Bully's Blog

A Debtor to the Law

“Any commentary that misses the fact that the first century isn’t about Jew versus Gentile, but about the Noahic nations of the old world versus the birth of the Christian nations of the new, is way off the mark.”

We continue with the Deuteronomy section of Galatians, which has seven cycles. Paul moves from a Division/Passover motif to an Ascension/Firstfruits motif. That is, Paul gets all Levitical. It’s all about sex and death.

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“God’s word is His presence, when delivered in a true setting.”

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“Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: ‘Did you offer Me slaughtered animals and sacrifices during forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?”  Acts 7:42 [NKJV]

James Jordan observes that in using the phrase “The Book of the Prophets”, Stephen refers to what we call the minor prophets, considered as one book in the Hebrew canon. The main themes in this Book were the jealousy of the Lord and the day of the Lord. Another judgment, death and resurrection of Israel was on the horizon.

The Book of the Twelve, Lecture 1, available from www.wordmp3.com

The golden Lampstand, with seven flames, corresponds to the sun, moon and five planets (those visible to the naked eye) that govern the firmament. These are the seven “eagle-eyes” of God. The Lampstand was a stylised almond tree. In Hebrew, the word translated “almond” is also the word for “watcher, overseer.” An almond tree is a shepherd who grows out of the earth and reaches heaven–a Tree of Life.

Stephen defended himself with a speech recounting the history of Israel, culminating in their murder of prophets before the exile.

“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” (Acts 7:51-53)

They would be exiled, like their fathers, but into outer darkness grinding their teeth in agony (Matthew 8:12). They were already grinding their teeth, but against Stephen. He saw the heavenly veil opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, the Watcher Tree, the Lampstand, measuring the first martyr of the New Covenant Table of Showbread. Like Jesus, Stephen was ejected from the city and executed. Like Jesus, he asked the Lord to receive his spirit, and prayed for forgiveness for his murderers. He was “one like the Son of Man.”
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The book of Daniel begins with the captured vessels from Solomon’s Temple being carried off to Babylon. We assume the ark, with its solid gold lid, was melted down. The golden lampstand, however, shows up at Belshazzar’s feast just before the fall of Babylon to Persia. Cyrus decrees that the Jews can return and rebuild the Temple. They carry the vessels, minus the Ark, across the Great River Euphrates.

Zechariah later sees a flying scroll with the dimensions of the Tabernacle (10 x 20 cubits). These are also the dimensions of the Ark plus cherubim in Solomon’s Temple. The Ark had been offered as an ascension and created a new heaven – unrolled a new scroll. The Restoration Covenant cost the Ark its “life.”

Now to Acts. The human Ark, Jesus, had ascended to heaven and left the “seven churches”, the New Covenant Lampstands with tongues of fire, to rule and conquer Babylon (Jerusalem). The church did so, and we see the firstfruits church army, the “kings from the sunrising” crossing the Great River in Revelation 16, entering a new earth like Joshua over Jordan.