This is part 13 of a series;
The Selves is part 1.
As you learned last time, in Hebrew God’s name is El and Jesus’ name is Yahweh Elohim. As you should also remember, all of God’s house, specifically including those in heaven, bear the name of Elohim (Ephesians 3:14-15), which could be translated as “of the family of God”.
Acts 17:28-29 ‘For in him we live, and move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ Being then the offspring of God…
We are God’s offspring, His children, His descendants. But when you think about it, that means Elohim means something more than simply a family name… in this context it is also a species name!
When a bull reproduces, his calf is just like him; somewhat different, due to the genes of the mother, but recognizably an ox. Because by definition, the offspring of any animal is of the same SPECIES as the parent!
And yet… Adam was made of flesh, and God is not. How can we be the same species of God, when we are obviously so very different? Well, we must be changed, Paul said, into something else:
1 Chronicles 15:49 As we have borne the image of those made of dust, let’s also bear the image of the heavenly. Now I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood can’t inherit the Kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption… the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
As sons of Adam, who was the son of God (Luke 3:38), all humans have the genetic potential to become Gods; to change from flesh into spirit. But you can’t do it on your own! You require something that God must give you:
1 Peter 2:23 (WEY) For you have been begotten [conceived] again by God’s ever-living and enduring word from a germ [seed] not of perishable, but of imperishable life.
Peter says the true Christian has been conceived by the “seed” of a Father (Leviticus 15:16-18). Seed being an archaic but accurate way of expressing our word “sperm”.
Since you’re reading this, you were already conceived once, by mortal sperm. Peter was saying that you must be conceived a second time, by immortal sperm before you can begin growth as an Elohim!
And if all it takes is a special kind of sperm to begin your life, it means you are… wait for it… an Elohim egg! An unfertilized one, perhaps, but an egg of God nonetheless!
SPIRITUAL SEED
Paul told us that we were meant to infer things about the species of the Creator through His creation (Romans 1:19-20). So how does His primary creation – man – reproduce? The sperm (living water) flows from the belly of the father into the mother (John 7:38).
Water, in particular “living water” is a symbol of spirit (verse 39). And thus it is the spirit of every father which creates a son in his own image. But air or breath is also a symbol of spirit, in fact the word spirit means “air” in Greek and Hebrew… even in English!
John 3:8 The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.
It therefore stands to reason that any being who has inside of them any form or symbol of the spirit of another being, in some sense becomes their son (Romans 8:14). For this is the definition of a son – being made by the spirit of your father (Luke 1:35).
Whether that spirit takes the form of sperm, or of water, or of breath (Genesis 2:7, Luke 3:38), or words which are made of breath, and thus are another form of spirit (John 6:63, 1 Peter 1:23)… you become a son through some form of living spirit.
Your spiritual life begins when the spirit of the Father finds you, and chooses to attach His spirit to your “egg”, what you call your body.
Then the egg must attach to a handy spiritual uterus – a house of God – where it will be protected from infection and nurtured, until it’s ready to go out into the real, spiritual world. Which is to say, until you are born again in the kingdom of God.
Genetically the same as you are now, but with a body made of different substances – just like every other animal which goes through metamorphosis!
The substance of our adult body is called “spirit”, and a body made of it has all kinds of cool god-like powers like passing through walls and moving really fast and stuff. Basically like all the comic book characters rolled into one. And best of all your spirit body will never wear out!
Our second body is conceived by immortal sperm and as such it will create an immortal body; but we don’t have that body yet. No one has, because that body is still being prepared for us (Hebrews 10:5).
Today, we are weak, corruptible, mortal, in every way unworthy of our divine heritage. When we finally get our new body, that is our birth as an Elohim species. And in that body, we have the potential to grow up to the full height of Jesus himself!
Ephesians 4:13 (GWV) This is to continue until all of us are united in our faith and in our knowledge about God’s Son, until we become mature, until we measure up to Christ, who is the standard.
As humans we gestate in the womb for 40 weeks; likewise, we have roughly 40 years of prime adulthood to gestate as a God before our true birth; but are you, at the moment of resurrection, finished? Don’t be so sure you know the answer! Follow the pattern!
When you finished your 40 weeks in your mom, were you finished? Sort of… but at the same time, your birth day was what you count as your beginning! You were helpless; useless; couldn’t understand anything in your new environment or communicate with anyone there.
If the pattern holds true – as it always, always does – when you are born again as a spirit being you will be born as a spiritual baby, and will require just as much attention then as you did the first time around, as a human.
But you’ll be made of spirit; you’ll be immortal; you’ll be much more like your elders than you are now. The hard, scary, dangerous part will be done… but literally EVERYTHING in your life is left to do.
And as you grow, as all babies do, your spiritual body will get bigger, stronger, taller, more self-sufficient, until you approach true adulthood. A process which will take as long, in proportion to time spent in the womb, as it did the first time around.
OTHER SONS
When the head of the Elohim, God the Father, gave life to Adam by breathing life into his lungs, He called him “the son of God” (Luke 3:38). But Adam was not the only son of God! For God also used that term for the angels!
God told Job that when He created the Earth and laid the foundations of it, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). Since without an Earth, there were no humans, this was certainly the angels, often symbolized in the Bible as “stars” (Revelation 1:20).
So why are they called sons of God? Because when Jesus created all things (Colossians 1:16), specifically including angels, He did so by the word of God (1 Corinthians 8:6). And the words of God are made of the breath of God!
Psalms 33:6 By Yahweh’s word, the heavens were made; all their army by the breath of his mouth.
God gave life to the armies of heaven – angels – by giving them a small piece of His breath, giving them a small piece of His spiritual DNA. Just like He did for Adam! Which means every sentient being in heaven and Earth is, in some sense, a child of God… and therefore… an Elohim!
This explains why the Bible refers to Yahweh Elohim, usually translated as the LORD God… but also talks about Dagon Elohim (Judges 16:23), and the Elohim of the Sidonians, Ammonites, Sidonians, Philistines, and so on (Judges 10:6).
In fact, throughout the OT, almost every time the term “gods” is used to refer to idols or pagan, false gods, the name of the true God, Elohim, is named upon them! (Genesis 31:30, Exodus 18:11, Exodus 12:12, Exodus 23:33, etc.).
Because these other gods, other angels, are just as much Elohim as the Lord is! They are called evil Elohim, otherElohim, even false Elohim… but they ARE Elohim! (Psalms 82:1, 6). Why? Because all of the angels are of the species of Elohim! The same as we are!
Remember that Elohim is just a type of being; just as cows or woodchucks are a type of creature, which reproduce after their kind and have offspring that look like them, so the Elohim is just a type of creature… albeit the highest type of Being.
And so all of these other Elohim are angels who have been created by God and are therefore His sons, Elohim! And even though they may have sinned, all are still Elohim – just as a murderer is still a human, so also the angels, even the evil ones, are still Elohim!
I stress this because devils aren’t red with horns and a pitchfork, and angels aren’t glowing and white and holy. The word “angel” is simply a borrowed Greek word that means “messenger”. It’s not a special type of creature, any more than a FedEx driver is different from other humans.
This explains why, in every single example where men interact with angels they appear just like us, specifically youthful versions of us:
Mark 16:5 Entering into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were amazed. [John 20:12 explicitly calls this an angel.]
Daniel 8:15-16 …behold, there stood before me as the appearance of a man. And I heard a man’s voice… which called, and said, Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision.
Throughout the Bible, men have “entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2), because they looked just like men!.(Genesis 18:1-2, Genesis 19:1-2, Judges 13, etc.) Now I’m sure you’re thinking “what about the angels with six wings and four faces Ezekiel saw, or the four beasts full of eyes in Revelation, and so on?”
Yes – angels are pictured in other ways, but only in visions. In places like Revelation and Ezekiel and Isaiah and so on, God used fantastic imagery to portray angels as dragons or strange beasts with four faces full of eyes to convey a symbolic, deeper truth about the angel or His empire.
But when real angels interacted with real people, they always appeared as men. Men that glowed like the sun perhaps (Daniel 10:5-6, Ezekiel 8:1-3), because they, being made of spirit, live in that light which men cannot approach! (1 Timothy 6:16).
But Jesus said we will also look like that when we are resurrected in the kingdom!
Matthew 13:43 Then the righteous will shine forth like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Daniel 12:3 Those who are wise shall shine as the brightness of the expanse; and those who turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.
When we are able to dwell in the Father’s kingdom, we will be made of spirit and thus, to human eyes, will likewise shine like the sun. Because we will, as Paul said, “bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Corinthians 15:49).
So the beings we call angels of God are different from us, but only because they are made of spirit. They are better than us… but not that much better! We were made only “a little lower than the angels” (Psalms 8:3-5).
Because God, angels, and we, are ALL Elohim. All the same kind of creature! God, Jesus, Angels, Demons, baptized and unbaptized humans are all Elohim. The only difference…
Pay attention, this is huge…
The only difference between us, angels, and God Himself… is that we are at different stages in the life cycle of the species of Elohim!
UNTO WHICH OF THE ANGELS…
If you’re paying attention, you’ll have remembered a passage that seems to contradict these ideas, “For to which of the angels did he say at any time, ‘You are my Son. Today have I become your father?’ and again, ‘I will be to him a Father, and he will be to me a Son?’” (Hebrews 1:5).
Now this seems to imply that they are not sons. However, we have clear statements in the OT that the angels aresons, and the Bible cannot contradict itself! So when faced with a problem like this, always challenge your assumptions.
God did not in fact ever say to any angel “you are my son, this day have I begotten thee” (Hebrews 1:5), as He said of Jesus in Matthew 3:17, Matthew 17:5, etc. Because angels were not begotten, or conceived by God! They were CREATED, like Adam, without conception!
Nor did the Father ever say to any angel I WILL be a father to him – because they were already sons! None of them had to go from not being a son to BEING a son! But Jesus appeared to Abraham as Melchizedek, and Melchizedek had no Father! (Hebrews 7:3)
Jesus was, in the beginning, equal with the Father; for the Word was with God, and was also a God (John 1:1-3). And so He alone had to go from non-sonship to sonship! He alone had to be conceived as a son of God!
Hebrews 1:4 Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
And in the course of His new life after this conception as a son of God, He loved righteousness so much better than His fellows, the angels (Hebrews 1:9), that God gave Him an inheritance far above all His elder brothers!
LIFE CYCLE OF THE ELOHIM
Thus, we are all at some point in the life cycle of the Elohim species;
All humans are the unfertilized eggs of God;
Those called by God, the ekklesia, are the eggs which were called from the ovaries and fertilized, who then become the embryonic form of God; fetal Elohim.
Our fetal Elohim body grows even as our fleshly body wears out, and when we die, we go to the grave – a type of the womb (Jeremiah 20:17, Job 10:19, etc.).
After we are resurrected in the kingdom of God, we will be infant Elohim; capable of breathing “true” air and seeing the universe as it truly is but in the same way a baby human can do those things – which is to say with a lot of help.
The angels did not go through this process. They did not pass through the embryonic stage of humans or Elohim, they were created with somewhat mature bodies, just as Adam was never an embryo but was created partly or fully grown, as a “young man”… just like the angels!
John 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Thus all the supernatural beings in the Bible appear like men because we were all, human and angel alike, made in the image of the same God!
The only difference between us is that Adam was created as a juvenile fleshly Elohim, intended to pass through the spiritual womb to become a new creature made of spirit – while the angels were created as Juvenile spiritual Elohim.
1 Corinthians 15:44, 48-49 …There is a natural body and there is also a spiritual body… As is the one made of dust, such are those who are also made of dust; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of those made of dust, let’s also bear the image of the heavenly.
The image of the heavenly looks just like us, because it’s the same species as us! Which is why Jesus, when He was a human, told Philip “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:8-9); because, as Paul tells us “His Son is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact likeness of God’s being” (Hebrews 1:3).
That’s why angels appear as humans, because they’re just older members of the same species, and they appear just as we will after our resurrection gives us a new body! Which means they are the juvenile form of God!
We are embryos; they are children! What they are now, is what we will become after our resurrection. Not fully grown Elohim, but infant, then toddler, then obnoxious teenager Elohim! Which characterizes what we know of some of the angels pretty well, now that I think of it.
But remember, the angels were created, like Adam was, in some stage of young-adulthood. They were not conceived, gestated, and born; they were simply made. But Jesus wasn’t made! He was conceived by God in the womb of Mary!
And then He went through the whole process of spiritual conception, gestation, and birth as an Elohim that we humans must go through; and therefore, He was the first member of the Elohim family to actually be born, making Him the literal firstborn son of God!
So even though He was “born” millennia after they were created, He was the first one not made, but born, of the spirit!
But we will be next – after our gestation is complete.