David Wenkel wrote a first rate book, entitled Shining Like the Sun, and I really enjoyed it, but I have no desire to drag him into a controversy that he was not actually participating in. And yet, at the same time, this book is most relevant to us during this time when churches are being disrupted or even torn apart because of varying responses to the masking orders that the civil authorities have handed down to us.
Wenkel doesn’t treat any of this directly because he wrote before any of this came down. But at the same time he shows that face-to-face encounters with God are a major theme in Scripture. Not only so, but the experience of encountering God this way is a transformative experience. No one encounters God in this way while remain unaffected.
The book is basically thematic study of all these occasions and references in the Bible, and a study of what it does to the people involved. Whether we are talking about Jacob, or Moses, or the new covenant saints who are being transformed from one degree of glory to another, Wenkel demonstrates that when we are discussing worship with “unveiled faces,” we are not discussing a trifle.
Highly recommended. And if you are a pastor or an elder with controversy in your church over masks, highly recommended.