Bully's Blog

or This Is Not An Evil Age

By evil age, I do not mean the “terrible twos,” or even terrible teens. Many Christians believe they are living in the “evil age” Paul refers to in Galatians 1. They are wrong.

Paul, an apostle
(Creation – Initiation)

(not from men nor through man,
(Division – Delegation)

but through Jesus Christ
(Ascension – Presentation [Firstfruits])

and God the Father
(Testing – Purification [Rulers])

who raised Him from the dead),
(Maturity – Transformation – Trumpets)

and all the brethren who are with me,
(Conquest – Vindication – Atonement)

To the churches of Galatia:
(Glorification – Representation – Booths)

Grace to you and peace
(Ark – Sabbath)

from God the Father
(Veil – Passover)

and our Lord Jesus Christ,
(Altar & Table – Firstfruits)

who gave Himself for our sins,
(Lampstand – Pentecost)

that He might deliver us from this present evil age,
(Incense Altar – Trumpets)

according to the will of our God and Father,
(Mediators – Atonement ["Pass-through"])

to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
(Shekinah – Booths)

Firstly, Paul aligns their deliverance with the first resurrection, that is, the entry of the Firstfruits Church, along with the Old Covenant saints, into the heavenly country. This occurred some time between the middle and end of the Jewish War. These saints in God’s court called down the Covenant curses upon the city, just as Daniel called them down from his seat in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. This deliverance has past.

The second stanza seems to highlight the Tabernacle more than the other matrix strands, and this allows us to see the seven seals here as well. The fifth seal is the martyred saints under the Altar (from memory, James Jordan thinks it’s the Incense Altar and Peter Leithart recently commented that it was the Bronze Altar due to the blood splashed around its base. They are basically the same Altar. The first is the Adamic body, the natural body, and the second is the Evian body, the spiritual body: ashes and smoke. One sits “above” the other).

Secondly, it’s clear that Jesus believed the last generation of Israel-according-to-the-flesh was an evil time. The Veil between Jew and Gentile had grown irreparably old and was ready to pass away (and as a side note, notice the beautiful symmetry in stanza 2 [bolded]). The face of the Father was about to be revealed to the Old Covenant saints and the New Covenant Firstfruits. Galatians is also a fractal, so where stanza 1 is the Initiation of Paul’s letter, stanza 2 concerns Delegation, the Veil as the robe of Greater Joseph.

Dispensationalists, amillennials and historic premillennials do not believe this current age will see a growth in righteousness. But Jesus was postmillennial. He tore down the Veil, then He tore down the Temple, casting them away like an egg shell to allow a new age. But what is an age, biblically defined?

It’s probably best to swap “age” for “era.” The term seems to mean a Covenant administration. All the Old Covenants were cut “inside” each other, Noah within Adam, Abraham within Noah, etc., God cutting deeper and deeper into Adam till He found the righteous rib, the Christ. Each of these Covenant administrations was an age, but together they were all Adamic, flesh without indwelling Spirit (except for a few exemplary prototypes, such as David).

Amillennials generally aren’t preterists, so all the AD70 warnings are mistakenly applied to our future. This is where they get all their dark expectations from. They are mistaken.

This age is Evian. No cutting required, except for hearts. It’s about binding up, joining, networking, uniting by the Spirit. Eve is about multiplication, growth. So things can only get better and bigger as the nations are transformed and united in Christ. This age is no utopia, but neither is any construction process. And, like yeast, the kingdom of light grows better in the dark. As with any good story, the clues are piling up and the denouement is coming.

The passage of time has a habit of exposing people and ideas for what they are. Every false -ism (Naturalism, Communism, Socialism, Islamism, Zionism, Secularism, etc.) that gets exposed and debunked is one more lie we are very unlikely to fall for again, one less magic trick in Jannes and Jambres’ repertoire. Sure, some mistakes get repeated, but we do learn. This process of cutting away is incredibly costly, but the only one being corporately “circumcised” in the flesh in this age is the devil. It’s only an evil age for Satan. Like Peter’s wolf, the more he struggles, the tighter gets the rope, or in this case, the chain. It must be terribly humiliating for him, and it’s only going to get worse. As with the cross, every blow he strikes turns into a victory for the Church.

As the wheels eventually come off every other philosophy and the Church watches them crash and burn, the gospel of Christ is vindicated and shines in greater and greater glory. Slow and steady…

See also Circumcision and Apocalypse.