Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 9-10

While not all parts of Ezekiel's visions of God are reflected in Revelation 9-10, the interesting ones are. As for the rest, Revelation 1:15 is a loan and so is Revelation 4:7. As for the meaning of Christ's metal feet: the natural one is the equation of the metal figures with his apostles.

I trust you find Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 9-10 online or on the shelf in your room. I'd put Ezekiel's account like this:

Imagine a ring parallel to the surface of the Earth, held up by four wheels around the ring which in turn possess many smaller wheels around them. Next to each wheel stands a metal figure with four faces, one of a bull, one of a man, one of a lion and one of an eagle, and four wings, two covering their bodies and two flapping, so that the distance between two of the figures is spanned by their flapping wings. On top of the figures rests a dome and on top of it sits God on His throne. In the middle of the ring there is fire and vapour and lightning and light and the entire ensemble can swiftly move in any direction, but does not turn.

As anybody who has arms knows, it'd be pretty difficult to flap anything longer than two metres. From our perspective fire and vapour point towards propulsion, but not necessarily from Ezekiel's. Still I doubt that Ezekiel did believe that you can fly by flapping wings ten metres long. So there is a strong argument that Ezekiel meant this description metaphorically, and fire, vapour, lightning and light only figure, because they are awesome.

Now, let's start with the latter. Ezekiel doesn't give much of a description of how they are arranged, only that it's really bright in the middle of the cloud and that its edges shine. John says though: an angel clothed in a cloud, its face like the sun, a rainbow upon its head and its feet like fiery columns.

Awesome.

And when he describes someone sitting on top of a moving monstrosity, he says that the monstrosity spews smoke and has a headed tail that does damage.

By the way, he's being ambiguous when it comes to the breastplate: he doesn't say whether the riders or the horses have it.

And when he describes a flying monstrosity, he says that it were as if on its head there was a crown of gold. Well, you can't flap wings ten metres long, but you can rotate them.

Of course I already said all this and it might get tiresome, but my point here is: If you think that the Revelation is to be purely metaphorically understood, why do you think John divided Ezekiel's visions like this? The only legitimate connection, as far as I'm concerned, is that man's technical genius has manifested God's awesomeness in the dispersed manner John has described.

We are who we are. I don't want to shame anyone out of his nature. I can look around where I stand and feel the same kind of awe. It might be a good thing though to breath in fresh awe rather than to continue to exhale the old.