Spring 1983
The Glory of God
George Wylie

The glory of God—what is it? We talk about it, we sing about it, but do we know what it really is? We read about it in the Bible. We are told that God is in the process of bringing many sons to glory. What does that mean? We often hear the expression, when someone has departed this life, that they have “gone home to glory. This seems to make glory synonymous with a place we call heaven. Does this mean that God is going to take His many sons to a position in the glory-land—to a place that is called Glory—or does it mean something else? To understand this, we need to know what the glory of God really is.

God not only said He would bring many sons to glory, but that the glory of God would be revealed in His sons. “Our sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.”

This summer I was reading a little book written by our dear departed brother, Charles Price, entitled Made Alive. Something I read in this book was the key the Holy Spirit used to enlighten me on this subject: “Every atom of matter—every piece of mineral—indeed everything which is the result of God’s creative intelligence is surrounded by an “aura,” or an emanation which is identical with and corresponds to the nature of the substance from which it comes. There is a sense in which personalities are possessed with the “emanation” and “extension” of themselves into their surroundings. It is a radiation which can be felt when someone walks into a room in which you may be seated. Our personality becomes affected by their personality. They have power to elevate or depress.” I would like you to really get a grasp of this thought. We all know people who by their very presence can lift us up, and impart a feeling of well-being: who can lift our spirits up to heights of joy and happiness. Others can leave you feeling depressed and down by spending a few minutes in their presence. The thought I want you to get is the fact that every created thing has this aura surrounding them, which is a radiation of their nature and personality into their surroundings. It is an extension of themselves into their environment.

This emanation is the radiation of our natures into our surroundings, and with this thought in mind, I now want to write about the glory of God, because the glory of God is the radiation of His nature into the universe. I often wondered how it could be that God was omnipresent—that He could be everywhere at once, as the Psalmist said in Psalm 139: “Wither shall I go from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there, if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.” God can be everywhere, and fill the universe with Himself, because of the radiation of His glory into the whole cosmos. The aura is the extension of our natures and personalities into our surroundings, and God is able to extend Himself to fill the whole universe. In Psalm 84:11 we read, “The Lord God is a sun.” Here God is likened to a sun; so that old orb that shines out there in space is a type of God. Though the sun is over ninety million miles out there in space, it radiates light, heat, energy and life to everything on the earth, to support natural life on this planet. Without it no life could exist on this earth. The sun is the source of all this.

God is a sun, and what the sun is to this old earth, God is to the universe. He is the life, the light, the energy that pervades and radiates through the universe, and supports and sustains it and all creation. Just as our sun radiates itself into our solar system, and supports and sustains natural life on the planet, so God radiates Himself into the entire universe to support and uphold everything He has created.

Also we read that God is light. “This then is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” God is pure, absolute, perfect light, and there is no darkness in Him at all. There is no way we can begin to comprehend this. “Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting, Amen” (1 Timothy 6:16). In this natural realm in which we live there is no such thing an infinite light. The greatest light we can have is still mixed with some measure of darkness—that is why we have shadows. But in God there is no darkness at all; and this pure, absolute light that God is, no man can approach unto.

The glory of God usually manifests itself as light. When Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration, and was transfigured in the sight of the disciples, the light that radiated from His being made even His clothes look whiter than anything on earth. The light shone through His garments. When Jesus appeared unto Saul on the road to Damascus, He appeared as a light that was greater than the noonday sun (Acts 9:3). The glory of that light was much greater than the light from the sun.

“At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me” (Acts 26:13). The light was so bright that Saul was blinded by the brightness of it. “And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came to Damascus” (Acts 22:11). So from these scriptures we see that the glory of God manifested itself as light. In the tabernacle of Moses, the outer court was lightened by the sun; the Holy Place had a seven-armed lamp to light; but the inner chamber, the Holy of Holies, had no windows, and had no lamp to give it light—the glory of God was the light that lightened the Most Holy Place. So God, like the sun, is a consuming fire—He is light, a giver of life, and a sustainer of life; He is power and energy that pervades the universe. He is the one thing that the sun is not, and that is love: wonderful, absolute, all-embracing, infinite love.

Let us look now at some of the things that happened at the time of creation. We see the earth and the heavens in darkness. “And the earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.” “I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void; and the heavens, they had no light . . . For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black because I have spoken, I have purposed, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it” (Jeremiah 4:23, 28). So the first picture we get of the cosmos was that darkness was everywhere; the earth and the heavens were swallowed up in darkness. Then God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” The first thing God did was bring light into the darkened universe. What was this light? Was it the sun? No, because the sun was not yet made. The sun was not made until the fourth day, so this light could not have been the sun. The light was the glory of God. God who is light entered the picture at this time; and wherever He is, there is light. The reason I know that this light was the glory of God is because He is the First and the Last. This terminology is applied to God the Father, as well as to the Son. In Isaiah 44:6 we read, “Thus saith Yahweh the king of Israel, and his redeemer Yahweh of hosts; I am the first and the last, and beside me there is no God.” And in Isaiah 48:12, “Hearken unto me O Jacob and Israel my called, I am He; I am the first, I also am the last.”

When we turn to the last part of the Bible we read, “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” So when we come near the end of God’s great eternal purpose, we find there is no need of the sun nor of the moon, for the glory of God and the Lamb will be the light then. As they are in the end, so they were in the beginning. If they are the first and the last, and in the consummation of His purpose they are the light of the universe, then they must have been in the beginning. The first thing God did in the beginning was to bring light, and this was the light of His glory. The Son of God was also involved in this, as it says of the New Jerusalem, “The glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” Jesus said, “I am the light of the cosmos,” and “I came a light into the cosmos.” So in the beginning, the glory of God and the Lamb were the light, as they will be in the end.

Now I am going to say something that I want you to consider very carefully. The next thing God did was to separate the light from the darkness. This was the first day. The second day He separated the waters and made the firmament, which He called heaven. The third day God caused the waters to recede, and made the dry land to appear; and then from the dry land God caused all kinds of vegetation to grow. “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind; and God saw that it was good.” Now what I want you to know is that this happened before the sun and moon were made.

I do not believe for a moment that these days were days of twenty-four hours, because there was no such thing at that time. Our solar days did not begin until the sun was made. It is the sun that makes our day and night: the rising of the sun begins the day, and the setting of the sun begins the night. The scripture says that a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. I am fully convinced that the creative days were not solar days, but days that could have been thousands of years or ages. What I want you to see is that the earth was made and was fruitful, bearing all kinds of vegetation, grass, herbs, fruit trees, etc., without the need of the sun. The glory of God, which was the light, gave life to all the vegetation and caused everything to grow and be fruitful; and they had no need of the sun—the glory of God and the Lamb were the light and the life thereof, as they will be in the end.

The period that we call time did not begin until the sun and the moon were made, so what happened before that belonged to the eternal realm. It was on the fourth day that God made the sun and moon, and this is what it says: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days, and years.” This was when this realm we call time came into being. Day and night, seasons, days and years began with the creation of the sun and moon. This was when time began to be measured. Before this, time did not exist, and everything was dependent on God for its existence. He supported and sustained everything that had life.

This realm we call time will come to an end in the not too distant future, and that will be when the universe will have no more need of the sun and moon, and the glory of God and the Lamb will be the light and life of the creation, as they were in the beginning. The end of time and the beginning of eternity can be ours now, when we come into this relationship with God where He is our light and our life, and we are completely and fully joined to Him, and wholly dependent on Him for our all.

Jesus prayed, “That they may be one, as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may be one as we are.” Then He said, “The glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one as we are.” He said He has given us His glory, but have we received it?

In our natural state we are dependent upon the sun for our subsistence, as all natural life is. It is the sun that causes our food to grow, and all our food that we need to support our natural life originally comes from the ground, from which our bodies have been made. It is the sun that causes the plants to produce the nutrients our bodies need. It is also the sun that produces the vitamins in the plants, and makes the rain which the plants need for growth. The sun does all this. So we can see how natural life is dependent upon the sun for its existence.

In Isaiah, chapter sixty, where God is speaking to Zion, the holy city of God, as we see in the fourteenth verse, “And they shall call thee, the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel,” and He says to them, “The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but Yahweh shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall they moon withdraw itself; for Yahweh shall be thine everlasting light and the days of thy mourning shall be ended” (verses 19, 20). When the Lord has become our light and our life and glory, then we will have entered into a realm of freedom and liberty from the bondage and limitations of this natural realm, and entered into a realm of the Spirit that belongs to the eternal. This is the liberty Paul speaks of in Romans eight, where he says that the whole creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption and brought into the glorious liberty that belongs to the children of God. This is where God is leading us to: a place of deliverance, safety and life that is to be found only in God.

We have a wonderful example of this place is Psalm ninety-one: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” He is a dwelling place where we have absolute security and safety from all the destructive forces that are coming on the earth. This is a secret place, known only to those whom God is pleased to reveal it, and they are the ones who are seeking God with all their heart. They who find this secret place, as the Psalmist said, “shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” This word shadow must be a very poor translation, for with God there is no shadow. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). A shadow indicates a measure of darkness; and God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

The only way there can be a shadow is for a great light to shine on something that has substance and create a shadow. For God to have a shadow, a greater light than He is would have to shine upon Him but there is no greater light, and there is no darkness around God, so He could not have a shadow. What then is the Psalmist talking about? What he is speaking about here is the aura of God’s glory that radiates from the Eternal. We are not abiding in His shadow, because there is no such thing; but we are sheltering in the aura of His glory that radiates from Him, abiding in the shelter of His love, light and power. This is our refuge: to get close enough to God to be enveloped in the radiance of His glory. This is our abiding place; this is our refuge. It is in God that we have our safety and security. Paul said, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

The glory of God is the emanation or radiation of His nature, and this glory surrounds Him. As we become partakers of the divine nature, we will also radiate the glory of His nature. This is the real purpose of our calling. We partake of His glory when we are made partakes of His divine nature, and there is no other way in which we can enter into the glory of the Lord. When it says that God is bringing many sons to glory, this is not some geographical location He is going to take His sons to, but a realm in the divine Spirit that belongs to eternity, recreating Himself within us and giving us His nature—recreating us in His image and likeness, filling us with His fullness, until the light of the glory of the divine nature will radiate from us to give light and life to the rest of creation. As the Son was the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, when we have been conformed to the image of the Son, then we also will be in the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, recreated in the image and likeness of God; no longer bearing the image of the earthly, no longer just natural, earthy creatures, but bearing the image of the Heavenly One, we will be also like Him—life giving, spiritual beings.

There is a day coming when the earth shall not be in darkness, but covered with the knowledge of the glory of God. “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). Jesus said that He was the light of the world (the cosmos), and that He came a light into the cosmos; but He also said to His disciples, “Ye are the light of the world.” As He was the light of the cosmos, so we are to become also that light: a light that will shine into the darkest parts of the universe. But this can only be as we are filled with His fullness.

This is told to us in a wonderful way in Isaiah sixty: “Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon you. And His glory shall be seen upon you; and the Gentiles (nations), shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” My, what words are these! “Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee.” From these verses we can see that the radiance of the glory of His nature will not only be sensed and felt, but will be visible to all around us.

This will happen when the world is in darkness. “Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people.” But glory to God! The glory of the Lord will have risen upon us; and the prophet said, “The Lord shall arise upon thee.” There will be no visibility of our old selves, but the only one who will be visible will be the Lord. “The Lord shall arise upon thee. And His glory shall be seen upon thee.” Not just sensed or felt, but seen—visible to all. And the glory that will be seen will be the outshining of the divine nature: the radiance of the indwelling One, who has completely swallowed up the old and made all things new, in His image and likeness.

This light of the glory will be magnetic. It will attract: “The Gentiles (nations) shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” No more will we have to go out and try to persuade them to come. They will come—attracted by the light of the glory that will be seen upon us—for it will be the radiation of the divine love and light that will draw people to the Light of Life.

Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” This was only partially fulfilled on the cross, because all men have not been drawn unto Him. But when He is lifted up in us, when we have been glorified in Him, and He in us, then this is when He will really be lifted up, for the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee. He will be the one that is seen; He will be the one that is lifted up and manifested in the glory that will be seen in us. “For whom the Lord foreknew, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover who He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified.” He will be revealed in us, as Paul said, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His son in me” (Galatians 1:15, 16). This is what He is gong to do when His Son has been formed in us and come to His fullness in these earthen vessels; for “we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of thy power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

When He is lifted up and is manifested in the glory that will be seen in us, then will all men be drawn unto Him; for “they shall come to thee, they shall come from afar; the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, and the forces of the nations shall come unto thee; the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” Can’t you see the real purpose God had in our calling and election, and in bringing many sons to glory—that He might be exalted, and manifested in us, and draw all men unto Himself, by His Son, and those who have been conformed unto His image, and brought into His glory. When He has gathered out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath hears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 13:43).