As Above, So Below
The saying means that man is an unfinished world that only partially mirrors the neighboring cosmoses. Man, therefore needs to look upward that he may learn to look downward - beginning with himself.
Ezekiel 10:14
"Each of the winged creatures had four faces: the face of a bull, the face of a human, the face of a lion, and the face of an eagle."
Ezekiel was looking at the night sky to come up with the answer to what does a Cherub look like?
1. The face of Bull or Taurus where the Sun is in SPRING (Equinox)
Taurus is a large and prominent constellation in the northern hemisphere's winter sky. It is one of the oldest constellations, dating back to at least the Early Bronze Age when it marked the location of the Sun during the spring equinox
.
2. The face of Man or Aquarius the Waterman three months earlier where the Sun is in WINTER; (Solstice)
3 The Face of a Lion or Leo where the Sun is 6 months later in SUMMER (Solstice)
4 The Face of and Eagle or Aquila where the Sun is three months later in FALL (Equinox)
Cherubs are constructed of the position of the sun at the Spring Equinox where the days and nights are equal.
Face of a Bull
Face of a Bull
Winter Solstice where the days are the shortest
Face of a Man
Face of a Man
Summer Solstice where the days are the longest
Face of a Lion
Face of a Lion
Fall Equinox where the days and nights are equal
Face of Eagle
This is how you build a Cherub
Or it's just a big coincidence...Face of Eagle
This is how you build a Cherub
.Ezekiel also told his story of the Fall of Lucifer in Ezekiel 14:12
"How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! For you said to yourself, 'I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God's stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north."
by observing the apparent fall of Venus, the Bright and Morning Star, known throughout history as "The Light Bringer (Bring up the Sun) or Lucifer falling below the horizon to earth as an inner planet. It's what inner planets do.
Lucifer, The Light Bringer and Son of the Morning Star, cast down to Earth
But that's another lesson...
The fall of a planet is cyclic, while it sounds to me like Ezekial was picturing a permanent fall.
ReplyDeleteNice try though.
Dennis - since you are on the subject of Ezekiel, do you know how and why WCG felt Ezekiel's warning message was part of the Christian commission?
ReplyDeleteIs this tied to their love of prophecy and changing the great commission in Matthew 28 v19 to 20 which has nothing about prophecy to Matthew 24 which is an end time prophecy (that disagrees with Revelation)?
Murdock's speculation about the origins of Ezekiel's cherubim is interesting, and it may even help to explain their appearance in this vision. However, I think that it is arrogant and shortsighted to imply/suggest that these things are meaningless relics of a superstitious past. Religious/spiritual/supernatural/magical thinking were/are important elements of what it means to be human. I posted something earlier today on my own blog that is relevant to this kind of discussion:
ReplyDeletehttps://godcannotbecontained.blogspot.com/2019/01/on-being-human.html
what you see as pagan origins of Christianity we see as evidence of a grand design, set in motion by the Grand Designer, the Creator.
ReplyDeleteTLA asks "
ReplyDeleteDennis - since you are on the subject of Ezekiel, do you know how and why WCG felt Ezekiel's warning message was part of the Christian commission?
Is this tied to their love of prophecy and changing the great commission in Matthew 28 v19 to 20 which has nothing about prophecy to Matthew 24 which is an end time prophecy (that disagrees with Revelation)?
I just would just assume it was part of the habit the Armstrongs and others had to see anything "prophetic" to be for "our time." Ezekiel's writings were not for our time. No one could ever accuse HWA of getting context correct and leaving it be. Ezekiel was a very odd duck indeed. He was told to lie on his left side for 390 days and on his right for 40 days, for a total of 430 days, to bear the sins of Israel. 390 was for the Northern Kingdom, since laying on his left side meant he was facing North, and 40 was for the South because he was laying on his right side facing south. This was for his times and his perception of them. It is also something someone who was mentally unstable and perhaps schizophrenic would do. The voice told him to. It was hardly an effective way to actually teach anyone anything that would not think you were nuts.
Ezekiel also laid symbolic siege to a sand box Jerusalem with using an iron frying pan it seems etc. Not someone I can think today would be taken very seriously and not thought acting a bit daft doing what the voices in his head told him to do. Not a very good way for a God to communicate seriously with people about serious things I'd think. That's just me I suppose.
The church it seems to me just saw meaning for then as meaning for now which was a mistaken way to understand the Bible. Many do it. I maintain that "prophecy" was never much for anyone beyond those who were hearing it. You know, "things which must shortly come to pass." No one is going to care about things that were thousands of years into the future. Thus the concept of "types" but that is made up to justify the practice of making the OT mean what it never was meant to mean.
Like the blessings and cursings of Leviticus 26 being transformed into a warning to America far into their future. You can find parallel uses for it in any day but that is simply made up but when read by anyone at anytime in history would seem like it was for them too. Originally it had nothing to do with anyone else but Israel and was not meant to be taken too far out into some other countries circumstances which of course would always be universally similar in many cases. History repeats and as Churchill is said to have said , "History is one damn thing after the next." for everyone.
Reading OT prophecy as if one is reading a newspaper or Internet News is a mistake.
Anon said: "The fall of a planet is cyclic, while it sounds to me like Ezekial was picturing a permanent fall.
ReplyDeleteNice try though."
Good point if the reference is made to be taken as a one time event being described but it is a reference to almost the poetic reality of the common explanation of just what is that bright thing that precedes the sun and why does it go up but then falls back to earth? Even to the Romans, Venus was the "Bright and morning Star" Even Revelation uses that term for Jesus in Revelation 22:16 " "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star."
Some have used this reference to show Jesus and Satan were related somehow, and it just goes down hill from there lol.
Of course, again the context of Ezekiel's rant is not to explain a one time event about Lucifer but to warn and trash the physical King of Tyre for behaving like a god etc and how that was going to end. The story of belief about what's going with "that bright thing" was useful to make the point. Their minds and how they processed things were not as ours today of course. And with Ezekiel, mental illness could and no doubt was often seen as being special not being nuts depending on how it manifested. I am sure that any "demonic" child that threw itself into the fire flopping all around etc in the NT was simply a child having, what to them, would have been inexplicable epilepsy. Nice trick to "cure" it in about the time it takes for it to pass on its own.
Even Paul's Damascus Road experience, described by Luke in Acts but not by Paul himself in his writings can be seen as simply temporal lobe epilepsy with voices, bright lights with religious content. Classic. Luke may have seen it as a Physician of sorts and thought it made a great and dramatic tale about Paul that Paul himself does not seem to relate to.
There is the comment by Jesus in Luke 10 about seeing "Satan fall as lightening from heaven", but again, this is a one time statement said by the author and put in Jesus mouth in the context of sending out 36 pairs of disciples ahead of him to all the cities of the land. This account is told no where else. It is simply how Luke tells his story. It's a literary tool to make a point and to show Jesus, in the book of Luke, knew all about Satan and demons.
ReplyDelete" Luke 10 is the only place where we find the account of Jesus sending a specific 70 (or 72) disciples to prepare the way before Him. The discrepancies in the number (70 or 72) come from differences found in approximately half of the ancient scrolls used in translation. The texts are nearly evenly divided between the numbers, and scholars do not agree on whether the number should be 70 or 72, although such a minor issue is no cause for debate. Since the number 70 is repeated other places in Scripture (Exodus 24:1; Numbers 11:16; Jeremiah 29:10), it may be more likely that the actual number of disciples was 70, with the 2 being a copyist’s error. Whether there were 70 or 72 disciples sent out by Jesus is irrelevant. What is important are the instructions Jesus gave them and the power that came upon them to perform miracles and cast out demons (Luke 10:17)." It's an evangelization story telling them the great powers they would have.
https://www.gotquestions.org/70-or-72-disciples.html
Dennis, where did you get your image of Venus' retrograde motion? I searched "Venus retrograde motion as seen from earth" and that image didn't come up.I
ReplyDeleteJust wondering.
Kevin
Not sure Kevin. I did " How you are fallen oh Lucifer" Venus images I think
ReplyDeleteSo Ezekiel was mentally unstable and Paul hallucinated because of his epilepsy.
ReplyDeleteThe world is a dangerous place, so I wouldn't tempt God with such public attacks on the bible. But it seems that some don't comprehend this. I assume it's because they have had a string of 'victories,' with no real defeats. This is what happens when people have lived in ivory towers and were treated like junior gods. A poor sense of reality.
I don't dismiss theories entirely because until proven one way or the other, anything is possible. However I do wonder how the book of Ezekiel, presumably written from a middle eastern perspective connects to set of constellations defined by greek culture. It isn't to say that such a thing isn't possible. Only that I would be interested in knowing more about the sources that support this theory.
ReplyDeleteI’m not saying that I agree with the theories presented by Dennis, Mickey. However, there was pre-helenist understanding of the celestial bodies and constellations. The same Sumerians whose Gilgamesh account of destruction of the earth by flood predated the Bible’s account of Noah, also had their legends and theories about what they observed in the skies. Sumerians were an ancient Mesopotamian culture, predating the Israelites and Greeks by thousands of years. They were record-keeping people whose records (fortunately for us) were extensively kept on clay pottery rather than skins or papyrus.
DeleteThere is so much more new understanding today, understanding that eclipses best understanding from even 50 years ago, because linguists have “cracked” ancient languages. Understanding of Sumerian culture has shed much light on the history of humankind, and human development and philosophy.
For more information Google Sumerian understanding of constellations. Research papers will come up. They are fascinating.
BB
Thanks BB. It will be interesting to see what developes
DeleteEzekiel's reputation for possibly being mad is an old one, definitely predating this piece.
ReplyDeleteI always got the impression that's a fictional work, written by someone who was picturing a sort of "super prophet" who does more than have the occasional vision or miracle and then somehow manages to get into various kings' presences to lecture them.
But who knows, never really had a strong opinion about it one way or the other.
Those who aspire to be the leaders of what Herbert W. Armstrong would most certainly be calling the Laodicean Era, ordaining themselves prophets and such, should carefully consider what the Old Testament prophets are described as having endured!
ReplyDeletePoor Hosea probably wished he could have lain on his side and cooked his food on dung fires like Ezekiel. Or, suffered from depression like Elijah! Or, lived in a fish for three days like Jonah. In the modern vernacular, Hosea was required to marry a slut wife! Imagine the mental anguish! Yes, there was very heavy personal debt incurred by these prophets. None of this living in luxury and jet-setting around the globe, or being some kind of grand poobah.
In fact, the only ones who do worse, in Biblical terms, are false prophets. Hanged if you do, and hanged if you don't. It appears that God made it so that no normal persons would even want to be prophets. Once again, relying upon our rather colorful modern vernacular, life really sucked for the prophets!
BB