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Dear Friends in Christ,
 
I have been fascinated for a long time with the Diety and Pre-incarnate existence of Jesus Christ, as it is revealed in the scriptures. We have studied and contemplated the coming to earth and taking on of our flesh of Jesus Christ, perhaps it would be good to consider His Eternal existence as a member of the Trinity before He ever came to the manger. His “goings forth” have been from Old Testament times being seen on this earth, and yet keeping His true identity  hidden until just the right time when He came to live and die on the cross for our sins.
 
Most of these Bible verses were found in the book,  Major Bible Themes by Lewis Sperry Chafer, Dunham Publishers, (1966) p 30-33. Chafer was the founder and first president of Dallas Theological Seminary. Much of the content of this book was published in the magazine “The Sunday School Times”  in 1925.
God Bless you as you read and ponder His Word.


 
This  group of scriptures shows how the Pre-existence of Christ relates to the revealing of His Diety. By these Scriptures, Jesus Christ, The Son of God is seen to be in His Infinite Person and eternal existence, coequal with the other persons of the Godhead, and this fact is unaffected by His becoming a Man. Therefore, Jesus Christ is shown to be True God and True Man all at the same time. Consider these Scriptures: 
 
John 1:1-2 (KJV)
 In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
{2} The same was in the beginning with God.
 
Micah 5:2 (KJV)
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah,
though thou be little among the thousands of Judah,
yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel;
 whose goings forth have been from of old,
 from everlasting.
 
Isa 7:14 (KJV)
 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign;
Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall call his name Immanuel.
(Note:”Immanuel” in Hebrew means: “With us is God”)
 
Isa 9:6 (KJV)
 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:
 and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
The mighty God, The everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace.
 
John 8:58 (KJV)
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Before Abraham was, I am.
 
Exo 3:13-14 (KJV)
And Moses said unto God, Behold,
when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them,
The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you;
and they shall say to me, What is his name?
what shall I say unto them?
{14} And God said unto Moses,I AM THAT I AM:
and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel,
I AM hath sent me unto you.
 
Isa 43:10-13 (KJV)
Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD,
and my servant whom I have chosen:
that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he:
before me there was no God formed,
neither shall there be after me.
{11} I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.
 {12} I have declared, and have saved, and I have showed,
 when there was no strange god among you:
 therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God.
{13} Yea, before the day was I am he;
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand:
 I will work, and who shall let (hinder) it?
 
John 17:3-5 (KJV)
 And this is life eternal,
that they might know thee the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
{4} I have glorified thee on the earth:
I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.
{5} And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self
with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
 
John 13:3 (KJV)
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands,
and that he was come from God,
and went to God; 

Phil 2:5-11 (KJV)
 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
 {6} Who, being{Grk=from the beginning} in the form of God,
thought it not robbery{Grk=a prize to be retained at all costs} to be equal with God:
{7} But made himself of no reputation{Grk=emptied Himself},
and took upon him the form of a servant,
and was made in the likeness of men:
{8} And being found in fashion as a man,
 he humbled himself,
and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross.
{9} Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him,
and given him a name which is above every name:
 {10} That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
{11} And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
 

 

Col 1:12-22 (KJV)
 Giving thanks unto the Father,
which hath made us meet{Grk=worthy} to be partakers
of the inheritance of the saints in light:
{13} Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness,
and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
{14} In whom we have redemption through his blood,
even the forgiveness of sins:
{15} Who is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn{Grk=foremost in importance} of every creature:
{16} 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:
{17} And he is before all things,
and by him all things consist.
{18} And he is the head of the body, the church:
who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead;
that in all things he might have the preeminence.
{19} For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;
{20} And, having made peace through the blood of his cross,
by him to reconcile all things unto himself;
by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.
{21} And you, that were sometime alienated
and enemies in your mind by wicked works,
yet now hath he reconciled {22} In the body of his flesh through death,
to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Tim 3:16 (KJV)
 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.
 
Heb 1:1-3 (KJV)
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners
spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
{2} Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son,
whom he hath appointed heir of all things,
by whom also he made the worlds;
 {3} Who being the brightness of his glory,
and the express image of his person,
and upholding all things by the word of his power,
when he had by himself purged our sins,
 sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
 
Heb 13:8 (KJV)
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
 
Rev 1:8 (KJV)
 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord,
 which is, and which was, and which is to come,
the Almighty.
 
Rev 21:3-8 (KJV)
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying,
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
and He will dwell with them,
and they shall be His people,
and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
{4} And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,
neither shall there be any more pain:
for the former things are passed away.
 
{5} And he that sat upon the throne said,
Behold, I make all things new.
And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
{6} And he said unto me, It is done.
 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
 I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
 {7} He that overcometh shall inherit all things;
and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
{8} But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable,
and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers,
and idolaters, and all liars,
shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone:
which is the second death.
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HOW ANCIENT IS THE TRINITY DOCTRINE? by Wesley P. Walters

As different as para-Christian groups or cults are from each other, most have one thing in common: they hate the biblical teaching of the Trinity. They want their God to be simplistic, uncomplicated, and less complex than the world He created. They want a God reduced to terms they can get their finite minds around.

Modern advances in science have shown that the created world is an extremely complex mechanism. Those who work in nuclear physics or molecular biology are continually discovering the complexity of the world God has created.

In fact, some complex, seemingly contradictory data has yet to be fitted into a rational system that explains the relationships. A simple thing like “light” is known to move like “waves” yet strike like “particles.” Atomic physicists are still struggling to put together a theory that can fully explain this apparent contradiction.

Those who work in the complex mathematical equations of quantum mechanics are told by their instructors that “If you think that you really understand quantum mechanics and how it applies to reality, that proves you do not understand it.” One of the basic theorems is that if the speed of a particle is known, then its location can not be known, and the more accurately you know its location, the less accurately you know its speed. This does not seem very logical to the average person, but it works very well in atomic physics, in which scientists get very close to the essence of matter.

Thus, while scientists are continually learning more about how complex and even apparently contradictory the world of created reality is, cults that reject the complexity of the God who made this reality are proliferating. They, along with Moslems and modern Jews, taunt Christians, saying: “How can there be just one God, and yet the Father be God, the Son be God and the Holy Spirit be God? Is He the Son of Himself and the Father of both?”

Even though Christ Himself taught that the name [singular] of God in which we baptize is Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19), all cults falsely assert that the doctrine of the Trinity is a teaching that grew out of fourth century paganism. So unified are the cults in this assertion that they appear to be using the same erroneous Church history book and parroting one another.

The truth is that by the time of Christ, the first century A.D., the Jews themselves, on the basis of the Old Testament, were coming to an understanding of the complexity of Yahweh.

The Teachings of The Targums

When the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity 450 years before the birth of Jesus, they had adopted Aramaic as their native language. Although it is a dialect of ancient Hebrew, Aramaic is about as different from it as modern Italian is from its classical Latin ancestor. Consequently, during the first and early second centuries A.D., Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Old Testament were made.

These translations, called Targums, were The Living Bibles of their day, an interpretive paraphrase of Scripture. They help us see how these first-century Jews understood their Old Testament.

One of the striking things these Targums show is that first century Jews had come to understand the phrase “the Word of God” as referring to a divine entity within God Himself, yet distinguishable at times from God. J.W. Etheridge, in the introduction to his translations of the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, has given us a number of examples of this Jewish understanding of the term, “the Word” (Aramaic: Memra).

In Genesis 18:1, where the Hebrew Bible says Yahweh (Jehovah) appeared to Abraham, the Targum says, “The Word of the Lord appeared to Abraham.” Further on, where the Hebrew reports “Yahweh rained down upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of heaven,” the Targum states that “the Word of the Lord sent down upon them sulphur and fire from the presence of the Lord out of heaven.” (Genesis 19:24)

In Genesis 16, when Hagar sees “the Angel of the Lord,” the Targum says she saw “the Word of the Lord.” After seeing this “Word” (Memra) she says, “Here has been revealed the glory of the Shekineh of the Lord.” Then, according to the Jerusalem Targum, “Hagar returned thanks and prayed in the name of the Word of the Lord, who had appeared to her.” Thus the Word not only is regard- ed as the presence of deity, but is in some manner personally distinguishable from the Lord.

In Genesis 28:20 the Targum of Onkelos paraphrases Jacob’s vow, “If God will be with me… then Yahweh will be my God” with the words, “If the Word of the Lord will be my help… the Word of the Lord shall be my God.” Again, the Angel of Yahweh who spoke to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14) is designated by the Jerusalem Targum as “the Word of the Lord.”

The distinct personality of this Divine Word is seen pointedly in Jonathan’s Targum of Isaiah 63:7-10. There, where the Hebrew text speaks of Yahweh being their Savior, the Targum reads, “the Word (Memra) was their Redeemer.” (vs. 8) When the Israelites continued to disobey, then “His Word (Memra) became their enemy, and fought against them” — an action ascribed to Yahweh in the Hebrew text. Again in Isaiah 45:22 the Targum of Jonathan exhorts, “Look unto My Word and be saved.”

While this personalizing of the Word was being expressed in Palestine in the Targums of Jesus’ day, Philo, an Egyptian Jew and contemporary of Jesus, was expressing similar thoughts in even more distinct words. In his essay “On the Creation,” Philo states that man was not made in the image of some creature, but in the image of God’s own uncreated Word. He wrote: “for the Creator, we know, employed for its making no pattern taken from among created things, but solely, as I have said, His own Word.”

Philo continues: “Man was made a likeness and imitation of the Word, when the Divine Breath was breathed into his face. (“On the Creation,” XLVIII: 139, Loeb Edition I, pp. 110-111)

In his work on Noah, Philo again expresses the teaching that man is made by “the First Cause” (that is, God) in the image of “the Eternal Word:” “Our great Moses likened the fashion of the rea- sonable soul to no created thing, but averred it to be a genuine coinage of that dread Spirit, the Divine and Invisible One, signed and impressed by the seal of God, the stamp of which is the Eternal Word.”

He continues: “…man has been made after the Image of God (Genesis 1:27), not however after the image of anything created… man’s soul having been made after the image of the Archetype, the Word of the First Cause.” (“Noah’s Work as a Planter,” I:18-20, Loeb III, pp. 222-223)

Thus, the eternal Word is in some sense distinguishable from God, and yet at the same time is, like God, uncreated, rational and the bearer of the divine image. This comes very close to the teaching of the New Testament that the Word was distinguishable from God, and yet was God. As John 1:1 expresses it, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It also appears similar to Paul’s teaching that the Son is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15); and the writer of Hebrews statement that the Son “is the exact representation of His being.” (Hebrews 1:3)

Philo, however, goes further. He says that God is the king and shepherd of all creation, but rules and controls it through his eternally existing Word, whom Philo calls God’s “First-born Son.”

His “hallowed flock” of created things God directs by his divine laws, setting over it His true Word and first-born son, who shall take upon Him its government like some viceroy of a great king. (“On Husbandry,” I:51, Loeb III, pp. 134-135)

Philo has God expressing Himself in this manner: “I alone… sustained the Universe to rest firm and sure upon the Mighty Word, who is My viceroy.” (“On Dreams,” I:241, Loeb V, pp. 424- 425)

Therefore this eternal Word, God’s first-born Son, is the upholder of the whole creation, “the everlasting Word of the eternal God is the very sure and staunch prop of the Whole. He it is, who extending Himself from the midst to its utmost bounds… keeps up through all its length Nature’s unvanquished course, combining and compacting all its parts. For the Father who begat Him constituted His Word such a Bond of the Universe as nothing can break.” (“Noah’s Work as a Planter,” I:8-9, Loeb III, pp. 216-217)

This reflects the same thought that Paul expressed about the Son as being the one “in whom all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17) It also reminds also reminds us of Hebrews 1:3, which depicts the Son as “sustaining all things by his powerful Word.”

Philo continues his discussion of the Word by maintaining that to those incapable of seeing the supreme cause, God Himself, He appears to them in the form of His Angel, the Word: “For just as those who are unable to see the sun itself, see the gleam of the parahelion and take it for the sun, and take the halo round the moon for that luminary itself, so some regard the image of God, His Angel, the Word, as His very self.” (“On Dreams,” I:239, Loeb V, pp. 422-423) This sounds very similar to the teaching tha t the Son is “the radiance (or outshining) of God’s glory” (Hebrews 1:3), the only part of God’s nature that people are allowed to see. This is true because “no one has ever seen God,” but “the only begotten God… He has made Him known.” (John 1:18) Thus, Jesus, the Son, can say, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

Philo further explained that God, being light, is “the archetype of every other light.” As such He is “prior to and high above every archetype.” Thus He holds the position of “a model of a model,” that is, He is the model for His Word, which Word becomes the model for creation. The Word, therefore, contains all the qualities of God. As Philo expressed it, “the model or pattern was the Word which contained all His fullness — light, in fact.” (“On Dreams,” I:75, Loeb V, pp. 336-337) Paul expressed a similar thought when he wrote that in the Son all God’s fullness dwells. (Colossians 1:19; 2:9)

To Philo, therefore, the Word of God is the eternal, uncreated Word containing all the fullness of God and bearing His image. That divine image which the Word bears is the image in which man was created. The Word is further the sustainer, upholder and ruler of the world, carrying on the governing of all things, as God’s viceroy, and containing all God’s fullness.

While the Word is not a created thing and carries on all the functions of God, Philo is clear that there are not two gods — although he does not attempt to explain how this can be. Philo’s teaching is, therefore, very close to the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. Philo reached his conclusions without the aid of the New Testament and certainly without deriving his ideas from pagan notions of deity. The Old Testament teaching that the Angel of Yahweh is really the presence of Yahweh Himself seems to have strongly influenced Philo’s ideas.

To relegate the doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, to a fourth- century adaptation of paganism is to ignore the conclusions that several Jewish theologians and teachers had reached four centuries earlier, from God’s revelations given to Israel before the time of the coming of Christ. At the very time that the Word was becoming flesh (John 1:1, 14), Jewish writers were already beginning to see that God’s Word could in some way be distinguished from God the Father Himself, yet have all the fullness of God contained in Him.

http://www.barr-family.com/godsword/trinity.htm

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