“Take my life; I am no better than my fathers”

So said Elijah when he finally had enough of trying to teach Israel to understand more of God and to follow the ways of the LORD. Righteous man was Elijah. He knew God’s works were not just of the past. Each generation was to advance in knowledge and understanding and pass this along. But for the Israel of his time, he saw no such progress or interest.

To what extent has Christianity proven itself not as righteous as Elijah? For surely the church corporate has not advanced in its view of the Lord, nor been upset by that fact. Rather, in the hands of the lay Phariseeism they have terribly retrogressed and even justified their retrogression by making an idol out of the 1st Century AD concepts. By making NT arguments to Greeks and by Greeks the template, the church has gone back to the attitudes of 2000 years ago, to the infancy of man’s understanding of what was unfolding. Forgetting that God lives and that he has lived these 2000 years, they have also forgotten his mighty word is eternal. But they set aside his word for the New Testament alone. Surely the Church has retrogressed into a strange glorification of Christianity’s childhood instead of remaining on the meat of a grown Church. Yet who has sat down and declared as Elijah did: “I am no better than my fathers”?

Fortunately, God has given us the Scriptures. There are many ways in which scripture communicates prophecy. One is by chronology. This is not just within a book but from all of compiled scripture. Since scripture is the revelation of God, one should not be surprised that he moved the prophets in ways that slowly unfolded the fullness of his purpose.

Since all of scripture can be viewed chronologically, it’s collective voice obviously does not point to a mere prediction of a political or futuristic event that would have limited application, such as the Babylonians coming to destroy Judah or Israel.

The overall lasting theme to prophecy is, of course, Messianic, the coming of our Lord amongst us to completely reveal God in an undeniable way. But even the collective voice of scripture does not stop there. The LORD is always providing instruction for us and giving signposts to guide our future even when he would not speak through prophets. He has done this in a beautiful way through the chronology of scripture.

Not only do all the Messianic prophecies funnel to and highlight the events of the 1st Century AD, the developing prophecies from Moses to Malachi also predict how Jesus (our Lord) will be revealed over the period of the Age of the Gentiles. This aspect of prophecy-- chronology-- has proven accurate as well. It is therefore instruction in how he is to be continually regarded today, for we are not the babes of the New Testament but we are at the latter times of understanding.

The chronology in prophecy starts with the idea of a greater prophet than any other, advances to a mighty and everlasting king, then God’s son, then “Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father” and then one of the last combines all together in Malachi: Messenger, Lord, and the LORD. This progression is remarkably reflected in the Church in its regard for Jesus . . .until more recent years. 

Within the era of the NT writings we already see this progression developing. The apostles, having known him, were stuck on his humanness but that he was also the son of God. They refer to Jesus in a personal way that Paul only advanced to a more respectful “Lord.” We know Jesus did not teach them the scriptures, else they would not have been so dumbfounded that the Gentiles were converting.  But later, as the scriptures were being referred to more and more after his resurrection, it was becoming plain to all the new Nazarene Jews that something was clearly emerging. They were beginning to understand who had actually come. John the Elder was the first to finally hit it home. He is unquestionably the author of the Johannine works in the NT in the late 1st Century or early 2nd Century. Greek Gnosticism and its many godheads was his particular disgust. From scripture he began to see who had come, and penned appropriately in the Gospel of John Jesus saying “You have seen me you have seen the Father.”

Christology, though I don’t like the term, was developing along the scripture’s chronological prophecies, however sublime it may have been to early Christians. The view of Jesus of Nazareth was unfolding, thanks to the Jews’ reliance on scripture and the apostles’ clear instructions to remain fully based in scripture and not on all the Greek rationalizing. By the time of the major creeds of the church (4th century) there was such a unity movement within the Church that the Nicene Creed made it clear that Jesus was of one substance with God, though still the creed bears the concepts of trinity. Despite the schism between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, there were still thousands upon thousands of Gentile Christians who would not ignore the scriptures. 

Catholicism, the corporate descendant of the first churches, for all of its faults nevertheless had a very progressive mentality. The earliest criterion for heresy was actually over how to regard Jesus. Was he God, lower than God, a part of God or entirely separate? Heresy was to deny Jesus’ divinity. Due to Catholicism’s permeation by Hellenistic ideology the view that God walked amongst us never developed to be the sole asserted point of doctrine, though in concept it came close. Yet because of Hellenism the early church when going corporate took up and also institutionalized the idea of Trinity, though admitting “it’s a mystery.”

Yet despite the concept of “Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” early Christianity and even Catholicism couldn’t help but regard Jesus as God come in the flesh, though constantly finding it difficult in this context to explain or understand trinity. “It’s a mystery how God can do this” was the usual explanation. The 2nd century epistles by patristic fathers is evidence, for in the salutation and benediction one can find it penned, as in Ignatius’ case, “will of the Father and Jesus Christ our God” as both one together (Letter to the Ephesians). Christianity still insisted there was one God. But at this moment Christianity was at the “Son” and “King” stage in their Christology. And as those titles and concepts imply, they still had to differentiate between Father and Jesus, though some united both as God in the singular.

The idea of a “Godhead” came about early on because the language of the apostles in regard to Jesus was that of men referring to a man. The apostles and disciples had no choice but to regard Jesus in human terms, and certainly his body is human. They had known him, and since the human mind could not conceive of being faced with divinity, Jesus apparently didn’t expound to them in detail who he really is. Rather, he referred to himself as the Son of Man based on the popular Book of Enoch, which spoke of the righteous one who went hand in hand with God (Head of Days) having the appearance of “the Son of Man.” The struggle with the idea of “Godhead” is found when trying to reconcile the Scriptures with the New Testament. The scriptural Christology was that God would come among us and it is in this light, and only this light, that the New Testament can be accurately interpreted. Yet by giving up the Scriptures as the “Old Testament,” Gentile Christianity paved the way for the Gnostic concept of trinity to remain forever lodged in the Church. By giving up the Scriptures, Gentile believers were forced into human rationalizing based only on the New Testament language, which itself only reflected an infant understanding of what had actually transpired.

Yet Moses had already understood; and he was the first. As he wrote in Job he knew that his Redeemer would stand upon the earth at the latter day. Because of this, he would see God in his flesh. But how could Moses, even as a resurrected man, see God. . . period? We know even the angels have not seen God as he is. They are merely higher forms of men, and perhaps to hang around them one day would be like Aragorn hanging around Legolas and the Elves. They are not divine. God declared plainly through Jeremiah: “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” This statement is keenly tied to God’s name to Moses, which hardly means “I am that I am.” Rather the concept of total self existence and self generation of life encompassing and undisturbed is being asserted. Jewish scribes wrestled with the appropriate way to translate the concept of God’s name into Greek (in the Septuagint) in the 3rd century BC, finally opting for S<: “Ego eimi o S<.” I am Being. It is unfortunate that in English we have forgotten how being was and should be exclusively a verb. However, we have come to regard it in certain instances as a noun. For example: human being or a being. That is not accurate. It is really still a verb. The first is a human in the present state of existing-- being. The second is a presently-existing creature-- a being. Yet the only way to describe God is “I am the BEING,” if you wish to take the Greek literally word for word. His is constant self existence and, as Jesus declared God has “life within himself.” Unlike us he does not take in energy from without. We take in oxygen, water, fats, vitamins, all living nature takes in sun, carbon or oxygen, water (hydrogen) etc. God is completely self generating. How could any creature lay eyes upon such a being as this and, moreover, one who “fills heaven and earth”? He does not dwell within our dimension, and if we should dwell in his, his nature is not changed: he is still complete self generation. Who can indeed behold such as God, the BEING, father of all being?

The only way even for the angels to do so would be to see a form with which they could identify; and God, of course, knew well of it. God cannot dwell in temples. How can he be limited? But he said for our sakes he would put his spirit at the Temple. Yet we were not so ignorant that we did not realize that God was still omnipresent. The Temple could be destroyed, but God could not.  But God gave us the Temple in order to identify with a place for God, so we could have the concept of his presence amongst us.

We know a human body can be destroyed, but the spirit cannot. How mind-boggling it is now, with hindsight, to understand that’s what God had to do for our sakes. For such a being, he who is BEING himself, this is the momentous moment of his creation and revelation: he would come to his creation as a man, the very tabernacles that he fashioned for souls made in his own image, we, knowing how to love, hate, justice, anger, goodness, mercy, grace, generosity, wisdom, ingenuity-- indeed there is no shame in being created in the image of God, and mankind should boast of it. This is a most wonderful creation, to be human and to be fashioned with these tabernacles for our souls, souls that carry the divine breath in them, as it is written: “God breathed into Adam and he became a living soul.” There is no gross act in what God has done. Indeed, considering how beautiful are his works, it was the most beautiful gesture that he came unto us in a way we could finally identify with him. He could speak to us direct, teach us, hold us, feed us. In doing so he showed us perfect love, in that he suffered his tabernacle to be crucified. He endured the pain of the Cross, at the hands of his own creation. He made his “soul” a sacrifice for sin. In doing so he showed us the plain difference between himself and us: powerless finite creatures on one side who when threatened with being surpassed in their precious political and social positions would turn murderers to maintain the status quo, while God, possessing all things, would give the ultimate example of how his children are to behave: giving, self sacrificing; just at all times.  He has most definitely made himself plainly seen, and in doing so revealed by contrast what we are.

It seems logical, and in fact is quite implied in scripture, that he condescended for the sake of the angels as well so that they could comprehend a form. We know Moses saw his “back parts,” whatever that should imply, and that the elders saw the place of God’s throne on Sinai and heard his voice. Abraham entertained 3 “men” and one is definitely regarded as God. It is hardly difficult for God. If he could identify a temple with his spirit for our sakes, how much more could he fashion for himself a body?

It is unfortunate that most people have no inkling about how complex the human body is, how complex even one cell is. If they did, they would know God did not degrade any part of his nature by creating for himself a human tabernacle. It is not like a temple we build, where he could take away his spirit for our sins. It is something he created and is intimately a part of him. What a triumphant moment! How incomprehensible that the very spirit of God could dwell in a body and, even more incomprehensible, how a body can be tied in intimately with the spirit of God, created in the womb by his own spirit in which he would dwell. Not just a body in which he would place a portion of his spirit to inspire a prophet, but his own spirit, vast and intellect, in a body that he would never be separate from-- Not like some Gnostic tripe where Jesus was the fleshy man and Christ was his spirit, separate and distinct.

How else can one see God? One cannot. And how stupid were our fathers so long ago after the flood to forget, and each scattered tribe to eventually form the “God of Heaven” into human form, into the image of beasts and half breed incubi. How childish to take the one who “fills heaven and earth” and link him as represented accurately by stone and wood, and then, as they did, give him their own debased nature. Now we understand why Jesus said “No one comes to the Father but by me.” To deny him is to go into idolatries of the mind and of stone, to think God is formed as you would have him. And how well it is that even Jesus had to speak of the “Father,” so that even today we know there is no limit to God as he is and there is only one way to him. All others are the ways of idols, the vain imagination of mankind.

Because mankind had forgotten who Dyaus Pita (“Father of Heaven”) originally was, as Noah must have called him, God spoke to Abraham and took him from the land of the Chaldees. While the nations made idols, he appeared before Abraham as a man. We know Abraham saw him as such (Genesis 18), and Moses plainly declared he would see God.

For all of the prophecies that have unfolded since Moses’ time of the coming Messiah, his alone stand out for being out of chronology, in that his plainly declared the divinity of “that prophet” to come. There was really no other way to refer to the coming event early on except as a “prophet” coming. How could people have understood more? But his song of departure and his book of Job made the divinity clear.

The next major prophecies started regarding the coming of a chosen one as a great king who would come from David. These prophecies appear on this website and it is not necessary to repeat them here. But though predicted as a king, as Moses foretold of a prophet, a strange divinity is implied, for his kingdom would last forever. It is in the Davidic prophecies that “Son” is used a few times to denote him. (See Messianic Prophecies and Men & Brethren)

From great prophet, King, to Son.

But the prophecies don’t end with David. They continue and get more and more clear. Isaiah refers to a son being born as well, and in this case he would be memorialized as the “Prince of Peace, the Everlasting Father, the Mighty God, Messenger of Great Counsel,” etc. Micah, too, prophesied of the birth of the “Ruler of Israel” “whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting” and that he would be born in Bethlehem.

Just with these we see how the prophecies escalate “That prophet,” king, Son, Mighty God, eternal, everlasting ruler to eventual, pure uncontested divinity. Not a separate entity-- God has taken form and walked amongst us. Malachi places the final touch upon it: “and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.”

Whose temple? His temple. In Malachi 1:14  God calls himself “a great King” and yet Zechariah said our King would come upon a donkey to Jerusalem. Malachi finishes it with he will call the temple “his.”

From a prophet who is greater than all to King, Son, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Eternal, to Lord at “his temple.” “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.” All rolled in together: “I will send my messenger” to “prepare the way before me” the “Lord whom ye seek” will come where? “to his temple” and he is “the messenger of the covenant” and, once again, who has said all this? “The LORD of hosts.”

But where is this knowledge anymore today? Christianity was rightly progressing along, fulfilling over time this exact chronology, believing, understanding and developing that Jesus was actually God come among us. God had to reveal the impact of this slowly, and we 2000 years later are at the fruit of his revelation. It had to be revealed the way God did it for the very specific purposes that man could not have been able to comprehend God walking among them. None could bear knowing they were in the presence of God. Yet the revelation is true, tried and true. God has walked amongst us.

Where is the knowledge of this today? It’s gone. Lost in Hellenistic concepts of trinity. Just as bad, after the New Testament books became cemented as divine in the 17th century, Protestantism reversed back to the infancy of the New Testament, locking Jesus as “Son” and reasserting a trinity not mentioned in the New Testament or in Scripture. Worse, Jesus has become a great teacher and guru today. His image is plastered on T-shirts: “Jesus is my homeboy;” He’s on bumper stickers: “Powered by the Son.” There is a website selling Messianic T-shirts greeting everybody in the name of Yeshua and then using that to pitch underwear. There’s a Pentecostal knockoff, if ever I saw one! (Many of those Holy Roller” organizations preach profit as a sign of God’s favour. Just place a bible in your establishment, use God’s name in greetings and advertisements and sales will increase!)

Do they know of whom they are speaking? They best get their heads out of modern entertainment and Jesus Christ Superstar anarchist buddy, and get back into Scripture and the Gospels to see how God revealed himself and how as a result we are to finally regard him and understand. God has come. He shall come again, and he’s not brother Jesus. He is the Lord. As Malachi continues: “But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap.” My God, do you know of whom this is speaking? Do you understand how long Israel has waited for him? To do what? -- push underwear?

Think of the slogan that makes a play on a credit card commercial: “Jesus: don’t be caught dead without him.” I tell you here don’t dare be caught speaking of him so casually.

Instead of accepting the full revelation of God about himself, the Gentiles for hundreds of years have slowly been slipping into the guru Jesus mold until modern society could get away with calling him “brother Jesus” and “my homeboy.”

It is time to prepare the way before him again, lest he smite the earth with a curse; for surely he is the Lord and as Isaiah 9 reads in the Septuagint variation his is “the Father of the Age to come.”  Do not form him in your own image. His words and works have formed him, your vain imagination cannot. It can only confuse who he really is.

With this we must again touch on how this was done once before when our fathers so long ago called God only “Father bright,” having no word for “god” apparently. He was “deispater,” bright meaning and implying heaven: “Father of Heaven;” “God of Heaven.” But Noah’s descendants corrupted his memory. The far-flung peoples of the Indo-European language, originating around Ararat (that language no doubt the direct descendant of the “mother language”), preserved from India to the cold forests of Europe and to the warm Mediterranean this expression for God. Yet they corrupted him. Deus pater remained the father of the gods and of the sky and storms. Every tribe of the Indo-Europeans recalled him as Deus, Teus, Div, Jupiter, Tseus, and for the Dorians and Ionians the terribly carnal Zeus always seducing some mortal woman and spawning demigods. They corrupted their memory of God, debasing him.

He has revealed himself plainly through Jesus’ coming, not through the incarnations of our sick souls. And now what do we have today? Are we better than our fathers and do we recognize Jesus finally for who he is? No, we are no better than our fathers, but we are not righteous enough to sit down like Elijah and say “take my life” I am become worthless. Instead of understanding him as Father, millions now believe him to have been a man who had kids with Mary Magdalene, and Dan Brown’s book Da Vinci Code merely catered to the giddy foolishness in people. Unoriginal like all storytellers. The ancients did the same thing with far more epic grandeur. Ignorant of God’s mighty works they created him --Deus Piter-- into the carnal Zeus diddling with women on Crete. Mankind starts it all over again. Dan Brown has merely contributed to debasing God again into a carnal man spawning children. As the nations forgot Deus Pater, the God of Heaven, in the myriad of carnal incarnations of ancient storytellers, so now the nations do it again with his very express image. Instead of “Everlasting Father” and “Prince of Peace,” and “he whose goings forth have been from the beginning, even everlasting” he is becoming now but a carnal demigod diddling with women. The logical outcome, is it not, of the base and froward?

It is time that Israel believes that the mighty God has come, for surely his word is good and he shall come back. Who will abide that day? Prepare the way before him, for the nations have turned him into a joke again. Turn the nations to God, making it clear you shall never come to him except through Jesus, for that is the image he has created of himself and that image lives and will dash to pieces the idols of our minds and hands. 

It is enough that a servant is like his master, so I quote here what Jesus declared: “Moses testified of me.” That can only mean one thing-- his song of departure:

Behold, behold that I am, and there is no god beside me: I kill, and I will make to live; I will smite, and I will heal; and there is none who shall deliver out of my hands. For I will lift up my hand to heaven, and swear by my right hand, and I will say, I live forever. For I will sharpen my sword like lightning, and my hand shall take hold of judgment; and I will render judgment to mine enemies, and I will recompense them that hate me. I will make my weapons drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh, with the blood of the wounded, and from the captivity of the heads of their enemies that rule over them. Rejoice, ye heavens, with him, and let all the angels of God worship him; rejoice ye Gentiles, with his people, and let all the sons of God strengthen themselves in him; for he will avenge the blood of his sons, and he will render vengeance, and recompense justice to his enemies, and will reward them that hate him; and the LORD shall purge the land of his people.

This is who he is. His children are those who believe and love him. Surely he is father and he has born many children. Stop calling him Son and brother. We are no longer infants. He that bore me and sat me on his knee has been blasphemed enough. The Lord has come to his temple suddenly. The Jew must realize he is the last light for the world, and that Jesus is that one in the Shema. Your father’s image is being corrupted again into debase humanity.