The Next Chapter - God's Big Picture, Epilogue
He urges readers to consider two dimensions in approaching the text, the horizontal and the vertical. The horizontal (historical/chronological) asks two questions, "Where does this passage/book fit in God's timeline of redemption? What has gone before and what follows?" The vertical (relational) asks the question, "What does this passage/book tell me about God and my relationship with Him?"
The historical dimension will help us understand where Christ is revealed in our reading. The relational dimension will help us understand how the text directly reveals God or some attribute of God, helping us to gain a deeper understanding of the individuals in the text and get a better perspective on our own relationship with God.
Our reading should impact us spiritually, not just academically. Through the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be blessed with a deeper understanding of the Bible, and a growing application of it to our lives.
Now, it's your turn. Jot down a few comments about the book and what challenged or impacted you? Have you benefited from Roberts' writing? Will it affect the way you read your Bible? Where do we go from here?
Posts
God’s Big Picture provides a good complement to reading all the way through the Bible itself. It makes sure that we can see the forest as well as the trees, following the history of sin and redemption from Genesis to Revelation. God’s eternal plan unfolds, just as He intended before the foundation of the world.
ReplyDeleteThis broad view reminds us that even we Christians are still sinners, offers us the hope of increasing sanctification through the indwelling Spirit, and promises final freedom from sin and life with Christ. The comforting assurance of heaven must be matched with a constant striving to yield to the Spirit, something we must do in good times and bad. The Bible offers us a multitude of examples (both good and bad) to guide, warn and encourage us. We can be better than we are, but it is also very easy to backslide.
Charles Orndorff
God’s Big Picture has been a great read and very informative. I have also enjoyed the postings and comments. To make my little contribution to the dialogue, here are just a few of the passages of Vaughan Roberts’s book that have impacted me.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was very intriguing that Roberts wrote: “Before the Israelites entered the land, God planned that they should be governed by a king” (p. 81). Basically, God had wanted a theocracy through monarchy. I am not writing about the predestination aspect of it so much as that I had previously thought that it was sinful for the Israelites to have requested a king no matter what type they had in mind, especially after reading the often infamous history of the Israelite succession a number of times.
Also, I had never thought of the symbols in Revelation as representing “a number of sequences arranged in parallel” (p. 150)! That was very helpful.
What really struck me was how different the new creation will be from Eden. I had always thought of heaven as a sort of return to Eden and was never excited about a city in heaven. Now I understand that the Holy City is the Church [city comes from the Latin civitatem meaning a “community of citizens” (www.etymonline.com)], and the New Jerusalem refers to those redeemed by Christ.
Roberts writes of the two dimensions of history and the relation between God and men. This brought to mind the Navigator’s Wheel which adds in the dimension of the relationship between people.
Anyways, I am grateful for this reading group for the encouragement it gave me to commit to reading God’s Big Picture. Robert’s has helped me to have a clearer understanding of the how the Old Testament is fulfilled in Christ.
~Wendy