Bully's Blog

At the centre of any good chiasm is the main point, the thesis. History is chiastic, with the life of Christ at the centre. The Bible’s main point is the union of God and man in Christ.

The Eccentricity of Religion
by Henry Drummond

“They said, He is beside Himself,”—Mark 3:21

The most pathetic life in the history of the world is the life of the Lord Jesus. 

Those who study it find out, every day, a fresh sorrow. Before He came it was already foretold that He would be acquainted with grief, but no imagination has ever conceived the darkness of the reality.

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Talking Animals

Called, Divided, Filled and Reunited

Exegetical Blinkers – 2

Prayer is Postmillennial

The End of Shadows

Evil Eve: The Harlotry of the First Century sons of Aaron

The Lord “called” Adam as Day 1, giving him one law (light). He divided him as Day 2 and built Eve as a Holy Place, a firmament to be filled with stars (godly offspring). As Day 3 He made a new covenant and married them, the first nearbringing. Adam as the Bronze Altar (dust elevated from the Land) then became the first High Priest, the Table. In his obedience, together they prefigured totus Christus.

Day 4 follows. As Adam represented singular light, Eve was plural light. She was the holy fire on the altar, the glory of Adam. [1] Day 4 is the Lampstand. Day 4 is also the wilderness. If Eve was seduced, it was because Adam’s priesthood was corrupt. There was strange fire on the altar, the biblical theme of harlotry. In the garden, the strange fire was the false lightbearer who filled the “firmament” with darkness.

With that background, look at how this plays out in Daniel 7. It also supports James Jordan’s assertion that the fact that the beast’s body is “feminine” carries some importance. [2] The false church is the body of totus diabolus, the locust swarm gathered as a tabernacle by the fallen head. Daniel seven is the history of the first century church as the Woman in the wilderness. But the faithfulness of the new Adam brought an end to the priesthood of the sons of Aaron.

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I’m printing another 100 review copies of Totus Christus.
Get one or more fresh, toasty and warm.  Continue reading

or OT as Mostly an Accommodation to Ancient Pop-Culture?

The Modern Evangelical Bible Academy, Model 2300X.

In his new book Deep Exegesis, Peter Leithart has a great chapter called “The Text is a Husk: Modern Hermeneutics”. To distill his chapter down to its basic essence, he says that distilling the Scriptures down to their basic essence is not what God intends. The text is not a kernel hidden in a husk that can be discarded. We are not to heave our Bibles down to the threshingfloor. Every word of Scripture has significance.

Leithart presents a fascinating history of this methodology and the philosophies behind its various forms. Then he turns on “the good guys.”

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This overlaps the passage Kelby did the other day, so we may of course be chasing our tails. There is definitely a progression in the passage, however, and such analysis does help in meditation on the text. Perhaps there is a way of combining them.

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Exhortation by Mike Lawyer (I think) at Christkirk, 27th September 2009.

The Bible tells us we were created for God’s glory. Glory means, in a very simple sense, to make one famous. Our job therefore is to make God famous. We do this by praising Him, bragging on Him, telling others of His glorious works in our lives and in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ, both now and in history. When others hear about the mighty works of God, they believe our words and put their trust in Him, and He is made more famous than He was before. He gets glory.

One of the impediments to our making God famous is when the words of our message don’t match our behaviour. It sends mixed signals to those who are hearing the story. But we believe God’s story is glorious, so why don’t our lives match our story? I believe it is a combination of two very simple things.

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Sometimes the Costly Choice is to Stay

by Peter Scholl 

I’ve just spent a week in a country I doubt you’d want to live in; I don’t think I would. It’s a country wracked by multi-level poverty, which makes it a difficult place to visit and an even more difficult place to live. (NB: for the security of the people involved, I’ve deliberately omitted the name of the country.) The economic poverty is apparent on every street corner: buildings and infrastructure are run-down, food is scarce and expensive, and essential services are hard to access. But perhaps more pressing is the overwhelming social poverty—expressed in a lack of relationships, constant mistrust and suspicion, and the reality that you are being ‘watched’.

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Two reviews of the “review edition” of Totus Christus, one from a scholar and one from a student. Sincere thanks to both these readers for taking the time, especially Peter Leithart, who is a pastor, author and father of ten. He writes:

Mike Bull is a graphic designer in the wonderfully named Katoomba, New South Wales, who writes about the Bible. He’s produced a massive “biblical theology of the whole Christ” entitled Totus Christus. There are a lot of juicy details here, but the overall scheme is to follow the heptamerous chiastic pattern of Creation, Division, Ascension, Testing, Maturity, Conquest, Glorification from Genesis to the end of the Bible. Some of it feels forced and schematic, but overall it’s a lively introduction to a richer reading of Scripture. With a lot of quotations from James Jordan and me, it’s a good summary of what we’ve been up to for the past couple of decades.

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