Judges 6
22 When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the LORD, he cried out, “Oh, Sovereign LORD, I’m doomed! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!”
Whenever someone in Scripture realizes that they are talking with an angel of the LORD face-to-face, their immediate reaction is terror. They realize that they are in the physical presence of someone so holy that by all rights, they should die right on the spot. Why is it that we who live under the New Covenant seem to have lost our “holy fear” of the Lord? Is it because we sing “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” and forget that God is first and foremost HOLY? Is it because we have such direct access to the Creator of heaven and earth through prayer? Is it because we don’t have those literal face-to-face encounters any more? Could be any or a combination of all of these factors. It could be because we just don’t take God as seriously as the folks about whom we read in the Bible. By the time of the Judges, the children of Israel had already established the pattern of “forgetting God,” getting enslaved by surrounding peoples, “remembering God,” and getting rescued. Sadly, I believe the Church in the United States of America has been in the “forgetting God” state for several decades now. We haven’t even truly gotten to the crying out to God stage yet. Sigh.
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