Page 122 - Through New Eyes

T E N

BREAKING BREAD:

THE RITE OF

TRANSFORMATION

In the preceding chapters we have investigated the funda-
mentally revelatory or symbolic view of the world presented by
the Bible. We have inspected some of the fundamental items of
‘furniture” in God’s world-house. Now we need to put all these
pieces together into a worldview, and show how God has acted to
bring His world from glory to glory through the transforming
process of history. In the present chapter we shall look at the
process of transformation. In Chapter 11 we shall look at man,
who is God’s primary agent for transforming the world. Then in
Chapter 12 we shall begin our study of the design of the world, as
God originally made it, and as He has acted to transform it.
The Bible opens with a Garden and closes with a City. This
simple observation points to the meaning of history, of process,
of change, of time. Something has happened during the years
between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22, and that something is the
work of glorification. The world, created good, has been trans-
formed or transfigured. The potential has become actual. The
raw material has been worked into art.
Man is God’s agent for the glorification of the world. Man is
positioned between heaven and earth. He started out at the apex
of the pyramid, the holy mountain. There he was able to see into
heaven, to perceive the heavenly pattern, and then bring it
down into the world and transform the earth. “Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.” Just so, Moses was shown the pattern
on the mountain, and then he built the Tabernacle on the plain
(Exodus 25:40). Just so, Jesus ascended to a mountain to speak

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