The Place of God at the Bookends of the Bible

Book excerpt: What if everything in the Bible has a larger outer context than is usually accounted for? Missional and biblical theologies suggest that the Bible presents a grand story like a play with multiple acts. The acts typically include creation, fall, redemption, and finally restoration. But what if the whole story itself occurs in another larger setting, occurring within a mission running in the background throughout the whole Bible? How might this aid our research, reading, and application? And why is this being proposed now? This book explores these questions. The larger context is the production of the place of God—a home and homeland wherein God, with his people, dwell on earth. Since place is underdeveloped in biblical studies, the book presents a new method for interpreting place. Then the book lays out the case that a grand mission to produce the place of God becomes the outer context for the whole Bible. Finally, the book defends this proposal with an in-depth placial commentary of the bookends of the Bible, since these bookends provide keys to unlock this message, thereby inviting further study on the rest of the Bible and on the implications for this transformative perspective.