Apokalupsis

In English, we call it "apocalypse:"  the revelation of something previously hidden.  And because it is hidden, it is not something we can guess at---it must be revealed to us.  On Paul's journey to Damascus, he was sure he knew the right belief; he had studied under Gamaliel, the greatest living teacher in Israel.  But when he met the Son of God on the road, all of his previous learning was shattered----or, better yet, collected finally into a framework that made sense of everything he had learned from experience.

In the Garden of Eden, there were two trees:  The Tree of Life / Wisdom / Revelation, and the Tree of Knowledge, or Experience, of Good and Evil.  Now most of us want to learn from experience---from what we can taste, see, hear, touch, and understand through our reason or reflection.  But there is a much greater world beyond the senses.  There is a world of spirit, a world we cannot touch, taste, see, or hear----except by revelation from above.

All of the saints entered this world and tried to bring it back to us---but the only avenue they had to explain what they had received by revelation was the world of sense.  At the end of his life, Thomas Aquinas said that everything he had spent his life writing was "as straw," given the revelation he had received at the end.  It has been said that God has no grandchildren----that is, that He reserves revelation to a moment directly between Himself and each one of us.  In the Old Testament, He would appear to each generation, saying, "I am the God of your father Abraham," or "I am the God of your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob..."   In other words, "I am the One they told you about---but now, I am here before YOU;  now, it's between Me and you alone!  Will you listen to Me, as did your fathers in faith?"

And how shall we come to that moment of Apocalypse, of revelation from God to us?  For most of us, it comes at a moment of deliverance, as Psalm 116 indicates:

I love the Lord [Yahweh], for he has heard

my voice, my appeal;

for he has turned his ear to me whenever I call.

They surrounded me, the snares of death;

the anguish of the grave has found me;

anguish and sorrow I found.

I called on the name of the Lord:

"Deliver my soul, O Lord [Yahweh]!"

How gracious is the Lord [Yahweh], and just;

our God has compassion.

The Lord protects the simple;

I was brought low, and he saved me.

Turn back, my soul, to your rest,

for the Lord has been good to you;

he has kept my soul from death,

my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling.

I will walk in the presence of the Lord

in the land of the living.

At the moment we have cried out to the Lord with all our hearts and have experienced His saving grace, we come to know Him as The-One-Who-Hears-Us, The-One-Who-Sees-Us, as the servant-girl Hagar came to know Him in her desperation in the desert.  The one who experiences the Living God this way- -i.e., spiritually -- will never again be at the mercy of someone whose argument about God is from reason and education, as was Paul's, originally. 

God is a Person, and His greatest desire is that we know Him directly, Person-to-person, not through intermediaries, even though the Law and the Prophets are necessary to point us in the right direction until such time as we are ready to meet the Living God for ourselves.