R.C. Sproul

There is something about the holy that draws us to want to step more closely to it to find out what it's about, and yet there is something so mysterious, so different about it that we want to run from it.

Otto used a technical term to describe this sensation of the holy, which he called, using the Latin phrase, the mysterium tremendum, the tremendous mystery, or the mystery that produces tremors, trembling within us.

Have you noticed in our own day and in our own culture how people seem to be fascinated with the occult?

They'll rush to the movie theater to see films like The Exorcist.

They're interested in reports of Satan worship, and yet there's something ugly about these things that is grotesque from which we want to flee.

but we're not quite sure.

We're fascinated.

We want to draw near.

And it seems like that we will follow anything that gives us some hope of penetrating the barrier of the secular and of the profane, something that will open a gate for us into the realm of the supernatural.

It frightens and fascinates all at the same time.

I remember that when I was a boy, we used to listen to the radio.

There was no such thing as television then.

I'm dating myself, I guess.

But the difference between radio and television is that when we were restricted to following our favorite programs by way of radio, that we only heard the story.

We listened to the dialogue and the descriptions that were given to us by the narrator.

We didn't see anything except the plain front of our Philco radio.

And that left it to our imagination to fill in the gaps.

We would visualize in our mind's eye Superman or the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

In fact, I can see certain advantages to that for the developing of creativity that we were forced

to use our imagination.