When You See Most Clearly

22 August 2026  Ezekiel 43:1-7

“While the man was standing beside me, I heard one speaking to me out of the temple.”  (Ezekiel 43:6) 

A mysterious character turns up in Ezekiel’s prophecy from time to time, and especially in the last nine chapters (40-48) – the Radiant Man, who from the waist down appears as flames, and from the waist up as bright as polished bronze. He functions as a sort of guide to Ezekiel in his last visions of the restored Temple.

Ezekiel is one of only two prophets who actually experienced deportation to Babylon. Prior to the deportation, Ezekiel wrote and spoke, like the other prophets, of the doom that was coming.

When the Bible describes great beauty like the glory of God, it refers not just to the intensity of light – light that merely blinds isn’t generally experienced as beautiful. It refers rather to its brightness (in Latin claritas). You don’t just see it, but by it you see everything else.

After the deportation, however, he spoke with robust hope, especially when he spoke of the glories of the restored Temple. But if you read Ezekiel’s description of the new Temple carefully, it soon becomes clear that this was not a temple that could ever be built anywhere in the world. For one thing, it was bigger than the whole city of Washington D.C., covering over 70 square miles. It sat on a mountaintop, which also had palm trees, and those grow typically at lower altitudes where the weather is more moderate and there is lots of water. For a third thing, it had a water source that could not exist anyplace on earth. What was most astonishing about this Temple, however, was what was not there. The Holy of Holies, its most sacred sanctuary, was empty – no Ark of the Covenant, no Menorah, nothing.

Nothing, that is, except the glory of God. That shone everywhere in the Temple with a beauty that left all witnesses gaping in awe. No furniture is needed if the glory of God is there.

Clearly Ezekiel was not describing any earthly Temple. He was describing heaven.

When the Bible describes great beauty like the glory of God, it refers not just to the intensity of light – light that merely blinds isn’t generally experienced as beautiful. It refers rather to its brightness (in Latin claritas). You don’t just see it, but by it you see everything else. Before the beauty of God’s glory, the meaning of everything becomes more clear. The glory of God, in other words, is light that reveals the beauty and truth in everything else around.

Like the Radiant Man.

It isn’t an accident that he is described in terms very similar to the Transfiguration (cf. Luke 9:28-36). Some commentators believe the Radiant Man is one of the Old Testament appearances of Jesus – Ezekiel saw what Peter, James and John saw on the mountaintop, viz., Jesus in an otherworldly light, a light so bright and clear that by it he could see everything else. Peter, it seems, got what was going on when he said, “Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Luke 9:33). He was thinking of the Old Testament Feast of Booths (Succoth), when Jews recall their time in the wilderness after the Exodus, a time when they were alone with God, and He was forming them into the people He meant them to be. There on the mountain Peter, James and John were alone with God who was making them His own. The Radiant Man in Ezekiel was doing the same thing.

Perhaps you’ve had one of those perfect moments when you got it, when the true meaning of a person or event was before you, bright and clear and beautiful – the love of a husband, or wife, or child; something lost or something found, making you into the truest version of yourself. It wouldn’t be a bit surprising if that was your experience of the Radiant Man and the glory of God.