Bully's Blog

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.

Analysing the repeated structures of Scripture can bring some insights. Most interpreters would call these speculation, but that’s like saying Middle C is not the same note as High C. Such an attitude renders very sharp people obtuse. And these structures are repeated many more times than there are octaves on the piano.

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The LORD will attack those nations like a warrior fighting in battle. He will take his stand on the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem, and the mountain will split in half, forming a wide valley that runs from east to west. Then you people will escape from the LORD’s mountain, through this valley, which reaches to Azal.” (Zechariah 14:3-5)

diSpENSATIONALISTS love to quote verses from Zechariah and apply them to modern Jews. While this breaks all the rules of interpretation (context, first audience, book structure, common sense, etc.), those who realise its events were all fulfilled, culminating in the first century, still have a lot of trouble with the details. But the answers lie in Old Testament typology.

Not only does the entire book of Zechariah follow the ‘Egypt to Canaan’ pattern, each of the ‘post-vision’ chapters does so individually. There is too much detail to go into here, but I want to deal with the splitting mountain.

The Ark was the Lord’s footstool. It, along with both the incense and bronze altars, had to be purified with blood. The Lord will only stand in a clean place, and indeed even required His priests to have clean feet. As a square altar, Canaan was purified with blood by Abraham. It was purified with blood again under Joshua in the ‘devotion’ of Jericho. Immediately after this victory, the people were divided between Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, one for the blessings of the Law and one for curses (Joshua 8). Blood, and a split mountain, made a way into the new Land.

Here’s where the structure of the passage is important. It follows the feasts pattern (Lev 23) and this section appears at Atonement (Covering). One goat was blessed and ascended to God; the other carried the curses to destruction (ez azal). As the Lord’s footstool, the Mount of Olives was divided to the north and the south, just like the Temple veil was torn in two. With Christ’s death as Passover, Olivet became symbolically like Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal at the birth of a new Promised Land, the heavenly Canaan, the New Jerusalem.

The mountain was split from the east to the west. The faithful would enter from the east, the opposite direction to Adam’s expulsion. The death and resurrection of Christ tore the Garden door open, and there were earthquakes. The death of the first century church under Herod/Rome also tore the Land in two. Old Israel became the garment of the old High Priest, torn under the Covenant curse (Matthew 26:65) to be eaten by birds and beasts.

Revelation also uses the symbolism of two mountains. One was a flaming Sinai, thrown into the Gentile sea as Jesus promised (curses – Matthew 21:21). The other was a new, heavenly Zion – the one mentioned by the writer of Hebrews (blessings – Hebrews 12:18). The saints prayed as Jesus commanded and Judaism and Christianity were split in two when Christ came in vengeance in AD70. Judaism went to Azal.

When God is making something new, He begins by tearing something in two. If it happens to be you, the something new might not be you. This is something Adam knew.

(Zechariah’s visions showed two bronze mountains allowing the Restoration era ‘gospel’ to go out into the world after the rebuilding of the Temple in 6:1. The events of Zechariah’s day prefigured the restoration of Israel in the Christian church.)

The Bible contains some patterns that are frequently repeated. Sometimes these are inverted or reversed to make a point.

Passover was not a sign of salvation, but of coming salvation. Passover constituted Israel a “peculiar” people, particularly redeemed by God, and given a special priestly task. How were the gentiles related to Passover? By watching it, and putting faith in it. Someday, according to the promise of the covenant, they would be let in the House. For now, they were to stand at the doors and windows and look in. They watched the peculiar people eat the Passover, and they trusted that God would save them as well. They watched the peculiar priestly people circumcise their children, and they trusted that the benefits of that act were theirs as well.

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In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave the pattern for a new Tabernacle. The sermon follows the pattern of the Tabernacle furniture, which in turn follows the pattern of the Creation week.1 At ‘Day 3′, Altar and Table, are His commands concerning Covenants (divorce and oaths), and the Lord’s prayer.

“Leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” Matthew 5:24

Interestingly, these blessings are mirrored by the curses upon the saints’ evil twins in Matthew 23, the Jews who sat in Moses’ seat of judgment.2 The “woes” follow exactly the same pattern, and climax with Christ’s prophecy of the destruction of the Old Covenant Temple. And what do we find in this passage at Day 3?

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