J. Townsend posted a great Luther quote over at the AV forum, one that I really needed to hear today:
“Whenever the devil pesters you, at once seek out the company of friends, drink more, joke and jest, or engage in some form of merriment.”
Alone, we are more vulnerable to his intimidations. And I bet our get-togethers remind him of the party we’ll have at his destruction.
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.
Christ cast Satan out of the Garden. He bought it with blood. The Garden ascended. The Garden is now out of his reach. Satan was bound, then released for a time.
Satan took up residence in the Land. The firstfruits church bought it with blood. [1] The Land ascended. The Land is now out of Satan’s reach. Satan was bound. He will again be released for a time.
A further thought on confession related to Your Own Private Sheol:
At the seduction of Eve, Adam was faced with a creature he had previously named. This naming was the first expression of his dominion.
One of the best things you get from James Jordan is a big handle on the Tabernacle.[1] It was a miniature of the creation. It was also a further development of the Garden of Eden, being more glorious than the Garden itself (the trees were now worked timber, and the wood was covered in precious metal).
Jordan’s theory that Satan was to be a tutor to Adam and Eve, but fell in the moment he deceived them, finds support in the Tabernacle layout. (Angels tutor God’s people throughout the Old Testament.) Satan was the secondary lightbearer, the Lampstand, facing north.
Adam was to be broken bread and poured out wine, the Face of the Man, facing south, the Table of Showbread (the facebread).
Between them, Eve, the mother of all living, was the Altar of Incense. As element 5, Day 5, she is a “multitude” in one body. She is awesome as an army with banners. Women possess all their ova from birth.[2] Continue reading
“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” Matthew 24:21-22
The context of Matthew 23-25 is very clearly first century. Many interpreters are forced to put gaps and parentheses and qualifiers into Jesus’ warnings because they won’t recognise what happened in the last years of the Old Covenant.[1]
“For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” 1 Chron. 16:9
The Bible was written to be understood by word-search software, or by believers who think that way. There are many expressions and phrases that are used repeatedly—very deliberately—so that the reader makes connections.
Once upon a time, not far from here, there was a graphic designer who busted a gut for five years teaching the Bible in a local high school. He was committed to building a biblical worldview through the communication of the exciting, terrifying, comforting narratives of the Old Testament as a foundation for the gospel, to a generation starving for this stuff and filling the gap with movies and novels like Harry Potter and Twilight. After all, postmoderns love narrative.
The battle between the Son and the serpent rages throughout the Old Testament. Every time the Lord renews the Covenant, Satan is ready with a counterfeit. God uses the phonies to test and purify His people, wipes the failures off the slate, then starts again.
Aaron and Jeroboam set up patently false worship in their golden calves. But false worship in the guise of true was much more difficult to discern, especially when it usurped the exact location of the true. When the Lord took Ezekiel to the Temple as a legal witness, it was a whitewashed tomb. He dug through the wall and discovered that it was a house of hypocrisy, the synagogue of Satan. All that remained of Israel’s witness to the nations was a thin veneer.
The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the [Land] came to the help of the woman, and the [Land] opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. (Revelation 12:15-17)
Satan mimicked the expanding gospel dominion with counterfeits at every step. Here, not only did he forge the water chariots of the true Temple (a false baptism), he would bring Noahic “rest” to the Land by destroying God’s mighty men. He would bring about his own twisted “new earth” by deluging the church with bogus teaching.
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