Bully's Blog

or True Gravity – 2

Someone made the comment that the “Bible Matrix” is something mystical. While it is certainly typological, it is not mystical. And it is only typological because it is the process of maturity God has built into everything under heaven. Trees and men grow up and bear fruit. That’s typology.

The next step is to understand each cycle as a stage of greater maturity that leaves a legacy. Adam’s faithfulness in the Garden would have won him dominion in the Promised Land, and so on…

Jesus was tested three times in the wilderness. The wilderness is the place where God’s people are sifted like wheat under the Ethics of the Law. This is where the 5 point Covenant pattern expands to the 7 point New Creation. The test is, “Will I be a living sacrifice?” There are three tests within the Ethics, and they relate to the process of sacrifice: Flesh, eyes and life. [1] To combat the lust of the flesh, we put the flesh on the Altar. To combat the lust of the eyes, we submit to the eyes of heaven, the seven Spirits before the throne. To combat the pride of life, we trust God for resurrection. In the ascension rite, this is meat, fire and smoke. In the Tabernacle this is Bronze Altar, Lampstand and Incense Altar. The process of transformation has three stages.

Jesus’ victory over Satan qualified him to come out of the wilderness and cast demons out of others. He had beaten Goliath, one-on-one, so He could now chase the rest of the Philistines away. What most commentators fail to see is this process repeated in the church after Pentecost. James Jordan notices three strikes against the church: Jewish persecution (the flesh on the Altar), false doctrine (strange Fire, seven demons), and then Jewish-Roman persecution (the final legal witness of a “resurrected” Israel, leaving the house “filled with smoke”). This explains the various bindings and loosings of Satan recorded in the Revelation before chapter 20. The church dealt with each temptation, but the Lord allowed another one that required greater maturity. The church was being sifted like wheat and purified. Just as the persecution took on a temporary Jew-Gentile body against the Church, the Church was a Spirit-filled Jew-Gentile body that would actually last.

But the final binding, the one in Revelation 20, is not a recapitulation of this period. (Jim Hamilton thinks this is the case, and so do hyperpreterists). Not only does the Covenant structure of Revelation make this impossible, [2] but it means the baby church learned nothing during this foundational time.

The righteousness or unrighteousness of an individual always leaves a corporate legacy (this is the Covenant Head and Body). Jesus’ “Garden” victory left the legacy of the Spirit for those in the Land. It was the inverse of the legacy which Adam left for Cain. Just so, the “Land” victory of the Apostolic church left a legacy of kingdom wisdom for the conquest of the World. As Jordan observes, the chain in the right hand of the Angel in Revelation 20 is the Church. It is an application of the seven stars of the New Covenant Lampstand in Jesus’ right hand. Satan’s fall was due to Jesus’ “gravity.” [3] But is is the gravity of the Apostolic church’s legacy that keeps him bound from “deceiving the nations” until Jesus has finished His own work of gathering the nations. [4] Hyperpreterism, premillennialism and amillennialism, the inept recapitulators, leave no hope for the nations. Only postmillennialism gives Jesus what He came for as an inheritance, as a Covenant legacy: a corporate holiness of, not one (AD30-AD70), but a thousand generations.

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[1] See Satan’s Synagogue.
[2] See Moses vs. Hyperpreterism.
[3] Notice that Satan’s anti-Covenant “mission” was Garden-Heaven-Garden (his last stand being in Herod’s Temple, poisoning the “springs” of Edenic waters), but Jesus’ mission was Heaven-Garden-Heaven.
[4] On the “thousand years”, see For A Thousand Years, and the comments following.