Introduction to the Mirror Bible Part 1

This book review will contain many posts.  This book is loaded, and the value of its content cannot be overestimated.

This book  is.....one of the most important books that I have come across. I say that sitting next to 700 books or so that are part of my personal library, let alone what I've had my hands on elsewhere.

I've been going through this book pretty heavily for about a year and three months....I purchased it in January 2015.  I've given a lot of copies away in English and Spanish.  (Please contact me if you want this book, and don't wan to pay for it).

This is not a text that I came across casually or by accident.  There is a quite a bit of history behind me getting my hands on this book so I'll give you the short version.

About 3 and a half years ago I met a brother in the Lord that was very full of life, and very wise in the Lord, a rare human being, in a very good way.
To make a long story short, one of the things this person began to frequently communicate with me was the idea that we are made in God's image.  After a couple months I couldn't get over that idea; it began to come alive in me. I knew that I had stumbled on to something big and overlooked, and I begin to do a lot of research on this idea.
The Lord led me to a number of material and people that helped me get more familiar with this idea, and to allow it to grow in me.  The path of discovery was really wonderful and miraculous, and the hand of God was very evident in it.
In the context of my research, a person recommended a YouTube video which was a short clip of a man named Andre Rabe. He had a short YouTube video on the Image and Likeness of God.

Andre Rabe's Video on the Image and Likeness of God

After watching and enjoying this video I mentally archived it and moved on with research.  However, I came back to it about a year later and really liked it, and looked around for some more stuff on YouTube by Andre Rabe.

I came across a series called "Questioning Your Answers" and those messages began to revolutionize the way I saw things, myself, God, Jesus, just about everything.  Andre very beautifully handled the image of God, placing it in the narrative of the Gospel and God's purpose for man. He sees the glory of our origin.

Andre Rabe's Questioning Your Answers Series

Being very excited with my findings, I shared them with the person I mentioned earlier. He told me that someone close to Andre Rabe, maybe one of the people he ministers with was working on a Bible translation that contains a lot of image of God references.  I couldn't believe it. I thought to myself, "What does that even mean? How can you bring out the image of God throughout scripture?" I knew that you could, and that it really was a central theme in scripture, even though there are only a handful of references, but I hadn't heard anybody talking about it.

He didn't know who it was, but vaguely remembered seeing it referenced somewhere. That was all the information I needed, so I set off on a search to find this Bible....FYI Google is a powerful searching tool.

I can't remember how I found it, but somehow I found it online.  I quickly ordered a copy from Amazon and went over to YouTube to check out the author of the Mirror Bible a gentleman named Francois Du Toit.  There are 3 messages that He spoke in Sausalito, CA, and my.... those 3 messages are some of the most glorious I had ever heard.  I have since then listened to them over and over again, and they don't seem to get old. Full of life, love, grace, and good news.

Francois Du Toit's 3 Messages

Okay.

So I get my hands on this bible, it arrives in the mail some time in the beginning of January 2015.

I open the book, and scan the pages a bit.  I come to the first book, the Gospel of John.  It was amazing stuff. As excited as I was, it blew away my expectations.
John 1:9

"A new day for humanity has come.  The authentic light of life that illuminates everyone was about to dawn in the world! (This day would begin our calendar and record the fact that human history would forever be divided into before and after Christ.  The incarnation would make the image of God visible in human form.  in him who is the blueprint of our lives there is more than enough light to displace the darkness in every human life.  He is the true light that enlightens every man!)"

So it isn't long before I close the book, and realize that I need to get alone with this book for a few days.  So that is what I did. I happened to have a couple days off work, so I immediately started looking around for a cheap cabin to go shut myself in for a few days to be quiet and alone.  I found one for like 50 bucks a night in West Virginia about 2 hours away, called Abram's Creek.  I called them up, and they had a cabin so I took I believe the first day I got the book.  I went and sat in a cabin with this book alone for about 36 hours.  Except for a trip to town to get a cup of coffee of course.  I knew that this was something huge.  I'll stop there. 

In the next part of this book review, I actually start to talk about the content of the book.  Excited!?!?!

Made in God's Image, So what? Part 2

It has been a long time since my last post.  I am embarrassed over the time that has passed, having intended to quickly jot out a small four part series that would focus on the idea that we are made in the image of God, introducing the relevancy this idea has for our lives.
So diving back into the first area of the image of God that I wanted to touch, which is: Why is this idea relevant to me, to you, to ourselves as individuals?
Ponder these questions a bit.

What does it mean that I am made in the image of God?

What does that say about my identity?

This idea has profoundly impacted my self-understanding. I will tell of a little experience I had when I visited a small country church in Pennsylvania to be in a teaching session of a well-known Catholic teacher.  This particular teacher popularizes a body of teaching that emphasizes the dignity of human beings, and human sexuality, in the light of being created in the image of God.  At the end of the half-day session my mind was thoroughly blown. There was beauty that I had never even considered as we delved into the pre-sin history of man, and our intended relationship with God, ourselves, and one another.

At the end of the session I purchased by the guest speaker, met him and asked him to sign it for me. I felt a little raw emotionally because that kind of teaching has the power to find its way into woundeed areas of the heart, touching dignity, value, and sexuality.

So I handed the book to him, and told him what his teaching had meant to my life, how it had been impacting me, and just thanked him for doing what he is doing.  At the end of our short conversation he looked at me and said, "Ryan, you are a beautiful man." And he said a short prayer for me.
I can tell you that I had never heard words like that before. There was not an ounce of flattery in those words or anything weird or funny.  I honestly felt as though he was just admiring the beauty of God in a human being, which at that moment happened to be me. It was awesome.  My thoughts were, if only we could all learn to look at one another that way.

So this idea of self-worth is strongly connected with the image of God, and is one of the most immediate effects I see it having on people.  People, through negative experiences in life be it personal failures or negative opinions of others have of them can acquire a negative and false image of themselves.  So when we talk about our true origin, we are talking about ourselves having a value that pre-dates anything we experienced in life, and nothing we experience in life negates our original value.

The image of God relates very strongly to identity.  In fact, that scripture in Genesis 1:26 is a defining word.  It is God identifying and defining man.  What a beautiful identity!

Now so far we have see the image of God in relation to the "being" of life....in relation to what we are.  But how about the "doing" of life? It's pretty simple. Image of God is what we are...that is in the noun form.  Turn it into a verb and we take care the doing.  We are to image God. Imaging God is our real business that makes life fulfilling.

But we know that that is the hard part isn't it: imaging God. In reality, we can't really do that to the full extent by ourselves.  Because we weren't created to.  Man is not an independent being.  We are a being that is intended to live in union with Jesus, sharing and participating in all that He is and has and has done.  That is why Paul in Romans 8:29, the image of God is connected to God's Son Jesus, saying that we were destined to be conformed to His image. Again, something we don't do ourselves, but something that happens when we respond to Him including us in all that He is has and has done.