WE ARE APPROACHING THIS SUBJECT DEALING WITH THE ONENESS OF GOD IN AN EFFORT TO TRY AND HELP THE LARGE NUMBER OF SINCERE BELIEVERS WHO DESIRE TO KNOW THE TRUTH, BUT IF GOD SHOULD SO DESIRE TO USE THIS ARTICLE TO PUT TO SILENCE THOSE WHO WILLINGLY TEACH THE DEVIL’S PERVERTED VERSION OF THE GOSPEL, THAT IS ALRIGHT WITH ME. I HAVE FOUND (ESPECIALLY IN OTHER COUNTRIES) A SCARCITY OF LITERATURE DEALING WITH THIS MOST ESSENTIAL TRUTH OF GOD’S WORD (THE FACT THAT HE IS ONE, AND NOT THREE PERSONS.) THEREFORE, IF GOD WILL HELP ME, I WANT TO USE EVERY SCRIPTURE THAT IT REQUIRES TO MAKE THIS SO CLEAR THAT EVEN A CHILD CAN UNDERSTAND IT. THERE IS NO LACK OF SCRIPTURE TO ESTABLISH WHAT WE ARE GOING TO BRING OUT IN THIS MESSAGE. IT JUST REQUIRES A PERSON TO STUDY THEM WITH AN OPEN MIND. WE KNOW THAT THE ANTICHRIST SPIRIT IS IN HIS MAJOR ROLE OF DECEPTION AS THIS AGE IS FAST CLOSING OUT. THE GODHEAD DISPUTE WAS ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS THAT BEGAN TO CAUSE TROUBLE IN THE CHURCH AND EVENTUALLY LED TO THE NICAEA COUNCIL WHERE THE TRINITY VERSION WAS ADOPTED AND DECLARED TO BE THE CORRECT UNDERSTANDING OF THE GODHEAD. THROUGH THE YEARS SINCE THEN AND ESPECIALLY COMING OUT OF THE DARK AGES, MANY A POOR SOUL HAS CALLED UPON THEIR PASTOR TO EXPLAIN THE GODHEAD ONLY TO BE TOLD THAT THEY MUST JUST ACCEPT IT BY FAITH FOR NO ONE IS ABLE TO EXPLAIN GOD. THE REASON THEY WERE NOT ABLE TO EXPLAIN THEIR VERSION OF IT WAS BECAUSE THEY DID NOT HAVE ANY SCRIPTURE FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED. WE HAVE ALL THE SCRIPTURE THAT IS NEEDED TO EXPLAIN THE ONENESS OF GOD AND TO UNDERSTAND THE OFFICE WORK OF HIS ATTRIBUTABLE EXPRESSIONS. HE DOES NOT REQUIRE US TO BELIEVE ANYTHING THAT WE DO NOT HAVE SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY. THEREFORE, WE ARE GOING TO BEGIN OUR MESSAGE IN ST. JOHN 1:1, AND BUILD FROM THERE.
THE WORD
John was one of the apostles that Jesus called to be with Him as He walked by the sea of Galilee in the beginning of His ministry. John is presumed to have been about the same age as Jesus and seemed to have a closeness with Him that most of the other apostles did not have. He wrote from a personal understanding of the deity and ministry of Christ for he was an eye witness of the events of the 3╜ years of Jesus’ ministry. That is why we want to begin our message in St. John 1:1 where we will see just exactly how revelation struck him. Let us read it now. “In the beginning was the WORD and the WORD was with God and the WORD was God.” Let me say first of all that a statement like this is only made by the revelation that only the Holy Ghost can give. A little later we will see what the apostle Paul had to say. A man who never walked with Jesus on earth, but a man who took his scrolls and went into the Arabian Desert and stayed there until he came out with a genuine revelation. When we hear him expressing the revelation given to him by the Holy Ghost as he tarried there, it matches John’s revelation perfectly. That is what makes the scriptures so beautiful. When the Holy Ghost reveals them, every person believes them the same way. That is why I say that in these last days we are going to see just how many of these people who profess to be filled with the Holy Ghost will come up with an empty sack. I say they will come up with an empty sack. If the spirit you received does not reveal truth to you, truth that separates you from your old traditional ideas, then you had better get down on your knees and seek God for the Holy Ghost, you do not have Him in you yet. Yes, every professing believer is carrying around something and in time the Holy Ghost will reveal whether it is truth or error. The men who wrote the Bible were all unctioned by the same Spirit and we have that same Spirit present today to reveal the truth to us if we hunger for truth. These men were all human beings, subject to the same human feelings and emotions as we and I am persuaded that there must have been times when they were temporarily disillusioned especially when they saw Jesus hanging there on that old cross. Some said, We had hoped that he was the one who would deliver Israel, but now he is dead. Nevertheless, those who picked up the pen to write what they had witnessed, gave a revelated account of what they had seen and heard.
IN THE BEGINNING Let us direct our thinking back to the verse we read from John 1:1, “In the beginning was the WORD.” First we want to consider the word, “BEGINNING.” This is not referring to the beginning of a man, nor is it referring to the beginning of creation. It is speaking of a time before creation when ELOHIM (God) was thinking and planning. Why do I say that? Simply because it is attached to another word, which is “W-O-R-D”, and that was before the WORD was made flesh as we find in the 14th verse that it was. (To you Hebrew and Greek scholars I will just say I know nothing about either one, but I do know that when you begin to express a thought, it is becoming a word. Anything that I am saying right now had to be a thought first. Our thoughts are arranged in our mind and then they can be spoken as words. Otherwise, we would just stand here and let our mouth rattle.) Remember now, God Himself had no beginning, but there was a time when He began to counsel with Himself, (THINK AND PLAN) as you find in the first chapter of Ephesians. At that time, His thoughts, which later became creative words, were with Him. God is a master designer. Before He ever set His plan of creation in motion, He planned every detail of all His creative work throughout the ages to come. That is why we read in the Bible that Jesus Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. As God planned that which He would do naturally, His foreknowledge allowed Him to know that if He created man giving him a will to make choices, he would sin and need to be redeemed. That is where the slain lamb came into His thoughts even before He began to create. On the other hand, if He created man and gave him no choice, he would be like a robot. There would be no honor, respect, glory or worship attributed to God by man if that man could only do what he was programmed to do. You must keep in mind the fact that until He created something that could worship Him, He was not God. He was sovereign spirit, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, meaning He was present everywhere, all powerful and his intellectual abilities were unlimited, but as long as He was not God, there was nothing to bow down and worship Him. The very word G-O-D means object of worship, so in order to be God, He had to create something that could worship Him, but He did not start a haphazard creation. He planned every detail and left no loose ends and he made no secret of the fact that He did. The bible declares it from Genesis through Revelation. That is how we know that in the eternal age, only those who have worshipped God from a free choice will be present. All who have rejected Him will have been cast into the lake of fire. Now you may say, That doesn’t seem fair. Yes it is, for you must remember that every one of those who will have been destroyed had their chance to worship and serve God and rejected it. To further clarify your thinking on this subject, let us turn to the book of Colossians and read what the apostle Paul wrote to them. In chapter one, we find the apostle expressing his feelings toward the saints at Colosse and his desire for their spiritual growth. Then, as we read on down to the 13th verse, we find him starting to speak of their inheritance in Christ Jesus. Verses 14-15, speak of our redemption through His blood and declare Him to be the very image of the invisible God. Then verse 16 reads like this, “for by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: ALL THINGS WERE CREATED BY HIM, AND FOR HIM.” Did you see what I wanted you to see in that last verse? All things were created by Him and for Him. Try to get the picture now, God was all alone. There was nothing for Him to express His many attributes through. Therefore, His creation was for Himself. It had to be. There was no other life that it could be for. Now in order for his attributable qualities to be fully expressed, there had to be not only that which He had created, but also that which had fallen from its first estate. In Him lay the attributes of redeemer, intercessor, judge and all the other abilities that never could have been expressed if man had never sinned. You should never accuse God of being unfair, because everything that had ever been created was for Him and he who creates is the one who decides what his creation is to be like and also what it is to be for. Furthermore, like I said already, every person upon the face of this earth since the day Adam was created, has had to make a choice concerning right and wrong. God did not force any of them. He even told Cain if he would do well, he would be accepted. Therefore, when we say that God planned everything from the beginning unto the end, we are saying that He did not leave any loose ends. He did not force Adam to sin, but He knew that he would. He did not force the serpent to seduce Eve, but He knew that he would. It had to be like that in order for God to be able to express all of His many attributes and then in the end have a multitude of sons and daughters that will walk with Him throughout eternity having made Him their choice after being tempted and tested with all of Satan’s evil devices. Yes, in the eternal age, God will have a great family of people who truly love, worship and adore Him, a people who will never sin nor turn from Him and every one of them will be where they are by their own free will. That is the beauty of it all. There will not be one single one of them there against their will.
WHEN GOD BEGAN TO SPEAK
Now, in the beginning when God began to think of His great plan for the ages, His thoughts were His words. Then, after the whole plan was fixed in His great mind, He began to express those words and they were creative words. “The Word was with God and the Word WAS God.” God and His Word are one. We are not yet talking about the Word that became flesh for the flesh (Jesus) that was the Word expressed and made manifest two thousand years ago, came into time and we are still dealing with the Word that was the thoughts of God before time began. The word, B-E-G-I-N-N-I-N-G, in John 1:1 is not related to time. However, when we go to Genesis 1:1 and look at the same word, it definitely does mark the beginning of a time, a time when God began to express His thoughts (WORDS) in creation. Yet time, as we measure it, still had not started. We measure time by the earth’s rotation to the sun and the sun was not made until the fourth creative day. That is when God placed the two great lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. One to rule the day (the sun) and the lesser light (the moon) to rule the night and said that they should be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. Let me say before moving on, God’s creative works in the first chapter of Genesis did not literally manifest these things upon the earth, that is, there was still nothing visible. All of his creative works were in the spirit. You will notice that in the sequence of creation, man was the last thing that God created. After that, God rested from all of His works sanctifying the seventh day, because in it, He rested from all His creative work.
MANIFESTING HIS CREATION
Now, verses 4 and 5 of chapter 2 give us enlightment on God’s creative acts, actually explaining that up to this point nothing has been visibly manifested upon the earth. Then in verse 7, we see that man was actually the first thing of God’s creation that was manifested upon the earth. Let us read those verses with this in mind. 4 “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth WHEN they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens and every plant of the field BEFORE IT WAS IN THE EARTH, and every herb of the field BEFORE IT GREW. The Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was not a man to till the ground. You may read the rest of the chapter to see the order in which all of God’s creation was actually visibly manifested upon the earth. In verses 18-20, you will see that the animals and fowls, etc. were formed because God said it was not good that the man should be ALONE. I will not read any more here, for this is not our message. I only used this much in an effort to help you see the word BEGINNING in its true relationship with the verses it is used in. In the beginning was John’s way of expressing his revelation of the Godhead and I think it was a good way to say it. Look at it like this; In the beginning when God began to think, His thoughts became fixed in His mind. When His thoughts became fixed in His mind, they became His Word. They were unalterable. God’s Word never changes.
LOOKING AHEAD
I want to use a little illustration that I believe will help you better understand what we mean when we say God counseled with Himself (He meditated and planned). Take a young man and his wife for instance. Let us say they have just gotten married, started housekeeping and they desire to build a house. They talk among themselves and plan until they have a fixed plan in their mind of what the house is to look like. They try to work out a plan that will not only be sufficient for the two of them when the place is new and everything is working well, but they also take into consideration room for guests and also for an increase in the size of their family. They will also want to build the place with excess space to repair plumbing and other things that may need to be serviced as time goes on. In other words, they must work out the details and get a picture in their mind of what they want before they can ever start drawing up blue prints for the construction crew to go by. The point we are making is that they have a picture in their mind of what the place is to be like. They have said, this is it, this is what it will be like. Creation is completed in their mind, but the creation must yet be manifested. After those thoughts have formed a complete picture and it is time for the blueprint, those thoughts become their words. They say, Let there be a living room here and let there be three bedrooms at such and such a location and so on until the whole structure has been laid out. They see it clearly, but it is yet to be materialized. This is just a little illustration to call your attention to the fact that in the beginning, before there was anything, a great architect, a mastermind chose to have things a certain way. Therefore, the natural, material world that we are so accustomed to was at one time, somewhere in the billions of ages back, nothing more than a fixed thought in the mind of God. Those thoughts became His word and His word manifested them. John recognized that because a man’s thoughts cannot be separated from him and still remain to be his thoughts so is it with God. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and Word was God.” The trinity oriented person reads that verse and thinks it is speaking of the Son, (Jesus) for they have read the 14th verse that declares, “And the Word was made 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.” Brothers and Sisters, that would be reincarnation if Jesus (the Son) had been with the Father in creation and left whatever form he was in then to take upon himself the body that came forth from the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Bible does not teach any such thing as that. The Bible teaches resurrection. Resurrection is the act or process f being reunited with the same. I repeat, the S-A-M-E body that you walked on earth in. Reincarnation would be where the same spirit being would come back in another body or form. You certainly cannot get the Bible to teach anything like that. But, Bro. Jackson, what does it mean the where it says, The same was in the beginning with God?” Let me say first of all, you should not even think of a flesh and blood being when you read that verse. There is no such thing as eternal Sonship even though some are teaching such thing. The reason they teach a thing like that is because they are without revelation concerning the Godhead. The flesh of Jesus Christ had a beginning some two thousand years ago. Therefore, we know that the flesh is not eternal. What do we say then to these questions? Simply this, the life that was in that flesh is what was with the Father in the beginning for it was eternal life. Please do not become confused here. Remember what we have said already. God, who in the beginning dwelt all alone, is a spirit. He had no physical form nor anything of matter yet He (THIS SOVEREIGN SPIRIT) could think and speak. That is why John said the Word was with Him in the beginning and that all things were made by the Word that was with God in the beginning. We have already explained how that God (who is Spirit) and His thoughts and His Word are all one and the same. Could you say that your thoughts are not you? Could you say that your word is not you? Of course not. You, your thoughts and your word are one. That is why John said (concerning the Word of God) that it was with God in the beginning, because it was just as much God as the sovereign Spirit from which it originated.
HOW WORD BECAME FLESH
None of the other gospel writers ever expressed their revelation as did John. He saw the oneness of God and had perfect understanding of the deity of Christ and wrote it in his account in very plain words. He understood how God, who had no physical form, created all things by His Word and how, in the fullness of time, He created a cell of life and placed it in the womb of a virgin girl who brought forth a son and called his name Jesus. John understood that in the veins of Jesus, flowed the only blood of all humanity that was not contaminated by sin from Adam’s disobedience. Why? Because it was a created blood. In other words God spoke and created Himself a human body that He could incarnate for the purpose of walking among man as one of them and afterward, offer that sinless body upon the altar of sacrifice for the sins of all mankind, but He allowed that body to come forth into the world in the same manner as any other little baby that is born of woman. This gave him an identity in the natural genealogy of mankind, but he did not have imputed death in his blood because he was not begotten by any man. He was begotten by the creative Word of God and that is why John said that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus was in the mind of God from before the foundation of the world just like everything else that God created by His spoken Word and that is the point we are endeavoring to make. Though the flesh had a beginning two thousand years ago, the eternal life which dwelt in that flesh was the very life of God which made Him God, incarnated in flesh. That did not empty the universe of the presence of God, for God is omnipresent (present everywhere) but Jesus Christ was every bit God. That is why the apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 2:9 (speaking of Christ) “For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Also, we find in 1 Timothy 3:16, these words, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; GOD was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” When Jesus uttered the words recorded in John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life;” He was not speaking of His flesh. He was speaking of the life of that flesh which was the eternal God. In his mind, before the foundation of the world, God saw the sun, the moon, the stars and the Milky Way, all the trees and animals of every species. He knew exactly what man would look like and what his span of days and years upon earth would be. Right here is where predestination and eternal security come into the picture. God knew exactly what He was going to create before He ever spoke. He knew exactly what man would do when he was tempted and He knew exactly what provision He would make for man to be reunited with Him after the fall. He knew which men would accept His provision for restoration and He knew the ones who would harden their heart against Him. Therefore, by foreknowledge (His ability to know the end from the beginning) he knew the destination of every person who would ever live upon the fact of this earth. By knowing the end from before the beginning, He was able to record the name of every person who would surrender their life to Him in this earthly journey. All their names were recorded in the Book of Life before Adam was ever created. Every detail was worked out in His mind and those thoughts later became His Word, but in the beginning, his Word was with Him, for He had not spoken any of those words. In the third verse we find John saying, “All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.” What does that verse say to us? If you read verses 1 and 2 correctly, this verse will tell you that God created everything upon the earth and even all the other planets by his Word. He simply spoke saying, Let there be thus and so, speaking that Word that was with Him in the beginning and it was so. Hallelujah! Saints, I am thankful to be serving a God who is able to carry through with His thoughts with perfect accuracy. There have been many who desired to be called God and there have been many gods through the span of the ages, but there is only one true God and He earned the right to be called God by making something out of nothing. True, He made man from the dust of the ground, but remember this, He is the one who made the dust. Often when we say that God made this or that, when there was nothing to make anything out of, someone will say, Tell me, Where did God come from? Brothers and sisters, that is a question we do not need to ask. If you are a believer, you know that God (Spirit) had no beginning. He always was. If you are not a believer, there is no answer that will satisfy you, but unless you are completely blind, you certainly must realize that there is a Higher power somewhere. All the celestial bodies being so precise that men are able to calculate, years in advance, certain conditions and positions, is not mere chance. They were designed by a Master Creator. Yes, all things were made by Him. Not by the flesh man Jesus, but by the Word of the eternal Spirit (God) that walked on earth in that flesh. In Jesus was a full expression of all the attributes of the eternal God. He was God, walking among men so that men could touch God. The flesh was not God, but it was a medium by which men could come to God. Prior to the days of Jesus, God could not be touched nor observed with the human senses. There were times when God would manifest Himself in some particular form in order to commune with men as He did with Abraham in Genesis, chapter 18, but these were all temporary manifestations for the purpose of getting man’s attention. When he veiled Himself in the flesh of Jesus, it was to be a permanent habitation. Jesus would be the Godman throughout eternity. As we said earlier, the flesh was strictly man, but it did not have inherited sin attached to it. There was no death dwelling in its physical structure, yet it was voluntarily subjected to death to pay man’s sin debt. Then it was raised from the dead to become the first fruits of them that slept. God is still in that body of flesh, but now it is immortal flesh having conquered death. It can never be touched by death again.
GOD IS LIGHT
Let us look at verse 4, in the 1st chapter of John. “In Him was life (in this God who is Spirit and Word) and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” This is the same light that you read of in Genesis 1:2-3, “and the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said, Let there be light; and there was light.” God is not only Spirit and Word, but He is light also. If you do not believe that God is light, then you will never get past Revelation 21:23 and 22:5, for John said, (speaking of that holy city, the new Jerusalem, which he saw coming down out of heaven in a vision,) “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the GLORY OF GOD DID LIGHTEN IT, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord god giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.” God is light; He is all light; there is no darkness in Him. He is the light that spoken in Genesis 1:3 and said, Let there be light. Do not think it strange when we say that God is Spirit and then that God is Word and now that God is light. He is all of this and much more. John recognized that light. That is what caused him to say, “The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Brothers and sisters, we were all born in sin, shapen in iniquity and until we were redeemed, we were in darkness, but now we are children of light. I am sure that most of you will confess along with me that when God shined His light upon our soul, it made us feel so condemned. I couldn’t stop until I had bowed down at an altar and said, God, come into my life and give me a know-so salvation. Now, what does that light do? It reproves men of sin and calls them into that marvelous light.
SOME CHOOSE DARKNESS
Some people do not want to get out of darkness. They are just like bugs, they love the darkness. I am not calling anyone a bug, I merely said that some of them are like bugs the way they enjoy the darkness. Did you ever go down into an old damp, dark basement with a flashlight? If you have, you know what I am referring to. When that light pierces the darkness, you can see bugs of every sort scurrying for a hiding place. That is exactly how sinful mankind reacts when the gospel is preached in its true revelation. When it begins to shine on their sinful hearts and reprove them or their sinful and wicked ways, they begin to say, I have got to get out of here. I cannot stay in the presence of this; I feel miserable. Saints, I am glad that Jesus Christ is a full expression of that glorious eternal light. He is the light, He is the door, He is the life, He is the way, He is everything. No wonder He could say, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)
DOORWAY TO LIGHT
God is everything we need, but He has purposed that men this side of Calvary must come to Him through Jesus Christ. He is the doorway into the presence of the eternal God who is light. The apostle Peter expressed it very clearly in 1 Peter 1:18-21, “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your VAIN CONVERSATION or BEHAVIOR received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you. Who do believe in God that raised Him up from the dead and gave Him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.” Just to sum that up in few words, Peter was saying, you are REDEEMED from your VAIN TRADITIONS, (which was darkness) handed down to you from your fathers, but the price of your redemption was the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ who was foreordained to shed His blood for all our sins from before the foundation of the world, (while it was all still in the mind of Elohim) but was manifest in these last days. Looking back, we can see that Jesus had his manifested beginning just about two thousand years ago, but as we said already, he was in the mind of God before creation ever began. Furthermore, all of God’s plan for creation and redemption was perfect, nothing was overlooked. Therefore, He only made one doorway for sinful man to come through to be reconciled to his Creator. That doorway is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which makes every other way that men are trying to reach God, vain and hopeless. “No man can come to the Father, but by me.”
IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD
Let us go now to the 14th verse of this 1st chapter of John. We have already talked some about it, but let us go back, now that we have fully established the fact that God created all things by His Word which were His thoughts before He started to speak. When you read in various scriptures that God created all things by Jesus Christ, you must realize that the writer is speaking from the standpoint of the eternal Spirit which dwelt in that body of flesh and think not, that the flesh of Jesus had anything to do with creation. 14 “And the Word was made 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.” How was the Word made flesh? God sovereignly created a cell of life by speaking the word and placed it in the womb of the young virgin Mary. That is how the word was made flesh causing Him to be the very image of the invisible God. Yet we find Jesus saying, “the Son in himself can do nothing,” speaking from the standpoint of the flesh of course. There was nothing impossible to the eternal Spirit that dwelt in that flesh. Let me read that verse of scripture from John 5:19 and when we read it, please keep in mind that the Son reference is to the flesh, the human side of Jesus the Christ and the Father reference is to the eternal Spirit, (God) that indwelt that flesh and blood man. We read, “Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth these also doeth the Son likewise.”
TRUTH WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE
Brothers and sisters, I just have to say this right here for the sake of the message. People who have been raised up to believe that God is three persons will read a verse like John 5:19 and almost be willing to fight anyone who mentions the fact that God is ONE and not THREE persons. Listen to me now, if you are one of those person’s who believe like that. Please! This whole message is being published just for the sake of giving you a chance to gain by revelation of the scriptures, the understanding of the Godhead. If you are willing to be honest with yourself in the presence of the God we are speaking of, I beg you, lay aside your traditional teaching and sincerely study this message. It can change your whole life. To further clarify the fact that GOD IS A SPIRIT, we will read John 4:22-24, with special emphasis on verse 24. Jesus spoke these words to a Samaritan woman who approached Him as he sat on the side of Jacob’s well one day. Verse 6 tells us that He was wearied with His journey. In other words, He was tired. This very scripture by itself proves the humanity of Jesus. God, who is a Spirit, does not get tired. (This is for you who try to place Jesus as the 2nd person of a trinity, which in the beginning said, “Let us make man in our image.” If he had been back there, He would not be sitting here on the side of a well, tired from walking.) No! God (who is Spirit) said to his angelic helpers, (which are spirit beings) “Let us make man in our image.” (In other words, a spirit being) But here sat Jesus (a young man in His early thirties) on the side of well, tired and thirsty. Along comes a woman of Samaria to draw water and He asked her for a drink. The woman thought it was very strange to have a Jewish man (as she commented) ask her for a drink since the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans, but Jesus told her that if she only knew who she was talking to, she would ask of Him and He would give her living water. The conversation went on, then Jesus said to her, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (Speaking of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of eternal life.) As they continued to talk, the conversation came around to how and where man should worship God. That brings us to verse 22. “Ye worship ye know not what: we (the Jews) know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. (He came to the Jews first and they rejected Him) But the hour cometh and now is when the TRUE WORSHIPERS shall worship the Father in SPIRIT and in TRUTH: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. (If you are still trying to worship God believing that He, (singular) is three persons, you are not worshipping Him in truth.) 24 GOD IS A SPIRIT: (now a Father and a Son and a Spirit co-existing as three distinct persons of a trinity, like Babylonian tradition teaches) and they that worship Him MUST worship Him in SPIRIT and in TRUTH.”
IDENTIFYING THE UNKNOWN GOD
When you attach the word Father to man, you have a person who can be seen, heard, touched and fellowshipped with through the physical senses, but when the same word is attached to God, it pertains to an omnipresent Spirit which can not be fellowshipped and worshipped through the five senses. Furthermore, as we said in the beginning, He is Father in that all things had their beginning in Him. He wasn’t even God until after He had created something that could worship Him. When He is called Father, it is because all life came from Him. It is no wonder the apostle Paul spoke as he did, standing in the midst of Mars Hill in Athens, Greece, that day. He had observed an altar dedicated TO THE UNKNOWN GOD as he passed a certain place. Therefore, when the philosophers prevailed upon him to declare unto them the strange or new doctrine he had been speaking of around the market place and in the synagogue, he said, I am going to tell you about this unknown God that you have been ignorantly worshipping, the God who is the creator of heaven and earth and all things therein. We are all His offspring by creation for He has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation. This is not an exact quote, but this is the thought that Paul was conveying to them as he spoke (Acts 17). Now when you begin to talk about offspring, you are talking about something that has descended from a source that could give life. Therefore, referring to God as Father, does not make Him a visible person that can be seen with the natural eye. It simply identifies Him as the source from which life originated. God who is Spirit began to express Himself in the earth by begetting offspring which carried a resemblance or likeness of Himself. He gave His offspring earthly bodies to have physical contact with the earth. Before Adam disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, he could move just as freely in the spirit world or realm of the spirit as he could in the natural surroundings where he was placed. He willingly forfeited that privilege and passed his penalty on down to the whole human race.
REVELATION IS THE KEY
Saints, we are trying to lay this message down clear and plain by the scriptures, but I realize there are a lot of people who will still try to interpret these scriptures carnally or I should say by the natural mind, strictly from a human level. I am here to tell you, they cannot be understood except by spiritual revelation. That is why Jesus said to the apostle Peter (Matt. 16:17) “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father (not a physical person, but a Spirit) which is in heaven.” What was he talking about? He (Jesus) had asked His disciples, Who do men say that I the Son of man am?” Naturally they answered that question according to what they had been hearing from the multitudes, but then He asked them another question and this time they were required to give their own answer. “He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?” Peter was always the impulsive one among them and before the others could answer, he burst forth with, “thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” How did he know that? Here was the very Life-giver Himself, incarnated in flesh, standing, talking to His disciples, but how did they know who He was? No man had ever seen the Father, but here He was, in flesh, communicating with them on their human level and Peter recognized Him to be the Christ, the anointed one that their forefathers had longed to see. How did he know? There was only ne way he could have known and that is the only way that you and I can know. That is by revelation of the spirit. Men can point you to a revelation, but unless God Himself opens up your spiritual understanding, all you will ever have is head knowledge, which will never be a real part of you like a revelation is.
HUMAN SIDE OF JESUS
Not very long ago, I received a letter with a certain question which I did not try to answer in personal correspondence. I thought at the time that it would be better to wait and preach a message that would answer the question and print it, for others have the same question. The question was; Bro. Jackson, I believe in the oneness of God and I believe that Jesus Christ was none other than God manifested in the flesh, but I have a question. Did Jesus have a human nature like other men? Yes! He absolutely did have a human nature. Listen carefully. Once life becomes expressed in human, earthly, physical form, it takes on a human side as well as a divine side. The human side is that which is intended by the Creator to have intimate contact with tangible things while the divine side is to have intimate contact and fellowship in the realm of the spirit. As we said earlier, when it comes to the flesh side of man, there are no two humans exactly alike. Even if you find two people who look exactly alike, close observation will reveal that their likes and dislikes are not the same. For instance, one may like cherry pie and not care a thing about apple pie, while the other one might be crazy about apple pie. Apple pie would cause the taste buds of that person to get full of saliva, just like mine do when cherry pie is mentioned. In other words, you can be sure that Jesus had some taste buds. He had affection and desires just like any other man or it could not be said of Him (Heb. 4:15) that He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. He did not yield to any of the temptations, but the point we are making is that if He had been completely divine, without any human nature, He could not have been tempted. That is where many people have their greatest difficulty in understanding the Godhead. They just cannot see how Jesus could be as human as anyone else and still be a full expression of the eternal God manifesting the works of God among men. You have two extreme factions in the religious world concerning this. No group holds that He is completely divine with no human feelings or emotions, while the other extreme denies His deity, claiming that He is just another creature made out of nothing, like all other created beings. True revelation causes us to see that both of these views are wrong. All one needs to do to settle that question is read the four gospels, carefully noting all the times that His human makeup is revealed as well as all the times that His divinity is displayed. When He wept over the city of Jerusalem and at the report of Lazarus’ death, that was human emotions. When He stopped in at the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus on His travels, that was human choice, but when He stood before the tomb where Lazarus had been lying dead for four days and cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth,” that was deity speaking. That did not come from the human side of Him. From the human standpoint, Jesus was very fond of this young man, Lazarus, but to further show the divine side of Jesus, let me point out to you that He never did call this young man to be one of His apostles. He walked along the sea shore and called men who were fishermen, smelling with the odor of their occupation, saying to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Why? This was the predestined plan of God, foreordained from before the foundation of the world. These were the men chosen by God when His words were still just unexpressed thoughts, before He began to create by speaking. If Jesus had chosen His apostles from the human standpoint, He would have just sort of sat around with these men until He had made friends with them, then he would have chosen the ones that impressed Him the most, but He did not choose these men like that. He chose them by revelation of the Spirit, never having tried any of them. We will say it like this, God spoke to them through the lips of Jesus saying, Follow me.
SUBMITTING TO DIVINE PURPOSE
We have used some illustrations in an effort to show you that Jesus Christ was both God and man, so please do not take what we have said and try to separate the human side of Him from the divine side. You cannot do that. By the spirit we see that God and Christ are one. Take for instance when the sisters of Lazarus sent word to Jesus about Lazarus being sick (John 11:3). They said, “Behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.” Notice verse 4 now. “When Jesus heard that He said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God that the Son of god might be glorified thereby.” The next verse tells us that Jesus loved Lazarus and his two sisters. We know that if Jesus had given in to human feelings when He received that report, He would have went running, but He submitted His human feelings to the divine purpose that was being worked out through this occasion. Two days later when He and His disciples were talking, He told them plainly that Lazarus was dead already and said to them, “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there to the intent that ye may believe.” He waited until the man died, then He went and raised him from the dead. That was God in action. Human responses are not like that at all. He loved these people humanly as well as divinely, but the divine purpose of God always had the pre-eminence in every situation in the life of Jesus as He walked on earth among men. On the other hand, it is very foolish for people to think that every little conversation Jesus had with people was the Word of God. I believe He was just as apt to comment about a beautiful flower or a cool refreshing breeze as anyone else, even though the life of that flower and the source of that breeze was the very Spirit that was in Him. The flesh did not have anything to do with either one in creation or in effect, but now that God is manifesting Himself to mankind in this human flesh, he is also using this flesh to fellowship man on a human level. The Bible does not go into detail about these things, but it does not have to. Surely we would have no trouble realizing that Jesus, as a little boy, played in the streets just like all the other little children did and played with the other children. If he had stayed secluded all his boyhood days as some are prone to believe he did, when he grew up, he never would have wanted to go among the multitudes. I do believe that he was a child that knew all along, every day of his life, that he was destined to be something for the Father, the eternal spirit. You will recall when he was 12 years old, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, according to their custom, but when they left, Jesus stayed behind and upon returning back to look for him, they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors (teachers and instructors in the law of Moses) both listening to them and also asking them questions insomuch that they were all astonished at his understanding and answers. When his mother questioned Him about his actions, he replied, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” He was not talking about Joseph when he answered Mary like that. He was talking about the eternal Spirit (God) that had created a cell of life in the womb of Mary when she was still a virgin and sent His angel to tell her that this child would be called the Son of the Highest and that his name should be called JESUS. By this, we know that Jesus grew up knowing that he had a purpose to fulfill which would be beyond the ordinary man, but that did not keep him from being just as human as anyone else. The scripture states that after the occasion in the temple when he was 12 years old, he went down with Joseph and Mary to Nazareth, their home town and was subject unto them (Luke 2:51). In other words, he obeyed them and respected their decisions. He grew up physically to an age of mental maturity. This set a pattern and a perfect example fr life on this earth. We have no record of his life between the age of 12, when he was in the temple at Jerusalem and 30, when he came to John the Baptist (or baptizer) to be baptized, but you can be sure of one thing, he was not a rebellious teenager who acted like he knew it all and Joseph and Mary were a couple of old fogies who didn’t know how things ought to be done. No! He was subject unto them as every teenager ought to be to their parents.
I AM THE RESURRECTION
I want to come back to Lazarus now, for this story which is recorded in the 11th chapter of John enables us to see so clearly both sides of Jesus, His divine nature on one hand and His human nature on the other. Jesus was beyond Jordan preaching, when the word reached Him that Lazarus or he whom thou lovest is sick. He sent a message back to Martha and Mary and stayed there two more days after that preaching to those who came out to hear Him. His reply to the messengers was not from His human nature, but strictly from the deity standpoint. He knew perfectly well as He spoke those words that Lazarus would be dead very shortly and it probably sounded to those messengers like He didn’t even care. This is probably what made His disciples sort of wonder two days later when He said, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” His disciples thought Lazarus was just taking a nap and that he should be left alone. This was done to get their attention. Therefore, Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.” When He finished speaking to His apostles on the matter, then He started for Bethany. By the time they arrived there, Lazarus had been dead four days. It was already in the 4th day since he died, we will say. Upon His arrival, one of the sisters came rushing out to meet Him saying, Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would never have died. They had seen what he did with the widow’s son in Galilee and all these others, but here is Martha saying, Lord, if only you had been here, he would not be dead. It just goes to show that they were looking at Him strictly from a human standpoint. Martha did go on to say, But I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. That is when Jesus said to her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha replied, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said, I am the resurrection. (The conversation really begins to get deep along about here. It looked like Jesus was just waiting to see what kind of revelation she would actually get.) This led Jesus to say, He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die. This is a spiritual statement. More than 1900 years have passed and all of those who believed in Him are physically dead, but they are spiritually still alive. When you carry that statement over to the end of the age, it will apply to a group of people who will not die physically nor spiritually.
LAZARUS RAISED FROM DEATH
Martha called her sister, Mary, saying to her, The Master is come and calleth for thee. Upon hearing this, Mary runs to Jesus saying much the same that Martha had said, but by this time most of them were weeping and Jesus just asked, Where have you laid him? They answered, Lord, come and see. Right here is where it is recorded that Jesus wept. Some said, Just look how much He loved him, while others said, It seems like a man that could open blind eyes could have prevented this man from dying. Their lack of understanding caused Jesus to groan within Himself as they came near the grave, but upon arriving at the cave where they had laid Lazarus, Jesus said to some of the men who were with them, Take away the stone. Martha said, Lord, by this time he will be stinking, for he has been dead four days already. (It seems like some of these critics who believe Jesus had to lay in the grave a full 3 days and 3 nights, “72 hours” ought to learn a little something from this account of Lazarus’ death and resurrection.) By this we see that when Lazarus passed that third day, he was stinking already, yet many of these fault finders insist that Jesus had to be buried a full 72 hours in order to fulfill scripture, when they have to walk right over another scripture to do so. That is the prophecy of David in Psalms 16:10, where he said, Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption (speaking of Jesus). When you pass that point, you are already entering the fourth day and these people knew that such a body would be stinking already. Jesus had deliberately waited until this dead man’s body had reached such a point of decay, knowing that eternal life, which is the fountain of all life, is not limited by circumstances such as these, for out of this occasion many should receive a revelation. Quite a crowd of people had gathered by the time the men had taken the stone from the opening of the cave where Lazarus lay and many of them were weeping, but all attention was focused upon Jesus. What will He do now? This was a question in the minds of all who stood there that day. Jesus lifted His head and prayed a short prayer of thanksgiving; then cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” Immediately, that man who had been dead four days stood before them, still bound hand and foot with graveclothes, just like he was when they laid him in that cave. He probably looked like a mummy and was helpless to loose himself, but, Praise God! He was alive. The words that called Lazarus forth and gave him his life again, came through the same lips that had fellowshipped this man and his sisters on a very human level in former days, but this time deity was speaking. This God man could weep one minute on a completely human level and speak life into a man the next, something that mere human could not do.
CAN GOD WEEP?
Christian Science, along with some others, deny the deity of Christ because of the very fact that He wept. They say, If He was God, He wouldn’t have wept. It is true that the omnipresent Spirit that fills all space cannot weep for the simple reason that a spirit has no tear ducts, but when that omnipresent Spirit incarnates a human body, even though that man is every bit human, he also is every bit God. Brothers and sisters, it may seem that we are dwelling on this point longer than you think we should, but please be patient for the sake of all those who have so much trouble trying to understand the Godhead. This is the most important revelation a person can get for every other genuine revelation is hinged upon knowing the God who is behind that revelation. If we dwell on a point for a little while, it gives everyone a chance to think and consider the things we are speaking of. Our only reason for printing a message such as this is to help those who desire to know the truth. We are not doing it to pick at anyone else. God is the source of all life and the God man, Jesus Christ, is none other than a full expression of that ONE GOD. He could carry on a natural conversation with His friends, but you can be sure of this, He never participated in an off color conversation, nor took part in foolish jesting. He was without sin in every aspect of life. When He spoke of spiritual things, He could say, These words that I speak unto you are not my words, they are the words of my Father, therefore, that which I speak unto you is not of me, but of my Father. The words that I speak unto you are Spirit and they are life. Why? Because He was the literal expression of God’s thoughts. The scriptures declare that He was full of grace and truth and in Him was no lie. He was the channel through which grace and truth was passed to man from the fountain of all truth, God, the sovereign Spirit. God is the fountain of all truth and He channeled that truth through the personal flesh body of Jesus Christ who was an outlet, chosen by God, before the world was created.
NOW I SEE
The reason I chose to approach this message from a New Testament setting was to show the readers of our paper just how men in that first century reacted to a revelation when they saw God come down on their level. If you can truly see that God did definitely come down and walk with man on his own level, it will help you to better understand later as we go back into the Old Testament to bring the revelation through the Bible. Later in the message we are going all the way back to Genesis 1:26-27, where God said, let us make man in our image and try to cover this Godhead subject from every angle of the scriptures. We are fully persuaded that there can not possibly be two separate revelations on any subject taken from this Bible. Therefore, by the help of God, we will try to make the one revelation on the Godhead so plain that it will automatically show up every other version to be of human origin and not by the revelation of the Spirit of God. Anything that is a genuine revelation must line up with everything else in the book and ultimately climax by forming one great big beautiful picture. In this message we want to deal with the 7 attributable names that God was called by and also prove by the scriptures that God never did speak of Himself in plural terminology. Trinitarians read certain verses in the Bible and without revelation, they do just exactly what Nicodemus did when Jesus told him that a man must be born again in order to see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus looked at what Jesus said strictly from a natural view-point saying, How can a man enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born? Any man who looks into this book and sees God as three persons coexisting in complete unity is just as carnal in his thinking as Nicodemus was. Brothers and sisters, I do not say this to ridicule you. I say it as a fact, for there was a time when I was just as carnal in that area as anyone else and except for the grace of God, I might still be blind, but praise His wonderful name, He opened my eyes and now I see and now that I see, I desire for everyone of you to see also. Once you see exactly who Jesus is, you will understand better the depth of what He said to the Samaritan woman at the well that day. Jesus said to her, If you only knew who it is asking you for a drink, you would ask Him and He would give you living water (John 4:10). A little later He said to her, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst again; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” These words were coming from the lips of the man Jesus, called the Son of God, but that which was said proceeded forth from the Father that was in Him.
JOHN SAW ONLY ONE
Every time a trinitarian hears the word Father, they think of a person. They know the Son is a person, therefore, when the Holy Ghost is mentioned, they automatically think of another person. You can show them scriptures like 1 Timothy 3:16, “and without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: GOD was manifest in the FLESH, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, PREACHED UNTO THE GENTILES, believed on in the world, RECEIVED UP INTO GLORY,” and regardless of how many scriptures you show them, stating that God is one and that God and Christ are one, they will still argue with you until they are blue in the face if you will let them. They will say, I know there is three, Grandma had a vision where she was caught up into heaven and she saw all three of them. Let me tell you something, if Grandma saw three, she sure wasn’t in heaven. I am not saying that she went anywhere else, but there is one thing for sure. She did not go to heaven and see three. John went to heaven in a vision and he only saw one. There hasn’t been anyone else up there since then that saw more than one either. He saw one and that one was Jesus Christ and He was sitting on a throne, but one day in the near future He will leave that throne and come back to get a group of people that have known who He is and have been conformed to His very image. I do not mean that their physical appearance will look like Him, but spiritually, in every aspect, they will be like Him.
PAUL’S REVELATION
This far we have based most of our comments on the writings of the apostle John, one of the fishermen who walked in the footsteps of Jesus during the 3╜ years of His ministry on earth, but now I would like for us to go to Ephesians 1:1 to pick up the writing of another apostle, one who never walked with Jesus, the one who wrote most of the New Testament letters and whose revelation lined up perfectly with John’s, the apostle Paul. Notice how he starts his Ephesian letter, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, (he did not hold back on declaring his apostleship even though he was not one of the Twelve,) to the saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.” The Gentile churches were founded upon this man’s revelation and teaching, but the apostle John closed HIS personal ministry by writing the last revelation given to the church, the book of Revelation, which we call God’s love letter to the Gentile bride even though most of it is written about the Jews. Paul was a man who could stand up and defend his revelation as well as his apostleship. Listen to how he did just that in the Galation letter 1:10-12. “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Listen) But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” He goes on to remind them of his former life as a Pharisee and how he profited in the Jews religion above many until such time as it pleased God, who separated him from his mother’s womb and called him by His grace to reveal His Son in him in order that he might preach Him among the heathen; (Gentiles). He says, I did not immediately go up to Jerusalem to confer with them who were apostles before me, but rather, I went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. In other words, he took his scrolls and went out into the Arabian Desert alone and the Lord Jesus Christ taught him by revelation of the Spirit. Now, we are going to pick up with verse 2 in Ephesians 1 and read Paul’s revelation. “Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” Now that may sound to some of you like Paul was speaking of two persons when he greeted the people like that, but you will see as we read on in this chapter that Paul expressed his revelation of God very clearly. Nevertheless, this is one of the verses that trinity people use trying to prove their three god doctrine. It seems that some people spend so much time just picking at the scriptures that it is almost impossible for them to get hold of a revelation. Saints, I am so thankful to God that He opened my blind eyes so that I do not spend my time just picking at the scriptures trying to find something to prove a particular doctrine or something that will not cross the feelings of prominent men in my congregation. When God opens our eyes to truth, we give up that pickiness and just begin to feast. It reminds me of bygone days when a nickel for an ice cream cone was hard to come by. On the occasions when I had the nickel and was able to get to town where I could spend it, I did not stand around picking and fussing about what flavor of ice cream I wanted. If it was ice cream, just let me at it regardless of the flavor. I am the same way about truth from the word of God. If it is truth, just let me have it even if it hurts this old flesh or separates me from something I have been holding on to. The only time I am picky is to be sure that I am receiving truth.
GOD’S CHANNEL OF BLESSINGS
When Paul said, Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, do not think he was speaking of two persons. He approached this in the same manner that John did. Just as John went all the way back before time had a beginning, so also did Paul and this is his way of approaching it. First, by referring to the Father in the sense of creation and secondly, by referring to Jesus, the avenue by which this sovereign, creating Spirit had personal contact with His creation. You will notice in verse 4 that Paul takes his revelation all the way back before the foundation of the world just like John, but first let us read verse 3. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” Pay attention to how Paul says this. Blessed be the God (who is the object of worship) and Father (who had begotten us all through His creative process) of our Lord Jesus Christ (the channel through which grace and peace was extended to the human race). Paul knows and desires to have others know that it is through the Lord Jesus Christ that we have access to this sovereign, omnipresent, creating Spirit. The spiritual blessings are what God does for us by the Holy Ghost. In other words, these blessings are in the realm of the spirit, but Paul is exalting the channel through which these blessings are extended to us (the Lord Jesus Christ). Yes, we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, but it is through Jesus Christ. When Jesus was on earth, he could only touch a limited number of people, but when He ascended from the earth, He left a promise. You will find it in Acts 1:5,8. Just before He ascended, He said, “For John truly baptized with water but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” I want you to know, when Jesus spoke of baptism, He was not talking about sprinkling of a few drops of water upon them, nor was He using the term in relation to pouring a little water upon them. When He said baptize, He was talking in terms of being immersed, completely covered as in the case of one being buried and then resurrected, which is what Romans, chapter 6, explains more fully. Therefore, to be baptized is to be completely covered, immersed, saturated with the agent by which we are baptized. In Acts 1:5, Jesus left a definite promise or stated fact that they would be BAPTIZED with th Holy Ghost very shortly. Then in verse 8, He spoke further upon the subject. “But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: (remember, He called it baptism in verse 5) and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Now some will say, But that was just for the people of that first age. No, it is for as many as the Lord our God shall ever call. We will read that from Acts 2:38-39 where Peter was preaching on the day of Pentecost when three thousand souls believed were baptized, in water and received the Holy Ghost. Let us read, “Then Peter said unto them. Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off, EVEN AS MANY AS THE LORD OUR GOD SHALL CALL.” Praise God, Brothers and Sisters, that is where we were included in the promise. Do you see where that places us when we believe and obey the gospel? It means that we become partakers of all the heavenly blessings that Christ Jesus purchased for the family o God with His own blood at Calvary.
PATTERN OF HOLINESS
We will look at verse 4, Ephesians 1, now and see if Paul does not have the same revelation as John about when God began to set the wheels of His great plan in motion. We will go back and read verse 3 again to get them both together in our thoughts. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. (Notice now) According as He (God) hath chosen us in Him (when?) Before the foundation of the world, (when you choose, it requires you to think, meditate and plan, which is what God did before He ever spoke those creative words) that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. We make our plans for the future, but because we do not know what the future holds, all our plans are subject to circumstances. Therefore, we can only make tentative plans, but with God, since all circumstances are in Him, He could lay out the plans for all time and eternity in His great mind before the foundation of the world and there is nothing that can prevent every one of his thoughts from coming to pass. All eternity is in Him. Every one of us were a part of His fixed thoughts before He began to create. As we said earlier, the flesh of Jesus was not even in the picture, except in the mind of God as He thought and planned. That is where every one of us were. When we became fixed in the thoughts of God, His objective for us was that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Now I ask every one of you this question, What did man know about being holy? Down through time, men knew that God was holy, but what did mere humans know about how to be holy? I am asking this question because I want you to think about it for just a moment. We see here that God purposed in Himself that we should be holy and we see in the Old Testament scriptures that men have tried to write about the holiness of God, but until He manifested Himself in the human form of Jesus, no more than two thousand years ago, men did not have a pattern of holiness, an example that they could look to and pattern themselves after. Now we see Jesus, a full expression of the holiness of God, and we learn from the scripture that God has purposed to work His great plan of redemption and holiness in us until we are conformed to the very image of Jesus Christ. In other words, God Himself had to come down and walk among men in human flesh in order for man to know what kind of sons God desired to have when his redemption process is finished. In other words, the only way we can be holy is to be like Jesus. Man made versions of holiness are just the devil’s way to get man’s eyes off of Jesus and get them looking at themselves. I have always said that God requires a life of holiness, but that holiness must be according to the Bible. There are no acceptable substitutes. Some people get so wrapped up in their man made ideas of holiness, that they get completely away from God. They become so crankified that God has no place in their lives. Brothers and sisters, I must say this right here for the sake of the message. I am not saying it just to run someone else down. The Amish and Mennonites are good examples of man made holiness or should I say of man’s ideas of what holiness is? They refuse to partake of any form of what they call luxury even to the point of not having an automobile and some of them will not even have buttons on their clothes. Their mode of dress has been the same for nearly four centuries now. Why? It is because they believe that our form of dress is completely of the world. There is nothing wrong with people riding horses if that is what they want to do. I like to ride a horse now and then myself, but there is no virtue as far as holiness goes in using horses instead of automobiles. I will just say this and then we will move on to verse 5. Saints, there is a very fine line or narrow margin between godliness and worldliness when we begin looking at the word of God. That is why we must have the Holy Ghost. God wants us to be holy, but it must be His holiness and there is no chart that we can tack up on the wall to go by. We must be led by the Spirit of God.
PREDESTINATION
We learned from verses 3 and 4 that we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ and that is according to God’s own choosing from before the foundation of the world, but look what verse 5 says about that operation of God. “Having PREDESTINATED us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of HIS WILL.” Did you notice that we were predestinated according to God’s own will? You know there are a lot of Evangelical people running around these days, harping that anyone can be saved. What about that? They get that idea from the verse of scripture in 2 Peter 3:9, where Peter is talking about the longsuffering grace of God toward us, for God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Let us interpret the scriptures correctly now. Does that verse say that anyone can be saved? Isaiah and John both wrote, Whosoever will, let him come and partake of the water of life freely. Let him that hath no money come and buy without money, but does that say that anyone can be saved? This is God’s universal call to mankind, but we cannot put those scriptures ahead of all the other scripture that we have to consider. In John 6:44, Jesus said, “No man can come to me except the Father (Spirit) which hath sent me draw him.” Then in verse 65 of that same chapter, He said, “No man can come to me except it were given unto him of my Father.” Jesus also said, “many are called, but few are chosen.” So you see, when we begin to level this thing up by putting all these scriptures in the scales of time, we have no scriptural authority to declare that just anyone can be saved. We will also see that man is not running God’s program, God is still in control. Men may have their text books and their carnal plans, but God is building His kingdom on spiritual revelation in the hearts of those who believe. As I see it, the main reason so many people fight against predestination is because they do not understand it. They obviously think that it means God created some men to be saved and others to be lost. That is not the fact of it at all. Pre, speaks of before, and destination, speaks of the end. Therefore, the great omnipresent, omnipotent God who is also omniscient, meaning that He knows everything, knew before He ever created man upon the face of the earth, who would accept His plan of redemption and also, who would reject it. Therefore, our destination was pre-determined by the foreknowledge of God and that allowed Jesus to say, Of all that the Father has given me, none of them are lost. Because of that foreknowledge, Jesus Christ could look into the faces of men and know their destination before they ever said a word. That is why He did not hesitate to tell a certain group, You are of your father, the devil, one day when they were contending with Him. He knew who they were. God did not create them to go to hell, but God knew what they would do with their choice in their hour of visitation. Some will say, If God already knows every man or person who will be saved, then why preach the gospel? And why worry about people being saved? God did not tell us to worry about anything, but He has purposed to have His children called to their inheritance by the preaching of the gospel and those who do the preaching do not know who will believe nor who will not. That is why the gospel is preached to all men everywhere. Brothers and sisters, I rejoice in the fact that God knows everything. He wouldn’t be much of a God if He didn’t. The only reason we can have complete confidence in Him is because we know in our heart that He has every area of His plan for the ages under complete control. Nothing is run haphazardly. We may go bankrupt down here and we may build air castles and have a lot of day dreams that never become reality or responsibilities that we fail to fulfill, but God is not like that. Hallelujah! Everything with Him is right on schedule. All He asks of us is that we get caught up in His spirit, in His love and fellowship. The world may look upon us as a bunch of fanatics, doing a lot of crazy things, but I say this, they have had 6000 years to produce something that God would put His approval on and all they have been able to do is just speed poor lost sinners along their road to hell. David wrote in Psalms 9:16-17, “the lord is known by the judgment which He executeth, the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God.” Brothers and sisters, America is fast forgetting God and on her road to hell. It is almost unbelievable that a nation whose founding fathers believed in God and based their lives on Godly principles could stoop so low as this nation has. By this we can see why God chose a race of people to upbreed for the purpose of conveying a revelation of Himself to this sinful world. For that reason, the Bible is a Jewish book, handed over to Gentiles until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. Then the Jews will get it back.
ADOPTION
Let us look at Ephesians 1:5 for a few more remarks. God predestinated us unto the adoption of children. We all know what the word adoption means in our present society. By law, the adopted child stands in line to inherit from the adoptive parents just the same as a child born to the parents. Here we see that we are adopted into the family of God and some will say, But I thought we were born into the family of God by the new birth? Remember, Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. All the rest of us were born in sin, wandering through this world like a bunch of homeless paupers until God’s grace touched our lives. He picked us up from a life of hopelessness, imputed His righteousness to us through a divine act, placed His Spirit within us and declared us to be joint heirs with Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son. If that isn’t adoption, then please tell me what it is. To be born is to be projected into life. A baby is not given life when it is born. It already has life. Birth is the process or act whereby that living being is projected into an environment. A man and his wife might take a child into their home, feed and clothe it and treat it exactly like their natural born children, but if they never did legally adopt that child, it could never be a legal heir with the other children. That is how it is with this family of God. Jesus said in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, (makes alive) the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” All who believed those words were actually receiving life, but until they were filled or baptized with the Holy Ghost, they were not legal heirs with the only begotten Son of God. It is the Holy Ghost that actually places that seal of adoption on us so that we can never be disinherited. God does not make any mistakes. We do not receive the seal (Eph. 4:30) unless we are of those who God knows will endure until the end. In Romans 8:15, the apostle Paul referred to the Holy Ghost as the Spirit of adoption. Now we are talking about the fact that God is one in this message, so please notice here in verse 5, that this adoption was according to the good pleasure of His (singular) will. Then, drop down to verse 9 and we will read it. Paul is talking about how God has dealt with us in so many wonderful ways. “Having made known unto us the mystery of HIS will according to HIS good pleasure which HE hath purposed in HIMSELF.” That verse leaves no doubt about Paul’s revelation of the ONENESS of God.
THE FAMILY NAME
Alright, we are adopted into the family of God. First, we take on a name and that name is Jesus, the redemptive name of the Father. You say, How do you get that? Look at John 17:6, where Jesus is praying to the Father, He says, “I have manifested thy NAME unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.” Did He manifest any name other than His own name among those who followed Him? Of course not. That is why we read in Acts 4:12, where Peter was speaking to the rulers and elders of the Jews concerning the lame man that was instantly healed showing them that it was by the name of Jesus Christ and said to them, “Neither is their salvation in any other name: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” Then we read in Ephesians 3:14-15, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, (not another person, but a life giving omnipresent Spirit) of whom the WHOLE FAMILY in heaven and earth is NAMED.” After we take on the family name, then we are placed or positioned in the family. After this placing, we begin to execute and carry out the will of our Father in this adopted role. Just think about it. Before time began, our adoption was in the thoughts of God, our Father. Now that wasn’t three persons making those plans or it would have been written that it was done according to their will and according to their good pleasure instead of using the singular, masculine term. If there had been three persons, as trinity people teach, then neither one of them could have acted in an individual way. They teach that God is three persons, coexisting in perfect unity. That leaves no room for anyone to refer to God as HIM or HIS WILL. Do you understand what I am saying? We must keep this thing in the scriptures. Recently, when my wife and I were in India, we saw a painting on a wall there which was supposed to be Buddha’s concept of God. It showed one manlike body with three heads. That supposedly was Buddha’s concept of God, but such a creature would be a freak and God is not a freak. Even as far-fetched as that may seem, it is no more ridiculous than trying to explain Him (God) as three persons, co-equal in authority and in complete unity in the face of all the scriptures that declare He is one and that prior to His incarnation, He did not even have a physical form.
GOD STILL SPEAKS
It may be that I should take time right here to clarify what we said about the Word being made flesh. We explained the miraculous conception in the womb of the virgin, Mary, but I feel that I should clarify the fact that all of God’s Word was not made flesh. It was only the part of His Word that pertained to redemption that was made flesh. The sun, the moon, the stars, the trees and everything else that was made was also part of the Word of God, but none of these things sinned as did man. All that God ever created was first a thought and His thoughts became His Words in creation, but when John said that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, he did not mean that every bit of God who is omnipresent became flesh. If that had been the case, he no longer would have been omnipresent. He would have been present only in the flesh of Jesus. No, it was only that portion of God’s thoughts which pertained to redemption, that became flesh. The omnipresent Spirit still had the ability to speak and function in all the rest of the universe even after He incarnated the flesh. Take for instance, when Jesus came to John to be baptized. As soon as John raised Him up out of the water, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and lighting upon Him, a voice from heaven declared, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That showed that God could still speak and that He did not have to speak through lips of flesh. Another instance was when Jesus took Peter, James and John up to a high mountain where He was transfigured before them. When Peter got all enthused about it and wanted to build three tabernacles, one for Jesus, one for Elias and one for Moses, a bright cloud overshadowed them while Peter was still speaking and a void out of the could said “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” That was God speaking and what He was really saying was this, From now on, when you want to hear from God, you listen to Him. Now they could walk right up and ask God a question just like they would anyone else, but do not forget this, God did not vacuum all of Himself into that body of flesh. If you will remember this, it will keep you from becoming lop-sided with your revelation of the Godhead. The fact that Isaiah, in his prophecy concerning a child that would be born unto them upon whose shoulders would rest the government, and whose name would be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace, said all these things, does not make the human flesh God, nor the Father, but The Mighty God, which is The Everlasting Father was manifesting Himself to the world through that flesh. In other words, God’s thoughts pertaining to redemption, became flesh. Then let me say this, as we study the gospels, we see that this God-man concerned Himself with every aspect of man’s redemption.
THROUGH THE BOOK
We are going into the book of Genesis now, for I want to illustrate something for you. Up until now we have been dealing with scriptures that focused our attention on God as He was in the beginning before time had its beginning. What I want to do now as we enter into the scriptures that actually deal with, or in time, is to take the trinitarian side of the Godhead question and try to show you where such an idea will lead you when you try to take it through the scriptures. Remember what we have said before, any idea that will not line up with the whole Bible is not of God for the whole Bible was written by various men who wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of God.
ILLUSTRATION
Now, let us just suppose that I wanted to accept this idea that God is three persons, each one with a distinct personality of his own and that they worked together in creation. Will I be able to line that up with the scriptures or will I have to go to man’s book of creeds to find something that will agree with this idea? Turn with me to Genesis 1:26, and we will begin. Remember now for the sake of this examination of the scriptures, we are assuming that God is three persons and when we come to this verse of scripture, we are believing that one of the three said, “Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Naturally, for the sake of this illustration, we will say that the other two agreed to the suggestion. Remember, a suggestion is all it could be if two other equal in authority, persons, was to be in on this endeavor. Now we come to verse 27, where the agreed to plan was set in motion. “So God created man (up to this point it could still be three persons) in HIS own image.” Oops! There is something wrong here. Which one’s image was man created in? Oh well! I will read some more. Maybe it will explain it. “In the image of GOD created HE HIM.” You know, that sure sounds like only one of them was doing the creating and He created the man in His own image. Nevertheless, I am not going to let just one verse of scripture change my whole idea about God. After all, I have been taught ever since I was a little boy in Sunday school, that God is three persons, so I must be missing something here. I think I will read further on down and skip this part for now. Verse 29 “And GOD said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth.” I just do not understand that. Could that have been written wrong? Why doesn’t it say, WE have given you? It just keeps on saying I, instead of WE, everywhere I read. There must be some mistake. I have always believed God is three persons, co-equal in authority, and anyone knows that neither one of the three would have any right to keep saying, I all the time without recognizing the other two. I think I will just quit reading here, close the Bible, and then open it, trusting the Lord to show me what to read. OH! Right to the book of Joshua, this must be what I am supposed to read. Chapter 1, “Now after the death of Moses, the servant of the LORD (Let’s see now, Moses must have been a servant of the SON) it came to pass that the LORD spoke unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses minister, saying, Moses MY servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which-I-do give them.” Joshua is doing the same thing. He is talking about God as though there was only one person in the Godhead and I am sure there are three. I think I will read somewhere else. Surely the Lord will lead me to something that is written, right. I think I will just close my eyes and stick my finger in the pages, then I will read whatever the tip of my finger is closest to. Oh! Yes! David was a man that knew all about God. This should be good. Psalms 68:20, “HE that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto God the LORD belong the issues from death. But God shall wound the head of HIS enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses. The LORD said, I -will bring again from Bashan, I – will bring MY people again from the depths of the sea.” That’s enough of that. It seems like every where I read in the Old Testament, they are all talking about God as though they didn’t even know that there are three of them. I think I will read something from the New Testament. After all, they do say that all of the Old Testament has been fulfilled already anyhow.
CHECKING PAUL’S REVELATION
I have heard that the apostle Paul knew all abut God. I will read something that he wrote. I will just kinda skip around and read whatever my eyes fall on. 2 Timothy 2:15, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” Oh yes, this is better. I have always been told that we ought to study. Let’s see now. What do we have here? 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” That says all scripture. That must include the Old Testament as well as the new. I will just turn the page. Titus, chapter 1, “Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, (Paul mentioned two of them in the first verse) according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began But hath in due times manifested His Word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of GOD our SAVIOR.” I have always thought that Jesus is our Savior, but surely the apostle Paul could not be worn, for it seems like most of the New Testament epistles were written by him. What is this here? Ephesians 4:4, “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling: ONE LORD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM, ONE GOD AND FATHER OF ALL, who is ABOVE ALL and THROUGH ALL, and IN YOU ALL.” That says that God the Father is in us and I just read in Colossians 1:27 last week where it said that CHRIST, in us, is the hope of glory. Seems like I remember that Brother – read me a verse from Acts 2:4 and it said, They were all filled with the HOLY GHOST. Could it be that all three persons of the trinity are in us? That sure is confusing. There must be something that I don’t know about all this.
MALE CHAUVINIST
Brothers and sisters, I am sure that my critics will find fault with this little hypothetical illustration that I have used, but I believe it will help honest hearted souls who desire to examine what they have been feeding into their spirits from man’s traditions. All who believe God is three persons need to have occasion to ask themselves which one of the three we are created in the image of. They also need to face the questions of why God is spoken of in masculine, singular terminology throughout the rest of the scriptures, whether He is doing the talking Himself or someone else. The real truth of the whole matter in this, in order for a person to believe the trinity version of God, they have to shut themselves up in a dark closet of tradition and flatly refuse to let any light whatsoever shine in. If they allowed any light at all to shine in their little closet, they would soon see that what they think they believe, is a scriptural impossibility. Also, these blind leaders of the blind, who read Genesis 1:27, where it says that, “God created man in HIS own image, in the image of God created HE Him: male and female created HE them, and think that means that God is a woman are just about as far off of the revelated word as anyone can get. They use the terms, Male chauvinist, something I never even heard of until a few years ago. I never was taught that word when I was growing up. There was no need for it. I will say this though, if they want to vote for women’s liberation, that is their business. I will not physically try to stop them, but regardless of what they do, they will never change God one bit. God has always been identified in the masculine gender and He always will be. Females do not begat offspring. Let us look at this 27th verse like this. Since God, as Father, is not a man in the sense of being a man or a woman, this makes it very simple for any right-thinking person to understand that He who is now becoming a Father is one who has the authority, the ability, and the choice of taking of Himself to make another like Himself. Since He is a Spirit, then that which He is begetting is another Spirit being and since it was in His mind to have the man reproduce himself upon the earth after he received his flesh body and since He had determined for it to be done through a male-female relationship, it was necessary for there to be a female. They were in the image of God because they were spirit beings. Now some will say, But Bro. Jackson, the Bible says that Eve was made from one of Adam’s ribs, so how does that add up? That is very simple to answer. You are now talking about flesh bodies, and verse 27 does not have any flesh in it at all. Therefore, when God said Let us make man in our image, He was speaking of a spirit being, but if God is only one instead of three, who was He talking to? That is very simple to answer also. He was talking to His angelic helpers which are spirits also. God had an angelic family long before He ever created man. How do you know that, Bro. Jackson? The Bible is full of evidence to establish that, but I will only call your attention to one thing right now, that should be sufficient. You will all agree that it was the devil which inspired the serpent to seduce Eve in the garden that day and you will have no trouble establishing the fact that the devil was formerly known as Lucifer, the chief among the angelic family until he tried to exalt himself above God and God had to cast him out of heaven, never to be reinstated. We do not have the space to go into all that, but you can read it in Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekial 28:11-19, as well as other places. Nevertheless, you will find that this Lucifer was cast out of heaven before God ever created man. Therefore, when I say that God was talking to his angelic helpers when he said, “Let us make man in our image,” I feel that I have the whole Bible to back up that statement, but you who say that He was talking to the other two person’s of the trinity have no other scripture that you can use as the authority for making such a statement. I say that here, because some have said, Bro. Jackson, that is just your idea about all this.
WHOSE WORD IS IT?
Brothers and sisters, I am just a human being, but I feel that I am doing what God has called me to do. Therefore, whether these be my words in this message or whether they be God’s words, will be proved out in eternity. In the meantime, by the help of God, I intend to furnish enough scripture to satisfy every person who is willing to let God speak to them by His written word. I have searched the Bible through, knowing that the word, US, had to pertain to something other than God Himself. Gen. 1:26, is not the only time you find God saying, Let us, but right now, I would like to go to Hebrews and show you what kind of revelation the apostle Paul had about angels, then we will go from there. Turn with me to Hebrews 1:1. To me, this is where angels are clearly recognized as having a part in what God does. We have already read Ephesians 1 to find out what Paul said to them about the great plan of God and the process by which we have attained the place in Christ that we have, so now we want to see what this same little Jew has to say about angels. I realize there are a lot of critics who will rise up and say, He doesn’t know for sure that the apostle Paul wrote Hebrews, but brothers and sisters, there are keys to those things and to me, the key to who wrote the Hebrew letter is in chapter 13, verse 23. It was Paul who was always talking about Timothy. You do not find the other New Testament writers associated with Timothy, but Paul constantly referred to him.
LOOKING BEYOND THE FLESH
Alright now, Heb. 1:1, “God, who at sundry time (that means at various times) and in divers manners (different ways) spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, (the fathers here are the patriarchs) hath in these last days (it has been the last days ever since the advent of Christ) spoken unto us by His Son, (Jesus Christ) whom He hath appointed heir of all things by whom also He made the worlds.” Let me say once again that it was not the flesh of Jesus that made the worlds, but rather that which was in that flesh, the eternal God. Just as it was in His thoughts to become a man one day for the purpose of redeeming His creation, it was also in His thoughts to have that creation in the first place. It was all manifested by His word and now His word is being manifested through Jesus or has been, and now Paul is writing about it and bringing it out this way. Verse 3, still talking about Jesus, “Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power.” To put this in my own words, this is Paul’s way of saying, God, who is light, who is power and unto whom belongs all glory, is manifesting all His attributes and virtue through Jesus, making Jesus a full expression of what man had never been privileged to see prior to that and Paul desires to give Him this exalted place, making sure that He is distinguished apart from every other man. It was not that a person would see a halo of light nor a ball of fire if they met Jesus in the road. That is what men had been seeing in the Old Testament period and it scared some of them half to death. No, God wanted men to see Him on the level where he lived, yet He wanted them to be able to see the beauty of a life lived above sin, a life of perfect morality and perfect character, so that when they caught a revelation of who He was, they could say, as did John, We beheld His glory. In the 14th chapter of John, we find that Phillip had not discovered yet who he had been walking with, for he said to Jesus one day, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus said unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Phillip? He that hath seen ME hath seen the FATHER; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I – am in the FATHER, and the FATHER in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the FATHER THAT DWELLETH IN ME, He doeth the works,” (8-10). After all those months of walking with Jesus, seeing the 5,000 people fed from five barley loaves and two fishes, the raging storm stilled, the dead raised to life again, the lepers cleansed, and all the other works that He did, Phillip had never looked beyond the flesh. That was God in action and they should have recognized it. God’s thoughts were flowing out through the mouth of Jesus just like electricity flows out through a light bulb. The bulb itself cannot give light unless it is hooked up to the source of power. The bulb is jut the transmitter of the power that makes the light. By the same token, the flesh of Jesus could do nothing by itself. It was just as limited as any other normal flesh being; it was subject to the law of gravity, and every other law of this old earth, but brother, there was something inside the flesh of that man that was not subject to any of those laws and that is what Paul was writing abut. He had never seen Him like that, in person, but he could talk like he did because he had seen Him in a vision on the road to Damascus and because he had come to know Him by revelation of the Spirit. Therefore he says, (talking about Jesus) “Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of his power, (power, here, means authority) when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Brothers and sisters, when Paul speaks of Jesus sitting on the right hand of the Majesty on high, he is not talking about another person. Majesty on high, implies supreme authority, supreme royalty, or supreme position. On earth, the term your Majesty, is used in reference to people, especially in the days when kings and rulers of nations was the supreme authority over that people. The term was never applied to janitors, gate keepers, nor servant type people though. It is reserved for those of supreme authority. It speaks of one recognizing the supreme authority of another. Therefore, we see Jesus taken into the heavens and seated on the right hand of glory, power and authority. It was all invested in Him, by Jehovah, the eternal God, who, being spirit, had no physical form that Jesus could sit down beside of. In Matthew 28:18, when He was giving the great commission to His disciples, Jesus said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” (You who insist that God is three persons, co-equal in authority, ought to meditate on that verse 18 for awhile, then perhaps you would be better able to understand verse 19.) The eternal God, (who is one Spirit and not three persons) has invested in Jesus, all power and authority. Therefore, it was right that Thomas, after his eyes were open, said to jesus, MY LORD AND MY GOD. He had finally seen that this was God, walking with them in human flesh, but by this time it was immortal flesh.
MINISTERING SPIRITS
As we come to verse 4 in this 1st chapter of Hebrews, Paul begins referring to the angels and this is the main reason we are reading these verses. We want to establish the angels place in the plan of God and this is a good place to start. Paul has been talking about Jesus and now he says, “Being made so much better than the angels as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. (Paul knows that angels play a big part in what God does) 5, For unto which of the angels said He (God) at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to Him a Father and He shall be to me a Son? And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, He saith, And let all the angels of God worship Him and of the angels He saith, Who maketh His angels spirits and His ministers a flame of fire.” You will notice that while Paul is exalting Jesus Christ, he goes on to say that they (the angels) are spirits and since God is a Spirit, that very verse of scripture ought to begin to let us see who God was talking to in Gen. 1:26, when He said, “Let US make man in our image.” Paul knew that God did not create angels just to be idly present while God Himself did everything that was to be done. We ourselves talk about all the things that God has done, but upon careful investigation one can learn that angels have always been instruments through which God dealt with mankind. Paul said a little later in the Hebrew letter that angels are ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. This shows that they have a place in God’s plan of redemption. In Psalm 34:7, David said, “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, (GOD) and delivereth them.” In the 63rd chapter, we find Isaiah speaking about the loving kindness of the Lord toward Israel and in verse 9, he says, “In all their affliction He was afflicted and the ANGEL of His presence saved them.” I am thinking also of the account in Matthew 4, where Jesus was tempted of the devil after His baptism. We find the devil even quoting scripture about angles. He said something like this to Jesus, If you are really the Son of God, you ought not be afraid to jump off of this high place, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Then we find that after the temptation was finished and the devil had left Him, ANGELS came and ministered to Jesus. Then in Luke 16:22, we find that the beggar, Lazarus, died and was carried by the ANGELS into Abraham’s bosom. If you have a concordance you might find it very interesting just to search out and read all the scriptures where angels are doing something in the plan of God.
LET US TAKE HEED
For our next reference on angels, let us go back to Hebrews and read the first three verses of chapter 2. Paul says, “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word SPOKEN BY ANGELS was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him.” We were after the part about the word being spoken by angels, but read all three verses to keep from breaking the thought. Paul is admonishing these people to give earnest heed to the things which they have heard, calling to their attention the act that every transgression of the word of God will be dealt with and that it was even so when that word was delivered by angels. Now some of you may say, But I thought angels were not supposed to preach. That is right. God has called men to do that, but angels went to Sodom to deliver Lot and his family. They had something to say when they got there and everything was carried out according to their word. Well, Bro. Jackson, that brings up another question. I thought angels were spirits, but that was two men that went to Sodom. Yes, angels are definitely spirit beings, but they are able to present themselves in a manifested body for specific purposes. That is why we find in Hebrews 13:2, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Now, back to our thought. If angels worked in the plan of salvation and if they work in all the other areas that the Bible tells us they do, then I know beyond a shadow of doubt that they worked in creation also. When Paul speaks of the word spoken by angels being steadfast and every transgression and disobedience receiving a just recompense of reward, he is mainly referring to the word spoken by the Old Testament prophets. The word that God sent by angels was the word spoken through the lips of those prophets. Practically every time you find in the scriptures that the word of the Lord came unto this prophet and that prophet. God sent that word by His angelic helpers. It wasn’t just the ideas of those prophets that we find recorded in the Bible, it is the word of angels. Did not Daniel see angles or an angel? Did not Ezekial, Isaiah, Zechariah and others see angels? What was the purpose of those angels? Take the case of Daniel. It was the angel that explained the meaning of Daniel’s dreams and visions. That was the word of the Lord and we are seeing it come to pass right in our generation. It just goes to show that when those prophets spoke, it was not their idea, it was from the anointing carried by that angelic being.
ANGEL MESSENGER
I want to say something here for the sake of the message. There are always those who will find fault with what you teach if you are trying to follow God in truth and many of them will pick this part of the message to pieces and yet they are among the ranks of those who run all over the world preaching that God sent a prophet to this age. They will not hesitate to call him the messenger to this church age. They call him, and rightly so, the earthly angel messenger sent forth to call this age back to the faith of the fathers. I believe that also and I have been privileged to be in many of his services. Of course I am speaking of Bro. William Marrion Branham, a man who screamed to the top of his lungs, GET BACK TO THE WORD!!! Get out of those denominational prisons and return unto the faith of Peter, James, John and all the rest of those apostolic fathers or you will miss God completely. Was that just his own idea? Absolutely not! I have seen him stand many times waiting for the anointing to come on him. When he was ready to start praying for the sick and that anointing would come, I have heard him say, That ANGEL of the Lord is not three feet away. He could see the light. He could see the expression of the Lord’s presence there. That was a sign to him that the angel had come to anoint him for what he was ready to do. Without the presence of that anointing, he was like other men. He liked to fish, hunt, talk about nature and world events, but the real point of what I am saying is that his ministry was not without the presence of angels. By the same token, I believe that every one of us are affected by spirit beings. For, as we said before in Hebrews 1:14, it says, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” Brothers and sisters, we are going into quite a bit of detail establishing the place of angels in the whole plan of God, but we feel that this is necessary in a message such as this. It is not sufficient just to say, God was talking to His angelic helpers when He said, Let us make man in our image. People who have been taught that God is three persons want scriptural proof when you begin telling them that He is one. We feel that every believer ought to have a revelation of the word of God and not depend completely on the word of someone else for what they believe. This has nothing to do with what the ministry is for. After you hear it or read it, you should desire to understand by revelation whatever subject you are being taught on. That is why you need scriptural proof for what you hear. We are going to end part 1 right here for we cannot put everything that should be said on this subject in one eight page paper, but look for part 2 where we will go into the deity names of God and also into the seven attributable names of God. We will also give some illustrations that will enable you to explain the Godhead to others. Then by the time we finish this message, some of you should have a better understanding of the scripture which says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.