WHY does GOD choose TO reside in SECRET?

[redleghunter]

But from a human perspective of having to deal with the constant denials and mockeries, one sometimes wishes that he would thunder and announce his presence in no uncertain terms in order to silence this nonsense once and for all.

We are getting somewhere. You mention from a human perspective. Try looking at it from God's Sovereign perspective.

He is not a trained circus act waiting for us to call down fire from the sky to appease those who hate His Holiness.

An atheist a few months before he became ill and shortly died told me that even if God came down to his living room and told him everything he wanted to know, he would still reject God as a "big old meanie." My hope is he accepted the Gospel before his death. However shows the heart of a man who even with full knowledge and signs would reject God. The Gospels show us this. People fed, healed, raised from the dead...The miracles. Many still rejected Him even with the demonstrated Power of God.

Mockery? Jesus told us we would be mocked, beaten and even killed speaking the Words He left us.
Why with all the evidences squarely in front of them do they still reject Jesus Christ?

He told us why:

John 1:King James Version (KJV)

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.

16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.

17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

18 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.(KJV)

And then this:

John 3: King James Version (KJV)

17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

 

[redleghunter]

He is the system Administrator of life for the whole infinite universe, which means He operates all processes of life at the highest system level, and therefore cannot venture to make human beings see Him, otherwise, if He made them see Him, they would see something like being puppets in the hands of a giant/gigantic entity on an universal scale, and thus would not feel quite free - that is why He never ever made anyone see Him

Blessings

?

 

[DynamiteX]

I am not the one who describes him as being in secret. The Bible does:
Matt 6:5
So that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 5And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. Truly I tell you, they already have their reward. 6But when you pray, go into your inner room, shut your door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.…
Berean

So why all the secrecy?

BTW

I am aware of the different modes that were used to transmit the knowledge we now have.
What I am talking about is a direct manifestation. Why this hiding behind what seems like a deep silence?

No, I spoke too soon. Most translations say that God himself is in secret:



American King James Version
But you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret; and your Father which sees in secret shall reward you openly.

American Standard Version
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee.






Berean Literal Bible
But you when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father, the One in secret. And your Father, the One seeing in secret, will reward you.



Holman Christian Standard Bible
But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

International Standard Version
But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees from the hidden place will reward you.

NET Bible
But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.

New Heart English Bible
But you, when you pray, enter into your inner chamber, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
But you, when you pray, enter into your closet and lock your door, and pray to your father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you in public.



King James 2000 Bible
But you, when you pray, enter into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly

Reply:

That's not God being in secret, that speaking concerning us doing things for our love of God and not for the benefit of being seen by others which is an implication of pride. God resist the proud. God is Spirit and those that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. If we are refering to why God doesn't manifest Himself as He did in the Bible, or even in the New Testament and afterwards, the answer is quiet simple and it entails the fact that we are a people who are quite disconnected from God. With all our diverse Bibles and our own morals and beliefs playing such a huge role in how we teach the Word, it is rarely that we truly speak of the God of the Bible. There is a book entitled "God In Our Image" by J M Acosta that lays it all out. Quite wonderfully put. I wud recommend everyone to read it becuz it clearly defines the God of the Bible from the one we have made up to suit ourselves.

 

[Wunderlust]

Why not simply show himself to humans? Why all the mystery? If communication is indeed what is needed, why not communicate in a more direct way instead of in a way that can be doubted?

How do you suggest a non corporeal being reveal itself?

God is not made up of stuff that you and I can perceive. God is not hidden, there is just nothing about God that you can see, hear, taste, touch or smell.

So God became man.

 

[Vicomte13]

Why not simply show himself to humans? Why all the mystery? If communication is indeed what is needed, why not communicate in a more direct way instead of in a way that can be doubted?

He doesn't.
If you want to talk to God, you can.
If you want to see the manifestations of God, you can.

In fact, you have almost certainly already talked to God. Frequently. You have just not understood that that is what you were doing.

He isn't hidden. But he isn't what you want. You want a point source, a THING you can point at and say "That's God!" But God is "thing" that has numbered the hairs of your head, and not a sparrow falls in the remotest jungle of the world without God's consent. God isn't a point source. There's no "There" there.

Look at the natural law, functioning everywhere, perfectly, at the sub-microscopic and trans-galactic level. That law IS God.

He talks to you - you don't realize that your "inner monologue" is not a monologue at all, but a dialogue - until he stops talking to you and you find that even the interior of "your own" mind isn't really YOU. You, alone, cannot speak to yourself even in your head. That has always been God there, talking back with you, arguing with you, helping you reason things out.

Miracles happen. By miracle, I mean that the laws of physics, the laws of nature, are suddenly broken on your behalf. You know it, the outrageous "lucky strikes" you've had. You reason away that this was "just luck", but there is no luck in a world ruled by natural law, which is God. No, that's God simply choosing to alter the normal functioning of a "rule" for you - for the rule is him, and the "exception" is him. It's all him, all the time.

You SEE it, which means you SEE him, but he is too big and too all embracing to comprehend and cope with.

You've been talking to him all along, but again, he is so...MUNDANE...that you think he's YOU, you think your mind is just you running on talking with yourself. It isn't. Your interlocutor has always been God - although malign lesser spirits can also get in there if you crack your wetware with drugs and the like.

The major and minor miracles of your life, and other lives, everywhere, are him.

What you want is for God to send out a pseudopod and address you face to face, on your terms.

Sometimes he does THAT too. You've met people who have talked to God directly in clear and direct manifestations that stood out from the background. Jesus was the most dramatic of those cases, speaking to all, but individuals experience it in all ages.

You're not one of them, but if you encounter somebody who is and tells you so, you dismiss him as crazy.

So, you want God to manifest himself as a "pseudopod", so you can talk to a visible "thing". What do you want from him? What will you ask of him?

I demanded that he prove he was God by turning on the lightswitch across the room. Instead, I was thrust into the abyss, had him STOP talking to me internally - which is why I suddenly realized that he had been there all along - and then rip me out of the abyss and show me one gate of the glorious City, high above.

And his words "You have your answer."

So, that's what you want. The proof. Ask and you shall receive. You have to persist a little, like the widow and the unjust judge. God doesn't play parlor tricks.

Understand that your life will never be the same, because you can never un-see what you have seen, you can never un-believe what you know to be so. And understand that your fellow humans will treat you like [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]e if you try to talk to them about it. Either they don't want to know, or they think they already DO know, and they'll start quoting to you out of their books.

Do you want to be estranged from your fellow men, to get satisfaction on a question? You might think you do, but what is God telling you? You're already talking to him, all the time. So talk to him.

If you really have to have the pseudopod, like Thomas, then you can. Remember what happened to Thomas. He would not believe unless he saw. So God showed him. Then what? Then Thomas had to go out and be an apostle and preach. He went all the way to Parthia, then into India. Could he walk away? He knew it was true - how can you hide from what you know is true? And when they came for him in India, to ram spears through his body to kill him, his knowledge of the truth didn't spare him the pain and terror, didn't persuade his tormentors of anything - and pointedly, death is part of the process by which God runs the world, He's not going to SPARE your life no matter what, lest you remain the caterpillar forever who does not die in the chrysalis and be born anew as the butterfly.

Knowledge was perhaps solace to Thomas as he was being speared to death, but it didn't spare him anything. And it meant that he could not blanche and run away and hide. He had to go through with the whole grim thing.

So, God doesn't really hide himself, people are just not seeing and hearing what is in plain sight and hearing. He is communicating with you directly, all the time, but you don't recognize him. If you want to see and hear more clearly, you can, but once you have, your freedom is clipped off considerably for the rest of your life, and you will have a real hard time getting along with other people. Do you REALLY want that? Is that REALLY good for you? Apparently not, or not yet, because God hasn't grabbed you yet.

But if you really want it, you certainly can have it. It will not make you powerful, and it will not make you a leader - in fact, people who are already leaders, on human terms, will deride you if you talk about it, because you have something they don't.

It will not make you happy either, for then as you continue to experience the bruises and bad things, you will be talking to God as God lets those things happen to you. You will find yourself like the teenager talking to the parent: It's UNFAIR!

The problem, though, is that it is perfectly fair - you're just not a special snowflake. And it sucks to be told that by your Creator.

Still, if you want it, you can have it. You just have to ask and keep asking, and God has to decide he doesn't like you enough to actually give you what you want. Then your life will be harder.

It's much easier when things are left in the abstract and maybe.

On balance, it's still better to be closer to God than to get along with men - but the price of what it is that you want is that you will find an almost unbridgeable gap with other men, you will find yourself a freak, and others will too, if you talk about it. And many others will really HATE you for it, and call you names.

Want to talk to God right now? Engage in the inner dialogue, and you will see what I am talking about.

There is your answer as far as it can be conveyed. To really SEE, you have to go the rest of the way yourself.

Your book won't help you get there. But you will find, once you've gotten there, that the landmarks are as the book says. The book contains the truth, from the perspective of other eyes and minds. Your own eyes and minds will find different things fascinating than they did. And you'll find that nobody else in the world wants to hear your viewpoint. So you're left at the end talking with God.

Don't say that he doesn't show himself plainly. He does. You just are not seeing and not hearing what is there. There's a roadmap, if you really want it.

 

[Tull]

The op is asking a question that any finite being with only so much time would ask,the issue between man and God is mortal and immortal,finite and infinite,holy and unholy.

I wonder sometimes why all of the seemingly endless and pointless drama and waiting that makes up so much of life on earth is necessary,i am a results type person and have a hard time dealing with process within my limited time here and hearing that it will all be made plain in 100 or a 1000 years from now is not much comfort.....its a honest question that does not need to be spiritualized away but understood as part of the human condition that honest people will admit to....my experience with God has at times been like going shopping with a millionaire,when they start spending their hundreds and thousands and millions of dollars the same way you spend a dollar or two it sets you back a little.

 

[toLiJC]

?

what?!

Blessings

 

[Inkfingers]

Why not simply show himself to humans?

How would you know that it's God and not the Devil who stood before you and went "ta-dar, behold I am your God...see, I do exist, and here is [insert half a dozen miracles] to prove it"?

In truth, God does show Himself to humans - in the orderly working of the Cosmos and the way that even evil is used to serve a greater good in such.

 

[chilehed]

Why not simply show himself to humans? Why all the mystery? If communication is indeed what is needed, why not communicate in a more direct way instead of in a way that can be doubted?

Why are holy places dark places? Why can't we see God face to face?

Because of our own darkness. Because we ourselves don't have faces.

http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/16_cslewis-till-we-have-faces.htm It's a bit long, but worth listening to.

 

[eartheart]

Perhaps its seeking the truth of his secret that brings us to him, the human form of worship that God chose for us.

 

[AlexDTX]

Why not simply show himself to humans? Why all the mystery? If communication is indeed what is needed, why not communicate in a more direct way instead of in a way that can be doubted?

God is not hidden, we are blind therefore we can not see him. And for us whose eyes are opened through the Gospel, he is too big for us to see.

 

[Radrook]

God is not hidden, we are blind therefore we can not see him. And for us whose eyes are opened through the Gospel, he is too big for us to see.

It is for the benefit of those to whom he appears as non-existent that I make the suggestion. Also, please keep in mind that the Bible does describe him as being in secret in the sense that we cannot physically presently see him directly. We are also promised that we will see him if we are pure of heart. So a longing to see him in person in all his glory just as the angels do is in full harmony with the scriptures and is definitely not wrong.


Exodus 33:20 (HNV) He said, "You cannot see my face, for man may not see me and live."

1 John 4:12 ►
New International Version
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Matthew 18:10
See that you do not look down on any of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.


Matthew 5:8 ►
New International Version
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

1 John 3:2 ►
New International Version
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

 

[DynamiteX]

But they did not doubt his existence.
It is his existence that is continuously placed in doubt today by smug-faced atheists who claim blindness to all things which do indicate his existence. Perhaps he reads their heart of hearts and sees a deep insincerity there? Or perhaps they aren't as numerous as they are claiming to be. Or maybe it bothers us but it doesn't faze him in the least. But from a human perspective of having to deal with the constant denials and mockeries, one sometimes wishes that he would thunder and announce his presence in no uncertain terms in order to silence this nonsense once and for all.

The reason we don't see the manifestations today that were apparent in the bible is becuz we lack the full baptism of the holy ghost. Speaking in tongues alone is the equivalent of having a swiss army knife with only a toothpick in it while missing all the other functions. When believers decide that they want all Jesus said they wud have in Mark 16:17-18 KJV, then they will seek it out diligently. Today's methods have failed miserably to provide the characteristics of a true believer as described by Jesus Himself. Again, in perfect and elaborate detail, the book entitled: "God In Our Image" by J M Acosta explains what happened, what we lost and how to get it back. Definitely a recommended resource.

 

[redleghunter]

what?!

Blessings

Ah, now it's clear. I missed the punctuation last night.

 

[Greg J.]

Why not simply show himself to humans? Why all the mystery? If communication is indeed what is needed, why not communicate in a more direct way instead of in a way that can be doubted?

He is not hiding from us. We are blind. He doesn't forcibly show himself to the world, because as a large community, that is contrary to our will. The evidence is our sin, which is a rejection of God. Our sin is the source of darkness between God and us. God is not the source of the darkness in any way. (God is light; 1 John 1:5) He used to be fully present to people (Garden of Eden) then later (depending on how much sin was in the world) was less present—as a tangible pillar of fire, for example.

Another reason is that salvation is by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 4:2-6, Romans 5:1-2, Romans 9:30-33, Romans 11:6, and others). IMO, God showing himself to a person would remove the possibility of being saved. An unbeliever—who is still completely full of sin in body, soul, and spirit—brought into God's presence would be destroyed/transformed into a being like Satan, who sinned knowing God face-to-face, and became unredeemable. It is sin with full knowledge of God, rather than sinning without knowing God fully (i.e., knowing him only through faith). In the case of a Christian, his sin-tainted body would be destroyed, but he himself, who is alive in Christ, would be saved. (God alters the effect of his presence sometimes.)

We are accountable and responsible for how much we know of God. Because God loves us, IMO, he won't reveal himself/truth to us unless we are strong and pure enough, otherwise he would be putting us in a position where we would sin (e.g., James 4:17).

Revelation of God also gives us a deeper revelation of how sinful we are (in this life, because of our sinful nature). If too much of that is experienced, it would also destroy a person.

Remember that God is gentle (Matthew 11:29, Galatians 5:23, 1 Kings 19:12), although with so much sin, historically and today, it can be hard to tell.

 

[~Anastasia~]

I suspect that most of us would not be able to endure God openly revealing himself. Moses spent 40 days face to face with God as it were, and the people could not bear looking upon Moses' countenance without it being veiled. How much less would they have been able to endure seeing God directly?
I believe this is done for our benefit since we would probably be consumed like as in a fire if we faced God unprepared.

Adam wasn't affected that way when God communicated with him directly.

Sorry, but I had to chuckle when I saw the first words of your very next post to someone else, because they answer your objection.

Please consider that those circumstances aren't the ones that exist now.

We are not exactly as Adam was before the fall ...

 

[Colter]

Why not simply show himself to humans? Why all the mystery? If communication is indeed what is needed, why not communicate in a more direct way instead of in a way that can be doubted?

Because we couldn't see God if we were transported to his presence anyway. God the Father is spirit, he resides in a light that man is not yet equipped to see. God designed life for us to experience his truth through experience.

 

[BeStill&Know]

How would you know that it's God and not the Devil who stood before you and went "ta-dar, behold I am your God...see, I do exist, and here is [insert half a dozen miracles] to prove it"?

In truth, God does show Himself to humans - in the orderly working of the Cosmos and the way that even evil is used to serve a greater good in such.

Good morning if I may add, to what you said in reply to OP.
The generation that goes through the Great Tribulation will surrender to a person that will present himself as God in a physical form, do miracles and bring peace at first. Those who rejected the Father of the Bible will follow after this Anti-Christ because he will be what they desire in a God. So beware what you wish for.

 

[RDKirk]

Why demand such trust when he can simply thunder with his voice and put all atheistic doubt to rest?

Why would He want to do that? That's a serious question, considering scripture says in Romans 1 that when a person honestly does not want to know the truth about God, He makes sure they don't.

 

[RDKirk]

Because we couldn't see God if we were transported to his presence anyway. God the Father is spirit, he resides in a light that man is not yet equipped to see. God designed life for us to experience his truth through experience.

Although Jesus is "God as discernible by physical senses." So the resurrected Jesus could just live on earth making rounds of all the nations, campaigning for God.

But He doesn't.