Angels From David’s Time to the Babylonian Captivity
97
The seraphim dwelt in the presence of Jesus, yet they vailed with
their wings their faces and their feet. They looked upon the King in His
beauty, and covered themselves. When Isaiah saw the glory of God,
his soul was prostrated in the dust. Because of the unclouded vision he
was graciously permitted to behold, he was filled with self-abasement.
This will ever be the effect upon the human mind when the beams of
the Sun of Righteousness shine gloriously upon the soul.... As the
increasing glory of Christ is revealed, the human agent will see no
glory in himself; for the concealed deformity of his soul is laid bare,
and self-esteem and self-glorying are extinguished. Self dies, and
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Christ lives.—BE&
The Signs of the Times, December 3, 1894
.
Such was the prospect that greeted Isaiah when he was called to
the prophetic mission; yet he was not discouraged, for ringing in his
ears was the triumphal chorus of the angels surrounding the throne of
God, “The whole earth is full of His glory.”
Isaiah 6:3
. And his faith
was strengthened by visions of the glorious conquests by the church
of God, when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as
the waters cover the sea.”
Isaiah 11:9
.—
Prophets and Kings, 371
.
Ezekiel
Upon the banks of the river Chebar, Ezekiel beheld a whirlwind
seeming to come from the north, “a great cloud, and a fire infolding
itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the
color of amber.” A number of wheels intersecting one another were
moved by four living beings. High above all these “was the likeness of
a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone; and upon the likeness
of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon
it.” “And there appeared in the cherubims the form of a man’s hand
under their wings.”
Ezekiel 1:4, 26
;
10:8
.
The wheels were so complicated in arrangement that at first sight
they appeared to be in confusion; yet they moved in perfect harmony.
Heavenly beings, sustained and guided by the hand beneath the wings
of the cherubim, were impelling those wheels; above them, upon the
sapphire throne, was the Eternal One; and round about the throne was
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a rainbow, the emblem of divine mercy.
As the wheel-like complications were under the guidance of the
hand beneath the wings of the cherubim, so the complicated play of