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The Burning in the Prophet's Heart
I am here, Jesus:
It was from this experience that Jeremiah emerged with a closeness to God, such as he had never before undergone -- wherein he felt a burning fire in his heart, which prevented him from being pressured into silence to avoid persecution. Through the direct contact of his heart with God, he realized he must continue to cry out because such was God's will;
". . . . . The word of the Lord is made a reproach unto Me, and a derision, all the day. And If I say: I will not make mention of Him; nor speak any more in his name; then there is in my heart a burning fire shut up within me, and I weary myself to hold it in, but I cannot." (Jeremiah, Chapt. 20, verses 8 & 10).
This burning fire in the heart of Jeremiah heralded an advance in God's closeness to man as had never before been experienced by a human being -- at least, not among the Hebrew prophets whose relationship to God could not be equalled or surpassed for knowing the Father. The will of the Father had been made known to Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Zephaniah, Hoblakuk, through an inner voice, or a vision, but now it made itself felt through a commotion, a tumult in the heart as a burning fire. If an inner voice or a vision could be disregarded, the violent feelings in the heart were a reality of such proportions and of such a nature that Jeremiah knew in his soul that here was God's presence, making itself manifest through the burning in the heart.
It was this experience of Jeremiah's that taught me, under God's tutelage, that God could enter the human soul -- and possess it. In Jeremiah, this presence of the Father was His Will accompanied by an overwhelming sense of righteousness that battled the evil thought in his mind to keep silent in the face of evil, but it was not Jeremiah's mind that was upset -- it was his heart that reacted to the Father's presence, making his soul melancholy at the unworthy thoughts of silence in the mind. Once the determination to keep silent had been banished, the violent fire in the heart ceased to trouble the prophet and he was calm, and God's Will had not been circumvented -- it remained uppermost in his mind and heart, and gave Jeremiah more courage and resolution than ever before.
Thus it was that God's presence in Jeremiah as Will, as a fire in the heart was a harbinger which showed me that the glow in my own heart, which I could feel from earliest childhood, was the Divine Love of the Father, the very presence and nature of God. And when I spkoe to the fugitives at Emmaus, and revealed my presence to them, and explained as I had many times, the availability of the Father's Love, they exclaimed, "Didst not our hearts burn . . . ." For with that burning of the heart had come to them the Divine Love, as 600 years before them had come to Jeremiah the burning heart of the Father's Will for righteousness.
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
