Bully's Blog

During the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah, the LORD said to me, “Jeremiah, since the time Josiah was king, I have been speaking to you about Israel, Judah, and the other nations. Now, get a scroll and write down everything I have told you, then read it to the people of Judah. Maybe they will stop sinning when they hear what terrible things I plan for them. And if they turn to me, I will forgive them”… (CEV) Jeremiah 36:1-3

God’s Covenants are always temporary. Every Covenant is a to and fro. It reflects the Word sent to the Son by the Spirit and the “bridal abundance” received in return by the Father. The Word is often pictured as a scroll, for obvious reasons. Scrolls were written and sealed with wax. The seal was temporary, something to protect the confidentiality of the contents, but something to be broken once the document reached its intended destination. The Bible Matrix makes plain the symbols used by God to illustrate this step in the Covenantal order of all He has made.

In the Creation week, Light is the Transcendent Lawmaker, and a seal is set upon this Covenant document on Day 2. It is the firmament, a scroll that is stretched out, opened, but one that hides heaven from earth. [1]

In the Tabernacle, it is the Veil, hiding Man from the consuming fire of the Covenant in the Ark.

In the Covenant/Dominion pattern, it is the delegation of a human representative (or representatives) who are sent to speak this word. At this point, Joseph receives a robe. Just like the Veil — and the firmament — Joseph’s robe was intended by God to be torn and bloodied as a witness that the Word had been carried out. In darkness, the delegated Man is made prostrate. He falls on his face and God writes on him as a living epistle. The Word is engraved into him, and he receives it with meekness (Jas. 1:21). The Man then makes an Exodus with the scroll, or rather, as the scroll.

The third step is the unsealing of the document. This occurs at the Ascension of the delegated Man, the Covenant head. The Man is Moses on the mountain, opening the Law to God’s people. We see this throughout the Old Testament, and in the gospels. Interestingly, pretty much every time an Apostle stands up to preach in the Book of Acts, it is at Ascension. The Apostles themselves had become Tables spread with bread and wine, and were unsealing the invitation to God’s people. But the invitations of God are bittersweet. They always contain blessings and curses.

Revelation completes the book Daniel was commanded to close, to “seal up,” concerning “what is to happen to your people in the latter days” (Daniel 10:14). The latter days refers to the Restoration era, the Covenant restored in Zechariah, and they ended in AD70. The book was closed because the time was in the distant future, half a millennium away.

Now John was given visions because that time had arrived. The latter days were coming to an end. Jesus’ warning was in no way a generic, long-term “picture book”. It was an urgent seismic alert to those on the empire-Land. But it was also an invitation to a New Covenant, a new Creation:

(Revelation 1:1-3:)

TRANSCENDENCE
Creation – Genesis
The revelation
…..of Jesus Christ,
……….which God gave him
……………to show
……….to his servants
…..the things
that must soon take place.

HIERARCHY
Division – Exodus
He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,

ETHICS
Ascension – Leviticus
who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ,

Testing – Numbers
even to all that he saw. (Governing Law-Lights)

Maturity – Deuteronomy
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy,

SANCTIONS
Conquest – Joshua
and blessed are those who hear,
and who keep what is written in it,

SUCCESSION
Glorification – Judges
for the time is near.

Notice that the first “week” or “seven” is a microcosm of the entire introduction. In the first week (Sabbath), it is Jesus who is the delegate. Then it is the angel, the messenger, sent to speak to John. (In Revelation 5, there are seven blessings that correspond to the seven ruling lights in their order of ascension. Mercury, the messenger, is number 2.)

At Ascension, John is the bread-and-wine, the sacrifice on the Bronze Altar. The reference to sight at the centre (Testing) is a common one, and here it corresponds to the “show” in the first sequence.

Then at Maturity, it is the angels of the resurrected body, the church, who are to speak the words aloud as Moses did to the new generation of Israel.

At Conquest, the division between the goats is the difference between those who merely hear the words, and those who both hear and keep them.

Finally, at Glorification, we have Covenant succession, and a reference to the final line in the first stanza. Here it is ironic, however, because the Revelation is the final word concerning the Old Covenant. The final point concerns the future of the Covenant, but the Old Covenant had no future. Its generations, including its genealogies, were about to be cut off and thrown into the fire. [2]

But every time Jehudi finished reading three or four columns, the king would tell him to cut them off with his penknife and throw them in the fire. Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah begged the king not to burn the scroll, but he ignored them, and soon there was nothing left of it. The king and his servants listened to what was written on the scroll, but they were not afraid, and they did not tear their clothes in sorrow. (CEV) Jeremiah 36:23 25

The Jewish rulers tore up the New Covenant, so the Lord tore up the Old. Removing the Veil brought them face to face with God’s Law.

This pattern structures the entire book of Revelation. It expands and expands like ripples from a pebble dropped into a pond, or more correctly, like soundwaves from the very Source of the Created Order. At Ascension, Jesus is presented as The Firstfruits Lamb, the Man on the Altar, Bread and Wine. He is the first Man worthy to open the scroll. Was this the scroll sealed up by Daniel? In one sense, yes, because although the opening of the New Covenant ended the entire Old Testament construct of centralised worship, its last incarnation was the Restoration Covenant. That is what Jesus was about to judge.

Daniel ascended to the right hand of King Nebuchadnezzar and opened the mystery of the next 500 years. But its very end was to be sealed, TOP SECRET. The Covenant that had been stretched out in Zechariah as a new heavens was about to be rolled back up, snapping shut upon those who refused to enter the New Order. What was in the secret document? The mystery of Jews and Gentiles in one body. The rejection of this truth was the offense that sealed the doom of those who were the “unwise” of Daniel 12. They failed to realise that every Covenant installed a “Jewish” head and was supposed to return to God with a hybrid body, an arkful of animals, ie. Gentile worshippers. The Restoration Covenant, despite the fact that many scholars fail to even acknowledge its existence, actually succeeded. Even while certain Jews and all the Judaizers were hardening their hearts to God’s fresh work, Gentile God-fearers were crawling out of the woodwork and coming to Jesus, their Noah, their Rest.

Tragically, but perfectly, the firstfruits church was the torn, bloodied robe presented to the Father before Jerusalem’s doom. The mystery of the Gospel was opened as a testimony for all time, for all subsequent history. It was publicly shouted from the rooftops. Even these saints, these martyrs were sealed as Covenant documents, with the earnest of the Spirit, only to be torn open. The Apostolic epistles are Covenant documents, witnesses both for the first-century prosecution of the Covenant-breakers and the first-century defense of the Covenant-keepers. To read them in any other way is to miss the point.

Well, I’ve slammed modern evangelicals. Now it’s time for the hyperpreterists. The scroll that was unsealed by Christ in early Revelation is not the scroll that snapped shut later in the book. The New Covenant was opened, but it is still open. This new, friendly sky will remain open until this Covenant, too, has carried out its work.

Another thought: The seal placed by the Jewish authorities (with the Romans in cahoots, ie. harlot riding beast) on Jesus’ tomb symbolised their deliberate intention of maintaining the integrity of the Old Covenant. Case closed. But the Old Covenant was designed to die, to be completed, to be opened, in the New. When the stone was removed, the seal was broken. The day dawned. What was loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven at the Ascension.

Application: The seal of the Spirit is not something to “keep me safe until heaven.” If I fail to live publicly for Christ, I remain a Covenant document with an unbroken seal, a message whose contents were intended by God to be sounded as Trumpets and poured out as Bowls.

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[1] See Firmament of Flesh.
[2] See Pedigree Papers.