Bully's Blog

“…when the blood goes up, the Spirit comes down.”

The battle between the Son and the serpent rages throughout the Old Testament. Every time the Lord renews the Covenant, Satan is ready with a counterfeit. God uses the phonies to test and purify His people, wipes the failures off the slate, then starts again.

Aaron and Jeroboam set up patently false worship in their golden calves. But false worship in the guise of true was much more difficult to discern, especially when it usurped the exact location of the true. When the Lord took Ezekiel to the Temple as a legal witness, it was a whitewashed tomb. He dug through the wall and discovered that it was a house of hypocrisy, the synagogue of Satan. All that remained of Israel’s witness to the nations was a thin veneer. 

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Time for another weird post I think. Here’s some thoughts on Genesis 2:

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Why the change from Adam and Eve to Ish and Isha? Perhaps because the words are symbolic, and symbols describe relationships.[1] There is the possibility that these words were used because they sound like eish (fire), regardless of their differing derivations (the jury is still out on this one after 6000 years). Jordan mentions that Adam was to be an Altar made of earth, and with his own blood shed comes the “fire” of Isha, the woman as the shining on the altar, the glory cloud on Mount Sinai. It certainly corresponds with the feasts. Adam “ascends” to headship over Eve in marriage (Firstfruits), and then he is to “open the Law” to Eve and fill her with light (Pentecost), which he did, but failed to repeat the Law (Trumpets) after she was tested. Atonement followed.

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For those reading my book, I need to correct a paragraph on p. 289. Although the newly expanded territory measured out the pattern of the Ark, the Ark was in heaven. So restored Jerusalem became the four-cornered Altar of Incense beneath it (the Holy Place/City) and the Empire became the Bronze Altar beneath that. 

“The Lord had used the exile to expand His territory. He had scattered His people as the four winds. Jerusalem was now the Temple (the holy city), a rebuilt Altar of Incense. The Empire was now the Land, the four-cornered bronze Altar beneath it.”

This all of course is a type of the New Jerusalem ruling an even greater world in this current age. I’ve also added a diagram.

“God claimed the Babylonian Empire as His territory, and began converting Nebuchadnezzar’s new World (Sea) into Land. The kings had failed to continue bringing the riches of the Gentiles under the Covenant, so the Lord expanded the Covenant promise. The expansion would cost Israel her life.”

We don’t know how many wise men travelled from the east, but perhaps we can make a guess via God’s deliberate typology.

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A Blazing Torch and a Smoking Firepot

Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness, then Israel did. God’s prophet lives through the pattern, then God’s people follow him in a larger pattern. The head of the sacrifice, then the body. The Adam, then the Greater Eve. Jesus, then the church.

James Jordan observes that the Promised Land failed to support Abram both during the famine and also later concerning the flocks of Abram and Lot. Only after the Lord “purified” the Land with a sacrifice was it again a garden for the people of God. Like Adam, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, but it was animal substitutes that were divided.

The Lord passed over Abram, but in the darkness, a smoking firepot and blazing torch passed through the divided animals. God structured this event to follow Israel’s feasts, with Passover and Atonement at each end, and the Lord’s prediction of the Hebrews’ slavery in Egypt at the “wilderness” centre.

The blazing torch and smoking firepot are the Lord’s chariot throne. The blazing torch (the head) is His throne, the Ark. The smoking firepot is the Incense Altar, the cloud of angel elders in His train (the body), the Holy Place positioned ‘underneath’ the Most Holy (see Ezekiel 1).1

Revelation 8

After the ascension of Christ, Satan was expelled from his “ministry” before God as the Accuser of man. Like the evil twin of the blazing torch that measured Abram’s sacrifices, he was then used by God to bring an end to the Old Covenant upon the Land.

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.

The seven trumpets are a chiasm, with the third and fifth corresponding symmetrically. The “de-Ascension” of Satan mirrors his fall in the third trumpet. Like Christ, he was given a key. His throne-coming was also accompanied by clouds of smoke, but as false High Priest, instead of a sweet-smelling aroma it was the sulphur of Sodom. As Pentecost’s fire came from the Altar of Incense in heaven, its evil twin bore an army of unholy mighty men—the “smoking firepot” body of Satan’s blazing torch head. It was the children of Satan (John 8:44), an army of Judaisers, locusts who would devour the Land. As in Daniel 7, the winds of the Spirit raised up beasts.

“as with Tyre of old, the Abyss is being dredged up to cover the Land with its unclean spirits. Apostate Israel is to be cast out of God’s presence, excommunicated from the Temple, and filled with demons. One of the central messages of Revelation is that the Church tabernacles in heaven; the corollary of this is that the false church tabernacles in hell.”2

As the preaching of the seven-sealed Gospel to the Land began with a white horse, so at the destruction of Judaism, the preaching of the Gospel to the World began with the white horse passing through the divided pieces of the Land (Zechariah 14:4). However, this time, Christ did not ride alone but with His bride. He was a blazing torch, and She was now the smoking firepot—a permanent part of His Ark-chariot. A government of ascended men had replaced the government of angels. Together they passed through the midst of a divided Land to carry the seven seals to the World.

“Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way.” Luke 4:30

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1 Note also that in Exodus 25-31, the Ark is the Light of Day 1, and the Incense Altar is the “swarms” of Day 5 – birds from above and fish from below. The Tabernacle was both a portable Sinai and an image of the chariot of God.
2 David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 244.

“Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” Revelation 9:13-14

To purify the Land of the sins of the nation or the High Priest, the horns of the Incense Altar were smeared with blood from the sacrifice at the bronze Altar. These four angelic commanders, who were previously held back, were horns looking for blood.*

The fifth trumpet, alluding to Joel 2, had summoned clouds of Babylonian locusts (Judaisers) with hair like women (false Nazirites) from Herod’s false altar to devour the Land. Like those in Joel, these are ‘mighty men,’ the result of the compromise of the sons of God with idolatry (Genesis 6).

Now, the sixth trumpet brought a response from the true Altar of Incense—an unimaginable cloud of true Nazirites. The position of this event in the structure of the passage alludes to Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. But as a ‘Trumpet’, this was only a warning. The sixth bowl would bring the final conquest: Armageddon.

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the sunrise.

Like the Jews returning from Babylon, and Abraham when he first entered Canaan, they crossed the great river Euphrates in their baptism into Christ. Just as Cyrus “parted” the Great River to conquer Babylon, the river of death was parted to allow the true saints to inherit the heavenly country. Old Jerusalem became Jericho – the city devoted to destruction.

This was an army of true Nazirites who had not broken their vow:

These are the ones who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb. (Revelation 14:4)

Instead of storming the open gates and raping the virgins, here an army of “virgins” crossed the Euphrates, stormed into Babylon and purified the daughters of men culture around them.

(*This refers to the Hebrew for corners and commanders being the same word.)

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

Revelation 20-21:21 as a new Tabernacle

This passage seems to follow the Tabernacle furniture (and the Feasts, but more subtly). It concerns the inauguration of the new heavens and new land, the gospel age as a new creation, beginning with the closing of the heavy lid of the false ark.

Day 1 Throne The Ark of the Abyss – Satan thrown into the pit (cf Zechariah 5)

Day 2 Firmament The Laver of the Abyss – Satan’s final rebellion ends in the lake of fire

Day 3 Altar (Land & Sea) The Altar of the Abyss – Land and Sea give up their dead to be judged

Day 4 Lampstand The Lampstand of Heaven – the Holy City (Eve lights) is ready for her Adam light

Day 5 Altar (Incense) The Altar of Heaven – True and false Eve armies are separated

Day 6 Firmament The Laver of Heaven – the Old Covenant crystal sea is replaced with a crystal city

Day 7 Throne The Ark of Heaven – the bridal city is described as pure gold, the Shekinah

Greater Eve, the virgin bride, is enthroned over the nations, a human government in heaven.

This pattern reflects the testing of Adam in the garden. Jesus deals here with Adam’s usurper and rescues Eve from the serpent by filling her with the light of the Law. She becomes a “fulfilled Ark” as the pattern is measured out across the world.

The remainder of Revelation begins a new pattern, but it ends halfway through at the same test Adam faced – the Tree of Life.

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The image above is from Elizabeth – the Golden Age, which contains some truly awesome ‘warrior bride’ iconography. TAOTA