"In the Beginning . . ."
In the first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, God introduces Himself to mankind as the Almighty Creator. In the English translation of the Hebrew it is unfortunate that the term "God" is used because it does not describe fully the Hebrew word from which it is translated. The word God conveys the idea that one being or individual is involved. It is singular. In the Hebrew it is no! singular!
God introduced Himself to mankind with a PLURAL name!
God uses this plural name exclusively over and over throughout the first chapter of Genesis and through verse 3 of chapter 2. That plural word in the Hebrew is "Elohim." In English we use "s" as a pluralizing letter on words. In Hebrew they use "im" as a pluralizing form. In some cases this is confusing. One example of this is in Genesis 3 and verse 24 where the Hebrew word "Cherubim" is transliterated from the Hebrew. In order to make people understand that there is more than one individual involved, this word is Anglicized and spelled "Cherubims"! Although this conveys the idea to English-speaking people that there was more than one Cherub involved — and so helps us understand the original language in which the Bible was written — it is also misleading in the sense that this practice is not consistently exercised throughout the Bible.
If the translators had been consistent with this form of translating, then the first verse of your Bible would read, "In the beginning Elohims. . . ." So the word translated God in Genesis 1 — Elohim in the Hebrew — means the Everliving, Eternal Creating, All Powerful, Governing Family — Kingdom of God. Elohim does mean ONE God not many Gods — but that One God is a KINGDOM! It is similar to God's Church. There is but one true Church — ONE Church, but MANY members! (I Cor. 12:20)
The Greatest Creation
As far as is revealed in your Bible there are only two Beings presently in God's Kingdom — the Ones we call God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son. Those two, in that beginning chapter of Genesis said, "And God {Elohim} said, Let us make man in OUR image, after our likeness"! (Gen. 1:26)
Mankind at that time was created physically in the form of God — "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Geri. 2:7). He did not have eternal life, or immortal life, at that time, but, as God said to him, "DUST thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Gen. 3:19). Physical creation was completed in the record we read in Genesis 1, but the greatest creation — the very purpose for the physical creation — was not complete The great process of Spiritual Creation was just begun with the creation of two human beings to produce the entire race of mankind which was to be offered Sonship in the Kingdom of God!
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong has said:
"The PURPOSE of life is that in us God is really re-creating His own kind — reproducing Himself after His own kind — for we are, upon real conversion, actually begotten as sons (yet unborn) of God; then through study of God's revelation and His Word, living by His every word, constant prayer, daily experience with trials and testing, we grow spiritually more and more like God, until, at the time of the resurrection we shall be instantaneously changed from mortal into immortal — we shall then be born of God — WE SHALL THEN BE GOD!"
The Father Greater Than The Son
When Jesus Christ was here on this earth as a human being He constantly referred to the Gospel of His Father — the Gospel of the Kingdom of God — constantly turned people's attention to the fact that there was a Father. He revealed the Father. He never hesitated to show that He could do nothing except the Father guide, lead, support and sustain Him (John 5:19, 30). He said, "My Father is GREATER than I" (John 14:28).
Just as some human beings have greater jobs, responsibilities and authority than other human beings, so it is that that great God called Father has the greatest responsibility of ANY being — is greater in every way than any other being. Jesus Christ, who is next in responsibility, authority and office to His Father is joyfully, willingly and properly submissively fulfilling His responsibilities as second in command in the great God Family. Jesus gladly admits the Father's superiority. He focuses all His called-out ones' attention to that fact. He does not chafe under that authority but lives in perfect harmony with it.
It was through Jesus Christ in a total unanimity with His Father that all things were created — the invisible things as well as the visible, that is, great spirit beings such as angels and Cherubim. It was that Jesus who by living His perfect life example through the power of the Holy Spirit showed us, manifested to us, made visible to us what the INVISIBLE GOD IS LIKE! It is that same Jesus whom God has made the Head of the body He calls the Church. That same Jesus who is the firstborn from the dead — the first to receive total Sonship in the Kingdom of God (Col. 1:15-18).
The Son's Responsibility
Let's briefly review the magnificent and glorious responsibilities and activities of Jesus Christ. Ask yourself the question as we do so — what greater thing can the Father do? By Bible definition, Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God, was the One who spoke, and all the great universe we see came into being. It was He as well that created the vast world of spirit beings that we do not see. It was He who called out Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was Christ who called Israel out of the bondage in Egypt. It was Jesus who spoke the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai. It was Christ who chose David to be King of Israel. It was this same Jesus who sent Israel and later Judah into exile and captivity, wandering over the face of the earth, as a result of their having turned aside from His true way.
This was the Jesus who came, born of a virgin, begotten by God, who lived an entire lifetime perfectly within the Spirit of God's Law, died as a perfect sacrifice, shedding His blood, pouring out His life — having already emptied Himself of being God, He now emptied Himself even of His human life. He gave His life's blood to pay for our transgressions, our spiritual sins, He gave His body, beaten, pummeled and bruised as a payment for our physical sins, so that we might be healed. (Have you ever wondered why the sacrifice of Christ can pay for the sins of all the world? Well obviously, if all the world and all that are in it and all of the created spirit beings and everything we know about was created by that one Life, then the payment of that Life was certainly sufficient!) This same Jesus, God the Father in heaven, by the power of the Holy Spirit, resurrected from the grave to be His firstborn Son.
This same Jesus began God's one true Church on the day of Pentecost in 31 A.D. This same Jesus has been with that same Church all these years, and death and the grave have not prevailed on that little flock, as He promised. This same Jesus is coming again as King of kings and Lord of lords to rule, on this earth, all the nations in the wonderful World Tomorrow, which is just around the corner!
If Christ, then, did all of these great things and fulfills these magnificent prophecies — what greater things is it that the Father does? THE FATHER BEGETS AND BRINGS TO BIRTH VERY SONS OF GOD! Jesus Christ does not beget us as the Sons of God, THE FATHER DOES. Of course it is only through Jesus Christ that we know about the Father, that we can go before the Father, our sins paid for by Christ's blood.
Father and Son = Perfect Unison
Jesus Christ, with His Father, in a PERFECT UNISON, works out the purpose for which creation was made. But only God the Father can beget sons! And each one of those sons He begets and brings to birth in His Kingdom is worth more than ALL the creation we see and do not see put together! And so God the Father is greater than Jesus Christ (and remember / didn't say it, Jesus Christ did! [John 14:28)) in that this God is the Father of that God we call Jesus Christ the Son — AND the Father of all the other brothers of Jesus Christ to be born at the resurrection into that glorious Kingdom, called GOD. And Jesus Christ, as any true Son of God, is the first to admit that His Father is greater than He —the last to want it to be any other way!
Listen to this statement from the Apostle John as translated by J. B. Phillips in his New Testament in modern English: "Consider the incredible love that the Father has shown us in allowing us to be called 'children of God'" — and that is not just what we are called, but what we are. Our heredity on the God-ward side is no mere figure of speech — which explains why the world no more recognizes us than it recognized Christ. (I John 3:1) Continuing in the King James — "Beloved, now are we the sons of God [begotten now, but not yet born) and it doth not yet appear what we shall be [that is, the manifestation of the Sons of God, the time in which they will appear, has not yet come — Romans 8:23): but we know that, when he shall appear [that is at the second coming of Jesus Christ to be King of kings and Lord of lords], WE SHALL BE LIKE HIM, for we shall see him as he is" (I John 3:2).
No human being can see God as He is and live. Even Moses, who was permitted to see God, saw Him only from behind, and God in His mercy would not allow him to see Him as He is! But at the time of the resurrection — when the promise of God the Father comes to pass and we are born from the grave — when our mortality puts on immortality and our corruption puts on incorruption — when we are changed from flesh to spirit and we become the living Sons of the Living God — when we become GOD AS GOD IS GOD, GOD AS JESUS CHRIST IS GOD — THEN WE will be able to see Jesus Christ just like He really is in all His spiritual splendor and glory!
The Example Oneness of Father and Son
That perfect unison that God the Father and Jesus the Son work in by the power of their Holy Spirit is fascinating to behold. Jesus said, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him" (John 6:44). And yet Jesus also said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). God the Father on His throne in heaven — active, living and in charge of His entire Family — decides whom He wants to call when. He causes those individuals to be drawn to Jesus Christ, His Son. Jesus Christ in turn directs them to the Father in heaven!
What beauty! What unity!
We do not see here any conflict between Father and Son. We do not see a Jesus Christ who this world teaches rebelled against His Father and recommended some different way. We see total agreement and unity, peace and the perfect work of SPIRITUAL CREATION of which the Father is in charge.
Believe it or not, the time of your salvation is in the hand of God the Father. God the Father and Christ the Son [the Elohim of creation] have established a seven-thousand-year plan to bring mankind from the human level to the divine level! (II Peter 1:4) Six thousand of those years are allotted for mankind to rule himself, for Satan to have free reign. Then comes God's Sabbath rest. The thousand-year term of His Kingdom here on this earth ruling mankind under His Government, His Way. Each week that passes bears a foreshadowing of that plan. And finally a resurrection of all who have ever lived — those who have never had any chance, who have never been called by the Father — every human being who has ever lived to be brought back to life and given that one and only opportunity God ever gives everyone to become His Son!
We see human suffering around us. We see a history of human suffering for thousands of years. Only here and there throughout that history did the Father intervene in the lives of a few human beings. The Son followed that lead in perfect harmony as always, working with, guiding, leading, prospering, educating, blessing certain individuals whom the Father had chosen out of a world living in rebellion, led by Satan the devil, against God's Government!
It was to that rebellious world that God the Father sent His Son Jesus Christ to live in the flesh and, ". . . As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but [born] of God!" (John 1:12-13)
Why Haven't You Heard This Preached Before?
Has your minister preached this central, vital Bible Truth? Have you heard before that your destiny is to become GOD AS GOD IS GOD?
Apollos, back during the early days of the New Testament Church, was an enthusiastic and eloquent speaker whose zeal at first exceeded his wisdom and understanding. He had heard, and he repeated certain things he had heard about Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, about the message they preached. He preached it himself and convinced many of its merits. Those many were baptized, believing in the message Apollos had taught.
But when Paul came to question the people who had been taught and instructed by Apollos, he found there was a KEY INGREDIENT missing in Apollos' teaching. He had failed to instruct them regarding God's Holy Spirit! God's Spirit! His Mind, His Power, His very essence which He grants and gives to us to beget us as His sons, to give us the power to overcome our human tendencies. The power that will raise us from human beings to God Beings! Apollos himself needed further instruction and got it from a dedicated couple in the Church of God, and from the ministers in the Church of God. And, of course, those individuals to whom he preached needed further instruction, which they received from God's ministry of that day and were all RE-BAPTIZED! (Read this in Acts, Chapter 19)
Surely you can see that there have been great areas left out of your Christian instruction from the ministers you have heard in the past — no matter how zealous and sincere they may have been. In fact, it seems that in preaching the Father and the Son they have LEFT OUT — perhaps vociferously rejected — the most important reason WHY God is called our Father, and WHY Jesus is called His Son!
Write for our FREE booklets Why Marriage! and What Do You Mean — Born Again? for a fuller understanding of this subject. If you have any specific questions don't fail to write them to us. If you feel you would like to talk to one of God's representatives about this MOST IMPORTANT of subjects — or any other subject of importance to YOU — don't hesitate to ask!
You've heard it said, I'm sure, that Jesus Christ promised the Holy Spirit to His followers, but have you ever heard it said that Jesus, in giving that very promise, labeled it THE PROMISE OF HIS FATHER IN HEAVEN? Read Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4, and see it there with your own eyes!
God is called a Father because He is a Father. And it is His Will, Purpose and Plan to become the Father of untold millions — to become YOUR Father to share in His life, His glory, His majesty, His Kingdom — GOD AS HE IS GOD!