“And all Israel stoned [Achan and his family] with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.”
Questions from blogger Blue Ollie:
Many still claim to get their morals from the Bible. Well, what does the Bible actually say?
The following is a very incomplete list but is nevertheless a valid list.
1. How do you determine if someone is guilty? Answer: gamble.
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
The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch,
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
And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. Revelation 19:14
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.
Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)
In Hebrews 10, the writer (most likely Paul) tells the Jewish Christians that if they turn back from following Christ they will be destroyed. Instead of offering a lame explanation to prove this passage doesn’t contradict the New Testament teaching that believers can’t lose their salvation, we should understand where the original audience was in history. If we do that, we find no explanation is necessary.
“Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were living in that nation, their faithfulness would not save anyone but themselves. …even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were living there, I, the Lord, promise that the children of these faithful men would also die. Only the three of them would be spared.” (Ezekiel 14:14, 20)
The mediation of even the holiest men would not avert God’s judgments. Noah had failed to prevent the destruction of the old world. Daniel had failed to prevent the destruction of the Land. Job had failed to prevent the destruction of his children. Like the three domains under these men, Jerusalem was beyond deliverance. And even if these holy watchmen were present in Jerusalem, they alone would be saved. These three only would be rescued from Sodom like Lot. In chapter 23, Ezekiel refers to Jerusalem as Sodom. Jerusalem the oppressor was also like Egypt. As the Land symbolically had four corners, four judgments would desolate it: sword, famine, beasts and pestilence, the Covenant curses from Leviticus 26. This was the Levitical sword indeed. The exiles, as watchmen, would see the repentance of the “marked” survivors and know that the Lord had not acted without cause.
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. Revelation 9:1-2
The fifth trumpet aligns with both the Feast of Trumpets, and Deuteronomy. It is the summoning of armies on Day 5, swarms of birds and fish filling sky and sea as glorious clouds. The Altar of the Abyss, in this case, is now an evil twin of the Altar of Incense, a demonic response to the ascension of Christ and His new government. Continue reading
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