When God comes down...
I’m taking a class in apocalyptic literature1 that’s pretty darn fascinating. In these texts,2 there’s a lot of talk about God “coming down3.”
So what do they mean?
What do they claim that God is going to do
when God comes down?
Well, it doesn’t say anything about God setting up a soup kitchen, delivering casseroles, or picketing in the streets (not to disparage any of those things).
It says that God is going to smash all your idols (yes, and mine too). And not just the little wooden or golden statuettes that you may have lying around your home (or the rectangular plastic, metal, and glass one you carry around in your front right pocket all day).
Our idols make up the foundation of our existence and serve as our existential guardrails. Our idols are the mental, spiritual, and social constructs that we lean on to save us (but which are merely made of imaginary sand).
This is what God is coming to rip out of our ground.
Sounds like good fun, doesn’t it?
Warmly,
Jonas
Books like Revelation, Enoch, Jubilees, Daniel, Qumran, etc. - you know, the terrifying ones.
Along with a lot of other books throughout Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, but also in the New.
Not that God is actually “up there” in a directional sense, but you get the point.
This comment is about God coming down...
Scientists talk about more dimensions than the 4 that we are aware of, length, breadth, height & time. Time we are aware of, but we cannot move around in it like the first 3, we just travel along it into the future.
There are probably many more dimensions. In my mind God is above / outside all dimensions, not restricted by any of them, not even time or those we are not aware of. In that sense He will always be coming down for us.
That is one of the reasons that the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross & in his resurrection is so effective.
He doesn't have to die every time we sin, it is done, for all time, forever, for the past, present and future!
Including for those faithful believers throughout the Bible who died before He lived.