The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Did God come to Earth as a man in the beginning?

Jesus’ “again” is a bit like a rhetorical “likewise” or “so it is”… somewhat emphatic; these are not chronological statements. The same is so of Heb 1:6, which verse 5 preceding demonstrates etc…

From the KJV John 16:28 " I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father." How can He leave the world again if He was not here before?

I really think He is just sying that He came forth into the world from His Father, and He is leaving the world to return to His Father, “again”, being a statement of the parallel of where He came from, and where He is returning.

As in

I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. I leave the world and return to be with My father again.

John 6:32-33 says Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. “For the bread of heaven is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Genesis 1:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
This sounds like God came down from heaven in the beginning to give life to the world.

We know God through Jesus Christ(God in the flesh). He gave Himself as a living example for us, and if we follow in His likeness, we portray His image.
Ephesians 3:9 and to make all people see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ.

John 1:3 All things were made through Him (Jesus-God’s Word in the flesh)

Genesis 1:26 Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.

From these verses, my thought is this: If man was created in the image of God in the beginning, and if all things are created through Jesus (through meaning by means or agency of) then it was God in the flesh who taught man in the beginning.

John 1:30 says “This is He whom I said, After me comes a Man who is preferred before me, for He was before me.”
Again, this speaks of God as being a Man before.

No. It doesn’t speak of God being a human being prior to the birth of Christ. Rather it speaks of the man Jesus as having existed before John (not as a man, but as a pre-existent divine Being).

Paidion, This could be true , but I would say that it depends on how one sees Jesus. According to Isaiah 45:21 “And there is no other God besides Me, a just God and a Savior; there is none besides Me.” I see Jesus as God in a different form, not as a separate being. So as in my previous post, when they speak of things being created through Jesus, to me this means God in the flesh. Now John 1:10 for example says, “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.” “Him” could mean God the Holy Spirit or “Him” could mean Jesus. If “Him” is referring to Jesus, then I take it to mean God in human form.

The phrase “God the Father” occurs SIXTEEN times in the New Testament.

How many times does the phrase “God the Son” occur? ZERO

How many times does the phrase "God the Spirit occur? ZERO

A reasonable question is…

If the scripture says all things were created by Him and without Him was nothing made that was made…

In what way did He do this?

Was He infused with the Spirit acting in human form, or in angelic form, or Christophany- as an executive administrator with unlimited authority over limitless resources?

Was He actually, as the Deity, performing the actions of creation Himself?

By faith we know the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that unseen things are greater then visible things.

John 1, Heb 1, Col 1- all tell us clearly and unrefutably that God created all things through Jesus Christ- but we have little insight (and perhaps not the capacity to understand the immensity and mystery of it) into exactly “how” this worked between the Father and the Son.

Is the Spirit of Christ the Spirit of God, are they separate, are they the same, are they a unified mind or two minds so completely unified as to be like tea in water- God the water and Christ the tea, the flavor…God the wind and Chrst the aroma, the identity at the detectable level for man, who cannot see God the Almighty Invisible One True God Who Dwells In Unapproachable Light-but the Son of Man, coming down out of heaven, has revealed Him. The radiance of the father’s glory. The icon of YHWH’s divine nature and eternal power.

I hear people making confident assertions all the time about wht they know based on this perspective or that.

Nowhere is Jesus called God the Son yet Thomas called Him His God, but Jesus called the father My God and Your God, yet Jesus created all things, or YHWH did through Jesus, the Logos.

Nowhere is the Holy Spirit called God the Spirit but He is called the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, and Jesus says God is spirit, and His worshippers must worship Him in spirit and truth.

Mysteries, enigmas, paradoxical paradigms- oy vey!

Ro 11:33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

What does it mean when Rev. 13:8 says,

?

Or in Jesus’ prayer in John 17:5,

?

Does this not mean that Jesus is eternal with the Father?

It could mean that.

Or it could mean, Jesus as firstborn of creation, came into being before anything else, and was with God in the beginning, before the foundation of the world.

The relationship indicated between the words Father and Son to me indicate that a father comes first, a son second, having come from the father.

I am not claiming to know either way. My point is that it is obscure, and that many confident assertions made by men are not as simple and obvious as they would like there prosylytes to believe.

Paidion, I’m not sure what you mean. To get a better understanding, how do you see Jesus?

Dondi, As Eaglesway mentions, some things are not quite clearly expressed. I don’t read to much on the book of Revelation, so I can’t offer my opinion on the first verse. As for John 17:5, I take the world in this passage to mean earthly or carnally minded, not spiritual. In the beginning, when people first knew God via Jesus, they respected His words and glorified Him. This is before the ways of the world took over. As time went on, people forgot about God and started pursuing their own ways.

You can see the interaction right there in the beginning of creation. The Word (which became flesh later) was Spoken, Let there be Light, which is the Light of Christ as He made everything.

The Word wasn’t flesh in the beginning, but became flesh in the Incarnation.

Jesus was God in the Spirit before becoming Man. The reason He has to go away is so that the Holy Spirit may come indwell within us with His Own Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Yet somewhere, He still possesses a glorified Body.

I think Christ was eternal with the Father, but it is His role as the Son that He subjected Himself to the Father in order to save the world.

This brings us back to the question, if God’s word was spoken in the beginning, through what means was this accomplished? If we say that Jesus was God in a physical human body speaking His own words to man, that man was created in the image of God in the beginning, and that all things were created through Jesus, then to me, this says that it was through Jesus(God in human form) that God made His word known to man in the beginning.

Well, I suppose that you could say that man was made in God’s image in that man emulates certain characteristics of God, ie conscience, rational thinking, etc, distinct from the rest of the animals, which doesn’t necessarily have to include any physical aspects of man in the body.

On the other hand, we really don’t know too much of what happened in the spiritual world prior to the creation of man. For example, where did the serpent come from and why does this creature, however you might view him (Satan?), seem to have the same kind of intelligence as man. If Lucifer was an angel prior to the Fall, then some reality existed spiritually before the world began, from which he supposedly fell. Did Jesus appear in that Realm in some form?

We have instances of possible pre-incarnations of Jesus in the OT to consider: Genesis 18 to Abraham before Sodom’s destruction, Genesis 32 where Jacob wrestles with a being whom he says has the face of God, Joshua 6 and the Captain of the Lord’s Host, Judges 13 and the Angel of the Lord with a secret name appearing to Samson’s parents, and of course, Daniel 3 in the fiery furnace with Daniel’s friends.

One other thing to consider, considering eternity, if you can wrap you head around it, and that if God resides outside of the space-time continuum, then Jesus was already in a glorified state even before creation. That is, the end and the beginning are the same to God. Everything has already happened in eternity from God’s perspective: past, present, and future. But we in the dimensional world cannot comprehend it.

Hence the terminology of Jesus being the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. The plan of salvation has taken place already in eternity.

When God first created man, He didn’t leave them in the dark. He gave them the light of understanding.This is the knowledge of who He is, His laws, and the way of life(God’s word-everything that Jesus revealed to us). These words keep us from falling into sin and tell us how to create productive societies as well. If we find ourselves going astray, this knowledge is what leads us home, for we also know that God’s Holy Spirit is always there to guide us.
If God has the ability to come to Earth as a man(Jesus) to give tell us these words and show us the way, then I believe He did likewise in the beginning. For what better way to show people how to live than to lead by example. I think the reason the Old Testament writers depicted God as a man is because He revealed Himself in this way from the start.
Jesus also says this: Matthew 24:42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
Matthew 25:40 And the King will answer and say to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.
This is how they knew the Lord was coming back and how we also know the same thing today. We are to keep these words in mind because if we treat someone badly, then that someone could very well be the Lord.

I think I answered that in part in an earlier post in this thread:

The early Christians also said that the begetting of the Son was the first of God’s acts. I think that act marked the beginning of time. Heb 1:3 indicates that Jesus is the exact image of the Father’s essence. He is just as divine as the Father, but He has a different position. During His lifetime, He always submitted to the Father. Paul wrote in 1 Cor 15:28 When all things are subjected to him [the Son], then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

In His prayer to the Father, Jesus said, "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.(John 17:3)

So Jesus, in His prayer, called the Father “the only true God,” and then with that little conjunction “and” indicates that He Himself is Someone other than “the only true God.” Jesus may also be called “God” in the sense that He is fully divine, but not in the sense that He is the same Individual as the Father, nor in the sense that He is part of a compound God (as in Trinitarianism).

As I understand it Jesus was Israel’s prophet par excellence… greater than Moses (encapsulating the Temple idiom of Mt 12:6); when Moses spoke God spoke and thus when Jesus spoke God spoke – in this way Jesus reflected the very essence of God’s presence (Heb 1:3; Deut 18:18).

Jesus’ power and authority was derived from the Father (Mt 28:18; Acts 2:36; Rom 1:4)… hence the “equality” (Phil 2:6, 9).** Jesus’ “divinity” was NOT ontological.** When for example Jesus said “I and the Father are one” he was indicating THEY were both on the same page, which is WHY the Father had previously said “this is MY son, listen to him”.

In that day and age Caesar was considered to be “divine” and so to be “son of Caesar” (god) meant carrying the same authority; albeit in a preparatory role not dissimilar to Paul’s heir-apparent etc of Gal 4:1-2.

Paidion, So you see Jesus as a separate divine being who is not God but is the essence of God. Even if this is the case, if God sent Jesus to Earth as a man to deliver His word, then couldn’t He have also done so in the beginning?

I must admit that I am not one who believes in the caveman theory. I don’t think that man sat around and grunted at one another until they figured out language or that they froze their butts off until one day they realized how to make fire. I think people who believe this have it all backwards. On the contrary, the first peoples that God created were highly intelligent. For I think that God was there in person, living amongst them, filling them up with knowledge, spending time teaching and preparing them for life here on Earth. Before He left, I would say He Informed them that His Holy Spirit would always be there to guide them, and that He would return someday. When He was finished, He possibly left in a whirlwind or in some other way that left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to the fact that there is a God because everyone at that time was an eyewitness to the event. If we believe in the accounts written about Jesus, then I don’t think my thoughts on this are too far-fetched. All this I believe because of God’s great love for mankind.
Isaiah 40:21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
Isaiah 42:10-12 You are My witnesses, says the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord and besides Me there is no savior. I have declared and saved, I have proclaimed, and there was no foreign god among you; therefore you are My witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God.