Bully's Blog

Garden
Christ reclaimed Adam’s garden and disarmed Satan by dying.

Land
The “son of man” (Christ’s body, the church) reclaimed Abel’s land and disarmed his Canaanite older brother in the Land by dying.

World
With the razing of Cain’s city, Jerusalem, the Christ’s Dominion expanded from Land to World, from brothers to children, from Abel to Seth. As the sons of God, we disarm the “daughters of men” culture around us by dying. We die to our predatory desires, and if necessary, we die physically as a witness. Kingdom expansion is always bought with blood. As with Job, our innocent suffering shames and disarms predatory powers and thus renews the world.

(See also Postmillennial Suffering)

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”

If, as preterists maintain, Jesus came in AD70, why do you celebrate the Lord’s Supper?

To answer as an orthodox preterist (I’m sorry, but ‘partial’ doesn’t work for me), I would mention that the communion is a covenant memorial that reminds God of the covenant. The covenant is the key.

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A couple of guys have written a book called Beyond Creation Science. As preterists, they understand there was a symbolic ‘flood’ across the Land of Israel under both Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon and Nero/Vespasian’s Rome. Problem is, they read this back into Noah’s flood and try to say that this was only a local flood, which then allows them to compromise with old-earth Creationism.

It was ‘long-age’ geological assumptions that provided a ‘foundation’ for Darwin’s long-age biological fantasy. I would recommend Tas Walker’s site, Biblical Geology, for someone who really knows his stuff.

The position of these fellows causes more problems than it fixes. It makes the Bible’s very detailed chronology a joke, and forces a gap of millions of years into Genesis 1.

Here’s the solution:

Adam’s failure brought physical de-Creation. Cain founded a corrupt civilisation whose evil influence triumphed and was destroyed in a literal flood. Just like Cain, Ham was cursed, and his son Canaan’s influence led to social de-Creation. As God raised new land out of the waters after the flood, God would now perform another Creation miracle. In calling Abram, God was socially dividing the waters of the nations into the Land and the Sea. The era of the patriarchs, ruling fathers, began. God called Abram, and tore the world in two.

The land and sea division was a literal, physical land and sea in early Genesis. The ark of Noah was a literal ’world-in-a-box’, a safehouse and doorway to a new world. But when God called Abram, the ‘Land and Sea’ division was purely social, and the Tabernacle and Temple were a symbolic ‘world-in-a-box.’ These guys have confused these two and unwittingly undermined the authority of Scripture.

[Also, on hyperpreterist ‘Covenant Creationism’, see A Chronic Hysteresis.]

Postmillennialism and preterism

from davidpfield.blogspot.com

“It’s been a very long time since I looked at Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology. But when I was flicking through it today I noticed a section called “Objections to Postmillennialism”. This is in his first paragraph:

There are some very serious objections to the Postmillennial theory.

The fundamental idea of the doctrine – that the whole world will gradually be won for Christ, that the life of all nations will in course of time be transformed by the gospel, that righteousness and peace will reign supreme, and that the blessings of the Spirit will be poured out in richer abundance than before, so that the Church will experience a season of unexampled prosperity just before the coming of the Lord - is not in harmony with the picture of the end of the ages found in Scripture. The Bible teaches indeed that the gospel will spread throughout the world and will exercise a beneficent influence, but does not lead us to expect the conversion of the world, either in this or in a coming age. It stresses the fact that the time immediately preceding the end will be a time of great apostasy, of tribulation and persecution, a time when the faith of many will wax cold, and when they who are loyal to Christ will be subjected to bitter sufferings, and will in some cases even sealed their confession with their blood, Matt. 24:6-14, 21, 22; Luke 18.8; 21.25-28; II Thess. 2:3-12; II Tim. 3:1-6; Rev. 13.

I don’t know about “just” before the coming of the Lord but what I found most striking was that, in my view, every one of the six passages he cites in defence of his objection to postmillennialism has reference to first century events.

There are other things to say about the relationship between postmillennialism and preterism but I thought this remarkable.”

Attack from the Abyss

As with most things in the Bible the pattern begins in Genesis.

Unlike the serpent’s warriors, who live by the sword, God’s warrior is a father-ruler who fights only to protect those in his care. Nimrod was a serpent-king—a dragon; Abram was a servant-king, God’s answer to Nimrod the ‘rebel’ (most likely Gilgamesh).

Satan’s attack on ‘the offspring of the woman’ through Pharaoh had failed, so he resorted to inciting a conspiracy of nations. The serpent became a dragon. But Abram (as a good Gilgamesh/Nimrod), along with the men of his household, defeated them, rescued Lot and his family, and very importantly, plundered the attackers. The darkest nights that God allows are always opportunities for more glory. And, this being HOLY war, Abram refused the ‘devoted’ plunder.

The next instance involves Amalek, who attacked Israel in the wilderness, and mercilessly picked off the stragglers. Once again, God’s man “came down” to fight – in Joshua, at Moses’ command – with Moses, Hur and Aaron as Ark and cherubim on the holy hill, the “garden gate”.

“The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17:16)

This statement about Amalek is more loaded than it seems. Amalek was defeated, and the plunders from the victory were devoted to building God’s house in the wilderness. We will see this pattern again and again. Each time, deliverance for God’s people is on a greater scale, and the defeat more catastrophic for His enemies.

A Conspiracy of Nations

Amalek is the archenemy of the saints. This first Amalek most likely descended from Japheth. Numbers 24:20 paints him as the original great “Sea beast”, and a counterfeit Alpha and Omega.

“Amalek was the first of the nations, but his end shall be destruction.”

Esau moved to Mount Seir and merged with the Horites to become ahybrid part-Canaanite people known as Edomites. One of Esau’s grandsons was named Amalek (Genesis 36:16), which shows a conscious or subconscious alliance between Gentile hatred and false brother hatred of God’s chosen son—a “Land beast”. This has an enormous impact on interpreting the later history of the Bible.1

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Saul and Agag

I puzzled over Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 for years. Bible commentators suggested many things but nothing seemed to fit the historical context of the surrounding chapters. It seems James B. Jordan was the first to put the pieces together.1

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Counterfeit Kingdom Come

Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the Sea. Revelation 12:17 [ESV]

“After a number of years of peace for the Church (Acts 9:31), Wormwood poured out his poisonous waters, false Judaising doctrines, to try and corrupt the woman. God raised up Paul to defeat Satan and the Judaisers, and meanwhile the land (the Circumcision) drank up his false doctrine. Satan has engaged in two tactics: persecution and corruption. These have failed. So now he decides to return to persecution, but this time against the non-Jewish believers, the “rest of her offspring”. He stands on the sands of the sea, addressing the Roman Gentile sea, and raises up the Sea Beast.”1

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A Blazing Torch and a Smoking Firepot

Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness, then Israel did. God’s prophet lives through the pattern, then God’s people follow him in a larger pattern. The head of the sacrifice, then the body. The Adam, then the Greater Eve. Jesus, then the church.

James Jordan observes that the Promised Land failed to support Abram both during the famine and also later concerning the flocks of Abram and Lot. Only after the Lord “purified” the Land with a sacrifice was it again a garden for the people of God. Like Adam, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, but it was animal substitutes that were divided.

The Lord passed over Abram, but in the darkness, a smoking firepot and blazing torch passed through the divided animals. God structured this event to follow Israel’s feasts, with Passover and Atonement at each end, and the Lord’s prediction of the Hebrews’ slavery in Egypt at the “wilderness” centre.

The blazing torch and smoking firepot are the Lord’s chariot throne. The blazing torch (the head) is His throne, the Ark. The smoking firepot is the Incense Altar, the cloud of angel elders in His train (the body), the Holy Place positioned ‘underneath’ the Most Holy (see Ezekiel 1).1

Revelation 8

After the ascension of Christ, Satan was expelled from his “ministry” before God as the Accuser of man. Like the evil twin of the blazing torch that measured Abram’s sacrifices, he was then used by God to bring an end to the Old Covenant upon the Land.

And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the [Abyss]. He opened the shaft of the [Abyss], and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft.

The seven trumpets are a chiasm, with the third and fifth corresponding symmetrically. The “de-Ascension” of Satan mirrors his fall in the third trumpet. Like Christ, he was given a key. His throne-coming was also accompanied by clouds of smoke, but as false High Priest, instead of a sweet-smelling aroma it was the sulphur of Sodom. As Pentecost’s fire came from the Altar of Incense in heaven, its evil twin bore an army of unholy mighty men—the “smoking firepot” body of Satan’s blazing torch head. It was the children of Satan (John 8:44), an army of Judaisers, locusts who would devour the Land. As in Daniel 7, the winds of the Spirit raised up beasts.

“as with Tyre of old, the Abyss is being dredged up to cover the Land with its unclean spirits. Apostate Israel is to be cast out of God’s presence, excommunicated from the Temple, and filled with demons. One of the central messages of Revelation is that the Church tabernacles in heaven; the corollary of this is that the false church tabernacles in hell.”2

As the preaching of the seven-sealed Gospel to the Land began with a white horse, so at the destruction of Judaism, the preaching of the Gospel to the World began with the white horse passing through the divided pieces of the Land (Zechariah 14:4). However, this time, Christ did not ride alone but with His bride. He was a blazing torch, and She was now the smoking firepot—a permanent part of His Ark-chariot. A government of ascended men had replaced the government of angels. Together they passed through the midst of a divided Land to carry the seven seals to the World.

“Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way.” Luke 4:30

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1 Note also that in Exodus 25-31, the Ark is the Light of Day 1, and the Incense Altar is the “swarms” of Day 5 – birds from above and fish from below. The Tabernacle was both a portable Sinai and an image of the chariot of God.
2 David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 244.

Greater Solomon

The structure of Revelation passes through two large heptamerous cycles (1-11 and 12-19). But the book as a whole follows the same pattern as Ezekiel. In the last three chapters, following Ezekiel’s pattern, John is shown the destruction of Gog (Amalek) in the Land, and a vision of a new Jerusalem. However, unlike Ezekiel, these events are beyond the second cycle of the book, and for good reason. This final “east-west” section exiles the Accuser to the Abyss (Azal) and enthrones the Bride. It is the only part of Revelation that directly concerns our own day.

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