At that time the Lord said to Joshua,
“Make flint knives and circumcise
the sons of Israel a second time.”
(Joshua 5:2)

Was Israel disobedient in its failure to circumcise every male born in the wilderness? The Lord never chastised them for this. If this lapse in the practice of circumcision was in the plan of God, what was the purpose of that plan? The example which first comes to mind is the circumcision of the firstborn son of Moses in Exodus 4:24-26.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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Part 1, The Architectural Significance of Lot’s Daughters, is here.

We’ve looked at the three-level Tabernacle structure in Genesis 19. That’s the rooms, and their doors, so what about the furniture?

The events follow the Bible Matrix, so an identification of how each step in the story fulfills the Creation Week might shed some light on the point of the details that the Spirit has included for us. And identifying how each step fulfills the Festal Calendar might also shed some light on the motivations of Lot and his daughters. The prefigurements of events nearly half a millennium in their future are breathtaking.

Day 1: Creation – The Angels, as two legal “spies” come to Sodom in the evening as Holy Light. Lot offers them rest (Sabbath) overnight. There is evening and there is morning. In the Tabernacle, this is the ARK OF THE COVENANT, which contained the two tablets of witness, hidden from the eyes of sinful men.

Day 2: Division – The Angels make as if they will spend the night in the open (a serpentine deception often appears at this “Exodus” step) but Lot insists they enter his house. He bakes them unleavened Passover bread — the symbol of historical discontinuity. In the Tabernacle, this is the installation of the darkening VEIL, the firmament.

Day 3: Ascension – This step is the Covenant Firstfruits, the blameless lamb. It concerns the promise to be fulfilled if the Covenant Ethics are obeyed. Sometimes this is a betrothal. The act of sex also follows the pattern, where it is the Adam overshadowing the Eve. In that case, Ascension is also an erection.

In the Tabernacle this is the four-horned BRONZE ALTAR, and the people from every quarter surround the house. In this liturgical structure, the men call on Lot to send the angels out as “living sacrifices.” (I’m sorry if you think this is crazy but I’ve seen so much of this stuff that it’s fairly obvious. And it’s often the reason for the scant descriptive details we are given!)

Ascension is also the TABLE OF FACEBREAD, where the holy man breaks the seals on the scroll and speaks the words of God, opening the mystery. Here, the mediator, the “lamb standing,” is Lot, who gives these sinners their last sermon. The sermon itself follows the pattern of the Feasts (included here for the naysayers):

Notice that the three “Ethics” steps move from the Covenant Head (in this case, uncircumcised ones, in every sense) through the “threshing floor” to the Covenant Body as two witnesses. More on that later. Also, Pentecost corresponds to the Lampstand, and Lot begs them to “see.”

It should be obvious, but the fact that this passage, and this speech, follow patterns not laid down (or not completed) until the time of Moses and Joshua are evidences for inspiration that are extremely difficult to explain away.

Day 4: Testing – This step is the turning point in the structure. The Word has been given, now it will be opened. Will it return void? As “Light” was offered at Testing in Lot’s sermon (a microcosm of the whole passage), so here their rejection of that Light results in blindness. The people of Sodom had tasted the goodness of the Lord and been “enlightened,” but would now be given a strong delusion. As it was at the first Pentecost, these men loved darkness, so they received darkness.

The correspondence to Day 4 here is the governing lights. The angels are the obvious “heavenly lights,” but Lot had also set himself up as a judge in Sodom, and his righteous judgment was rejected. Behind every godly testimony, whether it is accepted or rejected, are the “LAMPSTAND” eyes of the Spirit of God.

 Day 5: Maturity – Now we have the Trumpets. The angels give their warning to Lot and Lot repeats it to his “swarms” (which is what Deuteronomy, the fifth book, is all about). Because his daughters were almost put on centre stage, we often overlook the fact that Lot also had sons and sons-in-law (or potential sons-in-law) in Sodom. [1] Their testimony of “the outcry against them” in this structure corresponds to the witnesses against Cain. The INCENSE ALTAR is the prayers of the saints ascending to heaven for vengeance and redemption. It is the savor of life to some and the smell of death to others. (In Revelation this is presented as two “Trumpets” armies: the fragrant saints under the Altar of God and the locustine Judaizers who smell of sulphur from the Altar of the Abyss).

This step often includes a three-level house, but a house of life instead of a house of death. The Garden-Land-World architecture described in the previous post is here reversed: City-Plains-Mountains. It is the ascension of the sacrificial Covenant Body.

Of the sacrificial rite, James Jordan says, “the blood goes up and the Spirit comes down.” [2] At Ascension, the blood is the exposure of righteous Lot. At Testing it was the Blindness of the Spirit. But that’s the Covenant Head. The judgment was local, as it was at Pentecost. At Maturity it is the Ascension of the Covenant Body, and the fire to fall was not Pentecostal “Head-Fire” but AD70 “Body Fire.” As with water, salt and wine, a little bit of fire is a Covenant blessing, and a lot of fire is a Covenant curse. The Bible Matrix demonstrates the incredible correspondences in these events, and the apostles were clearly in on it. Their mysterious “hermeneutic,” I believe, was simply this matrix, a systematic typology.

Lot hesitates, but the angels, who between them have four hands, take one person in each hand. Hands are “five-fold” and military, and often appear at this step. Ten fingers are the Law of God in human flesh. The key word here is “mercy.” It is all grace.

Notice that, like Israel later on, Lot did not fully obey the command of the Lord, which led to “Canaanite,” or “Land,” immorality. Yet righteous Lot’s presence in the city of Zoar protected it as it had protected Sodom. Lot’s wisdom was a sacramental dose of salt. Which brings us to…

 Day 6: Conquest – Lot, standing in for the HIGH PRIEST in this structure of events, “passes through” with his two “goat” virgin daughters (MEDIATING ANIMALS) on this Day of Atonement. But his wife becomes a “white stone,” a pillar of salt. She is the microcosm of Sodom, a barren woman. Somehow, she is the sign that the offering for sin has been accepted. Israel set up two pillars of stone when they entered Canaan, and whitewashed them. The correspondences are not exact, so this still requires some thought, but the underlying idea is a perpetual memorial to the event. In the Revelation, the “virgin daughters” are the saints who persevered, and the woman who looked back is Herod’s Judaism, a magnificent edifice covered in … white stone. Notice the reversal: the women who were offered for sin and got “passed over” came through clean, and the woman who did not speak out became the barren “harlot.”

Day 7: Glorification – Now that he had lost everything, instead of heading for the mountains to be reunited with the house of Abraham, Lot lives in a cave. Typologically, he has found a covering in the tomb but no resurrection life. The final stage of the structure involves Covenant Succession, [3] and this is the concern of Lot’s daughters. Instead of the wine and strong drink of Tabernacles, a God-fest thrown by God’s people for the godless, here the “ministry” is incestuous. Instead of becoming a spring of living water, the offspring is the peoples of Ammon and Moab. These two women had lost their husbands, and their father had lost his wife. I think they get a worse rap than they deserve. Their motives were pure under the circumstances, but, like Abraham with Hagar, they unrighteously sought to answer their own prayers rather than waiting patiently for God’s. Theirs was not the sin of Sodom but the sin of Lot. They learned this “Covenant-impatience” from their father, and the result was that their descendents failed to enter into God’s REST.

Next Post: The Only Straight in the Village

[1] See How Many Daughters Did Lot Have? by Eric Lyons.
[2] See Esau’s Ladder.
[3] See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

“His eyes [were] like a flame of fire …
[and] out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword”
(Revelation 1:14-16)

“I will set My face against you,
and you shall be defeated by your enemies.”
(Leviticus 26:17)

The Tabernacle layout to the Bible narratives is like the Globe Theatre to Shakespeare. [1] If we understand the correspondences we can get the “architectural” relationships worked out. The same blueprint appears again and again, and it explains the motivation of “righteous Lot” in the offering of his daughters to the men of Sodom.

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[1] See Jesus in the Theatre of God.
[2] See The Significance of Adah and Zillah.
[3] See Better Angels.
[4] The difference between those leave their old life behind and those who don’t is the ability to see, to judge, sin rightly in themselves. The Spirit of God is the perseverance of the saints.

“…of the angels He says:
‘Who makes His angels spirits
and His ministers a flame of fire.’”

God is the source of all things, and He identifies Himself as such in His speeches. Every speech is Covenantal, and every preamble within His speeches is a statement of transcendence. “I am the Lord your God.”

After the initial call comes delegation, Covenantal Hierarchy. A man, a Moses, an Abraham, receives the Word with meekness.

We know that angels are God’s messengers, the sent ones. They administered the Old Covenant as our tutors, Satan becoming the first false teacher, the first corrupt ambassador, or, if you will, the first publican.

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

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From James B. Jordan’s Trees and Thorns: [1]

The land and garden of Eden were watered by a spring. Why call attention to the fact that God did not send rain? Why not just mention the spring and leave off the statement about rain? The reason, I believe, is to call our minds back to Genesis 1:2-9. We find in Genesis 1:2 that there was an ocean over the original earth. Then God created the firmament, and separated the waters above from the waters below. On the third day God gathered the waters below into areas below the surface of the land.

Now we have a clear distinction between waters above the firmament, the source of rain, and waters below, which would have to come up from under the earth. Both Genesis 1:2-9 and 2:5-6 set up the distinction eschatologically; ground water comes first, and then heavenly water.

With this distinction in mind, we can begin to see rather clear associations between ground water and the first creation, which is earthy and Adamic, and heavenly water with the second creation, which is heavenly and Last Adamic: “The Spiritual [world order] is not first, but the natural [world order]; then the Spiritual [world order]. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second Man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:46-48).

Ground water is associated with the first world, the world defiled by sin. Originally the land of promise centered on the “circle of the Jordan,” which “was well watered everywhere—before Yahweh destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah—like the garden of Yahweh, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar” (Gen. 13:10). This Edenic spot was chosen by Lot, who went for the obvious blessing of ground water—so much more reliable than rain, which must be prayed for. Notice that Gen. 13:10 interjects the statement that God would soon destroy this area. Why is this stuck in here? I believe it is to point to the fact that ground water is not going to be the place of salvation. The waters below, the original garden of Eden, cannot be recovered. We shall have to move forward to the eschatological waters above and the heavenly Jerusalem.

Just so, Moses contrasts the old land of Egypt, watered from the ground, with the promised land, which is watered by rain: “For the land, into which you are entering to possess it, is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, where you used to sow your seed and water it with your foot like a vegetable garden. But the land … drinks water from heaven’s rain” (Dt. 11:10-11). Moses quotes God’s promise, “I will give the rain for your land in its season, the early and late rain” (Dt. 11:14).

________________________________
[1] James B. Jordan, Trees and Thorns: A Commentary on Genesis 2-4. Available from www.biblicalhorizons.com
Art: Firmament by
Lebbeus Woods, architect
Kiki Smith, artist
Henry Urbach Architecture Gallery
New York, New York

“The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed.”  Deuteronomy 28:27

The Bible matrix pattern brings out some interesting parallels. Step 5 is about a military multitude in unity after being tested under the Law of God. It is Deuteronomy. It is Trumpets. It is the swarms of fish and birds on Day 5. It is the step of plagues and plunder. It is the step where Jesus tells His disciples they will now need both swords and moneybags.

In Moses’ ministry in Egypt, his Day 5 was the plagues sent by God upon that nation. Just like Moses, the Ark made an exodus out of Eli’s Egypt and defeated Dagon in his own temple. The Philistines, being a high culture that, it seems, even the Israelites looked up to, were the only ones to link plagues and plunder in one highly artistic gesture — tumours made of gold! And, as Jordan observes, the Philistines were descendants of the Egyptians.[1]

So, the apostles in the first century pattern, witnessing to the diaspora Jews as Trumpets before the great atoning tribulation, were not only “glories” whom the rebellious Judaisers were blaspheming (“two” angelic witnesses to “Sodom” [2]). They were, in effect, to the hard-hearted Jewish vessels of destruction, Herod’s hemorrhoids.

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[1] James B. Jordan, Egypt in Biblical History. Peter Leithart notes that the word for “tumours” is also the word for “fortified cities” and there were five Philistine cities: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath. See A Son to Me, page 59. Leithart thinks the golden mice thus symbolised their villages. I think the mice are more likely linked to the tumours as carriers of the plague. Mice swarm.
[2] See The Two Witnesses.

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.

“And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.”  – Revelation 11:8

Revelation 20 makes it clear that the “second death” is the lake of fire. But an analysis of the literary structure of Revelation brings out an interesting factor.

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“I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.”

Jesus prayed these words shortly before these disciples betrayed, deserted and denied Him. As High Priest, the twelve were still just names etched on His shoulders. Unformed and uninteresting.

After Pentecost, with God’s breath breathed into them, each would become a precious stone, differing in glory from the others. They would be fully formed elders surrounding the slain Lamb (Rev. 5:6), walls and gates of a new Jerusalem.

With the seven eyes of the High Priest, the light of the Lampstand flames, Jesus could already see Pentecost, when the disciples would become the ‘angelic glories’ sent to warn Herod’s Sodom (Rev. 11:8) and curse it with blindness. Old Jerusalem was sulphur in God’s nostrils, but the apostles became an incense altar of aromatic smoke.

The twelve spoke words that changed the whole world in a matter of decades. Jesus sees us with those same eyes. We deny Him. We betray Him. We desert Him. But we are His, and He sees our future. Breathe into us, breath of God.

The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.

Christ refers here to Psalm 2. It had been fulfilled in the “head” at His ascension. At this point, it was yet to be fulfilled in the “body.”

“Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.””

Jesus’ reference to this Psalm here is striking for two reasons. Firstly, it settles the matter of whether or not earthly Jerusalem is the city of God. Christ was set on the holy hill (the throne of David) at His ascension, and it was in heaven, not in Palestine. Secondly, this promise of divine authority over the nations is opened to the faithful saints:

“I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me,
“You are my Son; today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.””

Any faithful saint, as one like the Son of Man, should now be feared by the rulers of the Land:

“Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the Land.
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”

This organic sharing of Christ’s authority is demonstrated when the church prays part of Psalm 2 in Acts 4:25-6. They identify the nations, kings, peoples and rulers as “Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel” (v. 27). However, they go on to identify the “Anointed” as Peter and John, who are suffering from the same “threats.” Again, in Acts 9:1, Saul was “breathing” murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples, yet in v.4, the Lord asks of him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” This might explain the identity of the “glorious ones” whom the false prophets reviled in 2 Peter 2:10. Peter Leithart comments:

“The condemnation of the false teachers for blaspheming “glories” is a continuation of the example concerning Sodom… in second Peter 2:10-12, what we have is a charge that these false teachers revile or blaspheme the “glories,” the angelic messengers, the apostles, in literal terms, who are warning them as the angels warned Lot to escape from the city of destruction. In 2:11, angels who are greater in might and power do not bring reviling judgments against them before the Lord. That simply repeats what Peter says in his first letter. When reviled, Jesus did not revile in return, which is an example for us. The “glories” that are reviled and blasphemed by these false teachers don’t respond in kind.” 1

This identification of the apostles with the angels who rescued Lot is more important than it may seem at first. As we observed earlier, the angels were “two witnesses.”

1  Peter J. Leithart, 1999 Biblical Horizons Conference lecture on 2 Peter 2. www.wordmp3.com