Cosmic Geography in a Deuteronomy 32 Worldview

By Dr. Will Ryan and Dr. Steve Cassell

“If it’s weird, it’s important“.

Perhaps you have heard the term, “Cosmic Geography”; through excellent works like “The Unseen Realm,” much of Christianity has been impacted and even changed through the restoration of a legitimately or “real” supernatural context for all of scripture. Yet many of these revelations were never translated into an application for modern ministry and spiritual warfare. I was enthralled the first time I learned that Naaman the leper was actually of sound mind when he requested dirt from the prophet as a normal transactional aspect of ancient near eastern culture.

The term cosmography is the protoscience of understanding and organizing the thoughts and general features of the cosmos, heaven and earth and the spiritual and physical universe. [1] Simply put, “Cosmic Geography” means that the dirt on our planet is very important to the spiritual entities and their realm. This is also an ancient worldview that likely all the living people possessed in biblical times. The people of that era would have considered this thinking normative. We have advanced so far in modernity that we have drastically, and detrimentally, drifted from this important premise.

 For the purpose of clarity, let us refresh ourselves to the historic account. I will skip around for brevity.

2 Kings 5

Vs 1 Now Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man in his master’s sight and highly regarded, for through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. And he was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.

Naaman the Aramean (Hebrew: נַעֲמָן, lit. ‘pleasantness’) was a commander of the armies of Hadadezer, the king of Aram-Damascus, in the time of Jehoram, King of Northern Israel (Samaria) [2]. He was a military figure for the Arameans who had been successfully raiding the Israelites and on one of these raids, Naaman gained a young Jewish slave girl for his household. With unimaginable virtue, this young slave girl lamented for Naamans sickness affected life and made the comment, “If only my master would go to the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy.” (Vs 3b)

Naaman went through all the politically necessary hoops to go to the prophet (Elisha) and pursue his miraculous healing. Elisha told Naaman to dip in the Jordan River seven times (baptism? allegiant declaration?) and the requested miraculous healing would manifest. 

Vss 14-15 So Naaman went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored and became like that of a little child, and he was clean. Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God, stood before him, and declared, “Now I know for sure that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant.”

Elisha refused the gift but did allow Naaman a granted request that seemed like a standard practice of the day.

Vss 17b-19a “Please let me, your servant, be given as much soil as a pair of mules can carry. For your servant will never again make a burnt offering or a sacrifice to any other god but the LORD. 18Yet may the LORD forgive your servant this one thing: When my master goes into the temple of Rimmon to worship there, and he leans on my arm, and I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the LORD forgive your servant in this matter.” “Go in peace,” said Elisha.

As you dive in, I think you will see the “Cosmic Geography” applicationand connections for much of the Old Testament context. But what about the New Covenant outlined in the Christian part of scripture?

• In the begenning… the Genesis creation story, am I the only one who ever wondered why God chose our building blocks to be dirt? Adam was created in the most sacred place on earth, the cosmic mountain/garden of Eden. That was the most sacred physical environment that existed, and the dirt there was the most sacred dirt ever. The substance being formed of sacred material from a sacred place was divine wisdom in supernatural action.

• Our substance could’ve been anything in the hands of the creator, but He chose our cosmology would be based in the foundation, the building blocks of the earth itself. We are earthlings, of planet earth, made from earth, made by the Creator of earth, to be the sacred part (remnant) of the Earth. This would also coincide with the curse that was laid upon the Nahash (serpent).

Genesis 3:14

So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life.

• If it’s weird, it’s important. Why was our cosmic enemy cursed to crawl in the dust, and eat dust? I would conjecture that the answer revolves around a cosmic reality that the dust of humanity was meant to be much more than what the old preacher says at the gravesite… “Ashes to ashes dust to dust”

We were created to be a sacred people (royal priesthood) living in sacred space (cosmic paradise mountain of Yahweh) so of course we would be the culmination of that sacred place (dust) and that sacred function (the Ruach breath/Spirit of life making us of the same substance of God) living eternally feeding on the Tree of Life. But the serpent eternally adjusted our trajectory into the first fall of mankind and because our dirt became defiled, we were now required to leave the sacred space, and the sacred dirt of our creation transformed into dirt -dirt. Plain ole’ dirt. 

This makes much more sense when applied to the curse that the Nahash (serpent, cosmic enemy, the satan, the devil) would now be a ‘dirt eater’ for the rest of his miserable life. We were the dirt he was going to live off of like a leech sucking the life of its host, so our enemy was a spiritual parasite consuming our dirt.

Here are a few more to ponder:

• There was a “rock” that followed the Children of Israel through their wilderness journey… why a rock? Was it a pet rock (in jest)? Of all the illustrations that were possible, this seems weird. But it is not if you consider that rock or stone is a geological type of dirt but it is solidly formed and unchangeable. This is why that ‘rock’ was called Christ (1 Cor 10:4) and they drank from it because it was life-giving (water = life in a desert). The rock was spiritual (life) dirt (stone) making it a type-and-shadow of a New Testament reality.
• In the Song of Moses in Exodus 15, we see this in verse 12, “You stretched out Your right hand, and the earth swallowed them up.” The actual account contains the Red (Reed) Sea as the swallowing agent, so why the reference to ‘earth’ here? I would submit that it was another example of the Cosmic Geography being alluded to. The dirt (earth) was going to swallow the enemies of God in a great victory on the eschatological ‘Day of the Lord’ that apocalyptic literature infers. 
• In another astounding example, Moses used this doctrine to ‘prove’ that an act of judgment was direct divine interaction during the rebellion of Korah:
  • But if the LORD brings about something unprecedented, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them and all that belongs to them so that they go down alive into Sheol, then you will know that these men have treated the LORD with contempt.”(Numbers 16:30)
• The famous response of God to the passionate prayer of Solomon at the Temple dedication:
  • “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I close the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send a plague among My people, and if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:12b-14)
  • In verse 14 the term ‘land’ is ‘erets’ in Hebrew which is the Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 term ‘Earth’. It is Cosmic Geography being referenced again.
• Abraham, the father of faith and the progenitor of the messianic lineage was specifically told by God that his offspring would be like the ‘sand on the seashore’:
  • I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies. (Genesis 22:17)

We could go on but let us get to the fun stuff… the New Testament references that I believe are lost to our modern theology.

Here are a few verses that all of you have memorized…

John 3:3-10

Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time to be born?”

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh is born of flesh, but spirit is born of the Spirit. Do not be amazed that I said, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and you do not understand these things?

If we look at this first through a Deuteronomy 32 worldview and apply Cosmic Geography, then the rebuke of Nicodemus by Jesus for his lack of understanding makes much more sense. If you were like me, you would have likely wondered why Jesus insulted Nicodemus’ lack of revelation so quickly in this discourse. If we look at that rebuke through the lens of Cosmic Geography then it makes sense that a scholar of Jesus’ day would have known that there would be a redemptive need of the actual cosmology of mankind to fulfill the framework of reclaiming sacred space. The ‘born again’ experience returns humanity to the sacred space, the holy place, of the cosmic geography that we were created to be. We become ‘new dirt’ through the work of the Spirit and thereby become the new sacred space where Yahweh can abide with humanity in holiness and completeness.

Although there is no clear source of information about Nicodemus outside the Gospel of John, Ochser and Kohler, writing in The Jewish Encyclopedia in 1905, [3] identify him with Nicodemus ben Gurion, mentioned in the Talmud as a wealthy and popular holy man reputed to have had miraculous powers. [4] Some 21st-century historians make the same connection. This would connect to a Deuteronomy 32 cosmic view of the spiritual realm. Nicodemus did not grasp that Jesus had come to change the very DNA of humanity to reclaim us as His Cosmic Geography where He would eternally abide. He will never leave nor forsake that sacred space, He will walk in them and live in them forever, He will ‘pitch His tent’ (tabernacle) in that dirt and never pull up stakes.

I would also stipulate that the reality of cosmic, geography, revolving around the new birth, so sarcastically annotated by Jesus to Nicodemus was something that was deeply rooted in all of the New Testament writers. Please take a minute and go on a scriptural journey with me as we look at these verses in this different light of human Cosmic Geography. 

• 2 Corinthians 4:7 NASB
  • But we have this treasure in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves
  • How is it possible for ‘dirt’ containers to contain the ‘extraordinary greatness of the power’ of God? It is not! Unless we are a new, better, sacred kind of dirt that was made for God to live on.

• Matthew 5:13
  • You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
  • Salt is considered an ‘essential mineral’ because all life is dependent upon possessing it. In a Cosmic Geography application, it would make rational sense that Jesus would connote that we, the recipients of the new life He was offering, the born-again life, would literally be the living part of the Earth. The new dirt that gives essential life.

• John 9:6-7
  • When Jesus had said this, He spit on the ground, made some mud, and applied it to the man’s eyes. Then He told him, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing.
  • Jesus is THE life, there is no life without His life. He spit of regular dirt, and the dirt became supernatural dirt that healed a blind man. This new kind of dirt that we are to be is the substance of this world mixed with the life of God. In the world but not of the world. Jesus was illustrating that the dirt He would make would heal the physically and spiritually blind by being a new kind of dirt covering and healing broken places.

• Luke 8:15
  • But the seeds on good soil are those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, cling to it, and by persevering produce a crop.
  • The Parable of the Sower is the granddaddy of all parables. It is not ‘A’ parable it is ‘THE’ parable. We learn through the Physician’s account that Jesus said that the dirt was the human heart and the seed was the Logos of God that contained the Kingdom of God/Heaven. When the normal, defiled, fallen dirt of humanity is infused with the Logos of God then that dirt becomes the place where the Kingdom grows from. When Jesus, Who is the Logos (John 1:1) is planted into a regular dirt heart, that dirt becomes supernaturally capable of Heavenly production that it was previously incapable of. The seed of Jesus changes our dirt into the Cosmic Geography that Heaven springs from.

• Luke 4:13
  • When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.
  • In keeping with the Genesis account of the Nacash consuming the dust of humanity we can look at the temptation of Christ in the wilderness under a different lens. Jesus was the one and only dust that the serpent could not consume. Jesus was already a special kind of dirt because of His incarnation and virgin birth, but we see here that He was also unique in the aspect that He could not be consumed by the cursed snake. His dirt was Consim Territory that the enemy could not slither into and eat. When you and I are born again, we take on the same substance as Christ (Colossians 2:9-10) and therefore become unconsumabale dust in the same way.

• Luke 9:5
  • “If anyone does not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that town, as a testimony against them.”
  • We are now the new dirt of the new birth becoming the sacred space where God and His Good News emanate from. As we tread through this dusty earth we are to encounter other dirt creatures and effect change into their composition. Jesus was teaching His peeps here that if those people would not receive the message (seed) into their dirt then we are to knock the unchanged dirt off of our changed dirt because the two are incompatible. Only sacred items can be in sacred space. There is no room for ‘common’ or unholiness on Holy Ground (just ask Moses and Joshua). There is no mixing of the sacred with the un-sacred, it must be knocked off and returned to the unredeemed ground outside of Yahweh’s Cosmic Geography.

• John 13:3-5
  • Jesus knew that the Father had delivered all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was returning to God. So He got up from the supper, laid aside His outer garments, and wrapped a towel around His waist. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel that was around Him.
  • Jesus KNEW that His hands held the future of humanity and chose to illustrate the redemption of humanity’s dirt by washing the dirties place of His disciples… the dusty feet. This is no accident that Jesus used this illustration to exemplify this notion of a new Cosmic Geography being the new people of God, His Ekklesia. Jesus removed the old, sinful, and cursed dirt from His people so that their dirt became sanctified and sacred fit for sacred use. This was not just a cool way to show His guys how the Last Supper is supposed to be celebrated, there was a Cosmic reality taking place in that upper room on that last evening together. Jesus was literally creating sacred ground with His hand and His breath on that holy night.

Those Divine hands are still making sacred ground every day in any human dirt-bag that humbly and submissively comes to Him. We offer ourselves as a human sacrifice, He takes that dirt offering and adds His divine life to it in the new creation of a New Creation of Cosmic Geography in sacred space made from a different kind of dirt.

1. Weinberg, Steven (1972). Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity. Wiley. pp. 407–463. ISBN 978-0-471-92567-5.
2. “God Loves Naaman”. Word Journey. 29 August 2008. Archived from the original on 8 September 2008. Retrieved 7 September 2008.
3. Safrai, Zeev (2005). “Nakdimon b. Guryon: A Galilean Aristocrat in Jerusalem”. In Jack Pastor; Menachem Mor (eds.). The Beginnings of Christianity. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press. pp. 297–314. ISBN 978-9652171511.
4. Bauckham, Richard (1996). “Nicodemus and the Gurion Family”. The Journal of Theological Studies. 47 (1): 1–37. doi:10.1093/jts/47.1.1. ISSN 0022-5185. JSTOR 23966458.