The awe-inspiring transcendence of God is depicted by the following images, ‘From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.’ (4:5-6)

First, there is the lightning and the thunder. In the days before the nuclear bomb what would have been the most powerful, destructive force the ancients could have referred to? The answer: a thunderstorm, the dark, wild, booming electrical storms which stalk the great continents where, when thunder erupts, the whole ground shakes, and when lightning strikes the whole sky is lit up. When God met with his people at Sinai, this is what they saw and they were terrified. Nature in the raw, nature unleashed at its most violent - that is what encircles the throne of God. To think that one can blithely walk into the presence of this God would be as suicidal as walking into an atomic blast - it can’t be done!