” with silver as Firstfruits for a renewed worship. The Lord Himself becomes the shepherd, but the flock rejects Him. He feeds the faithful remnant in preparation for slaughter and starves the rest. He is rejected and, like Moses, breaks the first staff of the Covenant: Favour.

After Joseph’s brothers, the theme of bad shepherds reappears frequently in the Old Testament.

Zechariah’s three bad shepherds are cut off at “one month,” which, along with the structure of the passage, is another clue to their identity. In Numbers 18, Aaron was instructed to redeem the firstborn of Israel’s sons and unclean animals with five shekels of silver when they were one month old. But the firstborn clean animals could be sacrificed and eaten by clean priests. Here, the Temple rulers have again turned Judah into Egypt. Jesus comes as Redeemer/Avenger, and they will be destroyed, but the faithful Firstfruits flock will be fattened on the bread of life ready to be sacrificed and ascend to God (Revelation 14).

There are specifically three bad shepherds, referring to the disobedience of Aaron and his two sons, and to Eli and his two sons. The priesthood had disobediently allowed their unclean “sons” to “buy” and “devour” the faithful as Firstfruits offerings. As priests covered by the wrong kind of innocent blood, the priests’ offspring themselves were unclean and would not be redeemed.
This theory is supported by what follows.

Pentecost
The watching flock recognise this as the Word. His worth is measured at thirty pieces of silver, the minimum price under the Law for a slave

The Great Shepherd Himself became a sheep in order to test Israel’s shepherds. In spite, they “redeemed” the true Firstborn with blood-money as a sinner or anunclean animal unfit for sacrifice.

This feast structure is used a great deal in the Bible, and Firstfruits is the feast where the priesthood draws near to God (as the third book, Leviticus corresponds to this feast). I believe this passage predicts that the corrupted priesthood of Aaron would no longer be able to draw near, but left behind in Herod’s Egypt (Revelation 11:8). They had offered “strange fire”, taken bribes, and slept with prostitutes in the face of God. Judah herself was the idolater, tax collector and harlot that refused to repent.

(This chapter is also related to the ‘Altar of the Abyss.’ I have commented on that here.)

The content of this post has been revised and included in Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

“…and I came to Jerusalem and discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God. And it grieved me bitterly; therefore I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room. Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense.” Nehemiah 13:7-9

After the failure of Israel’s kings and their adulterous priesthood, God established new worship in the “wilderness” of Babylon under Daniel and Ezekiel. When Babylon fell, He brought His new Jerusalem, like a pure bride, back to the mountain of God.

In Ezra, opposition to the building of the Temple was overcome. But the returned exiles were sitting ducks without a city wall, and this is what distressed Nehemiah. In its last chapter, Nehemiah describes the expulsion of Tobiah from the Temple, one who had previously opposed restoration; the Canaanite 7-day traders are also locked out of the city on the Sabbath, and the children of mixed marriages who speak foreign languages are struck and have their hair torn out. Hardly a model of tolerance.

This new Jerusalem, like the old, was a new garden of Eden. The sin pattern of early Genesis is reversed. Tobiah the serpent was cast out of the garden by ‘Adam.’ The Canaanite ‘false brothers’ were prevented from polluting the Sabbath in theLand, and the children of the “daughters of men,” future “mighty men” were terrorised before a harvest of bloodshed in the world.

Then Nehemiah reminds them that this last sin brought the downfall of Solomon’s kingdom. Which brings us to the New Testament, and Revelation.

“But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.” – Mark 13:14

“Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.” – 2 Thess. 2:3-4

Like Nehemiah, the first century builders of the walls of New Jerusalem were troubled by false prophets as Jesus had predicted. The later epistles make this final apostasy plain. It was to separate those who were approved before the final harvest. But the point is, there was once again a man who had opposed the restoration of Jerusalem now living in God’s house — King Herod and his puppet High Priest, twin horns on a lamb-faced dragon — a false Solomon.

Like Nehemiah, Christ expelled this predatory squatter from the house of God (2 Thess. 2:8), locked out the Canaanite traders (Zechariah 14:21; Revelation 18:11-15; Revelation 22:15) and wiped out the “mighty men” children of spiritual adultery, the Judaisers and Jewish rebels, in a flood (Daniel 9:26).

The New Worship was established in the wilderness, replaced the earthly city and now mediates between heaven and earth with walls of pure crystal. One day, like Nehemiah’s city, she too will descend upon the mountain of God.