(January 2, 2014 at 3:40 pm)xpastor Wrote:(January 2, 2014 at 2:20 pm)Drich Wrote: Neither.Yeah, yeah. The point is, if the bible is written to bring people to God, then it must be written in human terms, not some arcane incomprehensible language where up does not mean up.
God used people to write the bible so people who wanted to connect to God would be able to do so.
In the end it is not an 'either or' because both benfit.
In other words, in Acts 1 up means up. Anyway you slice it or dice it, the bible represents Jesus floating up in the direction of the stratosphere, but we now know there is no stopping point out there. The people in his time did not know this.
I agree. So if Jesus simply disolved away like a ghost to enter into the realm of Heaven, what would the 'common man's' understanding have been?' Maybe that He was not alive/resurected in physical form and that He was a spiritual being?
What if God did not want us to have that understanding?
What if God wanted us to carry on with the Idea that we will exist again in physical form as Christ did, but still exist in Heaven, where or How could Christ have exited this plain of existance for his own, and still maintain that core principle?
Would you have Him walk away? to where? into the sunset? What ever direction He picked, Heaven would have thought to be in that physical direction. Then what? pray in the direction of heaven two or three times aday like a bunch of shmoes? send people on expidetitions in that general direction? Look at the madness of the dark ages for holy sites, could you imagine the wars fought over the land in the direction Jesus walk off into? Look at the scale and destruction of the crusades? for what the land that these 'things' once happened in? Now imagine the destruction that could be justified for God's land.
Up, is the perfect direction. It was not attainable by any of us until we were sophisticated enough to understand that Heaven does not have to be of this world/realm. "Up" also perserved the idea or need for the physical relocation of a person away from this world this realm in that time and in this.
