Majestic meeting in exhibitor's pavilion

I Thessalonians 4: [17] Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

There’s a discussion you hear people have about, “Well, what are the clouds?” People realize, “They’re not rain clouds; they’re not storm clouds.”

There’s that verse in Matthew 26 where it says the Lord Jesus Christ is going to come in the clouds of heaven: [64] Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

When the Bible talks about the Lord of hosts, it’s talking about a host of angels. This great crowd, says Richard Jordan.

Hebrews 12: [1] Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

The word “cloud” there is not talking about a cloud of water vapor. It’s talking about a big group of witnesses; all these people listed in chapter 11.

One of the ways of understanding I Thessalonians is to say that the clouds are really angels; the heavenly host. I don’t think that’s what it is. It seems to me if he had wanted to say angels, he would have said angels. I think it’s going to be clouds.

II Samuel 22:8 matches Psalm 18 and this is a psalm that really prophetically looks toward the Second Coming of Christ.

[8] Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth.
[9] There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.
[10] He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet.
[11] And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: and he was seen upon the wings of the wind.
[12] And he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies.

Under his feet were clouds. What you have with the clouds becoming thick darkness, look at Psalm 97: [1] The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.
[2] Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne.

In II Samuel, it says “he made darkness pavilions round about him.” The way He did that was with clouds that veil off His glory.

If you get clouds that are thick enough and dense enough, they black out the sun. But if you got up in an airplane and flew into those clouds, they would be snowy white.

I’ve done that. I’ve flown into a cloud bank that looked just as dark as night, but when you actually flew INTO them, they were just light and white. What the darkness is really is a shadow. It’s the optics of the thing.

So, what the cloud does is it veils back the sunlight. Now, around the Lord He has the same thing. He has clouds to sort of veil off His glory.

If you look at I Timothy 6 you'll see why that is: [16] Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

The light of the majesty of the manifestation of His person. God as being God cannot be limited by time or space.

Because He is God and He has a creation that He’s made, He chooses to manifest Himself to His creation. He chooses to do that in a geographic location; that’s part of what the third heaven is about. When He does it, He does it in this blazing representation of LIGHT and it’s called the glory of God.

But when that glory appears—when the manifestation of His person appears, it is so overwhelming that you can’t approach to it. So He veils it off in the Scripture, over and over, and what He veils it with are clouds.

The clouds put a filter, as it were, on the glory and so He builds a pavilion round about Him. A pavilion is a “temporary building erected for the use of an exhibitor,” according to the dictionary.

In other words, He builds a house around Him; a temporary dwelling place in which He exhibits His glory. The pavilion is made of clouds.

I Kings 8 has a passage talking about the glory of the Lord filling the temple: [10] And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the LORD,
[11] So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD.

The same thing happened in Exodus 40 when the glory of the Lord entered into the tabernacle of Moses. The cloud filled the house and the cloud had the glory of God in it, but there’s no way you could approach to that glory if it wasn’t filtered.

Notice what happens in verse 12: [12] Then spake Solomon, The LORD said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
[13] I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in for ever. 

In other words, what that cloud’s doing is holding back, making it so that you could approach to the Lord.

This happens all through back there with Israel. Exodus 19 they have the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day—the cloud representing the Lord’s presence in their midst, but it’s a cloud because it’s engulfed. It’s veiled off.

Exodus 19:9: [9] And the LORD said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the LORD.

He comes in this thick cloud; it holds back the light. Verse 16: [16] And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.

There’s the cloud in which the glory of God is and what you’re seeing when you see the cloud is you see the majesty of His glory, but it’s veiled so they could look at it.

Exodus 20: [20] And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.
[21] And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

Well, that’s not like a dark hole on Star Trek kind of a thing. There’s this cloud where the glory of God is but it’s veiled back. I mean, these are real clouds; these things are not make-believe kind of things.

Nahum 1: [1] The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.
[2] God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.
[3] The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

This passage is about the Second Advent; it’s going to be historically about God judging Nineveh. The Book of Job talks about the Lord’s coming and it’s like a whirlwind.

So, when the Lord has a dust-up, what happens is you have clouds. Now, you know when someone’s walking across somewhere, they can make a big cloud plume, and it encompasses them.

In a case like this, when He comes through the atmosphere, His presence makes such a disturbance that it generates clouds and storms and stuff.

But there’s also the issue of His presence; the majesty of His presence being manifest in a cloud that literally veils off the light to which no man can approach.

What happens is we’re going to be caught up in the clouds. Not in angels, but we’re going to be caught up in this giant pavilion that accompanies the presence of the Lord when He comes, and the pavilion is a place that’s a temporary structure that’s used for an exhibitor.

So, where you’re going to meet Him is in this pavilion that He has that surrounds His presence and is made up of the clouds. We’re not going to be standing out looking at the clouds; we’re going to be in the midst of the clouds.

The Lord’s in the midst of the clouds. We’ll go right into His presence. The clouds will veil what’s going on off from everybody else.

In Ezekiel 1 you see this thing about the light to which no man can approach: [4] And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

Ezekiel sees the glory of God and he sees this great cloud that engulfs it. The cloud that engulfs it is glowing; it’s glowing from the inside out.

Now, the light that comes out is affecting all around it. Ezekiel 1: [27] And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.
[28] As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.

Notice the description there in verse 28. We call that a rainbow. So, the appearance of the glory of God--this light that represents His glory was not just a white light shining out. It was that because that’s what light does, but rather it was the appearance of a rainbow.

When it goes through that prism and bend it what it does is it bends out the different shades and all the colors of that light appear. That’s where we get the rainbow.

What’s happening is that light comes out through that cloud and you begin to see the appearance of the glory of God in all of the facets of what light is.

What you do is you begin to see God’s glory represented in all the various facets that make up His character and His essence. That’s what His glory’s all about.

This cloud with the glory of God in it would have been a spectacular, majestic, awe-inspiring thing to see. Israel had it, we refer to it sometimes as the Shekinah Glory.

It’s the glory of His presence. It was in the tabernacle, it’s in the temple, it’s here in Ezekiel. The Lord Himself’s going to descend and we’re going to be caught up with other members of the Body of Christ in our glorified bodies; bodies that radiate His glory and we’re going to be caught up together in the clouds.

We’re going to be caught up into this pavilion that encompasses the glory of God. This is not some Jitterbug that we’re going to go to; this is not some shindig. We’re going to go meet the Lord in all of His glory.