Bully's Blog

Daily Dose of Doug:

Yesterday at church I saw a bumpersticker on a friend’s car that summarizes a lot of things wonderfully. “Never trust a theologian who hasn’t been executed.”

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Garden
Christ reclaimed Adam’s garden and disarmed Satan by dying.

Land
The “son of man” (Christ’s body, the church) reclaimed Abel’s land and disarmed his Canaanite older brother in the Land by dying.

World
With the razing of Cain’s city, Jerusalem, the Christ’s Dominion expanded from Land to World, from brothers to children, from Abel to Seth. As the sons of God, we disarm the “daughters of men” culture around us by dying. We die to our predatory desires, and if necessary, we die physically as a witness. Kingdom expansion is always bought with blood. As with Job, our innocent suffering shames and disarms predatory powers and thus renews the world.

(See also Postmillennial Suffering)

The content of this post has been revised and included in Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

“Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” 1 Peter 2:24

The Cross of Jesus is the revelation of God’s judgment on sin. Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross was a superb triumph in which the foundations of hell were shaken. There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God. He made Redemption the basis of human life, that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God.

The Cross did not happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The whole meaning of the Incarnation is the Cross. Beware of separating God manifest in the flesh from the Son becoming sin. The Incarnation was for the purpose of Redemption. God became incarnate for the purpose of putting away sin; not for the purpose of self-realisation. The Cross is the centre of Time and of Eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both.

The Cross is not the cross of a man but the Cross of God, and the Cross of God can never be realised in human experience. The Cross is the exhibition of the nature of God, the gateway whereby any individual of the human race can enter into union with God. When we get to the Cross, we do not go through it; we abide in the life to which the cross is the gateway. The centre of salvation is the Cross of Jesus, and the reason it it so easy to obtain salvation is because it cost God so much. The Cross is the point where God and sinful man merge with a crash and the way to life is opened—but the crash is on the heart of God.

–Oswald Chambers

“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