Gary North has a free course on reducing your debt. Part of the plan is an application of the 5-point Covenant structure. Basically, God calls a man, gives him a job to do, and returns at the end to assess the man’s work. North refers to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:
Warren Gage/Christopher Barber and then James Jordan on Joseph’s wisdom:
“How strange Joseph’s behaviour toward his brothers appears to a modern reader! He recognises his brothers immediately but maintains his Egyptian disguise. He speaks harshly to them and then only through an interpreter. He charges them with spying — a capital crime for which he can sentence them to death. He takes one brother as a hostage. He returns their silver as they go home for the first time, and then he sets the brothers up in order to accuse them of stealing his silver cup on their second return trip, at which point he has them arrested. In short, he terrifies them.
What does this all mean? Is Joseph seeking revenge? Clearly that is not the case, for he so loves them he can hardly restrain himself fom revealing his identity — and his forgiveness — to them. Surely he is not vengeful. Why does he act this way? And why does the text go to such lengths to describe all of this?
“There is a very important connection between the Church’s worldview and the Church’s hymns. If your heart and mouth are filled with songs of victory, you will tend to have an eschatology of dominion; if, instead, your songs are fearful, expressing a longing for escape—or if they are weak, childish ditties—your worldview and expectations will be escapist and childish.
Historically, the basic hymnbook for the Church has been the Book of Psalms. The largest book of the Bible is the Book of Psalms, and God providentially placed it right in the middle of the Bible, so that we couldn’t miss it! Yet how many churches use the Psalms in musical worship? It is noteworthy that the Church’s abandonment of dominion eschatology coincided with the Church’s abandonment of the Psalms.”
—David Chilton, Paradise Restored.
The New Covenant is not about salvation. It is about dominion. Before you call in the inquisitors, have a look at this diagram from my book:
I saw in my dream, that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand again, and led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage. Now the man seemed very sad. He sat with his eyes looking down to the ground, and his hands folded together, and he sighed as if his heart would break.
Then said Christian, “Who is this?”
“Talk with him and see,” said the Interpreter.
“What used you to be?” asked Christian.
“I was once a flourishing professor, both in my own eyes, and also in the eyes of others,” answered the man. “I was on my way, as I thought, to the Celestial City and I was confident that I would get there.”
“But what did you do to bring yourself to this condition?” Christian asked.
“I failed to keep watch,” the man replied. “I followed the pleasures of this world, which promised me all manner of delights. But they proved to be an empty bubble. And now I am shut up in this iron cage—a man of despair who can’t get out.”
No further explanations were given. No one said who put him there. But the Interpreter whispered to Christian:
“Bear well in mind what you have seen.” [1]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Another thought related to the ideas in Behind Closed Doors.
The whole aim of the construction process, whether in sex, foetal development, education, business, art, music, family or state government, is the ultimate revelation of a mature glory. We are given the opportunity to create, and that involves certain God-given freedoms. If the freedoms are abused, what we construct for ourselves is a cage. Lust is a cage. A dysfunctional family or state is a cage. Enforced egalitarian socio-economics is a cage. Undisciplined children are a cage.
Jesus laid down His life for this world, and the freedoms of western culture have been a direct outcome. In its final stages, we have rebelliously inverted each of these freedoms (including the economic ones) and turned both our Christian protection (including our God-given wealth) and Christian mandate into a cage. Ancient Israel did the same. Why does this inversion process seem such a logical path for fallen human nature?
I watched a sermon by J. Edwin Orr from 1976 in which he gave a summary of his brilliant history of revivals. His main point was that revivals all began with unified, cross-denominational prayer. It was a very friendly yet stunning address.
Revivalism cops heat from mainline denominations, and often for good reason. But the societal fruits of the events Orr shared were exactly the kinds of things the proponents of dominion theology crave to see in our time. And they happened over night. What’s the deal?
Or Rich Jewish Rulers made Poor, Blind and Naked
Or The Bible Teaches Replacement Theology
According to James Jordan, there’s nothing much in Revelation that isn’t also elsewhere in the New Testament. We just don’t get Revelation because we don’t speak the language of the Old Testament with any confidence. Accordingly, his interpretation of the Apocalypse interprets the seven Seals as the release of the gospel. The Trumpets are the warnings of the Apostles to the Jews until the beginning of the Roman siege. [1]
Tim writes:
“[Totus Christus is] a book which certainly makes you think. While I have read other books on Biblical theology, looking at the structure of the Bible in that way (the Dominion pattern, feasts, etc.) is an idea which I’d never considered at all before. At first I didn’t quite get what each part of the pattern involves, even after you’d explained it, but after seeing it applied to a few sections of the Bible I was fine. I think its helped me get a better understanding of how God has revealed himself through the Bible. Continue reading
A brilliant thought (I think) from shotgun over at the AV forum:
I’m currently reading Gary North’s commentary on Genesis, “The Dominion Covenant.” It is probably one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read, especially in terms of economics.
Anyway, I ran across some ideas that might serve to savage any and all attempts to intertwine the Genesis account with modern theories of evolution. (Gary North doesn’t apply these conclusions in this way. This speculation is all Shotgun.)
Gary North says this:
Under covenantal dominion, cursed nature’s restraints are progressively lifted. (Pg. 84)
He claims earlier that the “Earth was never designed to be autonomous.”
It seems to me that those who would posit long periods of time before man arose (as man) are implying that the Earth (and nature without man) has some sort of autonomous purpose apart from man. Implicit then, in systems like those of Hugh Ross, is the assumption of an autonomous sphere of sovereignty allocated to nature.
This cannot be true since there is no neutrality. In seeking to critique theistic evolutionary models, then, we should be on the lookout for any implications of an autonomous wilderness.
A couple of brave readers of my book Totus Christus have pointed out an apparent discrepancy in my ordering of the above three roles. One kindly writes:
The only question of substance I have for you concerns the prophet, priest and king flow of OT history. It may be that you disagree with Jim, but he’s quite insistent that the proper order is priest, king, prophet. He discusses this in From Bread to Wine, p. 9-15. In any case, it might be helpful to explain why you deviate…
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