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Usually when I get to work I turn off my cellphone, but today I forgot to do so. Naturally, today was the day I got a call on my cellphone while I was at work! There’s no strict rule about that here, but I was just about to start my lunch break anyway.

Anyway, it turned out to be my parents. They said that tonight they’ll be heading down to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which holds an annual Christmas event called “Electric Safari” wherein they string up animal cages with Christmas lights and there’s free admission at night. Actually, I should point out that when my parents say they’re going what they mean is that my three-year-old nephew is going and they’re going to see him watch the animals….

Since I was invited along, I figure I’ll go too. It’ll be nice to see animals in cages…late at night…in the cold. Unpaid animals.

I see absolutely no way this will remind me of work.

I just watched Resident Evil: Apocalypse which was included with Resident Evil on a nifty little two-pack. I remember watching the first Resident Evil years ago, but I really forgot how cheesy these movies were. The first one was still infinitely better than the second one, but the second one really made me appreciate Shaun of the Dead that much more.

Question. Why is it that zombies that are so slow can sneak up on people so fast? Further, why is it that the main characters are stupid enough to go into a dark room and breathe a sigh of relief? (This is just asking for a big bite to get taken out of your shoulder.)

Oh well. At least they weren’t vampires in Alaska. Still, I really have to ask…where are the good zombie horror writers?

I wonder if it means anything when I won’t write a zombie story. Perhaps it means it’s just impossible to do anything with the zombie genre. Maybe that’s why all zombie movies (that aren’t spoofs) totally suck. There just isn’t enough there.

Or perhaps authors need to get away from cliches and stupid protagonists who go out of their way to die horrific deaths.

Yes, today I got in the mail the official final version on Public Transit. It should be available on Amazon.com and Borders in another week or so (it could be delayed a bit due to the Christmas holiday). But it is available at Lulu.com (click above), and if you’re concerned about me getting royalties (hey, I’m a writer and I can imagine whatever I want) I get more $ if you buy through Lulu then anywhere else.

In any case, this means that it’s time to work on my next projects, which include finishing Event In Progress, Apocalypsis, and Memorial Stone, as well as re-editing Ghost Shadows and Lisa. I’m also putting the finishing touches on a short story I’ve been working on called “Snake Oil” which is about John Kerry (not really).

Check this headline: Non-believing US voters feel demonized

Isn’t this about like saying “I feel unicornized”? I mean, seriously, if you don’t believe in the supernatural, how can you feel “demonized”? :-P

The article cites how atheists aren’t trusted in politics. (BTW: it’s not just atheists, I don’t trust anyone in politics.) But then it ends by saying:

“Many of the candidates would be acceptable to me regardless of their religious faith,” Stark told AFP. “Jimmy Carter (who became president in 1977) was perhaps the most personally strident conservative Christian — and I think he did a wonderful job.”

Well THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM RIGHT THERE. Anyone who thinks Carter “was perhaps the most personally strident conservative Christian” cannot be trusted to vote well.

Hmm, well today has finally passed most of the way on toward oblivion. It’s been another unusual day, although not quite as surreal as the days have been. Still, when there are weeks like this it makes me wonder what in the world God’s up to.

I suppose time will tell.

After last week’s oddities, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that today they would continue. Although actually I had a fairly normal day at work, and the really weird stuff didn’t start until after I got off.

Yeah, went down to the bus terminal…only to find that the building had been evacuated. Someone left a “suspicious package” unattended under one of the benches.

By the way, I should take this time to note that you should never have an emergency in Colorado Springs. The bus terminal, which is right next to the City Hall, is maybe a mile away from the police operations headquarters. Which is why it took over half an hour before the first cops showed up.

Reminds me of the time several moves ago when my then-roommate had a seizure while he was taking a shower. I couldn’t get the door open and just heard him moaning, so I called 911.

It rang 18 times. I hung up, tried again. After a dozen rings, I called the operator and said, “This is an emergency” and explained the situation. She called 911 and it rang over twenty times. Finally, twenty minutes after it all began, she was able to get hold of the fire department. Thankfully, my roommate was fine (although he burned himself on the heater that was running in the bathroom, and had the water from the shower hit the heater he woulda been fried).

In any case, it turns out the suspicious packages was just a tool-kit case. So at least that was good.

In order to explain this next bit properly, I should take a quick detour. Earlier this afternoon, I talked to one of my coworkers and told her that I was the weirdest person on Earth. She said, “Maybe in this office.” And I corrected to say, “Well, the whole building then.” But I was still thinking that I was the weirdest person on Earth cuz…well, I’m me.

In any case, during the bomb square I met this guy who had come over. He said, “If it’s a bomb, I could probably dismantle it. I was trained for that.” I asked him what branch of the service he served in. He said: “The French Foreign Legion.”

Didn’t see that one coming. But immediately after the “bomb scare” was over, a woman came up with someone who I guess was her boyfriend. She claimed she was Russian, but the only accent she had was the “I’m so totally stoned I don’t know what I’m saying anymore” accent.

After that, my bus arrived and I climbed aboard. As we neared one of the stops, this old guy on the bus got up and started yelling about Jesus. Then, when he climbed off the bus he said, as best as I can recall: “You won’t know salvation until you kill the Son of God. Lucifer is Lord! Accept it now.” And then he was gone.

Oddly enough, no one on the bus understood what the guy had said. The driver asked what the guy had been yelling, and one of the passengers responded with the best description of it I can imagine: “We all understood the words he was sayin’ but none of it made no sense.” Seriously, it was really weird, like listening to something you almost immediately forget. I won’t even claim that what I thought I heard him say was what he really said, despite the fact that he yelled it about ten feet away from me. It was like his words were slippery and just skipped off your ears. I really can’t explain it better than that. It was so surreal that after it’s over you immediate think, Did that really happen? And if you were the only one to hear it, you’d probably say, Nope, I just imagined it. But in this case, there were several others on the bus.

Oh well. Just to finish up the surreality, by the time we got to my stop, the two remaning women on the bus were talking about the strip clubs they had worked in. Honestly, I was sitting there thinking, If this is who they’ve got in a strip club, I’m glad I don’t go there. Why pay money to watch ugly people dance around a pole when you can watch YouTube for free?

My point exactly.

After having read T-Stone’s latest screed, which I’m not even going to bother to link to, here is my final response to anything that T-Stone has to say for now and forever more.

As I’ve studied theology, I’ve come to the conclusion that God really knew what was best when He decided to reveal Himself through the Old Testament shadows before He revealed Himself fully in the person of Christ. As a result, I am going to look at a few of the Old Testament typologies as they relate to Christological significance. There is no better place to begin than with the Garden of Eden itself, and with Adam. Now I should point out that this post is not the place to weigh questions of how literal the six day creation is, or whether or not Darwinism is true. While those are fine topics of discussion, what I want to look at is simply the relationship between the opening chapters of Genesis and the person of Christ. It is my hope that by looking at the Old Testament in more detail, we can all gain more insight into Him.

Before you read any of the following, it is helpful if you read Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 3:24. Due to space concerns, I will not quote the entirety of the passage here (you can read it in the ESV, which is the version I shall be using, by clicking here).

To set the stage, we begin with the creation of the universe. It culminates in the creation of a man, Adam, and his wife, Eve. Of the nature of man, we read:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:26).

There has been much debate over what is meant by being created in the image of God. However, I think it is safe to conclude that at least part of what is meant is given by the rest of the context. Man gains dominion over the animals on the earth. Just as God has dominion over all created beings, man (in the image of God) has dominion over animals.

To exercise his dominion, Adam names all the animals on Earth (Genesis 2:19). In the ANE culture, naming was a way of showing dominion. God named Adam to show God had dominion over man, but He allowed man to name all the animals because God had given Adam dominion over them.

Additionally, Adam named Eve (Genesis 2:23). It is important to note a few things about this. First, Eve was created after God had already demonstrated that none of the animals on Earth were a suitable helper for man. In other words, while pagan cultures always devalued women, the Jewish culture was shown that women were, indeed, to be treated better than any animal on Earth. Women are just as much in the image of God as men are (Genesis 1:27), yet God chose that men would hold a position of dominion. This is a dominance of position, not of worth (in the same way that a governor holds dominion over his subjects, yet holds no greater human rights than his subjects). Naturally, once sin entered the equation this relationship has always been strained; yet it remains a fact that God established this relationship, and it further remains that He worked to ensure that men would know women were of more value than any animal. Sadly, most cultures throughout history have forgotten this.

The form of dominion that Adam had was one that can best be represented in terms of Federal Headship. We see this by the fact that Adam, and not Eve, was specifically given a command to obey:

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17).

This command came before God created Eve. Adam had responsibility to obey it, and because of his Federal Headship, his obedience and disobedience would be meted out to all of those who came from him (including Eve, who came from one of Adam’s ribs).

Indeed, we see from the Fall in Genesis 3 that Eve’s eyes were not opened until after Adam had eaten of the fruit too:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked (Genesis 3:6-7, emphasis mine).

Because God’s command had come specifically to Adam, the consequences for sin were not meted out until Adam fell. Since both Adam and Eve fell, we do not know what would have happened to Eve had she eaten and Adam refrained. Quite possibly, given the structure of dominion that God had put in place, God may have simply given Adam the responsibility to mete out punishment since Eve was given the command via Adam and not directly from God. But this is speculation since it did not occur. What we do know from the text is that once Adam sinned, the eyes of both Adam and Eve were open and they knew they were naked.

After the Fall, God punished men and women for their sinfulness. But even while punishing, He offered a promise. To the serpent, He said:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel (Genesis 3:15).

This passage, commonly referred to as the protoevangelium, gives us the first explicit information about who Christ would be. However, much is also inferred from the events that occurred before this. Let us now examine both, starting with the clear statements from Genesis 3:15, and then looking at the inferences from the rest of Genesis 1-3.

1) We know that Christ will be human. The serpent is told it will be one of Eve’s offspring.

2) We know that Christ will be wounded in the exchange. “You shall bruise his heel.”

3) We know that the serpent will be destroyed by this. “He shall bruise your head” (other translations use the word “crush” instead of “bruise”).

In addition to this explicit information, we can infer much from what has gone on before, and it deals specifically with what is called Original Sin.

When Adam sinned, all of his descendents were judged sinners with him. This causes most of us to immediately proclaim: “That’s not fair!” After all, we did not have a choice in the matter. We did not sin, so why should we be included in the judgment? That the judgment does extent to all mankind is immediately seen from the punishments meted out to Adam and Eve—the cursing of the ground indeed occurs to this day, as does increased pain in childbirth. And, returning to the theme of dominance, it is certainly the case for woman that “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). These punishments occur to this day; so too does the punishment of all of us knowing we are “naked” before God.

This happens, again, because Adam was the Federal Head of all who came from him. He was the Federal Head of the entire human race, and as such when he fell all mankind fell with him. But had this not happened—had God not put Adam in that Federal Headship role—it would have been impossible for Christ to save all mankind by His actions.

For we know from later Scripture that Christ is the second Adam. Christ fulfilled the laws that Adam could not, and as a result all those who are under the Federal Headship of Christ transfer their status from being under the judgment of God to being under the blessing of God. In order to fix the problem of evil, Christ had to be under the same situation as Adam. If we balk at all men under Adam being condemned in Adam, we must balk at all those under Christ being redeemed by Christ.

Thus, it becomes vitally important to look at the role Adam had before and after the Fall. As Paul tells us, Adam was the “type of the one who was to come” (Romans 5:14). As a result, when we learn about Adam we learn about Christ.

The opening of Genesis gives us a great deal of information about Christ, information that was given in a type and shadow format. God gave the shadow before the reality so that, when we see the reality, we would have something to relate it to. We can understand Christ’s representation of us before God because we already see Adam’s representation of us before God. Since we live with the effects of Original Sin, we have something with which we can grasp His imputation.

UPDATE: I posted this over on Triablogue too (you can read it at http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/12/first-adam.html, and Gene Bridges made the following comment which I thought relevant to add here:

I’d add that something that is sometimes overlooked is that we can also learn that, like Adam, Christ has a wife, namely the Church. His people are predestined, according to Ephesians, “in Him.” Eve of course was also taken “from Adam.” All of these images go together.

I’ll just add that I agree, and I also believe there are more “threads” that link the OT with the NT as well. Part of the joy of reading Scripture is when God illuminates some of them for us.

BTW, anyone who tries to leave comments should be aware that there has been an upsurge in spam that I’ve been getting rid of. If I accidentally delete a relevant comment, I do apologize. If you don’t see a comment you make appear within three or four days, you can re-submit it.

I got to spend the afternoon with my father. We did a little Christmas shopping (and everyone in my family already knows what they’re getting: Borders gift cards…booyah) and then searched around for some other things which, because my mom reads this blog, I will not mention yet. (Yeah, try to read between THOSE lines!)

In any case, after the shopping was finished, we went to Village Inn and ate dinner, drank coffee, and had a good chat. It’s always nice to talk with my dad. I’ve always been close to him, and he definitely shaped my theology more than any other person. A lot of that comes from the fact that my dad was my pastor for the first eighteen years of my life or so. Not that my mom didn’t help either (I still remember the songs she taught me as a little child, a lot of which were simply Bible verses set to music); however, when it came to wrestling with the big ideas I was always able to talk to my dad and know that he could think about them as well.

Needless to say, our talk covered a wide area. There wasn’t just one thing, but several different topics. I got to talk a bit about my theory of how teaching occurs, some various philosophical thoughts on what knowledge is, thoughts on free will and fatalism, even thoughts on the divine command theory. But intermixed was normal conversation too. It’s actually quite amazing how easy it is to go from talking about Ukraine to talking about justification to talking about snow. All in two minutes.

When I see my dad, I see a lot of me. And I’m glad that I’m father’s son. In some ways, it helps me to see what Christ meant when He said: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). I am glad that God has given so many different varieties of “clues” about who He is. We have what we can understand from the workings of nature (by which we know His invisible attributes, as per Romans 1)–and that includes the way that families are–and we also know from Scripture more about Him. God reveals Himself in many ways, and it is through His Son that He is most clearly seen (as per Hebrews 1).

I love the way that God uses images and types to communicate truth. I’ve said before how much I like the Old Testament, and how I think it beneficial for all believers to get to know it intimately. God revealed the Old Testament before the New Testament for a reason. And one of the most Christologically significant books of the Bible is none other than the book of Genesis.

Because of this, I’m planning on doing a quick four or five part series beginning in the next few days. The series will look at Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph and look at their Christological significance. By no means does this exhaust Genesis (for one immediately thinks of Noah and Jacob/Israel too), but I think it gives us enough to hopefully motivate others to delve into the Old Testament once more.

Additionally, I should point out that if you’d like to read more on the significance of Christ in the Old Testament, one of the best books for that is The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses by Poythress. It actually makes the OT law interesting :-) When you see the purpose behind the repetitive commands for what the tabernacle should look like (for example), it makes it that much easier to make it through Numbers.

In any case, I think our cultural illiteracy of the Old Testament is one of the major drawbacks to modern evangelicalism. I think most of the various issues we struggle with, including those I talked with my father about today, all boil down to the fact that Christians have largely jettisoned the OT completely, and 99% of the New Testament too. When we see that a large number of Christians cannot even tell why Mormons aren’t Christians, then we know that something is amiss. And I, for one, think understanding the Old Testament will equip the believer with one of the strongest apologetical arguments he has: the self-consistency of Scripture. Frankly, once you understand the OT and how the NT is its fulfillment, it’s impossible to doubt the inspiration of Scripture.

So be prepared for the next few days for some good conversation. And perhaps you should get a cup of coffee to sip along with it too.