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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation: 17. Transfigured by a Look
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 17. Transfigured by a Look
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Transfigured by a Look
No one ever had a sight of Christ's face and forgot. No one ever gets a sight of Him and gets over it. He is never the same man after that. He doesn't want to be the same.
A look into the face of Christ is transforming. You see Him; and you can never be the man you have been and be content. A change comes. You want a change. You must have it. This longing is the beginning of the deeper change. You can never be content again with being the man you have been.
It has always been so. It always will be so. For this is the natural thing. In the dawning twilight of Eden God looked into the face of the man he had fashioned. He drew very close to him, close enough to breathe his own breath into his face. And the man looked out into God's face, and took on God's likeness. So he became his own real self, as originally planned.
But while man was yet young, sin looked him in the face. And the man looked at sin with an evil longing look. And in that look he took in some of what he saw. He was marred. The God image was hurt. He was not the same man. And he knew it. He felt it. His eyes were never the same after that exchange of looks with sin.
But God helped him. He didn't go away. He came closer for the sake of the sin-hurt eyes. And whenever man has looked into that wondrous God-face, even though seeing dimly and indistinctly, something within him makes a great bound. He recognizes the original of his own natural self. And he catches fire at the sight. A holy discontent springs up within.
"Couldst thou in vision see
Thyself the man God meant,
Thou never more couldst be
The man thou art—content."
But you have to see Jesus as He was in His humanity to see yourself the man God meant. And you have to see Jesus as He is now to see the God who meant you to be like Himself.
It has always been so. This has been God's simple method with men He would use. He has wooed and then wooed more, and a bit longer, gently, persistently, up and away and apart until at last the man's eyes were trained away from the lower glare enough to see the real things.
Then in some vision of the night, whose darkness helped hold back the lower earth lights, God has looked a man in the face once again. Or, perhaps in open day there came to him that which he could not describe. But in his inner spirit he knew there was One with him whom yet his outer eyes could not see, but who could not be more real if his outer eyes did see.
And in that presence there was a mingling of exquisite tenderness and of limitless power that was overawing. Inconceivable purity and yet such an unspeakable graciousness seemed blended in this presence. And the man seeing was melted in his innermost being with the sense of tenderness, and bowed in awe to the lowest dust in the sense of overwhelming power. Those who have seen will understand how poor the words are to tell the story. And those who have not may wonder a bit until they, too, have seen.