April 3, 2003, re-edited November 27, 2005
The Lord was showing me this morning.
When we walk into the presence of some honored earthly personage, some king, queen, president, star, dictator or intellect, we may feel a certain pressure to give them honor. We may be taken with their rich attire, their court, their nobility, their properties, their power over people, or their amazing intellectual and reasoning abilities.
However, underneath their trappings, their courtly processionals, their special honors and rituals is a mere man, or woman, a person who must arise each morning and wash away the sleep from their eyes, brush their teeth, bathe and be clothed.
Earthly greatness has to do with position, riches, intellect, but more than anything it is based on how great a number of people pay tribute to them, how many honor them, how many fear them, how many follow them in the media.
But God is different. HIS holiness is totally another thing.
When God called me into the ministry HE spoke to me with the voice of many waters. I was so ignorant I did not know that HE had such a voice.
"And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east: and HIS voice was like a noise of many waters: and the earth shined with his glory." [Ezekiel 43:2. See also Revelation 1:15, Revelation 14:2, Revelation 19:6]
When HE spoke to me in that voice, it sounded as if Niagara Falls was enunciating words. I have stood at the top of Niagara Falls and heard the roar of many waters. They are louder than a jet engine, but much deeper. And when that voice spoke to me the voice was so awesome that I couldn't concentrate on what was being said! The voice itself overloaded my circuits. All I could think was, "That's God talking! God is talking to me! I would know that voice anywhere! How do I know that?! Why is HE talking to me? It's God! What shall I do?"
I understand why the Israelites begged Moses to ask God NOT to speak to them directly from the top of Mount Sinai down to the valley floor where they were. They said they thought they were going to die. [See Exodus 20:19]
When God spoke to me that Spring, Sunday evening of 1969, the voice was so awesome that the hair stood up on the back of my neck. The voice was so big that I thought everyone must be hearing it. Yet, it caused me no ear pain. Even so that voice was so large, so huge, so breath-taking.
I had never heard that voice ever before in my whole life. But the moment God spoke I knew that it was HE HIMSELF and no other. I was so overtaken by the voice, it's power, it's quality, it's purity, it's presence, it's reality that I could not even fix my attention on what it was that God was saying.
The words were being burnt into my being, but I could not absorb the meaning of those words in the moment that they came. But later I would never forget them. The light in that voice itself was so glorious, so brilliant that the voice totally overcame the meaning. The only way I can explain it is to say that if you lighted an open book with a million flash bulbs blazing at once, it would be impossible to read the open book. The whiteness of that light would overcome even the darkest printing.
The glory of that voice over-loaded my circuits. I could hear my own being inside shouting to me: "That's God!!! That's God!!! God HIMSELF is speaking to me!! I would know THAT voice anywhere! IT is HIS voice! I recognize that voice! How do I know that voice so well?? I've never heard that voice before! How do I know that voice?? HOW COULD I NOT KNOW IT??!"
Why am I telling you this? It is because the Holy Spirit wants you to know that in Heaven the angels shout "Holy! Holy! Holy!" NOT because it is polite, NOT because you must say big things in the presence of important ones, NOT to keep from getting thrown in the dungeon for being irreverent!! All of those reasons are why people say, "your majesty, your excellency, your honor, your holiness" down here on earth, to ordinary people who have gotten bigger than life.
But in Heaven the angels shout "HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!" for none of those reasons! They shout "HOLY!" because God is so awesome, so beyond description, so marvelous, so wondrous, so absolutely pure and so totally free from all darkness and shadow that their circuits are continually over-loaded by being in HIS presence! If God's voice, that the Israelites heard, is so awesome that just the voice over loads you, what would it be like to experience the whole person and presence of God at once???
The angel's minds are continually over-maxed by the power, the purity, the presence, the charged atmosphere of HIS wonderfulness!!! The JOY that they have in being near HIM and being exposed to the radiation of HIS presence is always about to melt them down. They are so happy, so pleased, so full of every positive and wonderful emotion that they know that their bodies would disintegrate if it weren't for the fact that God HIMSELF is holding them from flying apart!
Just to be near HIM is a constant healing miracle of life that the angels cannot fathom. They are in over-max ecstasy. They are on a high that never ends with no hangovers. They never want to come down. They have arrived at the apex, the top of life that is beyond numbers!
Every time they shout "HOLY!" it is because a new revelation has just about blown another one of their circuit breakers and God has instantly restored them and kept them so that they can still function in HIS awesome presence! They are experiencing so much life that they know they could not live if it was not for HIS very presence keeping them from overloading. HIS presence blows them away and puts them back together all at once!!! And there is no pain, only joy, infinite joy, infinite peace, infinite wholeness.
Don't you want to go there some day?? This earth is a mirage compared to the Throne Room of God. It's going to take a new body for you to go and stand in that place with the angels and enjoy God Almighty, the ONE who makes all else disappear!
Oh yes, some of you want to know what the Voice of Many Waters spoke to me. HE said these ten words: "I WANT YOU TO DO WHAT THAT MAN IS DOING!!" I was listening to a preacher proclaiming the Word of God. That was my call. I became a preacher.
clint