1,628 texts · Page 33 of 34
The voice came again. Twice it called his name: "Abraham, Abraham!" "Here I am." "It is I. Fear not, for I am before the worlds, a mighty God who has created the light of the world...
When the voice stopped speaking, Abraham looked in every direction. No one. No breath of a man anywhere. His spirit was seized with terror. His soul fled from him. He became like a...
Abraham rose and saw the one who had grasped his hand and lifted him to his feet. The sight was overwhelming. Iaoel's body was like sapphire. His face shone like chrysolite. The ha...
They walked together for forty days and forty nights. Abraham ate no bread and drank no water. His food was the sight of the angel beside him. His drink was Iaoel's speech. This wa...
Abraham did everything the angel commanded. He slaughtered the animals, divided them, and gave the portions to the angels who had appeared beside him. Iaoel took the birds. Abraham...
The angel turned back to Abraham. "Know from this moment that the Eternal One has chosen you. Be of good courage and use this authority, as far as I bid you, against him who slande...
The sun went down. Smoke rose from the ground like the smoke of a furnace (Genesis 15:17). The angels who held the portions of the sacrifice ascended from the top of the smoking fu...
Abraham turned to the angel in distress. "Why have you brought me up here? I cannot see anymore. I am already grown weak, and my spirit is departing from me." The mortal body was f...
While Iaoel was still speaking, fire closed in around them on every side. A voice was inside the fire, like the voice of many waters (Ezekiel 1:24), like the roaring of the sea in ...
While Abraham was still reciting the song, the fire on the surface rose up on high. He heard a voice like the roaring of the sea. The fire would not stop. And as it climbed, ascend...
A voice came from the midst of the fire. "Abraham, Abraham!" "Here I am." "Consider the expanses beneath the firmament on which you are now placed, and see that on no single expans...
The Eternal Mighty One said: "Abraham, Abraham!" "Here I am." "Look down at the stars beneath your feet. Count them for me. Make known to me their number." Abraham looked down from...
God told Abraham to look beneath his feet at the firmaments and understand the creation that was foreshadowed in the expanse, the creatures existing upon it, and the age prepared a...
Abraham asked: "O Eternal, Mighty One! What is this picture of the creatures?" God answered: "This is my will with regard to those who exist in the divine world-counsel. It seemed ...
"Now look again in the picture," God said. "See who it is that seduced Eve and what is the fruit of the tree. You will know what shall be and how it shall be for your seed among th...
God answered Abraham's question about evil with a revelation about the nations. He was angered at them on account of Abraham's descendants, the people who would be separated after ...
The vision shifted. Abraham saw something that struck closer to home than the cosmic sins of Cain and Desire. He saw an idol standing inside a Temple. The idol of jealousy. It look...
Abraham asked the question that every prophet and mystic after him would ask: "O Eternal, Mighty One! Why have you established that things should be this way, and then proclaimed t...
The picture in the vision swayed. From its left side, a heathen people emerged. They fell upon those on the right side, the people of Abraham's seed, and pillaged them. Men, women,...
Abraham could no longer contain himself. "O Mighty, Eternal One, hallowed by Your power! Be favorable to my petition. As you have brought me up to your height, so make known to me,...
Abraham asked again: "How long a time is an hour of the Age?" God answered: "Twelve years have I ordained of this ungodly age to rule among the heathen and in your seed. Until the ...
While God was still speaking, Abraham suddenly found himself back upon the earth. "O Eternal, Mighty One," he said, "I am no longer in the glory in which I was while on high, and w...
After the ten plagues, after the final convulsions of the dying age, God revealed to Abraham the moment everything would change. "Then I will sound the trumpet out of the air and w...
The vision was nearly complete. God spoke His final words to Abraham, circling back from the cosmic future to the personal promise that had started everything. "Therefore hear, O A...
Enoch was three hundred and sixty-five years old when the visitation came. He was alone in his house. Resting on his bed. Asleep. And in that sleep, a terrible distress seized his ...
The angels lifted Enoch onto their wings and carried him upward. The earth fell away beneath him. The air thinned. And then — the first heaven. They set him down on the clouds, and...
The second heaven was darkness. Not ordinary darkness — not the darkness of a moonless night or a sealed room. This was a darkness thicker and heavier than anything on earth. A dar...
After the horror of the second heaven, the third was a revelation. Enoch looked down from where the angels placed him and saw a landscape of impossible beauty — a garden whose abun...
But paradise had a shadow. The two angels led Enoch to the northern side of the third heaven, and everything changed. The fragrance vanished. The light died. What he saw next was t...
The fourth heaven was a machine. The angels carried Enoch upward and showed him the workings of the sun and moon — not as distant lights in the sky, but as colossal engines of fire...
The fifth heaven was silent. That was the first thing Enoch noticed. In every other heaven, there had been song — ceaseless, layered, beautiful. Here, nothing. A vast emptiness of ...
The sixth heaven was order itself. The angels carried Enoch upward, and he found himself among seven bands of angels — radiant beyond anything he had yet seen. Their faces shone br...
The seventh heaven nearly destroyed him. The two angels lifted Enoch upward once more, and what he saw stole the breath from his body. A very great light — not sunlight, not fireli...
Cherubim and Seraphim surrounded the throne. Six-winged, many-eyed, they never departed — standing before God's face, doing His will, covering the entire throne with their wings as...
For sixty days and sixty nights, Enoch wrote without stopping. The archangel Pravuil — heaven's own scribe, the wisest of all the archangels — dictated to him the totality of creat...
God summoned Enoch to sit at His left hand, beside the archangel Gabriel. Then He spoke — not through angels, not through intermediaries, but directly, with His own voice — and rev...
God continued speaking to Enoch, and the story of creation grew stranger and more terrible. He had made the heavenly circle firm. He commanded the waters below heaven to gather int...
God told Enoch how He built the world in six days — and how it all went wrong. On the third day, He planted paradise and enclosed it with flaming angel-guards. On the fourth, He se...
Then God gave Enoch his mission — and a deadline. "Everything I have told you," the Lord said, "everything you have seen — from the lowest heaven to My throne, all the hosts and al...
There was one final thing to do before Enoch could go home. God called one of the older angels — a terrible, menacing being, white as snow, with hands like ice and the appearance o...
"My beloved children," Enoch said, "hear the admonition of your father — not from my lips, but from the lips of the Lord. Everything that is, was, and will be until the day of judg...
Enoch stood before his children and delivered a teaching that cut through every pretension: all the ways humans measure worth — wealth, wisdom, beauty, strength, youth, cunning, el...
"Lay thought on your hearts," Enoch told his children. "Mark well the words of your father, which have all come from the Lord's lips." He gave them the books — the three hundred an...
Enoch made his children swear — but not by heaven. Not by earth. Not by any created thing. "The Lord Himself said: There is no oath in Me, nor injustice — only truth," Enoch told t...
With his departure drawing near, Enoch delivered a series of blessings and curses — a final reckoning, sharp as a blade, that laid bare the difference between the righteous and the...
Methuselah came to his father and asked: "What is pleasing to your eyes, father? What can I prepare for you before you depart, that you may bless our homes and your sons and all th...
When Enoch had spoken his final words, something extraordinary happened. People from far and near — two thousand of them — heard that the Lord was calling Enoch home, and they came...
Eve dreamed of blood. Her son's blood. Pouring into the mouth of his brother. After their expulsion from Paradise, Adam and Eve journeyed eastward toward the sunrise and settled th...
