Who is God? – Day 22

One of the most exhilarating experiences that I have delighted in, and which I have been blessed to have had repeated a few times in my life, has been during the “Hallelujah chorus” from Handel’s Messiah whilst attending a concert. The brilliance of this inspired music as it builds to crescendo; the magnificence of the words as they fit the music and the image they conjure up as the audience jumps to its feet as it starts its resounding “Hallelujah!” is something that I would wish every person everywhere would be able to experience, because not only does it have such a profound effect that it is able to evoke tears, but it can also give you an incredible sense of what it would feel like to be in heaven with every being united in praising the Almighty God! He is the One who will reign forever and ever. But what is the event, and who inspired it?

In the last examination of who God is, this exciting verse from Revelation 11:15 takes us straight into the future and heavenly things, when the world will make its transition to being ruled directly by God forever. We will be in His presence! Clearly it is this that inspired the composition of the work, and its truth resounds through the Bible.

Early in the Bible, in Exodus, Moses and Miriam compose a song of triumph with this very theme. After the defeat of the Pharaoh and the Egyptian army, when they are overawed by God’s great might and power in liberating them and defeating their enemies, they sing as part of their song: “The LORD will reign for ever and ever” (Exodus 15:18). This was their experience of Him who had fought on their behalf in miraculous ways.

Then David proclaims in psalms “The LORD is King for ever and ever …” when He praises God for hearing the cry of the distressed, and for reassuring them by defending “the fatherless and the oppressed” against their human foes. (Psalm 10:16,18).

Even the writer of Lamentations, in the middle of sorrowing over Israel’s sin, declares “You, O LORD, reign forever; your throne endures from generation to generation” (Lamentations 5:19) and the well-known King Nebuchadnezzar, after seeing how God the LORD had delivered Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the blazing furnace whose heat had consumed his own soldiers on their way to putting them in it, proclaimed: “How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; his dominion endures from generation to generation” (Daniel 4:3).

What do you say? Who is God?