Bully's Blog » Seth

BioLogos’ Jenga Bible

Mike Bull — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 02:19:38 +0000

Daniel Harrell tries to marry chalk and cheese by positing that Adam and Eve were real people, just not the first real people. They were the first people with whom God entered into a Covenant relationship.[1] The Rev. Harrell is sitting on the fence, an extremely pointy fence.

For many Christians, the biblical characters Adam and Eve can present a significant challenge to accepting evolutionary theory—that is, when they are cast as historical figures who are also the biological progenitors of the human race. …the Rev. Daniel Harrell discusses how there may be some “middle ground” in the way that Christians understand Adam and Eve. Harrell points out that the historicity of Adam and Eve does not necessarily conflict with science. Rather, the claim that conflicts with science is the idea that Adam and Eve were the first humans, who were the only original biological ancestors of all humans today.

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]

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A Cast of Thousands

Mike Bull — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:57:58 +0000

Band of Brothers – 2

Part 1 here.

One thing the Bible Matrix demonstrates is the nature of history. Sure, it repeats itself. Everyone knows that. But our personal histories are microcosms of the lives and deaths of families, churches, nations and empires. Reading the Bible is like looking through a glass onion.

The structure of events in the primeval Garden are replayed in Cain and Abel, then in the sons of God. Garden; Land; World. Most Holy; Holy; Courts. Word; Sacrament; Government. Heaven; Mediator; Earth.

The pattern of creation was repeated in Adam and Eve, Word becoming flesh, but instead of the building of a greater Tabernacle out of raw materials, the dust devil of sin grew into a tornado, multiplying in speed and size, collecting material and taking on a body of its own—the entire race but for Noah.

Jesus reversed the pattern in the Garden. But it took all of the Old Testament to teach us what Jesus would actually do. We need to analyse all the occurrences of the pattern, all the different ways in which it was played out in history, to comprehend His redemptive achievement in all its glorious facets.

Just as death entered the world by the act of one man, it literally took a cast of thousands to portray the work of the Second Man. Cain slew Abel at the cross. Eve bore Seth as a replacement son in the resurrection. Enoch walked with God and was not at the ascension. Jonathan abdicated the Old Covenant and was resurrected as a New Covenant robe in David. Jephthah and David conquered as “Conquest” Land kings but had to die and be resurrected as “Glorification” World kings in Samson and Solomon respectively.

By the time of Jesus, the sin that was dealt with in the exile had again taken on a corporate body. God had divided and then scattered Solomon’s kingdom in judgment, but as God does, He scattered the people like seed. This enlarged His field. Jesus came to harvest this greater field. But the body of sin was also now much larger. The compromise between the Jewish sons of God and the Gentile daughters of men was empire-wide. Just as Lamech’s sin became institutionalised and ended the race, Ahab and Jezebel had again become a draconian church state under the Herods.

Jesus dealt with the cyclone by standing in the eye. His ministry itself took on a body, but in the gospels we see Him whittle it away until He stands alone and rejected. The crowds abandon Him, and then even His band of brothers is scattered. His seamless robe, a symbol of His kingdom, is taken away. It also symbolised the Covenant—the firmament. The firmament is a garment for God, filled with governing lights. No lights (disciples), no robe. Jesus is torn from the Father, and then, more alone than anyone until the final judgment, Jesus’ body itself is torn. All glory, all identity was gone, right down to the most personal, the most precious, the Most Holy.

He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him,
there is no beauty that we should desire Him.

“The guards came again, handing out coats. I could not understand at first why they took away all of our clothes only to give us in return garments that must have been worn by other women entering the [concentration] camp. But as I looked around at the women beside me withdrawn into their meagre, worn rags, I saw that we were no longer the strong women who had been able to endure hard labour, wartime conditions, and separation from our family and friends. The shearing of our heads and vulvas, the stealing of our clothes and everything we had owned, took from us the last traces of who we had been. My knapsack on the train, my mother’s chains and rings, would never be given back. I felt their loss almost as much as the loss of my hair. All I had left was Samuel’s ring.

When the guard reached me she held out a long gray coat. Without thinking I took it from her with my right hand. Immediately the guard circled the ring with her fingers and thumb, giving it a hard yank. My finger felt as if it were being pulled from me. The ring would not come off. Her grip tightened; the flesh around the ring was squeezed tightly. I cried out in pain.

‘Quiet!’ she hissed.

Again she pulled, spitting on the ring twice while she wiggled it back and forth. Finally, in one smooth movement, she scraped it over the ridge of my knuckle and slipped it off the end of my finger and into her pocket. Satisfied that no one had seen her, she shoved her crate of coats forward and moved on.” [1]

Crowds torn away. Family torn away. Disciples torn apart. Robe torn off. Beard torn off. Body torn … veil torn … torn … torn OPEN. And in the most exquisite plot twist in history, the plunderer was plundered. In the eye of the cyclone, in the Most Holy Place, the Gordian knot was cut.

In the eye of the cyclone, in the tomb, Jonathan became David. A new history, begun with this one-Man liturgy, was spoken into the Garden. Over the next forty years, the kingdom of the father of lies began to unravel in the Land. Like the climax of Peter and the Wolf, the more the Cunning Edomite Fox struggled, the tighter became the Apostolic rope around its neck.

Over the next forty years, Jesus took on a new body by His Spirit, and David became Solomon. Both John’s Old Covenant decrease and Jesus’ New Covenant increase became institutional. The headless Jonathan/John had a new Head. [2]

When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed.

The Word that tore open the Garden door began to tear open the Land. Revelation 14 shows Jesus again at the eye of a cyclone. This time He is an Angel with a sickle. The literary structure puts Him right at the centre, between the grain and the grapes [3]. It was time for His new “Land” body to follow Him through death and resurrection. The sickle swings and He harvests the saints as bread and wine. Now it was not just the eye but the whole Roman/Herodian cyclone that was red. What He accomplished on the cross was reenacted—filled up—in a cast of thousands. The empire was filled with violence and the corrupted sons of God disappeared beneath a flood of troops. [4]

The band of brothers we join is one of blood brothers. More Christians were martyred in the twentieth century than in the previous 19 centuries combined. As the victory in the Land continues to tear the World in two, the cast of thousands is now a cast of millions. Thankfully, the blood is always foundational. Spirit follows. [5] But we must be ready with our blood.

Could it take anything less than a cast of millions to picture the work of Christ? And perhaps we are still in the early days.

He shall see the labour of His soul and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant
shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.

__________________________________________________
[1] Sarah Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress, A Memoir of Survival, pp. 198-199.
[2] King Saul, Jonathan’s “head,” was beheaded.
[3] See Totus Christus p. 557.
[4] See Jewish War by Peter Leithart.
[5] See The Whole Bloody Bible.

Leaving Las Vegas

Mike Bull — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:51:49 +0000

or Every Knee Shall Bow

Day 1
So, Adam fouled the first Sabbath. He failed to be Light.

Day 2
Cain made a false exodus (with Abel as the Passover lamb) and went to “worship in the wilderness.” God marked him as a “covering.” Being “barren”, Cain built a city as a covering, but it was just like Adam’s figleaves. It was a phony firmament, a fabricated Covenant, a city built on the wrong sort of blood.

Day 3
His offspring built a counterfeit Tabernacle – in opposition to the worship at the Gate of Eden. This was a false Land, a false mountain, like Mount Gerizim became to the Samaritans. Lamech, as a false Moses, “ascended” not as a Lamb slain, but as an accuser, the incarnation of the serpent. But someone true ascended as Firstfruits: Enoch.

This brings us to Day 4. As in the Garden, and as in Israel’s wilderness, the test was harlotry.

Day 4
Satan was false “governing lights” in Eden. Due to Adam’s failure to judge the serpent as a ruler, Eve committed “harlotry.” It was unity with godlike power that bypassed death and resurrection. That is what we have in Genesis 6. Lamech ascended and sent the wrong spirit. It was not the spirit of comfort but the spirit of disobedience, an anti-Pentecost.

Adam’s divided kingdom consisted of the worship of Seth (Abel’s replacement) and the worship of Cain. This division should have brought death in the “wilderness.” Just as Jesus was divided into bread and wine and united again with greater government, Satan tried to put these two kingdoms back together without reference to death under the Law. Even though Lamech took capital punishment as a legal right, there was as yet no Phinehas with a spear to deal with the “intermarriage.” The resulting mighty men – ungodly rulers – were a greater government, for sure. They were a government of wolves, not shepherds. They were a Law unto themselves, the law of Lamech.

A similar death, the death of Israel in Babylon, finally reunited the northern and southern kingdoms as “Jews.” This was prefigured by the reformation under Josiah. The iconoclasm covered both kingdoms.

Jesus, as Josiah, “liturgically” united a divided world in his own body through death. Then He united Jew and Gentile, men and beasts, in that body.

The only way to truly leave Las Vegas, the fertile plains made barren through bloodshed, is by death. No wonder John refers to Herod’s Judah as Sodom and Egypt. We drink the cup of death willingly, as Christ did, or we drink it by coercion under God, as the Canaanite nations and Babylon did, and as the harlot of Judaism did. Either we fall down as dead men before God like the prophets, or we stagger and fall or are knocked down like the soldiers who arrested Jesus and guarded the tomb.

No one leaves Las Vegas without passing through the sanctions of the Covenant.

Day 5
The first cup brings unity, the Incense Altar, a multitude acting as one, flocks of birds and schools of fish. The second cup, unity without the death of obedience, always brings scattering. Noah, as Moses in Deuteronomy, repeats the true Law. In Noah’s day, the mighty men of “Trumpets” refused to heed his summoning call, and animal substitutes were taken instead. This Law was a cup of staggering, a rock of stumbling.

Day 6
The world passed through the Laver. As High Priest at Atonement, Noah represented the world as he passed through the veil. He was a branch from the old world to be replanted in a new earth, a Land washed clean of blood.

Day 7
“Noah” means rest. Tabernacles.

“And he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed.” Genesis 5:29

Compromise makes us “strong” but brittle. It is not the strength of integrity. The world should be united, but not on the world’s terms. The dominion of Cain, the kingdom of beasts, must submit to the Covenant first. Every knee shall bow.

____________________________________________
See also Blood and Soil.

Visionary Suffering

Mike Bull — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:06:56 +0000

Garden
Christ reclaimed Adam’s garden and disarmed Satan by dying.

Land
The “son of man” (Christ’s body, the church) reclaimed Abel’s land and disarmed his Canaanite older brother in the Land by dying.

World
With the razing of Cain’s city, Jerusalem, the Christ’s Dominion expanded from Land to World, from brothers to children, from Abel to Seth. As the sons of God, we disarm the “daughters of men” culture around us by dying. We die to our predatory desires, and if necessary, we die physically as a witness. Kingdom expansion is always bought with blood. As with Job, our innocent suffering shames and disarms predatory powers and thus renews the world.

(See also Postmillennial Suffering)