Bully's Blog

When Solomon’s Temple replaced the Tabernacle, everything was more glorious. Among the enhancements and additions were two great bronze pillars at the entrance. One of the things the Tabernacle symbolises is a great metal man. The glorified Christ is seen in visions with legs of molten bronze, or a fiery, angelic stream that reaches down to the Altar of the earth. The Tabernacle was a portable ‘flying’ chariot of God. These two great pillars, priest and king, were its landing gear.They pictured the union of heaven and earth, and Jew-priest-Land and Gentile-king-Sea in Christ, Greater Solomon.

“I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire. He had a little book open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land…” (Revelation 10:1-2)

On the AV forum, Matthew Cart wrote:

When I was first a Christian I used to believe that it was always wrong to tell a lie, no matter what. Both Leviticus 19:11 and Colossians 3:9 talk about not lying to one another. There are scores of verses that talk about honesty.

I was first introduced to the idea of exceptions to this rule by a friend of mine. He spoke about the Chinese Christians who lie to communist authorities while they are escaping from prison and persecution type situations. Also there are Bible smugglers who lie to get Bibles to Christians in persecuted countries. There is a lot of deceit that happens, even with Voice of the Martyrs, doing things in secret and using deception for the sake of the gospel. You could consider this lying.

Didn’t Christians also practice deception and lying during Hitler’s reign to have the Jews? Someone would come to their house and ask if there were Jews there and they would say, “No”.

I am also challenged by the story in 1 Kings 22 where God put a lying spirit in the mouth of his own prophets in order to purposely deceive someone…

The repeated theme is (I think) actually that of the “warrior-bride” tricking the “serpent” before making an escape, as observed by James Jordan in his lectures. This would possibly include all the examples above plus the Hebrew midwives, Rahab’s hiding of the spies, Jael’s deception of Sisera, Michal’s lie after David’s escape and Esther’s “invitation” to Haman. These and many more were “eye for eye” justice from Eve upon the father of lies, the serpent, fulfilled of course in the cross.

It appears again in Revelation, when the serpent vomits out counterfeit living waters (false doctrine) which is swallowed hook, line and sinker by the Judaisers and Jews (the “Land”), but not the saints. In this case it was like Solomon’s sword – a deception that made plain which woman was the true mother of the living child and which woman was lying.

So Eve deceives the serpent. It is ironic justice.

Counterfeit Kingdom Come

Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the Sea. Revelation 12:17 [ESV]

“After a number of years of peace for the Church (Acts 9:31), Wormwood poured out his poisonous waters, false Judaising doctrines, to try and corrupt the woman. God raised up Paul to defeat Satan and the Judaisers, and meanwhile the land (the Circumcision) drank up his false doctrine. Satan has engaged in two tactics: persecution and corruption. These have failed. So now he decides to return to persecution, but this time against the non-Jewish believers, the “rest of her offspring”. He stands on the sands of the sea, addressing the Roman Gentile sea, and raises up the Sea Beast.”1

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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.

Greater Solomon

The structure of Revelation passes through two large heptamerous cycles (1-11 and 12-19). But the book as a whole follows the same pattern as Ezekiel. In the last three chapters, following Ezekiel’s pattern, John is shown the destruction of Gog (Amalek) in the Land, and a vision of a new Jerusalem. However, unlike Ezekiel, these events are beyond the second cycle of the book, and for good reason. This final “east-west” section exiles the Accuser to the Abyss (Azal) and enthrones the Bride. It is the only part of Revelation that directly concerns our own day.

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“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot!
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:15-16)

In the book of Revelation, many sentences contain multiple Old Testament allusions knotted together. Sometimes these are more obvious (the Judaisers as Babylonian locusts from Joel with long hair added to make them ‘bad Nazirites’, for example), but sometimes they only become apparent from their position within the structure of the passage in question.

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Beasts and Antichrists

“Scripture describes for us the sin of being antichrist, the Greek word being antichristos. There are four uses of the word in 1 John, and one in 2 John, and that’s it for the Bible. Surprising to many, the antichrist is not found in the book of Revelation at all. The recipients of John’s letter had heard that the antichrist was going to come, and indeed, John says, many antichrists had already come (1 Jn. 2:18). The antichrist is defined as one who denies the Father and the Son (1 Jn. 2:22). And the spirit of antichrist is a refusal to confess that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh (1 Jn. 4:3). The same thing is said again in 2 Jn. 1:7. The spirit of deception and antichrist is a rejection of Jesus come in the flesh.

So what is the sin of being an antichrist. Through long-standing misunderstandings about eschatology, the definition of this sin has gotten almost completely distorted. A common understanding is to see The Antichrist and The Beast as the same character out of poorly written end times novels. But this is not the case at all. In Scripture, a beast is a civil ruler, persecuting the Church. An antichrist is a false teacher from within, one infected with all the latest ideational leprosy. For a beast, think Stalin, Hitler, Nero. For an antichrist, think of a mild, soften-spoken Anglican bishop — one who denies that Jesus was God enfleshed.” www.dougwils.com

The distinction is between fallen Adam and the serpent. Ezekiel sarcastically called the bejewelled high priest the “King of Tyre” and the worship “Queen Sidon” – but they were still human, still “Adam”, still worshippers. In Revelation, however, the fallen priesthood was no longer human, but a beast, ie. political. A dragon with lamb’s horns and a speaking “graven image” picture a very different sort of idolatry.

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

“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.)

Why were Jerusalem’s “gates” left open to the enemy? Josephus records miraculous warning signs during the period of Revelation’s Trumpets. Once again, the death angel stood at the threshing floor holding a sword over the city for the king’s “numbering” of the saints:

“Thus were the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers, and such as belied God himself; while they did not attend nor give credit to the signs that were so evident, and did so plainly foretell their future desolation, but, like men infatuated, without either eyes to see or minds to consider, did not regard the denunciations that God made to them.

Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year. Thus also before the Jews’ rebellion, and before those commotions which preceded the war, when the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, [Nisan,] and at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone round the altar and the holy house, that it appeared to be bright day time; which lasted for half an hour. This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskillful, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes, as to portend those events that followed immediately upon it…

“Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner [court of the] temple, which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night. Now those that kept watch in the temple came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, and told him of it; who then came up thither, and not without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again. This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy, as if God did thereby open them the gate of happiness. But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord, and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared that the signal foreshowed the desolation that was coming upon them.”

“Besides these, a few days after that feast, on the one and twentieth day of the month Artemisius, [Jyar,] a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared: I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those that saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals; for, before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armour were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities. Moreover, at that feast which we call Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner [court of the temple], as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said that, in the first place, they felt a quaking, and heard a great noise, and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, “Let us remove hence.”*

*Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, (vi:v:3), quoted from David Chilton’s compilation in Paradise Restored, A Biblical Theology of Dominion. The chariots in the clouds were also reported by the Roman historian Tacitus: “In the sky appeared a vision of armies in conflict, of glittering armour. A sudden lightning flash from the clouds lit up the Temple. The doors of the holy place abruptly opened, a superhuman voice was heard to declare that the gods were leaving it, and in the same instant came the rushing tumult of their departure.” (Tacitus, The Histories,translated by Kenneth Wellesley).