For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6).
This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.
Who are the dogs and pigs whom Jesus warns His hearers against in Matthew 7?
[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]
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“For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night,
in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.” (Exodus 40:8)
Continued from The Household of Faith – 1
“You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:3)
Israel took the man who was collecting kindling on the Sabbath and nipped his sin in the bud. His intentions were plain, so they wanted to know what should be done with him. It sounds brutal, but Exodus and Leviticus give us a plethora of strange laws for Israelites. At least, they seem strange until we understand that not only was Sinai replicated in the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle was to be replicated in every Israelite tent, and indeed in every Israelite. Every household was a tent of God, a cloud, and every Israelite a burning star in the sky. The tribes were, after all, arranged around the tent in military “constellations.” This new Black Sabbath was to reconnect every tent with its source, the tent of God.
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19)
Every one of God’s houses throughout Bible history has a “former days” and a “latter days.” Each goes through a process of death and resurrection, a “purification by fire.” Following the Bible Matrix, the central “slaying” of every row has a Day 4 symbol, something related to “the governing lights,” the all-seeing eyes of heaven.
“And as he prayed, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his clothing was white and glistening.” (Luke 9:29, King James 2000 Bible)
The Tabernacle was covered in three layers: linen, red-dyed ramskin, and a third layer of tachash. What’s tachash? The word is a mystery, and there have been many suggestions concerning its meaning, from unicorn to dolphin. But perhaps that mystery has now been solved. And the glistening solution is nothing like you’d imagine in a million years.
This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.
“Once the architecture is taken into account, the text is not ridiculous but terrifying. It marches inexorably through the deep rhythm of the seven days with laser precision, stately deliberation, and omniscient vision. These words were breathed by the source of all breath.”
“You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:3)
Many Christians ignore, and atheists poke fun at, the weird bits of the Bible, as though these texts are primitive, distorted, or contrived. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that these texts are designed to choke the faithless, and to be chewed over, meditated upon by the faithful, that we might be changed.
Why was fire forbidden on the Sabbath? The first thing to do with any text is identify its context. No more treating Bible texts like fortune cookies, do you hear me?
There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,
but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind,
and the glory of the earthly is of another.
(1 Corinthians 15:40)
Did Adam receive the Spirit of God? If he did receive the Spirit, was the Spirit taken away when he sinned?
This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.
“Once prosperous (gold), we forgot God and dismantled marriage (girls) and then relied upon military power rather than God’s protection to maintain peace with our enemies (guns).”
In Deuteronomy 17:14-20, Moses gave Israel three laws for her future kings. As moderns who wrongly assume the Bible is merely “propositional truth,” we not only fail to see these three laws as a continuum, and thus fail to identify them in Bible history, we also fail to interpret contemporary history in their brilliant “triune” light.
“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war… From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.” (Revelation 19:11-15)
The Bible is big on fruit. The first “Covenant Ethic” was a prohibition on fruit from a particular tree. The transgression of Adam resulted in curses upon the fruit of the Land and the fruit of the womb. The book which describes the end of the Old Covenant, the Revelation, shows the dragon attempting to eat the son of Adam, the fruit of the womb, and then to devour the fruit of the Land, the apostolic “firstfruits” Church. [1] But where is the forbidden tree?
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