“The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth his handiwork”
Adam, his son, would have had a significantly intimate fellowship with his Father as he talked regularly with Him in the cool of the evening. But before the Fall of man through disobedience, he never knew God in His attributes as Saviour, Healer, … since at that time the need for salvation and healing, for instance, were not manifest.
God is described in the Book of Genesis using the name Elohim. He was the self-existing eternal being, omniscient (all-knowing), all-powerful, omnipresent (by his omniscience (“All things are open and bare before Him”)
After the fall God revealed Himself to Moses by His Name Jehovah (or Yahweh) and in different times to his prophets and other individuals revealed his attributes to his own and these are usually referred to by his compound names (what we might call the Jehovah complex), thus, for example:
Santifier/Our Righteousness (Jehovah-tsidkenu)
Peace (Jehovah-shalom)
Present One (Jehovah-shammah)
Healer (Jehovah-rapha)
Provider (Jehovah-jireh)
Banner (Jehovah-nissi)
After the Mount Sinai experience when God visited his people and the whole mountain trembled and was on fire with his presence, the people were in such fear of God that they requested Moses to have God deal with them through Moses. Moses asked God about this and He said that the people spoke well and this is the way he would do it.
We see that his was the pattern God has followed throughout all ages. In any age he reveals his secrets (Amos 3:7) first to his primary prophet of that age (there is usually only one major prophet, where there is one, in any age) who then reveals them to his people. When this communication comes we normally see this in the scripture as a verse which says something along the lines of ‘at a certain time, the Word of the Lord came to the prophet xxx’.
So in addition to the Jehovah complex we have God revealing himself through his prophets when the Word (which God is – John 1:1) came to each of them.
Physically God was masked (veiled) in Old Testament times behind whirlwinds, earthquakes, and in the time of Moses, for example, by pillar of fire by night and cloud by day, as Israel traveled to the promised land.
In Old Testament times, God, Jehovah-Elohim, the eternal invisible being of the Godhead, could be described as God above us in the revelation of Himself.
His uniquely begotten Son Jesus was begotten before the foundation of the earth, had a beginning (that is, was not eternal – all sons have beginnings), and through him as an instrument, God created the world and all living creatures, plants, animal and humans. These all had seed in themselves for propagating their kind/specie as we see described in the Book of Genesis.
However, in New Testament times, God prepared a human body for his Son, providing both sperm and egg for the borrowed womb of Mary, and sent his Son to earth in this prepared body. We know him then as the man Jesus of Nazareth, considered to be the son of Joseph and Mary, born in Bethlehem of Judea, although his actual biological Father was God, that is Jehovah Elohim, who created the sperm and egg, and wrapped Himself in the Blood cell. Thus was born the Son of God, as at this time, the man Jesus in the body prepared for him by his Father (Heb 10:5). However at this time, although he was the Son of God, he was not yet the Messiah (for Christ which means The Anointed One).
When he was 30 years old, he was baptized at the Jordan River, and at that time his Father, Jehovah Elohim, came to dwell in that same body for the period of Jesus’ ministry which started at that time and continued for 3-1/2 years until the crucifixion when his Father left him (“My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me”)
During this 3-1/2 years of ministry, we have a duality, that is, two occupying the same body: the Father and the Son. The Son surrendered his own will and testified that the doctrine which he had heard and preached was not his own but the Father’s and that the miracles, healings, signs and wonders, that is the works, were not his but the Father’s. He was involved only to the extent that he did what the Father told him and showed him to do, Jesus explained. During this time we have the ‘Son of man’ ministry which is the eternal person of the Godhead Jehovah Elohim manifesting (revealing or expressing) Himself though a man, his Son. In the Son of man ministry we have the two together, Father and Son, to manifest “the fullness of the Godhead (the one eternal person of the Godhead) bodily (through the Son)”.
We had in OT times, 1/ God above us, but now we have God 2/ in the role of Sonship revealing himself. Here God is revealing Himself in a man. The son came to declare the Father. “In him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily” taking two to do this. First the invisible eternal person of the Godhead, his Father and secondly the visible portion of the body of his Son Jesus. Thus, the two make the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Here we have God revealing himself by the Spoken Word through his Son and the works which He, God, accomplished again through his Son, but were His works, not the Son’s.
In the next of God’s revelation of Himself, we have that in sons, that is, in the church of the redeemed, who have His spirit, and carry His Word engrafted in their hearts, and become “living epistles learned and read of all men”. This fold of God manifestly revealing himself is referred to in Scripture as the Holy Spirit, which is the self-same person of the eternal Spirit, Jehovah Elohim, revealing himself in a new role. This time in the Bride, God revealing Himself in Bride form.
So then as we see God has manifestly revealed Himself in a three-fold revelation of Himself: God above (Pillar of Fire), in Bridegroom form (Sonship) and Bride form (sons). Jehovah Elohim in the New Testament has the name LORD Jesus Christ which is the Name (singular) of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that is, God manifesting above, in in Sonship, and in His sons (the Holy Ghost dispensation). And this is the Name (Lord Jesus Christ) that new members of his church were baptized in from the formation of the church on the day of Pentecost and continuing for about 200 years thereafter until apostacy set in and the Name was dropped and replaced by the three titles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of which is a title and none of them a name. This was developed in a new man-made doctrine in the time of apostacy when the false Trinity doctrine was formulated of three persons in the Godhead. It is not a trinity of persons but a trinity (if we would use that term) of three manifestations (three modes or roles of making Himself known) of the one eternal person of the Godhead, Elohim Jehovah.
There is only one eternal person in the Godhead, that is, Jehovah Elohim. Holy Spirit is just what He, Jehovah Elohim is. “God is Holy” and “God is Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth”.The eternal God was the Father of his Son who was named Jesus (after His Father) who had a beginning and “was conceived of the Holy Spirit”. The Son did not have two Father’s, God and the Holy Spirit, since Jehovah Elohim is Holy Spirit. Some make two persons because scripture says that God was his Father and Holy Spirit was his father, but saying God or Holy Spirit was his father is just saying, in other words, that Elohim Jehovah was his Father if we rightly divide the Word of Truth.
In the matter of names we might note at this point.
Jehovah Elohim of the Old Testament is Jesus Christ of the New, Christ, the Anointer.His Son is also called Jesus (he came in his Father’s name). Christ here meaning the Anointed One (Messiah) by the Anointer (His Father – Isa 61:1).The whole family of God in heaven is named Jesus as we read in NT scripture.Lexicon: Jesus means “Jehovah is Salvation”. Note that Christ is a compound word and can refer to the Anointer or Anointed. It is compound in that you cannot have an Anointed One without an Anointer.
At this point we should note a number of things concerning The Word (Logos).We read in scripture that “if they do not have the Word there is no light in them”.”The Word is God”. It is how the invisible God is known.The Word, a Seed, begets its own kind. Word begets Word. That is why man Jesus can also be called Word, but he is not his own Father, for “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (the latter speaking of the Son) as we read several places in NT scripture. The son is not God, but is one who has a God.
His other sons (we note the man Jesus said he was our elder brother) also are Word children, being born of the Word, and have the Word “engrafted in their heart” and become “living epistles learned and read of all men”.”The Word is Spirit and Life”
“The Word is Spirit and Life”.The sole genuine evidence of sonship is believing the Word of the Hour in which you live. No individual is a son of God without having his Spirit. “If you have not the Spirit you are none of his”. And if you have his Spirit, how would you be able to speak contrary to his Word clearly manifested and vindicated, but instead agree with it and live it.
1Peter 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
1John 3:9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
Gifts of the spirit are not dependable evidence. All can be counterfeited. And even when they do occur we should remember what Jesus said. “Man shall come in that day, and say, did we not do many miracles, signs and wonders in your name and he will say to them, depart from me you workers of iniquity, I never knew you.” (Matt 7:23)
Take the advice of 1 John where is says, “Try the spirits whether they be of God”. Give them the Word test. It is the Word which tries the spirits not some “anointing of spirit” which tries the Word. Many have this backward to their own peril.
“I am the LORD I change not”,Jehovah Elohim speaking. “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my Word will not pass away.” It’s unchanging and eternal.
The denominational ‘Christian’ systems of men have much error. This is the reason the Bride, the elect church, is being called out from among them and why the scripture declares “Come out from among them and be ye separate and be not partaker of their plagues” It is one reason God sent a vindicated prophet in our day.
Our day is prophesied to be a time of such a strong delusion that “if possible it would deceive the very elect” if the time were not cut short. Speaking, for example, on the Godhead, Christianity had gone to two extremes (both wrong): the Trinity doctrine and the Oneness doctrine. The former has three persons in the Godhead, the later has one person but that includes both Father and Son (this is not true because the son Jesus cannot be his own Father.Also his Father is eternal and he, like all sons, had a beginning). With either of these, many of the things God has revealed cannot be understood and many scriptures remain a complete puzzles or seeming contradictions.
Num 23:19 God [is] not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do [it]? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
LORD God (Jehovah Elohim) is eternal. His ways are perfect and does not have to alter them as circumstances change. He changes not (Mal 3:6). He is not in the process of learning. He knows all things past, present and future.
1 Tim 2:5 For [there is] one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 6 Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
His Son, Jesus, like all sons, had a beginning. He “learned obedience by the things he suffered”. He grew in wisdom and stature. Certain things, he said, only the Father knew. But as in a prefigure, Joseph was raised to the right hand of Pharaoh and every knee in his kingdom bowed before Joseph, so Jesus, the Son of God, as the result of being an obedient Son and giving himself as a sacrifice carrying the blood of His Father, God to the cross, God raised him to be Lord and Christ in the heavenly kingdom (and future early kingdom) where all knees will bow to him. But with one exception…
1 Cor 15:27 For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under [him, it is] manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him.
28 And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
I might add that all of God’s children, His family (all His sons), were in his mind before the foundation of the world! And in due season, on individual births, each comes into manifestation and become persons in their own right. They are then able to have fellowship with their Father.
Heb 7:9 And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham. 10 For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.
Just think Levi paid tithes when he was in his great, great, great grandfather! But on birth, he became a person in his own right.
And of all those that the Father gave the Son, none will be lost!
JOHN 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any [man] pluck them out of my hand.29 My Father, which gave [them] me, is greater than all; and no [man] is able to pluck [them] out of my Father’s hand.