"The Bible says that God is fire," a pastor in the slum told the paper at the time.
The notion here is that the word of God is fire, redoubled fire if you like, and that if you get too far from it you freeze, but if you draw too near to it you burn.
The scriptures tell us both that God is fire and that God is spirit, but Origen warns us not to deduce, from a literal construction of these terms, that he is a body (Princ. 1.1.1).
The representation of God in the Old Testament is inconsistent, yes, but in this story, God is fire.
"God is great!" rings out whenever a volley of bullets is fired into the air.
We stayed with the local TV reporter on the scene, in real time, as she cried, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" as shots were fired; we watched people jump to their deaths; we digested tearful interviews with survivors.
Some time ago I got a call and he said: oh my God, they're firing people right now.
As the convoy was waiting to depart from the Tani district police headquarters, Naqibullah walked up to the car, yelled "God is great" and fired his AK-47 rifle into the back seat, where the journalists were sitting, officials said.
"God is the fire," he says to me, his eyes fluttering as he reclines against the armrest of his couch.
According to several witnesses, the gunmen shouted "God is great" before firing at the nightclub and the embassy.
He is next seen on the ground, surrounded by men with weapons shouting "God is great" and firing in the air, before being lifted on to a pickup truck as men around him shout that the ruler for more than four decades should be "kept alive".
