(Best read after reading the previous pages in this section. This page will have ongoing updating too as more jigsaw pieces are revealed. If you can provide any or maybe show me why I need to remove an odd piece here and there then please do get in touch). 

So, here on this final page in this section is my latest up to date travel news of my journey’s progression. I know this idea of a journey may sound a bit silly but I wanted to do it this way with lots of talking about ‘self’ and ‘I’ and that is deliberate, this is my personal testimony with no pretentious intentions. I am just a woodman, an ordinary guy that heard and responded to the message of Jesus Christ and I am beholden to anyone with ears to hear, as we all are, to pass on any illumination that may be graciously granted to us. There are few references, I’m not pretending to be a scholar, although please be assured I have done my homework on this huge topic. I’m just an everyday bloke sharing my illumination with other everyday guys in everyday talk.

Truth is so very difficult to find nowadays, always covered by multiple layers of lies and deception before we find it and monumental amounts of effort and time have been expended to get this far. I’ve tried to keep this as simple and accessible as possible though, and this site has just been a very brief recall of where my journey has taken me, all my failings, all my findings and all in the hope I can be of some help to other sojourners as we journey through this incredibly dangerous alien land. The signpost to the importance of covenants has been the latest trail I’ve discovered but I want to stress that what you will read here bears very little resemblance to what is academically termed Covenant Theology, capital C and T, please don’t think I am endorsing that. Whenever I see the signpost ‘Theology’ I see danger signs too, and the same with Covenant Theology, the true covenantal understanding of the Old Covenant has been bent right out of shape by the pliers of theology.

The Importance of Recognising Covenant.

Not long after I turned my life to God I learned just how evil this world system that we are living in really is and I asked myself a question, why then do they allow churches to remain open, especially like my wife’s first English church in Westminster – right in the very heart of enemy territory, the global centre of the world system? Only years later did I realise – it is because these churches are working for them, either knowingly or probably nearly always unknowingly, by teaching us what they do – compromised doctrine that keeps us largely in the dark. Before you click out right now, please keep in mind that great quote by Spurgeon, ‘Discernment is not knowing right from wrong, it is knowing right from almost right’.

If you’ve been churched from an early age like I was then to grasp what follows here really will require an open mind and the ability to think beyond or deprogram from what we have been taught but as I have mentioned before, please be like the Bereans in Acts 17 when Paul bought a strange new message to them, at least check this message out and be called wise as they were. Please consider the fate of all those Jews who didn’t check out Paul’s strange teaching and perished in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. simply because they were absolutely convinced that they were right with God and thought Paul was a madman. 

So. Let’s consider again John chapter 3 where Jesus mentions Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. The literal reading clearly was relevant, but only for their dispensation and absolutely undeniably shows us that we must not necessarily interpret scripture literally in our current dispensation, the mistake which so many people make. Does looking at a crucified snake heal a person today?? Our big quest is to grow in wisdom to know just when to read literal and when not to*. Here on this page you are going to need to go well beyond that literal reading and travel deep into typology and other figurative language to find the spiritual treasure.

I rarely say anyone is wrong nowadays but instead I look at it like this, what each of us sees all depends on our degree of illumination. If we give a person blacked out sunglasses and ask him what there is in the room, he will quite correctly say nothing – and he is not wrong, relative to himself. However, gradually increase the amount of light getting through and he will gradually tell you more and more truth of what there is to see. And it is exactly the same with scripture. Spiritual vision is not all about learning, it is not about going to Bible College, it is not about how clever we are or what position we hold in church, it is about the state of our heart towards God. The more we give ourselves over to Him the more light he will allow to pass into the eyes of our understanding. Jesus said “I am the light of the world” and the more we are obedient and submit to Him the more clearly we see. 

How dim or how bright my sight is I have no idea but I can observe that my church friends have thinned out over the years, and, Jesus said narrow is the way and few find it, so either I’m on the right track, or, I’ve fallen down the ravine – in which case, please come and save your stumbled brother. But because nowadays the few people I do meet on my journey just close their doors when I knock on them rather than welcome me and offer a safety rope, logic tells me its probably the former.

Please remember, finding this narrow path is not a question of ones intellect or one’s social standing, it’s a question of submission/obedience and therefore it is open to all. Although in reality, for the very same reason, it is found by few. Stiff necked people are found throughout the Bible too, like they’re going round with fingers in their ears, although they are still about today and this is one of my favourite recent examples – after sharing the content of this page one retired Anglican vicar told me that if he had his way Paul wouldn’t even be in the New Testament! At first that so frustrated me but when I thought about it, he’d obviously understood this message here clearly and didn’t want to change, so just discredited Paul instead. And that told me that I must be on the right track. It also tells us something about the state of institutional church, especially when they ban guys like the Rev Steven Sizer (the only English church minister I know who understands this main message on Part two of this site) whilst appointing people like the Most Rev Cherry Vann. If you’re serious in your walk with God I would encourage you to check them both out and form your own conclusions.

Please bear all that in mind now if you don’t quite see this clearly when I now share some of my latest illumination, although if you do see more clearly than what I’m describing here or if you need some signposts to help clear your vision then please, please do get in touch.

This latest stage of my journey began one night in a church Bible study setting when I asked a young lady what the gospel message meant to her and she simply replied “a return to the garden of Eden”. I quickly moved on and asked the next person but as I meditated over that God used that lady’s comment that night to lead me further along this incredible journey of progressive illumination. 

I began to realise much deeper detail of just how Adam was a type (Rom 5:14) of Jesus and I discovered the real importance of covenant. The Bible begins with a man in the Garden with access to the Tree of Life, and armed with knowledge I’d discovered already about fulfilled prophecy I realised that it has already ended in Revelation with man ALREADY back in the Garden with access to the Tree of Life, with Jesus Christ right in the middle of every aspect of this and in multiple different roles and places, including being that Tree of Life. Once again, looking through that incredible ‘in Him’ lens of interpretation really clears up our vision. Finding that lens of ‘In Him’ was such a major signpost on my journey. I remember years ago wondering why those words were so important and highlighting all the phrases ‘In Him’ and ‘In Christ Jesus’ in my Bible because I knew back then a decade ago that because of their frequency there was a major key there to something I hadn’t yet found.

As is so often the case though, timing is everything and for the life changing illumination and application of all this to become fully clear to todays churched folk too we first need to completely deprogram, and that really does take some effort, and study, but most of all the scarcest quality of them all, the willingness to grow and keep moving on on our journey from our comfort zone and into the unknown, which let’s be honest, is something we all struggle with to some degree or other don’t we. Even after totally stepping out in faith into the unknown zone a couple times in my life and seeing the most incredible consequences I too am somehow still apprehensive when it comes to moving forward sometimes, even though I KNOW God is faithful and being hesitant is so stupid. So let’s always encourage each other, no one is exempt from needing encouragement.

When we realise that the message of the Bible is not all about being good boys and girls so we can go to heaven in the future when we die, that the Bible is not all pie in the sky in the future when we die, that the New Testament was not written to a future me and you but to the early Christians to aid them in the transition from the Old Covenant to the New and to encourage them all to steadfastly keep going on their journey under severe persecution, then applying this should be our lesson and our encouragement not to put our feet up but to keep travelling on. For me, recognising the total deception of todays Dispensational futurism, which pushes so much present tense truth into a supposed future hope, was a major help in discovering the truth about covenant, how the reality is right now immediately we enter into covenant with God, and then everything starts to fit into place. We eventually realise we’ve become fully equipped for battle against those spiritual giants in our present tense spiritual Promised Land. Sadly, I’m finding my fellow warriors are all too often found far away on sunny beaches or sat in nice warm coffee shops, far away from the frontline passively waiting for their future hope. Is that because they don’t see the enemy or because life is far more cosy when we’re not in a battle? Anyway, I’m not yet called to sound the trumpet, I want to carry on rightly dividing the Word of Truth and sharing this with my brothers and sisters. Back to Covenant and please put on your ‘covenant lenses’ now…..

In The Beginning.

Let’s start “in the beginning” then, when the land was first separated from the sea and consider Adam, BUT, not as being the first man, but rather as being the first man who God makes covenant with (seriously, as absurd as that first sounds just allow yourself to go with the flow…) Picture this, mankind is already inhabiting the whole earth but they are completely lost, spiritually dead. God chooses Adam to be the man to lead people to Himself, the first priest, to become spiritually alive, to be fruitful and multiply, God gives Adam a garden and Adam becomes the covenantal or federal head for mankind – if man wants to know God, they have to come to Adam. But we know Adam messed up don’t we, and then realised he was naked and judgement came both to Adam and eventually to his whole covenant world. 

God thencontinues His/this existing covenant through Noah and continues His original purposes. It’s paramount we see this is not a brand new covenant but a reworking, and a look into the Hebrew wording (Strong’s H6965) totally supports this view. So, after the judgment of the preceding covenant people with the flood, we see the same ‘creation’ theme again in the text, a dove (symbol of the Spirit of God) hovered above the chaotic water eventually bringing an olive branch (symbol of peace) and then the land is separated from the waters again. Noah is told to be fruitful and multiply (all just as in Genesis 1, do you follow the drift…)? Noah, the covenant man, plants a garden, gets drunk and then we hear of his nakedness and his descendant being cursed. See the similarity with Adam and the Garden again? Judgement then comes again on the covenant people, this time at Babel (look at the covenant judgements as always being a progressive dividing of the faithful remnant from the unfaithful covenant people). God scatters them but keeps one group of people for Himself, to continue His same Covenant purposes with Abraham.

Let’s move on to the continuation of this Covenant now with Israel and see if we can spot the same creation theme.

Moses separated the waters from the land and the Israelites went through on the DRY, not muddy, land. Ezekiel 16 describes very poetically how they were naked and then covered by God. They were given a garden, the land of milk and honey and just as the priest Adam was given a law which he failed to keep and ‘ate’ the fruit, Israel were given the Levitical Priesthood and The Law which they failed to keep. By becoming totally exclusive they also failed to multiply and subdue the whole earth and were ultimately expelled out of their garden, the land of Israel, when God’s curse and covenant wrath was experienced by them in 70AD when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. That completely fulfilled both the Law and the Prophets and that covenant ‘which was ripe for destruction’ (as the Aramaic Bible in Plain English puts it in Heb 8:13), not a Dispensational 2000+ year postponement, finally came to an end in 70AD. 

If that lot is too complicated, not to worry, it’s the bigger picture we just really need to know. I too am a bigger picture person, and even though I could add a lot more convincing detail to this I do think scholars all too often miss the forest for the trees, and I do believe we can sum up the whole Old Testament, think covenant, Old Covenant, in thirty seconds to better understand what’s going on. Try this….

Old Testament/Covenant Summary in One Sentence!

God made the heavens and the earth which he judged** and then renewed, chose Adam to come into covenant with Him (Adam was the first COVENANT man, not physical man), the judgment of Adam following his fall and the subsequent ongoing (SAME) covenant updates/judgments and narrowing of the faithful remnant down to Israel, then specifically Judah, and finally, following the judgement of Judah in AD70 at the harvest at the end of the Age, singled down to the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, WHO WAS THE ONLY MAN found to fulfill all righteousness from the covenant which was originally made way back with Adam.

This seems a convenient spot to split this message into two pages, although it’s so important to maintain the flow of the creation theme of Part One before looking at the New Covenant next in Part two. You’ll also probably want to pause a while on the journey to take in and meditate on that last paragraph, although often these things are just instantly lit up and we think why on earth didn’t I see that before!! Either way, please get a grip with that paragraph before reading Pt 2.

Notes.

*We potentially read the scripture from four viewpoints. Each of these four viewpoints is a vehicle for the manifestation of The Word of God. 

First, the literal historical, then the typological, ie scripture can be typological of i)Jesus

ii)The individual, an example being Gods temple is our bodies, 

as well as…..

iii)The broader Church, which is “in Him”. 

**I currently accept the translation “the earth became (not was) without form and void”, and I believe this implies judgement because the ‘Bible interprets the Bible’ method of interpretation shows the Hebrew term tohu wa bohu (without form and void) appears elsewhere in the Bible always in connection to the judgement of God. Plus it makes sense to me in the bigger picture. Why would God create the world without form and void ie already judged? This will also make more and more sense the further we go into our studies, especially when we discover more and more of the figurative language employed. See Bible Poetry in Part 3, especially for the term heaven and earth.