Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us hold on to grace. By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. – Hebrews 12:28,29
Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure. – 1 John 3:2,3
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God -- Hebrews 10:31
When we say God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. But there is something beyond their fear – a divine fate which they cannot withstand, because it works along with the human individuality which the divine individuality has created in them.
The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear, coming out with ten-fold consciousness of being, and bringing with them all that made the blessedness of the life men tried to lead without God. They will know that now first they are fully themselves. The avaricious, weary, selfish suspicious old man shall have passed away. The young, every young self, will remain – remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which they thought themselves, though they misjudged their own feelings, shall remain – remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed.
It is the law of Nature – that is, the law of God – that all that is destructible shall be destroyed. When that which is immortal buries itself in the destructible – when it receives all the messages from without, through the surrounding decadence, and none from within, from the eternal doors – it cannot, though immortal still, know its own immortality. The destructible must be burned out of it, or begin to be burned out of it, before it can partake of eternal life. When that is all burnt away and gone, then it has eternal life. Or rather, when the fire of eternal life has possessed a man, then the destructible is gone utterly, and he is pure.
Many a man’s work must be burned, that by that very burning he may be saved – “so as by fire.” Away in smoke go the lordships, the Rabbi-hoods of the world, and the man who acquiesces in the burning is saved by the fire; for it has destroyed the destructible, which is the vantage point of the deathly, which would destroy both body and soul in hell. If he still clings to that which can be burned, the burning goes on deeper and deeper into his bosom, till it reaches the roots of the falsehood that enslaved him – possibly by looking like the truth.
The man who loves God, and is not yet pure, courts the burning of God. Nor is it always torture. The fire shows itself sometimes only as light – still it will be fire of purifying. The consuming fire is just the original, active form of Purity, that which makes pure, that which is indeed Love, the creative energy of God. Without purity there can be as no creation so no persistence. That which is not pure is corruptible, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption.
The man whose deeds are evil, fears the burning. But the burning will not come the less because he fears it or denies it. Escape is hopeless. For love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire. He shall not come out until he has paid the last penny. – George MacDonald : Sermon, “What Is To Be Feared?”
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