One could call the throne room of God the operations center for all the universe. It is also a model or paradigm for man for beauty, truth, and goodness. Hebrews calls it the “true tabernacle” (Hebrews 8:2), an example for the earthly one (Hebrews 8:2). Just like man was made in the image of God or in His likeness, the earthly tabernacle mimicked the heavenly tabernacle as seen in Hebrews 8-9.
The throne room of God is visited or mentioned several times in the Bible and it is where the special presence of God is. Since beauty is the glory of God or the beauty of His holiness, then the throne room of God is a template for an understanding of beauty.
The beauty is the coherent wholeness of the throne room, the composition or symphony of all of the parts, but also the individual aspects making up that whole. God is beautiful, which is to say that His holiness, majesty, and glory are beautiful. However, as beauty relates to the aesthetic of God’s holiness, it is the order, symmetry, proportion, brilliance, harmony, arrangement, splendor, accuracy, and completeness of it. These qualities are beautiful and then beauty is found in the imitation of these qualities.
Objective beauty is that the object is beautiful in itself. It isn’t based upon the perspective of the subject either seeing, hearing, or experiencing the qualities of it. It doesn’t matter what you feel. It is beautiful if you never existed. God’s throne room existed before man existed. Beauty existed before man could have a perspective, a like or a dislike.
When the taste of the subject determines beauty, it elevates the subject. Value comes down to what someone thinks or feels. The subject becomes the measurement. The true beauty starts with God. All beauty is judged based upon God. Taste should conform to God. If not, then the subject becomes the basis of value and in the way the creature is worshiped, not the Creator.
To rebel against God is to rebel against the nature of God, which is beautiful. Ugliness is both rebellion and a symptom of a rebellious heart. It violates the nature of God. It is a characteristic of this world.
Someone whose taste clashes with the beauty of God wants something different than God, therefore, a different god. He may conform his god to what he likes or wants, but it isn’t God. He’s not worshiping God. His rebellion against the nature of God manifests itself in his taste. He doesn’t like what God likes. This will not be hidden. It will be seen.
If your taste doesn’t fit into the throne room of God, it’s not going to be there in the future either. You don’t live a life congruent with the ugliness of this earth and have any kind of yearning for the actual throne room of God. You won’t bring anything you like there. If you don’t like the taste of heaven, then you should consider whether you are going to be there. Why would you want to be there?
In scripture Jesus Christ is in the throne room of God in many instances. He’s the one on the throne for Isaiah in Isaiah 6. He’s in the throne room at the Father’s right hand in Psalm 110. He’s in the throne room, of course, in Revelation 4-5. Jesus is in that throne room right now as you read this. You can say that you follow Him, but when your life wouldn’t and so doesn’t like Who He is, His beauty, because you choose the ugliness of this sin-cursed world, then you aren’t following Him. You can attack me about that, as the messenger, but that won’t change it either. Even though Jesus isn’t in His heavenly throne room in Revelation 1, John describes what He would be like there.
12 And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; 13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. 14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. 16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. 17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Beauty is to be beheld, but what makes it beautiful is not based upon the response of the one seeing or hearing it. What is beautiful is beautiful no matter what the acknowledgement, but the response is informative. In verse 17 John says that when he saw Jesus, He fell at His feet as dead. John fell prostrate before the Lord in great fear. Jesus’ “countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength” (v. 16). He looks into the eyes of the Judge of the entire earth, which were like “a flame of fire” (v. 14). Awe and reverence are the appropriate responses to the beauty of Jesus Christ. He was in the presence of the glory of Jesus, and his penetrating judgment, the beauty of his purity, justice, and truth.
I included back to verse 12 in this description because Jesus is in the midst of His assemblies, His churches, which are the seven golden candlesticks. A Christ follower doesn’t arbitrarily follow Jesus on the earth, but in one of His churches. You aren’t following Jesus outside of a true church, which today is His earthly temple (1 Cor 3:16-17), symbolized by a golden candlestick, one of the pieces of the temple in the Old Testament to imitate the shining light of God in the heavenly temple. A true church shines with the doctrinal and moral light of Christ.
At no time does He or would He ever appear like anyone either attending or performing at a popular music concert, and at no time would any true believer treat Him like that. It is not appropriate. Jesus can and does condescend to us, but our responsibility to Him is reverence as God. The coarsening of the imagination of beauty has been a major cause for the profaning of Jesus Christ, treating Him in a common or casual fashion, which is not how John treats Him and partly because of how Jesus appears in His glory. In Isaiah 6, totally holy angels cover their faces and feet in reverence of His holiness. Jesus Himself is dressed in a garment down to His feet, much like ones God fashioned for Adam and Eve, and immodesty of any kind is not compatible with His holiness.
I understand that the throne room of God is unlike any place on earth. It is the most beautiful place anywhere, more beautiful than anything or anyone, but one we can only attempt to imagine by reading what scripture says about it. Still, however, it is a model for imitation for the earthly temple, something that Solomon understood when he built his temple in Jerusalem, but also what God designed into the tabernacle in the wilderness. Much was put into the beauty of the entire structure and its parts.
One can also read the beauty of the text of the songs sung to God the Father and the Son throughout scripture, but including in the throne room of God in Revelation 4-5. George Frederick Handel used that text for the lyrics of his oratorio, the Messiah. It too is a model to imitate for beauty, since beauty is imitative.
The effervescent light at the throne of God is the red jasper stone, the translucent white sardine stone, and an emerald light rainbow round about it. Men in pure white robes and crowns of gold sit at every one of twenty four of their own thrones encircling the throne. There are seven lamps burning before the throne and lightnings and thunder proceeding from it. Before the throne is a sea of crystal like glass from which would bounce reflections of all the other colors and hues. Four awesome beasts are too before and behind the throne in the likeness of four different creatures with six wings apiece, flying and chanting or singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
In this description of God’s throne room are many varied aspects of the beauty of God at their most resplendent in a symphony of color, light, creatures, and sound, all of which speak of the majesty of a holy God. Many chapters are given to the building of the tabernacle and then the temple of the Old Testament to imitate this scene. This is the nature of beauty. A departure from that is the on ramp to the broad road to destruction and the fastest lane from any way back to the narrow road that leads to life eternal. Anyone reading this should be warned about the fascination and allurement of this world’s ugliness, drawing them forever astray from the presence of God.
The ugliness of a sin-cursed world and cooperative false religion stands in stark contrast to the overall beauty and the beautiful aspects of the throne room of God and then its imitation on earth by those truly God’s people. In my second post, I compared true beauty on earth, mimesis, imitation, with poiesis, the expression of self, but also with diegesis, in which so-called beauty is revealed through the perspective of the narrator or storyteller. Men love themselves. What else occurs though is men who love themselves conflating their desires or taste into what God wants. What makes something beautiful to them in their own imaginations is their taste, what they like.
The center of the universe isn’t in the belly of a man (read here and here), but in the throne room of God. Beauty doesn’t start with a perspective ruined by sin or even from the experience of a professing believer. Man’s heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). At best, he sees through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12). He should doubt his own perspective. Imitation is a matter of faith, which pleases God (Hebrews 11:6).
Millennial, who ghosts his parents, because your own taste supersedes all other, consider that you perhaps will continue to ghost them right into eternity. The boundaries you set up to protect your own lifestyle will still be a boundary, much like the one between the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. You want a great gulf and a great gulf you will get. Hell is the ultimate in ugly, but it will be for everyone who prefers his taste above God’s.
The world is not intended by God to mirror the imaginations of men’s hearts. It should look like the throne room of God and then a Paradise regained. With that in mind, the church turns the world upside down, not the world turning the church upside down. Churches have capitulated to the world, using its allures to conform to the belly of man, bringing the uglification of the church. It not only is not acceptable to God, but it is the further downfall of man.
You know all of these people, the so called concert-goers, if they would suddenly become aware of the existence of some of the things you spoke about, then they would immediately cast down everything they lived and wanted for down as a thing of bitterness. It is something to be held in contempt. Paul said he counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.
Now the tragedy is that they can be aware of these things now, through his word. They could already begin to "awaken to righteousness." If they would only put aside some things and if they would just believe. So then it is blessed to know the things that go on in those rooms, and to know already some of the things that are said there. In reality, the world of the senses is like darkness before morning, eye or ear has not even sensed the things – but, these are things that one ought to know are coming, if one had even a smallest portion of wisdom and faith. People sometimes seem not to know what they ask for themselves when pursuing vanity. Just the sight of the Lord coming in the clouds would be enough to convict people of their errors, and it is enough to do what they should be able to find by reading his word now.
I have been made well aware of my limitations. So I know that one may be convinced, it is better to side with the Lord now and find out the fullness of excellence in the world to come. Or another way to put it, better to lay up a good foundation against the time to come than to seize on some pottage now. Good article.
Thanks Andrew.
Everyone,
Many churches find themselves as being held hostage by the next generation. Not only do statistics show this, but it is also something I've heard all over the country. I've been around recently. It's easy to see on the internet as well, what's happening. The uglification of the culture comes by the capitulation of the culture to younger people, like Jeroboam erecting golden calves at Dan and Bethel at the start of his reign. This is the chief reason why I bring this in. It's interesting in the cancel culture the degree of separation that comes from the left on this.