A. W. Tozer cogently and challengingly remarked in his work The Knowledge of the Holy: ‘Wherever God appeared to men in Bible times the results were the same — an overwhelming sense of terror and dismay, a wrenching sensation of sinfulness and guilt. When God spoke, Abram stretched himself upon the ground to listen. When Moses saw the Lord in the burning bush, he hid his face in fear to look upon God. Isaiah’s vision of God wrung from him the cry, “Woe is me!” and the confession, “I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.”

‘Daniel’s encounter with God was probably the most dreadful and wonderful of them all. The prophet lifted up his eyes and saw One whose “body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.” “I, Daniel, alone saw the vision” he afterwards wrote, “for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves . . .”

‘These experiences show that a vision of the divine transcendence soon ends all controversy between the man and his God. The fight goes out of the man and he is ready with the conquered Saul to ask meekly, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”

“Conversely, the self-assurance of modern Christians, the basic levity present in so many of our religious gatherings, the shocking disrespect shown for the Person of God, are evidence enough of deep blindness of heart.’

Image Credit: “Gebhard Fusels Moses at the Burning Bush.”