God loves numbers and patterns. You are probably familiar with how the numbers 12 and 70 are significant in Scripture.
But God also delights in dissonance and lopsidedness. The numbers 12 and 70 are quite distant; their least common multiple is 420. A lunar month (29.5 days) does not evenly fit into a year (365 or 365.25 days). A week (7 days) does not evenly fit into either a lunar month or a lunar year. The earth is not perfectly round, nor are orbits perfectly circular.
Solar noon and midnight are pinned to the top and bottom of the clock.
The face of the clock reflects a sweeping 24 hours. The white band indicates what you might call the “date line”—the divide between today and tomorrow. This divide trails the current time so that the clock primarily reflects a view of future hours.
Daylight, nighttime, and the three twilights (civil, nautical, astronomical) are mapped on the clock.
At extreme latitudes, day or night may not be present. The clock attempts to account for this but I have not fully tested it at every extreme. Please let me know if you run into problems.
The major marks on the clock indicate a common understanding of the liturgical hours. The minor marks on the clock indicate a division of individual non-liturgical hours.
I wrote previously about James Jordan’s reflection on God’s covenant name and the merciful cutting off of wickedness. Jordan says,
The statement “visiting iniquity of fathers to the children of the third and fourth generation” means that if you become involved in image worship and your children and grandchildren don’t repent of it, you just move out of history and you move out of the covenant people. You wind up being like the Serbians. Your children are going to suffer from it. They were misapplying that to say, “Well, we suffer nowadays because our fathers sinned.” And the prophets came along and said, “no, if you repent, God will alleviate.”
That’s not what’s going on [in Exodus 34]. Now, the Sinaitic covenant was made with Israel. That covenant’s broken. There isn’t any covenant with Israel anymore. Now what are we going to do?
But I also discovered that I learned this from Gary North as well. North says,
And then Murray says the third thing you’ve got to have is a doctrine of final sanctification, that is, a final judgment in which God looks at what you’ve done and once again, at the end of the process, declares “not guilty.” And that there’s the final resolution and the final evaluation. There’s final judgment. And he said, you’ve got to have a concept of sanctification which includes definitive, progressive, and final.
Now, how do I use that? How should you use that? Because what we’re taught covenantally is that’s not just limited to people. That’s societies, too. That there is not just personal, definitive, progressive, and final sanctification, but there is also corporate and covenantal. And you have that with the bride of Christ. The bride of Christ, the church of Jesus Christ, is perfect in the eyes of God. It’s received all the perfections of Christ, but she’s not dressed in holy robes yet. That takes time. That’s what progressive sanctification is for the church. And at some final point, the church will receive her perfect robes and the marriage supper of the Lamb will take place. And that’s a corporate element of sanctification. It’s not just individual.
Now, what I’m arguing is that if it’s true of the individual and it’s true of the church of Jesus Christ, then I think I can make an application in terms of the development of societies. That certain societies become rebellious and are cut down because judgment takes place also in the midst of time, and you go to the fourth commandment. Visiting the iniquities under the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and showing loving kindness unto thousands of those that love me and keep my commandments. There you’ve got the model of history. That’s what that’s about. Because the thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments, in the Deuteronomic passage: it’s thousands of generations.
So you have the short-term development of evil, and then it ends. It’s cut short in the midst of history, and that inheritance is transferred. And we know that because the wealth of the wicked is laid up for the just. The compounding process takes place over long periods of time for the church of Jesus Christ and the elect.
For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my exodus.
For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1)
This entire passage is a reference to the transfiguration. This is somewhat obscured by variant translation of tent and tabernacle, and of the hiddenness of the word exodus.
From Matthew:
Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tents: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.”
And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things. But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished. Likewise the Son of Man is also about to suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist. (Matthew 17)
From Luke:
Now it came to pass, about eight days after these sayings, that He took Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray. As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His exodus which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. But Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him. Then it happened, as they were parting from Him, that Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tents: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.
While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” When the voice had ceased, Jesus was found alone. But they kept quiet, and told no one in those days any of the things they had seen. (Luke 9)
Given the strong connections between these passages, I think we should look for what “the Lord Jesus Christ showed me” directly in Matthew and Luke. It seems that Peter is drawing this principle from his experience at the transfiguration: on this side of the resurrection (under the sun, as it were), there is a real experience and perception of light and glory, but this comes at the expense of labor and suffering; we do not have enduring rest. We tabernacle, but we do so in our temporal flesh.
If you had the opportunity to bind your children to Jesus, why wouldn’t you do so?
So they answered Joshua and said, “Because your servants were clearly told that Yahweh your God commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you; therefore we were very much afraid for our lives because of you, and have done this thing. And now, here we are, in your hands; do with us as it seems good and right to do to us.” So he did to them, and delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel, so that they did not kill them. And that day Joshua made them woodcutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of Yahweh, in the place which He would choose, even to this day. (Joshua 9)
The same goes for cities:
Then the priests and Levites purified themselves, and purified the people, the gates, and the wall. (Nehemiah 12)
And nations:
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. (Matthew 28)
The case in Nehemiah is particularly interesting. Both the civil and religious spheres encircle the city in song and with trumpets:
So I brought the leaders of Judah up on the wall, and appointed two large thanksgiving choirs. One went to the right hand on the wall toward the Refuse Gate. . . . The other thanksgiving choir went the opposite way, and I was behind them with half of the people on the wall, going past the Tower of the Ovens as far as the Broad Wall. . .
Also that day they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and the children also rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar off. (Nehemiah 12)
This reminds us of Jericho. And this underscores that the dedication of a family or city or nation to Jesus is an inescapable concept: you will either be dedicated to him in obedience and service, or in destruction.
Any new language implies a new loyalty. (Rosenstock-Huessy, Time Bettering Days and Other Essays, 29)
Rosenstock-Huessy would equally say that a new loyalty or love is generative of a new self, new language, and new music. For example,
In any life of normal health, grace comes first and the law follows. Any loving couple goes through the acceptable year first and out of this perfect happiness the special law of this marriage is derived and developed. Fluid flesh and blood precedes, and ossification follows. Jesus is free grace and his church is lawful order. Life is a process of crystallization. Free, revolutionary inspiration precedes; evolution, lawful development, is derived from the previous revolution and ecstacy. (Ibid., 49)
The fools of hope only, love only, or faith only, split the trident of our life energy. They pervert the fresh hopes of childhood into the sour milk of eternal moralizing, the great power of enthusiasm into nervous fits of excitement, and the tenacity of a responsive faith into the brutal energy of a “climber”. (Rosenstock-Huessy, Time Bettering Days and Other Essays, 55)
Nobody more than the Puritans murdered the whole church calendar and emasculated it so as to consist of 52 sabbaths; today this austere colorless Judaising has lost its hold on the community more and more. But their negative success is with us. The canonical hours are forgotten. We are the heirs of a great catastrophe (or a rebirth; we call it the Renaissance) which did away with a previous order of time-bettering days. When I hear the Humanists sneer at the downfall of ecclesiasticism, I often wonder how the humanists can overlook our own frailty. . . .
What the pre-Franklin, the pre-pragmatic mind called “time” was not a quantity, but a melody. Any particle of time could be lived as eternity and that it was lived as eternity was expressed by the 7 parts into which it was subdivided . . . .
Since we have lost this immediate power to accept a particle as the representative of a whole, most of the language of Church and Synagogue, of antiquity, is lost on us. It is analogous to modern man’s hesitation in speaking of God’s finger or womb or eye or smile or of the Church as His bride. Modern man calls such expression embarrassedly “similes” or metaphors. But he may rest assured that his own finger only got its name from its quality of there also being God’s finger, and the Day only was observed because it stood for eternity. “Metaphor” so called is the genuine source of all speech and language of our race, and the languages of anatomy and dictionaries are much later layers of language, derived by abstraction from the “Day of Days” and the Back of God. The parts of our body as well as the parts of time have received their names only after and because they proved serviceable to express some divine and eternal meaning. As metaphor for our experience of calendaric times, high and low, our language has been born, and is reborn. Scientific language is rundown, expired, murdered language. If you do not reconcile yourself to this origin of our words in potent speech, you will never understand the order of monastic life or of liturgical living. For the hours in a monastery shifted in their lengths according to the seasons of the year. In other words, on no two days in sequence did the word “hour” signify the same length of time. This, to modern man borders on the insane. Our hour has this one and only merit—that always it is sixty minutes long. This would have been to its disadvantage in antiquity. For the ancients, pious pagans, pious Jews, pious Christians, all were in agreement that man could not abstract time out of the hands of the God who sent each day, each moon, each cycle of the firmament. It would have been blasphemy to teach the times our own minds’ lesson that they had to behave according to our abstract scheming. In the continuation of the unanimous reverence of five thousand years, the monk’s seven canonical hours observed God’s time. Therefore, the hours could not help running from the actual sunrise to the actual sunset as observed “here”, let us say, in Monte Cassino, and “now” on October 1, 529 A.D. Only in this way could prayer enter upon God’s real times as they ringed the eons of eons.
Both aspects of the pre-Renaissance time sense are lost on us. For instance the King James Version mistranslates the organic flow of the eons by its heretical space concept “world without end”. But the Church suggested the organic flow of times after times, epochs of epochs, and nobody today can share the time experience of the apostles unless he casts out the abstract dead time of “world without end”. The genuine formula says the very opposite. It says that the end of the world must be experienced at the end of an epoch as much as the beginning of the next. Only by living through the end of one eon first and the beginnings of the new eon first, and thanks to this experience, the end of the previous eon, later, can we realize the times. Eons are like links in a chain. We have to hold on to the next eon as it shapes up in catastrophe, and let go the previous, a ring completed in a catastrophe. How else can we realize the Lord of the eons of eons? For God survives the end of time, with the revealing words, “And the end of the world was long ago”, which begins a great song. God survives ends as well as beginnings. Now exactly this truth we have lost and so we mock and are mocked by the believers in Armageddon. The end of the world, the monks realized every night. Time died. The day died. And then it rose again. For this great existence of the death and resurrection of Christ in their canonical hours, they joyfully paid the price of shortening and lengthening the twelve hours. These twelve hours themselves after all were there in honor of the twelve months during which the great year of atonement, the great New Year’s Day was brought back over 360 degrees. In other words, the number twelve, in the hours system, was as much an organic reference to the twelve months as in Shakespeare’s play “Twelve Nights”. The Twelve were meaningful with reference not to the single nights but to them as they were reminding us of the twelve months. (Eugen Rostenstock-Huessy, Time Bettering Days and Other Essays, 250-256)
Dear Children John Samuel and Henry Pastorius: Though you are (Gernano sanguine nati) of high Dutch Parents, yet remember that your father was Naturalized, and ye born in an English Colony, Consequently each of you Anglus Natus an Englishman by Birth. Therefore, it would be a shame for you if you should be ignorant of the English Tongue, the Tongue of your Countrymen; but that you may learn the better I have left a Book for you both, and commend the same to your reiterated perusal. If you should not get much of ye Latin, nevertheless read ye the English part oftentimes OVER AND OVER AND OVER. And I assure you that Semperaliquid hœrebit. For the Dripping of the house-eaves in Time maketh a hole in an hard stone. Non vi sed sæpe cadendo, and it is very bad Cloath that by often dipping will take no Colour.
Lectio lecta placet, decies repetita placebit Quod Natura negat vobis Industria præstet. — F. D. P.
I gotta have my orange juice. 