Bully's Blog

A delightful and slightly eccentric friend of mine often writes letters to the local rag to stir things up for Christianity. He has had death threats, but not for a while. His latest letter was a bit different:

To the person or persons who entered my home on the night of 4.11.08 after midnight and stole my wallet and mobile phone, and for some reason a pair of jeans (all done in my bedroom whilst I slept) I just want to say you wasted your time for you can have it all.

Do you think doing that affects me? I have complete peace and assurance in all things from the Lord, because all things work together for good to those who love the Lord, to those who are the called ones according to His purpose; and I have learnt to be anxious over nothing.

Sure, I had to make a few calls to cancel cards and mobile and attend to other matters, like getting another driver’s licence. But those things were just a matter of routine and make life interesting. And thanks for not waking me up for I was somewhat tired that night. Oh, and I forgive your sin against me in the name of the Lord Yeshua, who is the messiah and the Son of God. I have committed you into His hands.

Drop in for a cuppa tea some time.

The Ark was always to be carried by human legs, never on a beast or a man-made cart. The Jewish rulers and religious leaders were content to keep God in a box, symbolically hidden behind a veil. But in Christ, the Ark was free and walking around on human legs with the eyes and mouth of a Man. When the Ark was mobile, the people of God followed, seeking rest and scattering His enemies on the way (Numbers 10:33-34).

The Ark was a covering that protected Israel from the consequences of face-to-face exposure to God’s Law. With the Ark taken by God, the Restoration Covenant would be different. The synagogues would come into their own, and the Law would be studied by all Jews throughout the empire:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31)

The next fulfilment was the bodily incarnation of the Words, Jesus Christ. He was both the Law of God written on tablets of flesh, and the blood covered container that protected Israel from extermination. They all knew Him, from the least to the greatest. Like the Ark, His words were a flaming sword that would bring either life or death to His hearers.

And of course, we are familiar with Paul’s explanation of this being applied to believers who are His body. Our words also bring division:

“…clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart… for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Cor. 3)

“Are we Western Christians truly suffering because of Christ? Or the lack of us standing up for Christ?”

Good point. Once again I would use the book of Esther. The role of restored Israel was to be witnesses within the world empire, as Daniel had been. It seems Mordecai sought to be like Joseph or Daniel, but by compromising Esther’s witness, Haman ‘usurped’ his role at the right hand of the throne (a pattern begun in the Garden of Eden).

However, God used the situation for good, and Esther provides us with an historical blueprint for events in the first century:

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The golden Lampstand, with seven flames, pictured the sun, moon and five planets (those visible to the naked eye) that govern the firmament*—the seven “eagle-eyes” of God. In Ezekiel 1, this corresponded to the face of the Eagle that always faced north, watching over the people of God, the Table of Showbread (the face of the Man).

The Lampstand was also a stylised almond tree. In Hebrew, the word translated “almond” is also the word for “watcher, overseer.” An almond tree is a shepherdwho grows out of the earth and reaches heaven—a Tree of Life.

The serpent usurped Adam’s authority in the garden, and he became the legal judge (satan) of mankind, standing full of eyes before the ark/throne – seven stars at God’s right hand. As the ancients, including Solomon, sculpted wild beasts to guard their thrones, so this angelic tutor became a beast “crouching at the door.” Man had to pass him to reign with God. We see him before God’s throne in Job. He roamed to and fro on the Land like a raven and returned to accuse God’s people. The angel of light—the shepherd “Lampstand”—had become a wolf.

*The governing lights were created on Day 4. The speech concerning the Lampstand is the fourth speech regarding the Tabernacle construction.

The difference between the wicked and the righteous is whether
or not we give thanks as we take hold of the world.

–James Jordan, Ritual and Typology. biblicalhorizons.wordpress.com

Rieu’s theory of Jesus as a ‘man of letters’ is borne out by the structure of the Sermon on the Mount. As with many of the prophets, His “book” begins with a preamble that follows the themes of Israel’s 7 feasts in Leviticus 23.

Jesus begins with the Sabbath rest of those who have a humble spirit, works through those who mourn for their sins at Passover, and ends with the Atonement covering of the blood of those who would be persecuted yet to be shed on the Land. And at Tabernacles, their reward is in heaven.

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There is an old Doctor Who episode where the crew of a crashed spaceship, after many generations, degenerated into two warring tribes, the Tesh (from the technicians) and the Sevateem (from the trained pioneers, the survey team).* The remaining wreckage became religious artifacts used for various superstitious rites which were originally very practical operations for planetary conquest.

The reason most of the Bible seems culturally irrelevant to modern evangelicalism is because it is a tool for change. Our culture has moved so far from biblical thinking, so distorted from the heavenly pattern, that we don’t recognise the original ‘cast’ when we see it. We want to change our culture, and we have the tools. We carry them around with us in leather cases. They sit in racks in the pews. But we have lost the plot. The Tesh hide in gnostic academies. The Sevateem degenerate into superstition. The alien jungle terrorises them both. They war with each other and the planet goes unconquered.

*The villain turned out to be the damaged computer which was behaving like a capricious Greek god. We have no excuse. It is not our God that is malfunctioning, but us.

Is there another choice besides Barthian gnosticism and the fundamentalists’ cultural retreat?

Van Til believed, along with Augustine, Calvin, Kuyper, and Klaas Schilder that the building of a Christian culture is a biblical imperative. Van Til castigated the Barthians for their repudia tion of a Christian culture. “For them,” he wrote, “there is no single form of social, political, economic order that is more in the spirit of the Gospel than another.” Christians today are hearing a similar refrain from within evangelical circles. If there is no specifically biblical blue print, we are left with a pluralistic blue print, no blueprint, or a postponed blue print (dispensationalism)…

Read It Takes More Than A Theory (Part 1) by Gary DeMar, here and (Part 2) here.

The western church’s capitulation to feminism is part of the reason it suffers a creeping rigor. Why would there be any life in something that carries its own disaffected head (ie. the disconnected men) around like so much luggage? No wonder the men stay away from this freak.

An excellent post by Peter Leithart offers some balance for those tempted to swallow the entire anti-American propaganda hook, line and sinker.

Empires Of Trust

Thomas Madden offers a contrarian analysis of American and Roman empire in his recent book, Empires of Trust. Most empires in history, he says, “have sought to build their power in whatever way they can, making war on their neighbors when it seems advantageous and continuing to do so until stopped. They are trusted only to use power for their own benefit and to treat those they conquer as, well, conquered.”

Many believe that the Romans were the same. Not Madden.

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