Hi @Seedsower,
What did you mean when you said, 'However, there are different manifestations of said Theophanys and that is the crux of the matter.' The 'crux' of what matter? Forgive me, I am a little lost here.
Also, why should we assume that Moses saw a theophany? When seeing God's face was obviously denied him (see previous entry), so the words, 'face to face,' has to have the meaning of 'speaking directly', rather than that Moses actually saw God's face.
Thank you
In Christ Jesus
our risen and glorified,
Saviour, Lord and Head.
Whose Name be praised!
Chris
It is of no use measuring scripture by our own spiritual experience or lack of it .
For if we do we will brign the scrriptures down to our experience .
We are to hold up scripture above all and seek by the grace of God to bring our experience up into conformity with what the scriptures speak of .
If you look at the life of Moses you will find a man of progression from one of ignorance of God having only first HEARD of God .
But even by what he had heard he had understood that God would deliver Gods people by his hand.
But what God says must be done in the Spirit and by God cannot be done in the flesh.
Thus his first attempt ended in failure and he fled Egypt.
40 YEARS later he met with God and was terrified and could (if eh did at all) look up .
For he understood God was HOLY and he was not .
and whiel before he was bold enough to kill the egyptian now he was timid enough to ask to send some one else.
For he was of no use to God while he was somebody in Egypt.
God first had to make him a nobody (in his own eyes also)
Then God could make him a somebody in Gods eyes and in the eyes of Gods people .
If you follow his life you will find his fellowship with God and his confidence increased as he came to know God.
This applies to all in scripture .
As it should also apply to us .
I fear though that the church does not know God at all but has only heard of Him Or at best as "little children"
and though there is much boasting of this and that . The reality is quiet different.
if then people do know God they do not know Him as much as they think they do.
How can it be otherwise ? When people who profess to be christians deny the Word of God lean more upon their own understanding rather than trust the Lord who was promised to lead us into all truth?
and how can any one know "Him who is from the beginning" when they do not believe HIM who inspired men to so write what is "in the beginning"?
in Christ
gerald