You and I will disagree on your points above. I will end my discussion by adding a few last points here. You can find the scriptures by searching on you IPhone.
What part of these statements do you not accept?
When you have SEEN ME you have SEEN The Father. IOW, people saw the bodily likeness of the image of the Father when they beheld the bodily likeness of Christ.
NO!!!
Jesus wasn't talking about His body! He was talking about HIMSELF!!! Jesus and the Father are ONE!
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
18
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared
Him.
John 3:13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven,
that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.
John 10:30 I and My Father are one.”
Yes, Jesus had a mortal physical body where The Father's body was super-natural. 74 men saw God clearly and ate a meal in his presence. They clearly saw his body of heaven and he laid not a hand on them to harm them. Exodus 24:9-11
Exodus 24:9 Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. And
there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in
its clarity. 11 But on the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank.
This was a Christophany!
A teaching as least as old as Justine Martyr!
Now some may want to say this was Jesus ... incarnate ... and I agree if and when I keep this in mind: The Father and the Son are the ONE God.
Thank you for crushing your own teaching into dust!
That is literally what you've done with this single sentence. I have no idea why you're so obsessed with this idea that God the Father has a body but it is obvious heresy that no one but you believes.
When Moses saw the LORD then he saw the living heavenly bodily form which God had chosen for himself in order to appear within his creation unto men.
You've given no evidence in support of this claim. All the evidence you have provided is to the contrary, which you just stated one sentence ago.
The Children of Israel were accustomed to hearing about a glorious, dangerous, presence belonging to the Father LORD God from days gone by. When God came looking like a normal fleshly son of man, it wasn't the look they expected when God was to come as their king. They totally missed the point of why the Messiah came as a servant to die and not as a glorious super-natural conquering king. Just because the level of the glory of the body of the Father was greater than that of Jesus's body does not mean that they did not greatly favor one another.
So what if they did? Jesus was a direct biological descendant of Mary. There isn't any doubt at all that He would have had a familial likeness to her and so by your logic, Mary must have looked similar to God the Father!
RIDICULOUS!!!
It's simply meaningless, nonsense.
Jesus, the WORD of God who was God and was with God, tells us exactly where he was before he came as the Messiah. He spoke a prayed which included this statement:
John 17:4-5
I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self - with the glory - which I had with [shared with] thee before the world was.
You see, Clete, God told the truth when He said he had an image and that He wanted to share that image and likeness with Adam. Adam not only favored God as the first Adam... but Jesus favored the Father as the Second Adam.
Nonsense.
You've already conceded the truth of Jesus' own plain statement, Jesus and the Father are One. This alone is enough to disprove your thesis. A thesis which seems to have no point to it, by the way. Even if it were true (which it is not), so what?
Now, I'm not sure why you want to exclude The Father, whose name is forever to be The LORD/YHWH, from the OT appearances.
ME? Why bring me into this? No one asked me what should and should not be taught in scripture. I didn't write the bible, nor was I consulted about it's content. You are the one here introducing extrabiblical concepts, conjecture and speculations, NOT ME!!!!
The question isn't why I should want to exclude the Father from OT appearances, the question is why you should want to include Him when God the Son Himself explicitly stated that "No one has seen God [The Father] at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared
Him."
I mean, how much more explicit do you want it to be?
many forefathers and prophets mentioned that they saw God and they were not thinking of a Son of flesh when he appeared. The Father did precede the Son and men saw his presence in dreams, visions, and out right face to face.
This isn't just heresy, it's blasphemy!
The Father DID NOT precede the Son!
The Father and the Son are ONE!!!
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Here is a NT verse which will explain things about whether no one had seen God the Father. I use a KJV Bible so I will write the verse according to a proper diagram. I will not change any word but ...
- will move the adverbial phrase telling when next to the verb it modifies
- will surround the appositive with commas right after the noun it renames.
- I will identify the antecedents for the pronouns - he and him.
- Things will be so clear then.
John 1:18
No man
at anytime hath seen God, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father; he
[John the Baptist] hath declared Him
[God the Son].
You do not have the skills to rewrite the bible. There isn't any chance at all that you would know a Greek adverb from a hoot owl's tail feather.
There are translations of the bible that use the same source material as the KJV but translate it into more modern English. They are just as easily available online as any KJV version and you don't have to waste your time "rewording" it.
What you've done here is to take yet another page out of the cultist Yahweh Ben Yahweh's handbook of biblical interpretation. "If there is a passage that doesn't fit your doctrine, don't worry, just reword it so that it agrees with you. People will buy it if, before presenting your rewrite of God's word, you use words that sound intellectual, like "adverbial phrase" and "antecedent""
You see, Clete, it was not that no one had ever seen the Father God appearing with his heavenly body ... but rather that no one had ever before seen God appearing as his own begotten Son with flesh!
You are a cultist!
Now, last points about the Three that are ONE.
- No one has ever seen God the Spirit for our eyes were not created / designed to see an invisible Spirit.
- BUT, people did see God appearing with his chosen image [heavenly body form]. They saw him in dreams, visions, and out right. They witnessed it with its dangerous glory and some saw it safely with a toned down glory.
- When people saw the Father they beheld the image in which Christ would appear ... yet as flesh. And Jesus told us this: When you have SEEN ME ... you have SEEN The Father. Jesus tried to help the religious leaders understand their ignorance when he explained this:
John 5:37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye [ignorant leaders] have
neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.
IOW, they had never been given the privilege of having seen the Father's presence - no dreams, visions, or face to face encounters. If they had they would have recognized Jesus as God standing before them - EVEN IN FLESH!
LOL!!!!
This is the stupidest thing I've seen posted on TOL since the flat earth thread!
What is this wacky obsession with forcing a physical body onto God the Father? What could possibly be the pay off for having to jump through so many literally idiotic hoops?
Again Jesus explained:
John 8:19 Then they said unto him [Jesus], "Where is thy Father?" [The LORD of Israel] Jesus answered,"Ye neither know me, nor my Father; if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also."
Do you see the truth here? It was obvious that these people had never seen the Father for if they had they would have recognized Jesus. The very fact that they did not recognize the image and likeness of Jesus as God but in flesh meant they had never seen the Father in his glory.
Assinine!
This is just nothing at all but abject stupidity! Jesus was not talking about His physical appearance!
Here is my short explanation of the trinity.
- God the infinite invisible Spirit cannot be seen by men. Yet He worked [Genesis 1] establishing and bringing forth things of creation. The WORD was there as the Spirit spoke things into existence.
The Word wasn't merely there, He was God Himself and created all that exists....
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
- The LORD God, the Father, began his Work on the 7th day [Gen.2].
This statement would have gotten you stoned prior to Paul's ministry!
Genesis 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
Exodus 20:11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
Hebrews 4:4 For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from ALL His works”;
- A time when God came into his own creation as a personage of the God Head in a hands on relationship in order to manifest things which had been established but not yet brought forth into a visible realm. The WORD was there speaking with the Father ... for it says that Adam and Woman heard the WORD walking in the Garden and they tried to hide from his presence. IOW, they could see his finite presence as well as hear his foot steps. No wonder they thought they could hide from him.
Jesus is the Word, Ps82!
Once again, you directly undermine your own doctrine!
- The Christ, who John the Baptist said was the WORD, who was God and was with God from the beginning, came into the world to do his work. Jesus explained to people he only says and does what the Father wishes. John 8:28-29
John the Baptists did NOT say that the Word was with God and the Word was God! That was the Apostle John! The John who was charged by Christ to take care of His mother. The John who wrote five books of the New Testament.
You see, Clete, The WORD of God was always there ... when the Spirit worked, when the Father worked, when the Christ worked. The three are the ONE God.
Thank you for, once again, smashing your own thesis into powder!
People in Jesus's day became especially angry when he did miracles on the 7th Day/Sabbath. Once he healed a lame man on the 7th day and some of the Jews wanted to kill him. He took time to explain why it was okay for him to work on the Sabbath. It was a day dedicated unto the LORD God and he had been with the Father as he manifested mankind ... etc. .
More cult like "interpretation".
You should look up the terms "unfalsifiable" and "confirmation bias".
He explained. John 5:16-17 And therefor did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day [7th day]. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto [as the Father of glory in Adam's day], and I work [now as the Christ who was with the Father on the 7th day of creation].
One day you will learn that adding your doctrine to the bible doesn't count as presenting biblical evidence for that doctrine.
Jesus was as much God as was the Spirit and as much God as was the hands on Father who worked generations ago ... the three who are the ONE God.
And that One God rested on the seventh day, Ps82. He rested! He didn't start a new project on the seventh day, He CEASED from His work!
Hebrews 4:3 For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:
“So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest,’ ”although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; 5 and again in this place: “They shall not enter My rest.”
6 Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, 7 again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said:
“Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts.”
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.
