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.

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Full preterist Samuel Frost has kindly reviewed the book:

Mike Bull recently sent me a copy of his book, Bible Matrix: An Introduction to the DNA of Scriptures, 2010, Westbow Press. Peter Leithart, who I began reading when studying the book of Samuel, writes the introduction. Leithart, as many of you may know, is a close student of the works of James B. Jordan, who is perhaps closer to our view than most, but nonetheless stays within the “orthodox” limits.

I like patterns. I believe the Bible is built on patterns (tupos, or “types”), and that’s exactly what this book is about. “Genesis 1 is the Bible Matrix. As it matures throughout the Scriptures, the identification of this pattern unlocks the book of Moses, Israel’s history, the structure of Jesus’ ministry and the book of Revelation… It also has staggering implications concerning the identity, purpose and future of Christianity…” (15). Amen. God has taught us in the historical unfolding of the Bible (its stories) how He acts, why He acts, when He acts and how we are supposed to act as a result. For me, as a preterist, God doesn’t “cease” acting this way in A.D. 70.

Now, of course, Bull is an “orthodox preterist”. But, this should not deter one from buying the book. It has much to offer in the way it is laid out, and the structuring of the biblical feasts, types, patterns consistently run throughout the book. The contents takes their cue from Bible history, climaxing in the Church. The feasts, furniture of the temple, and many other “patterns” are applied throughout to the people of God. Bull is very much “dominion” oriented (read, postmillennial), and I think does a good job at showing that it is the purpose of His people to take dominion over creation. Through the continual appeals to the patterns, by the time one gets to the end of the book, it becomes clear what this purpose is, unless, of course, God changed everything in A.D. 70 and no longer acts in the way that he has repeatedly revealed; that is, according to His nature. Of what benefit would it be for God to reveal himself over thousands of years in the Bible, only to say, “okay, now I am going to change, but for the next several thousand years, I am not going to reveal anything else.” The point of having revelation “cease” is precisely because he has already revealed all that we need to know! And, as Bull has shown, all that we need to know (the Bible) is framed in terms of patterns (typology).

There are, according to Bull, three, seven-step patterns: creation, dominion and festivals. These three are divided into seven steps which are all formed in a chiastic structure. The organization of the material helps one to “see” the patterns in the Bible and to begin to read the Bible accordingly. I recommend, then, this book. Of course, in the bibliography, Bull cites Jordan’s Through New Eyes, which, when I first read it (when it originally came out), it changed everything for me. Theology was not something only intellectual, but also intellectually visual – a seeing in the mind’s eye. This allowed for the conceptualizing of a “covenantal world” within “the world”. The covenantal world (“the world above”) must be understood not so that we can escape the world below (creation), but so that we can have dominion over creation through the proper understanding of the purpose of creation (Gn 1). If these concepts are ever split apart so as to have no relationship together in the Redemption, then some form of Gnosticism or Escapism will result. Bull ever keeps our feet grounded while he soars the clouds of the spiritual. You will do well to get this book and read it. Cultivate its fruits in your own studies. There is much to glean from it.

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