According to the Bible, the entire cosmos belongs to God.

But Earth, it's a special place where God put humanity in charge to rule the world on his

behalf as his image. And so the biblical view is that humanity at its best reveals or

uncovers who God really is. Our ideal calling and purpose is to be a walking,

talking apocalypse of God's purpose, will, power, creativity, love. To say that

humans are made in the image of God is to say that humans are to be a bridge

between heaven and earth. And so the story of the Bible makes a pretty simple claim.

The world is corrupt and violent and falling apart because humans have forgotten who we are.

We are the image of the cosmic king and we need an adjustment of our imagination to see that.

We need an apocalypse. In this view of the world, the what-apocalyptic literature is makes sense.

The vision's a transportation to the divine throne room where the prophet gets a glimpse and learns

divine wisdom that he then returns to his own people and is able to give them either comfort or warning.

And so when we read apocalyptic dreams and visions in the Bible, we're often transported to God's

cosmic throne room to eat it. And we see things the way God sees them. All of these apocalyptic

moments, they happen Abraham, they happen to Jacob, they happen to Moses, they happen to David,

they happen to all of these prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, they are all moments when somebody,

a human out in the realm of mortality gets transported and altered states of consciousness back into eat.

And who do they see there? They see a human figure, often seated on throne or sitting in the

middle of the tree like with what Moses sees in the burning bush. The Tantfire, they see a human figure.

And this human figure is sometimes called the angel of Yahweh. We made a video about this.

This human figure is sometimes called Yahweh sitting on his throne. So what's happening in the biblical story here is all rooted in how Genesis 1 and 2 work.

I'm John Collins, this is the Bible Project Podcast and today we continue our series on how to read apocalyptic literature.

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