Bully's Blog

or The Liturgical Significance of Lot

Part 1, The Architectural Significance of Lot’s Daughters, is here.

We’ve looked at the three-level Tabernacle structure in Genesis 19. That’s the rooms, and their doors, so what about the furniture?

The events follow the Bible Matrix, so an identification of how each step in the story fulfills the Creation Week might shed some light on the point of the details that the Spirit has included for us. And identifying how each step fulfills the Festal Calendar might also shed some light on the motivations of Lot and his daughters. The prefigurements of events nearly half a millennium in their future are breathtaking.

Day 1: Creation – The Angels, as two legal “spies” come to Sodom in the evening as Holy Light. Lot offers them rest (Sabbath) overnight. There is evening and there is morning. In the Tabernacle, this is the ARK OF THE COVENANT, which contained the two tablets of witness, hidden from the eyes of sinful men.

Day 2: Division – The Angels make as if they will spend the night in the open (a serpentine deception often appears at this “Exodus” step) but Lot insists they enter his house. He bakes them unleavened Passover bread — the symbol of historical discontinuity. In the Tabernacle, this is the installation of the darkening VEIL, the firmament.

Day 3: Ascension – This step is the Covenant Firstfruits, the blameless lamb. It concerns the promise to be fulfilled if the Covenant Ethics are obeyed. Sometimes this is a betrothal. The act of sex also follows the pattern, where it is the Adam overshadowing the Eve. In that case, Ascension is also an erection.

In the Tabernacle this is the four-horned BRONZE ALTAR, and the people from every quarter surround the house. In this liturgical structure, the men call on Lot to send the angels out as “living sacrifices.” (I’m sorry if you think this is crazy but I’ve seen so much of this stuff that it’s fairly obvious. And it’s often the reason for the scant descriptive details we are given!)

Ascension is also the TABLE OF FACEBREAD, where the holy man breaks the seals on the scroll and speaks the words of God, opening the mystery. Here, the mediator, the “lamb standing,” is Lot, who gives these sinners their last sermon. The sermon itself follows the pattern of the Feasts (included here for the naysayers):

Notice that the three “Ethics” steps move from the Covenant Head (in this case, uncircumcised ones, in every sense) through the “threshing floor” to the Covenant Body as two witnesses. More on that later. Also, Pentecost corresponds to the Lampstand, and Lot begs them to “see.”

It should be obvious, but the fact that this passage, and this speech, follow patterns not laid down (or not completed) until the time of Moses and Joshua are evidences for inspiration that are extremely difficult to explain away.

Day 4: Testing – This step is the turning point in the structure. The Word has been given, now it will be opened. Will it return void? As “Light” was offered at Testing in Lot’s sermon (a microcosm of the whole passage), so here their rejection of that Light results in blindness. The people of Sodom had tasted the goodness of the Lord and been “enlightened,” but would now be given a strong delusion. As it was at the first Pentecost, these men loved darkness, so they received darkness.

The correspondence to Day 4 here is the governing lights. The angels are the obvious “heavenly lights,” but Lot had also set himself up as a judge in Sodom, and his righteous judgment was rejected. Behind every godly testimony, whether it is accepted or rejected, are the “LAMPSTAND” eyes of the Spirit of God.

 Day 5: Maturity – Now we have the Trumpets. The angels give their warning to Lot and Lot repeats it to his “swarms” (which is what Deuteronomy, the fifth book, is all about). Because his daughters were almost put on centre stage, we often overlook the fact that Lot also had sons and sons-in-law (or potential sons-in-law) in Sodom. [1] Their testimony of “the outcry against them” in this structure corresponds to the witnesses against Cain. The INCENSE ALTAR is the prayers of the saints ascending to heaven for vengeance and redemption. It is the savor of life to some and the smell of death to others. (In Revelation this is presented as two “Trumpets” armies: the fragrant saints under the Altar of God and the locustine Judaizers who smell of sulphur from the Altar of the Abyss).

This step often includes a three-level house, but a house of life instead of a house of death. The Garden-Land-World architecture described in the previous post is here reversed: City-Plains-Mountains. It is the ascension of the sacrificial Covenant Body.

Of the sacrificial rite, James Jordan says, “the blood goes up and the Spirit comes down.” [2] At Ascension, the blood is the exposure of righteous Lot. At Testing it was the Blindness of the Spirit. But that’s the Covenant Head. The judgment was local, as it was at Pentecost. At Maturity it is the Ascension of the Covenant Body, and the fire to fall was not Pentecostal “Head-Fire” but AD70 “Body Fire.” As with water, salt and wine, a little bit of fire is a Covenant blessing, and a lot of fire is a Covenant curse. The Bible Matrix demonstrates the incredible correspondences in these events, and the apostles were clearly in on it. Their mysterious “hermeneutic,” I believe, was simply this matrix, a systematic typology.

Lot hesitates, but the angels, who between them have four hands, take one person in each hand. Hands are “five-fold” and military, and often appear at this step. Ten fingers are the Law of God in human flesh. The key word here is “mercy.” It is all grace.

Notice that, like Israel later on, Lot did not fully obey the command of the Lord, which led to “Canaanite,” or “Land,” immorality. Yet righteous Lot’s presence in the city of Zoar protected it as it had protected Sodom. Lot’s wisdom was a sacramental dose of salt. Which brings us to…

 Day 6: Conquest – Lot, standing in for the HIGH PRIEST in this structure of events, “passes through” with his two “goat” virgin daughters (MEDIATING ANIMALS) on this Day of Atonement. But his wife becomes a “white stone,” a pillar of salt. She is the microcosm of Sodom, a barren woman. Somehow, she is the sign that the offering for sin has been accepted. Israel set up two pillars of stone when they entered Canaan, and whitewashed them. The correspondences are not exact, so this still requires some thought, but the underlying idea is a perpetual memorial to the event. In the Revelation, the “virgin daughters” are the saints who persevered, and the woman who looked back is Herod’s Judaism, a magnificent edifice covered in … white stone. Notice the reversal: the women who were offered for sin and got “passed over” came through clean, and the woman who did not speak out became the barren “harlot.”

Day 7: Glorification – Now that he had lost everything, instead of heading for the mountains to be reunited with the house of Abraham, Lot lives in a cave. Typologically, he has found a covering in the tomb but no resurrection life. The final stage of the structure involves Covenant Succession, [3] and this is the concern of Lot’s daughters. Instead of the wine and strong drink of Tabernacles, a God-fest thrown by God’s people for the godless, here the “ministry” is incestuous. Instead of becoming a spring of living water, the offspring is the peoples of Ammon and Moab. These two women had lost their husbands, and their father had lost his wife. I think they get a worse rap than they deserve. Their motives were pure under the circumstances, but, like Abraham with Hagar, they unrighteously sought to answer their own prayers rather than waiting patiently for God’s. Theirs was not the sin of Sodom but the sin of Lot. They learned this “Covenant-impatience” from their father, and the result was that their descendents failed to enter into God’s REST.

Next Post: The Only Straight in the Village

[1] See How Many Daughters Did Lot Have? by Eric Lyons.
[2] See Esau’s Ladder.
[3] See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.