The Glory of God
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. (Isaiah 40:5) This is the verse that set in motion the thoughts for today. It is well known and familiar, especially if you have sung or heard Handel’s Messiah.
When I prepare to share my thoughts, I typically clear my mind of my preconceptions of the topic and search as many sources as necessary to formulate a foundation for the concepts I want to share. In this case, I asked the all-knowing interweb the question, What is the glory of God?
Here are a few of the answers I got. The glory of God is the beauty of His spirit. God’s glory is the magnificence, worth, loveliness, and grandeur of his many perfections. The glory of God is the manifest beauty of his holiness. It is the going-public of his holiness. Glory is feeling the whole weight (the splendor, riches, dignity, reputation) of who God really is. While these descriptions seem plausible and appropriate, I find them lacking something. The best way I can categorize them is the human attempts to describe things we don’t fully understand, which leaves them incomplete.
Fortunately, because of the latter-day revelation, we have a definition of the glory of God stated concisely and completely. Doctrine and Covenants 93:36 reads, “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.” In contrast to the definitions found on the internet, which are things we think about God’s glory or ideas projected on him, the revelation describes something God possesses and is independent of what we ascribe to him.
If you read the verse which is the catalyst for today’s thoughts in the context of the concepts of worldly definitions, you envision Christ coming in the clouds, surrounded by light in the company of angelic hosts. If you read the same verse in the context that God’s glory is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth, the image completely changes, and the verses that precede or succeed make more sense.
When you think of life as stumbling through life in darkness, climbing jagged mountains, or traversing deep valleys that seem impossible to escape, where the footing is treacherous, think how a bright light would help. Verses 3-4 describe some of the effects of the glory of God: “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:”. I am confident that we all would like our paths made easier.
Verses 6-7 compare human knowledge and understanding to grass and flowers: “The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass”. Then verse 8 contrasts mortal understanding with the word of God: “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever.”
The rest of Isaiah, chapters 40-49 reiterate the ideas that the kingdoms and accomplishments of the world will fall, and the only thing that will remain is the kingdom of God in Zion. Verse 17 says it all: “All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.”
I submit that the glory of the Lord has been revealed and can be seen in the revelations which accompanied the restoration of the Gospel in our day. Section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants describes in more detail the glory of God, how we have access to it, and what happens when we strive towards it. Verse 1 reads, “Verily, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am;”
According to the prophecies of Isaiah, there will be a time when all flesh will see the glory of the Lord together and realize that he is the only way to temporal and eternal salvation. If we are to survive as a people, we must seek to behold the glory of God so that we can have the light needed to traverse the path that lies before us.