Bully's Blog

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Christian Gangs

A Simple Answer to the Problem of Distant Starlight

The Point of the Spear

The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men

The Money Lender’s Ledger

“According to I Chronicles chapter 15, 16:4-6, 37-43, David rearranged the Levitical priesthood into 24 courses (orders); he assigned 16 courses to Eleazer, and 8 courses to Ithamar. This rearrangement was chartered because of a population explosion in David’s reign.” [1]

More evidence for a human government installed in heaven in AD70 (the firstfruits church). If the rebuilt Tabernacle (the Tabernacle of David [2]) prefigured both the restoration of the Jews after the captivity (which is what Amos is actually referring to) and the Jew-Gentile church, what could David’s rearranged priesthood mean typologically?

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or Suckers for Systems

God chooses certain men to do great works. Their work is duplicated and multiplied in the institutions they found. When these men are gone, those who remain tend to rely on systems. The machine must be maintained for pride’s sake, regardless of whether it is being used by God or not. This violates two basic biblical principles.

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or Understanding Dominion by Covenant

The New Covenant is not about salvation. It is about dominion. Before you call in the inquisitors, have a look at this diagram from my book:

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“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.”  Matthew 24:21-22

The context of Matthew 23-25 is very clearly first century. Many interpreters are forced to put gaps and parentheses and qualifiers into Jesus’ warnings because they won’t recognise what happened in the last years of the Old Covenant.[1] 

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or Feeding the Correct Dog

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN: THEOLOGY YOU CAN EAT AND DRINK

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An added thought based on this from a post last week:

Living things have brains, guts and outsides. This is Word, Sacrament and Government. Word is intangible, but our emotions are communicated symbolically through our bodies. Facial expressions and body language are the response of the “Holy Place” to the “Most Holy” of our inner soul. Eyes are organs of judgment. Eyes are also the windows to the soul. The crystal sea is a window to heaven. The “outer court” interacts with the world and needs cleaning. Only clean stuff is allowed inside the “Holy Place.”

So, basically, as a Tabernacle, if my mind is a symbol of the command from the Most Holy (Word), and my body carries out my thoughts and intents in the world (Government), what is in between? The Holy Place, the place of flesh offered to God.

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Revelation is laced with the Dominion pattern like brandy through a Christmas pudding. As a literary structure, its identification highlights some interesting things.

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I saw in my dream, that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand again, and led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage. Now the man seemed very sad. He sat with his eyes looking down to the ground, and his hands folded together, and he sighed as if his heart would break.

Then said Christian, “Who is this?”

“Talk with him and see,” said the Interpreter.

“What used you to be?” asked Christian.

“I was once a flourishing professor, both in my own eyes, and also in the eyes of others,” answered the man. “I was on my way, as I thought, to the Celestial City and I was confident that I would get there.”

“But what did you do to bring yourself to this condition?” Christian asked.

“I failed to keep watch,” the man replied. “I followed the pleasures of this world, which promised me all manner of delights. But they proved to be an empty bubble. And now I am shut up in this iron cage—a man of despair who can’t get out.”

No further explanations were given. No one said who put him there. But the Interpreter whispered to Christian:

“Bear well in mind what you have seen.” [1]

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Another thought related to the ideas in Behind Closed Doors.

The whole aim of the construction process, whether in sex, foetal development, education, business, art, music, family or state government, is the ultimate revelation of a mature glory. We are given the opportunity to create, and that involves certain God-given freedoms. If the freedoms are abused, what we construct for ourselves is a cage. Lust is a cage. A dysfunctional family or state is a cage. Enforced egalitarian socio-economics is a cage. Undisciplined children are a cage.

Jesus laid down His life for this world, and the freedoms of western culture have been a direct outcome. In its final stages, we have rebelliously inverted each of these freedoms (including the economic ones) and turned both our Christian protection (including our God-given wealth) and Christian mandate into a cage. Ancient Israel did the same. Why does this inversion process seem such a logical path for fallen human nature?

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Excerpts from Peter Leithart’s new book, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture:

“My insight, if such it is, into the workings of humour was reinforced and generalised when I watched Shrek, a movie that I now tell my students is a gold mine of hermeneutical insight. All the funny parts of that film assume that the viewer has information the movie does not provide, information from three main sources: nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and popular culture, especially movies…”

Johannine Jokes

…How does all this apply to our reading of Scripture? Scripture has the same literary properties as the texts we have been examining. Just as Eliot read Dante who read Virgil who read Homer, so Matthew had read Jeremiah, who knew Kings (or wrote it), and the writer of Kings had read the Hexateuch. Let us look at some examples. Let me tell some biblical jokes, again taken from John 9.

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That Which Is Perfect

Tablets of Flesh

Typology’s War Against Modernity

Assurance