When Moses is given the Ten Commandments they are written on two tablets:

And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. (Deuteronomy 4:13)

Why are the Ten Commandments written on two tablets? Was one tablet not big enough for God’s handwriting? Or did God give Moses two copies of the Law, one tablet being a duplicate of the other?

Two Witnesses

Firstly, we must understand that God always requires the testimony of at least two legal witnesses.

On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. (Deuteronomy 17:6)

The book of Deuteronomy itself is a “second testimony” of the Law (deutero-nomos meaning “second law”), repeating what was given to the Israel whose bodies fell in the wilderness.

A legal case will fail if the testimony of the witnesses does not corroborate, as was the case in the trial of Jesus. It seems the Father and the Son were two witnesses against the tower of Babel. The angel of the Lord sent two angels as witnesses into Sodom. And Israel herself saw her unfaithful spies slain, leaving only two faithful witnesses of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb.

The Ten Words are referred to as a “testimony”:

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. (Exodus 32:15)

So the tablets of the Law are “two witnesses” with a corroborated testimony, and we should notice that even these two tablets were given twice due to Israel’s idolatry. The tablets themselves suffered a “death and resurrection”, the second set being a prefigurement of every future “new covenant,” including the one predicted by Jeremiah and fulfilled in Ezra/Nehemiah and Haggai/Zechariah.

Because the tablets of the Law agreed, those who swore to keep the Law could be punished, excommunicated, or executed for breaking it.

A Complementarian Covenant

Ray Sutton attempts to fit the ten words to the five-fold Covenant pattern found everywhere in the Torah, as outlined in his groundbreaking book, That You May Prosper (p. 214).

Although numbers 1 and 5 seem to fit the Covenant pattern very well, Sutton has to go to great lengths to make the others relate to it. Also, his book sees the Covenant process as a linear progression, rather than a “there and back again,” as the Bible Matrix shows. With the matrix in mind, we can see this twofold “head and body” progression in the Ten Words.

Being very familiar with the “above, beside, below” movement of the Bible Matrix (also found in James Jordan’s excellent essay on slavery), when I came across another possibility for the arrangement of the Ten Words, even though it made no reference to the Covenant structure or the Bible Matrix, I could see immediately that it corresponded very well.

The alternate arrangement is by Moshe Kline, a Jewish scholar who follows the “scroll” division of the commandments (as did Augustine). This means that our first two are combined into one, and our last is divided into two. This sounds strange until we realize that not only are the Ten Words a double witness, they are an Adam and an Eve horizontally, and God, Mankind and the Future vertically.

If we read the laws as the warp and weft in fabric, we have “Adamic” laws as 1 3 5 7 9 (odd numbers) and “Evian” laws as 2 4 6 8 10 (even numbers). multiples of two – the Bride always “multiplies”

So, the structure works from above to beside to below (from God, through fellow man, down to offspring, that is, past to present to future), and it follows the fivefold Covenant pattern:

You might notice that this is also a slightly truncated version of the Creation Week, since the “mediating veils” are removed. There is no “removal of sin” at Passover (Day 2) or Atonement (Day 6), which things correspond to Circumcision and Baptism. Adam and Eve are entirely naked before heaven at every point. Not only this, but they have unobstructed access to the Garden (Transcendence) and the World (Succession) from the Land.

Ten Fingers

The Ten Words were written with the FINGER of God. Ten Words is ten fingers, two human hands, instruments of righteousness or unrighteousness. When Jesus broke bread, He would have used all ten fingers to tear it, picturing His imminent death under the curse of the Law. We should remember this whenever we break bread.

“And Moses threw the tablets out of his hands…” (Exodus 32:19)

The theft in the Garden of Eden was carried out with two hands, the hand of Eve and then the hand of Adam, five fingers each. If the Adam/Eve, priest/people idea is strange, it is simply an expression of the totus Christus in Man and Woman at every level, from the Sanctuary to the Household to the Nations.

Also, the High Priest made two approaches to the Most Holy on the Day of Atonement, once for the priesthood and once for the people. This is recapitulated in Daniel 7, which predicts Jesus’ ascension into the glory cloud as “head,” then four decades later returning “in like manner” for the sacrificial “body,” the firstfruits martyrs.

We also see this in Abraham, who entered the land to sacrifice Isaac (firstfruits/priesthood) and then again to bury Sarah (offspring/people).

When the sin of any culture is fullgrown, it is thus “ten fingered” (priesthood and kingdom corrupted) it has become military, a swarm (the fullness of Day 5). God sends prophets (Day 5/Trumpets), and then acts through mediators (Day 6/Atonement/Sanctions) to save a remnant, and secure for them the future, historical continuity (Day 7/Succession).

Filthy Lucre

Finally, if this arrangement of the Ten Words is correct, it should be reflected through correspondence with other events. The first is the correspondence between theft and lying in Prophetic Ministry, which was condemned by Paul in Titus 1, and appears to be rampant today. We can see this combination in the “ministry” of Gehazi (2 Kings 4), who sought to misrepresent the generosity of Israel’s God to the faithful through his sly words to Naaman, the believing Gentile.

Peter Leithart helpfully highlights another two cases, without corresponding this “unusual” combination to either the Ten Words or to Adam’s sin. He writes:

Zechariah 5:3-4 threatens a curse to those who steal and those who swear falsely. It’s a somewhat unusual combination. Perhaps the implied scenario is this: A thief steals, he is questioned about his theft, and he swears falsely that he did not steal. His theft is compounded by an oath declaring his innocence. He steals goods, and then robs the name of God by a lie.

The ultimate source of this threat, though, goes back to a specific incident in Israel’s history. Jericho was under the ban, which meant that all living things were slaughtered and all plunder was given to Yahweh. Achan, the “troubler of Israel,” stole some of the consecrated goods and hid them in his tent. Yahweh accuses him of “stealing” and “deceit” (Joshua 7:11). Because of his sacrilege, Israel is defeated before Ai, changing the psychological dynamics of the conquest against Israel. Before they got beaten at Ai, the Canaanites’ hearts were melting (2:9); after Ai, Israelite hearts became water (7:5).

No wonder Zechariah takes this combination of sins so seriously: Until the troublers are purged, Israel will flee in fright before their enemies.

Ten Tests

The last example I will present is James Jordan’s list of the ten tests which Israel failed before that generation was doomed to die in the wilderness (from the notes for his lectures on the book of Numbers). It seems to fit very well, typologically speaking:

Two Copies?

Meredith Kline argues that the “tables” were actually two copies of the same law (The Structure of Biblical Authority, pp. 117-120.) This is based on the assumption that the Mosaic Covenant is either a divine “answer” to Ancient Near East suzerainty treaties, or their inspiration, and still closely related. Dr. Meshulam Margaliot writes:

To get at the peshat, or simple meaning, we must take account of the historical context in which the Ten Commandments were given. According to Ex. 19, this was done in the course of establishing a covenant–a berit–between the Lord and Israel. Hence, we are dealing with the text of a covenant, a type of contract between two (or more) parties. For obvious reasons, it is customary for every written contract or agreement to be issued in duplicate, each party receiving a complete copy of the agreement, contract, or covenant.

This was also the practice in the ancient Near East. The most famous example of two copies of a diplomatic agreement between two kingdoms is the treaty containing the pact made between the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite King Hattusilis III, c. 1270 B.C.E. The Egyptian copy was found in Egypt, and the Hittite one in the capital of the Hittites, in eastern Turkey. The contents of both copies are identical.

It would be reasonable for the pact made at Sinai to be issued in two copies, one for the Lord, and one for the Israelites. This practice explains why one tablet did not suffice, rather two were needed.

I believe, as Kline does, that the Lord’s Covenants were the inspiration for the pagan treaties, not other way around, not least because the same Covenant structure can be traced back to Genesis 1. However, the explanation of the need for two copies does not suffice, since in Israel’s case, both copies were kept in the Ark of the Testimony. Israel’s “copy” was the hearing of the graven words. Based on the “complementarian” structure of the Ten Words outlined above, it would seem that each tablet contained only five commandments each, because the Covenant was not merely an expression of unitarian (vertical) authority between heaven and earth (or between Egypt and the Hittites). God’s Covenants are Trinitarian, with not merely an above and a below but a “beside.” They include the relationship between Church and State, the horizontal “marriage” between priesthood and people.

Moreover, Moshe Kline argues:

that the division in the Masoretic Text (MT), which appears in the Torah scrolls read in synagogues, should be preferred because it leads to a reading that integrates all ten Words in a coherent document.

The document itself consists of five consecutive pairs of Words organized hierarchically, from the first pair, which focuses on God, to the last pair, which is limited to subjective human experience, “Do not covet.” Once this internal structure is recognized, it leads to seeing a new arrangement of the Words on the two stone tablets.

They should be seen as written in pairs across the two tablets, the first Word on one and the second Word on the other, the third on the first, etc. Thus one tablet contains the “odd” Words and the other the “evens.” This arrangement may be the literal meaning of the otherwise difficult verse in Exodus 32:15, “לחת כתבים משני עבריהם, מזה ומזה הם כתבים”, “(the writing was) written across both tablets; (alternately), on one and (then) the other, were they written.”

What is the conclusion here? That the Ten Words work not only from heaven down to earth (vertically) but also horizontally, between priesthood (Adam) and people (Eve), the left hand and the right hand. This means that their architecture aligns with the four “points” of the Tabernacle furnitures, leaving out only the Incense Altar in the centre. The Tablets taken together are a cruciform instrument of death, the curse upon Adam and Eve. The missing element, the Incense Altar, is a fragrant symbol of the resurrection, Word and Response, both vertically and horizontally, united at last in the bosom of Christ.

Paul’s Numbers

We have arrived at what appears to be the center of the epistle, which would be Testing (in matrix terms), the “opening” of the Law (Ethics 2 in Covenant terms) and “purification” (in sacrificial terms). And, being at the centre of the book, this part is the Apostle’s main argument, or thesis. Just as Christ and the coming of the kingdom in His sending of the Spirit are found at the centre of Covenant history, so the transformation by fire of the Levitical priesthood into a fragrant Bride are at the centre of Galatians.

At this point, it seems that there may be more than one cycle here, which means this section could enjoy its own expansion “fractally” to allow for more exposition. We’ll have to wait and see. But Paul’s journey has reached the fourth book of Moses, “In The Wilderness.”
This post has been refined by fire and included in a new book, The Shape of Galatians.

You must be logged in to see the rest of this post.

Join now for a year for $15!

“The solution here is not, as Calvin believed, to dress the New Covenant’s ethical maturity in the puerile clothing of paedobaptism.”

In The Failure of the American Baptist Culture [PDF], James Jordan, Ray Sutton and others expose the rot at the heart of baptistic theology, which is inherently man-centred. The authors call us from a view of salvation in isolation to a wider vision of the meaning of baptism, which signifies the broader realities of the Covenant of Grace. I learned a great deal about history and Reformed theology, and thoroughly recommend it to you. In my view, however, they don’t go far enough. A call to understand the vital historical connection between circumcision and baptism certainly deals with the errors of the Anabaptists, but when rightly understood, the progressive nature of revelation also exposes the use of paedobaptism as a connection with the Old Covenant as entirely bogus.

Fractal Nature

We have discussed the process of maturity as consisting of physical, social and ethical. This occurs at many levels. In each case, one is given being, then one is given authority by Covenant (a legal and relational contract, consisting of Law and Love), and finally one is called to nurture and protect those in one’s care. We see this threefold pattern in the Garden of Eden. Then we see it multiplied (as a 3 x 3) in the three domains of Garden, Land and World. Each domain has a “horizontal” progression and a “vertical” one. [1]

In the chapter “Calvin’s Covenantal Response to the Anabaptist View of Baptism,” Peter Lillback notes that Calvin rejected credobaptism because it classified circumcision and baptism as “carnal” and “spiritual” signs respectively.

Since this rejection demanded that the Old Testament covenant be made into a material or carnal covenant – circumcision was not a spiritual symbol – several important doctrines associated with the covenant were as a result severely injured. If the Anabaptist basis for rejecting infant baptism prevailed, then there would be no Old Testament progressive revelation and preparation for the Messiah. Since the Old Testament covenant was only material, Christ would be never present before them, and so God would in essence have mocked them by withholding salvation from them. Just as serious, there would have been no Old Testament counterpart of the grace of justification which was founded upon Christ. If such a carnal covenant were correct, Paul’s argument on the example of Israel’s punishment for disobedience supported by the equality of sacraments of the Old and New Covenants would be utterly in error. And every bit as unthinkable, the Word of God present in the covenant formula would be severed from eternal life. It is because of these resulting errors that Calvin can speak of infant baptism as a safeguard of Scripture and doctrine. If it is taught, the continuity of Scripture in the one divine covenant of grace is affirmed. For Calvin, there is one covenant which is constant throughout Scripture. To reject infant baptism is to deny the unity of the covenant and thus to result in such confusion. (p. 193) [2]

How can I maintain that, even before the Fall, nature and “supernature” were distinct elements and avoid the severance of the Old Covenant from the New? It seems to me that the problem lies in a failure to understand organic growth. At every point in my life, I am complete, and yet, throughout the process of life, there is progress, there is continuity. A male is a boy, an adolescent and then a man. But a man is not a boy, and a boy is not a man. The prelapsarian world, the Old Covenant world, the New Covenant world, are all stages in a single process, growing like a body. At every stage, the Covenant is complete. Each stage is physical, social and ethical. And yet, like a human life, the early stages are predominantly physical, the middle stages predominantly social, and the final stages predominantly ethical. The solution here is not, as Calvin believed, to dress the New Covenant’s ethical maturity in the puerile Mosaic clothing of paedobaptism. That is not continuity; it is retardation. In this respect, paedobaptism is like the modern habit of men dressing as boys to express their shirking of adult responsibilities.

So, the key is to understand the fractal nature of the life of the Covenant, which brings us to the real solution to the problem.

Ray Sutton rightly makes much of the objective standard of the Covenant being the fix for the subjective spirituality of fallen human beings. Forming always comes before filling. The hard edges of the walls of the house make for the comfort, safety and freedom of those within. But the hard edges of the Mosaic Law have been replaced by the Law of the Spirit. The letter of the Law, written on stone under Moses, then written on flesh after the captivity (Jer. 31:31-34 [3]), is now alive in the Spirit. If this is the case, what exactly are the hard edges of the New Covenant house?

Excommunication as Architecture

One thing I have really appreciated from these authors is their revival of an understanding of New Covenant excommunication. The problem is, according to them, one can be born physically into the New Covenant and then excommunicated “spiritually” for an unwillingness to repent of unethical behavior. Conflating generation with regeneration might appear to solve some problems that credobaptists have, but it causes untold problems elsewhere.

The walls and gates of the New Covenant are Spirit-filled people. The dividing line between those inside and those outside is ethical maturity. It is the understanding that I am sinful and Jesus Christ is righteous. This can only be revealed by the Spirit. More than that, however, it goes beyond this objective legal truth to a subjective relational truth, completing the Covenant process, and uniting Old and New as necessary parts of the whole. Church membership requires an ethical response, which begins with repentance and confession. In confession, I stand with God, legally, and in His court, against myself and against the devil.

This means that excommunication is simply identifying someone who has wittingly or unwittingly masqueraded as an angel of light. It means they are bread that is not cooked through and must be returned to the oven, put once again under the sound of the Gospel: repent and believe. If they will not be cut ethically (“cut to the heart”), then they must be cut away socially. If they still do not repent, God will cut them off physically.

Guarding the Spring of Life

The New Covenant gathering is an ethical gathering. It is all of the previous Covenant eras snowballed into one. It is most certainly physical, a visible body of gathered people. It is most certainly social, because we are to be mediators in prayer and care for each other, for our children and for the helpless. But it is predominantly ethical and the change in the Covenant sign communicates that progression. This means that baptism to circumcision is as a judge’s gown to a family likeness. Each of us was formed to be filled. The fact that there are truly retarded people who may not be able to understand or confess is no excuse to retard the process of Covenant maturity. We minister to them as God’s mediators and leave them to His mercy, because, believe it or not, He is merciful. We must not lower the bar for the New Covenant to mere physical attendance or social interaction. The divisions of flesh are torn away and God is after our hearts.

Still Cutting the Flesh

We see this threefold process in the Tabernacle and in the sacrificial rites. The animal “is” (being), then it is “set apart” (sanctified) and cut (social – circumcision), and finally the holy fire descends to “transform” it. If we maintain a “social” baptism, our understanding of Covenant is no better, typologically speaking, than the priests of Baal or the first century “mutilation.” Paul wished that they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. I don’t believe that paedobaptists are like these godless people. What I am saying is that our use of the New Covenant sign should clearly reflect the ongoing ethical maturity, received by faith, which we are teaching and preaching.

The Ark Carried on Human Legs

Israel’s festal calendar, like the Creation week, moved from physical light to social light to ethical light. [4] The final step is Sukkoth, Clouds, God’s people as miniature glory clouds, with bridal fire visible from within. God’s law has been satisfied and He is now pleased to dwell within each individual and gather them as His cloud, a corporate dwelling. He smells a pleasing aroma and feels at home. Only the regenerate person is on the same page as God. The only baptism that makes sense of all the biblical types and patterns is credobaptism, a rite that makes one a righteous judge, one of the elohim, who have the mind of God and are therefore many but one. Under the New Covenant, it is our “ethical” (spiritual) sameness which brings about our physical and social unity, not the other way around. We meet with the saints because, like God, we discern a spiritual likeness. That, and only that, is the sociology of the New Covenant. Baptism is for the Shekinah people, those with permanent access to the Cloud. A New Covenant saint is a union of heaven and earth, of flesh and of Spirit, a living sacrifice. To divorce these with either baptistic gnosticism (Spirit) or paedobaptistic carnality (flesh) is to put asunder what God finally joined together in Christ.

The Two Births as Architecture

Finally, here is another diagram which I hope explains the “fractal” nature of the Covenants, and allows both a continuity and a discontinuity.

When I explained my position to a friend recently, he commented that it is “the Federal Vision on steroids,” which describes it perfectly. The Federal Vision has understood the Old Covenant structures but applied them as an inherently social sign rather than an inherently ethical sign. In the diagram on the left, the blood is the blood of the sacrifice applied to the four horns of the Altar. The altar symbolized Israel, a single nation, and in that case it was the blood of circumcision. You might notice the correspondence between the firstborn male (corners) and the firstborn animal (horns). Circumcision divided Israel from the other nations. When Christ came, that division was torn down. The four cornered altar gave way to a round laver. But the altar was not removed, only displaced and enlarged. All nations are now being offered to God in Christ.

This brings us to the second diagram, where the four horns are now the entire social world, Jew and Gentile, all nations. The blood is now the blood of Christ. This means that, and please listen here, all nations are now under Covenant. All men everywhere are commanded to repent. All children in every nation are Covenant children. All men, women and children across the world are now under the obligations of the New Covenant. The New Covenant sign marks out the priesthood within this new global “Land,” the regenerate within the merely “generate.”

For the Federal Vision crowd, this means that your baptism is redundant. It also means that the Covenant realities you have unearthed for us from the Old Testament put both baptistic and paedobaptistic errors to death. And yet, it is Good News.

__________________________________________
[1] This chart is from Bible Matrix III: The House of God. It shows that the threefold Ethics stage of the Covenant is a microcosm of, and contained within, the fivefold Social Covenant and the sevenfold Physical Creation. (This also destroys Covenant Creationism, which conflates the physical and social rather than the social and ethical, but that’s another story.)
[2] Lillback does in fact go on to share Calvin’s many reasons for the obvious discontinuities, and they align in with what I have presented here. Yet in all this he fails to grasp the individual experience as an expression of the macrocosmic history, an observation which would unite all of his isolated observations together as descriptions of a single organism, and also explain why there was no “Covenant sign” required before the circumcision of Abraham. It also leaves him with no sound explanation for the move from one Covenant sign to another.
[3] Calvin mistakenly sees the citation of this text in Hebrews as interpretation rather than application. Its context is clearly the Restoration Era.
[4] This supports James Jordan’s assertion that Adam and Eve sinned on Day 6, failing to enter into God’s rest on Day 7.

“A Christian culture is a culture of opportunity because it is a culture that flows from the Covenant.”

The Bible Matrix is found throughout the Bible. It is the shape of Creation but it is also the shape of Covenant. It is the process of promise and fulfilment. We see it in Eden. We see it in Canaan. Every Covenant is a mission, a tour of duty, resulting in a safe place to live, a home of abundance, peace and glory. It should be no surprise to Christians that it is also the process that underpins economic growth.

Capitalism is based on the biblical Covenant structure. Good businessmen understand how it works. It invariably necessitates the risk and sacrifice of what we now possess for a greater reward. Steve Jobs told us that, and demonstrated it again and again. It takes money to make money. This requires faith in the one who made the promise, even though business people do not recognize the source of the abundance is the hand of God.

God calls Man to work, which involves risk (faith), a sacrifice and some obedience to laws (which include natural and business laws), which will bring fulfillment of the promise — a greater abundance than what you sacrificed. That is where capitalism ends, but it is not where Covenant ends, and here is the problem for which socialism is tendered as a solution.

The final step of Covenant is that you, the risk taker, become a shelter, a house, for the helpless. The final step is generosity. Capitalism only works in a moral society. This is why we can correspond the shape of good economics to the shape of the Gospel. Jesus gave His life to give abundant life to us all. He believed in the promise made to Him by the Father, the promise of resurrection—a new body. Poverty was not something to be embraced eternally. Christian socialists forget that Jesus now owns everything. All the great saints were rich people who risked their wealth for even greater wealth, a wealth that included a legacy of other people—a household. The “glory that was set before Him” was also the glory of the Church, a new body that includes every believer. Jesus Himself is our covering. We are only saved because of His atonement, His “covering.” He, the king of kings, the great Land Lord, is our shelter.

But His kingdom is also growing to become a great tree, a shelter for the nations. As Western culture has cut itself free from the contraints of God, it has also cut itself off from the working of His Spirit. [1] The spiritual decline has led to moral decline which in turn has led to demographic and economic decline. And what is our response? Do we turn back to God? No. We attempt to minimize the risk. We don’t want the safety of the “shelter” promised by God and available through risk and sacrifice. We want to keep what we have now and spread it as thinly and as fairly as possible. That is what socialism is, and it is exactly the temptation offered to Adam in Eden and Jesus in the wilderness. It is a counterfeit kingdom at the hand of Satan. It involves no risk, no faith. And no growth. It is a bubble. [2] Worse, it is idolatry. [3]

That is what Americans just voted for. The nanny state is a satanic security. [4] It is a corporate Judas, where the voters, in their President, crucify Jesus with a kiss. Their loyalty exists only in lip service.

But those on the Right also have a misplaced faith. They believe that capitalism per se, the free market, is the saviour. But capitalism itself has no moral constraints. It is the godly Covenant process cut off from God. It is those whom God has put in authority (and whom He deliberately made wealthy) using their position for their own gain, which is why Jesus saved His sharpest words for the Jewish leaders. [5] The rich get richer and the poor get poorer (leaving out for a moment the hardworking middle class who actually produce stuff and support everyone). The opportunity that comes with biblical economics is removed from the reach of those at the bottom. We will always have the poor with us, for numerous reasons, but a society with a growing rank of “helpless” reveals a fundamental problem. A Christian culture is a culture of opportunity because it is a culture that flows from the Covenant.

To sum up, capitalism without God knows little about generosity. The socialists do see the problem, but they don’t replace the greed with generosity. They fill the God-gap by breaking other commandments. They fill it with envy and theft, and then sit enthroned like Orwell’s pigs at the farmer’s table. And once the risk is gone, the abundance is gone too.

Based on Church history, I have no doubt that there is even greater prosperity awaiting the world. [6] But like Israel, like Adam, to enter into God’s rest, we must turn back to Him in obedient faith. The prosperity gospel is a satanic lie, yet true prosperity will only even come through an application of the Gospel. We embrace risk and sacrifice for greater blessing at every step.

If you would like to understand more about the Covenants in the Bible, you can read my Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key, or Ray Sutton’s That You May Prosper. R. C. Sproul’s Biblical Economics is also a good introductory read.

_____________________________________
[1] See The Exorcism of Christ.
[2] See A Bad Investment.
[3] See Out of the Eater and Worship as Commerce.
[4] See Baal’s Stimulus Package.
[5] See When Judaism Jumped the Shark.
[6] See posts under the Postmillennialism tag.

The Living Dead and the Dead Living

Creation: In part 1 we saw that the theme of the first stanza of 2 Thessalonians 2 was the “Sabbath” rest of the church. Paul writes to remove the alarm caused by the “conspiracy theorists” who attempted to disturb it.

Division: The second stanza concerned the splitting of the church into two — those who would persevere despite the growing threat of tribulation throughout the empire [1], and those who would succumb to their fears. The attacks would culminate in the completion of Herod’s Temple and the Nero’s burning of Rome in AD64. The first threw doubt upon the words of Christ concerning the Temple, and the second, though hardly believed, was an excuse to scapegoat this new Jew-Gentile sect, now legally separated from the protection afforded to Jews by Rome. The gospel tore Judaism in two. Then it united those believing Jews with Gentiles. But as in the wilderness, new Israel would be threshed and purified.

Ascension (Altar): The third stanza played on the theme of the Temple Altar and the Ascension offering. Rather than humbling themselves to be exalted by God, the rulers of the Land (badly translated “kings of the earth” in Revelation) exalted themselves as blameless before God. Unlike Christ, the dead living, they were in God’s eyes nothing more than the living dead.

The passage has two cycles for Ascension (we can tell this by the subject matter of stanza 5). I have found this is quite common. It allows one line or stanza for the Bronze Altar and one for the Golden Table: one for the earth from which the grain and fruit (flesh and blood) is harvested, and one for their presentation in the heavenly tent as a worthy “nearbringing.” With the sacrificial pattern in mind, the literary structure makes visible some pretty cool stuff.

Ascension (Table) – Firstfruits Church as Lot in Sodom

Do you not remember (Ark – Light)
…..that when I was still with you (Veil/Hierarchy)
……….I told you these things? (Altar – Sinai – Law given)
……….And now you know what is restraining, (Firstfruits – nearbringing)
……………that he may be revealed in his own time. (Lampstand)
……….For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; (Witnesses – Law repeated)
…..only He who now restrains [will do so] (Mediators)
until [out of the midst he is gone]. (Succession)

The word “restrain” appears twice. It also means “bind.” In the matrix structure, the first half concerns “forming” under the Law (childhood). The sacrifice is bound, offered as an Ascension, as Isaac was (the true Adamic “son of cutting off.”) The second half concerns “filling,” the maturity of adulthood, the “loosing” of the Bride. Adam is bound, cut, and Eve is loosed from his side.

The sacrificial type is important, but it is a symbol. Paul was bound with a chain. Moses complained of Israel “breaking loose.” What is the actual nature of “restraint” when it comes to principalities and powers according to the Bible? James Jordan writes:

“…one of the most important duties of a ruler is to restrain the waywardness of the people, using the power given him. To the magistrate is given the sword, to the church ruler is given excommunication, and to parents is given the rod. Those who are given these powers, and who refuse to use them to restrain those under them, become partially guilty when those under them wander into sin.” [2]

When Samuel saw Saul, Yahweh answered him,
“Behold, the man of whom I spoke to you!
This one will restrain My people” (1 Samuel 9:17).

The biblical pattern of restraint concerns governors, including rulers like Eli, who failed to restrain his sons. So who was it that restrained the Herods from another massacre of biblical proportions when Paul wrote? Jordan writes:

The Church and her evangelism in Palestine created fence-sitters who were restraining apostate Judaism. An example is Gamaliel, Acts 5:33-42. Perhaps the falling away of so many early Christians into the Judaizing heresy would release the Man of Sin.” My own best guess is that the restrainer is the presence of believers in Jerusalem, whose presence kept Sodom from being destroyed. Their captain was James. [3]

Besides “Babylon,” Jerusalem is also called Egypt and Sodom in the Revelation, a prophetic practice we also observe in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and originating in Moses (Deut. 32:32). The city could not be destroyed until the righteous were removed. How were they removed? They became a righteous firstfruits offering, a harvest of grain and fruit predicted in Revelation 14, with Jesus swinging the sickle.

Interestingly, the literal translation of the final line is “out of the midst.” The idea of the “midst” at this point is very common. Just as the people of God are set apart with a veil of circumcision (Passover blood), so the Atonement step is a “passing-through.” We see this in the Lord’s prefiguring of Israel’s entry into Canaan by “passing through” the divided animals, and also (and terrifyingly) in Jesus’ passing safely through the midst of the Jews who desired to bring down the Covenant curses upon Him by their own hands. [4] The festal picture is the High Priest passing through the Veil, symbolically tearing it as flesh on the Day of Atonement.

Testing – AD70 as Greater Pentecost

And then the lawless one (un-Ark)
…..will be revealed, (un-Veil)
……….whom the Lord will consume (un-Altar)
……….with the breath of His mouth (un-Table)
……………and destroy with the brightness of His coming. (un-Lampstand)

Now we come to the phrase, “the breath of his mouth.” Some translation render “breath” as “spirit.” Either is fine, because the image comes from the Lord breathing life into the Altar, the earthen mound made flesh, of Adam. Yes, even that process follows the Bible Matrix. Only, here it only gets so far. The Spirit of the Lord came flashing to and fro “in the spirit of the day” as He did in Eden (Genesis 3:18).

The final Pentecost in the first century was the destruction of the Old Temple by fire. The house of prayer for all nations was now the apostolic church. The Jewish war tore the final veil away, and the identity of the true sons of God was manifested (Romans 8:19 – don’t worry, this is what always happens when the Lord comes in judgment, and there is a greater judgment to come).

Maturity – False Witnesses under Covenant
The coming of the [lawless one] (False Advent)
…..is according to the working of Satan, (False Delegate)
……….(False 3-decker Temple)
……….with all power, (Head – Word)
……….signs, and (Hands – Signs)
……….lying wonders, (Feet – Serpents)
……………and with all unrighteous deception
……………among those who perish,
……….because they did not receive
…..the love of the truth,
that they might be saved.

If you have Bible Matrix: The Covenant Key, you’ll know that the Ten Commandments follow the matrix structure (I disagree with Ray Sutton’s structure on this one). The commandments have been renumbered (according to Augustine’s “scroll” division) which puts “Stealing” and “False Witness” at level 4, Sanctions. This seems to be a combination of the Maturity and Conquest sections of the matrix structure. It demonstrates that the context of “false witness” is the courtroom, the same kind of false witnesses brought against Jesus, to have him falsely accused and falsely condemned. Instead of the “two witnesses” pattern begun at the death of Abel/conviction of Cain, the Cainite Herods are Jannes and Jambres, court magicians to a Herodian Pharaoh (yes, this is the context of Paul’s warning in 2 Timothy 3:8).

So, the theme of this fifth point (stanza 6) concerns the lying under Covenant oath of the rulers of the Old Covenant. By destroying Jesus, they brought the Holy Spirit from heaven to the Church. By destroying the church, they led the unbelieving Jews into a fiery holocaust engineered by the Spirit, under the true Covenant “testimony of Jesus.” The unbelieving Jews cursed the brethren of Jesus, and the sharp edge of the promise to Abraham was fulfilled upon them.

“I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you…” (Genesis 12:3)

Dispensationalists make terrible mistakes when it comes to this promise. Those of faith are the sons of Abraham.

The Holy Spirit is a consuming fire. Baptism is a Noahic flood. The Table of Communion is the cross. The Christian receives all of these “curses” as “blessings” because they are given to us in sacramental doses. The old Temple was set alight, “flooded” with Roman troops (Daniel 9:26) and the blood of the slain ran through the city in rivers. Thousands of Jews were crucified. This is why Revelation presents her destruction as a worship service. Vengeance belongs to God.

Conquest – Covenant Oath broken: Black Stone
Atonement: the goat elected to be a vessel of destruction

And for this reason (Transcendence/Covenant Curse)
…..God will send them strong delusion, (Hierarchy)
……….that they should believe the lie, (Ethics 1 – Law given)
……………that they all may be condemned (Ethics 2 – Law opened)
……….who did not believe the truth (Ethics 3 – Law received)
…..but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (No Sanctions/Judgment)

The delegate in this passage is an evil spirit from the Lord. [5]

Notice the ironic “Ethics” pattern at the centre. Following the first 7 Bible books, Israel is condemned in “Numbers,” the book of counting. Only Jews are “numbered” in the Revelation, Gentiles are not. The unbelieving Jews would be “counted among those who go down to the pit.” The sons of Korah come to mind. [6]

And this stanza is missing its Sabbath rest. At the “Atonement” line, the unrighteousness remains uncovered on the day of coverings. There was no more sacrifice for sins. [7]

Conquest – Covenant Oath kept: White Stone
Atonement: the goat elected to be a blessed offering

But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you,
…..brethren beloved by the Lord,
……….because God from the beginning chose you for salvation
……………through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,
……….to which He called you by our gospel,
…..for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, (Creation)
…..brethren, (Division)
……….stand fast (Ascension)
……………and hold the traditions (Testing)
……….which you were taught, (Maturity)
…..whether by word (Conquest/Oath)
or our epistle. (Glorification/Commission)

This stanza gives a full cycle to its Glorification line, the blessing of New Covenant Succession. I’d say the first line of this stanza probably does the same, but in a five-fold pattern.

Glorification – (Booths) The Church sheltered by God

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
…..and our God and Father,
……….who has loved us and given [us]
……………everlasting consolation (Spirit comforter)
……….and good hope by grace,
…..comfort your hearts
and establish you in every good word and work.

The final blessing in this passage. The rest disturbed by the liars at the beginning is reclaimed — reborn and resurrected as an even better hope — by the Shekinah. Not sure why the Father is in line 2, but it sure is interesting! Possibly because the pattern shows Jesus bringing the saints as an Ascension to the Father.

The structure ends with the Firstfruits Church as the fulfilment of the Feast of Booths, the true shelter for the nations, founded on the blood of Christ.

___________________________________
[1] One objection against a preterist interpretation of the New Testament is that the Gentile churches would not have suffered during the Jewish war. See Peter Leithart: Jewish War.
[2] James B. Jordan, The Restrainer.
[3] James B. Jordan, The Abomination of Desolation, Part 2.
[4] See Pass-over and Pass-through.
[5] See Strong Delusion.
[6] See The Falling Away and Ashes and Smoke.
[7] See No More Sacrifice for Sins.

Artwork: Herod’s Temple interior by Abe Goolsby from the HCSB Study Bible. Check out his design process here.

When Sam Frost reviewed Bible Matrix, he was a full preterist. What changed his mind was the Bible’s inescapable trajectory, its relentless reach towards maturity and glory.

From Sam’s blog:

Mike Bull has recently sent me his new book, Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key (Westbow Press, 2011).  Like his Bible Matrix, this one is full of “patterns”. Did you ever think that Esther, probably one of the most neglected books in the Bible, was covenantal in structure and outline? That it speaks directly to us?  Get ahold of Bull’s “key” and you will.

Bull takes the most basic and fundamental structure from one Ray Sutton. You may have heard me from time to time mention Sutton, Jordan, Chilton, Gentry, DeMar and Grant – the Tyler, Texas gang funded by Gary North back in the late eighties and early ninties.  I cut my teeth on these men.  Sutton is currently Bishop of the Church of Holy Communion in the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC).  As an aside, my family has recently joined an Anglican Province of America (APA) body which has established “intercommunion” with REC. Our Bishop knows Sutton.  Weird how God brings things around like that. Sutton is no longer a “theonomist” in the strict sense of the word. Nonetheless, his “covenant outline” has survived.

If you don’t remember it, it is:

1.  Transcendence
2. Hierarchy
3.  Ethics
4. Sanctions
5. Inheritance

Or, to put it into everyday speak:

1. Who’s in charge here?
2. To Whom do I report?
3. What are my orders?
4.  What do I get if I obey or disobey?
5. Does this outfit have a future?

Now, this structure, if you will, further came from M. Kline’s work on the ancient near eastern covenant pattern, and is clearly seen in the covenantal structures of the Bible.  The Bible is covenantal. The Reformed faith has picked this up more than any other religious sect within Christendom. The Reconstructionists picked up on it with greater clarity, carrying it into every book of the Bible.  It sort of became the “glasses” of the believer.  After a while, you start “seeing it” everywhere.

Well, that’s what Bull does.  I mean he sees it everywhere.  But, he does not simply reuse Sutton’s five points.  He develops a seven-fold pattern:

1. Creation
2. Division
3. Ascension
4. Testing
5. Maturity
6. Conquest
7. Glorification

This “overlay” (p. 12) onto Sutton’s work forms the Bible matrix.  Previous details in the OT particular suddenly make sense. Why did God have them wash the legs of the sacrifices?  Why did he command this act, and not that act. Why are there genealogies? Two themes dominate here: dominion and progression. Dominion is progress. God moves. History moves until it will finally come to rest (glorification).

It’s the way God works, as revealed in Gn 1.  God is a God of order, not chaos.  He takes chaos and orders it.  Straightens it out.  Systematizes it. And, here’s the kicker: if you are in a blood covenant with this God, then he demands that you imitate him. Put order in your life.  Remove the chaos. Ultimately, he will give you rest. But, not so much individually. In a sense, we “rest from our works” when we die (Rev 14.13). However, on earth, the Church is still working the ground as priests. Ultimately, the whole Body will come to rest. This is what Bull calls, “the bigger picture.”

There is no single “prooftext.” The whole Bible is the prooftext. God has demonstrated this patterning over and over again in the Bible; in the stories, the covenants, the books, the laws, down to the details of the Tabernacle and its movements to its rest in Jerusalem. Creation is the focus for it belongs to the LORD. And, he will give it “rest” as well.  That’s our mission.  As long as Canaanites pollute the Land and cause the “Land to sin” (Lev 18.24-ff), creation is not at rest.  This is the language of covenant.  It ain’t your grandma’s “spiritual” Christianity.  The New Covenant is not a “spiritualizing” of the older ones.  It is the covenant through which the older ones can now be entirely realized.

The whole point of Conquest (Joshua-Judges) was to bring “safety, peace and rest” in the Land (Deut 28.10; 12.10 et al).  The Land is now the Earth.  How the Christian Church has, in some quarters, spiritualized away the “physical” promises and the principles behind them for art, covenant, education, science and politic is the great sin of Gnosticism. It amounts to saying that the Israelites got real peace and safety under Solomon, but we only get “spiritual peace and rest” in the New Covenant, with no promise of every bringing peace on earth, literally.

Bull’s book is imaginative, of course. He takes liberties here and there. But, you can’t really find fault there. If biblical patternings like the ones he points out are there, then they are there. We tend to think only in terms of straight-jacketed exegesis. “What’s the original audience relevance?” “What’s the date of the composition”? All good questions to be sure.  But, the Bible also teaches us to use our imaginations in the things of God, so that an ordinary matter, like going to the grocery store to buy food, involves covenant. How?  Well, “food.”  “Buy”. “Going to.” Mobility.  ustenance. Longetivity and health. Food is in the Bible, is it not?  And, where did that money come from (Deut 8.18)?

Think about what you are doing. Open your eyes to the hand of God. There is no doubt why the word “matrix” is chosen. Like the movie, what you see is just “stuff” – illusion. What’s behind the stuff is what Transcendence is all about. But, biblical covenants never transcends the stuff so that that is all that one thinks on (heavenly minded, spiritual). You transcend the stuff so that you can now think correctly about the stuff (Creation, matter, substance, stuff). You order what is daily around you in terms of covenant. Even when I see a star athlete cross himself, or take a bow, or say, “I want to first thank my Lord and God” I see Deut 8.18. God is at work. Everywhere. What, you don’t take omnipresence seriously? Bull does.

One of things for us Preterists to answer concerning the future. How do we know when the Bible appears to say so little about the end of time and history? That the Bible appears to speak more of the “time of the end” (AD 70), than the “end of time.” Well, the end of time is there because it has always been in the covenant structures themselves.

God has a goal (end) in each covenant. The patterns of the Bible have instructed the “man of God”. How much more does the Bible need to spell this out? What, does it need to give the Church a detailed blueprint for what is supposed to happen in the future? You can’t develop one from the previous umpteen patterns and repeated story motifs? You don’t get it by now? That’s why any biblical idea that comes down the pike that has no “future” in terms of the dominion mandate is false. How can you tell it’s false? It does not fit the covenant pattern. It does not take into consideration the whole stuff, heaven and earth, spirit and body, soul and dirt. It usually, radically separates these things and becomes materialistic (science, which sprang from the Church), or Gnostic (spiritualism, which sprang from the Church).

Covenantalism unites heaven and earth. Before you know it, we will start “spiritualizing” the opening chapters of Genesis! Oh, wait, that’s already being done. Jesus, however, shatters this notion. He was raised dust. His earthy body was transformed. It Ascended. The dirt of creation from which it originated (Luke 3.38) arose to Heaven, restored. Jesus is Covenant in Action from First to Last.  Jesus is the all things of Covenant. He is the Model. He is the Future (Omega).  He is what Covenant will look like for all of God’s people, and for Creation itself, as God makes all our enemies under our feet, because they are already under His. He set the Covenant Standard. He is the Goal – the telos of Covenant Law.

Anyhow, get this book. Read it. Study it. Give it to a neighbor, or your Pastor or Bishop. You won’t regret it.

bmxiireview

As Doug Wilson says, when you first discover the hammer you think everything looks like a nail. This Covenant structure was seen to be the solution to all biblical debates, and I actually think it is. But Sutton has the mind of a lawyer, not the mind of a poet, so this book will give you a lot of structure and only a few glimpses of glory, a lot of law and not so much grace. The problem of the modern western church is the lack of understanding God’s law, so despite the fact that this book isn’t the whole story, this shouldn’t hurt. There are some areas where I disagreed with Sutton’s applications, but like all groundbreaking books, it’s a solid foundation that paves the way for further work. Like the church, theology is a group effort, a pooling of different gifts, and Sutton’s offering is a crucial one.



View all my reviews

There is great advantage in tracking the shape of God’s work in history through the Old Testament. This is because God is consistent. Everything He does has the same shape, even though He does it in new and surprising (and sometimes devastating) ways.

One of the big handles in Scripture is the five-fold Covenant pattern, described by Ray Sutton in his book, “That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant.”

Transcendence – God is distinct

Hierarchy – God delegates a representative

Ethics – He outlines the rules, the laws that, if kept, will bring success

Sanctions – He lists the blessings for obedience/curses for disobedience

Succession – Finally, he outlines the arrangements for the next Covenant “mission,” the next generation

Sutton uses Deuteronomy as his prime example of this structure. But it is found right throughout the Bible, including the five books of Moses, the Ten Commandments, the Psalms, Hosea, and Hebrews. It is even the foundation for the seven-fold Creation week and Feasts pattern, but that is beyond the scope of this post (the Ethics step gets split – “opened” – into three).

As a Covenant lawsuit, the book of Revelation also follows this structure:

Transcendence: Jesus is distinct from other men, as the divine, and first-glorified, man.

Hierarchy: Jesus assesses the sins beginning to sprout in His new goverment, the seven pastors.

Ethics: The New Covenant scroll is opened, and the Spirit is poured out upon the Land. It puts Judah on the Altar and sets her alight. (This is Firstfruits, Pentecost and Trumpets)

Sanctions: The seven bowls of Spirit-oil on the Law-Lampstand are carried out by the angels and tipped onto the Land one last time. It is an anti-Pentecost, for Israel’s blasphemy of the Spirit. The harlot drinks the cup and the bride is married to her Bridegroom. This takes us to the end of Revelation 19.

Succession: Here is the point of this post. Throughout the Old Testament, this final point details the future of the Covenant once this one is carried out. It concerns the next administration, the next generation, the “godly (or ungodly) offspring” of this first arrangement. It is the legacy in history of the obedience or disobedience of God’s people. Those who disobeyed are cut off by the Sanctions. Those who obeyed remain and prosper.

The final chapters of Revelation were not fulfilled in AD70. They are the outcome of the Sanctions poured out upon the Old Covenant, the judgment which brought it to an end. It was not a destruction of God’s people but a pruning.

So it is not inconsistent to claim that these chapters stand distinct in some way from the rest of the book. It is nothing new. It is the way God always presents His Covenant. He deals in securities and futures, and His lawyers include these in all their documents.

The Revelation, as the final warning in a Covenant lawsuit, is no different. Every Covenant has an element of futurism because the Covenant process is how God directs history and moves it forward. Moses helps us to identify which part of Revelation is yet future. To claim otherwise is to ignore the structure of the entire Bible. We can quibble about words and phrases forever. But structure is where the real answers lie, and they are damning for hyperpreterism.

_________________________________

Available in June/July, Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key explores the shape and use of this structure in the Scriptures, and shows how it is also the foundation of the Creation week/Feasts which were outlined in Bible Matrix.

“Let’s face it, even daytime television
is more inspiring than your sermons.”

Ray Sutton’s 5-point Covenant model is crucial when it comes to making sense of the judgments of God, both the blessings and the curses. As he says in his book That You May Prosper, “Everyone talks about the Covenant, but nobody does anything about it.”

When I was writing Totus Christus, I thought it was only natural that the 7-point Creation pattern and the 5-point Covenant pattern could be combined. Transcendence is Light. Testing and Ethics matched. The positive and negative Sanctions were quite obviously the two goats on the Day of Atonement (Ebal and Gerizim). So it was only a matter of figuring out how the 5 of Words becomes a 7 in history. [1]

I recently found that James Jordan covered this in his occasional paper, An Introduction to the Seven-fold Covenant Model with Notes on the Five-fold Covenant Model. But how many people have read that? Show of hands, please. How to get this across at a popular level?

John Piper says that pastors should be compassionate men who have backbones of steel. Doug Wilson says that some churches are doctrinally pure, but unloving. They are all backbone, all bone, no flesh. Other churches are all flesh, all gooey love, a body with no skeleton. Sin divides Law-Word from Life, but God is able to put these two together, and it takes a miracle (Ezekiel 37). It is the work of the Spirit to form and fill, to marry head and body, structure and glory.

Eric Rauch did write a great summary of Ray’s ground-breaking book a while back, [2] but Ray’s technical approach attracts the retentive among us: the lawyers. I think it was Jordan who remarked that the Bible has been in the hands of the lawyers for 1000 years — far too long. Lawyers love rules and regulations. They like to have all the boxes ticked. They are legal accountants. Their books get written and filed, just in case the IRS does an audit. (I don’t think Ray’s book is that technical, but it’s still way above the level of most Christians.)

Sure, the Lord is a lawyer, but none of His books is dusty-on-the-shelf. His laws are Bridal. He might give us a long list of Covenant conditions, but then He gives us narrative, and we see how the same pattern plays out in history. Word becomes flesh, and flesh is filled with Spirit. The lawyers rarely get beyond Word, so the saints turn to “Christian” fiction, and the surrounding post-Christian culture turns to Buffy, Harry Potter, House, People and Manga for their stories. Let’s face it, even daytime television is more inspiring than your sermons.

That’s what I want to achieve with this book: to give a detailed summary of Ray’s book, but then tie it to the Bible Matrix. After all, postmoderns love narrative. Showing how the Law is inseparably married to the narrative would have great benefits. And I pray the Spirit would use this to open more Christians’ minds to the wonders of the Torah and the foundations it lays for the rest of the Bible.

The benefits for interpretation are great: we begin to see Israel’s sins in the light of the transgressed documents, and to identify the Covenant lawsuits as what they are, an area where most evangelical scholars fail dismally. (Why do they insist on ignoring literary structure and allusion? Ah, they have the minds of lawyers. They see the letter and not the Spirit!)

And the benefits for application would be greater: Covenant obedience and postmillennialism would suddenly make sense (and not be branded as works righteousness and right-wing political fantasy respectively). Instead of being suckered by Christianised socialism (Baalism) [3], teaching a prosperity gospel (materialism), or fighting it with a poverty gospel (gnosticism), the modern evangelical church would understand “good success” as God does — spiritual and material prosperity within a transformed church and state.

If you have any thoughts on what would make this a good book (besides canning the idea altogether), please let me know. Eric has very kindly agreed to the use of his article.

Hopefully, it will be better than Matrix sequels tend to be.

Do you think THE KINGDOM KEY would be a more suitable subtitle?

______________________________________
[1] See Lambs in Limbo.
[2] See A Jaw-Dropping Book.
[3] See Baal’s Stimulus Package.

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

___________________________________________
[1] See Behold Your Mother.
[2] See Incantation or Incarnation.
[3] Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper, pp. 73-75. Forget Calvin. Forget Barth. This book is a must-read.
[4] See Little Man With No Hair and Veiled Lawlessness.