“Come, gather for the great supper of God,
…..to eat the flesh of kings,
……….the flesh of captains,
……………the flesh of mighty men,
……….the flesh of horses and their riders,
…..and the flesh of all men,
both free and slave, both small and great.”

It’s only subtle, but after observing this pattern so many times it gets easier to see. The first line is the Ark/Word [Sabbath], the kings rule in the firmament [Passover][1], the captains are the “Firstfruits” head of the body; the mighty men/giants always appear in the Pentecost wilderness (always! beginning in Genesis 6. They are the children of compromise); point 5 is always the body/army [Trumpets]; at six we have the High Priest/Adam [Atonement]. In Revelation, “men” refers to the mediating Jews; and finally Tabernacles refers to Sabbath rest, a Jew-Gentile feast where all are welcome, but in this case it is Herod’s Jew-Gentile kingdom as fare on the table.

This short passage also works its way down from the throne of God to the average Joe Jew. No one would escape the judgment.

What is even more interesting is that the passage within which this heptamerous invitation occurs also follows the pattern, and this invitation occurs at “Firstfruits.” In the greater pattern of the Revelation, the Firstfruits is the Lamb slain who opens the seven-sealed scroll of the New Covenant Law. So this invitation to the scavengers who carry out the cleansing after the Covenant curse falls is the outcome of the rejection of the blood of the Lamb.[2] The menu itself is a seven-sealed Covenant scroll. It is a free pass to the meat market of Club Gehenna.

“For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.” Matthew 24:28

Tabernacles, as the final harvest of the year (grapes and olives), was also called “Ingathering.” Matthew 24 also follows the feast structure (twice), and Jesus uses this factor to make a terrifying joke. [3]

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[1] In Revelation’s big pattern, this spot is taken by the Lampstand churches ruling in the firmament as New Covenant governing lights.
[2] See also No More Sacrifice for Sins.
[3] This passage contains the “scroll” command to “gather” because it is “Tabernacles” within an even greater structure. In Revelation, Jesus often has this Dominion/Feasts structure going at 3 or 4 levels simultaneously. The Revelation is designed like a Swiss clock. See Totus Christus for a full commentary.

Time for another weird post I think. Here’s some thoughts on Genesis 2:

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Why the change from Adam and Eve to Ish and Isha? Perhaps because the words are symbolic, and symbols describe relationships.[1] There is the possibility that these words were used because they sound like eish (fire), regardless of their differing derivations (the jury is still out on this one after 6000 years). Jordan mentions that Adam was to be an Altar made of earth, and with his own blood shed comes the “fire” of Isha, the woman as the shining on the altar, the glory cloud on Mount Sinai. It certainly corresponds with the feasts. Adam “ascends” to headship over Eve in marriage (Firstfruits), and then he is to “open the Law” to Eve and fill her with light (Pentecost), which he did, but failed to repeat the Law (Trumpets) after she was tested. Atonement followed.

But there is also the idea of fire-and-fire. He is the blazing torch and she the smoking firepot; he the Ark and she the Incense Altar (smoke), awesome as an army with banners; he the High Priest’s golden forehead, and she the breastplate carrying the tribes. Adam is the head, and Eve is the body. Adam fills Eve with light (as the Lamb in the holy city), and she fills the world with a holy host.

Day 1 Sabbath – Word to Adam (Ark) [2]
Day 2 Passover – Adam is divided (Veil)
Day 3 Firstfruits – the Lord fills Adam (Bronze Altar/Table of Facebread)
Day 4 Pentecost – Adam fills Eve (Lampstand)
Day 5 Trumpets – Eve fills the Land (Incense Altar)
Day 6 Coverings – Eve, as Land, (feminine in Hebrew) begets a Man from the Lord (Laver)

Because of Adam’s failure, every child that opened the womb was a “man of sin” and required redemption by blood.

We also see this pattern in Leviticus 1. The priest puts the fire on the Altar on “Day 4.”

Satan is the false light-bearer (a shining beast, like a golden calf), and demons are “strange fire” on the Altar, scavenger birds that need chasing away. 

So Ish and Isha are terms related by Covenant. And they are brought near (sacrifice/offering in the Old Testament is literally “nearbringing”) by blood sacrifice. Based on this, when Ish (husband) fails to “die”, Isha (wife) is filled with darkness. Blood opens the veil between the Ark and the Incense Altar, and head and body are united to conquer the world.[3]

In the first century, the last Adam died and filled the church with the seven Lampstand lights of Pentecost. But a Herod also ascended—unwilling to die—and the false church was filled with seven demons (Matthew 12:45). False Eve worshipped the image of a beast, and begat a man of sin, a Cain, whom the Lord destroyed on “Day 7″ with the breath of His coming.

“Now when He rose early on the first day of the week,
He appeared first to Mary Magdalene,
out of whom He had cast seven demons.” Mark 16:9

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[1] Chilton observes that Bible symbols are not primarily to describe the “spiritual essence” of something, but rather to describe the thing’s symbolic value in relationship to something else. Jordan points out that in Revelation 12 Satan is a serpent to the Women (deception) but a Dragon to her offspring (persecution). This could also be a solution to the problem of how many wings cherumbim have. When in relationship to the four cornered Bronze Altar of the Land (Israel) they have four wings, but when seen in heaven, in relation to the Trinity, they have six wings. There are thus twenty four elders mediating between heaven and earth.

[2] The instructions for the Tabernacle in Ex. 25-31 follow the days of the Creation week.

[3] Note that despite the picture above, there were no stairs in the Tabernacle or Temple. Each section did imply an “ascension” to a higher level, but this “ladder to heaven” was laid out on flat ground in all cases. Actually, there’s a lot wrong with this picture, but you can see the Table, Golden Altar and Lampstand before the Veil.

The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the [Land] came to the help of the woman, and the [Land] opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. (Revelation 12:15-17)

Satan mimicked the expanding gospel dominion with counterfeits at every step. Here, not only did he forge the water chariots of the true Temple (a false baptism), he would bring Noahic “rest” to the Land by destroying God’s mighty men. He would bring about his own twisted “new earth” by deluging the church with bogus teaching.

His plan backfired. “The Land” swallowed the false worship, alluding to Korah’s rebellion. These Jews had heard the gospel but would not obey it. They could not stomach an undefiled religion that stood against oppression (James 1:27). Israel was specifically accountable before God in a way that other nations were not: for her treatment of the poor (Exodus 22:21-24). This was the major charge Amos had brought against a previous Israel, and the reason for the death of that nation. 

Like the saints, the unbelievers had drunk the pure water of Christ (2 Peter 1:4), but in their lusts their faith was choked by thorns and thistles. The true woman passed the jealous inspection by eating the scroll and becoming fruitful. However, to the false woman the riches of Christ became a cup of destruction (Numbers 5). Instead of living waters flowing from her belly (John 7:38), she vomited up the kingdom and her subsequent barrenness exposed her adultery.

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.  (Hebrews 6:4-8)

The rich desired a different cup—a glory they could see. Like Esau, they gobbled down fool’s gold—false glory—and sold their eternal inheritance—resurrection “mansions”—for houses and lands. They “ascended” to receive Satan’s Oral Law scroll from Herod’s throne for a religion they could stomach, and sent out Wormwood chariots (Jeremiah 23:15). But they would not be able to keep down this false gospel, the gold and silver for which they sold the Son of God. Like Judas, their bowels would be torn open for buying land with the rewards of iniquity (Acts 1:18). In AD70, Jews—dead or alive—were cut open and searched by Syrians and Romans scavenging for the gold that many had swallowed before attempting to escape the siege.1

…Though evil is sweet in his mouth, though he hides it under his tongue, though he is loath to let it go and holds it in his mouth, yet his food is turned in his stomach; it is the venom of cobras within him. He swallows down riches and vomits them up again; God casts them out of his belly. He will suck the poison of cobras; the tongue of a viper will kill him. He will not look upon the rivers, the streams flowing with honey and curds. He will give back the fruit of his toil and will not swallow it down; from the profit of his trading he will get no enjoyment. For he has crushed and abandoned the poor; he has seized a house that he did not build.  (Job 20:12-19)

This was a charge from Zophar, who accused Job of being a self-exalting hypocrite, one who in his head arrogantly ascended “to the clouds” in defiance of death, but who would perish like his own dung (Job 20:1-11). Like the boys from Bethel, these Jews ridiculed the ascension of Christ and scoffed at God’s prophets, the men who reminded them of Jesus’ words concerning the real flood that was coming to bring a real new Land with true peace (Daniel 9:26; Luke 17:26-27).

For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.  (1 Thessalonians 5:3)

Like Adam, they lost both the flowing “honey and curds” kingdom and the riches they had sold Him for.

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See Josephus, The Jewish War, 5:13:4. Available for download from www.ccel.org

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