And he is the atoning sacrifice{"atoning sacrifice" is from the Greek "hilasmos," an appeasing, propitiating, or the means of appeasement or propitiation-- the sacrifice that turns away God's wrath because of our sin.} for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

 This was not so much knowing God as feeling God. But it was a highly emotional experience and, as such, it was necessarily transient. It was a kind of religious drug. It quite definitely found God in an abnormal experience and its aim was to escape from ordinary life. 