Bully's Blog

“And God said, ‘See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food’; and it was so.” Genesis 1:29-30

“‘Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.’” Genesis 9:3

We can’t accurately imagine what the pre-Fall world was like. If there was no death for Adam, was there animal death? And if there was animal death, was there death for things like bacteria?

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN EXTENDED AND REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

Continue reading

or Holy Smoke

Doug Wilson writes:

“The debate in the early church was not whether the Jews should stop circumcising their sons; it was whether the Gentiles had to start. The decision of the Jerusalem council was not that individual Gentiles did not have to be circumcised. If circumcision had been required of them, it would have obligated them to live as Jews under the Mosaic law — which included the circumcision of all subsequent generations. Circumcision was not being waived for individual Gentiles; circumcision was being waived for Gentiles and their seed. So the Christian church did not insist that Gentiles circumcise their infants — not because they were infants, but because they were Gentile infants” (To a Thousand Generations, pp. 68-69).

Since there is no ex-plicit proof of infant baptism, Pastor Wilson’s self-stated, continuing goal here is to find im-plicit proof. My goal in the following is to show that not only do circumcision and baptism not correspond, but also that the solution to the dispute in this passage he refers to is given in the passage, leaving no room for an im-plicit reference to infant baptism.

Continue reading

From Wine, Women and Song, James B. Jordan lectures, Biblical Horizons Conference 2010:

“[Wine, women and song] are three things which are essential characteristics of the New Covenant glory which the Church has done a bad job of affirming over the centuries, and are three things which are hated by Islam. Islam is the scourge of Christendom, and a mirror of Christendom. It’s as if all the mistakes the Church makes are magnified in Islam or in some way directly perverted in Islam. Then, there is a fourth characteristic of the New Creation order: holy war.

Continue reading

We receive baptism, but is membership of the visible New Covenant body entirely objective? The Old Covenant church, “the Body of Moses,” was Adamic. The Tabernacle was a Babelic tower, a ladder to heaven, laid out prostrate on the ground. The New Covenant Body, the Body of Jesus, is Evian. As a Temple filled with the Spirit of God, it stands upright and walks on the Crystal Sea.

Continue reading

What do the Psalms mean when they speak of the Lord “bowing the heavens”?

“Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.” (Psalm 144:5)
“He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet.” (Psalm 18:9)

The language is architectural, based on the original and greatest Temple of them all, the cosmic “house” constructed in Genesis 1.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

Continue reading

or True Gravity – 2

Someone made the comment that the “Bible Matrix” is something mystical. While it is certainly typological, it is not mystical. And it is only typological because it is the process of maturity God has built into everything under heaven. Trees and men grow up and bear fruit. That’s typology.

Continue reading

The debate over infant baptism at Doug Wilson’s blog continues. Pastor Wilson writes:

“The Gentiles were threatened with removal from the same tree the unbelieving Jews had been in. But if this were the tree of salvation, then the elect can lose their salvation — which cannot be defended biblically. And if this is the tree of the covenant, then the point stands” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 36)

This looks logical enough, but trees are a process of maturity, from seed to fruit. So is righteousness, and so is sin.

Continue reading

There is great advantage in tracking the shape of God’s work in history through the Old Testament. This is because God is consistent. Everything He does has the same shape, even though He does it in new and surprising (and sometimes devastating) ways.

One of the big handles in Scripture is the five-fold Covenant pattern, described by Ray Sutton in his book, “That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant.” Continue reading

“…how we feast and celebrate is a reflection of our beliefs concerning the salvation of the world.”

Sermon Notes on Deuteronomy 14:22-29 – Part 2
Guest post by Michael Shover

The Garden City

According to Leviticus 23 the Feast of Booths, or The Feast as it was later called, was an eight day celebration.

Continue reading

or The Disunited State of Samaria

“…and they are seven kings;
five have fallen,
one is,
the other has not yet come;
and when he comes,
he must remain a little while.” (Revelation 17:10)

Time for another weird one. Although it’s probably only weird to the conservative evangelical Bible scholars among us. [1]

Albert’s post on marriage the other day allows us to see the context of the sin of the Samaritan woman. James Jordan observes that this woman was most likely a victim of this unjust system, hence the other Samaritans’ readiness to believe her testimony.

Continue reading