Tag: eschatology

The Vindication of Jesus Christ ~ Brief Book Review

vin
This is the best book I could recommend on Revelation. It is short and simple, but it may be confusing to anyone who is unfamiliar with eschatology and Jordan’s point of view on it.

Basically, Jordan teaches that Revelation describes events that happened in the first century, between AD 30 and AD 70. The climactic judgement/visitation of Jesus on the Jews happened in AD 70 with the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem which was also the end of the old world creation. We are now living in the new creation.

Jordan focuses on the symbols of Revelation and how they all come from the Old Testament. For example, 666 comes straight out of the book of 1 Kings.

Jordan also points out how the old creation was governed by angels, while the new is governed by the Church.

Jordan gave a series of lectures on Revelation which consists of 204 lectures and a 300+ page notebook. It can be found here.

The book can be found here.

Don’t Put the Symbol Before the Horse

horsecart 001ps

In Genesis, the creation account talks about the passage of days before the sun was created. There was a light time and a dark time: a full day.

Now, when God did create the sun, He did not then spin the earth, wait to see how long it took to spin once, and then decide to make a day 24 hours long. God determined that a day would be 24 hours long before He made the first day. The sun and the rotation of the earth were set to conform to what God had already determined. We need to be sure we don’t get that backward.

It is the same with biblical symbolism. Biblical symbols are not like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates. Forest wanted to describe life, so he chose an object close at hand and used it. The object he chose was not created to be a symbol for life, but it was able to be used as such with some imagination. Biblical symbols, however, are specifically created to represent something else that already exists.

An example is marriage. When God wanted to describe the relationship between Christ and the Church, He did not say, “The relationship between Christ and the Church is like marriage,” in a ‘Forest Gump box of chocolates’ kind of way. No, God created marriage because the concept of the relationship between Christ and the Church already existed, and marriage is an image of that pre-existing reality. This is the first reason why Christians oppose gay marriage. Jesus isn’t marrying another Jesus, therefore men don’t marry men — the created symbol has to follow what it’s imaging of the Creator.

When a man is opposed to the idea of a woman being a pastor, it is not because he is a male chauvinist. Rather, it is because he believes that gender matters. Gender is symbolic; not in a ‘box of chocolates’ kind of way, but in a ‘something pre-exists about God and this is an image of that’ kind of way. A man standing before his congregation is a symbol of Christ standing before His bride. A man protecting his church is a symbol of Christ protecting His wife. A woman can not do that; not because she isn’t smart enough, or talented enough, but because she doesn’t fit the symbol. The ‘Beauty and the Beast’ story would quickly lose its appeal if the beauty decided to switch roles with the beast — the symbols wouldn’t match.

Bread and wine exist because they image pre-existing things about God. Baptism, circumcision, the temple, birds, trees, clouds, stars, and even people themselves are symbols following after something which was real before any of them ever existed. Biblical symbols are directly connected to that which they image. Gump’s box of chocolates is not.

Symbols matter. They are not interchangeable. God sets them in place, and we benefit when we follow them and use them as He intended.

Power Religion (aka 666)

disney-666
In Deuteronomy 17 God gave instructions to the Israelites about their future king. God said that the king must never multiply horses for himself, not multiply wives for himself, and not multiply gold for himself.

To not multiply wives and gold means God did not want the heart of the king to be drawn away from God.

To not multiply horses means that God never intended Israel to be a conquering empire. They were to be a nation of priests to the Gentile nations. The surrounding Gentile nations were to protect Israel. God’s people always had a “Gentile sponsor” — someone to support and protect them. For Abraham it was Melchizedek, for Joseph’s family (the Hebrews) it was Egypt, for Moses and the people (now called Israel) it was Jethro, For David and Solomon it was Hiram of Tyre, and for the post-exile Jews it was Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome (the four beasts of Daniel 7 called up out of the Gentile sea to protect God’s people). Each time a beast went bad, God replaced it.

The Roman beast protected God’s people (now called Christians) all throughout the book of Acts. It was only the apostate Jews who wanted to destroy the Church, and the Romans always protected the Church. But after the events of Acts, the Roman beast went bad and turned on the Church — so God killed it.

The first century apostate Jews worshipped the religion of power. They wanted their Messiah to come with a sword and establish a Jewish empire. Jesus offered a religion of righteousness and self-sacrifice, but the apostate Jews rebelled against that and said, “We have no king but Caesar!” The Jewish leadership caused the people to worship the Roman beast — power religion.

We read about this in Revelation 13. The Land Beast (the Herods and the High Priesthood — two horns) caused all the people on the land (Israel) to worship the Sea Beast (the power of the Roman empire). The Land Beast caused all the people to put the mark of the Sea Beast on their foreheads — 666. That’s in direct contrast to the mark of God put on the foreheads of the faithful Jews in Revelation 7. No one could buy or sell without the mark. Buying and selling refers to worship, which is why Jesus says, “I counsel you to buy from Me gold…” (Revelation 3:18).

Solomon, at the peak of his career, did exactly as God intended for Israel. He built the temple and people from the surrounding nations came to Israel to see the glory of God and to learn from the kingdom of priests. But, Solomon went bad and began to worship power religion. We can read of his downfall in 1 Kings.

In 1 Kings chapters 10 & 11 we read that Solomon multiplied for himself horses, wives, and gold — exactly what he was not supposed to do as king. And we know he became a harsh king because when his son, Rehoboam, took power, the people asked for a more lenient rule (1 Kings 12).

When we read about Solomon multiplying gold (1 Kings 10:14), the bible says that he had 666 talents of gold coming to him each year. There’s more to that number than just this, but anyone “with understanding” reading the book of Revelation in the first century would have seen that the number 666 directly tied the Jewish worship of power religion to the fall of Solomon and his worship of power religion.

There is no need to go outside the bible to understand the number 666 or any of the other symbols in Revelation. 666 does not refer to Barak Obama, George W Bush, three W’s, or any of that stuff. It can all be understood by looking back into the Old Testament.

*This explanation of 666 is derived from James B Jordan’s teaching on the book of Revelation, which you can buy here.

The Four Stages Prophetic Fulfillment

Biblical prophecy ps

When we read the bible and find prophesy we want to know when the prophecy will be fulfilled. Has it been fulfilled already? Still to come? Or, will there be a double fulfillment? I have even heard the term “the law of double fulfillment”, stated as though every prophecy must be fulfilled at least twice.

While listening to lecture by James B. Jordan I learned a different way to look at the fulfillment of prophecy.

Often there is a fourfold fulfillment:

1) Anticipatory

The prophecy is given and there is a near fulfillment of it. The purpose of this stage is to confirm the word of the prophet. It’s way of saying, “This prophecy hasn’t been definitively fulfilled yet, but here’s a small fulfillment to prove that the prophetic word is true.”

2) Definitive

This is the actual definitive fulfillment of the prophecy. All biblical prophesy is definitively fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

3) Progressive

This is the full effect of the prophecy coming to pass through the Church. The Church is in Jesus, and Jesus is in the Church, therefore whatever is fulfilled in Christ will also happen in the Church.

4) Cumulative

This is the full effect of the prophecy coming to final fruition on the Last Day.

One example we can look at is the Temple:

In 2 Samuel 7:1-16 we read of how David decided he wanted to build a temple for God.* When David told the prophet Nathan of his idea, Nathan told him to go ahead and do it. But then God said, “You’re going to build a house for me David? No, I will build a house for you. Your descendent will build a house for me.” If you read the text, it is clear that God is talking about Jesus. God gives the prophesy here of Christ’s kingdom and the true temple of God which Jesus will build.

In 1 Chronicles 22:7-11 the exchange between God and David about the temple is elaborated a bit more. David told Solomon that he wanted to build the temple but his hands were too bloody. He also said that God would give him a son, a man of rest, and that son would build the temple. God also said the son’s name would be Solomon, which means peaceful. Then in verse 11 and following, David tells Solomon to go ahead and build the temple and that he had provided resources and plans for it. Again, read the text and you will see that the words God spoke were referring to Jesus.

In 2 Samuel 12:24-25 it is interesting to see that David named his son Solomon, but God named him Jedidiah.

So, God gave a prophecy that He would provide a king of peace, whose kingdom will last forever, and that this king would build a temple for God.

1) The prophecy was fulfilled in an anticipatory way with king Solomon building the first temple.

2) The prophecy was fulfilled definitively when Jesus built the true temple: the Church.**

3) The prophecy is being fulfilled progressively as time goes on and more and more people are brought into the kingdom.

4) The prophecy will will reach its final complete state on the Last Day when the bride (the Church) is married to her Groom (Jesus). From that point on, the temple will grow more and more glorious for all eternity.

There are several examples of prophecy being fulfilled in this fourfold manner in the bible. It doesn’t have to be this way every time, but when it is done this way we need to take notice of it.

*Notice from the text how it was David’s idea to build the temple, not God’s. God was happy with the continued use of the tabernacle — which was a temporary structure. David wanted to make the temporary structure more permanent. God wasn’t interested in that because He had a whole new structure in mind for the temple: the Holy Spirit filled Church. But, God allowed the temple to be built, He wasn’t against it. God can knock down a stone building just as quickly as a tent.

**Old Testament Israel was always the Church. I don’t believe Jesus created something new called the Church. But, because of His work on the cross, the law was fulfilled and God was no longer confined to the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. The curtain was torn. Also, with the barrier of the law out of the way, the Gentiles were able to enter.