“Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire.
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“The symbol of the consuming fire would seem to have been suggested by the fire that burned on the mountain of the old law. That fire was part of the revelation of God there made to the Israelites. Was this show upon Mount Sinai a device to move obedience, such as bad nurses employ with children? A hint of vague and false horror? Was it not a true revelation of God? If it was not a true revelation, it was none at all. God showed them what was true. He will not put on a mask. He will not speak out of flaming fire if that flaming fire is alien to him, if there is nothing in him for that flaming fire to reveal. Be his children ever so brutish, he will not terrify them with a lie. It was a revelation, but a partial one; a true symbol, not a final vision. No revelation can be other than partial. If for true revelation a man must be told all the truth, then farewell to revelation; yea, farewell to the sonship. For what revelation, other than a partial can the highest spiritual condition receive of the infinite God? But it is not therefore untrue because it is partial. Relative to a lower condition of the receiver, a more partial revelation might be truer than a fuller revelation; for the former might reveal much to him, the latter might reveal nothing. Only, whatever it might reveal, if its nature were such as to preclude development and growth, it would be but a false revelation fighting against all the divine laws of human existence. The true revelation rouses the desire to know more by the truth of its incompleteness.”
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