God calls His people to represent Him to others who don’t know Him. When, through unbelief, these mediators forget that God is in charge, not them, they become ‘squatters’ in God’s house. They act like they own the place and mistreat God’s true children.
The book of Daniel begins with the captured vessels from Solomon’s Temple being carried off to Babylon. We assume the ark, with its solid gold lid, was melted down. The golden lampstand, however, shows up at Belshazzar’s feast just before the fall of Babylon to Persia. Cyrus decrees that the Jews can return and rebuild the Temple. They carry the vessels, minus the Ark, across the Great River Euphrates.
Zechariah later sees a flying scroll with the dimensions of the Tabernacle (10 x 20 cubits). These are also the dimensions of the Ark plus cherubim in Solomon’s Temple. The Ark had been offered as an ascension and created a new heaven – unrolled a new scroll. The Restoration Covenant cost the Ark its “life.”
Now to Acts. The human Ark, Jesus, had ascended to heaven and left the “seven churches”, the New Covenant Lampstands with tongues of fire, to rule and conquer Babylon (Jerusalem). The church did so, and we see the firstfruits church army, the “kings from the sunrising” crossing the Great River in Revelation 16, entering a new earth like Joshua over Jordan.
“As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle (intermarry) with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay.” Dan 2:43
I think the key to Genesis 6 is that this pattern is repeated many times in the Bible. It was the sin of INTERMARRIAGE, of compromise between the priesthood and unbelieving women. Adultery and idolatry have a close connection. Continue reading
As God’s bouncers, the Levites carried swords to keep non-priests out of the Holy Place. In the New Covenant, the Laver has been replaced by baptism. The waters of baptism are a doorway into the city of God, the ‘crystal’ walls of water standing up by the breath of God, and Christian elders are the new Levites at the twelve gates.
This means that the church can’t just accept everyone into membership. Nehemiah kicked Tobiah out of the Temple rooms but most modern churches would offer him a place on the worship team. The church, as a city with crystal walls, must be transparent so the world can see the enthroned Christ at her centre.
First century Israel muddied the waters by tolerating compromise. Pluralism and relativism can be traced back to the church of God. It’s the church’s fault. Secular humanism is just a perversion of Christianity.
Peter Leithart writes:
“The climax of the prophetic denunciation of the merchandising of Babylon in Revelation 18 is the judgment that Babylon/Jerusalem has “deceived” the nations “by your sorcery” (18:23). This is immediately followed by the charge that “in her was found all the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slain on the earth” (18:24). Thus, the deceived people of the land become deceivers for the whole world. Sound familiar? Liberal churchmen deceive the nations into an ideology of tolerance and pluralism.”1
Babylon never changes. She tolerates everything, and kills anyone who disagrees. My point is, she is always a corruption of the true worship, a mediator gone bad, a narrow door made wide.
They sent therefore fifty men. And for three days they sought [Elijah] but did not find him. And they came back to [Elisha] while he was staying at Jericho, and he said to them, “Did I not say to you, ‘Do not go’?” (2 Kings 2:17-18)
It seems the Ark was “taken” like Enoch. If it was carried to Babylon, perhaps it was melted down with other conquered “gods” to contribute to Nebuchadnezzar’s “golden calf.” It fits the pattern if the Ark “died” on the altar of false worship “outside the city.” Continue reading
During the Creation week, there were three days of forming new “empty spaces” by dividing the original watery deep (the Abyss), then three days of filling them. A ‘world model’ develops with God’s throne at the top and the Abyss at the bottom, the place furthest from the throne. The architecture of the Tabernacle follows this model, laid out upon the ground.
When the priesthood – the Land-mediators – disobeyed God, the Abyss was dredged up to cover the Land (holy place). We see this first in the flood, and later in the invasions of Assyria, Babylon and Rome.
The Valley of Hinnom became a symbol of the ‘Abyss’ below the true mountain of God. As an evil twin of the holy place, it was an ‘Adamic’ clay pit with no glorious metal. It was also the place where Judah sacrificed their infants to false gods. It was counterfeit worship in the tabernacle of hell, and the Lord said He would fill it with their bodies. Their dark ‘table of showbread’ became a snare. [Read Jeremiah 19]
After the Babylonian captivity, Zechariah saw the church in “the deep” (often translated valley or glen). A new Land-altar was rising out of the ‘waters’ – a new mountain of God, with a new Eden-temple to mediate for the world.
TAOTA
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. Revelation 9:1-2
The fifth trumpet aligns with both the Feast of Trumpets, and Deuteronomy. It is the summoning of armies on Day 5, swarms of birds and fish filling sky and sea as glorious clouds. The Altar of the Abyss, in this case, is now an evil twin of the Altar of Incense, a demonic response to the ascension of Christ and His new government. Continue reading
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