This GCSE RE Christianity quiz takes a look at meeting God. The key religious experience for many believers (Christian or otherwise) is to be convinced that they have had a direct encounter with their God, and which will transform the purpose and daily fabric of their life. Such an experience may come in a variety of forms, such as Wesley ‘feeling my heart strangely warmed’, or, in the somewhat extreme case of St Paul, the vision of a blinding light; but however it manifests itself, the technical term for such a moment is a ‘theophany’ ~ when a god makes him- or herself apparent to the human senses.
Christians believe that their God has manifested Himself in the form of Jesus, to live a human life, showing ‘how it should be done’, but also, by experiencing a (particularly brutal) death yet returning through the Resurrection, to re-open a way to the Father in heaven for all people who turn to Him.
However, since His Ascension into heaven, God would no longer have any apparent form of active agency among us on earth ~ unless (or until!) the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, alighting in visible form upon the heads of the Apostles, who were then ‘energised’ to go out, fearlessly preaching God’s word in languages they had never formally learned (see early passages in the Acts of the Apostles).
Few people alive today have needed to receive God’s blessing or commission in quite such startling ways, yet He can still be known first-hand in a believer’s heart. This quiz will help you consider some of the ways in which individuals can seek, or come, to be at one with their God.