The miraculous gifts given to the firstfruits church are part of a very large pattern, one which we can can see thwarted in the Garden of Eden, and presented as laws in the Ten Commandments. It is the “song of the Woman” after the crushing of the serpent. It is a “legal testimony” that the Word of God is true. We see this epitomized in the life of Paul the apostle, who sought every opportunity to testify in court concerning the resurrection of Jesus. In the greater picture, the witness of the firstfruits church is this part of the picture in the history of the world. That legal witness continues today, but in the first century it had a special purpose, and that was to divide the Jews into “two goats,” two women, Hagar and Sarah (the past and the future) and bring down the curses of the Covenant upon those who rejected the Gospel. The gift of tongues was part of that miraculous witness, a corroborrated legal witness in the courtroom of God, [1] and the purpose of this “Babelic” gift was completed when the Herods and their Temple, the “Babylon” of the day, was destroyed. [2] Consequently, the miraculous gifts ended with the firstfruits church. The time of “childhood” for the Church was over. [3]

Luke Welch has some related observations which are interesting, and he, like Jordan, demonstrates how much we Christians miss because we fail to read the Bible as a united book.

As I read along in Numbers, I keep seeing things that Paul has latched onto. For example, Paul says (1 Corinthians 14.5-9, 24):

“Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up. Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said?… If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?”

The punch line to this whole thing is at the bottom, but let’s focus on the bugle thing first. Look at Numbers 10.1-3, 9:

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Make two silver trumpets. Of hammered work you shall make them, and you shall use them for summoning the congregation and for breaking camp. And when both are blown, all the congregation shall gather themselves to you at the entrance of the tent of meeting. … And when you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, that you may be remembered before the LORD your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.”

The bugle gets two things to happen which Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 14:

1. Gets the congregation to assemble
2. Gets the congregation to be ready for battle by breaking camp while making a memorial directed at God.

Having established the passage connection, notice another huge one, which we see when God gives “the Spirit which is on Moses” out to the 70 elders, and two have not shown up at the elder assembly. They were caused to prophecy even in the camp, and Joshua wants to help by saying, “My lord Moses, stop them!” What is Moses’ reply?

But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 10.29)

Remember that? Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. (1 Corinthians 14.5). Paul’s heart is Moses’ ministry desire too.

I note also that this prophetic period for both Paul and Moses:

1. was a forty year period between defeat of one enemy and another
2. Pharaoh, and Philistines (for Moses)
3. Caesar, and Satanic Israel (for Paul)
4. Moses took the people INTO the land for conquest.

Throughout Paul’s writing, he is calling the church to the conquest of the whole world, and at the end of those forty years they will be forced out of the land, in a sense, after the destruction of Jerusalem.

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[1] See A Tongue of Gold.
[2] See Three Babylons.
[3] See Cessation.

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11)

This passage (or pericope?) retraces the Covenant pattern, which is also played out in the flow of the history of Israel. We’ll have a look at the structure of the passage and then I want to discuss the significance of the literary placement of “every tongue.”

WARNING: Weird ahead.

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

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When it comes to the miraculous spiritual gifts, I’m a bit of a hybrid.

After my conversion as a teenager, I desperately wanted to be able to speak in tongues, like some other Christians I knew. For some reason, the Anglicans and Presbyterians I knew didn’t, or couldn’t. And neither could I.

Acts needs to be interpreted in context. The signs Luke recorded for us were for the blessing or cursing of unbelieving Jews. They were a warning that the end was near. It was the end of the “Abrahamic rift,” so a reversal of Babel. Sign language at the beginning, sign language at the end, and the Word in between. Despite the signs, many of them hardened their hearts like Pharaoh (Romans 9).

What we do see today is miracles at the frontiers. Christianity is booming in many countries today, even Muslim ones, mostly due to miraculous signs and dreams. I have a friend who was a missionary in the Pacific, and definitely not into the gifts. He witnessed some amazing things, and said that even though it was his own ministry, he just felt like a spectator. He was on a gospel frontier.

We in the West are not at the frontier. We have the Word of God and in many cases we reject it. If we do see any miraculous signs, it is because our leaders are Pharaoh and Herod. The glory is departing. The frontier is crossing us. The miracles we see today are the counterfeits of Jannes and Jambres. We demand a sign and the antichrists make fire fall from heaven. But these manufactured signs signify not the beginning for our culture, but the end, as they did in Egypt, and in Herod’s Egypt in the first century.

See also End of the Abrahamic Rift, Three Babylons, Bloody Throne, Bloody Frontiers and That Which Is Perfect.

“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Matthew 3:11 

I remember a scene from X Files where they printed out a binary code and laid the pages out on the floor. When viewed from a distance the ones and zeros made the image of a face. There was a similar scene in one of the Indiana Jones movies, where there was a search for a secret passage and it turned out to be a large X on the floor when viewed from above. This is just my view, but it seems a lot of theologians spend a great deal of time walking in circles in the jungle, lost in the details of prooftexts when we have Old Testament “Google maps” at our fingertips.

There’s been some discussion about the baptism of John: why his disciples needed to be baptized again, and why we never hear of the disciples themselves being baptized.

James Jordan points out that John’s baptism was Red Sea, but the baptism the disciples ministered was Jordan. The first was an exit; the second an entry. [1]

But what about those pesky disciples who only had their feet washed? What’s the bird’s eye view? Why, it’s the familiar Tabernacle floorplan!

Ark – Completing His own ‘personal’ Adam-cycle, Jesus is transfigured. Peter suggests the construction of tabernacles. As ‘Great Prophet’ He initiates the next cycle, the ‘Eve’ (Light – Sabbath)

Veil – Jesus is crucified (Firmament – Passover)

Altar & Table – Jesus is resurrected from the earth (new Land) and ascends as fulfilled ‘grain and fruit,’ bread and wine on the table (Rev 4-5 – Firstfruits)

Lampstand – The Spirit descends as fire (Apostles baptized – Pentecost)

Incense – The Apostles, as elders in the new government, [2] preach to Jews (the old house is comin’ down – Trumpets – swarms) in Gentile tongues [3]

Laver – The Apostles baptize Jews (new Adams – Atonement)

Shekinah – Gentiles are also invited and the house is complete (Tabernacles)

It is a new Creation and a new Temple. And it is the end of the old week. Worship is moved from the last day to the first day.

And, as we see many times in the Old Testament, this initial structure foreshadows a similar structure at a much larger scale. It set the pattern for history between AD30 and AD70.

ADDENDUM: Those who are familiar with the Bible matrix might also notice it in the verse quoted above.

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[1] See the links on baptism here.
[2] See Big Government.
[3] See That Which is Perfect and Three Babylons for more on this temporary gift.

or Through a Glass Sea Darkly

“Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.”  1 Cor. 13:8-10

I remember hearing a Southern Baptist pastor many years ago teaching that “that which is perfect” was the completed New Testament. He was forced to find some point in first century history that would justify his belief in the cessation of miraculous gifts like tongues. Well, to a point, I think he was right.

The apostolic church was quite a different kettle of fish to the church after AD70.[1] Paul and the other apostles would very soon be face to face with Christ, but only after the Word was completed (around AD64-65) as a final witness to the Jews, and the gospel was preached to all the Gentiles in the oikoumene (Matt. 24:14). Only then could the end of the age come.

That premillennial pastor wouldn’t entertain a “first resurrection” in AD70, but I believe concerning the completion of the Bible and the end of tongues as “business as usual” he was right on the money.

This interpretation is also supported by the Dominion pattern. The chapter begins with Paul’s Word from God as the “prime mover” (the Ark), runs through the “mystery veil” (Red Sea) to the Altar and Table (Tabernacle) to a wilderness where, in response to the Law, Eve is victorious through an exercise of love. If this is true, it paints the miraculous gifts as Trumpets which were a warning to the Jews. They are the ministry of the two legal witnesses against the old order, pictured in Revelation as partial judgments.[2] These childish signs weren’t going to make it across the Jordan, which is the Laver, the crystal sea, the glass barrier through which Paul peered and upon which the firstfruits saints including the apostles would soon stand (Rev. 15:2) (Jericho – Atonement) [3]. Then faith, hope and love are the finished, perfect (mature) Tabernacle which remains to this day.

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[1] See Babel and Pentecost and End of the Abrahamic Rift.
[2] See The Two Witnesses.
[3] I know the “glass” refers to a mirror. The laver was made out of bronze mirrors. It symbolises the firmament. See Exodus 38:8; Job 37:18; 2 Cor. 3:18.

James Jordan points out that when the Lord confused the languages of the Babel builders, the Hebrew term is ‘lip’, and it carries the connotation of scattering their religious profession.

“The origin of many tongues and nations comes at the Tower of Babel. We read in Genesis 11:1 that the whole earth was of one lip and had one set of words. It is important to understand that “lip” does not refer to language, but to religious belief, as a concordance study of this term will reveal. (See Zephaniah 3:9; Psalm 81:4-5; Isaiah 6:5-7; etc. See James B. Jordan, The Bible and the Nations (1988), p. 9, available from Biblical Horizons.)

The people built a city and a tower; the city a cultural unit gathered by their one language, and the tower a religious artifact built in terms of their one belief-system. In Genesis 11:6-9 we read that God attacked their tower and scattered the people in terms of their “lip”, their religious beliefs.

The foundational scattering was not in terms of language and culture, but in terms of religion. Instead of one idolatrous system in the world, there came to be many. To be sure, from an objective perspective all of these idolatries are pretty much the same, but the nations do not think so. There is hardly a dime’s worth of difference between Molech and Chemosh, but the Moabites and Ammonites did not think they were the same at all. There is hardly a dime’s worth of difference between Leninism and Maoism, but the Russians and Chinese did not think so. Until the nations turn to the true faith, God keeps them at war with one another in terms of their idolatries, and thus keeps them weak.

Language, however, was also diversified. The original tongue (almost certainly Hebrew, or proto-Hebrew) was scattered into thousands. This also helped keep the nations divided and relatively powerless.”1

Firstly, there is the obvious application to what we have just covered concerning the ‘scattering’ of Herod and Rome’s Babel in AD67-70, and the consequent inability of Satan to gather the nations against the church. The only united lip is currently Christianity, which draws men from all nations, tribes, tongues and peoples.

Secondly, any time man builds his own tower to heaven, whether it be the corrupted worship of the Roman church, the pride of communism or the pragmatism of ‘infallible’ human reason, God turns up and disassembles the house of cards overnight.

“Whenever Jesus walks in the room, the old ideas stop working. Suddenly, nothing makes sense any more, and whatever it is that He does creates confusion. It is rather an update on the medicine man’s powers no longer working after the Gospel begins to be preached. All of Jesus’ miracles in the Gospels create disruption and trouble. It is no different now. The Tower of Babel stops working whenever God shows up. All the smart people get confused. It is only after they are stricken with blindness that there is a new search for sight, and that is what one hopes for.”2

Just as, according to Plutarch, the pagan oracles stopped talking after the coming of Christ, whenever the Word of God comes, the old “lip” is confused. The current financial crisis is a judgment of God upon the moral failure of western culture. The house of cards has come down. The Greed-god’s gordian knot has been cut in one stroke.

We were privileged to have John Anderson, Australia’s deputy prime minister during the Howard government, speak at this year’s Christian Men’s Convention in Katoomba. He was pessimistic about the immediate economic future, but maintained that it was an opportunity for the church. The confidence of moderns has been battered in every major arena that begins with ‘global.’ The state we have deified is being exposed and shamed as a false god by plagues from heaven.

“You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says the LORD of hosts. “Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house.” Haggai 1:9

CNN reported that with the closure of a major DHL hub in Wilmington, Ohio, an enormous percentage of the town and surrounds is now unemployed.

Larry Jones, founder and president of Feed the Children, urged communities to reach out to one another.

“If we are going to solve the problem, it’s not going to be the government; it’s going to be churches and charities and colleges, literally everyone working together,” Jones said. “We are not the total answer, but we are part of the answer, and hopefully when people see us doing what we are doing, they will join in to help.”3

The God we serve always judges with one eye on the future. He shakes the world so that only that which is eternal will remain. It is a severe mercy, but mercy nonetheless. It is the Church as the body of Christ who mediates between heaven and earth and gathers the riches of the nations. She is the only ‘global’ that the ascended, ruling Christ will tolerate until Satan is released for a short season.

So this current crisis is a visitation of Jesus for the sake of the church and Her continued ministry.

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1 James B. Jordan, Concerning the Nations, OPEN BOOK, No. 29,www.biblicalhorizons.com (Emphasis added)
2 Rich Bledsoe, Jesus and Confusion, biblicalhorizons.wordpress.com
3 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/02/20/feed.hungry.ohio/index.html (Emphasis added)

“The failure to understand the Babelic context of Israel’s history results in a failure to understand the purpose of tongues in the New Testament, and a failure to understand the historical transition that took place between A.D. 30 and 70. God judged Babel because if the people were united, nothing would be withheld from them (Gen. 11). Jesus prays that His people would be united, so that nothing will be withheld from us (John 17). It was necessary for Jewish and Gentile believers to overcome the Old Covenant bipolarity and be united, before the Gospel could really go forth in full power. After A.D. 70, with Jew and Gentile united in one Church, nothing can be withheld from us, unless we choose by our sin to be disunited. After A.D. 70, there is no longer any God-instituted historical disunity in operation.”

- James B. Jordan, The future of Israel re-examined
http://www.bullartistry.com.au/lastdays.html (articles 13-15)

“…Here we see the third Babylon in all its horror. Both city (Nimrod: Herod + Pilate-Caesar) and tower (priests and Jews) join in putting Jesus to death. Together, they intend that their city and tower will endure, no matter what the God of Heaven says or does. Judgment comes, however. As God came down on the first two Babylons, the Spirit comes down at Pentecost. Immediately there is a confusion of tongues. Jews of every nation hear the gospel in every language except Hebrew-Aramaic. This time, however, instead of a scattering of lips (religions), there is a unification of lips around the praise of the Father of Jesus Christ. As we shall see below, however, there is another sense in which there is a scattering of different “lips.” The “gift of tongues” continues on and off throughout the Apostolic Age until Jerusalem (the whole circumcision) is destroyed in the destruction of Mystery Babylon in ad 70. The Jews are brought into consternation (1 Corinthians 14:21–22; compare Acts 18:7).

Just as the builders of the first Babylon could not understand the new languages, and just as the Chaldeans in Daniel 5 could not understand the writing on the wall, so now the Jews cannot understand the new gospel except in other (new to them) languages.

The third Babylon is judged, and the people scatter from it. They begin scattering from physical Jerusalem in Acts 8. In Matthew 24, Jesus told faithful Jews to move away from physical Jerusalem whenever they perceived judgment was about to fall on her. Paul’s letters, and those of the other Apostles, call repeatedly for believers to leave the old spiritual Jerusalem, the religion of circumcision, behind (Galatians, Colossians, etc.), because the old spiritual Jerusalem has become Mystery Babylon.

Like Abram before them, Christians who have the faith of Abraham move away from old Babylon-Jerusalem to a new place, into the new Holy World of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Eventually the old Jerusalem is destroyed, literally and spiritually, and men “leave off building the tower.””

James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall, p. 114-115
Available from www.americanvision.org