1.6 Israel
Abraham’s descendants were chosen by God to develop and expand the revelation of God’s character. Having been given this infinite gift they were to pursue it above all else. Now that they knew who God was, their goal became establishing a proper relationship with him. Being children of their time this meant offering burnt sacrifices. Knowing they had found the proper God to offer their sacrifices to, they still had questions to answer like: What kind of sacrifice does God want? When do we offer it? Where do we offer it?
Answering these questions was what the nation of Israel was chosen for. If they could discover the answers they could provide all Humanity with the ability to once again establish a proper relationship with God. God chose them to work out and uncover the means by which anyone, anywhere could be like Enoch and Noah, and walk righteously with God. This was a tremendous task and it took millennia to accomplish.
It started with the Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We can look at how they answered the questions of offering proper sacrifice. They just did what they were told! Lucky them! Although the Patriarchs should be seen as the graduated, mature adults of Mesopotamia, God knew that they were the infants of Israel. When dealing with an infant you always give them everything they need. This is exactly what God did. They were allowed to have Anyone, Anywhere, offer Anything, Anytime, as long as it followed the appearance of God
This solved most of the problems around offering proper sacrifice. Who offers the sacrifice? Well the person God appeared to, of course. When do you offer the sacrifice? Now! Are you crazy?! God just appeared! When else would we offer a sacrifice?! Where do you offer the sacrifice? Right here! Aren’t you listening? God just appeared! We know he is in this place!
Many times God even described to them what to offer and how exactly to offer it. I mean how easy can it get? If God didn’t do this then the Patriarchs simply offered whatever they had of value on them at the time. God’s kindness towards the Patriarchs allowed for the religious pursuit of Israel to take root and begin to grow. As they began to establish a proper relationship with God, this naturally led them to discover Truths about how to have proper relationships with one another.
Improving their relationships with one another increased their unity and gave them a stronger foundation upon which to expand their proper relationship with God. This self-reinforcing process didn’t work itself out in a perfect, straight line, but it inexorably brought the Jews out of the darkness and into reality. For our purposes we are going to focus on the religious sacrifice side of things because this is the primary mystery which Israel was chosen to solve.
If we think about the questions surrounding religious sacrifice we can see that for the Patriarchs, who were infants in this regard, the answers were completely undefined. This left them completely dependent upon God in order to engage in proper relationship with him. As a loving father God did not want this situation to go on forever. His children would need to discover the answers to these questions on their own. Not because he grew tired of helping them, but so that they could begin to participate more fully in the relationship, as independent adults. Only then would the true, mutually free relationship Love requires be established.
Having planted the seed and helped it take root, God stepped back to watch it grow. Blinded by ignorance, the simplest question for the Jews to answer was “Where do we offer the sacrifice?” This question is like asking “Where is God?”. They didn’t know! But they had some clues. Through their traditions they knew that God had appeared in certain places in the past. Maybe he would pass by there again. So they established holy places around the sites where tradition taught them God had previously been.
Like they have several times now, the actions of our ancestors can seem silly from our present perspective. You and I know that God is everywhere, all the time. He is not bound by time and space, because he is not bound by the Quintentium. For God these things do not exist, because they don’t. They are merely a result of the limitations the Quintentium places upon our perception of Creation. You and I benefit from a much clearer view of reality. The nation of Israel was still operating primarily off what the Quintentium presented to them.