BY ROBERT GREGORY
The JAMS Conspiracy – Breathing Together
The Joseph and Alice McKeen Study Center at Bowdoin College (affectionately referred to as the JAMS by the students) was conceived as a place for Christian students to meet around square tables, elbow to elbow, reading scriptures aloud, singing songs in crowded rooms, praying prayers with hands locked in solidarity. Some students have reported that this is one place on campus where Christian students can breathe the same air together. According to the Latin conspirare or to “breathe together,” we must say that the Study Center movement, of which the JAMS is a part, is therefore a conspiracy. Located on college campuses across the country Christian Study Centers are intimate venues – often houses like ours in Brunswick, Maine – where students learn to breathe together the words of God, in scripture, publications, readings, song and prayer.
This essay is inspired (this too from the Latin inspare or to “breathe upon)” by my wife of 45 years and a Community College course she is taking to continue her Maine teaching certification into her 43rd year. One assignment led her to create a presentation on the environmental triggers for asthma and how to address the resulting breathing impairment. With multiple asthmatic children, it is a topic she knows well.
How are we breathing together in these campus Study Centers? This season of dealing with the Covid-19 respiratory pandemic is forcing us all to think about our breathing impairments. I have learned from family members in the healthcare profession that securing airway management is the first responder’s top priority. Is there airway obstruction?
Life and Breath – Harmony with God
An interesting feature of the biblical languages is that sometimes words carry the same meaning in both the Hebrew language of the Old Testament and Greek language of the New Testament. Our studies at the JAMS last year focused on the prophet Jeremiah where we learned the Hebrew word for ungodliness (Jeremiah 23.15) carried the double meaning of obstructed worship and impaired moral virtue in line with the Greek word for ungodliness (e.g., Romans 1.18). The Hebrew word for breath (ruach) – Genesis 3 similarly carries a double meaning for spirit, as does its Greek counterpart (pneuma). The Spirit of the Lord who hovered over the waters in Genesis 1.2 is the one who gives breath to living things (Number 27.16) and by that breath, man became a living creature (Genesis 2.7). Life is an inspiration and a conspiracy where God breathes on man and we in turn learn to live and breathe in harmony with God, both morally and in our worship.
Jesus Breathes his Last
When the Roman tyrants were considering a public execution that would reach maximum pain and suffering on the victim, as well as maximum value in deterrence, they implemented crucifixion as the means of death by asphyxiation. Death came when the condemned was no longer able to lift himself on the cross foot rest (called a suppendaneuum) or a small seat (sedile) in the middle of the vertical post of the cross. The Gospel writers inform us of the death of Jesus in such respiratory terms: “And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.” Mark 15.37
Jesus Breathes Again
Earlier in his ministry, Jesus was explaining to his disciples the way they might understand his life mission as a shepherd, as a door to the sheepfold, and one who would lay down his life (pointing to the cross) in order that he could take it back (pointing to his resurrection).
14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. (John 10, ESV)
John later records Jesus appearing to his disciples on the evening of the very day of his resurrection in a room, behind closed doors, reminiscent of the meetings we hold in the JAMS at Bowdoin College. In that confined space Jesus bestows the blessing of peace and a commission that sends these disciples on their own mission. John then records both what Jesus does (he breathes on the disciples) and the meaning he assigns to it (their reception of the Holy Spirit) with these words:
19On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20, ESV)
The Apocalypse of John and Two Witnesses
The evidence is strong that the same John who wrote the gospel account of Jesus breathing on his disciples and commissioning them (“I am sending you”) to forgive sins and to gather disciples, some 60 years later received a vision while he was on a penal colony located on the Mediterranean island called Patmos. That vision has been the subject of our study during the 2020-2021 academic year for the Bowdoin College students at the JAMS. In the middle of that vision in Revelation chapter 11, we read of two witnesses. They are not given names, since they are probably symbolic of the way God has often paired his servants whom he has authorized to declare the liberating message of his plan to set men free. Moses and Aaron, Elijah and Elisha, Joshua and Zerubbabel (priest and king mentioned by Zechariah), Paul and Silas, Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Timothy, Peter and John, are all examples of such pairings.
These “Two Witnesses” were given special protections while they carried out their ministry, productive as two olive trees and enlightening as two lampstands. John writes :
If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. 6 They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. (Revelation 11.6, ESV)
John understands in this vision that these Two Witnesses were unstoppable … until they finished their assignment. The Gospel conspiracy evokes another conspiracy in the Apocalypse of John. Combinations of political, economic, political, and cultural forces “breathe together” in their own conspiracy to make war on the Two Witnesses:
7 And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, 8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. 9 For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, 10 and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. (Revelation 11.7-10, ESV)
Resurrection and the Breath of Life – Breathing Again
The vision that John received on the Island of Patmos is the one we have received at the JAMS in 2020-2021. Death could not come until they had finished their testimony. But it did come. The heart of the conspiracy of which we are a part at the JAMS is the one that anchors our belief in the power of God, by the Holy Spirit, to raise Jesus from the dead after he breathed his last on the cross. The resurrection and the cross, we learned, do not stand in equilibrium. Rather, the resurrection overpowers the death of the cross.
The Apocalypse given to John was a Revelation of Jesus Christ. It was from Christ (Revelation 1.1) and about Him (Revelation 1.2). The conspiracy of the Christian message is not that death robs men of life, but that God robs death of the last word. Just as he did with the first man Adam, God breathes life into the Two Witnesses:
11 But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. 13 And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. (Revelation 11.11-13, ESV)
The Conspiracy – Breathing Together against Christ and the Saints
In the vision given to John about the Two Witnesses we read about the conspiracy to make war on them. War is a group activity, and many must conspire and breath together to plan and implement its strategies and objectives. So central to John’s message is that there was and will be a war on Christ, his offspring, and on the Saints that he repeats this four times after Chapter 11:
Revelation 12:17 Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.
Revelation 13:7 Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation,
Revelation 17:14 They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”
Revelation 19:11 and 19 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. . . And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army.
In my preparation to work with the students of Bowdoin College through the Joseph and Alice McKeen Study Center, I came upon one of those books that you add to the list of readings that force you to see something you have never seen before. The Bible occupies that place for me and for all Christians who are looking to a life guided by one who authored the beginning and has purposes that point to an end. At a lesser level, but important for my growth, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn were books that fit that description before my conversion. Personal Knowledge and The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi, The Desire of Nations, Resurrection and the Moral Order and The Ways of Judgment by Oliver O’Donovan are on that list for my days as a disciple. The serendipitous discovery this summer was a 1958 treatise by a Dutch theologian Hendrikas Berkhof who authored Christ the Meaning of History.
Berkhof has helped me to see that the conspiracy against Christ and the saints does not arrive until the Christ of the Scripture has been proclaimed. There is a “double mystery” in the proclamation of the freedom which Christ won in the resurrection. The missionary instruction which Christ gave to his disciples when he breathed on them included two responses, not one. The alternative response to faith, reception and obedience was that of counterforce, hostility, persecution, competitive doctrines of salvation and apostasy (p 99-104). It is not until Christ has been preached that the counterforces are awakened and believers, like the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 are called to share in the struggle and suffering that it brings.
Berkhof taught me that it was apparently a core part of the confession of the early church that the Antichrist must of necessity come before the return of Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2.5) Paul reprimands the church in Thessalonica that this was ground he had already covered: Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? The context for that admonition is that he was reminding them, as Berkhof writes: “The antichrist, then, cannot originate in paganism, but only in a becoming Christian de-Christianized world.” (p 115) In other words, it is only when, and in response to, the Two Witnesses (you and me) that the conspiracy of antichrist is awakened. Again quoting from Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians:
3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. 5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? 6 And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. (2 Thessalonian 1.3-7, ESV)
That “mystery of lawlessness” is in fact the double mystery which includes the necessity that the Gospel be preached, and a second mystery that it will necessarily make war with those who bear witness to it. If this confession was a core belief of the early church, , then we might do well during this season to receive the Covid-19 pandemic as a time to reconsider the breath God breathed into the first Adam, the cross on which Jesus breathed his last, the commissioning breath by which Jesus sent his disciples into all the world to preach the Gospel to every nation, tribe and people, and the hope of the promise that God will breathe new life into all of those who following the “Two Witnesses” and finish our testimony.
The Final Breath
One final word on this subject. I have wondered who will be the last person to breathe a human breath? The question I ask is in the context of this “breathing together” conspiracy against the Saints, the conspiracy that makes war against the Lamb, the conspiracy against the Two Witnesses, all of which will not and cannot prevail. I propose that the end of this conspiracy will come by the breath of Jesus. That final breath brings to nothing that which is pure negativity (evil). That breath brings an end to all those who have as their king over them that angel whose name in Hebrew and Greek respectively are Abaddon and Apollyon which mean the Destroyer. Revelation 9.11. That end is the end of history, and it happens when there is no more delay, the seventh trumpet blows, and it comes with the end of evil. The end of history will vindicate God’s creation and its original purposes. The end of history will reveal that Christ accomplished all of that by the word of his testimony. Perhaps the last breath by a human agent will be the breath of the God-Man who and will bring evil to naught by the breath of his mouth: Again from Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians:
8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. (2 Thessalonians 2.8-10, ESV)