Bully's Blog

Red Blood, Blue Blood

Behold, when we come to the land, you shall bind this line of scarlet thread in the window from which you let us down… Joshua 2:18

Each Israelite was to wear blue tassels on the four corners of his robe. The tassel was a blue cord that unraveled into threads, a “one” that became many. Using the “systematic typology” of the Bible Matrix, we can see that these four blue tassels correspond to the four rivers the flowed down from the spring under the Garden of Eden. [1]

So, what’s the deal with the “red cord” that Rahab was commanded to display in her window in Jericho? Firstly, the Hebrew word isn’t the same word as the “cord” in Numbers 15.

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or The Undeserved Immunity of Devilish Talmudism

“For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.”
Matthew 23:4

One of the great benefits of understanding the “preteristic” nature of the New Testament is the way the many supposedly “generic” apostolic warnings in the epistles are suddenly grounded in their Jewish context. The destruction of the Temple barely gets a mention in any church today, yet when the letters of Paul, Peter, James and John are understood to be aimed at Jews outside the Church and Judaizers inside it, the New Testament doesn’t become less relevant to us, but more relevant.

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“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth…” Genesis 2:4

The word “generations” is toledot. Some scholars believe this indicates earlier sources for the texts of Genesis, ancestral documents that were collated and assembled. But this view reflects modern distrust in the deliberate, careful process of revelation throughout Bible history. The eye of faith sees that these texts were always “Covenant texts.” God is a documentary God. Nothing is left to chance. The toledot are not only historically but also Covenantally significant.

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Her husband is known in the gates,
When he sits among the elders of the land.
Proverbs 31:23

“A Christian is a living, walking, talking testimony to the end of the world—to a cosmic, judicial maturity, the ‘adulthood’ of mankind.”

Doug Wilson is right to emphasize the “eschatological reality” of the final judgment, but surely the requirements and mode of baptism should communicate that reality?

If the process of “salvation through Covenant” is pretty much the same under the New as it was under the Old, as he believes, why did circumcision become baptism? Why the change in the Covenant “road sign” if there’s no real change concerning what’s down the road?

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or Blood versus Water

They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham… You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” (John 8:39, 44)

The theme of seed and fruit, or genealogy and mission, runs throughout the Bible. Genealogy is entirely objective. Our heredity is a factor in which we have no choice. It is the tree of life. But the fruit of our lives, what we choose to do with that life, involves our volition. Volition is mission. “It’s not about the hand you are dealt; it’s about how you play it.”

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or The New Commandment

1 John 5: 1-12   |   Sermon Notes   |   17 June 2012

Introduction

Jewish Christians were first opposed by unbelieving Jews, then by Jews who said they believed. Members of this latter group are called “Judaizers,” and they were the false teachers whom the apostles condemn in their letters.

Not only did these men pervert the gospel by including adherence to the Law of Moses, they also failed to keep the commandments of Jesus. This was Pharisaism dressed up in Christianity, the old leaven carried into the new age. The Pharisees loved to control people, while they failed to control themselves. This is the context of John’s letters to Jewish Christians: despite their profession, these men would be exposed by their lack of of certain things in their character.

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“In circumcision, Adam was Divided.
In baptism, Adam is Conquered.”

It seems to me the assumption that the New Covenant “people” includes infants because the Old Covenant people did has to overlook Pentecost. Are we to believe that once the Gentiles were included things went back to business as usual, with churches simply serving as Jew-Gentile hybrid synagogues, another “genealogical” people of God?

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Here’s a discussion that’s gone on over at Doug Wilson’s blog. If you have read it there, you can skip it here. I’m posting it for those who haven’t, and also for my own future reference (there’s a book on baptism coming from me at some point not too far away). Also, if there is some more discussion over there I will add it over here.

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The dreamtime is over.

The Bible teaches us that flesh is temporary. This is bad news for those who distrust God. Flesh is all they have.

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I’m banging the drum again. Under the title Constant Conversion, Doug Wilson writes:

The true Christian life is a life of true conversion. The Latin is the word for turning around, turning from one direction to go in another.

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