Bully's Blog

“And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the Land, for its grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung his sickle across the Land and gathered the grape harvest of the Land and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia.” Revelation 14:18-20

Like Pharaoh, the “plagues” Trumpet warnings only hardened the hearts of the Jewish leaders. Like Pharaoh, he had raised up the Herods only to demonstrate His power in their destruction (Romans 9:17). Continue reading

“…though Jews returned to the land after the decree of Cyrus, they did not enjoy the fruits of it (Haggai 1:1-11). They were still alienated from the land. They did not really occupy it until they rebuilt the Temple, which was completed in the sixth year of Darius, 20 years later.”1

Darius listened to those who opposed the Jews and ordered the Temple reconstruction to officially cease, so the Lord raised up two witnesses, Haggai and Zechariah. Haggai would chastise the people for neglecting the house of God, and stir up their hearts to finish it. Zechariah would deal with the spiritual war going on behind the scenes.

Zechariah’s visions perform the same function as Abram’s animal sacrifice. (In Abram’s time, there was a famine in the Land, and later it did not support Abram and Lot’s flocks). In Zechariah, the mediator who is “passed over” is not Abram but Joshua the High Priest. The sins are atoned for again, but not with animal sacrifices. In Zechariah it is the Angel of the Lord who steps in, chases away the accusations of Satan (as the ravens), and provides clean robes as a New Covenant.

Then the Temple could be completed, and the abundant fruits of a recreated Land were enjoyed by a new Israel.

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1 James B. Jordan, Jubilee, 
Biblical Chronology Vol. 5, No. 4, www.biblicalhorizons.com

or Understanding the Restoration Era

Peter Leithart writes:

NT Wright has long argued that first-century Jews considered themselves to be in a continuing exile. The canon of the Hebrew Bible suggests as much.

If we take our arrangement (the LXX arrangement), the Hebrew Bible ends with Malachi, who certainly doesn’t see a gloriously restored Israel when he looks around him.

If we take the MT arrangement, the Hebrew Bible ends with the decree of Cyrus; it’s as if the return has never happened.

Either way, the canonical arrangement supports Wright’s contention.1

I had a long debate with my friend Matt who holds Wright’s view. I see the point. But regardless of the arrangement of the canon, what does the Bible teach?

I subscribe to Jordan’s view that the exile/restoration prophecies actually concern the exile/restoration. When Jeremiah predicted a New Covenant with Israel and Judah, it was the one ratified at the beginning of Zechariah. It came to pass, no bull. Those who apply the prophecies of restoration directly to the first century get it wrong.2

The Jews may have thought they were still in captivity. But they also thought the second Temple was less glorious than Solomon’s. Ezekiel’s Temple was a vision of an empire-wide temple made of people, synagogues spread throughout the empire. It was a picture of a restored Israel’s greater spiritual influence, in the same way that Revelation’s new Jerusalem is a picture of the church.

Like many Christians today, they were impatient for the Messiah to come and “wash behind their ears”, fix all their problems, when He had commanded them to conquer the world with their witness. The exile was long over, and atoned for as well. The Jews failed to understand the times they lived in, and so do we in many cases. Like Israel in Ezekiel 37, the first century church was an Israel resurrected for warfare.

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1 Peter J. Leithart, Continuing Exile and Canon.

2 Doug Wilson’s excellent new commentary on Hebrews, Christ and His Rivals, still does this from what I have read so far. To be sure, the apostles quoted the prophets because they prefigured the first century, but the details of the prophecies anchor them in previous history.

“In orthodox Christianity, salvation is not primarily deliverance from Satan’s realm, for Satan has no real realm; rather, salvation is deliverance from the wrath of God. Satan’s oppression of men is but an expression of the wrath of God, and it is not Satan who must be dealt with, but the wrath of God.”

There are many descriptions of Gnosticism, but the best is that which recognizes that Gnosticism is the great counterfeit of Christianity, which has hounded it since the beginning. Gnosticism sees the issues of history in terms of knowledge and power, instead of in terms of faith and obedience. Gnosticism approaches history in terms of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, rather than in terms of the Tree of Life (which is approached on the basis of faith). Continue reading