That’s not a figure of speech it’s a metaphor. We perform the same function on the world that salt does for meat. We preserve life and make the experience better.
Same thing. You are salt of the earth is a non-literal statement.
Deuteronomy 30:3 That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and
gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee.
4
If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee:
Matthew 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect
from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
From the four winds means from all directions. From one end of heaven to the other in that verse means from the most distant parts of the earth. There are three heavens - the earth's atmosphere, the cosmos, the heaven where God's throne is (which is the third heaven).
2Corinthians12:2
I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up t
o the third heaven.
Matthew 24:31, the gathering of the Jews from all nations to Israel is also in Ezekiel 39:28...
Ezekiel 39:28 Then shall they know that I
am the LORD their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there.
Jesus Himself is speaking in Ezekiel 39:21-29, having returned to this earth.