The Meaning of the Sheep and the Goats – Part Three of Three

Read Part One here.
Read Part Two here.

The content of this final section will be published in installments as time permits.
Additions will be announced to the email list and on Facebook and X. Or just revisit this post from time to time over the next month.

The work is long enough to publish as a book, and that’s what I’ll do when it’s complete.
So if you contact me with any typos or suggested improvements/clarifications, you’ll get an acknowledgement.

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The Seed and the Sword
The scandalous switch in the story

Jacob twice supplanted Esau using man’s desire for food. For Jesus to receive His birthright over the sons of men, He, too, would have to offer His ravenous rivals the very thing for which they hungered.

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That serpent of old
(Genesis – Sabbath)

From the beginning, the seed of the serpent shadowed the path of the Seed of the Woman. Sometimes it watched from a far horizon, and sometimes it hid in close quarters. Since it manifested in various guises, this shape-shifting adversary could turn up anywhere at any time, and it was tricky to pin down.

As a spiritual enemy, it exploited every opportunity to become “incarnate” in a willing host, whether an individual or an entire people. But as the proverbial “evil twin” its intention was always the same. It crouched at the door like a beast, lying in wait to shed innocent blood in the manner of Cain (Genesis 4:7).

The most intense animosity towards the promised Seed was embodied in the Amalekites. This vicious people from the bloodline of Esau functioned as the head of the snake. As potent distillations of the bitterness brewing behind the scenes of sacred history, Israel’s occasional stoushes with Amalek are glimpses into the mind of the devil.

As the paragon of serpent-kings, Amalek’s origin story is suitably cryptic. However, it is not difficult to decipher if we are wise and trace the plot back to Genesis 3. It relates to the desire of the devil—an impotent palace eunuch—for his own dynasty. This could only be achieved by seizing the promises given to the Man and the Woman concerning the fruit of the land and the fruit of the womb.

Amalek’s root in the genealogy of Esau makes special mention of his mother, Timna. She was from a region that was also inhabited by clans of giants (Genesis 36:12, 22). By highlighting his pedigree as the product of an even deeper degree of intermarriage with pagans, this deliberately invokes the reason why mankind was condemned to utter destruction in the Great Flood. From the beginning, Amalek is to be understood as the Esau of Esaus—an anti-seed multiplied by an anti-Eve.

As mentioned, Amalek was described by Balaam the Prophet as “the first among the nations” (Numbers 24:20). Amalek was not an ancient people, so “first” was an ironic jibe at his pretensions. He wished to be the younger son who, like Jacob, inherited the father’s blessing against the natural order. But his concentrated enmity for Israel only garnered him a greater curse.

The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.” (Genesis 3:14)

Combined with “its end is utter destruction,” Balaam’s God-inspired curse upon Amalek was a shadow Alpha and Omega. By becoming Israel’s avowed foe and seeking the nation’s utter destruction, Amalek’s “beginning” secured his ultimate end. God’s punishment upon the Amalekites for their merciless rancor would be eye for eye and tooth for tooth.

The word for “first” in the phrase “the first among the nations” is the same word translated as “In the beginning…” in Genesis 1:1. When Israel was “born again” through the Red Sea, coming of age and rising from the waters as God’s chosen heir, Amalek was the first nation to attack. In order to prevent the sons of Abraham from inheriting the “dry land” of Canaan among the “wild sea” of the nations, this serpent crouched at the broken waters of the womb. Open-mouthed and ravenous as Esau, he waited to devour God’s “firstborn” people.

The Lord had promised to bless those who blessed Abraham and curse those who cursed him (Genesis 12:3; Numbers 24:9). So for this acute hatred of the sons of Jacob, God later “chose” Amalek as a kind of anti-firstborn.

King Balak hired Balaam to defraud God’s firstborn of the Abrahamic promises. But instead of cursing Israel as Balak had ordered, Balaam’s first three oracles blessed Israel.

Even worse, the prophet’s final oracle took a Noahic turn and encompassed the peoples of the wilderness. Like Noah, who woke from his slumber to curse the seed of his youngest son, the Lord switched the curse to those who intended to steal the blessing. After heralding the Abrahamic star-son who would come from Israel, the Amalekites were singled out for special cursing in the list of desert nations.

This word “first” in Balaam’s prophecy is also the word for the “choice” firstfruits in Exodus 23:19—the best of the best. God’s condemnation of the Amalekites in Deuteronomy 25:17-19 is immediately followed by commands for offerings of firstfruits and tithes. Why? Because Amalek, the worst of the worst, would be denied a memorial by the people that remembered the Lord.

What made the Amalekites different was the character of the nation as a “sanctuary” enemy. Just as the serpent took advantage of the vulnerability of Eve in the world’s first holy of holies, Israel’s first battle against this serpentine seed was played out upon an Edenic stage.

Although the Tabernacle of Moses was yet to be built, the new sanctuary is implicit in Exodus 17 in the same way that Balaam’s mountains replicated the four-horned Bronze Altar. The Lord’s presence upon Sinai is the Most Holy Place; Aaron, Moses, and Hur are the Table, Incense Altar, and Lampstand in the Holy Place; the waters from the rock are the Laver; and Joshua and Amalek wrestle for preeminence like Jacob and Esau in a bloody “firstfruits” battle upon the four-horned Altar-Land below. This was a familial dust-up in the Father’s house over who would inherit the earth.

Like the serpent, Amalek relied more upon stealth and surprise than brute force. Being nomadic raiders, the most likely meaning of “Amalek” is “the people who nip.” And the name “Agag” or “Gog”—the Amalekite equivalent of the royal title “Pharaoh”—means “fiery one.” These desert dwellers struck at the heel like fiery serpents, and only ventured into the Land under the protection of other nations with whom they were temporarily in league (Judges 3:13; 6:3).

While the Israelites’ disobedience doomed them to wander in the wilderness for one generation, Amalek the accursed inhabited it perpetually. Always on the move, the Amalekites were hard to locate and thus difficult to attack. Like a brood of snakes, they were vulnerable when exposed and mostly avoided open conflict. Instead, Amalek crept into the house like a thief to steal and kill and destroy (John 10:10). Ever the opportunist, he waited patiently until an unfair advantage presented itself—any breach, weakness, or misfortune that befell the chosen sons of Eve. Then he pounced.

Just as the Amalekites struck the stragglers of Israel after the exodus (most likely the women, the children, and the aged), so they also attacked the city of Ziklag in the south when the armies of Philistia and Israel left them unguarded. They burned the city and took the women and children captive.

The animosity of Edom for Israel was less serpentine and more draconian, but similarly opportunistic. Instead of “Garden” attacks upon actual women, their focus was the impregnable “bridal” city in the Land. They raided Jerusalem, but only after the Babylonians had razed its walls and left it defenseless. Like vultures tearing at a carcass left by a lion or a bear, they gloated over Jacob’s misery and plundered what remained.

Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever. On the day that you stood aloof, on the day that strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them. (Obadiah 1:10-11)

The plot of Haman in the Book of Esther began in another impromptu sanctuary. As an Agagite, a descendant of Amalek, Haman’s strategy was cunning but cowardly—a serpentine strike in the royal court of Ahasuerus. The glorious furnishings are described in vivid detail to remind us of the construction of the Tabernacle (Esther 1:5-7).

In characteristic Amalekite fashion, but at an unprecedented scale, this was an opportunistic raid (Garden) against Israel (Land) in league with nations from India to Ethiopia (World).

Ezekiel predicted Haman’s strategy in his prophecy of these events. “Gog” (Agag) would attack the defenseless Israelites who lived in the unwalled towns (Esther 9:19).

“Thus says the Lord God: On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme and say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates,’ to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell at the center of the [Land].” (Ezekiel 38:10-12)

Although God is never once mentioned in the Book of Esther, the parries in each domain all bear His signature and follow His architectural blueprint. The deception was foiled by a wise woman (Garden); the “lawfare” that threatened the sons of Jacob was countered with a better decree (Land); and the incitement to violence intended to purge the empire of Jews ended with all nations bowing in fear before Mordecai (World).

The end of Haman—“exalted” on a pole like the bronze serpent—was as ironic as Balaam’s prophecy concerning Amalek. He desired to be like God’s chosen sons, Joseph and Daniel, the first among the king’s wise men. Instead, hanging from a tree, he became a man who was cursed above all others by God (Deuteronomy 21:23).

The execution of Haman’s entire “brood” was not only the end of Amalek, it was also the public vindication of God’s promises to Israel—the firstborn nation that miraculously rose from the dead. As Isaiah had predicted using Edenic imagery, the seed of the Woman would be unharmed in the new order because the serpent’s nest would be empty (Isaiah 11:8).

Amalek’s “In the beginning” claim ended with his utter “de-creation.” Instead of being “formed and filled” anew with untold power, he was rendered formless (head) and void (body).

Despite continual failures within and attacks from without, the Messianic line endured, blossoming afresh from the stump of the old Davidic kingdom. Purified by the severe discipline of the exile, the revived spiritual fertility of the Jews would influence all of the surrounding nations.

Water shall flow from his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters; his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. (Numbers 24:7)

They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the [Land] shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9)

Those who lay in wait for God’s firstborn inevitably fell into their own traps. Whoever “saw red” like envious Esau only ended up setting an ambush for their own lives (Proverbs 1:18).

It is important to note that the divine curse upon those who cursed Abraham also came upon members of the Abrahamic “household.” And it did so as the curses of the Law of Moses.

The plotting of the spiritual Edomites within Israel not only brought about their own demise, but also furthered the divine plan. The wickedness of the Israelite rulers who murdered the prophets led to the exile that eventually purged idolatry from the Jews. This in turn led to the “jealous brother” plot by Haman, which not only vindicated the God of Israel against all the gods of the nations, but also resulted in the unwitting self-identification of all God’s enemies across the known world.

As predicted by Obadiah, the kingdom of Edom was utterly destroyed. But as usual, the devil responded with a more crafty manifestation of the seed of the serpent. The next Edomite enemy would not be the one seeking the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple but the one building them—Herod the Great.

By the time of Christ, Esau and Jacob were living together in the tents of Isaac once again. The story of sibling rivalry would end as it began, but at a magnitude that would shake the world to its very foundations. God would alter the landscape to such a degree that even the narrow river of Israel’s progeny would overflow its banks.

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Sinful beyond measure
(Exodus – Passover)

The virgin birth of the Messiah surpassed the marvel of its heralds—the long history of barren wombs made fertile. But it also kicked off the final family conflict. This time the feud would be a duel to the death, a contest so grueling and bloody that it would take forty years to identify the winner.

Herod was regarded with suspicion by many Jews, so the birth of the “chosen one” was an unwelcome spark amongst the kindling. His terrible reprise of Pharaoh’s slaughter of the Hebrew infants stamped out any hope before word could spread.

As in Exodus, the Seed of the Woman being the one under foot was contrary to the promise in Genesis 3:15. This diabolical switching of places invited the God of Moses to come and turn the tables once again.

The Lord would shift the balance of power with another momentous deliverance, but this time it would not be a battle against flesh and blood. The target was no longer the devil’s willing tools but the deceiver himself.

The infant Jesus had been greeted by Jewish shepherds (priesthood), and then by Gentile wise men (kingdom). This was another instance of the core biblical principle: submission to heaven brings dominion on earth. Likewise, the Gospel would go to the Jews first because judgment begins at the House of God. The initial task of Jesus’ ministry was not to free Jerusalem from Roman rule: it was to free the Jews from the Jews. The chosen Son must first overcome the hirelings who ruled Jerusalem, the “big brothers” who had assumed His throne.

But the end of Israel can only be fully understood in the light of its origins. As is the case with all the works of God, the pattern planted in seed form at the beginning of the age dictated the shape of the end of the age. As He does with individuals, God withheld His judgment until the situation reached its adult form. Only by its mature fruit can a Jacob tree or an Esau tree be truly known.

The divine plan to end the old order was threefold, and each step was a shrewd act of provocation. The three stages of the strategy also reflect the offices and work of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

The Father is the one who gives life. In His birth, Jesus took hold of the footstool of the Herods as infant Jacob had grasped the heel of Esau. The king’s response—heartless infanticide—confirmed his true character, just as God intended.

The Son is the one who submits and inherits. In His death, Jesus offered His body as the proverbial bowl of red stew to the rulers of the Garden (the high priest), the Land (Herod Antipas), and the World (Pontius Pilate). Surrounding Him like wild beasts, they all ate the bread of wickedness and drank the wine of violence (Proverbs 4:17), partaking of His flesh and His blood in demonic fellowship. But in His resurrection, as the firstborn from the dead, Jesus took possession of the birthright of Adam. As the rightful heir of all three domains, He ascended to be enthroned in heaven as the true king of Israel.

The Spirit is the one who joins, multiplies, and gathers, so the final action in the legal proceedings—taking possession of the household—was “bridal” in nature. Instigated by Rebekah, the deception of blind Isaac was akin to the blindness of the first-century Jews (Romans 11:25). The Lord sent a delusion upon Jerusalem’s rulers so they would believe a lie (2 Thessalonians 2:11). Charmed like Isaac by earthly might, they sided against God’s firstborn with the bloodthirsty hunters of men—Barabbas, Herod, and Caesar.

The food prepared by the Spirit was again that of Jesus’ own body. This time it was the flesh and blood of the Jewish martyrs—those who had vowed their allegiance to Christ with bread and wine in the fellowship of the Spirit. These faithful sons, in whose mouths no lie was found, were the “firstfruits to God and the Lamb” (Revelation 14:4-5). The Son of Man would harvest them from the Land as wheat for His silo and grapes for His winepress (Revelation 14:14-20). By this means, Jesus received the legacy of Abraham, a dynasty as numerous as the stars of the firmament above and the sand of the sea below.

In each of these three stages—birth, birthright, and blessing—the murderous brothers were drawn out into the open by a temptation they could not resist: a final victory over the Seed of the Woman. Although they developed a taste for blood, the escalation in violence was driven by more than bestial lust. There was a verbal ministry of provocation. The words of Jesus incited the Jewish rulers, both church and state, to murder Him. And the testimony of Jesus in the mouth of the Apostolic Church led to the bloody massacres of the saints by Jerusalem and Rome.

The Law of God had served as a similar provocation. Paul understood that although it was inherently good, its very goodness made it a magnet for evil.

For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. (Romans 7:11-13)

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. (1 Corinthians 15:56)

As in the Garden of Eden, the giving of the Law called men to be teachers. But in making them more accountable it also made them more vulnerable to judgment (James 3:1).

As in Eden, this vulnerability was recognized by the serpent as an opportunity to attack. The devil even quoted Scripture in his attempts to corrupt Jesus. If he could succeed in doing so, the Father would be forced to disinherit Christ in the way He disinherited Adam.

So although the Law was a lamp for the path of the righteous who would judge themselves and seek the mercy of God, it also made disobedience more attractive to idolaters. It incited them to “multiply” their sins, which eventually brought the serpents out into the open.

However, by the first century, the nationwide reverence for the Scriptures with which God blessed the Jews after the exile had ossified into legalism—the weaponization of the Law. The spring of life was now a whitewashed tomb. The Spirit of the Law had departed. The Law itself was now “possessed.”

The hypocrisy of the Pharisees was worse than the sins that had condemned the nation in centuries past—the “priestly” disobedience in the wilderness, and the “kingly” syncretism with pagan gods in the Promised Land. The Pharisees’ “prophetic” use of burdensome laws to trap, condemn, and destroy the people under the guise of holiness was a far more cunning corruption. And the subtlety of this “hack” was a clue to whose “seed” the elites of Jerusalem really were.

A new sort of provocation was required to expose them, and there was only one option—a perfect (that is, mature) love that matched their perfect hatred. The only worthy opponent to the Mosaic “body of death” was the Gospel of the resurrection.

This was not a wholesale shift from law to grace. Both had been present since the disobedience of Adam and the first sacrifice that atoned for his sin. Instead, it was a shift in emphasis—the same pattern but at the grandest scale. The point of history’s great chiasm had arrived.

Now that the promised salvation had come, the mercy offered to all nations would be the undoing of the thieves who had monopolized and corrupted the sanctuary. Their appropriation of the seat of Moses in order to evade judgment under the Law had led them into a trap.

Like a fiery seraph, God’s Firstborn entered their Garden wielding the one law they were unable to possess.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” (John 13:34)

Freed from their grasp, the perfect law of liberty now confronted them like Nathan the Prophet, revealing their sins to them in its divine mirror (James 1:22-25). It had the power to set them free like Moses; but like the Israelites who worshiped the golden calf after swearing to keep the Law of Moses, it also gave them the opportunity to become sinful beyond measure.

They chose to regard Jesus as their mortal enemy, a pretender who came with guile to steal their inheritance. They hung Him on a tree as a man to be cursed above all men, and broke every law in the book to put Him there.

But He went willingly, turning the tables against them by fulfilling this new law—and to a magnitude that shattered the ground and disqualified every ruler in every sphere.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:7-8)

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in [it]. (Colossians 2:13-15)

Pentecost was Jesus’ second wind in His case against Jerusalem, and an integral part of this revived offense was the written Gospels, accounts inspired by the Spirit who had manifested as forked tongues of fire (Acts 2:3). These documents were more than declarations by the conquering king. Like the decree of Ahasuerus, they were designed by God to entice His hidden enemies out into the light.

Imagine the reaction of a Herod or high priest upon hearing the Gospel of Matthew proclaimed in public! It would have been the same as Saul’s response when he heard of the anointing of David by Samuel.

As the first-century equivalents of the writings of the ancient prophets, these publications were likewise intended to cause offense. The Lord preserved those earlier books for the edification of future generations, which is why Jesus and the apostles quoted them. If the Gospels are not read in the light of this same intention—a provocation of the wicked along with a summoning of the righteous—they are not being read in their comprehensive legal context, and thus cannot be fully understood.

Just as the key to the parable of the sheep and the goats is the Olivet Discourse, so the key to the Olivet Discourse is the entirety of Matthew’s Gospel. The book intentionally follows the legal pattern that governed all biblical covenants, a hierarchical sequence that was written implicitly into Genesis and established explicitly in Exodus. The pattern was also imitated by ancient kings in their legal treaties with nations they conquered and subjugated, requiring tribute in exchange for protection.

The Bible’s legal pattern has five steps, and these are also the foundation of the basic themes of the five Books of Moses:

• It identifies the conquering king as the supreme authority and source of well-being (Genesis);
• It then describes the relationship between the master and his new vassal (Exodus);
• It lists the obligations to be fulfilled by the vassal (including tribute) (Leviticus);
• and the consequences for obeying or disobeying these stipulations (blessings and curses) (Numbers);
• Finally, it records succession arrangements for the time when the current legal parties have passed (Deuteronomy).

Just as God set Israel apart to serve Him, so He also conscripted the Old Testament prophets as His legal representatives. As emissaries from the court of heaven, they came to bless and curse Israel and the nations.

This sequence was employed in various ways in the writings of those prophets to highlight their authority as judges of Israel. They were as empowered and endorsed by God as the judges in centuries past who were appointed to serve under Moses and in the Promised Land (Exodus 18:13-27; Deuteronomy 16:18-20).

It made sense that the works of these delegates followed the same formula as the covenant they were called to enforce. And the same goes for the apostles of Christ. Like the twelve wise arbiters named in the Book of Judges, they would sit upon twelve thrones and judge the tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28). They would bring salvation to God’s people and restrain their oppressors. The irony, of course, was that this ministry began with their legal testimony against the tyrannical rulers of Jerusalem. This was the city where the Lord was crucified, and whose spiritual names were Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon (Revelation 11:8).

As mentioned, Matthew’s Gospel follows this legal pattern. It first establishes Jesus’ bona fides as the promised Son (Genesis). Then, after the Master calls His disciples, Jesus’ ministry begins to supersede that of the Temple (Exodus). The center of the book concerns matters of the Law and the Kingdom (Leviticus). Jesus then enters Jerusalem to bless and to curse (Numbers). Finally, He suffers, rises, and commissions His disciples as His successors on earth (Deuteronomy).

With this Mosaic template in mind, we can see that Matthew’s legal case against Jerusalem comes to a climax in the curses of chapter 23 and the judgments in 24-25. The location of the parable of the sheep and the goats at the end of the “blessings and curses” section sheds even more light upon its legal context. It describes the final word upon the Old Covenant “contest” between the firstborn of Man and the firstborn of God.

Although we can—and must—apply its lessons today (and that is why all Scripture was preserved for us), this legal context means there is no way that the parable can be interpreted as having any direct reference to events beyond the first century. To make such a claim is to demonstrate an ignorance of Jesus’ carefully-considered use of familiar symbols and sequences from the Old Testament. All of the prophets used similar literary devices in order to verify their authority as a legal representative of God.

Matthew’s hearers who had been instructed in the Scriptures from childhood (2 Timothy 3:15), would not only have instantly recognized this Old Testament pattern, but also understood its legal implications. A new word from God meant that the old order was soon to pass away. As John the Baptist had warned, Israel was to be threshed by the Law and the Prophets one last time.

“His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:17)

Matthew’s Gospel was not only a precious promise to the faithful; it was also a premeditated provocation of the wicked. And the apostle commences his goading in the very first sentence of his evangel.

The legal testimony of this covenant document opens with the genealogy of Christ as the heir of Abraham and David. Matthew identifies Jesus not only as the chosen son of miraculous birth, but also as the beloved king who has come to conquer. The list of names was an authentic claim to the throne, so its publication and wide dissemination amongst the common people was a nightmare scenario for the Herods. The cat was not only out of the bag, it was also now irretrievably amongst the pigeons.

Moreover, Matthew deliberately structured the genealogy as a menstrual cycle in order to present Christ as the Seed of the Woman. He omitted some names (presumably those who were spiritually infertile) in order to achieve “fourteen days” from the physical infertility of Abraham to the spiritual fertility of David, another “fourteen days” from David to the barrenness (both physical and spiritual) of the exile in Babylon, and a final “fourteen days” from the deportation to the incarnation of Christ. Since the Woman’s cycle corresponds to the waxing and waning of the moon, David and Christ are the lights in the darkness of the lunar feasts of Moses.

In this way, even the shape of the genealogy was pregnant with meaning. It announced that the “evening” of the Old Covenant was now vanishing in the brightness of the “morning” of the new order (Hebrews 8:13).

Revelation picks up this theme by presenting Israel as the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” And her sworn enemy was the red dragon of the Herods who waited to devour her child (Revelation 12:1-3).

But notice that both the Woman and the dragon are signs in heaven. Both are comprised of Abrahamic “star-sons” (Genesis 15:3-6) but only one is the true Israel. Likewise, Matthew moves from the star-woman to the star-dragon in his record of the attempt by Herod the Great to wipe out the chosen son—the one whose birth was heralded by an actual star.

Even more provocative was Matthew’s inclusion of women in the list of names; and not only women, but scandalous women—Rahab the Canaanite prostitute, Ruth the Moabitess, and “the wife of Uriah,” Bathsheba. These cryptic inclusions were the remedy for the mention of Timna, the mother of Amalek. The Man had come to rescue the Woman from the serpent and present His purified bride, chaste and spotless, at His wedding feast (Ephesians 5:24-27).

It is John who picks up this theme. Israel herself was the woman at the well who had had six “Adamic” husbands but was still waiting for Mr Right (John 4:17-18). She was also the bride for whom Jesus would transform six jars of water into the best of wines (John 2:1-11).

The question for “daughter Zion” was this: Would she be like Esther who was willing to risk all to rescue her people from Agag? Or would she be like Queen Vashti who disobeyed her husband’s request to present her beauty and character as the ideal for all women, and risked causing a rebellion in every noble household (Esther 1:18)? Women, too, can be trusting, beloved sheep or defiant, obstinate goats in their God-given stations. Every common husband is a nobleman as he pictures Christ, and every common wife is a noblewoman as she pictures His Church.

Matthew’s message in his genealogy—for both the men and the women—was that, by the work of Christ, pedigree and past were now not only secondary matters, but had been relegated by Christ to the dustbin of history. Because Christ is the firstborn of God, none of the qualifiers for the firstborn of men (nationality, citizenship, sex) apply to those who are in Him. His inheritance is now their inheritance (Galatians 3:28).

The genealogy, let alone the rest of Matthew’s Good News and its corroborating witnesses, was bad news for the status quo—for the murderous Jewish rulers who prided themselves on being sons of Abraham, and for the murderous Idumean (Edomite) rulers who had become Jews in order to salvage some sort of legacy.

But it gets even better, or worse, depending upon your perspective. As we read further, it becomes apparent that Matthew is also describing Jesus as God’s “firstborn son” by picturing Him as the true “Israel.” Taking a leaf from the literary manual of the Old Testament prophets, he does this by recapitulating the major events of the Pentateuch in the first portion of his Gospel.

The device is a blunt instrument, and Matthew uses it to hammer home Jesus’ claim with the subtlety of Jael’s tent peg. But it is also a brilliant dramatic conceit because its forthright meaning would not be immediately apparent. As the reader continued through the text, recognition of the general themes of the five Books of Moses in its deep structure would suddenly dawn upon its Jewish hearers, resonating unforgettably in their hearts. This Jesus whom they had killed was He who had accompanied them from the beginning: Jesus was the better Adam, Moses, Aaron, and Israel, and He was about to lead them spiritually through a narrow pass into a broad land as the better Joshua.

So in Matthew 24-25, when Jesus employs the accouterments of Solomon’s Temple (priesthood) and palace (kingdom) to portray His step-by-step enthronement, He is likewise using symbol and structure to make a claim—as the better son of David.

After judging Israel under the Law of Moses, He would judge the nations as the one who is greater than Solomon. And with the mission of the Apostolic Church having been completed on earth, the final provocation would be in His own court, and from His own mouth.

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The lost son
(Leviticus – Firstfruits)

The undercurrent of Jacob-and-Esau rivalry in the New Testament is an important interpretive key. Without this crucial context, we are viewing the scenario through a keyhole. A lot of what is written is made unnecessarily ambiguous, even mysterious, and thus vulnerable to misinterpretation.

A good example is the debate over the meaning of “antichrist.” The texts themselves give us little to go on, but there is no need to resort to guesswork. Since the Christ is the chosen son, the long history of switching sons—with motives both good and bad—is loaded into that prefix “anti.”

The word itself can be good or bad. It can mean “against” but it can also mean “instead of.” It often denotes an opponent (the negative sense), but it can also describe a substitute (either positive or negative) or a representative (entirely positive). As we trace the Bible’s ongoing theme of son-switching, it continually flashes back and forth between good and evil, and we observe its flaming sword encompassing all three of these possibilities. But its core sense, whether positive, negative, or a mixture of both, is that of replacement. This would have been obvious to the ancient audience because “antichrist” was a play on a familiar title.

Like Pharaoh’s baker and butler, the true and false kings of the Jews accused each other of being the imposter. The context of the claim of the firstborn upon the Abrahamic inheritance and the throne of David rescues the word “antichrist” from ignorant speculation and needless spectacle. It simply relates to the question of who was the true son, the one who represented the Father (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3), and who was the counterfeit who desired to replace Him.

The father of Herod the Great was known as “Antipater.” The Greek title antipas (or antipatros) was also used by an heir of Alexander the Great. It means “instead of the father” and implies a claim to succession.

After the death of Herod the Great, his kingdom was divided amongst his sons. Herod Antipas was the ruler who played a role in the death of John the Baptist and the trial of Jesus. Matthew alluded to the same title when he wrote of Herod Archelaus, another of Herod’s three sons:

But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. (Matthew 2:22)

The title Antipas was later used symbolically to describe a martyr in the city of Pergamum (Revelation 2:13). Like the spiritual usage of the names Balaam and Jezebel, it was not the actual name of the person but a description of his character. As a son of God, he was a faithful representation of his Father in heaven. If you had seen this godly man, you had “seen the Father” (John 14:9) because he was filled with the Spirit of Christ. In the same way, but in the negative sense, the unbelieving Jews in Smyrna are described as a “synagogue of Satan.” They, too, represented their spiritual father by doing the works he had been doing since the beginning of the world.

However, the “anti” in the title Antipas can itself be switched to the negative. In the stead of the father can quickly become against the father. As a grammatical toggle switch, the prefix easily describes the heir who rightfully receives the succession, or the son who wrongfully seizes it.

We see the latter in the attempts of two of David’s sons to seize his throne. Absalom usurped his father while he still reigned, and even slept with David’s concubines as a notorious part of his claim upon the Davidic succession (2 Samuel 16:21-22). Adonijah later tried to pre-empt the coronation of their younger brother, Solomon, and Bathsheba realized that this could put both her and her youngest son under the Davidic sword (1 Kings 1:21).

The desire to seize or protect an established dynasty often resulted in the murders of family members. Herod the Great had his second wife executed, along with prominent members of her family whom he perceived as rivals. In fear of being usurped, he also executed three of his sons.

In his commentary on the Book of Daniel, James B. Jordan identifies Herod the Great as the willful king in Daniel’s prophecy of the last days of Israel:

And the king shall do as he wills. He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of gods. He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished; for what is decreed shall be done. (Daniel 11:36)

Jordan observes that Herod the Great is not presented as an antichrist, but as an antigod. As the anticreator, he established his own “world” though colossal building projects, both sacred (priesthood) and secular (kingdom). And as the antifather, he even attempted to kill the infant Jesus with the sword. Instead of attaining a “Sabbath” rest through humble submission to God, as Solomon did at the beginning of his reign, he was surrounded by enemies, as Solomon was at the end of his reign. There is no peace for the wicked.

The presumption of divine power was continued by Herod Agrippa, his grandson, the one who ordered the execution of James and the imprisonment of Peter. His voice was proclaimed by grateful Gentiles to be “the voice of a god” (Acts 12:20-23).

Of course, this double-edged word “anti” describes the perennial choice faced by Mankind. Adam could rule as God’s qualified representative, or he could attempt to steal the world and rule as God’s enemy. From that beginning, the ambiguity of “anti” encapsulates the ongoing feud between the natural man and the spiritual man as rival heirs. And in this universal spiritual battle, Jesus Himself was the “younger brother” for whom the Father overlooked Adam in His choice of a “successor.”

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:45-49)

As mentioned, Esau became the symbol for the natural man. Just as Adam was made to be the epitome of God, Edom was the prophets’ poster boy for all resistance to the fulfillment of the Messianic promise.

Although the Herods were not consciously the pawns of Satan, like their father Esau, their beastly outlook was enough to qualify for the role of antagonist in the finale of the Bible. God had destroyed the kingdom of the Edomites, so, by sheer instinct, the dynasty of the Herods gathered, solidified, and forged the age-old Cainite enmity into an “angelic” sword that awaited the rightful heir within the city of his father, David.

The practice of murdering rivals to obtain and maintain a kingdom explains Jesus’ words concerning the “brothers” who were actively opposing His claim.

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. (Matthew 11:12)

So the antichrist and antichrists mentioned by John were Jews who came to perceive the threat posed to the status quo by Christ and Christians. They cannot be identified without the lens of the anti-lineage of the “shadow messiah.”

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. (1 John 2:18-19)

Teaching the truth that Jesus is the better Adam is not enough. Its outworking or expression in the smoldering rivalry between the natural and spiritual sons of Abraham is the bloodline of the drama. It puts a firm finger on the pulse of the New Testament.

Another example of the power of this hermeneutical key is the identification of the lawless individual condemned by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12. Using Edenic imagery, the apostle described the ruler of Jerusalem as a “Man of sin,” an “Adam” who had disobediently enthroned himself in God’s sanctuary. Just as the Lord came to judge Adam in the “wind” (or breath or spirit) of the day (of the Lord), so also Jesus would come to kill the Edomite pretenders “with the breath of His mouth.”

Paul calls this man “the son of perdition,” which is another reference to a dispute between brothers over an inheritance. The phrase is taken as a purely pejorative term, often translated as “the son of destruction,” an equivalent of the offspring of hell. But it is in fact a reference to the disinheritance of a natural heir.

The Greek word carries a more sorrowful connotation than vengeance and destruction—that of a tragic downfall. In this case, it is the ruin of one’s own rebellious child. It is not an annihilation but a cutting off; not a loss of being but a loss of well-being. With tears, Esau sought to change Isaac’s mind concerning the greater material blessing given to Jacob (Hebrews 12:17). The Herods suffered a similar forfeiture of standing, wealth, and succession.

The Latin word from which “perdition” derives also survives in the French, Spanish, and Italian words for losing something. So as the archetype of natural man, Esau was a prodigal son who squandered his inheritance. He was the “lost son” who not only sold his birthright for a bowl of “red stew” (Genesis 25:30), but also disqualified himself from the Messianic promises. For behaving like a Gentile, he was cut off like a foreskin. His uncircumcised heart led to his banishment from the people of God like an Israelite who refused the physical rite (Exodus 17:14).

As a sign of the ruin that was coming upon all of Judea, Judas (Judah) Iscariot is described in the same way.

While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost [ruined] except the son of destruction [ruin], that the Scripture might be fulfilled. (John 17:12)

Paul had the reigning Herod and his puppet high priest in mind in his description of this “Adamite” antichrist. They were the two trees in the Garden-Sanctuary of Herod’s Temple—a counterfeit Tree of Life (priesthood) and a counterfeit Tree of Knowledge (kingdom). Together, they slandered, infiltrated, and persecuted the saints in order to maintain their invalid grasp upon the seat of Moses (church) and the throne of David (state).

But for Paul, along with indignation against the enemies of Christ, there was also a willingness to be “accursed” in the place of these lost brothers (Romans 9:3). Like Jacob, he was willing to give up every earthly good—all of his blessings as an Israelite—for the sake of reconciliation with spiritual “Esau.”

Even those of physical Edomite descent, who were impelled into Judaism by John Hyrcanus and had been circumcised for several generations (Deuteronomy 23:7-8), were actual Jews in every valid sense of the word. But what Jesus requires is a heart circumcised by the Gospel. That divine wound in the inner man is what sets apart the sheep from the goats, the sons of men from the Sons of God.

“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:36-37)

For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God. (Romans 2:28-29)

While self-exaltation was overt in the sins of the rulers and their heirs, it expressed itself more subtly in the spiritual pride of the Pharisees. Jesus condemned them for seeking honor among men instead of the honor that comes from God (John 5:44-47).

And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matthew 23:9-12)

Like Jesus’ death and resurrection, the destruction of Jerusalem would be a victory disguised as a defeat, that is, an expansion by an inversion. As Mary signified in her annunciation song (Luke 1:52), within one generation God would not only bring the mighty down from their thrones, but also exalt the humble. And in doing so He would “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

Just as the conquest of Jericho was the “firstfruits” of Israel’s physical conquest of the Land, so Jerusalem’s removal was the key to the Church’s spiritual conquest of the World. The spiritual Canaanites among the Jews would be utterly disinherited. The kingdom they held so tightly in their Adamic grasp would be given freely to the new people of God, a transcendent spiritual nation that would produce spiritual fruit (Matthew 21:43).

iv
King of the Jews
(Numbers – Pentecost)

To the Jews in Jerusalem and across the empire, the apostles proclaimed a choice of spiritual allegiance. They could maintain their loyalty to the magnificent edifices upon Zion, or they could trust in the promise of a heavenly city with an eternal glory (Hebrews 13:14). This was a choice between the natural and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, something they possessed and something that was only promised.

Since the former continued to grow in grandeur, apparently blessed by God, the latter was possibly nothing more than a delusion—an invention of the followers of that false prophet who, in the manner of His execution, had been demonstrably cursed by God. For Jesus’ friends and enemies alike, the question of His right to the throne of David was central to whether or not His prophecies concerning Jerusalem should be taken seriously.

Their fulfillment would be the conclusive proof of His identity, which is why Jesus repeatedly used His favorite title—“the Son of Man”—in the Olivet Discourse. As a reminder of His claim upon the Messianic promise, it appears seven times in the prophecy: a perfect Adamic “week.” In particular, “the sign of the Son of Man in heaven” speaks of the Lord’s ultimate vindication as the Seed of the Woman, that is, the Son of the Man.

And then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then will mourn all the tribes of the Land, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and glory great. (Matthew 24:30, Greek word order)

Of course, Jesus’ birth, ministry, death, and resurrection were all verifications of authenticity. As fulfillments of various divine pledges they were all vindications in their own right. But the denouement of Israel’s national office as God’s “firstborn” was yet to come. Jesus was the firstborn among many brothers, and the identity of the sons of the living God among the thousands of Israel was about to be revealed (Romans 8:18-30). They were a spiritual people, sons like Jacob (1 Peter 2:5-9), and the natural heirs would be cut off like Esau.

The evidence of Christ’s unseen enthronement in heaven at His ascension came four decades later in the fulfillment of His words concerning the destruction of Jerusalem on earth. This is the event that some of the Jews—including the rulers who pierced Him—would live to see (Matthew 16:27-28; Revelation 1:4-7). But why the forty-year delay?

Firstly, since the Law of Moses required a minimum of two witnesses, the testimony of Jesus was repeated by the apostles. Only then could Jerusalem be executed for murder and adultery.

Secondly, the promise of a definitive sign of the victory of Christ was a provocation that would effectively separate the Jacobs from the Esaus. The spiritual men would cherish such an astounding, unthinkable prophecy, and the natural men would scoff at it. In this regard, the last days of Jerusalem would be just like the days of Noah (2 Peter 3:3-7).

Jesus used “Son of Man” for the seventh and final time to open the parable of the sheep and the goats. While the title “Son of God” was blasphemy to the Jews and an insult to the divinity of Caesar, “Son of Man” was offensive only to the Jews. They understood the Messianic promise to be a legal claim upon the Temple and the throne of David. This supports the case for the fulfillment of the parable in the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem.

In its natural sense, the appellation “son of man” can mean any son of Adam (as in Psalm 8:4). Along with its plural, “sons of men,” it communicated the shared humility of the “everyman,” the Adamic state common to mankind. But in the prophets it came to mean far more. This is because Adam was called to greater things. God always intends to robe the natural in the supernatural. Sons of men were always intended to become Sons of God (Deuteronomy 14:1; 1 John 3:1-3).

In Ezekiel and Daniel, the title describes the office and inheritance from which the Adam had disqualified himself. He was created to be the one who mediated between heaven and earth as God’s legal representative. With that authority he would subdue the entire world—transforming its untamed nature into a holy culture—a godly, glorious civilization.

In Ezekiel, the title relates to the priestly office (the godliness). The prophet is addressed with the moniker “son of man” (that is, ’adam) as the one chosen by God to inspect, judge, and condemn Solomon’s Temple.

In Daniel 7, the title relates to the kingly office (the glory). As explained to Daniel, the “one like a son of man” (that is, enosh, mankind) is actually the saints (Daniel 7:18), the Body of Christ. As a result of His enthronement they would receive an international kingdom, one that will never be destroyed.

Based on Daniel 7, Jesus’ use of the title was a universal claim. As the fifth empire, His kingdom would encompass not only the Jewish Land, but also the Gentile Sea. However, it was the component of mediation that made Him an immediate threat to the Jewish incumbents.

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. (1 Timothy 2:5-6)

The rulers of the Temple knew what “the Son of Man” meant, but they would not risk their monopoly for a commoner, let alone a counterfeit. They reacted as expected when Jesus told them that He, as the Son of Man, would be enthroned in heaven.

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” (Mark 14:62)

This confession from Christ was a deliberate provocation. As He planned, it secured a unanimous verdict from the court—the sentence of death (Matthew 26:63-66).

Moreover, the mention of clouds was a claim to the authority of God. It is the Lord who comes in judgment riding upon the clouds (Psalm 68:4, 33; Psalm 104:3; Isaiah 19:1; Ezekiel 1:4). Indeed, Jesus had just been given that very authority when
the cloud of glory descended upon Him at His transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8).

But “coming with the clouds” was also a threat that the Lord would descend upon Herod’s completed Temple in the way that Yahweh’s chariot-cloud of glory descended upon the completed Tabernacle at Mount Sinai (Exodus 40:34-35). Those who were making a pretense of judging Jesus according to the Law of Moses would be judged by Him according to the Law of Moses.

The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary. (Psalm 68:17)

A final warning occurred just before the beginning of Jewish War in AD66. Josephus records that before sunset on the secondary Passover, “chariots were seen in the air over the whole country, and armed battalions speeding through the clouds and encircling the cities.”

The glory of Zion would be suddenly switched for the terror of Sinai. By the faithful testimony of the apostles, the burning mountain of the Jewish “Land” would be cast into the Gentile “Sea” (Mark 11:23; Revelation 8:8). Those who believed that testimony now assembled at a better mountain that they might receive an everlasting inheritance (Hebrews 12:18-24).

Interestingly, in Matthew 24:27, 37, and 39, Jesus uses a different word for His “coming.” The more common word simply means to either come or go, but this word, parousia, carries the idea of presence or manifestation. It was also used as a technical expression for the public appearance of a visiting king or emperor. Jesus’ use of this word meant that His visitation would be the public revelation of something previously reserved to the court of heaven—His enthronement as the true King of the Jews.

This is why Jesus later makes mention of His royal glory and His entourage of angels (Matthew 25:31). His use of Solomonic imagery there makes His claim to the throne explicit. But the discourse is also the culmination of Matthew’s case for Jesus being the son of David—a better Solomon—a case that he began in the early chapters of his Gospel.

After his “Davidic” genealogy, Matthew quotes from Isaiah concerning the son of an ancient Davidic king whose birth was a sign of judgment (Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7:10-17). He then records the wise men quoting Micah concerning the Davidic birthplace of the true king of Judah (Matthew 2:6), and ends the chapter with the cryptic reference to Jesus being a “Nazarene” (Matthew 2:23). This, also, is a Davidic claim. It is not a direct citation from the Old Testament but a clever pun on Nazareth and a Hebrew word for “branch.” Like Zerubbabel after the exile, Jesus was the new shoot from the stump of Jesse that the Herods, despite their best attempts, would not be able to cut off (Isaiah 11:1-5).

In the heart of his treatise, Matthew highlights numerous royal moments in Jesus’ ministry. He was anointed by the Father at His baptism (Matthew 3:13-17) and made king de jure at His transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13).

The triumphal entry was His public claim upon Jerusalem, with the crowds shouting the praises of the Son of David just as they had celebrated the return of His father a millennium earlier (Matthew 21:1-11). The reference was not lost on the rulers of the city, and the provocation displeased them as much as the original event had displeased Saul (1 Samuel 18:6-9).

But Matthew’s Gospel stops just short of the ascension. He deliberately ends with Jesus’ echo of the promise made to Joshua before the conquest of the Land. By His Spirit, He would be with them in their spiritual battle until the end of the age, that is, the end of the Old Covenant order. But His command to now go and baptize Gentiles as well as Jews was the set up for another provocation of the authorities (Matthew 28:20). As mentioned, the conversion of Gentiles was a strategy calculated to provoke the Jews to jealousy so that some of those who had previously rejected Christ might be saved (Romans 11:13-14).

It was the Son of David’s enthronement in heaven that began His actual reign over the Jews. And unlike the Herods—and King Saul—He was a merciful king. By forgiving His murderers, Jesus had dispensed to the Jews one generation of grace. Instead of cutting them off immediately like Sodom and Gomorrah, He gave them time to decide (Romans 9:27-29). The “sign of the Son of Man in heaven” that would bring their end was delayed for forty years.

As in the days of Moses, this “wilderness” delay was a time to thresh the wheat from the chaff. During the hiatus, the words of Christ were a living sword that discerned the hearts of men. It cut up the sons of Abraham as a sacrifice, even to the joints of Jacob (Genesis 32:32; Hebrews 4:12).

Once the process was complete, the armies of heaven that had been commanded to sheathe their swords at the crucifixion were set loose. With the righteous set apart from the wicked, the heavenly host accompanied Christ to bring down the curses of the covenant (Matthew 26:53; Revelation 7:1-3; 19:14). The wisest of all judges then handed Herod’s Jerusalem to Caesar for utter destruction in the same way that David’s city was handed to Nebuchadnezzar.

The primary difference between the Babylonian invasion and the first-century judgment of Jerusalem was that all of the mediatorial “machinery”—the Law, the Temple, and the holy city—was not only corrupt this time, but also utterly obsolete. What Jesus was about to legally abolish at the cross by the shedding of His blood He would return to demolish in AD70. The altar of Ezra would never be re-established; the city of Nehemiah would never be rebuilt.

But that was because this new Solomon would also come to dedicate a new Temple, a spiritual one in which the blood of bulls and goats is a desecrating sacrilege. This Temple was also a spiritual city in which the blood of Passover lambs was now a detestable abomination.

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. (Revelation 21:22-23)

Jesus contrasted the wise and foolish house builders (Matthew 7:24-27) for the same reason He contrasted the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). He was condemning the Temple-building kings who considered themselves to be as wise as Solomon. They refused to heed His warnings in the same way that Judah’s kings refused to hear the words of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 36:23-24; 37:1-2).

The house of the Herods was founded upon the sand of the Sea, and a “flood” of Gentile troops—like those of Assyria and Babylon—was on the horizon (Daniel 9:26).

Since the ministry of the apostles included a legal case against Jerusalem, we can be certain that the entire apostolic deposit was written between the crucifixion and the completion of Herod’s Temple. As a result, the primary villain in the New Testament becomes easy to identify. Contrary to what many scholars will tell you, it is not Rome but apostate Judaism. To claim otherwise, as many theologians do, demonstrates an astonishing failure to follow the plot.

Much attention is given by historians to the imperial cult of Rome and the ensuing persecutions of the saints under Nero and Domitian. This is wrongly assumed by many to be the key to the conflict described in the Book of Revelation. Not only does this ignore the legal context of the prophecy, but no convincing evidence of a Domitianic persecution of Christians exists, and the Neronian persecution was a personal matter, not an undertaking of the state.

Roman rule was appallingly brutal at times, but this was not the product of unbridled rage. It was a calculated, disciplinary strategy designed to keep the peace through intimidation. Despite the use of local collaborators (the Roman governor even appointed Jewish high priests), Roman officials were obliged to remain impartial in local disputes.

The constraints of the Pax Romana are the reason why Pilate ended up crucifying Jesus. As Scripture mentions and history confirms, he had no problem with offending the Jews. Scripture and history also describe a man who had a stronger stomach than most when it came to the use of violence to maintain law and order (Luke 13:1). And it was Pilate’s brutality that eventually led to his removal from office. Even Rome had its limits, and Pilate needed to keep his superiors at a distance because of his reprehensible conduct. Only the unjust death of Christ could pacify the irate Jews and keep him out of trouble.

So despite being corrupt, ruthless, and mean-spirited, Pilate was not “antiChristian.” And neither were his oppressive Roman masters. The Book of Acts records numerous instances where the “police state” Roman troops protected believers from their Jewish attackers. And in the bigger picture, Caesar did not even recognize Christianity as an entity distinct from Judaism until Nero blamed Christians for the burning of Rome.

In contrast, the claims of the carpenter were a bitter family affair for the Jewish rulers. Roman power was but a hammer with which to crucify Christ, and a cudgel with which to bludgeon His disciples. Jesus and the apostles “slaughtered” their enemies in the arena of public debate. So for these cunning manipulators, Rome was a wild animal to be goaded and let loose.

Argue your case with your neighbor himself,
and do not reveal another’s secret,
lest he who hears you bring shame upon you,
and your ill repute have no end.
(Proverbs 25:9-10)

As in the days of the Old Testament prophets, the rejection of the Word by the rulers of Israel led to the marshaling of the nations instead of their conversion. They unwittingly called upon themselves the judgment of God, stirring up the empire against the Church in the same way that the Jews had stirred up the Gentiles against Paul (Acts 14:2, 19; 17:5, 13; 21:27-36). Revelation depicts this as a beast rising from the Sea (Revelation 12:17-13:1).

With this in mind, it is clear that “the great city” of Revelation is not Rome, as many believe, but Jerusalem. Seated upon the beast, the harlot city slandered the saints and handed them over to Rome in the same way that the Jews slandered Christ and handed Him over to Pilate.

The Gentiles only factored in as extras in this Jewish drama. The nations of the empire remained a secondary matter until after the desolation of Judaism. They were converted to provoke fellow Jews to jealousy and salvation, or they were manipulated using slander to persecute fellow Jews to oblivion. This was yet another demonstration of Israel’s God-given spiritual influence over the Gentiles, for good or for ill.

The Gentile provocation included the wise men who knew all about the birth of Christ while Herod and his advisers did not (Matthew 2:1-4); the Canaanite woman who persisted in faith despite Jesus’ feigned partiality (Matthew 15:21-28); and the centurion and guards who shamed the Jews by recognizing Christ as the Son of God (Matthew 27:54).

In an ironic way, the Gentile provocation even included Pilate, who famously ordered the title “King of the Jews” to be affixed to the cross of Christ. Since this was the title given to Herod the Great by the Roman rulers who had appointed him, it was a deliberate humiliation of the Jews. They desired neither the Herods nor Christ, and despised Rome’s royal prerogative for the dispensation of the office, whether in reality or in mockery.

But in spiritual terms, and by God’s intention, the Jews now had two kings by Roman decree. Following the Law of Moses, both were chosen by God according to His holy purposes, and both were from among their own brothers (Deuteronomy 17:14-15). Of course, one king was a Saul and the other a David. So the clashing claims of Christ and Herod upon the kingdom, like the tension between Saul and David, were a federal equivalent of the domestic strife between Jacob and Esau.

When “the day and the hour” finally came, the ravaging of Judea by Roman decree was an ironic vindication of the words inscribed by the Roman prefect. Jesus was the king of the Jews after all. And this brings us to a further example of the interpretive power of this biblical theme. It explains another of the New Testament’s “chestnut” texts—the question from the disciples to Jesus before His ascension.

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6)

Although Daniel had predicted the fragile “marrying and giving in marriage” of the Adamic red clay of the Herods with the iron of the Roman empire, he did not give a specific time when the kingdom would be set up.

As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed… (Daniel 2:43-44)

Jesus had said that the kingdom of God would not come visibly. Like the wind, the work of the Spirit is known by its results (John 3:8). Indeed, it was already among them, but unperceived (Luke 17:20-21). Then He ate and drank with His disciples “in the kingdom” after His resurrection, as He had promised (Matthew 26:29; Acts 1:3; 10:41).

Since the disciples knew all of this, what did they mean by the restoration of the kingdom to Israel? Were they expecting a victory against the Romans? Or perhaps, as some claim, a future, earthly city for ethnic Jews? Was the ministry of mediation to be returned some day to Jewish priests?

We misunderstand the disciples’ question because we fail to ask from whom Israel’s kingdom would be taken that it might be restored. It was not the occupying Gentiles, or any Gentiles for that matter. It was the “older brother,” the house of Herod that had usurped the Davidic throne, and its religious toadies.

After the birth of Jesus, it was not safe to be recognized as a descendant of the house of David. The progressive paranoia of Herod the Great in his advancing years resulted in increasing executions of “Davidic princes.” They were hunted down by Roman armies as royal rivals to the Caesar of Rome.

Neither was the office of high priest any longer the inheritance of the sons of Aaron. It had been pilfered and turned into a political office that was bought and sold to actual hirelings.

As the Son of Man, the Messianic Seed promised to Adam, Jesus was the Abrahamic heir who would now receive the true throne of David in heaven. This would necessitate the dispossession of those who currently laid claim to it on earth—the sons of Edom, of both physical and spiritual descent.

So the disciples wanted to know when Jesus was going to take the throne from the Herods and restore it to the Jews. Since the Herods were, for all intents and purposes, Jews, the disciples used the name Israel to highlight the nature of the conflict. Since Jesus was now ascending to heaven, their question concerned the restoration of the kingdom to Israel from Edom.

This scandalous transfer of the inheritance would be every bit as outrageous, and every bit as righteous, as Jacob’s theft from Esau. The elder was still ruling over the younger, so the disciples were asking Jesus to do a Rebekah, to switch the sons—to “love” Jacob, and to “hate” Esau—by means of an act of divine cunning. The Solomonic wisdom of this righteous plot is explained in great detail by Paul in Romans 9-11, and he concludes with a song of praise.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36)

Jesus did indeed come to Jerusalem like a thief (Matthew 24:43; 1 Thessalonians 5:2-4; 2 Peter 3:10; Revelation 16:15). That was the point at which the kingdom, as the work of the Spirit, would finally become manifest to all.

The Day of Pentecost, when Peter announced to the men of Israel the enthronement of Christ as their lord and king (Acts 2:36), was the official coming of the kingdom. But Jesus was informing the disciples that the sending of His Spirit was only the beginning of the process. And this answers yet another contentious question.

Attempting to pinpoint the advent of the kingdom is a futile endeavor because it is misguided. The kingdom of Christ is His rule over the hearts of men—the law of the Spirit.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. (Romans 14:17-19)

The kingdom of God is not a revolution, nor is it an attack; it is a transformation. The Spirit works slowly within men and nations, multiplying quietly as leaven in the dough of society (Matthew 13:33). And like the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, this gradual task requires much faith, courage, and patience.

The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. But the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. (Deuteronomy 7:22-23)

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:25-26)

Lamech, Nimrod, Pharaoh, and Herod the Great resorted to the devil’s methods in order to build their kingdoms quickly. But the kingdom of God is a project akin to the construction of the great cathedrals of Europe over many centuries. The Abrahamic oak takes time to grow because it is being built to last.

The kingdom did not arrive all at once but in stages. And the same is true of it today. We can identify its frontiers by the miracles that occur to confirm the Word when it first arrives. These frontiers are not purely territorial, either. Wherever the saints take holy risks, God honors them with extraordinary signs and exceptional answers to prayer.

And as it was with the Old Testament kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of God arrives in stages both large and small. The smaller ones are like growth rings in a tree. There are times of humbling and suffering for individual saints and assemblies followed by times of exaltation, vindication, and celebration.

But the big picture is only threefold, and the Book of Genesis gives us the blueprint. The three distinct domains of the primeval physical order—the Garden, the Land, and the World—are being measured out in the spiritual conquest of the nations. The disciples obviously understood this, which is why they asked the question concerning the rulers of the Land.

Jesus, the better Adam, personally fulfilled the Garden stage of the kingdom by conquering death. The disciples realized that the next step in the campaign required Him to deal with their “Cainite” brothers—the rulers of Judea.

This reinstatement of the rightful heirs was not some far off event, and that explains Jesus’ apparently oblique answer. Although He denied the disciples a knowledge of the time of the restoration, the Lord did reveal to them the means.

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the [Land].” (Acts 1:7-8)

The word “martyrs” derives from the Greek word for “witnesses.” Jesus was saying that the switch between the sons of light and the sons of perdition would be achieved through the testimony and suffering of the Apostolic Church in His name.

Their martyrdom would complete the offense of Jerusalem, after which the blood of all the murdered prophets from Abel onwards would be avenged upon that generation (Matthew 23:29-36). Only then, with its first attacker—the jealous sibling—taken out of the picture, could the Gospel proceed unhindered into the World. And that is a clue as to what Jesus meant by “the least of my brethren” in the parable of the sheep and the goats.

v
The little brothers
(Deuteronomy – Trumpets)

A brood of vipers

Fulfilling his office as the final Old Testament prophet, John the Baptist confronted the reigning king of the Jews in the manner of his predecessors. As in the case of David and his mighty men, and the mistreatment of the ancient prophets, persecution by the hostile monarch only hastened the judgment of the old order. Moreover, the sufferings endured only served to purify and prepare the hearts of those who were going to inherit it. They learned to rely upon God, which is the key to ruling the earth.

But during the ministry of Jesus and the apostles, the civic rulers increasingly took a back seat in the proceedings. In the same way that the Gentiles were a secondary matter in the very Jewish drama of the New Testament, so also the kings of Judah were not the primary enemy of the Church. This “New Covenant” was a different sort of battle. Flesh would be flayed and blood would be spilled, yet this war was not a fight against flesh and blood.

Although the animosity of the Herods towards the Christians was “brotherly,” their brutality was like that of Pilate—it was borne of political expediency. Like Esau’s plans for Jacob, their treatment of John, Christ, James, and Peter was beastly, but it was not manifestly demonic. The diplomatic marriages, political assassinations, and religious persecutions were pragmatic affairs, deeds motivated by the jealousies common to all kings.

The rivalry at this level was that between the natural man and the spiritual man. It was like the instinctive fear of four-footed beasts in the face of encroaching settlement by upright men. And indeed, that is precisely how it was described in Daniel 7. The time of the beast empires was coming to an end; the empire of the Man was at hand.

In terms of sacred architecture, the antagonism of the Herods was the bloody territoriality of a dragon in the “Land,” not the poisonous resentment of a serpent in the “Garden.” That was the domain of the religious leaders.

This explains why the enemy is described in Revelation 12 as both a dragon and a serpent. Despite their mutual suspicion, the Jewish church and state served together as the mouth of the devil, but they did so in different ways. The state was a devourer of flesh while the serpent was a fountain of false doctrine. Herod might have been as cunning and bloodthirsty (and red!) as a fox (Luke 13:31-32), but the true enemies of the Gospel were a freshly-hatched nest of treacherous snakes.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matthew 3:7)

Because the dominion of Christ is first and foremost a spiritual kingdom, the priests and the teachers of the Law were the first to be offended by the ministries of John and Jesus. As the crowds increased, the authority of the elites decreased. They were losing their claim over the hearts of the people. The commoners already regarded the human traditions of these spiritual “fathers” with suspicion. Now they also had doctrinal ammunition.

An unexpected prophecy from the High Priest was the catalyst for the initial plot to put Jesus to death (John 11:45-53). His tongue was commandeered by God like the tongue of Balaam, and he declared the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ death for the faithful among Israel. This was clearly a warning from God, so the hostility from the Jewish council in response to it was more than “earthy” Edomite rivalry. It was an overt, ferocious, and self-aware spiritual opposition to the kingdom of heaven. They would crouch at the door, lying in wait to shed innocent blood.

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.” (Matthew 23:13)

For these opponents, the murder of Christ was a religious victory. Kings would come and kings would go, but Judaism was eternal. The chief priests’ public allegiance to Caesar was an acceptable secular means to a sacred end (John 19:15-16).

Likewise, the ridiculous stories of Jesus’ resurrection were easily contradicted and dismissed in the mass media, as were the fraudulent claims concerning His supposed appearances to the disciples. Just like the lies told in order to condemn Him, the blasphemous tales and slanders spread by the Jews about Christ were a necessary evil. They were delivering the true and ancient religion of yet another false prophet emboldened by delusions of grandeur. Then it would be back to business as usual.

There was no attempt by Pilate or the Jewish leaders to arrest Jesus’ disciples when they returned from Galilee to Jerusalem. So it seems neither authority believed that they constituted a threat without the incitements of their master.

Peace was apparently restored, only to be shattered by the amazing events of the Day of Pentecost. It was a vindication for the believers, and the worst nightmare of the enemies of God.

To understand the spiritual proceedings, we must turn to sacred architecture once again. The four Gospel testimonies of Jesus related to the daubing of sacrificial blood upon the four horns of the Bronze Altar (Exodus 29:12). Since that altar pictured the four-cornered Land, and the bull pictured the servant-king, the work of Christ was a foundation of something greater.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)

Jesus’ ministry was preparation for the holy fire of the Lord that would fall upon the sacrifice in the Book of Acts. The Spirit would transform the flesh into fragrant smoke—an acceptable offering that would rise to heaven and please God (Exodus 29:18).

And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke… (Acts 2:19)

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing… (2 Corinthians 2:15)

Only the obedience of reformation, the submission of the flesh, can bring the divine fire of revival. The smoke of the testimony is not only a transformation, but also a multiplication. Thousands of Jews believed when they heard Peter’s sermon.

The veil of Moses

However, the response of the Jewish leaders to the fresh challenge posed by Pentecost is just as important to the story. The rivalry of the natural man is a key to comprehending the events in the Old Testament and the hostility from the Herods.

But the devil’s immediate response to the sending of the Holy Spirit explains the supernatural nature of the conflict in the remainder of Acts, in the Epistles, and in Revelation. The fight was now an overtly spiritual war between the new people of God and its freshly-minted satanic counterfeit.

A true king is a spiritual leader. He is one who not only protects his realm and governs it with wisdom, but also owns the hearts of his people. As mentioned, it was the love of the Israelites for David that kindled the jealousy of Saul. It was a similar loyalty to Jesus that enraged the spiritual rulers of Jerusalem after the Day of Pentecost. Although they had no loyalty to the Herods per se, they were willing to kill for the preservation of the spiritual order represented by Herod’s Temple.

But Jesus’ apostles proclaimed that the salvation promised through the ages had now come. Those who believed were to be blessed. Those who did not were to be cursed. Predictably, this fresh, fiery blessing of “Jacob” stoked the stale wrath of “Esau.”

…and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” (Genesis 27:41)

Like Abel, the saints were victimized by their “Cainite” countrymen. But we tend to overlook the fact that, as with His own arrest, sufferings, and death, Jesus was the architect of the entire situation. The evil that their brothers intended for them, God intended for their good; not only that they might receive a greater inheritance, but also that many people would be spared (Genesis 50:20).

The Gospels describe how Jesus incrementally turned up the spiritual heat. He killed the words of Moses and raised them from the dead, revealing not only their true meaning, but also how inept were the teachers of the Law (Matthew 7:29). His marvelous teachings not only exposed these self-styled experts as uninspired, unteachable imposters; it also brought their pride out into the open for all to see. Instead of humbling themselves before the Master and joining His disciples, they responded with a fiery indignation.

But in order to bring an end to the bad-blood “Land” rivalry between the royal sons of Jacob and Esau, Jesus had to bring this simmering, seething, “Garden” jealousy of the Jews to the boil.

“I came to cast fire on the [Land], and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on [the Land]? No, I tell you, but rather division.” (Luke 12:49-51)

It was the burning envy of the Jews that stirred up the common people at His crucifixion (Matthew 27:18). So the Lord would fight fire with fire. The Day of Pentecost set Jerusalem, Judea, and eventually the entire empire “ablaze.”

However, after first kindling the holy zeal of the saints, the Lord then also kindled the unholy hatred of their brothers who instinctively sensed them to be a threat.

Just as He took His Spirit from Saul and gave it to David, so also He took the anointing oil from Judaism and poured it out as fire upon all those who believed—both Jews and Gentiles. This commenced the transfer of the inheritance.

Just as He sent an evil spirit to trouble Saul, so also He cast Satan out of the court of heaven and threw him down as “lightning” onto the Jewish Land and Gentile Sea (1 Samuel 16:13-15; Luke 10:18). This commenced the judgment of Jerusalem.

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the [Land], and his angels were thrown down with him… Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O [Land and Sea], for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” (Revelation 12:9, 12)

The coming of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost changed the game, and the devil’s only feasible response to this gambit was a counter-revival. Like the sons of Aaron, he introduced “strange fire,” a foreign spirit, to the worship (Leviticus 10:1-3). It was as animating and unifying as the Holy Spirit, but in a shadowy relief.

Revelation describes this counterfeit multiplication as anti-incense, a cloud of smoke from the abyss with the stench of brimstone. Alluding to the Babylonian troops in the Book of Joel, its “believers” are a plague of spiritual locusts upon the Land (Revelation 9:1-6). They have “hair as women” because they considered themselves to be holy warriors, Nazirites like Samson and Samuel. They would darken and devour the Land for “five months,” which was the time between Pentecost and Trumpets. This anti-church would “minister” against the saints until the Roman armies surrounded their city for a great, and ironic, Day of Atonement.

As an anti-Pentecost, this “strange fire” filled the House of God, and then the house of Israel, with demons.

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)

Why seven spirits? This was a counterfeit Lampstand. The Law of Moses was no longer a light to the path of the Jews, as it had been for David (Psalm 119:105). Moses was now a veil over their eyes (2 Corinthians 3:12-18), and they were walking in darkness—the blind leading the blind (Matthew 15:14).

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23)

The total of eight spirits now in the house indicates that this demonized religion was a “new creation.” And this explains the novel nature of the Church’s first sworn enemy.

The devil’s right hand

The sending of the Spirit opened the eyes of many Jews to what they had done to their own Messiah. They were like Adam in the Garden, and God was ready to forgive them. But it also raised up a more dangerous kind of sinner, one for whom crucifying the Christ was not enough (Hebrews 6:6). Like David, a faithful Jew had to not only cut off the head of this Christian invader, but also to rout and plunder the entire body (1 Samuel 17:51-53).

“They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.” (John 16:2)

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, claimed that the Christians were the true heirs of the promises, as sons like Jacob. He also condemned the Jewish rulers as murderers of the prophets, just like their fathers. As those who were “uncircumcised in heart and ears,” they would soon be disinherited, as sons like Esau.

This “crossing of the arms” was a transfer of the spiritual heritage of Israel. So the result of Stephen’s legal testimony was the birth of a spiritual envy, a demonic zeal that far surpassed the jealousy of the Herods or the animosity of the Pharisees in its intensity. For those who claimed to be the Sons of God, the fiery furnace of spiritual Babylon was suddenly seven times hotter (Daniel 3:19).

And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. (Acts 7:56-58)

Cousin Amalek was the first to attack Israel after the exodus, and this furious Pharisee named Saul was the first to mount an attack against the Jewish Church. Just as Amalek was the “first among the nations” (Numbers 24:20), Saul was “the first of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15).

Like Ham and Amalek, he was the bad little brother, one of untimely birth (1 Corinthians 15:8) who desired the blessing of the firstborn. But since that firstborn was now Jesus, Agag had taken on a new form and risen from the dust. Thus it was that Israel’s ancient Sanctuary enemy was “born again,” raised from the grave as a counterfeit “firstborn from the dead.”

Moreover, Saul was the antithesis of Stephen. Whereas the witnesses saw the face of the first martyr transformed into that of an angel as he reflected the glory of Christ, Saul was transformed by his rage against such blasphemous claims. As the evil twin of the martyr, he was no mere serpent; he was an angel of death, a thrice unholy seraph.

…for from the serpent’s root will come forth an adder, and its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent. (Isaiah 14:29)

Although Christ was out of reach, His followers were well within Saul’s Adamic grasp. As the “firstborn” of this new breed of spiritual Amalekite, he became the first among many venomous brothers who would torment the Church.

As Amalek was the Edomite’s Edomite, so Saul of Tarsus was the Hebrew’s Hebrew, the Pharisee’s Pharisee (Philippians 3:5-6). His zeal was like that of Phinehas, the son of Aaron who slew the man and the woman while they were in the act of defiling the Sanctuary of God (Numbers 25:6-8). With his nostrils kindled by the idolatrous lies of the Christians, Saul’s anger was the fury of Yahweh, and he would stop this plague of spiritual adultery.

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. (Acts 9:1-2)

Unlike Phinehas, this was not a zeal according to knowledge (Romans 10:2). But like Phinehas, Saul’s zealousness set him above his brothers for honor. This qualified him to be the two-edged sword of the Sanhedrin in the fire-breathing mouth of the Herodian dragon. The “ministry” that he founded was the reason that Jesus came against harlot Jerusalem to avenge the saints in exactly the same manner (Revelation 19:15).

Revelation 16:16 picks up the Amalekite theme as a factor in its description of the counterfeit church of demonized Judaism. This text speaks of Jerusalem at the height of its persecuting power, when Nero Caesar also turned against the Christians, in the final years before the Jewish War.

As usual, the oracle concerning Amalek is encrypted in biblical symbolism. But the strategy is recognizable: “Agag” deceives the authorities; under his spell, they muster the necessary allies; united by the lie, they attack the unprotected people of God; finally, Amalek is put “under the ban” and destroyed for entering the Sanctuary and touching God’s holy things—in this case, His holy people. As a “Garden” enemy, the vengeance upon him is not Man’s but God’s (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19).

The true Church is the army of kings whose way is from “the rising of the sun.” These warriors were the true Nazirites, dawning like Samson (whose name means “sun”) to dispel the spiritual darkness. Marching from the east, they were the true seed of Abraham, the sons who obeyed the call of the Spirit and came out of spiritual Chaldea (Jerusalem) to inherit the promises through patient faith (Jeremiah 51:44-45; Revelation 18:4).

In contrast, the false church was deceived by demons. The three frog spirits from below were the unclean, satanic counterfeit of the holy dove of the Spirit from above. These creeping things chirp in the darkness, like the mediums who sat in ritual pits and mimicked nocturnal animals in order to summon the dead (Isaiah 8:19). Having refused the counsel of God in the mouths of the apostles, and being denied any divine guidance from their wise men, the rulers of Israel were once again consulting with witches in the manner of King Saul (1 Samuel 28:7-20).

“…and all nations were deceived by your sorcery.” (Revelation 18:23)

The threefold lie bound the dragon (the Herodian devil in the Land), the beast (the Caesar summoned from the Sea by the devil), and the false prophet (demonized Judaism in the Garden) together in an unholy alliance. These three powers all detested one other, so they were strange bedfellows, united only in their hatred of the Church.

And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. (Revelation 16:16).

In the sevenfold sequence of bowls of judgment, the sixth bowl corresponds to Joshua, and this is the first clue to its meaning.

The second clue comes from John, who points us to the Hebrew for the meaning of “Armageddon.” To indicate that this is a Jewish dispute, there is no Greek equivalent given.

The third clue is the Hebrew meaning. “Har” means mountain and “Maged” means feasting or assembly. The location is not the battlefield of Megiddo because there is no mountain there. Instead, the allusion is to the battle at Mount Sinai between the assembled troops of Joshua and Amalek (Exodus 17:8-16). The symbolism pits the hosts of light against the hosts of darkness who want to prevent the saints from inheriting the promises.

Although the Land, and then the World, were both drawn into this spiritual war, it was essentially a battle over the Garden. The Law was weaponized by the serpent to execute Adam and Eve. Since all the Lord’s people, “both men and women,” were now prophets, the only recourse for the rulers of Jerusalem—the great city that murdered its prophets—was to kill them all.

As the mature fruit of the seed planted in Saul of Tarsus, this frenzied Amalekite mentality in the final years of Jerusalem was the other bookend on the apostolic era.

Even before his conversion, Saul was responsible—although unwittingly—for the miraculous blossoming of the Church. In the spirit of Haman, he requested letters, an official decree, that gave him the authority to attack God’s people. But his ravaging of the Church scattered the saints from Jerusalem, and they carried the Gospel wherever they fled.

As if that were not bad enough, his confrontation with Christ and miraculous conversion nipped the persecutions in the bud. Saul’s blindness was cured (the devil’s leprous scales fell from his eyes), and he was filled with a godly zeal motivated by love. The sword in his right hand was replaced with the Gospel, and the letters from the High Priest on earth were replaced with his letters from the High Priest in heaven.

As in the Book of Esther, this initial Amalekite plot backfired. Jesus was in heaven, and the saints were still multiplying on earth. So Satan resorted to a new strategy.

The old Sanctuary was now in his possession, and the men and women who followed Christ had been cast out as if they were Adam and Eve. But the saints had established new sanctuaries across the empire that could spring up in any common house. Fortunately, like the unwalled cities of Israel after the exile, they were low-hanging fruit that was ripe for the picking.

A murderous “Saul” was still on the throne in Jerusalem, and his opponents were still on the run. So the troubling spirit called for men like Doeg the Edomite to attack the priests of God, those who were in charge of the bread and the wine.

Hath God said?

Israel’s confrontation with Amalek occurred right after the Lord sent bread from heaven and summoned water from the earth—an inversion of the natural order. But before these two miracles of providence, the Lord had made the bitter waters of the wilderness sweet (Exodus 15:22-25). Like the serpent on the pole, the cross of Christ, and the conversion of Paul, this was also a reversal of the natural order. That which was a curse in the eyes of men was transformed into a life-preserving blessing for the faithful.

Revelation draws upon the bitter waters of Marah to describe the false doctrine propagated by the demonized Jewish rulers after Satan was cast out of heaven.

The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter. (Revelation 8:10-11)

The rivers and springs refer to the spiritual outflow of the “Edenic” Sanctuary on Zion. After the ascension of Christ to heaven, the “Judaizing” lies of the devil increased in force until they became a flood (Revelation 12:15).

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils… (1 Timothy 4:1 KJV)

This explains the vehemence of Paul’s rebuke of Peter for refusing to eat with Gentiles, as well as his castigation of the Galatians for allowing themselves to be bewitched by such teachers (Galatians 2:11-3:1). As one who had drunk deeply from this well, Paul knew from bitter experience what was in the water.

The name of the star even provides us with the devil’s recipe. Wormwood appears eight times in the Old Testament, and this bitter herb—favored by goats and camels—is always used figuratively. In Deuteronomy 29:18, it is the bitter fruit of idolatry. In Amos 5:7 and 6:12, it is the perversion of justice. Proverbs 5:3-4 contrasts the sweet attractions of an immoral woman with the bitter end of committing adultery. In Jeremiah 9:15 and 23:15, God gives His people and their false prophets wormwood to drink as a punishment for their sin. In Lamentations 3:15 and 19, the prophet describes his sufferings as gall from the Lord.

The symbolic invocation of Wormwood thus describes the false doctrine of the Temple as a potent cocktail, one that promised life but would bite like a serpent and sting like an adder (Proverbs 23:31-33). Like the Tree of Knowledge, the promise of power is intoxicating for the wicked. Its wine is too potent for those who lack the temperance of humility before God.

But Wormwood was also used as a cure for numerous medical conditions. Even the devil’s lies are prescribed by the Great Physician for the ultimate purification and salvation of Israel. Christ Himself received a bitter cup in Gethsemane, and was given gall to drink by those who crucified Him. As it turned out, the false doctrine of antichrist was a crafty extension of the Pentecostal tactic of the Spirit.

After Israel’s sin with the golden calf at the first Pentecost, the powdered idol was drunk by the idolaters, after which about three thousand Israelites were slain (Exodus 32:19-28), the same number who believed when Peter preached (Acts 2:41). This Wormwood mixture, as an anti-communion, likewise identified who was on the Lord’s side, and it did so just as effectively as the wine of the New Covenant. This is because they were, in fact, two sides of the same cup. The promises of God were offered by Jesus as an Edenic test of discernment between good and evil. The Kingdom Tree brings good to those who receive it from God, but evil to those who receive it from the devil.

The mention of the blazing torch invokes the miracle that accompanied God’s promises to Abraham (Genesis 15:17-21). This false doctrine concerned the identity of the true sons of Israel’s father. Thus it was the lie opposed so ferociously by Paul. Those who were justified by faith, whether Jew or Gentile, were the heirs of the promise; but those who claimed Abraham as their father yet trusted in their own righteousness would suffer the curses of the Law (Galatians 3:7-14).

The Pharisees’ Oral Law partially obscured the truth, but the smoke of the devil’s anti-Pentecost brought a plague of total darkness upon the Land. It swapped Judaism for something entirely different from the religion of the Old Testament.

However, it was a clever counterfeit, so all the outward trappings remained. This internal “conversion” could only be identified by its fruits. So the primary spiritual litmus test in those last days was not one of doctrine, but one of righteousness and love (2 Timothy 3:1-9; 1 John 2:7-11).

By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:10)

The Apostle John provided his “little children” with numerous tests by which they could discern the hearts of those who claimed to be their brothers in the faith. The true heirs of Isaac are new creations who:

The unregenerate Jews were circumcised in the flesh but not in the heart. They were not “Israelites indeed” like Nathaniel (John 1:47). Those who hated their brothers were not spiritual men like Abel, Abram, Jacob, and David, but natural hunters of men, brothers like Cain, Nimrod, Esau, and Saul. Those who took the kingdom by force (like Adam) instead of receiving it as a gift (like Noah) were not the Sons of God.

But John then elaborates on the pressure to deny that Jesus is the Christ. The host of “antichrists” was evidence that it was “the last hour” of the last days, so he wrote these things about those who were trying to deceive—to spiritually seduce—them. The first enemy of the Apostolic Church was Jewish, and so was the last.

The Jewish rulers rejected Christ outright as a false prophet, so there was no need to discern their hearts. They wore their animosity on their sleeves. John was dealing with a more subtle error—a serpentine lie that was leading Jewish Christians astray. And this sting was an inside job.

The spirit of antichrist was to be discerned by its denial of the incarnation (1 John 2:22-23; 4:1-6; 2 John 1:4-11). Only the Jews had any vested interest in whether or not the Christ had come in the flesh, so this was the acid test for the zeal of a Jew. This was a means of telling between the kindred fire of God and the strange fire of the devil, and thus of separating the Sauls from the Pauls.

Jewish Christians had been hunted down, incarcerated, and murdered by their Jewish countrymen. Like John the Baptist in prison, the survivors were tempted to doubt the claims of Christ. The weakness of their wavering faith was being taken advantage of by Judaizers who had infiltrated the assemblies. Under the circumstances, we can easily imagine the arguments of these spiritual quislings and the motivations behind them.

Christ was not a threat to the Romans, as expected, but to the Jewish rulers. So how could He be the Messiah? Surely the true Messiah would not divide the Jews like sheep and goats, as Jesus did, but unite them? As He Himself said, a kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and a house divided against itself cannot stand (Matthew 12:25). Nothing had been improved by Jesus. In fact, He had only made things worse.

If Jesus were not the Messiah but, say, an angel from heaven, or perhaps even a gifted but otherwise ordinary rabbi, a man of natural birth, then He was merely a divine messenger, one among many. He had no claim upon either the Temple or the throne of David. And that was the point: He posed no threat to the Jewish status quo. Moreover, if Jesus’ followers could be co-opted, His teachings could be filtered and assimilated into Judaism, and the Gentile Christians would have to become Jews.

The Apostle John was thus calling the Jewish believers to identify a dangerous syncretism within the Church. This subtle mixing of truth with error bore Satan’s trademark; it was the same strategy that led the woman astray in the Garden of Eden. But the Bride of Christ has a better Adam, the faithful protector who, by His Spirit, delivers her from deception.

For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. (Matthew 24:24)

The compromise was the spiritual equivalent of the idolatry of Israel’s ancient kings, who claimed to worship Yahweh but invited other gods into His house. Hence John’s final, fatherly command: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

The influence of the Judaizers is an important context for the correct interpretation of the epistles from Hebrews to Jude. They were written to Jews as warnings about the Jews.

Hebrews was circulated to the dispersed Jewish saints to encourage them in the face of intimidation from their countrymen, and to counsel them concerning the impending perils of apostatizing to the condemned house of Judaism (Hebrews 3:7-4:13; 5:11-6:9). And Jude’s entire epistle is a denunciation of these men who “crept in unnoticed” and denied the Lord.

Between them, Peter contrasts the “cleverly devised myths” of the Judaizers with the inspired and confirmed prophecies of Christ (2 Peter 1:16-21). He then riffs on Jude’s condemnations of the Judaizers, maintaining the observation that their spiritual pedigree can be traced back to Balaam, the false prophet who “loved the wages of unrighteousness” (2 Peter 2:15 KJV).

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. (2 Peter 2:1-3)

This call to be discerning of spirits obviously applies to the saints of any age and in any place, but the circumstances that necessitated it place the antichrist firmly in the first century.

As the Church matured, the attacks became more subtle, and thus more dangerous in spiritual terms. But as time progressed, and the Church continued to grow in number and notoriety, the attacks also became more personal. Pressure to conform came not only from false teachers, but also from family members.

The twofold call to be loyal to Christ in heaven and love the spiritual brethren on earth—whether Jew or Gentile—was increasingly bringing division to the families of Israel. It set Jew against Jew, and a believer might even be betrayed by those of his own household (Matthew 10:34-39).

So when John told the saints to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1), he was calling them to separate not only from false teachers and false brothers, but also to resist pressure from those fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters who denied that Christ was the Messiah.

John reminded the Jewish saints that if they buckled and denied Christ, they would be ashamed at His coming, and He would deny them (Matthew 10:28-33; 1 John 2:28). But if they stood firmly upon the promise of Christ, they would be rewarded with a better inheritance (Mark 10:28-31). The first would be last, and the last would be first.

The division within families would have resulted not only from the incurred risk of violence, but also from the ostracism required by the Law of Moses.

The insistence on denying the incarnation came to the Church as a temptation “in the wilderness” of banishment from the Temple and the synagogues. Jewish Christians were prevented from fulfilling their Levitical obligations—unless, of course, they renounced Christ.

Having been denied access to the purity rites that were carried out by the priests, these men and women could not be “blameless” according to the Law. Their impurity would have been stigmatized even within their own households. In ritual terms, they were “contagious,” ceremonial lepers. In response, the Epistle to the Hebrews called them to identify with the Christ who was treated as if He were an unclean thing (Leviticus 14:3).

Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. (Hebrews 13:13)

This Levitical scenario explains a difficult passage in Peter’s first epistle (1 Peter 3:13-22), where his declaration that “baptism…now saves you” is still the cause of heated debate. But Peter’s words had nothing to do with salvation, and everything to do with completing the saints’ emancipation from the old order.

The Jerusalem Council had been called as a response to the claims of some men who came down from Judea. They were teaching the brothers that the uncircumcised could not be saved (Acts 15:1). After hearing the testimony of Barnabas and Paul, the decision of James was that the Gentiles were under no such obligation. But it follows that the Jews were permitted to continue practicing their religious rites while the Temple was still standing, and there is evidence that Paul himself did so when it served the purpose of spreading the Gospel.

When keeping these practices came to require a denial of Christ, Peter told them that baptism now delivered them from their obligations. Thus it saved them from the legal grasp of their Jewish persecutors. As worshipers of God, they had been made blameless in baptism, and no longer needed a rite that removed dirt from the body. They could stand in the assembly of God and withstand the scrutiny of their families with a good conscience.

As it was for the one-and-seven who entered the ark of Noah, the abandonment of their old lives—their “house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands”—would also save them from the “flood” that was coming to destroy Jerusalem.

It seems to me that “In the days of Noah…” begins a new clause. It is not related to God’s patience waiting, which refers to the delay of vengeance upon Jerusalem for one generation. And that brings us to the next point.

Peter also speaks of Jesus preaching to the “spirits in prison” who at one time had “disbelieved” (1 Peter 3:19-20a), which is another apparent mystery. But he later refers to this event as the Gospel being preached to the dead (1 Peter 4:6).

The answer is given to us in Revelation 6:9-11. John sees the Old Testament martyrs who are impatient to be avenged, with John the Baptist likely among them. Like John, they had been imprisoned and killed by their own countrymen.

Jesus had delayed the destruction of Jerusalem so they were doubting His words. Even the greatest prophet of the old order was tested once again concerning Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah.

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3)

The martyrs, whose blood had been splashed against the altar as if they were Levitical sacrifices, were told by Jesus that their vengeance would come only after the New Testament martyrs had been slain as they were.

Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. (Revelation 6:11)

And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40)

Peter mentioned these murdered brothers because he knew that some of those in his audience would soon join them. But he also told them to answer the slanderers with gentleness and respect instead of reviling them in kind. If they desired to be rewarded as Christ was rewarded, they must be willing to suffer as Christ suffered. In doing so, they would join the fragrant cloud of the faithful witnesses (martyrs), those human sacrifices whose blood still cried from the ground all around them as they stood on the bloodthirsty Altar-Land of Canaanite Israel (Hebrews 12:1).

The least of my brethren

John’s first letter discerns those who are born of God from those who are not. “By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil” (1 John 3:10). For the safety of the saints, it was necessary to separate the seed of the Woman from the seed of the serpent—the Abels from the Cains, the Jacobs from the Esaus.

John addressed the believers as “little children” (1 John 2:1, 18; 2:28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21), but it is clear that he was not writing to actual children. He was teaching adults who lacked judgment, who were undiscerning “babes in the wood” like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He also addressed the leaders in the congregation, the fathers and the young men, but he identifies them by their spiritual, not physical, maturity (1 John 2:12-14). Paul uses similar language in Ephesians 4:11-16.

Likewise, when Jesus put a little child in the midst of the crowd, what He said had nothing to do with the children of men. The young one served as an object lesson.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:1-6)

Jesus was talking about His Father’s spiritual offspring, which is why He echoes these words in the parable of the sheep and the goats—along with a similarly severe punishment. He was not threatening those who abused children. This was a warning to the religious leaders who deceived and persecuted the saints. The object lesson communicated that the Father in heaven would react in exactly the same way as a human father would towards anyone who abused or murdered one of His children.

The retribution that Jesus described combines imagery from both the Land and the Sea, further proving that His target was the fratricidal Jews.

Abimelech slew seventy of his brothers in order to rule alone (Judges 9:5). The Lord intervened, and he was mortally wounded with a millstone—an instrument symbolically related to the fertility of both the land and the womb. The millstone was thrown down by a woman, and Abimelech’s skull was crushed (Judges 9:53). In other words, as a murderer like Cain, he was judged as the seed of the serpent.

Casting the offender into the sea was a threat of judgment involving the Gentiles. The chief priest, scribes, and Pharisees were the “evangelicals” of the day. That is why Jesus confronted them and mostly ignored all the other sects. As the teachers of the Law, they were held most accountable to it, and would thus be given a stricter judgment for misleading the children of God.

As with Zion (Mark 11:23; Revelation 8:8) and the Temple (Matthew 7:24-27), being thrown into the Gentile Sea symbolized a loss of office. Like a Levite who had completed his course of duty, the ethnic Jews and their leaders would be rendered ceremonially “common” once again. For rejecting the Chosen One, they would be “unchosen,” just another people among the many. The first would be last.

But the last would be first. The word “least” is the superlative of the Greek word for little, but also for the word mikros, “small,” from which comes our word “micro.” It was used to describe not only a comparative smallness of size, but also of amount, dignity, and importance. A child was the perfect choice to symbolize believers who were vulnerable to attacks from the Jewish leaders. As with the children of Israel in the wilderness, these spiritual children were the prime target of the spiritual Amalekites.

The intensity of the Jews’ “Amalekite” hatred on earth would be matched by a similarly intense fury from heaven (Romans 1:16-18). Hebrews encouraged those Jews who were wavering in their faith to continue meeting together unashamedly with Gentiles, which was not only an offense to the Jews, but also a warning to them. The Jewish Christians were to hold fast their confession of Christ, knowing that the day was drawing near when their Jewish adversaries—those who had “trampled underfoot the Son of God”—would be utterly destroyed. God would judge His people, and His fire would consume their enemies (Hebrews 10:19-31).

The reason for the ferocity of this consuming wrath was also made clear by Christ. If one received a “little one” who belonged to Jesus, one received Jesus Himself. And it is likely that Saul picked up on this surprising switch when the Lord said to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). Christ identified Himself with His disciples, those who had publicly identified themselves with Him in the voluntary grave of baptism. They did not deny Him, so He would not deny them.

So who were the “least” of Jesus’ brethren? A lack of stature and status in the eyes of men often disguises a glory visible only to the eyes of God. The little town of Bethlehem would not be considered the least among the rulers of Judah since it was the birthplace of mighty kings. Those who relaxed even the least of the commandments would be humbled as the least in the kingdom of heaven; and those who were faithful in the least of things would be given authority over cities.

“The least of these, my brethren” simply means “my littlest brothers.” These saints were in need—hungry, thirsty, ostracized, naked, and imprisoned—not because they were the spiritual stragglers, but because they were spiritually mighty. They chose to humble themselves like little children before God.

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. (Philippians 3:4-7)

These brothers became little by giving their inheritance away. In the pursuit of a better legacy, they made themselves like children under their heavenly Guardian, waiting to come of eternal age and be bestowed with the riches of the Heavenly Father.

The old world was passing away, so even the highest honor of men was worthless by comparison. It was now waste in the street, something unclean to be avoided or trodden underfoot, corruptible capital to be surrendered in order to gain the priceless kingdom of God.

For despising their natural heritage, these Jewish saints were disowned by their rich, powerful, but unbelieving Jewish “older brothers.” But old habits die hard, and a similar partiality was also occurring within the Church, so it was denounced by the Apostle James (James 2:1-7). The poor brothers were not to be dishonored as if they were slaves, and the rich were not to be favored as if they were the heirs of the kingdom.

As mentioned, regardless of office inside or outside of the Church, whether that be sex, social status, or Jewish or Gentile pedigree, all believers were “the chosen.” As such, each was an “Isaac” and thus to be treated equally as a co-heir of the promise.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:25-29).

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. (Romans 9:6-8)

This was only possible because the believers were not the heirs of the visible, natural things that were ready to pass away, but of the unseen spiritual things that are eternal. Even the rich Christians who were spiritually wise sold their houses and lands in the old Jerusalem because Jesus had warned that it would soon be destroyed. Instead of being among those whom James taunted with the words “weep and howl” for laying up treasure in the last days of the city (James 5:1-6), they invested their treasure in heaven by being generous to their new brothers and sisters who were in need (Acts 4:34).

For the same reason, Paul pleaded with Philemon to receive back Onesimus, Paul’s spiritual son, not as a bondservant, but as a brother. The principles of the Law of Moses concerning blood ties now applied to the bonds of the Spirit (Leviticus 25:39-43; Philemon 1:8-20). Such brotherly kindness was contrary to the actions of the rich Jews before the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. Those fools doomed themselves by behaving like Pharaoh. They rejected the warnings of God’s prophet and took their own brothers back into slavery (Jeremiah 34:8-22).

Some Christians even regarded the apostles with contempt. Association with such incorrigible rabble-rousers was bringing them public shame. These fanatics caused unnecessary trouble and were being persecuted only because they were so extreme.

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. (1 Corinthians 4:8-13)

The expression, “the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” referred to those who were blamed for the troubles of pagan societies, men whose crimes brought bad fortune upon all. The common practice of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans was to round up such people, subject them to ingenious tortures, and publicly execute them. Their blood would appease the gods, purify the land, and lift the curse.

The “crime” of the Christians was their rejection of the religious customs of society. The spread of this cult threatened to impoverish the temples, and destabilize the social order and its hierarchies. Gentiles in Ephesus opposed the apostles for their offense against Artemis (Acts 19:23-41). For the same reason, the Judaizers took the saints captive to the Law with philosophy, deceit, and human traditions (Galatians 4:3; Colossians 2:8).

Due to slander from both Jews and Gentiles, large segments of the population came to believe that peace and prosperity were at risk unless the Christians were purged from society. Of course, the opposite was the case. Cursing the Christians racked up a divine vengeance that not only destroyed Jerusalem, but also shook the entire empire to its foundations (Hebrews 12:26-27).

Despite their ill reputation among men, those who held fast to their profession of Christ and suffered for it were to be rightfully honored among the people of God. John the Baptist was despised, incarcerated, and unjustly executed. He was treated as if he were among the very worst of men, and yet Jesus described him as the greatest of those “born of women” (Matthew 11:11).

Jesus crystallized this paradox when He identified His crucifixion as the hour when He would be “glorified” (John 12:23-26). This was obviously not the kind of glory esteemed by kings and noblemen; it was a glory discerned only by the Spirit.

Genesis 1 describes the glory of the physical order; Genesis 2 the glory of the social order; but Genesis 3 was a test of the ethical order—the heart of man. Jesus had no glory either physically (beauty) or socially (wife and children) (Isaiah 53:2-3); yet the disciples’ eyes were opened to behold His true glory—His moral perfection (John 1:14). This is the glory that is overlooked, despised, or willingly sacrificed in order to garner the glories that are admired by men—men like the Pharisees (John 5:44).

Of course, the Father did then honor the obedience of His Son with social and physical glory, as the Lord had done with King Solomon. Despite being unmarried, He now has a bride (Revelation 21:2). Despite being rejected by His family, He has brothers and sisters (Matthew 12:49-50; Hebrews 2:11-12). Despite being cut off without “generations” (Isaiah 53:8), He has sons (Hebrews 2:13). And despite being rejected by Jerusalem below, He is the glory of Jerusalem above (Revelation 21:22-27).

Like Jesus, the glory of these brothers was a spiritual one, so He was giving them a new name—a spiritual name based upon the events of history. The persecuted saints in the first century were the spiritual culmination of all the actual “little brothers”—like Abel, Jacob, Joseph, and David—who suffered from the beginning of the world. Like John the Baptist and Paul the Apostle, these faithful “last born” of the old era would be the “firstborn” of the new. They would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

If the concept of a spiritual name sounds strange, remember that Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph were given new names that expressed their spiritual office before God. The prophets also did this in a negative sense, most notably referring to Jerusalem as Egypt, Sodom, and Babylon. Jesus told those who claimed the name of their father, Abraham, but did not do his works, that their true family name was from their spiritual father (John 8:44). Paul then gave the name of Abraham to all who believed the promises of God as the patriarch did (Galatians 3:29).

The old names of these overcomers were becoming a curse in their mouths (Isaiah 65:15), so Jesus called each of them by a new spiritual name (Revelation 2:17), just as He had given His holy people a new name—“Christians” (Acts 11:26). First the natural, then the spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:46).

In the same manner, these martyrs are referred to as those who were “beheaded” for their testimony (Revelation 20:4). This was a spiritual designation. Having been murdered by “Herod and Herodias,” they were the spiritual sons of John the Baptist.

Like Jesus, these saints were chosen from the flock and set apart for a special task. They were to make perfect the sacrifices of those who had gone before, so that the blood of all such prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, could be charged against that generation (Luke 11:50).

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:35-38)

Jesus was Adam’s “younger brother,” but in His resurrection He was now the spiritual firstborn tasked with deposing “Edom.” He would do this with an offering of His flesh and blood, which is why He called Peter to feed His lambs. These saints were to be fattened for the slaughter. And, as their faithful shepherd, Peter would suffer and die along with them (John 21:15-19).

As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” (Romans 8:36)

And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. (Revelation 12:11)

That the kingdom might come to all the World, these disciples were hated and murdered, suffering willingly like all those “little brothers” in the Land. And so it was that Jerusalem, to appease the gods of the nations and maintain her prosperity, once again engaged in the practice of child sacrifice. But this time, the little children who were offered were the Sons of God.

Whose god is their belly

For the Pharisees, the idea that the religion of Moses could ever again degenerate into the Baalism of the Canaanites was unthinkable. However, that is precisely what happened, albeit in a more insidious form. All of the old sins were back with a vengeance, but this time only “in spirit.”

This apostasy was of such a subtle nature that only those who had the Spirit of Christ could perceive it. Likewise, only Jesus could expose it, and that is exactly what He did in the Book of Revelation. The prophecy was not only the apocalypse (revelation) of Jesus Christ, but also the apocalypse (exposure) of those who conspired against Him.

In Hebrew, the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) is literally “the Day of Coverings.” The first day of atonement was when the Lord clothed Adam and Eve after uncovering their conspiracy with the serpent. Likewise, the Bible’s finale stripped away the “fig leaves” of lip service that camouflaged a diabolical plot in Jerusalem. But this time there was no covering for the nakedness of the natural man.

Those who stripped and nailed Jesus “uncovered” to the cross trusted in their sacrifices to cover their sins. But there was no more sacrifice for those who had rejected the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:26). The blood of the bulls and the goats they offered would be similarly rejected. And without any substitutionary covering, their sins would be atoned for with their own Adamic blood.

The end of Temple worship and its feigned atonement was a great day of uncoverings. Those whose crimes were exposed would call on the rocks and the hills to cover them, to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb (Luke 23:30; Revelation 6:15-17). Like their doomed forebears when Gentile invaders were nigh, and the Gentile kings themselves, these men of the earth would resort to their idolatrous high places for guidance and sanctuary.

And the idols shall utterly pass away. And people shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the [Land]. (Isaiah 2:19)

The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us.” (Hosea 10:8)

Revelation symbolizes the religious high places of the Jewish Land and the Gentile Sea as “mountains and islands.” Jesus’ coming would shake them loose and wipe them from the earth (Revelation 6:14; 16:20). And since it was now a man-made alternative to the true worship of God, even Zion was just another pagan “high place” to be reduced to rubble.

Under the dominion of the serpent, the old Garden of God had become a worthless pagan grove overrun with Edenic briers. But the Son of Man, no longer naked or crowned with thorns, was a priest-king robed in glory. He would strip the serpentine kings and queens who, like Adam and Eve, had desecrated their holy offices, and the curse would never depart from their doors.

But what exactly was the “Edenic” conspiracy in the first century? It was an orchestrated attempt to silence the truth, to suppress the Gospel of Christ.

Those who stopped their ears at the words of Stephen did not stop with silencing Stephen himself. The Gospel that was the power of God for the salvation of Jews and Greeks would suffer the same censorious “cancel culture” that had hounded and killed the ancient prophets.

Paul wrote of the wrath of God against the ungodly men who suppressed the truth (Romans 1:18). The Greek word means to restrain or hold something back. He also used that word in his description of the “man of sin,” and once again the first-century context explains the meaning of a much-debated passage.

And you know what is restraining [him] now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains [it] will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. (2 Thessalonians 2:6-8)

The word “restraining” here means “suppressing.” The word “him” that follows it is absent in the Greek, as is the “it” after “restrains.” And the word “revealed” is a form of the word “apocalypse.” In context, it means “exposed.” So this “man of sin” (an allusion to Adam in the Sanctuary) was not being “restrained” from evil, waiting to suddenly be “revealed” in an ascension to power. Quite the opposite. He who was presently suppressing the Gospel from behind the scenes would soon be removed and exposed.

And how was this exposé achieved? The hypocrisy of Judaism was laid bare by a massive, culture-wide act of provocation—that is, a trap. The unmitigated success of the Gospel across the empire resulted in a retaliation of such ferocity that it would never be equaled in Christian history (Matthew 24:21).

As Jesus had warned His disciples before His crucifixion, they would be hated, persecuted, and killed. They were to remember that this was not because they were hated by God, but because Christ was hated by men. As it was for all those who suffered for the sake of righteousness, they were the sons accursed by men because they were the sons who were blessed by God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:10-11)

Like the rest of the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount only makes complete sense when interpreted in its historical and covenantal context. Those whom Jesus described as “blessed” were the Jews whom the Law of Moses had led to Christ. These would inherit the promises, but not before they were persecuted by jealous brothers. And those brothers would be cursed and disinherited under the very same Law of Moses.

So these disciples were to understand that the curses coming upon them were in fact blessings in disguise. This was not a new thing. By God’s design, even the snake in Eden was also potentially a ladder. Which one of those options it turned out to be was down to Adam’s response to the challenge.

As it was for Jacob, Israel, and Christ in the wilderness, the stones and serpents that the Father was sending their way were actually bread and fish wrapped in a test of faith (Matthew 4:1-4; 7:7-11; 14:13-21). If they trusted in the good character of God in the midst of their sufferings, their humble conformity to Christ would bring an untold harvest from the Land and the Sea. All they had to do was obey the Word.

Rule would come to the faithful, but not by means of zealotry or the sword. It would come to them in the same way it came to Jesus at His ascension to heaven—by humble, sacrificial service, bold, provocative testimony, and voluntary suffering and death.

Once the truth about Jerusalem was revealed to all eyes in heaven and earth, Jesus would repossess the kingdom from an enraged Edom (natural Jerusalem below) and restore it to a purified Israel (spiritual Jerusalem above). But this could not be achieved without first plunging the entire kingdom into the grave and raising it again. Israel-according-to-the-flesh would be no more. In its place, with new flesh upon the old Adamic bones, would stand a new Israel, the Body of Christ, the spotless Church.

This process of provocation, persecution, purification, and judgment is what is described in the Book of Revelation. It is an exposé of the true nature of first-century Judaism—at least, of what it increasingly became after the Day of Pentecost.

The prophecy conveys its spiritual truths using imagery from Israel’s history, events that everyone was familiar with. And that imagery includes its structure. As with all Scripture, the shape of the book is the key to its contents.

The key to the last book of the Bible is found in the first books of the Bible. The prophecy follows the same pattern as the Olivet Discourse, entwining all of the same sevenfold threads from the beginning of the Bible into a spectacular tapestry for its blistering finale. For this reason, despite the complexity of its symbolism, the overall plot is surprisingly simple.

Revelation heralded a “new creation” in covenantal terms (Genesis); it called out God’s people and built a new spiritual sanctuary (Exodus); it offered purifying sacrifices (Leviticus); it tried Israel by fire in the wilderness (Numbers); it mustered God’s armies and prepared them for battle (Deuteronomy); it utterly destroyed the walled city (Joshua); and it enthroned the faithful and wise in a new government (Judges). The original, “natural” exodus and conquest were given to the saints so that they might understand this spiritual exodus and conquest.

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. (1 Corinthians 10:11)

The glimpses into heaven that were given to John were not an insight into business as usual in the court of God; they were a broadcast of a special event—the end of the age. Like the beginning of the age, this was carried out in stages, but with one obvious difference.

The creation of the “temple” of the cosmos was a process of construction, but Revelation carried out a dual purpose—a twin function. As the new world order was being constructed (Jacob), the old world order was being deconstructed (Esau).

Step-by-step, the inheritance was taken from the rebels and given to the faithful. Each “day” was plundered of its “Egyptian” goods and they were incorporated into the better “Tabernacle.” Behold, Jesus was making all things new (Revelation 21:5).

In a similar way, the very first offering described in Leviticus was a pictorial, blow-by-blow recapitulation of Genesis 1—a bloody dioramic model in which the world was destroyed and reborn. That Levitical pattern was about to be carried out upon Jerusalem itself, the city that would die on behalf of all cities in the way that Jericho did.

Revelation was written for those who were called to suffer through the death throes of Jerusalem. The book describes the fulfillment of Jesus’ warnings of judgment against her, but it does so as a worship service. While the unregenerate Jews were instigating the “sacrifice” of the righteous, Jesus was transforming their entire city into an altar. The apparent defeat of Christianity would be a pyrrhic victory for the now unholy city.

So the process that guides the events in Revelation is the praxis of sacrifice, the one that also undergirds the basic biblical pattern of worship. The same sevenfold sequence shaped the liturgy of the Christian Church, although the natural sacrifices of blood are replaced with spiritual sacrifices of praise.

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Genesis: A New Adam

The Man in the Garden (Sabbath) – Revelation 1
Sacrifice: The son without blemish chosen from the herd
Liturgy: The call to worship

Jesus is coming to judge the Edomite man of sin. He appears to John in the Sanctuary on the Lord’s Day. He is not the man at the beginning of Genesis but the man at the end—robed in glory. As a faithful younger brother, like Joseph, He has been given all power.

Exodus: A New Tabernacle

The Burning Bush (Passover) – Revelation 2-3
Sacrifice: The blameless firstborn set apart to be offered
Liturgy: The confession of sin

In the Sanctuary, He “passes over” the pastors of the seven Asian churches, encouraging and correcting where necessary. As a priest, He trims each fiery lamp-tree that its testimony might shine as a star in the sky above the Land of Judah. Notably, he deals with the same sins in seed form that are now full grown in Jerusalem. Judgment begins at the house of God. Beginning with the Fall, the symbolism in the letters works through the seven stages of Old Testament history This identifies the Church as the heir of the promises.

Leviticus: A New Priesthood

The Priest-King (Firstfruits) – Revelation 4-5
Sacrifice: The slain Lamb presented upon the altar
Liturgy: The ascension offering of praise

John is shown Jesus’ ascension as High Priest from heaven’s point of view. The Lamb of God has fulfilled the Law as a perfect offering. He is the only one worthy to open the seven-sealed title deed of the kingdom. The ensuing judgments are Levitical in nature—a further fulfillment of the Law. His victory in the Garden will now extend into the Land, setting brother against brother.

Numbers: A New Holy War

The Refining Fire (Pentecost) – Revelation 6:1-8:5
Sacrifice: Holy fire consumes the offering
Liturgy: The preaching of the Word

The Lord opens His inheritance deed by breaking its seven seals. The first four release spirit warhorses and they ride out with royal decrees. These are edicts to bear the Gospels as incitements to war—spiritual war. This battle required the spiritual armor listed by Paul in Ephesians 6:10-20.

The first seal sent the light of the truth (Hebrews 6:4); the second brought division between believers and unbelievers (Matthew 10:34-36); the third caused the old rulers to waste away while the saints persevered (2 Corinthians 4:16; Hebrews 8:13); and the fourth held the Levitical sword over the covenant-breakers as Moses did at the first Pentecost (Exodus 32:25-29; Matthew 22:5-7). The fifth seal comforted and prepared the Old Testament martyrs, and the sixth warned of the great apocalypse to come. Then, alluding to Numbers 7, the New Testament Jewish martyrs were sealed as human scrolls, living epistles. As an offering without blemish, they were “perfect” in number. Finally, the seventh seal poured out the Spirit upon the Land as Sinaitic fire—the Day of Pentecost from heaven’s point of view.

Deuteronomy: A New People

True and False Churches (Trumpets) – Revelation 8:6-15:8
Sacrifice: A pillar of smoke as a fragrant testimony
Liturgy: The offertory

As warnings to the Jews, the blessings of God are partially removed from Israel in a sequence of de-creation. The Day 5 “swarm” of the fifth trumpet is a demonized Judaism that torments the common people. In response, the sixth trumpet reverses the Adamic corruption of the globe. The witness of the Apostolic Church is described in three ways: as a “World” army that crosses the Great River to repossess the promises; as a “Land” judgment of Sinaitic thunders that would avenge the prophets under the altar; and a “Garden” condemnation with the legal power of Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets.

The Feast of Trumpets was a time of preparation for the Day of Atonement. But instead of the Jewish leaders mourning for their sins (Leviticus 16:31; 23:27), those who had rejected and blasphemed the Spirit of God now resumed their persecution of His messengers. Revelation 12-15 is a set of “dark” trumpets that heralded war upon the saints. They are the testimony of Israel’s false prophets, those whom Christ predicted would come in the last days of the Old Covenant (Matthew 24:24).

Joshua: A New World

The harlot city is judged (Atonement) — Revelation 16-19
Sacrifice: God is pleased; the polluted Land is purified
Liturgy: Communion

Since the warnings went unheeded, the partial judgments of the Trumpets proceed to the complete destruction of the bowls. They are a rejection of the seven sprinklings of blood on the Day of Atonement. Jerusalem is pictured as a spiritual Egypt plagued by God, then as Israel playing the harlot in the wilderness, and finally as a Canaanite queen like Jezebel who prospers by murdering the prophets. As the unclean birds feast upon her on earth, her demise is contrasted with the marriage feast of Christ and the saints in heaven.

Judges: A New City

Rest and rule over the nations (Booths) – Revelation 20-22
Sacrifice: Heaven and earth are reconciled in the Sons of God
Liturgy: Doxology and commission

The martyred saints are enthroned with Jesus, and Satan is bound from gathering all nations as one against the Church until the final judgment.

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This process of transformation by fire, as mentioned, was also a death-and-resurrection. But Israel “according to the flesh” did not want to die, and the resistance from the stakeholders of the old “economy” is the drama of the prophecy. That is why the Trumpets section is the longest portion of the book. As a window into the spiritual battle that was about to reach its climax, it expressed the primary purpose of the prophecy.

Just as the Lord told Abraham that the sin of the Amorites had not yet reached its full measure (Genesis 15:16), so also the inheritance of spiritual “Esau” could not be transferred to spiritual “Jacob” until God’s wrath had reached its full measure.

The Old Testament expression for God reaching the end of His patience is the kindling of His nostrils. He was so angry that He was breathing fire. In most instances, this was due to the mistreatment of widows and orphans. Here it was the Lord reaching the end of His tether with the Jews for their slander and final, frenzied massacre of the saints. The response to the smoke from the abyss below was the smoke of an incensed God in heaven above.

And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. (Revelation 15:8)

Heaven and earth would be a witness against Israel once again. As discussed, God deals with the secret things after they are drawn out into the open for all the world to see. Then His judgment is publicly vindicated. The end of old Israel could not come until the witness in the court of heaven was corroborated by bloodshed on earth. And the means of exposure, the act of provocation, was the legal testimony of Jesus in the mouth of the apostles.

Paul said that “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders.” This was a profound insight into the nature of post-Pentecostal Judaism as a counterfeit of Christianity.

The “shadow” Trumpets in Revelation 12-15 are not only the counterclaim of apostate Judaism upon the promises; they are also a pagan worship service in miniature.

The sevenfold sequence begins with a Genesis theme: “The woman and the dragon.” The draconian Herods failed to destroy the Seed of the Woman, and the serpentine Judaizers failed to corrupt the Church with false doctrine.

The action then shifts to Exodus, and the devil summons Neronic Rome as a beast from the Sea to take the saints into captivity and kill them with the sword.

The twist on Leviticus is the beast that rises up from the Land. With its lamb’s horns, it masquerades as true worship but is in fact a draconian counterfeit. The core sin, as it was in the wilderness and before the exile, is idolatry. But “the image of the beast” in this case was Herod’s Temple, so two referents are given to us to reveal the hidden nature of Judaism’s “paganized” priesthood.

Firstly, they performed great signs like the magicians of Pharaoh (this is made explicit in 2 Timothy 3:8). Despite its outward show of devotion to Yahweh, the Temple was a “golden calf” fashioned by the corrupted order of Aaron. Just as Moses had disappeared from the scene at Mount Sinai, so also Christ had ascended to heaven (Exodus 32:1). But like Moses, He was gone only temporarily. He would be back soon to slay the idolaters.

Secondly, they called down fire from heaven like the prophets of Baal whom Elijah challenged on Mount Carmel. So the Temple was also a “statue” of a Canaanite “lord” like Molech. Before the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, child sacrifices were carried out in the Valley of Hinnom, which in Greek is Gehenna. It was also the source of clay for pottery, which relates to the red clay of the Edomite dynasty (Daniel 2:41-43).

The allusions to those who opposed Moses and Elijah in the testimony of this corporate false prophet make it the evil twin of the ministry of the “two witnesses” in Revelation 11. That holy witness was likewise a corporate entity, the authority of the Law and the Prophets in the mouths of the saints who testified against Jerusalem. The short-lived victory over these witnesses is celebrated with gift-giving in a demonic anti-Purim, another cryptic allusion to Haman-Gog (Amalek) as a Sanctuary enemy.

Deuteronomy 13:1-5 tells us that God allows such serpentine testimony in order to test the hearts of His people. Jesus said that false prophets would come, and the Book of Acts records numerous instances of religious magic carried out by Jewish false prophets who claimed to possess power from above (Acts 8:9-24; 13:6-11). Some even used Jesus’ name in their incantations (Matthew 7:22-23; Acts 19:13-16).

All this serves as background for the reintroduction by stealth of human sacrifice to the worship of Jerusalem. The links to Egypt (Moses) and Canaan (Elijah) both imply the murder of the “little ones” by the rulers of Israel—first the sons of men and then the prophets of God.

For the same reason that Ezekiel dug through the wall of Solomon’s Temple to discover its internal walls were spiritually inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs (Ezekiel 8:7-10), John was permitted to see the spiritual rites of the dark host that had taken possession of Zion. In ancient times, the little hill of child sacrifice crouched in the “abyss” below David’s city as a dark doppelgänger of the Temple. Now it resided spiritually inside the “high place” upon the mountain where Abraham once offered Isaac. The House of God itself had become the evil twin.

Judaism was now just another pagan religion among many. That is why Paul refers to the taboos of the Jews and Gentiles alike as the “elemental things” of the world. The practices of the Gentiles were inherently demonic, but the rites of the Law of Moses posed a more subtle problem. As “elementary school” sermons that had now served their purpose, they were childish things to be put away (1 Corinthians 13:11).

In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons … Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? (Galatians 4:3-5, 8-9)

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of man? These are matters which do have the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and humility and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. (Colissian 2:20-23 NASB)

Peter likewise called the saints to be motivated in righteousness because these “elemental things” (it is the same Greek word) by which they were being unrighteously condemned would be revealed as worthless. This would be self-evident when God’s cosmic house, the Temple, was burned up.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the [Land] and its works will be discovered. (2 Peter 3:10 NASB).

The Circumcision turned Jewish rites into mystical practices like those of the ancient power religions. They were used as a means of coercion, intimidation, and control. In the same way that the Law of God had been possessed by the serpent and weaponized against God’s people, the outward signs of Judaism became “virtue signals” that displayed one’s allegiance to the Temple.

In a perverse inversion of their holy intent, these practices eventually became signs of outright rebellion against the God who prescribed them. The phylacteries worn on the hand and the forehead were now a Cainite “mark” of loyalty to the beast and his money changers.

Even circumcision on the eighth day now functioned as a pagan rite. Paul said that those who considered that their circumcisions made them holy might as well castrate themselves because both acts now made them unfit for the assembly of God. Perhaps he also had in mind the priests of Baal who cut themselves and threw their bodies onto the altar to invoke their false god.

As we shall see, even the nation-defining rite of Passover was “melted down” and refashioned into a fellowship with unimaginable evil at a table of demons.

The double portion

The prophet Jeremiah famously summoned the rulers of Jerusalem to the Potter’s Field in the Valley of Hinnom. Since they had shown themselves to be “natural” men like Esau—spiritual Edomites who had sold their birthright—it was fitting to gather them for an audience in a gigantic earthenware bowl of blood. Not far from the pit of red clay where the potter worked at his wheel, the priests of Baal put the infant sons of Israel through the fire.

Archaeological excavations have demonstrated what “the sin of the Amorites,” the most powerful Canaanite nation, actually was. Young girls were sawn asunder, and infants were decapitated. The incinerated remains of sacrificed babies were deposited in ceremonial clay jars as an enduring testimony before the gods.

The juxtaposition of red clay and the blood of innocents is yet another example of the inextricable link between the fertility of the ground and the womb. Combining them in human sacrifice was a sin akin to boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. The blessings promised to Abraham were commandeered by the devil to bring judgment upon the people of God, and thus the Messianic line.

It was King Ahab’s Canaanite idolatry, including his founding of a city on the blood of his own firstborn, that brought a famine upon the Land (1 Kings 16:29-17:7). Elijah’s curse upon agriculture was as bitter as that which God had put upon Cain after his murder of innocent Abel.

And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” (Genesis 4:10-12)

The connection between the “redness” of the natural man and the blood of his brother that cries from the ground for vengeance is clear in the Hebrew. Man (adam) came from the ground (a-da-ma). Blood (dam) flows in his veins. The color of this blood is red (a-dom). So the imagery of red clay for the ground from which God fashions not just men, but also nations, is another symbol rooted in the events before the Fall.

So the Lord’s use of pottery as an analogy for His formation of the nations was an apt one. If a vessel was spoiled in His hand, He simply reworked it into another one. In this case, it was the vain plans of Judah and Jerusalem that had deformed the work of God. The nation that was given such divine privileges—a God who was near to them, and His wise and righteous law—had no excuse (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). “Virgin Israel” had been led astray, and the land had become a horror at which people shook their heads and hissed (Jeremiah 18:5-17). Since the people ritually devoured their own children to force fertility from the natural order (an act of “stealing fruit”), God would make them resort to cannibalism when under siege.

“And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them.” (Jeremiah 19:9)

The rulers of Judah had filled their “vessel” with abominations, so the hands of the Potter were now “shaping” a calamity against them. For building the high places of Baal, and filling the place with the blood of innocents, God would fill the sacred valley of the idolaters with their own bodies. Like the altar of Jeroboam, the king who fashioned golden calves and led Israel into sin, the pagan altars at which the men of Judah worshiped would likewise be defiled with human bones. The Valley of Hinnom would become the Valley of Slaughter, and the unclean birds would feast upon the unburied remains.

To illustrate what God would do to the people and their city, Jeremiah ended his sermon by smashing a clay flask (Jeremiah 19:10-11). For this, the prophet was slandered, beaten and put into the stocks. Eventually, like Joseph, he was lowered into a pit by his own brothers. He himself was placed in an earthenware bowl and devoted to the gods as a “little one.”

The death of Judas in the Valley of Hinnom, the disciple who quite literally sold his birthright, was a sign that the Lord was once again going to fill what was now a rubbish dump with the bodies of idolaters. But Paul takes up the imagery of the Potter’s Field in a more explicit way. Just as God raised up Pharaoh that He might shatter the power of Egypt (Exodus 15:6), so He had raised up the Edomite Herods for a similar demonstration of His power. In both cases, His name was proclaimed in all the earth.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? (Romans 9:19-24)

The Jews who rejected and slew the true Isaac in the “thicket” upon Zion were not the true Israel at all. Instead of holy vessels for royal use, they had made themselves containers for the wrath of God. It was bad enough that they were whitewashed tombs filled with the bones of the prophets of old (Matthew 23:27-28); but in their murders of the saints they were now also jars of clay filled with the incinerated remains of the “little ones” of God.

Like Balaam, the “false prophet” of Judaism was now working to place the corporate “Firstborn Son” upon the altar. But Paul knew that Jesus’ response to the politically-expedient sacrifices by these paganized priests would be a brutal political bloodbath.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. (Philippians 3:17-19)

The apostle was still breathing out threats, but now under the inspiration of the Spirit of Christ. “Their end is destruction” is a direct reference to the doom of Amalek, as prophesied by Balaam. Like Agag, these spiritual Amalekites would be hacked to pieces by Samuel the prophet. Like Haman, they and their sons would be impaled for instigating an attack on the people of God. In this case, they would be lifted up in crucifixion, the same Roman rite of social purification for which they had sold their birthright at the trial of Christ.

“Their god is their belly” invokes Phinehas, the faithful priest who put a spear through the “bellies” of the adulterers for profaning the court of God (Exodus 19:13; Numbers 25:6-8; Hebrews 12:20). The “belly” refers to the stomach and the genitals, the human desire for the fruit of the land and the fruit of the womb. The fertility promised as a gift to Abraham was once again being coerced by the Jews from the natural order via human sacrifice. Despite their best intentions, in order to maintain the power and the glory of first-century Jerusalem they were engaging in shameful spiritual harlotry and invoking the gods of Rome instead of calling upon the name of the Lord.

God was still blessing those who blessed Israel, and cursing those who cursed Israel (Genesis 12:3). But Jacob had crossed his arms. The lovingkindness or “covenant love” of Yahweh for Israel was now transferred to the Church. Instead of being blessed for their faithfulness to Yahweh, the unbelieving Jews were cursed by God because of how they treated the true Israel, which is Christ, and His little brothers.

Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more … And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on the [Land].” (Revelation 18:21, 24)

Those who refused to bow to the Babelic image of Herod’s Temple would emerge from the furnace of persecution unharmed, without even the smell of smoke upon their clothes. But those who blasphemed the God of these sons and daughters would be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins (Daniel 3:29).

In an unjust abuse of the Law of Moses, the Jews handed Jesus over to Rome for crucifixion; as a just recompense under the Law of Moses, Jesus eventually handed the Jews over to Rome for crucifixion. As the historian Flavius Josephus records, the land around the city became unrecognizable, having been denuded of trees for the manufacture of crosses. At one point during the siege of Jerusalem, the Roman general Titus was capturing and crucifying up to five hundred Jews a day.

The rivalry over the inheritance of Jacob explains why the punishment was worse than eye-for-eye. As it was for Edom, the final penalty for the Herodian antichrist was a divine doubling of the ruin, an inversion of the double portion given to the firstborn (Deuteronomy 21:17).

Likewise, the “payment” for the anti-bride, harlot Jerusalem, was the inverse of the double portion given to barren but faithful Hannah (1 Samuel 1:5). And this double curse was mixed in the sweet cup with which she intoxicated the nations. It became the bitter cup reserved for the cursing of an Israelite adulteress (Numbers 5:24).

Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. (Revelation 18:6)

Jeremiah threatened a double payment in his condemnation of Jerusalem for its idolatry (Jeremiah 16:18). But Isaiah promised a double portion of blessing for the new Israel that rose from the grave after the exile (Isaiah 61:7; Ezekiel 37:12). The people delivered from Babylonian rule in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, who obeyed the Law and rebuilt the Temple and the city, would be more faithful than the “firstborn” delivered from Egypt.

That new Israel, blessed by God in ways more spiritual than physical, was a corporate “firstborn from the dead.” Its resurrection was described as the putting of new flesh upon the scattered bones of the idolaters (Jeremiah 8:1-3; Ezekiel 6:5; 37:1-14). The red “Adam” gave rise to a purified “Eve.” God had reshaped the nation into a more glorious vessel.

The New Jerusalem seen by John was also a bridal city, one in which the tears of the martyrs of all the ages would be wiped away. The emancipation of the believing Jews from the tyranny of Herod’s Temple would be entirely spiritual. There was no earthly house because the stones of the building were the people. And their foundation was the blood of the Firstborn of God.

But the marriage feast of the city in heaven could not be celebrated without a final, bitter feast in the city on earth.

The blood of the Sons of God became a river in the Land of the Herodian Pharaohs. The kingdom was nigh, even at the doors, and the destruction of Jerusalem was the climax of a Passover to end all Passovers.

vi
Their table a snare
(Joshua – Atonement)

King Zedekiah reneged on his agreement that the Judahites would release their countrymen who were in bondage. This was the final straw in Judah’s rebellion before the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 34:8-16).

In practical terms, this Pharaonic abuse of “Hebrew brothers” was a theft of their Abrahamic inheritance. Subjecting a Jew to indefinite bondservice was a blatant violation of the laws of Moses concerning the redemption of an Israelite’s property and the kindness to be shown to poor brothers (Leviticus 25).

After the exile, it was not only the intermarriage with pagan women, but also the oppression of poor brothers and sisters that was condemned and reversed (Nehemiah 5:1-14). God’s blessing upon Israel could not be restored while the people of God were continuing in sins that incurred the curses of the Law.

Similar injustices against the poor were evident before the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome, although the expropriation of wealth was now cloaked in lip service to the Law.

And in his teaching he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” (Mark 12:38-40)

While the Christians were learning to treat believing slaves as brothers who shared in their spiritual inheritance, the Pharisees continued to dispossess their poor brothers and sisters through the gradual accumulation of property—often by means of corrupt lawyers. Their later mistreatment of Jewish Christians was but an intensification of the way in which they already despised and exploited the common people. Whether against Jews or Jewish Christians, it was all the work of the devil (John 8:41). They were guilty not only of Adamic theft from God in the Garden, but also of Cainite tyranny of their brothers in the Land.

Such abuse was the subject of yet another difficult parable of Jesus, the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). Jesus contrasted the lives of two Jewish men in a story much like the one that Nathan told in his confrontation with David.

Nathan held an example of the perfect Law of God before the king’s eyes as a mirror. When the ruse was revealed, David saw himself in the story and, to his credit, did not look away (James 1:22-25). Despite the king having committed capital sins like Adam, God showed him mercy as He did to Adam. A key difference between Saul and David was David’s willingness to repent.

A word fitly spoken is like
apples of gold in a setting of silver.
Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold
is a wise reprover to a listening ear.
(Proverbs 25:11-12)

Unlike David, the Pharisees not only had the advantage of the Law, but also the Prophets, and also the preaching of the good news of the kingdom (Luke 16:16). They were without excuse.

Like the judgment of the sheep and the goats, the parable appears to teach salvation by works. Once again, the key is the ongoing theme of the transfer of the inheritance from the natural heir to the spiritual heir, from Esau to Jacob. The humbling of the rich man who exalted himself, and the exaltation of the humble Lazarus, was yet another instance of the crossing of the arms. The last was made the first, and the first was made the last.

As in the parable of the sheep and the goats, and also in the terrible losses suffered by Job, the material estate of Lazarus was a provocation. He himself was the divinely appointed means of the revelation of the spiritual estate of the rich man.

The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. (1 Samuel 2:6-8)

The circumstances of the two men after both of them die are also misunderstood. Jesus appears to provide an insight into the afterlife, but in reality He employs the well-known architecture of the Tabernacle of Moses to differentiate between the natural man and the spiritual man. Just as the plays of Shakespeare were composed to be performed within the familiar setting of the Globe Theater, the parable is yet another instance of the courts of God serving as the stage for the delivery of a divine judgment.

The story is a tableau vivant, a mystery play which only makes sense in light of the furniture of the “cosmic” tent. But behind the masks of Comedy and Tragedy in the drama are the faces of Jacob and Esau. So the inversion of the joy and the mourning in the destinies of these two Jewish “brothers” was not only a scandalous switch in the tent of Isaac; it was also the coming purification of Israel by sacrificial fire in the tent of God.

The rich man finds himself tormented by flames. He is inside the Bronze Altar, the red earth where the natural fruits of the ground and the womb were offered so that God might bless Israel with continued fertility. If you remember, this bloody altar was represented in the characteristics of Esau, the hunter.

In contrast to the rich man, who has fallen through the grate into the coal fire like Adamic dust and ashes, Lazarus ascends the stairway of Jacob as a cloud of fragrant smoke. Angels carry him to heaven to offer the fruit of the Spirit at the Altar of Incense.

Lazarus is seated at the table of Abraham, where the bread and the wine are no longer restricted to the Lord. By the offering of Christ they are now for human consumption, as they were in the patriarch’s meeting with the Noahic priest-king, Melchizedek. Like John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the poor man rests his head on the bosom of his spiritual father as a friend of God.

The poor man is the only person in a parable of Jesus who was given a name. In the context of Father Abraham, Lazarus (“God has helped”) is likely a reference to Eliezer (“God is help”), the faithful servant whom Abraham intended to make his heir (Genesis 15:2).

If this is the case, Jesus has turned that story inside out to make a point—the natural heirs of miraculous Isaac would be rejected in favor of the faithful servant who seemed to have no rightful claim upon the promise.

Moreover, an actual Lazarus did “go to them from the dead.” The Jews not only refused to believe, but also plotted to kill Jesus as a result (Luke 16:30-31; John 11:44-53).

As James wrote to the Jewish saints who had been scattered from Jerusalem by persecution, true religion is more than words. It is demonstrated in godly works, particularly in compassion for needy brothers and sisters. The parched tongue of the rich man—the very tongue with which he blessed God and cursed his brothers (James 3:9)—might be cooled with water from the Bronze Laver. But as in the days of Elijah and Ahab, that purifying Sea between the heavenly court and the earthly altar would be a curse instead of a blessing.

And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed. (Deuteronomy 28:23-24)

The Laver was a mediatory boundary between the clean and the unclean. Only flesh that was washed could enter into the Holy Place. Lazarus, the unclean of the unclean, an unacceptable offering laid “outside the camp,” now sat as an honored guest before the Holy of Holies. And the human remains of the rich man, who had been dressed in priestly purple and linen, the colors of a spotless, slain lamb, now defiled the Bronze Altar.

This story epitomized the future of the Pharisees under the curses of the Law: their disinheritance from God’s promises to Abraham, the defiling of the land with the corpses of the Jews, and the rejection of their prayers for mercy. Since they denied the Lord before men, God would not be their help.

The Edomite aspect is highlighted in the rich man’s practice of feasting sumptuously every day while the poor man starved at his gate. The allusion is to Edom’s mistreatment of Israel in the wilderness, threatening his brother not to enter his territory, and insisting on payment for food (Numbers 20:14-21; Deuteronomy 2:1-8). Jesus’ point was that although the Pharisees despised the Edomite Herods, all those in Jerusalem who neglected the welfare of their own brothers were spiritual Edomites. In the eyes of God, the extravagant feasts they held at the expense of their own flesh and blood were meager bowls of soup for which they had sold their Abrahamic birthright.

The sacrifice of the fruits of the ground and the womb at the Tabernacle was not only a mitigation of the Edenic curses; it was also God’s means of cultivating the fruit of the Spirit. It taught men to be rich towards God (Luke 12:16-21). In the same way, we are called to be rich towards each other: the preparation of a meal is a sacrifice that bonds men as kindred in spirit. To refuse hospitality to a fellow man is to curse him as a serpentine enemy. To offer hospitality is to be to him a blessed Tree of Life, both materially and spiritually.

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:7-9)

When Jesus sent His disciples to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10:5-13; Luke 10:1-16), the proclamation was served in a provocation. The men were to travel without supplies so that they would require support from the houses they visited.

Like the poverty of Lazarus, their obvious need would test the hearts of the Jews. Would they show hospitality to these angelic messengers as Abraham did, and be blessed (Genesis 18:1-5)? Or would they treat them spitefully as the men of Sodom did, and be cursed (Genesis 19:4-5)?

And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. (Matthew 10:14-15)

The disciples were prohibited from visiting the Gentiles and the Samaritans because this was a test of brotherly love within the household of Israel. Men knocking at the door elicit an immediate decision, a yes or a no, allowing no time for vacillation. Since the decision was expressed in an action—a reception or a rejection—resorting to the religious lip service of the hypocrites was not an option (Matthew 5:36-37). This binary choice, like the white stone and black stone in the ephod of Aaron, would quickly discern the hearts of the Jews concerning Christ, and separate the Jacobs from the Esaus.

This “intramural” assessment of Israel was a nationwide act of “church discipline.” It began the excommunication of unbelieving Israelite brothers, the “turning of ungodliness from Jacob” (Romans 11:26). “All Israel” as a body would be saved, that is, “delivered” by identifying, isolating and cutting off the fruitless branches as if they were gangrenous limbs (Romans 11:19-21).

Instead of being destroyed quickly, cut off like Sodom and Gomorrah (Isaiah 1:9; Romans 9:27-29), Jesus gave the nation one generation of mercy. Like Israel in the wilderness and after the exile, a remnant would remain. Those who endured to the end of the national threshing were delivered.

“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:12)

Like the two angels sent into Sodom, and the two spies sent by Joshua into Jericho, the disciples were sent out in pairs. They were the two witnesses required by Moses, and Jesus as the third was in their midst to make a judgment call. Those who refused to listen were uncircumcised in heart and would be cut off from the new people of God (Genesis 17:14).

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:15-20)

The door-to-door ministry of the disciples began the divine visitation upon the spiritual Egypt where Herod the Great had slain the innocents. In the preaching of the Gospel, Christ Himself was passing over the houses, towns, and cities of the Jews. Those who received the Lamb were the Sons of God, and those who rejected Him were the sons of perdition.

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41-44)

At the exodus, there was no distinguishing between the lambs and the kids. Either one of the natural brothers, a smooth Jacob or a hairy Esau, was an acceptable substitute for the human firstborn. The rough and the smooth both represented circumcised sons of Isaac, heirs of the earthly promises to Abraham. But this Passover by Jesus was not a separation of physical offspring like that in Egypt; it was a separation of those adults who were circumcised in heart like Moses from those with hearts of stone like Pharaoh.

“So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32-33).

The disciples were sent out as sheep among wolves, yet they bore the sword of the Gospel in their mouths, the one Jesus said would expose His enemies in every household.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:34-39).

Those who rejected the Lamb would suffer when He returned as the Lion. But why the Passover motif? Judging the old order and purifying what remained was a removal of the leaven of Egypt from the houses of the Hebrews. Cutting off the leprous hypocrisy of the Pharisees in the Garden and the Egyptian-hearted Herods in the Land was a protracted process that culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem.

The disciples were sent out as sheep among wolves, so the lambs to be slain were the disciples themselves. But the Angel of the Lord who traveled with them and spoke with their mouths would vindicate them when their work was done.

On the day of Jesus’ resurrection, two disciples encountered Him on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). After enlightening them concerning the purpose of His sufferings, He pretended that He would continue without them along the road. This veiling of His true intentions was yet another provocation to hospitality, and they “urged Him strongly” to stay with them. But what was the purpose of this visitation?

The sign was for all Jesus’ disciples. It was a reminder that He was in their midst whether they perceived Him or not. They needed assurance that He would be with them as He had been with Joshua (Joshua 1:9). Indeed, He later promised to be with them until the end of the age, and they were to “behold” Him with the eyes of faith in that word (Matthew 28:20). This event, so soon after all their hopes were dashed, began their preparation for the sufferings they would endure as His legal representatives.

“Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” (Matthew 10:21-23)

The Greek word for “gone through” (or “gone over” in the KJV) is the term Jesus used before He died: “It is finished” (John 19:30). So this “passing over” was an offer of the blood of the cross to every door in Israel. It was the legal testimony Jesus mentioned just before His ascension—the acts of the apostles by which spiritual Israel would be exalted and spiritual Edom dispossessed.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the [Land].” (Acts 1:8)

The end of the age was nigh. The day was approaching that would settle the dispute over the kingdom once and for all. So this initial “Passover” of the Jews and the judgment of “many nations” at Jesus’ parousia were the bookends of a single process. Between these two parentheses, the Great Commission removed the temporary prohibition on official witness to the people of the surrounding nations. As we know from the Book of Acts, quite a number were already believers thanks to the influence of the Jewish synagogues established across the empire after the exile.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

This was the point at which Jesus, having obeyed the Father as Adam (Priesthood: the Tree of Life) was receiving from the Father all the kingdoms of the World—the ones that were offered to Him in the wilderness by the devil (Kingdom: the Tree of Knowledge). Just as God would have given Adam the kingdom freely as a gift, so now Jesus would claim His inheritance on the earth.

I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Psalm 2:7-9)

The extension of disciple making and church discipline from one nation to all the nations explains Jesus’ words to the pastor of the church in Laodicea. Like the rich man who despised Lazarus, the affluent church was unaware of its spiritual poverty. A visit from the Lord was a call for hospitality, a request for fellowship that was a test of the heart. It was a chance to become rich towards God.

“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” (Revelation 3:17)

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20)

The proclamation by the disciples among the Jews of the Land preceded the preaching of the apostles among the Gentiles of the Sea. But even then, the Gospel went to the Jew first. If the apostles were not received by the local synagogue, the Jews were legally dispossessed—loosed from their office. The subsequent preaching to the Gentiles—as an offer of binding discipleship to Christ—then served as a provocation to the disowned Jews.

Paul’s ministry in Corinth provides some instructive examples of hospitality as an expression of fellowship in Spirit—as well as the opposite. He was received by a Jewish couple, Aquila and Priscilla, who had recently fled from Rome.

He then reasoned with the Jews in the synagogue, but they rejected him. He who had watched over the garments of those who murdered Stephen as their legal advocate under Roman law now shook the dust of the Jews from his own robe (Acts 7:58; 22:20). He would no longer be their Adamic covering (Garden) or Cainite keeper (Land) from Gentile vengeance (World). Their doors were left unprotected.

And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” (Acts 18:6)

He was next received by a Gentile worshiper of God, Titus Justus, whose house was next to the synagogue. Paul taught there for eighteen months, during which time the Jews brought him before the local tribunal for teaching heresy. But the proconsul dismissed the charge and permitted Paul to stay—another act of reception.

The pattern here is personal hospitality, church hospitality, and civic hospitality. And that is the reason why personal hospitality—whether receiving visitors or visiting the afflicted—is the front line in spiritual warfare. It demonstrates that the fellowship of the Spirit transcends all human demarcations at the most intimate level. And it is tangible evidence of the Person of Christ who enters the houses of sinners to invite and welcome all into the household of faith.

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. (Hebrews 13:1-3)

Matthew’s first audience would have made the crucial connection between Jesus’ visitation of the Jews in chapter 10 and His judgment of the Gentiles in chapter 25. In both cases, the means of provocation was the material needs of His disciples.

“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” (Matthew 10:40-42)

“Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:37-40)

Being hospitable to the preachers of the Gospel was nothing less than missionary support. This is why the Jews and Gentiles alike were judged by their response to the saints who were suffering the most for their faithful testimony—Jesus’ “little brothers.”

A refusal to support the work was not a neutral act; it was an active suppression of the Gospel, a spiritual alignment, if not an open identification, with the diabolical “ministry” of the Man of Sin who had enthroned himself in the Sanctuary of God.

By the time Herod’s Temple was completed in AD64, Christian Jews were completely ostracized, and their rejection by their brothers was the rejection of Christ. Bedazzled by the “noble stones and offerings” of the Temple (Luke 21:5), the antichristian Jews hated Jacob and loved Esau.

Over the next few years, the city’s rulers celebrated extravagant Passovers. These were attended by millions of Jews, and entailed the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of paschal lambs. But the dark side of these sumptuous feasts was the slaughter of the lambs put into Peter’s care by Jesus.

The denial of bread and water was kindled by jealousy into the shedding of innocent blood. What began as a mere withholding of hospitality metastasized into mass murder.

Just as the Law of Moses had been weaponized against Christ, and the spirit of truth was rejected for the spirit of error, so now the national feast that set the people of God apart from the nations had become a table of demons.

To partake in Passover was now a personal, public declaration that Jesus Christ was not the fulfillment of Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). In response, Jesus, as the Angel of the Lord, accompanied by the two witnesses—the Law and the Prophets, Moses and Elijah—put the entire “firstborn” nation under the sword.

vii
King of kings
(Judges – Booths)

The final week

The “latter days” of Israel were the era of the Second Temple, that is, the time between the Babylonian exile and the Messiah (Daniel 10:13-14). This period was bookended by twin spans of “three score and ten” (Psalm 90:10). The first 70-year term began with the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, and the last ended with the destruction of Herod’s Temple.

Each of these two periods of seventy years was a punishment for disobedience, but God used both of them to discipline and prepare His people for greater service and greater blessing. Times of oppression, though well-deserved, would also give them the broad shoulders required for a wider and weightier ministry.

In God’s wisdom, the penalties for their transgressions were postponed, stored up, and finally poured out “unmixed” in the cup of judgment. Strangely, such undiluted wrath was not only evidence of the Lord’s long-suffering with His people, but also His means of wrapping a lasting Abrahamic blessing in a temporary Mosaic curse. The evening and the morning were a new day.

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
(Psalm 30:4-5)

These two seventy-year intervals related to the Edenic curses upon the fruit of the ground and the womb. Together, they represented the office of the Man and the office of the Woman. In this way, they possessed a global significance: the sons of the seventy who went down to Egypt still bore the curse for the seventy nations.

The abundant food and abundant children promised to Abraham were a reversal of those primeval curses, but the Law of Moses imposed stipulations upon them. These conditions were not intended to cut Israel off, but to purify the nation in order to guarantee its future. God would always preserve a remnant.

The sentence of seventy years was a term related to the Law of Moses regarding these divine promises of fertility. Every seventh year, the land was to be given a rest. It was not to be cultivated, but left fallow that its fertility might be restored (Leviticus 25:2-7; 26:34-35, 43). Under the Law, Israel incurred a debt for the failure to “pay” these holidays to the earth. The captivity in Babylon made restitution for the sabbaths of 490 years (Jeremiah 25:11; 29:10; Zechariah 1:12; 7:5; 2 Chronicles 36:21). One year for every seven years was a tally of seventy.

Israel’s agricultural tyranny—the exploitation of the land as if it were a slave—was an act of oppression. God had given His people a calendar of harvest festivals that contrasted with their dispossession and servitude in Egypt; yet the kings of the priestly people took the earth under their dominion without the required submission to heaven. In this, they misrepresented the character of their Master, the one who had invited their fathers to become His Sons by spiritual adoption and enter into His rest.

The full punishment for this sin was postponed until the end of the “former days” of Israel. Although it fell with an unprecedented swiftness and severity—first in the north, then in the south—the deferral of judgment was an act of mercy on God’s part. Because the punishment was concentrated, it was also shortened.

For though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts will make a full end, as decreed, in the midst of all the [Land]. (Isaiah 10:22-23)

Moreover, the suffering was lessened by way of exacting the just restoration simultaneously with the penalties for idolatry and child sacrifice. Israel committed many crimes, but their sentences were served concurrently in the exile. The lifespan of a man was a “life sentence” that quickly and decisively cut off the old leaven.

In contrast to the infamous “sevenfold seventy” propagation of vengeance by history’s first king, Lamech (Genesis 4:24), God’s decrees worked in the direction of minimization. Despite the severity of the invasions and the bondage, the Lord’s singular love still covered a multitude of sins. In the big picture, the captivity was not a multiplication of His wrath but of His forgiveness—an expansion by an inversion.

When the sentence of Babylonian exile was completed, Daniel remembered the words of Jeremiah (Daniel 9:1-2), and he prayed that the Lord would keep His word concerning Israel’s restoration after seventy years of exile. God always keeps His promises through a chosen son, and in this case He inspired the stalwart prophet from Judah to mediate for the people and fulfill His word. Nothing that is made by God is made without a son (John 1:3-5). Daniel was made a light in the darkness to Israel at the beginning of this new era so that multitudes at its end might similarly shine as royal Abrahamic stars (Daniel 12:3).

Via Gabriel, God’s answer to Daniel was that Israel had been given another 490 years—“seventy sevens”—of history (Daniel 9:24). This second Temple era would last until the coming of the Messiah, and it would bring yet another tenfold “Year of Jubilee” (Leviticus 25:8-55). God would bring rest to the people and their Land, but in the same way that Noah brought rest to the World: through the judgment of their oppressors. This time, the payment of postponed debts against God and men would bring the permanent end of the sacrificial system that was begun by God in Genesis 3. And it would never be restored.

But what was the legal significance of the seven decades from the birth of Christ to the destruction of the Temple? This was a time of captivity under spiritual Babylon, Jerusalem, the very city that had been restored to Israel as a gift from God.

This second bookend began with the attempted murder of the incarnate Son of God and culminated in a massacre of His apostolic prophets. The focus was now upon this other sabbath that was disregarded—“the year of release” for Hebrews who were in bondage to their own brothers (Deuteronomy 15:1-18). Just as God responded to the Israelites’ generosity in their tithes and offerings with the blessing of a great harvest in the Land, so also He blessed their generosity to their own brothers—the fruit of the Abrahamic womb—who were suffering poverty or enslaved by debt. However, if they exploited their brothers, God would raise up the Gentiles to exploit them.

Jesus alluded to the year of release in the Sermon on the Mount, His own “Deuteronomic” address. The begrudging “evil eye” in Matthew 6:22-23 was directly related to the love of money in verse 24. If one is enslaved to Mammon, one in turn becomes a harsh slave master.

Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee. (Deuteronomy 15:9 KJV)

Although the reign of Israel’s ancient kings had ended with disobedience concerning the release of their brothers from bondage (Jeremiah 34), it was limited to a begrudging of material support. But the final crime of the rulers of Jerusalem before the Jewish War was the murder of their own brothers, the Jewish Christians. So although the Jews would again be dispossessed of their territory, the debt in the first century was incurred in relation to capital crimes against the faithful sons of Abraham.

Even more surprising than the gravity of this offense was Jesus’ exhortation to the saints in the face of it. In His revolutionary sermon, He not only reiterated the practice of the forgiveness of debts, but also inverted its direction. Such forgiveness was now not only to be dispensed to debtors who were poor and weak; it was also to be applied by the oppressed brother to his oppressor. This was because the evil intended by jealous brothers would once again be turned to Jacob’s good (Genesis 50:20).

Knowledge of this counterintuitive method—a corporate death-and-resurrection—was once again to be the foundation for the willingness of all God’s prophets to suffer at the hands of their own people. Unlike Lamech, who murdered his rivals, they were to turn the other cheek. This was not only an act of love, it was also a prophetic provocation. It presented the offender with a choice. He could either repent and seek forgiveness, or double down and strike again.

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:21-22)

This forgiveness was not a carte blanche; it was only a temporary reprieve, a postponement of God’s justice that God’s mercy might be offered or rejected. Righteousness would come not by the anger of man (James 1:19-20), but by the righteous anger of God on behalf of His people (Deuteronomy 32:35-36).

Until then, evil must be overcome with good, even if “turning the other cheek” meant doing what Joseph did. He invited to his royal table those very brothers who had betrayed, abandoned, and sold him into slavery. This act of hospitality was an offer of mercy, but also a warning of judgment. Given the opportunity to strike again, the offenders instead burned with shame.

Likewise, those “little brothers” in the parable of the sheep and the goats who were hungry, thirsty, destitute, and wrongly imprisoned were called to invite their persecutors to Jesus’ feast.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:14-21)

An invitation to strike the other cheek was to hold a mirror to the face of the offender. He was to see his own face in the face of his brother. Likewise, food and drink—the fruit of the Land—were a reminder that both brothers were the fruit of Daughter Zion. Showing hospitality (in obedience to the command in Proverbs 25:21-22) was an act of provocation that resulted in a “day of atonement.” Joseph heaped burning coals upon his brothers’ heads, and their repentance was a fragrant offering to God.

And he shall take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the Lord, and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it inside the veil and put the incense on the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony, so that he does not die. (Leviticus 16:12-13)

In Revelation, the sending of the Spirit of Christ on the Day of Pentecost is likewise described in terms of the Tabernacle. Jesus heaped “burning coals” upon their heads.

Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. (Revelation 8:5)

This, too, was both an offer of mercy and a warning of judgment. By offering His own flesh and blood—the saints—to the spiritual Edomites, Jesus was turning the other cheek. Many men of Israel burned with shame when they heard Peter’s sermon, but the Jewish rulers saw the angelic faces of their own brothers and viciously struck the Body of Jesus again. This sealed their doom.

As noted, the Spirit was poured out not only upon Jesus’ chosen representatives, but also even upon the common people who believed (Acts 2:17-18). Suppressing the Word now entailed a wholesale massacre, so this renewed murder of the prophets by the rulers of Jerusalem far surpassed the evil committed by their fathers.

And with this Cainite murder—multiplied in hearts after the heart of King Lamech—the entire debt suddenly came due. This generation, at the end of the sacrificial order, and serving as its legal representative, would atone for all the innocent blood shed since the beginning. Mingled with the blood of Abel, it cried to the Lord from the ground as a legal witness against all of the jealous brothers of sacred history.

However, Daniel’s prophecy of the ministry and death of Christ skips straight from the cutting off of the Messiah to the destruction of the Temple (Daniel 9:27). It is as if one resulted immediately in the other; there was no turning of the other cheek, no invitation to mercy, only instantaneous justice.

As the prophecy played out in history, things were a little different: the final “week” (seven years) of the 490 years was postponed for forty years. As discussed, this “wilderness” delay allowed Israel to be threshed instead of being quickly and completely dispatched. It also allowed the rebels to “fill up” their sins that God’s judgment upon them might be publicly justified.

The vengeance upon the city was delayed by the declaration of forgiveness made by Christ as He suffered on the cross. He was cut off in the middle of what would have been the final “week,” purchasing not only the salvation of the world, but also a stay in the execution order against Jerusalem. Before His arrest, Jesus had warned of “days of vengeance” that were imminent but not immediate (Luke 21:22), so this delay was His plan all along. All the things that were written would be fulfilled, but the actual destruction would not begin until this temporary dispensation—a period of grace—expired.

In practical terms, the conversion of Saul was the primary mechanism of this mercy (Acts 9:15). If Christ had not intervened on the road to Damascus, Saul’s “ministry” as the venomous head of spiritual Amalek would have been devastatingly successful. The sapling Church might have been crushed under foot in a few short years, and the resulting divine retribution upon the Jews would have completed that hypothetical, prophetic “week.”

Instead, its remainder was fulfilled by Saul in a different way. The three years were spent in his preparation by Jesus for a better ministry, beginning with Mosaic “seminary” at Mount Sinai in Arabia (Galatians 1:11-24). No doubt the training in the second half of the seven years focused on ministry to Gentiles, but there was another key difference—Paul was filled with the Spirit.

Under the tutelage of Jesus in heaven, the fiery Pharisee received the “supernatural” equivalent of the disciples’ “natural” training during Jesus’ ministry on earth. As a result, Paul’s degree of understanding outshone that of the other apostles (2 Peter 3:14-18). This “Sinaitic” instruction is also the probable source of the deeply Christian explanation of the Tabernacle in the Book of Hebrews. Its authorship is debated because its style and content cannot be attributed to any one of the other writers. The likely reason is that it was a group project, and the fingerprints of many apostles—including Paul—can be identified in its “graven tablets.” If so, it was knitted together by the Spirit of Christ.

The destruction of Jerusalem was withheld by the Son in heaven, but a son on earth was required to carry the prophetic burden. Paul “filled up what was lacking” in the sufferings of Christ in his testimony and afflictions (Colossians 1:24). His message of the cross was “made flesh” before the eyes of the world. This was so extreme that even some Christians distanced themselves from the public shame of the suffering apostles.

In this expansion by inversion, the Jewish tool for the Church’s annihilation became the means of Israel’s preservation. Instead of gathering the nations as wild beasts against the people of God, the former spiritual Agagite was “lifted up” like Haman, publicly embodying the sufferings of Christ to draw all men to the Savior.

As a prophet with power over the Land and the Sea, the Jews and the Gentiles, Paul’s ministry held back “the four winds” that threatened to bring down the Solomonic “house of cedars,” the Edenic Sanctuary that the Herods, with the wrong kind of Gentile support, had unwisely established upon the sand.

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the [land], holding back the four winds of the [land], that no wind might blow on [land] or sea or against any tree. Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm [land] and sea, saying, “Do not harm the [land] or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” (Revelation 7:1-3)

Like Job, and like Jesus, Paul’s ordeals were not evidence of divine hatred. He was not suffering for secret sins. His daily deaths were offerings for the life of the Church.

But Paul also suffered as a scapegoat for his people, the Jews. His sorrow over the unbelief of his countrymen was so great that he was even willing to bear the curse of the Law of Moses on their behalf (Romans 9:3). The Greek word for “curse” (anathema) answers to the Hebrew word for that which is devoted to destruction, the word used of the city of Jericho. Among other imagery, Revelation employs symbolism from the Book of Joshua to describe the sudden fall of Jerusalem.

The ministry of Paul was herem, that is, holy war. But this was a spiritual war, and he was not fighting against flesh and blood. He was holding back the curse—the “decree of utter destruction” (Malachi 4:6)—by becoming the accursed. He was fulfilling the role of mediation that God had given to Israel (Acts 13:47).

So Jesus took Paul at his word, and the apostle became a living sacrifice, a human shield from the wrath of God coming upon the Jews. Of course, Paul knew that nothing could actually separate him from the love of Christ (Romans 8:38-39). As he was being cursed by men, Paul knew he was being blessed by Christ (Matthew 5:10-11). His references to Israel’s inheritance in his “covenant oath” actually tie his willingness to be cursed to the obedience of the patriarchs. Like the fathers, God called Paul to relinquish His gift in a courageous act of faith.

I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 9:1-5)

Abraham willingly gave up Isaac, and received him back again from the dead. Jacob willingly gave up his household, and received it back again from the hand of Esau. Joseph willingly forsook his claim as Jacob’s chosen heir and received an entire kingdom. Christ gave up the glory He had with the Father, and received it back again, exponentially increased. Likewise, what Christ had given Paul he voluntarily placed on the altar that it might be “multiplied” as fragrant smoke. He gave up his inheritance just like Jacob did in order to be reconciled with his “Edomite” brothers.

The patriarchs all received their gifts back unharmed, and, in his martyrdom, so did Paul. The “better resurrection” he sought (Philippians 3:11; Hebrews 11:35) was a human prize—the “gold, silver, and precious stones” of believing men and women (1 Corinthians 3:12). Those whom he intended to murder had called him “brother” (Acts 9:17), and he now referred to them as his “beloved brethren” (1 Corinthians 15:58; Philippians 4:1). The man who began as the seed of the serpent was willing to die to become the seed of a great harvest.

Like Moses on Mount Sinai, Paul stayed God’s hand from utterly destroying the Jews. And also like Moses, Paul was taken from them once the nation was threshed and purified.

While Paul lived, the destruction of Jerusalem was held in check. The massacre of the saints that he initiated before his conversion was bound with his own chains. It was the execution of the Apostle to the Nations that ended Jesus’ stay upon the wholesale murder of the Jewish Christians by their jealous brothers. Once his testimony was complete, the devil’s hand was no longer bound, and the murderers put the pedal to the metal. This began the final “week” of Israel’s history.

The completion of Herod’s Temple in AD64 was a cultural victory for the rulers of Jerusalem; but it was also the event that set in motion the chain of events described in the Olivet Discourse. These played out over the next seven years, at the culmination of which the “false brother” of anti-Christian Judaism was disinherited from the Abrahamic promise.

The seventieth week that had been postponed by Christ was now back in play. This time, the role of the Messiah who was cut off in the middle of the week was fulfilled by the saints. This time, the New Covenant was not legally ratified but publicly vindicated in the removal of the Old Covenant. This time, the Temple veil was not torn; instead, the city and the sanctuary were torn down by “the people of the prince who is to come.”

That this prince and his people are often identified as General Titus and the Roman armies shows how little we understand the nature of the Church’s spiritual war. It was not the Babylonians who destroyed the Temple of Solomon but the prophets of God. The Gentile invaders were merely the tools of those who commanded the wild waves of the Sea.

Like the cross of Christ, the deaths of the first-century martyrs were a spiritual victory disguised as a shameful defeat. The extinguishing of Christianity’s greatest lights was regarded as more proof that Jesus had been nothing but a cursed imposter. But Jerusalem’s joy in AD64 soon turned to the mourning of AD70.

Like the latter days of Israel, this short period also had bookends of Temple events. It began with the completion of Herod’s Temple, and it ended with the destruction of Herod’s Temple. What started out as a “new creation” in the eyes of the Jewish rulers suddenly became the end of the world.

TO BE CONTINUED