Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19)

Every one of God’s houses throughout Bible history has a “former days” and a “latter days.” Each goes through a process of death and resurrection, a “purification by fire.” Following the Bible Matrix, the central “slaying” of every row has a Day 4 symbol, something related to “the governing lights,” the all-seeing eyes of heaven.

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And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed… Blessed…”
(Matthew 5:2-11)

Part 1 is here.

Just so, the first natural words formed a testimony given before the first natural audience. They follow the structure of the Ten Commandments. [1] This was the first prophecy.

Reading the Ten Words back into the first speech by the first human Lawgiver also shows a movement from the natural to the ethical. It recapitulates the movement from the “sacrifice of blood” to the “sacrifice of praise,” from the Tabernacle of Moses to the Tabernacle of David, etc. Eve is not spoken to. She is referred to in the third person. Her naming is a legal blessing and witness before God. You might notice that this stanza is the Sanctions of the greater pattern, and Succession follows in vv. 24-25, with the requirements for the foundation of a new household, a new “delegation.”

You might also notice that each horizontal row moves from Adam to Eve, and the entire process also moves vertically from Adam to Eve. Adam is protology (Genesis) and Eve is eschatology (Revelation). The Woman is always the “at last.”

The Veil of Flesh

Adam did not need to learn to speak (or presumably, to write). He was physically (naturally) mature. But now (“at last”) for Adam, the natural was also bifurcated. It was Social. Adam was now corporate. For the Physical to become Ethical, there must be a Social in between, that is, a veil of flesh. Bone is to flesh as law is to love. Adam is structure and Eve is glory. The spiritual/ethical words spoken by God were to become the “environment of fire” between them, for good or ill, blessing or cursing.

We see this triune order in the architecture of the first three chapters of Genesis.

In Genesis 1, Adam is a Physical creature, part of the created order. In Genesis 2, the focus zooms in on Adam to tell his story as a Social being. This involves cutting flesh and reuniting flesh, something which did not occur with the animals, whose law is earthly, tied to the blessing or cursing of the ground. Genesis 3 tells the story of Adam as an Ethical creature, one who is not only to represent the created order to God above, but to represent the heavenly order to the creation below. The movement is from being, to knowing, to loving. Of course, loving (of God and of Eve) is where he fails.

This brief history of Adam (the individual) becomes the history of corporate Adam. As discussed, the first Covenant was tied to nature, thus all nature which had “breath” was destroyed. But after Noah, Covenant history moved from the Physical to the Social. The cutting of circumcision avoided another “natural” destruction by creating a microcosmic “world model” in Abraham. Just as it was for Adam, this was a time of promises and foreshadowings. The subsequent history deals with a Social creation, that is, Israel and her Tabernacle as a microcosm of the Physical world. The revelation at this point is fundamentally Social. The expectations of the Law concern external obedience. The fight against evil is a fight against its expression in the flesh, both within Israel and through holy wars with other nations. When Israel sins, the flood that comes is not water, but the restless sea of the nations, first Babylon, then Rome. This explains why the prophets use “creation” language in their “social” judgments. The wrath against all flesh would fall upon a “firstfruits,” Israel as God’s firstborn. [2]

The final world model was Christ (“Now is the judgment of this world” [John 12:31]). In Jesus’ baptism and the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost (head and body), history moved from a Social architecture (based upon circumcision) to an Ethical revelation. Consequently, the Law also changed. The “external” Laws of Moses were replaced by the indwelling Law of Christ, expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.

The serpent was finally crushed, and the revelation given to us now is the mind of Christ, not an inflexible moral code but an organic, living, adaptable one (which is why the Pharisees had so much trouble with Jesus — they did not understand the Spirit of the Law). Jesus fulfilled the ethical demands of the “Social law” and began the age of a different kind of Ethics, the era of obedience in the Spirit. [3]

History in Adam

Jesus, as a blameless Adam, became the mouth of God, The Prophet Like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-19; John 1:20-21). He breathed on His disciples with natural breath, a liturgical act prefiguring their reception of the breath of the supernatural Spirit after His ascension. He was the first “Angel of the Lord” who not only took on human form, but took that human form, that flesh, justified, into heaven, to represent the entire earth in the heavenly court (see Part 1). He then shared that Spirit with the disciples who would be a new kind of “heavenly visitor,” founding a new microcosmic Social model, the Church.

So, the pattern of the history of mankind follows the shape founded in the creation of Adam.

Now, although the process is chiastic, it is also a progression. As with all good chiasms, the correspondences in the second half are developments upon their counterparts in the first half. Eve is a “development” beyond Adam. He is protological. She is eschatalogical.

So the original Physical world of Adam and Noah was not as glorious as will be the final Physical restoration. Moreover, and here’s the rub, the Social world of Israel-according-to-the-flesh was not as glorious as this fragrant new Social world of the Church. If we overlay this “all history” cycle upon the process we observed in Genesis 2:7, we can see that Israel is to the Church as the formed shape of Adam in the dust was to Adam breathing, speaking, naming. Of course, the same pattern is found in Adam’s qualification for the heavenly breath.

Since the process in the cycle above is cumulative (as is the entire Bible), we should modify it to express this.

The Spirit becomes the heart of a new society, then that new Spirit-filled society becomes the heart of a new physical order. We see this prefigured in God’s Ethical preparation of Israel before her inheritance of the Land of Canaan. But the first Pentecost was a Pentecost of death. It was much like the disqualification of Adam, who like Aaron, failed to speak against the shiny beast and his strange fire. The Last Pentecost changed everything.

The new social body is not like the old social body which concerned the cutting of flesh. It is a body of those indwelt by the Spirit because their hearts have been cut. It is not about the cutting of Adam to construct a bride (circumcision). This New Covenant body does what Adam was supposed to do. It does not represent the Physical creation to God, nor represent a “forming” Social moral code to its counterpart. Filled with the Spirit, it represents God to the Social and Physical orders with plenipotent authority — the mind of Christ. [4] Baptism is about mediation and representation as a co-regent with Christ. The New Covenant sociology is entirely different to the Old. It works from within, not from without.

As mentioned, to complete the chiasm the physical order must be restored. This is not what we are working towards because it is beyond our power. Those who want to argue about “Natural Law” are confused about the triune construction of reality. Natural Law is still corrupted, as reflected in our own bodies, in the animal kingdom, and in the corrupting autonomy of certain “natural” processes, which have become laws unto themselves. Our domain is Social. It is the transformation of individuals and culture. The natural laws themselves, and indeed the “natural breath,” are still instruments of cursing, which is why the last enemy that will be destroyed is death, when every natural mouth will be stopped. AD70 was only the end of the old Social order, not the end of the corrupted physical order, although each level is a type of the other. (The “Covenant Creationists”, confusing the “social” flood of AD70 with the “physical” flood of Noah, want to cut the beginning and end off this chiastic process. [5])

History as architecture

The difference between the Abrahamic social model and the Christian one is the difference between the Bronze Altar (earthy – sacrifice of blood) and the Incense Altar (heavenly: elders – sacrifice of praise). It, like Adam’s prophecy, is the move “from silence to song” which we see prefigured in the breaking up of the Mosaic Tabernacle and its reconstruction as the Tabernacle of David.

Between these two altars is the Laver, water contained in bronze, a purifying “lake of fire.” All this leads to my point, which concerns the definition of what a Christian is in the light of the architecture of the Scriptures. If baptism defines the Church as a “slightly upgraded” Abrahamic body, so that it includes infants, what did Pentecost achieve? Is the Church just a corpse washed? Or is there also an Ethical transformation, a new nature received as a gift and heralded by faithful confession?

If the Church is basically the same kind of body as Old Covenant Israel, then Pentecost did nothing. Membership of the “body” begins with faithfulness to a moral code rather than with the indwelling of a moral life, the Spirit of God. Paedobaptism makes nonsense of the architecture inherent in every passage, at every level, of the Bible.

If we follow the order intended in Eden, the gift of the Holy Ghost can only be received by those who have taken the first step of obedience, the one upon which Adam stumbled. This is exactly what we see in Jesus’ baptism. The Father’s pleasure was due to His prior obedience. He was certainly blameless before then, as Adam’s children would have been, but the actual gift of “representing God to others” is for those who truly image God and are subsequently given the authority of God.

In the Old Testament, we see the Spirit “coming upon” certain people to gift them for service, but never an “indwelling” of their flesh. The only indwelt house was the one which was truly clean, the Tabernacle, beginning with its foundation in the sacrifices of Abraham for the Land of Canaan [6]. Not only was the Law external but lawful cleanliness was external. Jesus was the first clean human, and the first permanently clean house. Israel, on the whole, fixated with the externals based upon circumcision, a Social divide, rejected Him, blaspheming the Spirit, and she was filled with demons instead.

To claim that New Covenant conversion and baptism does not follow the same pattern found in every other “forming and filling” process found in the Bible is to ride roughshod over the ways of God. Fire and water, baptism and the Spirit, are for mediators between heaven and earth, for the elders, prophets, witnesses, musicians who are not only welcome in God’s court, but welcome the nations (including infants) into God’s court that they may minister to them.

So when you are tempted to baptize an infant, it is the flesh lusting against the Spirit. It the claiming of a spiritual inheritance through fleshly, unethical means: prophesying “peace” when there is no peace. The New Covenant is about those who are indwelt by God, not those who “set apart” and cut the flesh in mere anticipation, as did the Jews.

Those who maintained an allegiance to the first Pentecost over the second, and held onto an an obsolete genealogical inheritance from an earthly father, also rejected peace with God and true sonship. Because they were unwilling to be a blessing to all nations, the other promises, the open Land and the open womb, were taken away (Matthew 13:12). Contrary to the delusions of paedobaptists, the New Covenant is not about a pregnant Woman but a resurrected, ascended, prophetic Man.

While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3)

What peace there is, is not fundamentally Social. It is fundamentally ethical, spiritual. It is announced, by the Gospel, from God in heaven to the ears of our children on earth from our own clean lips as baptized mediators, those who are hybrids of heaven and earth, New Covenant “angels.” [7] All the Lord’s people are now prophets, as Moses desired. The true Church is not only visible and tangible, it is audible. It is not only formed but filled and prophesying the future. The Scriptures never confuse or conflate the speakers with the hearers, and neither must we. Paedobaptism is the carnal expression of carnal thinking, confusing bone and flesh with witness, protology with eschatology, Delegation with Vindication.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:8-9)

We must not be like those who confused their Physical, Social circumcision with the Ethical circumcision, the repentance required by God.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
(Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11)

Art: Bryan Ahn, Sermon on the Mount
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[1] See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key for the reasons behind this architectural arrangement of the Ten Words. See also No Common Ground for their systematic (architectural) reversal by the secular state.
[2] See Cosmic Language.
[3] See The Ethics of the New Testament.
[4] See Images of God.
[5] See Covenant Creationism.
[6] See A Man of Beasts.
[7] See Shekinah People.

There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,
but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind,
and the glory of the earthly is of another.
(1 Corinthians 15:40)

Did Adam receive the Spirit of God? If he did receive the Spirit, was the Spirit taken away when he sinned?

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

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Michael F. Bird recently wrote:

The Jerusalem council achieved a via media by finding in Scripture a justification for the inclusion of Gentiles within the church without requiring circumcision and placing upon Gentiles only the obligation to avoid idol food and sexual immorality. Yet the Jerusalem council also permitted the existence of two parallel theologies: one theology where the Gentiles were uncircumcised equals in a renewed Israel with holiness constituted by the Spirit and another theology where uncircumcised Gentiles were guests in an Israelite remnant that still defined holiness through Torah observance. The Jerusalem council’s decisions seem optimized in a setting where Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians remain in parallel rather than integrated, especially in relation to shared meals. The council did not stipulate the standard of law observance to be upheld for Eucharistic fellowship to ensue.

Bird makes some interesting observations in his post, but two parallel theologies? Is that really what was going on? And does the council’s decision apply to modern observance of the Torah (ie. Messianic Jews)?

Theology is an overused word, for sure. Two theologies almost indicates two ways of understanding God, if not two separate gods. But the mention of Torah observance clarifies Bird’s meaning: the Jerusalem council maintained that Jewish believers approached God in one way, and Gentile believers approached God in another. And both were valid.

This AD30-AD70 era of “overlap” was the fulfilment of the Old Covenant order, with the Hebrews/Jews as a priestly nation mediating for the Gentiles. There were two tables: Passover for the mediators alone, and Tabernacles for Jews and Gentiles as one body (with 70 bulls sacrificed for the 70 nations in Genesis 10). [1] Salvation came to the Jews first because they were in the Holy Place, and the Gentiles were in the outer court. The “sons of God” set the Covenant table and invite the “daughters of men” to eat at it.

The only reason the Jews could still observe the Torah, and why Paul could take a Nazirite vow, was that the Temple was still standing. Observing Torah might have been valid when the Jerusalem council met, but as these early decades of the church rolled on, the door of the new age was opening wider and wider, and the light of the church era was eradicating the shadows of the old order. [2]

The Revelation illustrates this process of increase/decrease in a number of ways—in symbols. One of the most striking is the Black Horse, announcing that the Old Covenant grains were wasting away while the New Covenant oil and wine were in abundant supply. The Green Horse (the Levitical sword) finished it off.

Another is the symbol of “buying and selling.” [3] In Acts, the Jewish Christians are meeting in the Temple, but by the end of the process they were locked out. The Jewish polity unwittingly locked the Pentecostal glory of God out of His own house. It was left unprotected, which brought about its desolation.

Like rusty trainer wheels, Torah observance was a decayed, torn veil that soon passed away, despite the desperate post-mortem stitching of the Herodians and the zealots. And as Paul stitched Jew and Gentile together across the empire over the next decades, Torah observance also decayed. By the end, it was only the hardliners who remained, and God called them together to Jerusalem for a feast in which they themselves were the meat on the table for the Gentiles they despised.

The “parallel theologies” were the fulfilment of the Old Covenant two-feast order, but this bipolarity was temporary. [4] The book of Hebrews trumpets the end of the division of Adam begun in Abraham. [5]

Salvation was certainly of the Jews, but that Abrahamic blood was now in heaven. The blood no longer mattered. Only Spirit now mattered.

The wise decision of the Jerusalem Council cannot be applied to anyone beyond AD70, when James’ temporary “Tabernacle of David” (the firstfruits church) was consumed by the true Temple of Solomon. We live in a permanent house.

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God.”

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[1] See Eat Local and Die for the only way this applies today.
[2] See The End of Shadows.
[3] See Worship As Commerce.
[4] See Three Babylons.
[5] See The End of Judaism.

All the events of the Bible take place within a cosmic theatrical “stage,” one based on the structure of heaven. Like the Globe Theatre in Shakespeare’s era, an understanding of the symbolic significance of the physical elements in the literal, historical creation account in Genesis gives us incredible insights into the structure of many prophetic Bible passages and the order of many historical events. When we get to the Revelation, familiarity with this theatrical “set” is crucial to understanding its fulfilment in history.

The three-level structure of God’s heavenly court is pictured in the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is then also the top level of a larger three-level structure: Temple-Israel-Nations, or Garden-Land-World. So we have a three-level heaven, a three-level world, and a three-level “house” mediating between them, a house filled with bread and wine, flesh and blood. [1]

This explains the “soundwaves” pattern found in a great deal of the Bible, particularly the prophets. The Lord speaks His word as liturgy from the Most Holy Place, it is pre-enacted by the prophet in a new “Holy Place” (often from outside the sinning city in some terrifying judgments as object lessons), and then the same judgments are spoken into the “Outer Court,” the Gentile nations. In these three domains, from the top down, we have Word, Sacrament (the prophet as a kind of new “acting” High Priestly mediator), and Government. [2]

Jesus was arrested in a Garden. He was led before the Council and condemned by His own brothers (Land). He was then brought before Pilate, the Roman governor (World). In all cases, He was pretty much silent as a lamb.

Paul’s final journey follows the same pattern but with one crucial difference. He brought a sermon from the Temple steps to the Jews (Garden). Unlike Christ, he defended himself before the council (Land). Finally, he gave testimony before the Roman governor, Felix (World). The difference relates to the process that takes the Tabernacle from silence to song, the bloody silence of the tent of Moses (Jew-only heady-only Circumcision) to the victory song of the tent of David which included Gentile worshippers (Jew-Gentile whole-body baptism). [3] Paul’s journey through Garden, Land and World was after the resurrection of Christ.

Paul’s testimony made Felix tremble. ”He reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” Or Word, Sacrament and Government. Paul was building the Tabernacle of David. [4]

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[1] See A New Heavens and a New Earth.
[2] See How to Read the Prophets.
[3] See The Sacrifice of Praise. This also supports my position on credo-baptism. Infants can’t testify. Paedobaptism ruins the picture. An appeal to verses like Psalm 8:2 is as relevant to baptism, and circumcision for that matter, as trees clapping their hands. Baptism (Atonement/Laver) comes after the Spirit of Pentecost/Lampstand in every case. It is a robe of office. On baptism’s prefiguring in the four-cornered Israelite robe, see Healing in His… Tassels?
[4] The reference to the Tabernacle of David in Amos was fulfilled in the Restoration era. See Resurrected to Witness.