GLORY
The concept of glory is not easily found in contemporary language. People who read the Bible know that it appears there many times, but the nature of it is fuzzy at best. The definition of glory in the dictionary helps a little bit, but thinking of it in terms of praise and honor does not quite live up to the imagery of glory that we find in the Bible.

The reason the meaning of glory is so obscure is that it can be understood only in hearts that are clean and pure. God can see it, of course, because God knows hearts, but it is otherwise evident only to formerly religious people who have been set free from their addiction to religion and know how to hear God’s spoken voice.

Because God knows and judges hearts, he knows that there are two kinds of glory. First, there is fleshly, self-seeking, personal glory that man creates through religious activity. Religious people seek personal glory by engaging in religious activity that other religious people can see. This religious activity is often called faith, but it is fake faith because it is enacted for public observation. It is the opposite of God’s kind of glory which, like God himself, can be found only in hearts that are clean and pure.

Religious people practice their religion in plain view with the objective of making names for themselves as super-spiritual people. This kind of glory is also called pride. God sees prideful hearts and judges them as evil. Destruction of this kind of glory is the objective of humility. And after a religious person has been humbled and born again, they recognize God’s glory in their hearts and regret having worked to create glory for themselves.

STUDY TIP: See this link for more about religious pride.

The kind of glory that God hopes to find when he judges hearts is the glory that accrues to him and only him. Not to anyone else. Not even Jesus because Jesus did not want or expect any glory for himself.

That is all good to know, but it does not help us understand the true nature of glory. Looking at the Hebrew and Greek definitions of glory helps somewhat, but still seems to fall short of what we might imagine when we look at scriptures that speak of glory in the context of angels and heavens and earth. These scriptures seem to imply that glory is something much more spiritual, ethereal and other-worldly than praise and honor expressed by humans with their mouths, music and raised hands. It seems like God, big as he is and powerful as he is, is worthy of something much more exciting than fleshly human activity.

There is nothing that is more exciting or glorious in the natural world or the spiritual world than hearing God’s voice. People who know how to hear God’s spoken voice know this to be true. Religious people who do not hear God’s voice do not understand it. All they know is the pride they value for being religious and the fleshly experiences that religion offers through religious worship.

The people who do understand glory would probably use phrases like the following to describe it:

• • • • It is the excitement and exaltation experienced in the hearts when they hear God’s voice.
      • It is the lifting up of the heart that comes when God reveals mysteries to the heart.
      • It is the honor, gratitude, thanksgiving, relief and praise that they internally express, without human words in their hearts, when they understand that God has opened their eyes and ears to understanding that religion is sin and given them an opportunity to repent for their sinfulness.
      • It is the burning in the heart that they experience when God opens their eyes to understanding the symbolism of scripture.
      • It is the joy of experiencing the rapture here and now (i.e. today.)

But these words and phrases are only modest, incomplete, inefficient, limited attempts at using human words to explain what happens when God pours out his spirit on people, speaks to them, and writes his spiritual laws on their hearts.

In summary, God’s voice has the miraculous effect of lifting up hearts in a way that is unlike anything they have ever experienced in religion.

STUDY TIP: See Rapture for more about lifted up hearts.

In Ezekiel 1:28, glory is equated to a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day. Because clouds symbolically represent New Covenant disciples, it can also be said that rainbows also represent New Covenant disciples who have God’s laws written on their hearts and who speak for God. In other words, the hearts of New Covenant disciples, and the words they speak, are God’s glory because they represent him. His glory is in his laws/commandments which are his words. 

STUDY TIP: See this link for understanding of the symbolism of clouds.