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Originally Posted by awareness
And that was well said too. And down to earth.
But it seems to me that God was very outspoken back in the Bible days, in ways that He's not speaking today.
Sure God can only speak to us, if He does, in terms that we can understand, or His speaking would be nothing but nonsense otherwise. That means that back in the Bible days God could only speak in terms of Bronze Age and/or Iron age terms.
Today, if God speaks to us, He could speak in cosmological terms that they couldn't have ever possibly understood back in the ancient days.
And then there's the problem of the ancients interpreting God's speaking, and recording it.
That's why, as you pointed out, they speak of the four corners of the earth, and in many places write that God fixed the earth unmovable. And of the pillars of the earth. They obviously didn't know better.
This is how they pictured the earth, and cosmos back then :
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I have been a vegetarian just about my whole adult life. So, when I read through Leviticus and Numbers about taking various animals, slicing and gutting, and waiving, and putting the blood over here and the kidney over there, and the fat there, it draws this bizarre picture of God, and the pleasing of God. A sweet aroma of burnt sacrifices, offerings, incense goes up, up to where God dwells, dwells and watches over the children of Jacob. So this puts God in the heavens above where the sacrifices take place.
When Jesus was on earth, he would look up to heaven when he prayed ( today among the pastor set, they seem to like people to bow their heads when prayer time comes- not insignificant in their view of heaven) , when Jesus was taken up, a cloud received him, when God spoke at Jesus time, a voice comes out of heaven, and Jesus will return in like manner as he was taken up, in the clouds, as well as as lightning strikes, which is something in the earth's atmosphere, the heaven above the earth.