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figmentPez -> RE: A Few questions regarding Jesus and God the Father (4/27/2008 11:06:05 PM)
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ORIGINAL: bob97
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Okay, so your assertion is that the Son of Man is God. Okay, then who do you say that the Ancient of Days is?
The Ancient of Days is God the Father of course and Jesus Christ is Son of man
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John 6:38-40
So, who came down from heaven, and who sent him? Whose will is being done, and whose will is not being done? Who will be raising up believers on the last day?
John 8:16-19
Who testifies in this verse? Who are the two witnesses that Jesus Christ is talking about?
Luke 23:46
Whose spirit is being committed here and who is being addressed?
God of course sent His Son, Jesus Christ and of course Christ is doing the will of the Father. I have never denied any of this, in fact I have stated it to be fact; God sent the Son to do the will of the Father.
Okay, keep those answers in mind. "Oneness" and many other heresies deny those truths in one form or another. That's why the "oneness" proponents on these boards have been so terrified to tell me who they say that the Son of Man is. Not only do they know their answer violates TOS, hopefully the Holy Spirit is working on their conscience to make them aware that God is not pleased with the answer their heresy leads them to. You wouldn't believe some of the answers I've gotten to that question on these forums in the past. One claimed the Son of Man was Israel, another claimed the Church, a third said that the son of man was just a flesh body and yet another claimed that prophecy was vague and unreliable and we couldn't really say anything about God from reading about visions of heaven.
Other wrong answers I've gotten. In response to John 6, I've been told that it was a flesh body sent from heaven, and that it was Christ's humanity that was submitting his will to the spirit of the Father dwelling inside him, with no answer as to why the same one who says that He came not to do His own will is the same one who says He will raise believers on the last day. "Oneness" heresy has to twist basic grammar to be able to reach their conclusion, making the speech of Jesus Christ into that of a madman. Furthermore, they don't even realize that by claiming that there is a flesh body with it's own will apart from the spirit living within it (indeed, with another spirit as well, according to Luke 23) they have effectively declared that this flesh body that they call the "son of man" is a person in it's own right, but a person that is not God. They then go on to say that this body died on the cross, and that God did not die for our sins!
Let's look at that last assertion of "oneness", that God did not die on the cross:
Revelation 1:17-18
17When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man And He placed His right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last 18and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.
Now, "the first and the last" is a title claimed by the LORD in Isaiah (41:4 & 44:6), and the living One is a possible translation of the name of the LORD (YHWH, the tetragrammaton). The LORD God says that He was dead, and now He is alive forevermore. God really and truly did die on the cross for our sins. The Father did not die, but the Son did, and the Son of God is inherently God.
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Furthermore, you've previously claimed that the Son only came into existence when God became incarnate, but this passage shows that the Son is eternal in existence because He existed with the Father before the world began.
Of course Christ existed before the creation of the world, He created it. Do you understand the concept of multiple dimensional time as opposed to lineal time?
I'm a SciFi fan (and a fan of "hard" Sci-Fi, not just Trek and other fluff), so I'm familar with all sorts of different theories on how time can be non-linear. However, none of that should come into play in our understanding that the Son of God must eternally be the Son of God. The Father / Son relationship within these two persons of the triune God is exactly that, a relationship that exists within God. This is the very nature of God, not something to do with God's relationship to creation. Creation was NOT and then was. God WAS and IS and IS TO COME (Rev 4:8, among other places), the eternal and unchanging God. God exists independent of creation, and is not reliant on it. God's nature is to be who He is, as He says "I AM WHO I AM". If the Father/Son relationship within God were dependent on creation, then that would mean that God changed, and that is impossible. The God who WAS when creation was NOT is just the same now as He was before creation (and, arguably, time is part of creation). The Only Begotten Son of God, God of God, must be begotten of God independent of creation, because saying that the relationship within God relies on creation would mean that God changed.
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Now a question for you. Do you believe Hebrews I:3 to be true and if so how do you explain it in context to your understanding?
Heb 1:3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
Also, how do you understand Col 2:9;
Col.2:9: "For in Him (Christ) all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form"
To answer those, I reference two chapters in scripture I've already quoted other verses from:
Daniel 7:9
9"I kept looking Until thrones were set up, And the Ancient of Days took His seat; His vesture was like white snow And the hair of His head like pure wool His throne was ablaze with flames, Its wheels were a burning fire.
Revelation 1:13-15
and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash. 14His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. 15His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters.
Once again, we have the Ancient of Days, and the Son of Man. The Father and the Son. These two passages show us the spiritual appearance of the Father and the Son, and they are the same, they "look" just alike. It is nature of creation that sons resemble their fathers, to a certain extent, and that is to point us to the original father/son relationship, is that between the Father and His Only Begotten Son. The Son is deity, just as the Father is deity. They are not only of the same type, they are of the same substance, united as one God with the Holy Spirit (who is not begotten, but proceeds). The things about the Father that make Him who HE IS, are also true about the Son. The Son is the fullness of Deity, because there is nothing about the essential nature of God that the Son is not.
Indeed, the Son was the fullness of deity before becoming incarnate. Colossians 1 tells us that "by Him all things things were created..." (v.16), "... For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him." That is not referring to the incarnation, because the incarnation did not exist when all things were created. The Son was the Son, and had all the fullness of deity dwelling in Him, before that deity dwelled in human flesh.
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