ANSWER: Because, the Bible is not about heaven.....
It's about life: it's about how to live, right here, right now ~ as well as in all of time to come, for ever.
I'm coming to understand the meaning and purpose of Scripture, in a whole new light. God, the Creator of all things (including me and you), gave us his Word to teach us about some unspeakably important truths such as: the existence and nature of God; the nature of reality; the nature and meaning of human beings; true history and true prophecy; among other things. The Bible's teachings are so radically different from common, human experience as to make those teachings appear unconnected to reality as we perceive it. Thus the great majority of people ~ including most professing Christians ~ believe that the Bible is really nothing more than a hodgepodge of moral stories couched in myth.
But never mind what most people wrongly suppose. I want to know why the eternal Son of God came 'down' from his exalted state "far above all heavens," and willingly submitted himself to suffer a brutal and ignominious death by crucifixion. More than that, I want to understand the meaning of what he taught by word and deed both before and after his death and resurrection.
Christ came to teach us the truth about God. But why? Especially, when I contemplate how unfathomably great was the cost to himself; and, what superlative wisdom and power God did manifest in sending Christ into the world as a man: I wonder, Why was (is) God at all interested to speak to man? What is it that God evidently is so profoundly interested to communicate ~ to me?
I believe the answer to that question begins with the following revelation of Scripture:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness..." (Genesis 1:26)In other words, I can only hope to understand my own nature, according as I understand (the truth about) the nature of God ~ in whose "image" and "likeness" I was created.
That one idea is sufficiently mind- blowing as to be worthy of the most serious, the most probing and deliberate, consideration....
God said that he made me, by his own will and power, to be like him. But what does that mean?
It means that when God gave me my being, he invested me with various abilities (powers) which function like as they do in God himself (though not in the same scope and capacity as God). Specifically, God created me with the following powers:
- Thought ~ I can think and reason. I can even think about my own thinking. Thus, I can understand God's own thoughts which he may be pleased to reveal to me;
- Imagination ~ I can create, in my imagination, ideas and images that don't yet exist;
- Volition (will) ~ I can choose and, furthermore, I can purpose, determine...command;
- Language (speech) ~ I can express both my thoughts as well as my will, by means of the spoken word, in(to) the world 'outside' of myself;
- Action ~ I can carry into action what things I have thought, imagined, purposed, and spoken.
God is a creator. He is a doer. He is productive, fruitful. Importantly....
God is the Master of his world.
Of course, everything that exists owes its existence to God. (Beware not to wrongly suppose that God created "the devil." God did not create the devil. God created a powerful angel, which angel corrupted himself and so became God's enemy.)
The Bible says, "In him [God] we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Together with all the rest of God's Creation, you and I are part of God's 'world.'
Not as it were in some metaphorical or analogical sense, but in a very real sense, each of us 'embodies' (so to speak) a 'world.' Whereas there are doubtless many experiences that two or more persons may sometimes share; yet, none of those experiences can possibly be identical for any two persons. Even so intimate an experience as a kiss cannot be exactly the same experience for any two individuals ~ as a kiss is necessarily perceived from two different perspectives. In addition to a host of 'shared' experiences, however, every individual's experience includes an endlessly flowing stream of thoughts and feelings, of memories and regrets, of fears, desires and plans. Thus it can be said that every person embodies a 'world' within himself or herself. If some individual's consciousness could be extinguished, then that person's world would cease to exist.
Let us recall that we are made in the image and likeness of God. By his own will, God made us to be like he is ~ that is to say, with certain divine attributes and powers. Now, given the above discussion as the context, let us consider the following verses of Scripture:
"For if by one man's [Adam] offense death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:17)
"And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith" (Mark 11:22-23)I believe what God wants so much to communicate to me in his Word, is, that God wants to teach me how to live ~ like Jesus Christ. Jesus is the man who gave full expression to what God purposed for every man ~ that is to say, for every person who is "in Christ."
By looking at the man Jesus, we can see what it truly means to say, that God created man in the image and likeness of God. The writer of Hebrews put it this way:
"[W]hat is man, that thou [God] art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou visitest him?... Thou hast put ALL THINGS in subjection under his feet.... But now we see not YET all things put under him. But we see Jesus...." (see Hebrews 2:5-11)These are the sort of ideas for which I have been ostracized from nearly every church group I have ever attempted to be part of.
These are the sort of ideas...
...for which Jesus was put to death by the religious leaders of his own day.
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