{"id":369,"date":"2004-05-13T13:28:29","date_gmt":"2004-05-13T01:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=369"},"modified":"2004-05-13T13:28:29","modified_gmt":"2004-05-13T01:28:29","slug":"volunteer-imaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/archives\/369","title":{"rendered":"Volunteer Imaging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a theory which needs work and involves a sort of liberal view of the Old Testament:<\/p>\n

Various people and peoples through history have volunteered themselves as God’s representative(s) on earth. God lets them have a go at that for a while. From time to time there are crisis points, when there is a face-off between the volunteers and their enemies. At these points God steps in and either vindicates the volunteers as his true representatives, or visibly rejects them and ‘promotes’ the enemies.<\/p>\n

This notion came to me when I came across Ezekiel 31, where Assyria and Egypt almost seem like proto-Israels, that is, proto-True-Adams. <\/p>\n

I learned this morning that President Bush once declared that his favourite political philosopher was Jesus Christ, and I wonder if I can use this theory to predict future calamity for the United States. <\/p>\n

[Update in response to a comment from John<\/a>]<\/strong><\/small>
\nIt’s possible this whole idea won’t prove helpful, it’s very sketchy at this point. Here is where the liberalness comes in: The theory is that Isaiah & Ezekiel are speaking from Israel’s POV as The Chosen One, but from say Babylon’s POV perhaps there was a time when they thought the same thing about themselves. This occured to me when I noticed Babylon (Ez 17) and Egypt (Ez 31) are described using the language of big tree with lots of birds nesting in it’s branches. Langauge which is later used by Jesus to describe the kingdom of God. So that makes me think perhaps those countries were in a way failed attempts at being the kingdom of God. And then I think, well did God fail? No, it was people grasping towards Him but failing in the end, after a promising start. Like with Israel – they were rejected in the end, did God fail? No, Israel did. <\/p>\n

The imaging stuff comes from my idea that the most basic fact of people’s and peoples’ existance is that they are “made in the image of God”, which I understand to mean “made to image God”, that is “made to represent God”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a theory which needs work and involves a sort of liberal view of the Old Testament: Various people and peoples through history have volunteered themselves as God’s representative(s) on earth. God lets them have a go at that for a while. From time to time there are crisis points, when there is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}