God said, "Let us make man in our own image"
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Adam and Eve cannot be the image of the three Men in the Trinity.
- Adam and Eve are not the image of three male Persons
- The Triune God has lost His name
- Plural does not have to be two or more people
- The Holy Ghost is the Father of Jesus
- We humans often talk to ourselves
- The Royal We that kings use is a plural of majesty
- The word US refers to the supernatural and natural
- Every natural fruit tree was good for Adam
- The born again human spirit is in the image of God
Adam and Eve are not the image of three male Persons
GENESIS 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness
This sounds like a discussion between two or more Persons. But it does not say that there were three People involved. There could have been two, there could have been four or more.
However as most Christians believe in a Trinity Godhead, so let us assume that the three Persons in the Godhead were discussing the issue.
Immediately we see a major problem that Trinitarians are unable to solve -- Two people on earth is not in any way an image of three Persons in Heaven.
Another problem: All three Persons in the Trinity Godhead are masculine. Not one of them is a woman. So the woman, who was later called Eve, is not the image of the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Ghost.
The Triune God has lost His name
This is the elephant in the room that everyone pretends is not there.
Trinitarians are not allowed to ask what the name of God is.
This is a major problem because the Trinity God, made up of three Persons, has no name. That is based on the fact that you cannot find one name for three people.
The best-known name of "God the Father" is Jehovah. The Name of the Son is Jesus. The name of the Holy Ghost is...... ? No one knows.
There is no Bible name for the Holy Ghost. So we have two names for three People. This is not good.
A further problem.
"God the Father" is never mentioned in the Old Testament.
"God the Son" is never mentioned in the Bible.
So, you cannot say that "us" refers to God the Father and God the Son. Neither of those expressions appears in the Old Testament.
Both Adam and Eve each had their own name. So they are not the image of an un-named Holy Spirit.
Worse still is when we try to find one name for the God who is represented by all three People in the Trinity.
Christians keep saying "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit", but they cannot tell us what that name is. They find that trying to answer the question as to what God's name is, is impossible.
So by making up a Trinity, the Christians lost the name of God.
Another major problem:
John 4:24 God is a Spirit.
A Spirit has no shape or form.
JOHN 5:37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time,
nor seen his shape.
Neither the man Adam nor the woman Eve, who both have a definite physical shape, can ever be the image of an invisible Spirit that has no shape.
JOHN 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time;
We cannot see God, and thus we have absolutely no idea of what God looks like.
But we can say that neither Adam nor Eve, as human beings made of flesh, were the image of God Who is a Spirit.
Trinity has two major problems.
First, it loses the name of God.
Secondly, it is copied from the heathens who imagined that their gods formed a trinity.
This idea of a Trinity was well known to the ancient pagan Egyptians who had three gods on one throne, as seen in this rock carving.
Also to the ancient Hindus, who had three heads on one body, as seen in this rock statue.
In AD 325 at the Council of Nicaea, the emperor Constantine forced the church to agree that Father and Son were of "one substance". This was the first time that an expression was believed which is not in the Bible. This unscriptural statement opened the door to the debate which ended eventually with the acceptance of the idea of a Triune God.
Then clever Greek philosophers added in more unscriptural ideas like "Father and Son are co-equal", "Father and Son are of the same essence", "Trinity", "one God in three Persons", "God the Son", and "God the Holy Ghost", "Eternal Sonship", "Three Persons in the Godhead", "The second Person of the Godhead", etc. These speculations grew over the years amidst much controversy and in AD 381 at the Council of Constantinople, the Roman Catholic church established the doctrine of the Trinity and imposed it on the Christian churches during the Dark Ages.
From then on, the Christian God lost His name.
In protest, around AD 600 Muhammed invented the Muslim religion and a pillar of his faith was that the name of God was Allah. Muhammed, sensibly, realized that God has to have a name.
Today we have over 1.7 billion Muslims saying that God's name is Allah (the wrong name because Allah means God. And God is not the name of God.) and 2.2 billion Christians being totally unaware that their Triune God has got no name. The three titles of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost can never be a name.
Trinitarians claim that "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" is a formula for the Trinity.
But Jesus never asked us to baptize in a formula.
He told us to get baptized in a name.
The Holy Ghost has no name in the Bible.
Jehovah is never mentioned in the New Testament.
So the only name that we have for God in the New Testament is "Jesus".
And that is the one name that the churches refuse to use in baptism.
Plural does not have to be two or more people
Plural also describes our conscious and subconscious minds.
If you could look into Heaven today, you would not see "God the Father" as He is an invisible Spirit.
JOHN 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time;
But all of God the Father dwells in the Man Jesus (Colossians 2:9), Who is called the Son of God. We can see the Son of God, Jesus because He has a glorified Body.
JOHN 5:19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do:
The spirit inside a person controls the actions of that person's body.
So the supernatural Spirit of God dwelt inside Jesus and controlled His humanity.
The Bible never calls Jesus "God the Son", because God is a Spirit and thus He is not made from flesh and blood.
So, Jesus is called the "Son of God" because He is the human Man that the supernatural God the Father dwells in.
In Jesus, the supernatural controlled the natural Man.
In a similar way, our subconscious minds control our bodies and keep our hearts beating and keep us breathing even when we are asleep.
Our subconscious minds, in the form of our conscience and a deeper understanding of logic, can also control our conscious minds to some extent.
If we have forgotten something, our subconscious minds will find that fact buried in our memories and suddenly throw the correct answer into our conscious minds at some later time.
People find that if they are stuck on a problem it pays to take a break and do something else. Then, when they come back to the problem, the subconscious mind has suddenly thrown in a new idea into their conscious mind that can often solve the problem.
To a certain extent, we can think of our subconscious mind as the "father" and our conscious mind as the "son".
They do not form two minds. They are two different manifestations of one mind.
“Let us make man in our own image” describes the blending of the thoughts between the ability of the human characteristics and virtues of God to understand the requirements of the divine plan and purpose of the supernatural will of God.
ISAIAH 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God's thinking is far above human understanding, and God was deciding how far He had to simplify His thoughts in order to find a level that a human mind could comprehend.
The supernatural nature of God has to come far enough down to a level where the humanity of God can understand what the supernatural requires.
The humanity of God was represented in the spiritual Body ("Theophany") that God dwelt in, in order to be seen by the angels in Heaven.
In effect, how far should the supernatural Holy Spirit of God be able to bring His unimaginably deep thoughts down so that they could be understood by His humanity?
What characteristics should be built into this human spirit so that the mind of Adam could understand God’s thinking at this lower human level of revelation?
The Holy Ghost is the Father of Jesus
Then Who is the Holy Ghost?
MATTHEW 1:20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife:
for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
MATTHEW 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together,
she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost placed the seed of Life into the womb of Mary.
Whoever places a seed into the womb of a woman is the father of that child.
Thus the Holy Ghost is the Father of Jesus.
Then the Holy Ghost has to be God the Father as a human Baby can only have one Father, not two.
God is holy (His nature) and God is Spirit (what He is made of).
So “Holy Spirit” is the most compact description of both the nature of God as well as telling us what He is made of.
We humans often talk to ourselves
Can God talk to Himself?
Look at what the Bible says of humans who spoke to themselves.
PSALM 77:6 ...I commune with mine own heart: ...
The human brain is very complex, and can consider different approaches to a problem, all at the same time. It is as though different people are speaking in the brain and voicing their ideas.
NEHEMIAH 5:7 Then I consulted with myself.
Nehemiah gets different parts of his brain to analyze the problems from different viewpoints, and to suggest different solutions to his problems. Then he decides which one is the best course of action.
Arguing with himself was the best way to clarify his thinking on the topic.
Talking to yourself makes your brain think more efficiently.
Thinking silently or out loud helps a person materialize what he or she is thinking about. It helps a person make sense of things.
ROMANS 2:15.. ... their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
So humans talk or commune with themselves. We even consult with ourselves as different ideas keep popping up in our brains when we focus on an issue. Then we argue with our conscience as if it is another person, and we feel really good when our conscience approves of what we have done.
Albert Einstein was one of the greatest thinkers, and he talked to himself. He wasn't an avid social butterfly when he was growing up, and he preferred to keep to himself.
Einstein.org reports that he “used to repeat his sentences to himself softly.”
I check my clothes in a mirror and ask myself if I look fine. I then remind myself to check if I have taken the car keys.
These are typical daily events where we talk to ourselves.
Reflection is a useful habit for the human brain. I sit still and think about events, and ask myself if they went well or not.
So talking to oneself is a normal practice that people indulge in, to a greater or lesser extent.
The fairly common habit of talking aloud to yourself is what psychologists call external self-talk.
It helps us view our thoughts more objectively, as though we are more distanced from them.
Motivating ourselves by speaking out loud is a common occurrence, especially under stress.
Sportsmen and women often shout at themselves to encourage themselves to try harder.
When we are trying to write a good sentence, we can speak the sentence aloud and then change a word to see if it sounds better.
The human brain is complex enough to speak to itself. It enables a person to assume two roles, the speaker and the listener, though that person lives in one body. Those two roles enable us to hold onto two different opinions at once.
And God's "brain" is far more complex than ours.
The Royal We that kings use is a plural of majesty
The Royal We that is used by kings is because any single word used to describe their power is correct but inadequate.
In addition, God, as He approaches the capstone of His creation, needs to emphasize His own glory and majesty which is far greater than the glory of His creation.
Let us look up the “royal we” in Wikipedia on the internet:
The royal "we", or majestic plural
or "the plural of majesty", is the use of a plural pronoun to refer to
a single person holding a high office,
such as a king or religious leader like the Pope or a bishop.
This plural of majesty indicates all his power and glory.
If one word is used to indicate God’s glory, it can be correct but it would be insufficient.
Hence a king will use the plural of majesty to describe all his powers.
The Russian Tsar Emperor Alexander I wrote: "By the Grace of God, We, Alexander I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias...".
Kings, Popes, Bishops, etc. can refer to themselves in the plural as “ we” or “us”.
Was this rather unusual way of talking ever used by a king in the Bible? YES.
EZRA 4:11 This is the copy of the letter that they sent unto him, even unto Artaxerxes the king;
The Bible emphasizes that the letter was sent just to the king. Just to him. Not to the king and his counsellors.
Now, look at his reply.
EZRA 4: 17 Then sent the king an answer unto Rehum the chancellor, and to Shimshai the scribe, and to the rest of their companions that dwell in Samaria, and unto the rest beyond the river, Peace, and at such a time.
:18 The letter which ye sent unto us hath been plainly read before me.
The king uses the singular “me” as well as the plural “us”.
Kings are allowed to talk this way, just like the Russian king (or Tsar).
This “plural of majesty” denotes that the king has so much glory and power that no singular word can describe it all.
So if a king in the Bible called himself the plural “us” as well as the singular "me" in the same sentence, then God, Who is King of the universe and the King of kings, can also call Himself “us”.
Notice how God used the singular and the plural for the same event.
GENESIS 1:26And God 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.
: 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
The created spirit of man was masculine, but had feminine attributes in him.
This caused the plural "them". Eve was not yet a separate person at this time.
The word US refers to the supernatural and natural
God the Father was the supernatural Spirit, and the Son of God was the Spirit Body (or "Theophany") that God dwelled in. This Spirit Body would later become the Man Jesus Christ.
So "us" refers to both the supernatural attributes and the human attributes (or qualities) of God.
But why does God speak like this when He creates man?
For all the rest of creation, God had been happy to say
- “Let there be light”.
- “Let there be a firmament”.... this was the atmosphere or sky.
- “Let the earth bring forth...”
- “ Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven”.
These were simple statements, quickly spoken, that had great power.
But when He came to man, God first paused and consulted with Himself (just like Nehemiah).
He thus showed us that He was putting extra attention and consideration into this final creation of His. This gives man an added dignity and value. God pondered over mankind for a tremendously long time.
Deep thinking went into the process of creating the human spirit, so that it was designed to be complex enough to have free will and would also be able to comprehend God's will.
The man was to be very special. He was to be the final capstone of God's creation.
So God’s greatest compliment to man was to make man in the image of Himself. There was no higher role model than this.
Thus the infinite big Spirit of God made a small finite spirit of man that was just like Him.
What made the natural man special was the spark of the supernatural that God placed within him.
Let us represent God as a red Flame of Fire.
Then inside that Flame of Fire, there has to be a portion (represented by the black circle in the sketch) that represents all of God’s human attributes.
God is supernatural but also has human characteristics.
Human beings were in God’s thinking right from the beginning when He wrote their names into the Lamb’s book of Life.
REVELATION 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
We were somehow in God back then, though we have no memory of it. You were in your father when he was a young man, though you have no memory of it.
God asked Job where he was when the world was created.
JOB 38:4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Born again Christians are the sons of God.
We were in God and shouted for joy as we realized that our future home, the Earth, was being created. But we have no memory of this.
JOB 38:7 When the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Angels are never called the sons of God in the Bible.
HEBREWS 1:5 For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?
When Abraham paid tithes to Melchisedec, his great-grandson Levi rejoiced inside Abraham, though he had no conscious memory of the occasion.
HEBREWS 7:9 And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham.
:10 For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.
God wanted to put His human characteristics into all the people that He would later make human bodies for.
His main human attributes, in those born-again people, would later be called His Bride.
We can picture God as a supernatural "red Flame", with the "black circle" representing His humanity that He would later put into the humans who would make up His true church.
So God made Adam as an image or a miniature copy of Himself.
At this stage, Adam was a masculine human spirit that was an "image" or a much smaller “measure” of spirit than what God was.
But to be in the image of God, Adam also had to have the feminine attributes of his bride (the small black dot) in his masculine spirit. Later his bride, who we now know as Eve, would emerge in a separate body of flesh. But that only happened in Genesis chapter 2.
Meanwhile, in Genesis Chapter 1, both the human masculine spirit and the human feminine attributes were one spirit, called Adam.
GENESIS 5:2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them,
and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
God created them out of nothing. That is why they had to be spirit beings.
Every natural fruit tree was good for Adam
Flesh is not created because it is made out of dust.
GENESIS 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,
Our fleshly body is not a creation because it is made out of dust.
In Chapter 1 when man was created as a miniature spirit, there was no mention of problems. All the trees that the earth had brought forth were classified as good on the third day.
There was no bad or forbidden fruit tree.
GENESIS 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind,
and the tree yielding fruit,
whose seed was in itself, after his kind:
and God saw that it was good.
GENESIS 1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth,
and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
"Shall be" is future tense. In Chapter 1, Adam was an invisible spirit that did not need to eat. But this prophecy refers to Chapter 2 where God would breathe that spirit of man into a body of flesh made from dust. Then Adam could eat and live off the fruit.
And God gave him permission to eat of every tree. There was no bad tree with forbidden fruit.
Only after they were put into fleshly bodies were they warned of the tree of knowledge. So that could not be a natural tree.
But this sin could not happen while the woman's qualities were still inside Adam’s spirit. So there was no warning in Chapter 1. Everything, including all the trees, was good.
JOHN 5:19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
The spirit of a man controls his fleshly body.
God was first preparing the spirit of Adam so that he could think properly.
Then only would God put that spirit into a physical body.
The animals immediately came forth in their physical bodies. They lived by instinct.
That is why animals harmonize with Nature and help to build up their eco-systems.
Strangely enough, it is the "buried" creatures underground, bacteria, ants, termites, and earthworms, who do the most good by preparing the soil for plants to grow in.
Some scientists claim that there is more life living underground than all the animal life that lives above the ground.
The hidden things that people do and believe, unnoticed by others, count more in the end than our visible efforts.
The man was different. God had given him free will.
So God was training him how to use his mind properly so that Adam would know how to control his future body.
Adam learned these lessons so well that Satan could not deceive him.
That is why the Devil aimed his deceptions at the woman.
I TIMOTHY 2:13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
:14 And Adam was not deceived,
but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
The born again human spirit is in the image of God
Jesus was a Man, made from flesh. He is called the Son of God.
He is the Body of flesh that the Spirit of God hides in. The indwelling Spirit has full control over His human Body.
God is not flesh, as God is a Spirit. Thus Jesus is never called "God the Son".
COLOSSIANS 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
JOHN 14:10 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.
In Jesus, God became a Man.
God lived His Life inside the Body of Jesus, Who was the Son of God.
That way God showed us how He wanted us, humans, to live.
Jesus had the fullness of God's Spirit without any measure or limit.
JOHN 3:34 For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.
I TIMOTHY 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh
Born again Christians each have a certain measure of God's Spirit given to us as the baptism of the Holy Ghost.
That is how God gives every person different gifts and talents.
This can be seen on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down and was divided up amongst 120 people.
ACTS 1:15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said,
(the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)
ACTS 2:1 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
:2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
:3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
When God's Holy Spirit dwells in us then we must die to ourselves.
I CORINTHIANS 15:31I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord,
I die daily.
The more we die to self, the more the Spirit of God can show Himself in our lives.
II CORINTHIANS 4:11 For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake,
that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
By the Holy Ghost baptism, Jesus wants to dwell in our bodies and live His life through us.
Then only are we are the sons and daughters of God.
Only the born-again human spirit can be in the image of God.
That is the portion of God's Spirit that dwells in each Bride member and each future member of the 144 000 Jews.