Bully's Blog

Daniel Harrell tries to marry chalk and cheese by positing that Adam and Eve were real people, just not the first real people. They were the first people with whom God entered into a Covenant relationship.[1] The Rev. Harrell is sitting on the fence, an extremely pointy fence.

For many Christians, the biblical characters Adam and Eve can present a significant challenge to accepting evolutionary theory—that is, when they are cast as historical figures who are also the biological progenitors of the human race. …the Rev. Daniel Harrell discusses how there may be some “middle ground” in the way that Christians understand Adam and Eve. Harrell points out that the historicity of Adam and Eve does not necessarily conflict with science.  Rather, the claim that conflicts with science is the idea that Adam and Eve were the first humans, who were the only original biological ancestors of all humans today.

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]
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Band of Brothers – 2

Part 1 here.

One thing the Bible Matrix demonstrates is the nature of history. Sure, it repeats itself. Everyone knows that. But our personal histories are microcosms of the lives and deaths of families, churches, nations and empires. Reading the Bible is like looking through a glass onion.

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or Every Knee Shall Bow

Day 1
So, Adam fouled the first Sabbath. He failed to be Light.

Day 2
Cain made a false exodus (with Abel as the Passover lamb) and went to “worship in the wilderness.” God marked him as a “covering.” Being “barren”, Cain built a city as a covering, but it was just like Adam’s figleaves. It was a phony firmament, a fabricated Covenant, a city built on the wrong sort of blood.

Day 3
His offspring built a counterfeit Tabernacle – in opposition to the worship at the Gate of Eden. This was a false Land, a false mountain, like Mount Gerizim became to the Samaritans. Lamech, as a false Moses, “ascended” not as a Lamb slain, but as an accuser, the incarnation of the serpent. But someone true ascended as Firstfruits: Enoch.

This brings us to Day 4. As in the Garden, and as in Israel’s wilderness, the test was harlotry.

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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)