Originally Posted by awareness
Right bro Drake. But is it also for fanciful imaginings?
It's not that I don't understand what bro Evangelical visualizes about believers making up the living stones, that make up the New Jerusalem. I see it too ... or have ... maybe identical to EvanG, or close enough.
The problem as I see it is seeing into the book things that don't match what really is.
In other words, we can both read the text and see different things into it, and it may turn out that neither one matches what really is, or what the Lord is actually doing.
For example, if I consider that believers make up the stones, the picture is painted as made up of "all manner of precious stones." In this visualizing there's "jasper, pure gold like unto clear glass, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, amethyst ... all manner of stones."
I can see the NJ as made up of stones from around the world, and down thru history. That means there might be Local Church stones, Baptist stones, Lutheran stones, Pentecostal stones, Catholic stones, etc. etc..
Whether Lee agrees with this visualization or not, what if this is the actual case? that the NJ is made up of precious stones? that may not know all the other types of stones? yet all "like unto clear glass" (shining with the same light)?
I'm not saying that this visualization is accurate, but then, it begs the question : what, or whose, visualization is "the truth?"
The problem is, I'm not asking anyone to go "all in" on my visualization. Lee was. Lee sold his visualization as if it was the one and only true visualization from God.
Look, it doesn't matter to me if others go all in, to one Christian sect or another. As Jefferson would say, it neither breaks my leg or picks my pocket. But given that there are many different visualizations, shouldn't we, if wise, be careful about going all in to one or another.
In the end, to each his or her own. I just can accept Lee's "exclusive" visualization of the stones.
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