Light Lost and Restored

"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." (John 3:19-21)

Adam and Eve before the fall were clothed with a robe of light that emanated from their naked bodies. Instead of highlighting their nakedness, in their pure innocence it served to empower them to see clearly the truths and insights about God that are embedded and interwoven throughout all of nature. This light acted something like both a powerful flashlight and a magnifying glass so that they could perceive things that are today mostly hidden from our perception.

This was more than simply a physical light by far. This light had far greater properties that today we only have faint hints about as we try to examine clues from God's Word and observations from our own experience. This is the very same light that was observed on the face of Moses after he had visited with God for forty days on the mountain and is the same light that overwhelmed the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus was glorified temporarily with Moses and Elijah. This gave the disciples a taste of both the future reality that all who accept heaven's offer will enjoy as well as a reminder of what humanity lost when they embraced the lies of Satan about God in the Garden.

God's glory is clearly His character and His attributes. It is far more than simply a halo around His being. God's light is also described many times as a consuming fire. But these terms have been so misinterpreted most of the time that we have to be careful to research what they really mean as used by God. This fire, this light, this glory was what was reflected around the bodies of Adam and Eve and that gave them the correct relationship to all of the world that God had created for them. It also served to act as the communication between them and their Creator. Today there may be faint traces of this concept in what some call the aura around us. There are even special cameras that can take physical pictures of this aura around our bodies and many in the New Age movement have tried to guess all sorts of things about the real meaning of this.

I am starting to wonder if possibly this aura of light that becomes so intense that it becomes visible to others around us at times may also include the presence of the Holy Spirit in a very concentrated way in our lives. The Spirit of God was not absent in the Old Testament as many have asserted. It just was not as explicitly obvious as it was for a time after the day of Pentecost. It was this same Spirit that inspired all of the prophets of God in ancient times and is the same Spirit that is still active and seeking those today who are willing to submit fully to the authority of God and worship Him, worship rooted in embracing His methods and His ways of thinking.

I heard someone recently say that the loss of their robes of light caused Adam and Eve to become very frightened of God and run from Him instead of responding to His loving presence after they sinned. They had subscribed to the notions implied by the serpent about God and had quickly come to believe that God was actually an abuser. Abusers cannot be trusted even though they at times can act very loving, kind and generous. Because humans had come to believe the ideas of Satan instead of the truth of God their deeds became evil, they indulged in disobeying God and they began to love darkness – lies about God – instead of loving the light.

Because they had chosen to love darkness instead of light, the light that had shrouded their bodies and enabled them to perceive the real truth about God in all their surroundings faded from their bodies and they suddenly could see with more than just their physical eyes that they were naked. The problem of course was not that they had never been naked before but that now there was internally an intense sense of shame and vulnerability and fear associated with that nakedness. For the first time in history they felt apprehension that something bad was going to happen to them and because of their twisted ideas about God they now believed that He was very likely going to hurt them Himself.

This is part of the legacy we all find ourselves with from the introduction of sin, which is itself simply a mis-perception of how God feels towards us. Because we believe lies about our loving Creator we now believe that He is a God of both good and evil, that He sometimes loves us intensely but may other times threaten to hurt us, torture us or even destroy us if we don't comply with His demands. This is exactly how an abuser treats their victim and is the essence of the beliefs contained in sin and is promoted by almost all religions. This causes us to be afraid of God because we give more credence to the assertions of Satan about God than we believe what God says about Himself. In doing so we love darkness more than we love light.

As long as we choose to give credence to the lies about God in any area of our life, to that extent we are loving darkness. And as long as we love darkness and lies about God the inevitable results, as well as causes for further lies and further results, will be evil, hurtful deeds and words. We have lost the light that empowers us to perceive the real truths about God and so we believe that the darkness is the true reality. We then come to resent the light, become very irritated with the light for exposing our falseness and seek to either run from it or insist that those who glow with that light cover themselves and hide the light from our awareness like they did with Moses.

Paul declares that in his day the religious people still used that veil to hide from the light of truth about God every time they read the Scriptures. That problem did not stop with the Jews however. It is still a major problem yet today that the veil of lies about God still covers our hearts much of the time when we read the Bible. It acts as a distorting lens to filter out the truths about God while highlighting supposed dark motives of God in difficult to understand passages from the Old Testament. This filter is made up of assumptions and paradigms that are well accepted and enforced in all religions. This veil comes in all sorts of sizes and colors but always serves to prevent us from believing the real truth about God's nature and His heart.

But the light is not unavailable to us. God's Spirit has been sent to invite anyone who is willing to question their veil to perceive God in a completely new way. God's Spirit is uniquely designed to be the magnifying glass that can bring truth to light in our hearts as we read the Bible and realize that we have viewed it incorrectly all of our lives. God's Spirit is working constantly to bring back to all who are willing, that missing light lost by Adam and Eve so that we can once again begin to perceive the real truth about how God feels about us and about reality of what is going on around us.

There are even hints that someday soon this light of the Spirit may become once again so concentrated that those who have allowed that Spirit to fully invade their lives will be observed to have this light glowing from their faces quite literally. But as that happens the same problem is going to be aggravated that happened when Moses returned from the mountain with God. People who love darkness will become enraged at the sight of light that exposes their deceptions and hypocrisy so they will seek to veil that light and even come to try to exterminate those who reveal it. For men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.