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Bible
Study #1 Beyond
Intertextuality & Hypertexuality: Typological
Exegesis With its covers closed, hold your Bible in front of
you: your Bible exists as a tangible object. It is physical, material, an
object that you see, an object very much like the stone tablets upon which the old written code was inscribed by the
finger of God. Your Bible contains both the Old and New Testaments, with the
Old Testament or Covenant made with natural When dealing with what
cannot be seen, it is easy to wear the
Emperor’s new clothes. Scams and con men abound. Therefore, clearly seeing
the shadow becomes the determiner of what properly belongs in the spiritual
book, written according to what has been physically revealed. Intertexuality links one text with
another, as in when the Apostle Paul cites the Genesis chapter one creation
account (2 Co 4:6), thereby linking this epistle to the saints at The Genesis chapter one
creation account contains a lacunae,
a textual gap, a so-called fault line where “meaning” breaks as the crust of
the earth does along the San Andreas Fault: the earth brings forth plants and
fruits trees on the third day, but in a simple assignment of meaning where the
great light that rules the day is the sun and the lesser light to rule the
night is the moon, the sun and moon aren’t created until the fourth day (Gen
1:11-19) so photosynthesis cannot occur. However, when this lacunae is pried open, with the seven
day creation account (Gen 1:1-2:3) spanning the fault, it isn’t biological
error that’s found but another text, an account about a spiritual [not of the
four unfurled dimensions] creation that is foreshadowed by the creation account
described in Genesis 2:4 through the end of chapter 4. And it is this concealed
[through being invisible] text that faithful Christians now read, with each of
their lives being an epistle written by Christ…some of these epistles are as
the oracles of Isaiah were; some as the Lamentations of Jeremiah were; some as
the Chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judea were; some as Acts of the
Apostles were. All are the spiritual reality of the physical phenomena recorded
in the Books [i.e., the Bible]. In both the creation
account of Genesis chapter 2 (the so-called “J” account) and in the invisible
spiritual creation account of Genesis chapter 1 (the “P” account), no life
precedes Adam, the first Adam of the “J” account and the last Adam (1 Co Into this second fault,
thousands if not millions of words have disappeared: a gap-theory was called
into existence by Christian apologists eager to appear “scientific.” Allegedly,
billions of years fell into this narrative fissure—enough years to accommodate
several theories of Evolution, and a dating of the universe’s formation to 13.5
billion years ago. But all of the previous apologists that shoveled words into
this narrative break failed to recognize the shift of dimensional planes. The
“P” account moves from physical to spiritual in the lacunae between verses 1 and 2. The concealed hypertext must,
however, use a biological taxonomical hierarchy to express the increasingly
sophisticated transitional stages from flesh [the waters of humanity — at the
beginning of day two] to Spirit, in the image of and after the likeness of God
[at the end of day six]. The earth is a young
world, its age dated to approximately a thousand years for a day (Ex 31:17
& 2 Pet 3:8). But spiritual days and spiritual nights are not measured by
physical orbits; rather, spiritual days are denoted by the coming and going of
the light of men (John 1:4). The dark or lifeless portion of the day precedes
the light or living portion (Gen 1:4 & Lev The hypertext is the Book of Life, written by Christ on human
hearts, each person an epistle. The Bible is the lively shadow of the Book of
Life; for the Bible is a visible, physical book and as such reveals and
precedes the invisible, spiritual Book of Life that will be read by every son
of God post-resurrection. But because born of Spirit sons of God, while still
dwelling in fleshly tents, have life in the timeless heavenly realm, these sons
of God can (as if looking through smoked glass) today read the Book of Life by
taking meaning from Scripture through typological exegesis. Before meaning can be
taken from words—this meaning being first assigned to these words by a reading
community—a conscious or unconscious strategy for interpretation must be placed
in play by the reader. This strategy becomes the interpreter, and has come to be called hermeneutics after the Greek deity Hermes, the Olympian pantheon’s
messenger. And every reader uses an interpretation strategy if any sense is to
be made of Scripture or of other texts…the concept of text encompasses more than what has been written, for Jesus equated
His acts (speech and performing miracles) with words from the Father. Although
the text that is canonical Scripture
is only physically conveyed through a stream of inscribed icons [letters], the
original form of this text contained
the words of God the Father uttered through healings and expelling demons
[uttered through performances that transcend dimensions]. The inscribed
gospels, now, form the historical trace of the Word of God, this trace binding
icon [signifier] to object [signified] as the interpreter or interpretant;
this trace being the tracks left in this material world by the speech acts of
the Father. Yes, God’s presence among
men remains discernable by the tracks He left. But as humankind has moved from
being hunters, their existence dependent on their ability to read the story
told by tracks around a waterhole, to being farmers, then artisans, then urban
industrialists, then computer geeks, human beings have largely lost interest in
the tracks God left and are now interested in binary stories told through
stacking ones and zeros into ephemeral images morphed into surreal personages
drawn from subconscious minds consigned to disobedience. Therefore, the
hypertext Book of Life that does not exist in any physically inscribed form
lies immediately before, as if a stumbling stone, the third part of humanity
that will be born of Spirit halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation.
This third part is today neither Christian nor Jewish, but is actually hostile
to God. Yet, this third part will experience changed mindsets when born of
Spirit—for all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13). Today’s
Buddhist or Hindi will worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or will
have taken the mark of death upon himself or herself before the last year of
those seven endtime years begins. Every person then still alive will either
have produced fruit or will have remained as part of the waters of humanity in
bondage to disobedience—this is the third day of the hypertext Genesis one
creation account. Biblical typology usually
refers to interpreting Old Testament characters and stories as mimetic,
metaphoric, or metonymic representations that foreshadow aspects of the New
Testament—“typology” itself means the study of types. But a typological
interpretation of Scripture is to draw meaning from an extensive and critical study
of biblical types that goes beyond finding New Testament passages prefigured in
Old Testament modeling. Thus, biblical typology as used in this Bible Study is typological
exegesis. Exegesis, from ἐξηγεῖσθαι or “to lead out,” usually means how one
takes meaning from a given text, and is the application of hermeneutics; thus,
biblical typological exegesis is
interpretation and understanding of the Bible on the basis that all of
inscribed Scripture serves as the shadow or type of the Book of Life. Hence, the
Bible is a type of itself, with the relationship of the Bible to the Book of
Life being revealed through the difference between the commandments of God
being inscribed on stone tablets and the laws of God being inscribed on hearts
and placed in minds. When the laws of God are
written on hearts and minds, the lives of disciples become epistles from Christ
Jesus delivered through the actions of students and teachers—of whom the
Apostle Paul was ordained by God to lay the foundation of the spiritual house of
God, built not with dead stones but with living stones who, as obedient
children, do not conform to the passions of their former ignorance, but live
holy lives as God is holy (1 Pet 1:14-16). And the commandments inscribed on
stone tablets, as two schoolmasters, teach the flesh what has been written in invisible
Spirit on the heart and mind: the movement of the law from dead stone to living
stone is from hand to heart, body to mind. Jesus equated murder, an action of
the hand, under the old written code to anger under the laws written on hearts.
He equated adultery, an action of the body, under the old written code to lust
under the laws placed in the mind. And He equated the judgments of the council that
are paid in fines or lashes to the second death, which is damnation in the lake
of fire (Matt The above principle
supersedes the pettiness of, say, the Chronometrical Principle: words written in ink on
the processed skins of sacrificed lambs that formed the physical Scroll
foreshadow or are a type of the living words in the scripturally co-joined text
and hypertext that are the acts of persecuted sons of God written in blood on
the sacrificed Body of the Lamb of God recorded in the Book of Life (Rev
6:9-11). As lifeless words written in ink are joined together to form the
Torah, the Writings, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles, the
living words of God are jointed together to form the lives of the saints, each
an epistle from Christ or part of the writings that reveal the history of the
Church in the heavenly realm, a history as sad as the history of natural Israel
in Judea. ·
As God gave to natural Israel,
because of this physically holy nation’s refusal to walk in His ways and because
this nation’s continual profaning of His Sabbaths, “statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life”
(Ezek 20:25) thereby defiling “them
through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn” (v. 26), God gave to spiritual Israel,
the Christian Church, because of this
spiritually holy nation’s refusal to walk in His ways and continued profaning
of His Sabbaths, statutes and rules and holidays that left the Jerusalem
above empty for centuries. ·
As God delivered natural Israel
into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the human king of Babylon, God delivered the
Church into the hand of Satan the devil, the spiritual king of Babylon (Isa
14:4-21). ·
As seventy years passed before
a remnant of natural Israel could return to Jerusalem to rebuid a scaled-down
house of God, twelve centuries passed [325 -1525 CE] before a remnant of the
Church left spiritual Babylon to return to the Jerusalem above to rebuild a
humbled house of God on the foundation that the Apostle Paul laid. This
Bible Study is part of the work of rebuilding that spiritual house in the
heavenly city of Jerusalem; this Study appears in the sixty-ninth week of the
decreed seventy weeks in the Book of Life. For too long, biblical
criticism’s entire focus has been on better seeing aspects of the Bible, the
lifeless shadow of the Book of Life, not on gaining entrance into the spiritual
hypertext. Although some small amount of good scholarship has been produced,
the majority of the work done in the past nineteen centuries is charred debris
littering the foundation that the Apostle Paul, as a master builder, laid in
the A disciple doesn’t need
to know the nuances of Koine Greek, or the Predictive
Principle, the First Mention Principle, the Progressive Mention Principle, the Comparative Mention Principle, or even the Full Mention Principle to know
God, to love God, and to love neighbor…so much nonsense has masquareded as
“spiritual truth” for so long that the simplicity of Christ has been turned
into a school for carnival barkers, each hawking another sideshow amusement,
none genuine, each a lie disguised as righteousness. And no wonder, for the
super-apostles that gained control of the Church while the Apostle Paul still
lived were themselves tares to be gathered and burned at the end of the age
when all causes of lawlessness and all law-breakers are purged from the Body,
turned Bride through liberation from the law of sin and death that presently
dwells in the flesh of each member (Rom 7:25). If all causes of sin and
all law-breakers are gathered by the angels upon Jesus’ return and thrown into
the fiery furnace (Matt 13:41-42), then the law of God will have been in effect
from planting to harvest—from when Jesus breathed on ten of His disciples and
said, Receive the Holy Spirit (John
20:22), through when Jesus returns as
King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus is both cornerstone and capstone of the
living temple. Why would the
super-apostles teach disciples that they do not have to live as spiritual
Judeans? Why would these super-apostles teach that the tents of flesh in which dwell
born of Spirit sons of God should not live as Jesus lived? Will Jesus, an
observant Jew, today dwell in a tent of flesh that lives as a Gentile when He,
Himself, did not live as a Gentile while in the flesh? Question: would Jesus
have performed mundane work on the Sabbath, such as squaring timbers or hewing
stones? He would not have, would He? What did He do that caused the Pharisees
to accuse Him of breaking the Sabbath? He preached the words of His Father and
His God. Jesus delivered the spiritually uttered words of the Father on the
Sabbath, some of these speech-acts delivered in the form of healings. Jesus
preached a God about which the Pharisees knew nothing. On the Sabbath, He spoke
through His words and by His acts [works] the words of the Father, just as
disciples, every Sabbath, should preach by words and works those things they’ve
heard from the Father. Have today’s
super-apostles actually been given by God statutes and ordinances and holidays
that send the firstborn of two sons of God struggling in the womb of Isaac [Rebekah’s womb] (Gal Two sons, a spiritual
Cain and a spiritual Abel, born to the last Eve outside of Scripture, their
birth recorded in the hypertext Book of Life—this spiritual Cain, the elder son,
is as Esau was. He is hated before birth (Rom 9:6-13), before any sin is
imputed to him, for sin lurks in his flesh and he does not resist and overcome
it, but succumbs to it. He does not redeem his time in the womb, using it to
practice walking uprightly before God; whereas the younger son is as righteous
Abel was, and is loved before birth because he struggles with God and prevails
with God through his struggle against his deceitful nature. Both sons will be
born in a day (Isa 66:8), that day the Second or
Spiritual Passover when spiritual When the laws of God
inscribed on stone tablets—commandments that regulate the actions of hands and
bodies—move inward to become the laws written on fleshy hearts and minds of
living stones, the Sabbath commandment doesn’t move to another day, but moves
from regulating the actions of the hand and body to regulating the desires of
the heart and the thoughts of the mind. The Sabbath becomes a day to relieve
the oppressed, a day to contemplate God, not a day to do one’s shopping or to
go golfing or fishing or to produce the needs of the flesh. It is not a day to
think about the mundane things of this physical life. It is the day for entering
into God’s rest, which is not burdensome but a delight. Therefore, by
attempting to enter God’s rest on the following day as the natural nation that
left Egypt attempted to enter God’s rest on the following day (Num 14:40-41
with Ps 95:10-11 & Heb 3:19), the greater Christian Church demonstrates
that it has received—because of its profaning of God’s Sabbaths—statutes and
rules by which this spiritual nation cannot live. The greater Church has
transformed hope and faith into the making of itself into spiritual bulls and
goats to be sacrificed in the lake of fire upon Christ Jesus’ return. Yes,
those disciples who are today without fear and who expect to see Jesus upon
death, await a fearful and awesome fate upon His return. And it seems that these
spiritual bulls and goats are as unaware of what awaits them as was the
livestock brought to the altar of the temple in the Again, for the purpose of
this Bible Study, and all further Bible Studies in this series, typological exegesis has the Bible being
the type or shadow of the spiritual Book of Life. The intertextuality
that links stories and phenomena from the Old Testament with the New Testament
now, in the same way, links the Bible with the Book of Life, a hypertext that
cannot be physically inscribed for it is not of this world and does not exist
in this world. And this hypertext can only be read in the heavenly realm where
foreknown sons of God have already entered timelessness through their resurrections
that still remain ahead of all flesh confined within time…as sons of God
dwelling in tents of flesh, we cannot yet go to where we are. Therefore, typological exegesis actually lies beyond
present day intertextuality and hypertextuality. For a disciple to
conceive both timelessness and the difference between this physical realm and
the heavenly realm—the difference between lifelessness [darkness] and life
[light]—the disciple must perceive that the passage of time equates to change.
An example, passage of time must occur for the disciple to turn from one page
to another in Scripture, or to unroll and roll a scroll, but no passage of time
is necessary to “read” many living epistles, all functioning together in unity
as one organism, all having love for one another. Today, the many
self-identified disciples of Christ Jesus do not, and
indeed, cannot function together in unity, for some of these disciples have
been created as vessels for honored usage while some have been created as
vessels for dishonorable use [spiritual chamber pots]. Many disciples have been
called, but few will be chosen (Matt * * * * * "Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001
by Crossway Bibles, [ Home ] |