Shew me thy glory

To Moses, was granted a closer intimacy and a plainer vision of God than to the “seventy nobles of the house of Israel who saw God, and did eat and drink” (Ex. 24:11). It was granted at his urgent request. Moses said, “I pray thee if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way that I may know thee … I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.” God answered, “Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. It shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover thee with my hand while I pass by; and I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen” (Ex. 33:20–23). On the day appointed, “the Lord descended in a cloud, and stood with Moses there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord … and Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshipped.” There is a grandeur in these circumstances that is not approached by anything recorded in the whole course of human history, except the ascension to the Father of the prophet like unto Moses. The difficulty the mind conceives in the idea of the Eternal Father having thus been seen on the summit of Sinai, disappears in view of the plain intimation we have that it was the Father in angelic manifestation that Moses saw (Acts 7:38; Heb. 2:2). If this appears to create another difficulty, that the personage seen by Moses speaks with the absolute prerogative of the Eternal, and refers to the angels as His instruments (Ex. 23:20), we must remember that there are grades among the angels, as appears from Gabriel’s allusion (Dan. 10:21; Luke 1:19), and as illustrated by the superiority of one of the three who visited Abraham, over the other two (compare Gen. 18:1–2, 22, and 19:1). There being grades, if one is selected in particular to be the mouthpiece and representative of the Omnipresent Father, and constituted as such, not by oral instruction—as man delegates man—but by impulse and inflation of the Universal Father-spirit, then such selected name-bearer of Yahweh is practically Yahweh to all with whom he may have to do, and other angels are as subject to him as to the Father. This is illustrated in the case of Jesus, to whom “angels and principalities, and powers are made subject.”

Roberts, R. (2002). The Visible Hand of God (pp. 157–158). Logos Publications.