Mosaic and Nazarene Teaching Concerning God

Phanerosis is a compilation of these articles

John Thomas, M.D.

Preface

The little work herewith presented to that portion of the public which does itself the honour of seeking to "know the living and true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, has been styled by the Author Phanerosis. This is a Greek word in an English dress, and may be found in the lexicons in this form; and occurring in the phrase th fanerwsei thv alhyeiav the manifestationof the truth."  

Phanerosis originated in the following circumstances. Two Jews, converted from Rabbinical Judaism to Protestant Gentilism, commenced a meeting in New York City, for the purpose of convincing their "brethren according to the flesh," that the "Jesus preached" and believed in by Protestants and Papists is the Christ promised in the prophets to their fathers. The meeting was numerously attended by Jews, among whom was a certain Portuguese Jew, Dr. de Lara. He boldly and justly disputed the claims of what he styled "orthodox Christianity" to a divine origin. His acumen and arguments were too astute for their treatment, so that they were put to shame before the Jews they sought to proselyte. In this emergency they applied to the Author for aid against their persistent and indefatigable opponent, who had attacked the weakest part of their position. The author agreed to attend their meeting, and to examine the ground occupied by de Lara. He found that the philosophical Israelite was impregnable in his position against popular Christianity. When Epstein, the Jew converted to Congregationalism, and since returned to Judaism, after making considerable capital by his hypocrisy; and his companion, Lederer, since also apostate from the principles he professed, though still a distributor of Protestant tracts among the Jews at a certain annual stipend; when these two worthies enunciated their platitudes, they were riddled by the shafts of their adversary, amid the laughter and contemptuous ejaculations of the Jews. Calm being restored, the Author was invited to speak. He told them that he did not present himself for the defence of popular Christianity, for which he had no more veneration or admiration than they. Popular Christianity, he continued, is as different from the ancient and original faith of Christ preached by Jesus and the apostles, as is modern Judaism from the institutions of the Mosaic law and the testimony of the prophets. He had not a word to say in defence of such an unscriptural system, condemned alike by the Old and New Testaments. He advocated the doctrine set forth in the "form of sound words" employed by Jesus and the apostles, and attested by the law and the prophets. The New Testament, as originally delivered, perfectly agrees in its teaching with that of the Old. These Scriptures, and not the clerical creeds and symbols of popular credulity, are the authentic and authoritative records of the faith expounded by them. Dr. de Lara was, therefore, beating the air; for while he was assailing something he styled "orthodox Christianity," he was not touching ancient New Testament Christianity at all! The Author was, consequently, under no obligation to meet Dr. de Lara's arguments against Jesus as the Christ founded upon Protestant and Catholic misconceptions of his relations to Deity, and so forth. He would, therefore, leave him in all the glory of his conflict with "orthodox Christianity," so called, and proceed to show them "a more excellent way."  

Having addressed the Jews upon this for an hour or more, in showing them what Moses and the prophets teach concerning the Christ, and to what extent it was fulfilled in Jesus -- how that he was to be a sufferer, and on the third day rise from the dead, and afterwards ascend to the right hand of power, when he is to come again, and "revive his work in the midst of the years," the consummation of which will result in their acknowledgment of him as their king, and their consequent restoration to their land and national independence and glory. Having set these and other things before as peaceable an assemblage of Jews as could be desired, he concluded, exhorting ,them to a candid and dispassionate study of Moses and the prophets; for that the testimony for Jesus was the spirit of prophecy, which left no doubt that he was the Prophet like unto their great law giver, whom Jehovah promised to raise up to Israel, as "His salvation to the ends of the earth."  

But though the Jews, before so turbulent, heard the Author with marked and respectful attention (and one of their number declared that "if the Jews could hear him they would all become Christians"!) the manifestation of approval kindled the indignation of Messrs. Epstein and Lederer, who had invited him. They determined, therefore, to silence him, which they did effectually, by decreeing that no one should speak longer than five minutes.  

    The door of utterance to the Jews thus being closed in their meeting, the author invited them to hear him at another time and place. Some of them accepted the invitation, and among them, Dr. de Lara, who, as the author was about commencing his address, caused to be put into his hand the following epistle addressed to the Author:--  

Dr. de Lara's letter seems to have been originated in a spirit of astonishment, incredulity, and candour; of astonishment at our statement concerning the entire and absolute harmony of the teaching of the two Testaments, in the face of the dogmas of' "Orthodox Christianity" referred to; of incredulity, because of the unphilosophical and irrational character of the facts testified in the New Testament; and of candour in seeming, though by education hostile to the Nazarene, to desire a fair examination into "the stone of stumbling" presented to the Jewish mind in "the things concerning His name."  

We can easily appreciate the astonishment under which he seems to labour. Our declaration, which we here admit, of the entire and absolute harmony of the teaching of Moses and Jesus, is calculated to excite astonishment, confounding astonishment, in the mind that has no other idea of the teaching of Jesus and the apostles than the parody thereof exhibited in the old wives' fables of what Dr. de Lara styles "orthodox Christianity." But, we do not affirm the harmony of "orthodox Christianity" interpretations, or rather "imaginations, high things, and thoughts" (2 Cor. 10:5), with the teaching of God, in Moses and the prophets: we are, therefore, under no obligation to attempt the impossible task of reconciliation. We do not believe in the self-styled "orthodox Christianity" of the world. It is not the Bible teaching of tile Spirit of the Christ which was in Moses and the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles. Admit what Nehemiah and Peter testify, that one and the same spirit was in them all, and that that Spirit was God's, "in whom is no darkness at all"; and it follows, of necessity, as we have affirmed, that the doctrine of the Old and New Scriptures is entirely and absolutely harmonious and uncontradictory (1 Pet. I :11; 2 Pet. 1:21; Neh. 9:20,30). We believe in the doctrine of God, in the deep things of God, revealed by His spirit (1 Cor. 2:6-16), not through disobedient fanatics, or a clergy, Jewish or Gentile, infidel thereof: but revealed by His spirit in the Spirit's own words, through the holy and faithful heroes of the faith, to whom, under God, we are indebted for the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. This is the Christianity of our faith which we are prepared to state, illustrate, and prove, in opposition to modern Judaism, Jewish rationalism, and Gentile perversions of the truth.  

Dr. de Lara appears incredulous. He is reported to have said, in one of his speeches at Centre Street, he cared nothing for Moses and the prophets. He may, perhaps, care more than the report of his words gives him credit for. We rather think that he meant he did not care for their testimony as proof of the Messiah having appeared; for we find him saying, in a certain periodical, "he did not care if fifty prophets had prophesied the coming of Messiah, unless the facts can be adduced to prove that the Messiah had come." From the letter before us, it is difficult to determine with certainty whether he is "a devout Jew," "an enlightened Jew," "a Rabbinical Jew," or "a philosophical Jew." We suspect he is in feeling a Jew, archaeologically devout, unfettered by Rabbinism, and giving credence only to what "the thinking of the flesh," untutored by revelation, approve. From these elements seems to be generated the spirit of the letter before us. A Jew incredulous of those oracles committed to his nation's care, is a hard and slippery case to deal with. We feel no interest in arguing with such a Jew; for he has lost his Jewishness, and disappeared in the bottomless pit of nations -- the undistinguished multitudes of earth. In the midst of uncertainty, then, we have preferred to view Dr. de Lara as a professed believer in Moses and the prophets, too enlightened therein to be hoodwinked by Rabbinism, but not sufficiently so to see into their attestation of the righteousness of God in Jesus as the Christ -- the Jehovah-tzidkainu. We will not think of him as a rationalistic or philosophical Jew. Rationalism and "philoSophy" in religion may do for Gentiles, but are highly unbecoming in a Jew. A Jew ought to be a man of faith, and not a mere rationalist or fleshly pietist; but, unhappily, and generally speaking, they are true to the character given to them by Moses, in whom they glory, who says: "They are a very froward generation, children in whom there is no faith" (Deut. 32:20), really as faithless of Moses as of Jesus, if faith is to be measured by conforming to the obedience it demands. A Jew faithless of the Mosaic teaching must necessarily be a rejector of Jesus of Nazareth, apostolically displayed. Moses spoke of Christ; and, therefore, Jesus inquired: "If you believe not Moses how can ye believe me; for he wrote of me." This is the secret of Jewish incredulity; not that the testimony for Jesus is insufficient for faith; but because of their extreme frowardness in making void the word of God by Moses and the prophets, through the corrupting influence of their traditions.  

There is a candour about Dr. de Lara's letter that is quite attractive. Its points are distinctly stated, and the views of its writer boldly averted. This is according to our taste. We like a man to stand out in his true character, and not to appear one thing and be another. Moral honesty and moral courage are virtues which few possess in this age of sham. Neither Jews nor Gentiles are pre-eminent in these respects. The former fear one another, and have not lost their terror of the Gentiles. Many, as of old, do not confess Jesus for fear of losing caste, of being cast out of the synagogues, or denied sepulchre among Judah's dead; while Gentiles confess a Jesus, but know not the true doctrine, or fear to bear the cross, lest the clergy should blow upon them. Between the two there is nothing to rejoice in. The world is wilderness, and its oases desert. Bold and sterling honesty of purpose and principle is the desideratum of the times. Sham and swindle everywhere abound, and few remain to do battle for the truth at all hazards against the world. Candour and courage are exceedingly scarce.  

On the evening upon which Dr. de Lara's letter was handed in, we had perused it, marking its points with pencil as we proceeded and then answered them in general terms before the audience. After we had finished, Dr. de Lara rose and apologised for having afforded us no time for examination, and hoped that we would believe that he did not design to extort an advantage by taking us at unawares. We graciously accepted the apology, being satisfied that such was not his policy; but that he really desired the information indicated in the concluding paragraph of his epistle. This being the author's conviction, and recognizing the importance, the primary importance, of the subject, on the great question at issue between the disciples of modern Judaism and the writers of the New Testament, he announced, that on the following Sunday evening he would lay before the audience the  

The vital importance of understanding the Bible revelation of God will be manifest to those who admit the authority of the New Testament in matters of faith and practise, in considering the testimony of Him "Who proceedeth forth and came from God"; and who, in "giving to the disciples the words which the Father gave him," said: "Thou givest to Thy Son jurisdiction of all flesh, that everything which Thou hast given to him, he might give to them aionian life. And this is the life of the Aion (h aiwniov zwh) that they should understand Thee (ginwskwsin se) the only true God, and Jesus Anointed whom Thou sendest" (John 17:2,3). From this testimony we learn,  

1. That the life of Messiah's Aion is not for all mankind!  
2. That the life is for those specially donated to the Son; and  
3. That the attainment of this life by those specially given to him, is consequent upon their intellectual enlightenment concerning what constitutes "the only true God," and the relation to Him of Jesus in his begettal and anointing.

The apostle John, who heard the utterance of this teaching, and who had delivered the same to the Jews and Gentiles whom he and his co-labourers were sent to enlighten with the light of life, reproduces the same doctrine in his first epistle, saying to them, "We have comprehended (oidamen) that the Son of God is come, and hath given to us discernment that we might understand the True One, and we are in the True One, in His Son Jesus the Anointed. This is the true God, and the life of the Aion (he zoe aionios).Little children keep yourselves from the idols" (1 John 5:20).  

This intellectual comprehension of the True God is renewing, and capable of developing the likeness of His moral or spiritual image in the illuminated. This is clear from many passages of Scripture. Jesus, the image of the Invisible God, in addressing the Father said: "I have given them (whom Thou hast given me) Thy word: sanctify them through Thy Truth:Thy word is Truth" (John 17:8,9,14,17). And again, "Ye are clean through the wordwhich I have spoken to you" (15:3). And John says: "the Spirit is the testifier, because the Spirit is the truth" (1Jo 5:6). And Paul alluding to the transforming efficacy of God's revelation of Himself comprehended and believed, tells obedient believers of the word, that they had put offthe old man with his deeds, and put on"the new," made new again by exact knowledge (eiv epignwsin) after the image of Him creating him (Col. 3:9-10). Here are two characters, or moral natures, in relation to one and the same animal man. Ignorant of the true God and Jesus the Anointed whom He has sent, the man A.B., is "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in him" (Eph. 4:18): and is invested with "the body of the sins of the flesh" as with an apron of fig leaves. He is then in the Old Man state, and stands before God naked as Adam and Eve in Eden, obnoxious to the anger of offended Deity. He does not know or comprehend the Almighty. He thinks He is altogether such an one as himself, fickle, inconstant, mutable and false. He is as ignorant of His character, or Name, as he is of His hypostasisor substance. In the fulness of the ignorance he turns " philosopher," and presumes to discourse of God, and of soul, and of the ground of acceptance with Him! The presumption of this Old Man of the flesh, laden with sins and superstitions, is marvellous! He has filled the world with his lucubrations, or skotifications rather, and calls them "wisdom," "theology," "divinity," "philosophy," and so forth. Adam habited in fig leaves under the inspiration of the Serpent, is the incarnation of them all. He was "the Word of the Serpent made flesh"; the Federal Patriarch, or Chief Father, of all who walk in his steps:, the type, or representative pattern of all clerical and philosophical Jews and Gentiles who, "with the flesh," or its reasonings and gospel-nullifying traditions and practices, "serve the law of sin."  

Now of the clerical or rabbinical wisdom, and philosophy of this Old Man, the "wise men and scribes" whom the Jehovah Spirit sent to Israel, speak in very contemptuous terms. Concerning the rabbinical and philosophical Jews of all times, to say nothing of the Gentiles who have plundered their tradition, they say, "He taketh the wise in their own craftiness" (Job 5: 13). "Forasmuch as this people (Israel), draw near with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precepts of men",their traditionizing and philosophizing rabbis; "therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, a marvellous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from Jehovah, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay, for shall the work say of Him that made it, He made me not? Or shall the thing framed say of Him that framed it, He has no understanding? Is it not yet a very little while and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field and the fruitful field shall be esteemed a forest"? Thus testified the Spirit of Christ in Isaiah, concerning the 'wise and prudent men of Israel (ch. 29:13), who professed to know God, but in their works denied Him. Their wisdom and understanding have shrivelled and perished from off the land, in which they took counsel against Jehovah and His Anointed, to burst their bands asunder, and to cast their cords away (Psalm 2). The stately cedars of Lebanon have been hewn down, and their fruitful fields are a forest; and all because "they knew not the true God and Jesus the Anointed."  

But, as the Spirit of Christ in the same prophet, and in the same place, also testifies, although Jehovah has poured out upon the staggering guides of Israel the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed their eyes, and covered the prophets and rulers, and seers; and the vision of all is become as the "words of a sealed book," which the learned confess they cannot explain; yet "the deafhear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blindsee out of obscurity and out of darkness; the meekalso increase their joy in Jehovah, and the pooramong men rejoice in the Holy One of Israel." How literally this began to be accomplished in the day when Jehovah cut asunder his staff, Beauty; for whom, as the Spirit of Christ in Zechariah predicted, Judah and Israel's rulers weighed out to the traitor Judas, thirty pieces of silver; and afterwards cast the blood money to the potter for the purchase of his field (ch. 11:10-13). In that day, when "the poor of the flock were waiting upon Beauty," the deaf were made to hear, the blind to see, the meek to increase their joy, and the poor to rejoice in the broken staff Beauty, in the hand of the Holy One of Israel. "The poor had the gospel preached to them." When the deaf and the blind were cured, they rejoiced in what they heard. They embraced it as the wisdom of God, confirmed to them by Him with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and by the resurrection of Jesus, on the reunion of the fragments of the broken staff he had severed in his hand; "So," says the prophet, "the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of Jehovah."  

But the rich and the powerful of the flock did not know, and do not know to this day. They are still the deaf and the blind, with all their "vast learning" (!) and philosophy. We go to the Holy Land, the arena of Zion's controversy, and we inquire with Isaiah and Paul, Where are the wise? Where is the scribe? Where the disputants of the Mosaic Aion, who withstood "the truth as it is in Jesus"? The standing answer is, that "God hath made foolish their wisdom"; yea, the wisdom both of Jews and Greeks; for, says Paul, "the world by wisdom knew not God." They had wisdom but He pronounced it "foolishness"; and James steps in and adds his testimony, that their wisdom was from beneath, being a lie against the truth, and earthly, sensual, and demoniac (Jas. 3:14-15).  

Such is the wisdom of the Old Man of the Flesh. It can rise no higher in conceptions of God than the zenith of its own halo. He thinks as he feels, and his feelings are only blind. Being a creature of earth, and sense, and sin, his conceptions of God are earthly, sensual, and demoniac. He proclaims Him to be an incomprehensible existence, without body or parts. Having assumed this, he deposits Him in every created thing, and theistically worships Him in men, birds, beasts, creeping things, and their images. In this assumption, the philosopher, the theologian, the idolator, all meet together upon common ground. This is their "One God," whom they represent as fierce, vindictive, cruel, and implacable; who, but for some more benevolent being, interposing between Him and men, would increase His own glory and.enjoyment, and satisfy His eternal justice, by tormenting them in fire and brimstone endlessly. This is the God created and worshipped by the Old Man of the Flesh; worshipped, not because he loves Him, or sees anything in Him to admire, but because he is afraid of Him. Hence, all the fancy superstitions he has devised are an based upon one common error of the brain, namely the necessity of the worshipper doing something to placate the Deity. The prescriptions extant in the Old Man's dispensary for the purpose are multitudinous. Some of the most notable with which the world is empiricized and overspread, are those of cutting the flesh with knives after the manner of Baal; of causing children to pass through the fire after the manner of Moloch; of "covering the altar of Jehovah with tears, with weeping and with crying out," after the practice of the priests in the days of Malachi; of straining at gnats, and paying tithes of mint and cummin in the fashion of hypocrites; of self-immolation under the fervid wheels of Juggernaut; of voluntary martyrdom, after the manner of the disciples of the Nicolaitanes, Balaams, and Jezebels of the early centuries after Christ; of papistical penance in afflicting the body for its commendation to God; of many long "prayers" or rhapsodical rants, weeping, and cryings out for religion, after the manner commonly witnessed at the camp meetings and revivals of the names and denominations which now fill the unmeasured court of the Gentiles (Rev. 11:2). These, and ten thousand other absurd practices of the temple, the synagogue, and church, are all expressive of the common error referred to above, and indicate the total ignorance of Jews and Gentiles, both of the Mosaic and Nazarene teaching concerning the Holy One of Israel.  

Now, it is to exorcise A.B. of this Old Man,to deliver him from him, to cast the demon out, to "put off theold man and his deeds"from A.B.; to strip him of the fig leaves, and to put onthe sacrificial victim's skin, the garment appointed of Jehovah Elohim, to hide or cover his sin or shame, that "the knowledge of God,"or system of divine truth hath been devised. The Old Man of Sin's Flesh, who is the Devil, cannot be converted. His destiny is destruction; "for this purpose was the Son of God manifested that he might destroy the worksof the Devil," or the works of the flesh, which are the same things: and "forasmuch also as the children (of his Father) are partakers of flesh and blood, He (the Son) himself, likewise, took part of the same;that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil"(1 John 3:8; Heb. 2:14). Hence the Old Man of the Flesh and his deeds are doomed to extirpation from the earth at the hands of Jesus and his brethren. The Devil and all his superstitions of temple, synagogue, and church, whether dissentient or established, are all to be destroyed. Clergymen and Rabbis, philosophers and fools, will not indeed "go to the devil," but far better will vanish with him from the earth, which will remain emancipated and blessed for the "meek" whose heritage it is.

But if the Old Man cannot be coverted, A.B. may. Our friend A.B. may "be taught of God," not by direct spirit-afflation, according to the Old Man's theology, but by the direct operation of the heavenly ideas of God upon his brain-flesh. These ideas are the living spirit, the divine agent in conversion, which, when understood and believed, inscribe upon the tablet of A.B.'s intellect and affections "the Law of the Spirit of the life in the Anointed Jesus,"which "Spirit," as he himself hath said, "it is that makes alive," and "the words which I discourse to you is spirit and is life" pneumu esti kai zoe estin.That is, spirit isthe words, and life isthe words discoursed. The spirit or power of the words is in the ideas they represent; and those ideas generate intellectual and moral, that is, spiritual life; which life having been fully developed in a character approved of Him from whom the ideas originate, is permanently manifested in "the crown of life," the reward of righteousness, which is received by the resurrected and transformed made incorruptible and immortal, or deathless, by "the Lord the Spirit."  

Here, then, is a New Man created by the Spirit, who is the rival and deadly enemy of the Old Man, generated of blood, of the will of the flesh, and of the will of man. The germ of the New Man is the ideas of God.These ideas are aggregated in what Peter terms "the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord." If A.B. have this knowledge in him, God's seed is in him; "The Word of the Kingdom" is there; he knows the True One, and his knowledge leads him into the True One ,into His Son Jesus the Anointed; and he comes to know that "this is the true God, and the life of the Aion."  

When A.B. knows God, and Jesus the Anointed, apostolized, or sent; in other words, when he has believed intothe true God, in believing the gospel of the Kingdom, and obeying it; in the act of obedience, styled by Peter "the obeying of the truth," he puts offthe Old Man of the Flesh with his deeds, and puts onthe New Man of the Spirit. He is still A.B.; but he is no longer A.B. invested with fig-leaf devices. He is A.B. in a new character. Instead of thinking with the Old Man in his wickedness and folly he thinks with the Spirit. That is, God's thoughts and ways have become his. He understands, believes, and loves what God has spoken by His Spirit in the prophets in Jesus, and in the apostles; so that this thinking is now no longer "the thinking of the flesh," which is always wrong, when speculating upon divine things; but "the thinking of the Spirit," which is always right, so long as the seed of God abideth in him.  

Here, then, are two men, each of whom set up rival claims to A.B., The Old Man of Sin's Flesh, or the Devil; and the New Man, the Spirit, or the likeness of the Image of God. The likeness is Jesus Christ in A.B. dwelling in his heart by faith working by love of the truth (Eph. 3:17; 2 Cor. 13:5; Gal. 2:20; 5:6). It is "A New Creature," or creation within him; and upon whom the Old Man of the Flesh is incessantly seeking to impose the yoke of his traditions. Being a great theologian and philosopher, he is ever labouring to bring the New Man into bondage, and to turn him from "the simplicity which is in Christ." For this purpose he sets Moses against Jesus, prophet against prophet, Old Testament against New, and the New against the Old; puts them into his crucibles, for he is a great alchemist, and transmutes them into Rationalism, Transcendentalism, Natural Religion, into any- thing, in short, to suit the occasion and the times -- and dignifies them with the titles of philosophy, science, and "the higher law." But the New Man of the Spirit is free, looking searchingly into the perfect law of liberty, and having no respect to "the philosophy and empty delusion," and antitheses of gnosis,or "oppositions of science," falsely so called, in which the flesh delights. He troubles not himself about Trinitarianism, or Antitrinitarianism, Unitarianism, Arianism, or Socinianism. He has no more deference for these than for any other of "the works of the Devil," or for the Old Man himself. He does not commune with him in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, The Old Man judges after the flesh; the New Man after the Spirit, in Moses and the prophets, among whom are included John the immerser, Jesus, and the apostles. The spirit of the Old Man is the spirit that exhales from the flesh, and is known as the "nervous fluid," "animal magnetism," "vital electricity" and so forth. It is secreted from the blood by the secerning system of vessels and membranes, supplied with the raw material by the process of digestion and respiration. This spirit of the Old Man of Sin's Flesh is the spirit which his disciples's say "accompanies the word, and applies it in the conversion of the soul." The word, or letter, saith this hyperbolical sinner (kay uperbolhn amartwlov) killeth, but the spirit giveth life; by which he means, that the simple word itself, the doctrine, the testimony, and the commandments of Jehovah, are not perfect, converting the sou!; are not sure, making wise the foolish; are not pure, enlightening the eyes; but that what the Old Man or the Devil, calls "the spirit," is necessary to give them efficacy and power. "The Word," saith he "is a dead letter." True, it is dead as far as its ability to convert the devil is concerned; yea, and kills him, too. He feels this; and, therefore, speaks experimentally. This dead and devil-deadening word has power, nevertheless; for it never ceases to enrage him, especially when the New Man of the Spirit rejects the dogma of vitalizing the idea words of God, by the animal magnetism of the flesh, as blasphemy.  

The New Man of the Spirit is the mental likeness of God in Christ photographed, so to speak, on the fleshly table or sensorium of A.B., by the Holy Scriptures, "which," as Paul says, "are able to make wise to salvation, through faith, which is by the anointed Jesus." It is only the A.B.'s thus enlightened that are "taught of God," and know Him. None else are made alive by the Spirit; and, consequently, none others "know God"; for He, and all the deep things pertaining to Him, are "spiritually discerned."  

Furthermore, the high importance of this great subject, that, namely, of knowing the true God understandingly, is manifest from the magnitude of the evil consequent upon not understanding Him. Thus, in writing to the Thessalonians, Paul testifies, that the Lord Jesus shall be apocalypsed or revealed from heaven; and that in that apocalypse he will inflict condign punishment upon them "who know not God," and who obey not the Gospel of Jesus the Anointed.Surely here is incentive powerful enough to induce A.B. to study God's revelation of Himself, and to obey the unadulterated word of the kingdom. Is A.B. wise? Is he mighty? Is he rich? Then thus saith Jehovah to him: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I, Jehovah, do exercise mercy, judgment, and righteousness on the earth; for in these I delight, saith Jehovah."

In our January number, we introduced this subject to our readers, showing the importance of understanding it. In this number of the HERALD we propose to set forth some of the things extant pertaining to the subject itself  

But in turning to the Bible, which we regard as the only reliable source of information concerning God, we are met by the inquiry of Zothar, the Naamathite, saying, "Wilt thou find out ELOAH by searching? Or to perfection. wilt thou find out SHADDAI? The height of the heavens, what wilt thou do? Deeper than the grave, what wilt thou know? The lengthening out is more than earth's measure, and broader than the sea," Job xi, 7-9. The subject is indeed great, for God is great; and when we come to contemplate it aright, we are led with the apostle to exclaim, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who knows the mind of the Lord? Or who becomes his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him again? For out ofhim are all things. To him be glory for the Aions. Amen," (Rom 11:33-36).

To Zophar we reply, that "by searching" through the height of the heavens, or the depth of the unfathomed abyss, we cannot find out Eloahh Shaddai. "That known of God is made manifest among men; for God makes manifest to them: (for His invisible things from the creation of the world being understood by the works, are discerned, both His ever-existing (aidios) power and deity) that they may be inexcusable" (Rom. 1:19). But to discern this by a contemplation of the heavens, earth and sea, is not to "find Him out to perfection." They proclaim an "EVER-EXISTING POWER" and that this power is superior to "corruptible man," and, therefore "incorruptible (Theos), incorruptible power; or, as we say, "God." But while they proclaim this, they do not reveal the mode of His existence, the place of His throne, His mode of thinking, His character, purpose, and so forth. The wisest of men, who have speculated upon these apart from a written revelation, have only become vain in their imaginations; and, though professing to be wise, become fools. They have thought to define the Deity; and in so doing, have imagined that He was such an one as themselves. But all their speculations have been stamped with the seal of His reprobation; for both Old and New Testaments testify that "the world by wisdom knew Him not" (Ps. 14:1, 2; Rom. 3: 11 ).  

God delights in stimulating the intellect of His creatures. In revealing Himself, therefore, to them, He manifests Himself mysteriously. "It is the glory of Elohim," says Solomon, "to conceal a word, but it is the glory of kings to search out the word." A word is concealed when it is enigmatically expressed; and it is the glory of those whom God has chosen for His kings in the future government of the world, to search out the wisdom He hath hidden from the wise in their own conceit. "The world by wisdom," saith Paul, "knew not God but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, 'the hidden', which none of the chiefs of this Aion knew; for had they known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 1:21; 2:7, 8). Paul was sent to turn the Gentiles to the knowledge of the true and living Deity, and in so doing taught them the mystery which it was the glory of the apostolic proclamation to explain or reveal. Hence their preaching came to be styled, "the Revelation of the Mystery," and is thus alluded to by Paul (who taught "the gospel which God had promised through His prophets in the holy Scrip tures") in Rom. 16:25 -- "To him that is of power," says he, "to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus anointed; according to the revelation of mystery concealed dur ing Aionian times (chronois aionios) but now made manifest also through the prophetic writings according to the commandment of the God of the Aion (tou aioniou Theou) for obedience of faith made known.to all the nations: to God only wise, through Jesus anointed, to him be the glory for the Aions. Amen."  

This mystery, which as we see, was the burden of the apostolic preaching, was a great enigma -- an enigma, dramatically, as well as doctrinally, explained. "Without controversy," says Paul, "great is the mystery of godliness -- GOD MANIFESTED IN FLESH, God justified in spirit, made visible to messengers, preached among nations, believed on in the world, received again to glory"(1 Tim. 3:16).  

It would be premature to go into the consideration of these six points of godliness.It is sufficient just now to bear in mind that they exist; and constitute integral parts of "God-manifestation" as far as at present developed.  

We proceed to remark that Paul, as well as Moses, declares, "there is no other God but one"; and having so said, proceeds to remark: "For though there be that are called gods, whether in the heaven, or upon the earth (as there are gods many, and lords many), but to us there is one God the Father, out of whom (ex ou) all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Anointed, on account of whom (di'ou) all things, and we through Him. Howbeit the knowledge is not in all. (1 Cor. 8:4-7).  

Here then, we have good authority for saying, that in the universe there are many gods and many lords; but that over and above them all is "One Supreme," who is styled "the Blessed and Only Sovereign, (monos dunastes) the King of kings, the Lord of lords; the only one having deathlessness, inhabiting light unapproachable, whom no one of men hath seen, nor is able to
behold" (1 Tim. 6:15). He is God of gods, whose existence He Himself admits in saying to Israel' "I am Jehovah, thy Elohim ...." "There shall not be to thee other Elohim above me." ynp-le  

Thus far Moses and Paul are in agreement. They both teach one supreme Deity, and the existence of others beside; but that these others were not to be made objects of worship by dwellers upon the earth.  

Now Jesus of Nazareth is perfectly Mosaic in his teaching upon this subject. When a certain scribe asked him: "Which is the chief commandment of all"? He answered in the words of Moses, so often referred to by the Jews of our day, when disputing the claims of Jesus, and by Dr. de Lara among the number: "the first of all the commandments," said he, is, "Hear, O Israel; 'Jehovah' our 'Elohim' is 'one' Jehovah. And thou shalt love 'Jehovah', thine Elohim, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like; as, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these." "Well, Teacher," said the scribe, "thou hast said the truth; for there is one 'Deity' (hoti els estin Theos) - and there is no other but of him -ouk estin allos plen autou" (Mark 12:29-34).  

But at this stage of our inquiry it behoves us to pause and to look into the signification of certain words brought before us in these and other passages of the sacred writings. This is the more necessary, because the names of God which occur in the Bible are not arbitrary sounds; and one of the chief imperfections of the English authorised translation, or rather version, is the slovenly manner in which all the names by which God has been pleased to make Himself known to His people, have been rendered, after the fashion of the Septuagint, by the two words, "Lord"and "God."  

These words do not convey the ideas of the Spirit in its use of terms. Lordis of Saxon origin, and signifies monarch, ruler, governor, something supreme or distinguished. The word to which it answers in the Septuagint and New Testament is kyrios. kyrios.Under this word Parkhurst says: "Plutarch informs us, that kyrios. the name of Cyrus, who in Isaiah 44:28; 45: 1, is called vrwk koresh, did in Persic signify the Sun."This name," then continues Parkhurst, "seems an evident corruption of the Hebrew orx , the sun; and as the sun is manifestly the great ruler in material nature, and the idolators of several nations accordingly worshipped Him under the title of klm meleck, the King, and leb Baal, the Ruler, Lord; so from the same word, vrwk, may, I think, be deduced the Greek kuros kuros, authority, and kurios kurios, lord; and even the word kuro, to exist; for it was a heathen tenet, that the sun was self-existent. Thus, for instance, the Orphic Hymn, Eiv `Hlion 1.3, calls him Autofuhv ,self-born."  

But, if this be the radical idea of kyrios it fails to represent the meaning of la ail, hwla eloah, myhla elohim, mds shaddai, hwhy yehowah,for all of which it is often, or rather, most frequently, and almost generally used. The word Adon is properly enough rendered by Lord, or kuriov in the singular; but not the other words, for which it should never be used. Elohim, Shaddai and Adonai, are plural names of Deity, and require terms of the same number to express them.

The common use of God in the English language, is as little justifiable as that of the word Lord. "God" in Saxon, signifies good: a meaning which cannot possibly be extracted from any of the names recited above. God is indeed good, exclusively so, as we are taught by Jesus himself while in the mortal state. In this sense, he refused to appropriate the word good, saying to one who styled himself so, "Why callest thou me good? No one is good except one, that is God" (Matt. 19:17). Jesus was free from personal transgression, and therefore in character good; as he did not refer to character, he could only have had reference to nature, or to God as substance. He is good in the sense of being deathless or incorruptibility itself; which, when Jesus refused the term, did not define the nature the Spirit was tabernacling in, and was encumbered with. "In me, that is, in my flesh," says Paul, "dwells no good thing." God, then, whether in the sense of moral, or of material goodness, while it is a term expressive of the truth, is not a translation of any of the words before us; and where used in their stead, leaves the mind in the dark concerning the things they were intended to convey.  

To Melchizedec and Abram the alone "Good One" was known as Nwyle la, Ail Elyon "Most High Ail," which teaches by implication that there were Ailim of inferior rank, station and power. Melchizedec, King of Jerusalem, was the priest of the Highest Ail, whom he understood and proclaimed to be konai, "Possessor of the Heavens and Earth." In Gen. 14:22, Abram is made, by transcribers, to call the "Most High Ail" by the name Jehovah; though we are expressly told in Exodus 6:3, that Abraham did not know Him by that name. He knew Ail, and he knew Shad-dai; but with any superior or divine being of the name "Jehovah," he had no acquaintance (See additional Note in Appendix.). The name has no doubt been substituted for Adon, Lord or Ruler, which the Most High is by virtue of His being the owner or sole proprietor of the heavens and the earth. The use of the word Jehovah is evidence that Genesis was compiled at least 430 years after the events of Chapter 15.  

Abram, the Hebrew, spoke the language of Moses. This is evident from the narrative, and the name applied to altars and to God by his immediate family. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all called upon the Possessor of the Heavens and Earth, by the word Ail-Shaddai, which in Gen. 17:1, He bestowed upon Himself, saying ani-ail-Shaddai- "walk before Me, and be thou perfect"; and in verse 3 it says, "and Elohim talked with him": and Ail told him through Elohim that He would be to him lai-lohim, "for Elohim and to his seed after him" (verse 8).  

As often as this word ail passed before his mind, the idea of POWER, might, strength, would stand out in bold relief. "It always," says Gesenius, "presented to the Hebrews the idea of strength and power." Nebuchadnezzar is styled in Ezek. 31:11, Ail Goyim, the Mighty One of Nations; and in Isaiah 9:5, Messiah is termed Ail Givbor, the Mighty Warrior.  

Shaddai is plural, and comes from the root shadad, to be strong or powerful. Shaddai signifies mighty or powerful ones. Several appeared to Abraham, and three of them at one time condescended to partake of his hospitality. Their power is tremendous when they choose to exert it upon the wicked, as in the instance of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, cities of the Plain; but towards "the Heirs of Salvation" they are ministering spirits, beneficient and good (Heb. 1:14; 13:1).  

But, by what were these Shaddai so powerful that they could stand by cities and send them into the abyss profound? Was it by their own power, or by the power of another? By the power of another certainly; even by His power who is higher than they; and who, being Possessor of the Earth hath alone the right to lay its cities in heaps, and sweep it with terror and distress. And because this is the fact, therefore, the Possessor of the Heavens and the Earth announced himself to Abram, Isaac and Jacob, as Ail-Shaddai, or THE STRENGTH of the POWERFUL ONES, whose might he had witnessed in the destruction of the Plain.

In this sense, that namely of POWER INCREATE, being the strength of creatures formed by it, we find Ail associated with other words than shaddai. In Gen. 33:20, it is testified, that Jacob erected an altar, and called it Ail Elohai Yisraail, rendered in the margin of the English Bible, God, God of Israel. An altar, mizbaiach, is a thing to sacrifice or present offerings upon, from zavach, to kill, etc. It was regarded as "most holy," so that whatever touched the altar was sanctified or made holy (Exodus 29:37). The blind fools, as Jesus styled the Rabbis of his day, had reversed this, and by making the altar of no account (Matt. 23: 18), destroyed its typical and sanctifying character. In the days of the patriarchs and prophets, the typical altar was temporarily sanctified, but in the days of the apostles, and consequently now also, Jesus is the sanctifier, as Paul teaches in Heb. 2: 11, saying that "Both he that sanctifieth, and they being sanctified, are all out of one (Father) ex henos: and in Chapter 13:10-13, he plainly identifies Jesus as the sanctifying altar of which none have any right to eat who hold on to the types rejecting the things they shadow forth.

Now Jesus was one and the Father was another. "I can of mine own self," said he, "do nothing.": "My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me": and it is written in the Law of Moses that the testimony of two men is credible. "I am one that bear witness of myself; and the Father who sent me, (the other witness) He beareth witness of me" (John 5:30; 7:16; 8:17,18). Here, then, are two personages. The Father by Himself, being Ail, or POWER, but when associated with the Son of Man, who, when so associated, was powerful "anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power" -- He was Ail Eloahh, the Power mediately manifested; the power being one, and the medium of manifestation another Eloahh. "It is in the ail yahdi, power of my hand," said Laban to Jacob, "to harm you; but the Elohim of your Father forbade it."

Now the altar erected by Jacob was typical of those referred to in the title he bestowed upon it. When the Spirit descended upon the Apostles, and shone through them, holding forth the word of life confirmed by power, there were many other Elohim in Israel. They were full of power, and therefore full of Ail, as Jesus promised they should be, saying, "Ye shall receive power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you" (Acts 1:8); and when Jacob poured oil upon the pillar-stone of Baithail, he represented this anointing of the Elohim of Israel with Ail. The marginal reading of the title of Jacob's Altar expresses nothing of this. "God, God of Israel" is an unmeaning phrase: rendered after the Saxon version of "God," it is "Good, Good of Israel"! But with the promises before us, we interpret the Altar as typical of the Power of the Powerful Ones of Israel in sacrificial manifestation.

Another word applied to "Power Increate," and improperly rendered God, is Eloahh. It occurs fifty-six times in the Old Testament, of which forty-one occur in the Book of Job. It is used four times in the Psalms; only twice by Moses; once by Isaiah and Solomon; three times in Daniel, and twice in Habakkuk. It is not in all these places applied to the Most High. In Daniel it is applied to that power in the Little Horn's estate or dominion which enforces the adoration of "Guardian Saints"; and in Hab. 1:11, zu koho lailoho -- it informs us that the Chaldean shall offend in taking his power for his EIoahh. And Job, in speaking of him that provokes Ail, says in Chapt. 12:6, "Who carries Eloahh in his hand"; that is, he calls the sword in the hand of the violent, his eloahh, in the sense of its being his power.

Power, then, is the radical idea of Eloahh as well as of Ail. It is of the singular number and masculine gender. In Isaiah 44:8, the Spirit of Eloahh in the prophet enquires: "Exists there an Eloahh without me? Yea, there is no rock (tzur, metaphor for power), I know not any." And in Psalm 18:31 "Who is an Eloahh without -- mivbaladai Jehovah? And who is a rock (or strong) except our Elohim"? "The Mighty One (hah-Ail), girdeth me with strength: and hath made my way secure." Is not Eloahh the Majesty of the Heavens"? (Job 22:12). "In my flesh shall I see Eloahh" (19:26). And "At the presence of Adon, the Lord, be pained, O earth; at the presence of the Eloahh of Jacob" (Psalm 114:7).  

The plural of this word is elohim, and occurs in the Old Testament about 2,470 times. In the first and second chapters of Genesis, it is rendered in the English version by the word "God": but in chapter 3:5, it is translated gods. In 1 Kings 11:5, it is translated goddess." In Jonah 3:3, it is rendered exceeding; and in Mal. 2:15, it is rendered godly.

It is certainly somewhat remarkable, that Eloahh, the singular noun, should be so seldom, and the same word in the plural, so often, used concerning God, in a book revealing Him to the student of the word. Grammarians tell us that there is nothing in it: that it is only a poetical fancy, or a peculiarity of style, that caused the singular to be used at all; and that the plural is used as more becoming, being expressive of the majesty or excellency of God. Referring to this Gesenius says "In unison with Aramaean usage the form of the singular is employed only in the poetic style and the later Hebrew; while the pluralis majestaticus vel excellentioe is the common and very frequent form.

"Greatness," he remarks, in his grammar, "especially in a metaphorical sense, as associated with power and sovereignty, is plurally expressed. Hence, there are several nouns which are used in the plural as well as the singular, to denote Lord or God (Pluralis majestaticus vel excellentioe) e.g. Eloahh. God is scarcely found in the singular, except in poetry; in prose; commonly elohim; adon, lord, old form of the plural adonai, the Lord, kat exochen (God), shaddai, the Almighty. Often the idea of greatness is no longer associated with the form, the mind having accustomed itself to contemplate the powerful in general as a plural. Another example of the plural majestatis is the use of we by Deity in speaking of Himself (Gen. 1:26; 11:7; Isa. 6:8) and by kings. The German language has it not only in this latter case, but in addressing a second person by Ihr and Sie. This plural is also found in modern Arabic and Persian."

"In regard to number, the constructio ad sensum is frequent. The pluralis majestatis is construed with a singular adjective or verb. Conversely, the adjective takes the plural form when it is used with reference to God (pro notione majestatis) as eloah ossai, God created me, (Job 35:9).  

End of Second Article. - Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come. John Thomas, M.D. Mott Haven, Westchester, N.Y. Feburary 1858 Volume 8 Number 2  

Third Article. - Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come. John Thomas, M.D. Mott Haven, Westchester, N.Y. Feburary 1858 Volume 8 Number 3  

We quoted in our former article, certain learned observations, that the reader might see how grammarians get round, but do not explain the anomaly. The rules are, that an adjective agrees with its substantive or noun in gender, number, and case; and that a verb agrees with its nominative in number and person. But in the case of Elohim, Adonai, Shaddai, Eloahh, etc., when applied in connection with Ail or POWER INCREATE, commonly styled God, we find the rules of grammar disregarded. Gesenius tells us that it is a royal peculiarity of speech; granted: but what in relation to divine power is the ground of that peculiarity? This he does not, and cannot explain, because he does not know, "God and Jesus Anointed whom he has sent." The peculiarity is, to coin a word, phanerosial and doctrinal. The peculiarity has diffused itself into other languages, and generated "a plural of majesty or excellence"; but is not originally a plural of that kind. As to Eloahh being poetical, and Elohim, its plural, prosaic, the contrary would appear the more correct opinion, seeing that the poetical Eloahh is only used four times in the Psalms; while in these songs of Zion the prosaic Elohim occurs three hundred and forty times at least!  

In our previous article upon the subject before us, we were defining words occurrent in the Hebrew, and used by the "holy men of old," whom the Holy Spirit moved to write as he dictated concerning Deity, a topic so unsearchable by unassisted reason that it is declared to be "past finding out" (2 Pet. 1:20, 21; Heb. 1:1; Rom. 9:33).  

The words examined are Ail, Elyon, Elyonin, Eloah, Shad-dai, Adon, Adonai, and Elohim all of them rendered with little or scarcely any discrimination, by the Anglo-Saxon terms Lord and God. We have seen that power, might, sovereignty, are the ideas upon which the words are based; and as the ideas are absolute and underived in Him "out of whom, and on account of whom, and for whom, are all things" ( ex autou kai di autou kai eiv auton ta panta ) (Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6). The Hebrew nouns expressive of power, might, sovereignty, are selected and appropriated by the Creator as representative signs or names of Himself, in revealing the knowledge of divine power in its manifestation to men.  

The source or fountain of power in the universe is one. It is a unit. Therefore, everything which exists is ex autou out of Him. Hence the Creator did not "make all things out of nothing." This is the teaching of theology, the "orthodox theology" of the Old Man of the Flesh; and which leads many of his children to affirm that "matter is God," understanding by "matter" that which is cognizable by the five senses. Hence the sun, the moon, and the stars, and all the things they can see, taste, feel, smell, and hear upon earth, are God. They confound that which "is of Him" with the "Him" out of whom all things proceed. On the other hand, other children of the Old Man affirm that "God is immaterial"; by which they mean that He is not matter, or substance, or body; but an inconceivable something they call "spirit," an incorporeal, unsubstantial, immaterial spirit, which is as near to nothing as words can express. Nothing making all things out of nothing is the Old Man's theology concerning God and the fountain of all things, reduced to its simplest terms.  

But the Scripture declares that pneuma ho yeos esti literally, Spirit is the Theos. I say simply theos, because we shall yet have to ascertain the New Testament sense of Theos. "Spirit," then, is the Theos commonly called God. But more than this, this Spirit is the Father; that is, the One ex autou, out of whom are all things. This appears from what is affirmed of "Spirit" and of "Father." Jesus says in John 5:21: "The Father raises up the dead and quickeneth," or makes the grave-emergent dead incorruptibly living: and in chapt. 6:63, he says: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth," or makes alive. The Father and the Spirit are, therefore, the same; nevertheless, the word "spirit" is often used in other senses. It is the "Father-Spirit" that Paul refers to in 1 Tim. 6:16, whom no man hath seen in His unveiled splendour. Veiled in flesh, "the Vail o[ the Covering" (Exodus 35:12): he that discerneth him who spoke to Philip, "saw the Father" (John 14:9; 12:45). But, veiled or unveiled, the Father-Spirit is substantial. Speaking of the Unveiled Father-Spirit, Paul says in Heb. 1:2, 3, that the Son is the Character of his Hypostasis, rendered, in the common version, "express image of his person." The Son is the character or exact representation, and the Father is the hypostasis. In reference to the former, the Father says, in Zech 3:9: "Upon One Stone there shall be Seven Eyes; behold I will engrave the graving thereof (that is, of the stone), saith He who shall be hosts." The graving engraved on the stone is termed, in Greek, character, an impress wrought into a substance after some archetype or pattern. The archetype is the hypostasis, so that hypostasis is the basis or foundation of character; wherefore the same apostle in Col. 1:15, styles the character engraved the "Image" of Theos the Invisible (eikon tou Theou tou aoratou).  

Seth was the image of Adam, and Adam, the image of Elohim (Gen. 1:26; 5:3). Like Seth, Jesus was an image of Adam, but only in relation to flesh. Adam the First was the image of Elohim, and this was in relation to bodily form. Body and form were the hypostasis of Adam and Seth; that is, they were the basis or foundation of the images so named. Where body and form do not exist, there can be no image; therefore, where image is predicated of hypostasis, that hypostasis must have both body and form. The Father-Spirit, unveiled, is, then, a bodily form; and as all things are "out of Him," He is the focal centre of the universe, from which irradiates whatever exists.  

The Father-Spirit is embodied power. Paternal power implies offspring or children, children or SONS OF POWER. Son-power is also embodied power. It is power emanating from the Father, corporealized in one or a multitude, but never separated or detached from the focal centre. The Son-power is, therefore, the Father-power, multitudinously expressed, manifested through many bodies. This is illustrated in the science of arithmetic. Arithmetic is the scence of numbers. The hypostasis or basis of this science is the multitudinous expression of one, a multiplication of number one. Let there be no numerical power called one, and there could be no five, fifty, or any other combination of one. One is the great power of the arithmetical universe; and all the other powers resulting from the multiplication of one combined, cannot exclude one therefrom, without annihilating themselves, and expunging the system. This is true of Son-power, individually or multitudinously expressed, in relation to the One Father-power. Hence Jesus was led to remark, "The Son can do nothing of himself," and again, "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5: 19,30). "The flesh," said he, "profits nothing." As son of Mary, he pretended to no power, wisdom or superiority. Mary's son was "the Vail of the Covering" to be rent. The Vail m which the Father-power was veiled, the Flesh-medium of Power-manifestation.  

That which connects the Focal Power of the universe with the embodied sons of power, and indeed with all created things, is also "spirit" -- styled in Scripture "free spirit" (Psalm 51:12). It is free or uncombined in space, and fills immensity as the water fills the basin of the seas. The atoms of all material things are elemental condensations of free spirit, connecting the orbs of heaven and all they contain, with the Great Central Focal power of the Universe. It is the principle of cohesion, attraction, form; penetrating and pervading everything. To this universality the Psalmist alludes, when he enquires of Jehovah, "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? And whither from Thy face shall I flee? If I shall ascend the heavens, Thou art there: though I shall spread down in sheol (the grave) behold Thee! I will take the wings of the dawn; I will dwell in the utmost end of the sea --moreover, there Thy hand (or power) shall lead me, and Thy right hand shall take hold of me. And I said, surely darkness shall cover me; but the night was light about me. Moreover, darkness will not conceal from Thee; but the night as the day will shine; as the darkness so is the light" (139:7-12). All this is equivalent to saying that the Father-Power is omnipresent by His Spirit. Hence, He needs not to be locomotive to see what passes in the sun, moon, earth and stars. His all-pervading spirit places Him in contemporary juxtaposition with them all; so that at one and the same instant, He knows the fall of a sparrow on earth, and any other event, small or great, on the sun. In this way it is that, as Paul told the Athenian idolators: "He is not far from every one of us" (Acts 17:27). We are out of Him, and through Him, and in Him as physical beings. This is equally true of all flesh that breathes. Hence Moses styles the Father-Power Ail Elohai haruchoth l'kol-bashar, power, powers of the spirits, for all flesh (Num. 16:22). Here is power as the cause of life, called Ail; and powers as distributed to each living thing, and therefore styled Elohim. A dozen creatures have life. This life is Ail's spirit in them all. It is not, however, a dozen separate and independent Ailim; but one and the same Ail multiplied by twelve. Ail is life absolute; for as Paul says: "He only hath deathlessness." Life radiating from His hypostasis or substance, is spirit-life Eloahh ruach, power of spirit. Formative of a creature, and sustaining it in life, it is power of spirit, or spirit-power for that creature. Twelve such Eloahh ruach become Elohim ruchoth, spirit-powers of the twelve. Hence, these Elohim are son-powers, or emanations from Ail, the great "paternal power." He is therefore the Ail of all flesh, as well as Elohim for all flesh. "The ruach or spirit of Ail has made me, and the nishmath or breath of the Shaddai, or Mighty Ones, hath given me life" (Job. 33:4). Here is the Spirit of Ail through the breath of Shaddai that gives life to men. This withdrawn and they die. Hence it is written: "If He gather unto himself His spirit and His breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn unto dust" (34:14).  

In this elaboration, then, we have Father-Power, Son-Power, or emanation, and Free Spirit. Moses and the prophets teach this, as we have seen. The Father-Power is One; the Son-Power is the One Father-Power in plural manifestation; and the manifestation is developed by Free Spirit emanation from the Father Power. This is not only Scriptural but reasonable; and right reason and Scripture always go together.  

We affirm then, that the Mosaic and prophetic revelation concerning Deity is that there is ONE POWER, multitudinously manifested; and that these manifestations constitute GOD. The One Power inquires of Job: "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Who laid the corner stone thereof; when the stars of the morning sang together, and all the Sons of Elohim shouted for joy?" (Job 38:7). This inquiry teaches, that before the earth was fitted up Mosaically, or as Moses has described in Genesis; the Supreme Power existed in multitudinous manifestation. The plurality was composed of intelligences styled"Stars of the Morning" and "Sons of Elohim" the former kokvai voker, and the latter benai elohim. In Rev. 22: 16, the glorified Jesus is styled "the bright and morning Star." The enquiry put to Job showed that there were many such before Adam was created, and that these stars are sons of Elohim, even as Jesus is Son of Eloahh. The word bain, signifies a son, from banah, to build. A son is the thing built. The Stars of Morning Light were things built and made resplendent by Ail, whose spirit formed and illuminated them. His Spirit was their atomic nucleus, the organic principle that made them what they are. As intelligences created and made, they were "Sons of" or benai; and the Spirit of Ail, the Great Paternal Power, became Eloahh to each of them, and so constituting each of them bain eloahh, a Son of Power, and all of them collectively benai Elohim, Sons of Power, -- the One Spirit of the Supreme paternal Power multitudinously organised.  

Our proposition then, is that Moses and the Prophets teach, that there were One Primary Creating Power and a multitude of Secondary Powers, as intimately connected with and dependent on the First, as ten or a hundred are upon number one; and that this multiplication of the One Power in the relation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was in existence before the Mosaic Creation. Dr. de Lara's Jew is, therefore, unnecessarily excited "when he is told that God has a Son." The Supreme Power has not only a Son, but a multitude of sons, and all of them partaking of His nature, or spirit-substance, hypostasis. The Supreme Power, or Ail, is "the Godhead," or source, fountain, or sole spring of Power. Moses and the prophets do not teach that "there are three persons, three essences, three somethings, or three anythings, in the Godhead; and that these three distinct units, or unities, constitute only one unit or one Unity -- and that that Tri-Unity is the God of Israel." They do not teach this. This is the foolishness of the Old Man of the Flesh. They teach the absolute oneness of the Power-Head. "Before me," as written in Isaiah 43:10, 11, "Ail" was not created, nor after me shall be: I, I shall be (anoke., anoke, Jehovah); and NONE WITHOUT ME A SAVIOUR. This is perfectly true, and quite compatible with Peter's proclamation to Israel concerning Jesus, saying: "Him hath Theos exalted to His right hand, a Prince and SAVIOUR; to give enlightenment (metanoian) to Israel, and remission of sins" (Acts 5:31). The Jew objects that if Jesus be a Saviour, there is then another Saviour beside Ail. But this objection arises from not knowing Ail, and Jesus Anointed whom He has sent. That born of Mary was bain Eloahh, Son of Power. Beside that power there is no Saviour. Apart from the Power the Son could not save; for he, as son of Mary, testifies, that "of himself he could do nothing." That the Supreme Power would save by a Servant-Power, is manifest from Isaiah as well as Peter. In that prophet, the Only Potentate says to one He styles His servant: "Thou shalt be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the desolation of Israel; I will also give thee for a Light to the nations, that thou mayest be my Yesua, salvation to the end of the earth" (49:6). The I and the Thee of this passage are but One Power. Power in servant-manifestation -- I the First and I the Last, and independent of that I, there are no Elohim or powers (Isaiah 44:6).  

Our proposition is further illustrated in the first chapters of Genesis. The first verse commences by informing us that "In the beginning Elohim fashioned the substance of the heavens and the substance of the earth." Here Power is plurally presented in connection with a singular verb, bara Elohim "powers He created." This looks and sounds very uncouth to the Anglo-Saxon mind; and as the grammar is bad, in order to save the grammatical reputation of Moses, and to get over what they can not explain, the grammarians have invented the plural of majesty or excellence, and tell us that the plural word Elohim must be regarded as singular. Their grammar teaches us that there was only One Person as well as One Power concerned in developing what exists on earth, out of nothing; but that, as this one person is very great, He is to be spoken of as if He were more than one; as if to resolve Him into two or three would add to His excellency. This notion is, however, sheer foolishness; for in those passages where the Creator asserts His supremacy, majesty or excellency, he speaks of Himself emphatically as anoke, anoke, Jehovah, that is, "I, I Jehovah"; not "We, We, Jehovah."  

The grammarians, having invented their rule, the theologians of the Old Man's school, rush in to show why it must be so. They say, that in the Godhead there are Three Persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: three Gods in One Godhead; and that therefore, because of this, the Godhead which created all things is styled Gods in the Hebrew, that is Elohim. But we have shown that the Godhead, or Fountain of Power, is only one: and speaks of Himself as One only; we have seen also that there existed many Sons of Power before the earth was fashioned. These are Elohim, of whom it is testified in Psalm 103:20, "Bless Jehovah ye His angels, Mighty Ones of Power, doers of His word, hearkening to the voice of His command; bless ye Jehovah, all His hosts, His ministers who do His pleasure." And in another place commanding their worshipful recognition of Messiah, he says: "Bow down to Him, all ye Elohim" (Psalm 97:7): which is quoted by Paul and applied to the glorified Jesus, in the words: "Let all the angels of God worship him" (Heb. 1:6). By these testimonies we are taught that the Elohim and the Angels are the same order of Divine Intelligences; and that they belong to, or are the property of Jehovah. Hence, they are styled "His angels," "His Mighty Ones of Power," "His hosts," and "His servants," or ministers; "who do His pleasure." He is their Creator, Lord or Imperial Chief; and they are more ancient than the human race. Without Him, they can do nothing. It may be said of them, as Jesus said of himself, "Of myself I can do nothing." Energized and authorized, however, by Him, nothing is too great or difficult for them to do. The Supreme Power, or Ail, has His pleasures; and whatever He is pleased to do, He commands its execution, and they perform it by His Spirit, whose material embodiments they are. They are, therefore, "Spirits" -- public official spirits, as Paul styles them; "begotten of the Spirit," and consequently spirit. They are therefore in Ail, and of Ail, and He through them all. To see them, is to see power in form and body: in common terms, to "see God"; and yet not to see Ail, "whom no man hath seen, or can see."  

This intimate relationship, so intimate as to constitute a Unity in plurality, but not a plurality in the absolute and primary Power the source of all--is expressed in Isaiah 45:18 -- "Thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens hu ha-Elohim, HE THE ELOHIM that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited. I YAHWEH, and none without." In this text Jehovah is twice repeated. This expresses one, being in the singular number; but Elohim is plural expressing two or a multitude; and this noun of multitude is prefaced, not by they as they the Elohim; but by "He," as He the Elohim. This peculiarity is doctrinal not accidental, nor an arbitrary custom of language, but designed. It teaches that the creation was produced from one power ex ou, out of which, are all things, and that this one power operated through a plurality of agents, or Elohim, who are the spirit-embodiments of its rays.  

Now, when we turn to Genesis 1:1,we do not find Moses saying bara Jehovah, Jehovah created, but bara elohim, ELOHIM created, nevertheless Moses and Isaiah are accordant in their accounts. Moses introduces Jehovah in the second verse, but with-out giving Him that name. His words are ruach Elohim, "the 'Spirit' of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters." What spirit was this? The New Testament says, "there is One Spirit" (Eph. 4:4); and if we ask what is that one? Jesus replies "Spirit is Theos," or "God" (John 4:24). Then it was Theos who moved on the face of the waters. But concerning Theos or Ail, Agur says: "Who hath ascended the heavens, or descended? Who hath gathered the wind in his fist? Who hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is His name and what is the name of 'His Son' if thou canst tell?" (Prov. 30:4). What is the name of that "one spirit," that moved upon the face of the waters? The answer is Jehovah. This was the "He" of the Elohim "that formed the earth and made it." Hence, the nominative to created, is not a plural of majesty, but a singular noun understood -- thus, "In the beginning (the spirit of) Elohim created the heavens and the earth"; and that spirit named himself Ehyeh, "I shall be," at the bush (Exod. 3:14; 6:3). If then, the question be asked, by what power did they, the Elohim, create and make all mundane things? The answer is, by the spirit, self-named Jehovah or Yah, whose sons, messengers, and servants they are. Spirit radiant from the eternal centre of light and power embodied itself in them; and from them as secondary focal organisations, radiated into the substance of the earth and waters; by which radiation a collateral connection was established with "the free spirit" directly emanating from the Focal Centre of the Universe, permeating and pervading all atoms. Holding such a relation to all things, and energized by such a power, they could move heaven, earth and sea, and elaborated the six days' work of power with all imaginable ease.  

The name Jehovah does not occur in all the first chapter of Genesis. All the works it there narrates are affirmed of Elohim. The Spirit is presented there as the power; but in the second chapter the style is changed, and Moses, to whom the Spirit had communicated His name at the bush, instead of saying "the Spirit of Elohim," says "Jehovah Elohim made the earth and the heavens"; "Jehovah Elohim formed man." A saying in Job 33:4, shows that "Jehovah" is synonymous with "Spirit." There Elihu says, "the Spirit of Ail hath made me, and the breath of Shaddai hath given me life." The nishmath Ail Shaddai is the atmosphere or firmament which was elaborated on the second day; and not to be confounded with the Spirit. The Spirit formed the air with its appearances called "heavens," for the support of the vegetables and animal worlds He was about to form. That the nishmath Ail is the air, is clear from Job 37: 10, which says: "By the breath of Ail, frost is given; and the breadth of the waters is straightened," or congealed.  

Now from the consideration adduced, it is evident that the phrases, "and God said," and "God made," and "God created," occurrent in the first chapter, are equivalent to "Lord God"; or more properly, Elohimsaid, created, and made, are equivalent to Jehovah Elohim doing thus, as brought out in the second chapter-- "One Spirit in a plurality of Agents": not a single one in three, but One in hosts: and hence the title so frequently in Scripture, "Jehovah of Hosts" -- the Jehovah-Spirit in multitudinous manifestation.  

The plurality of Elohim in the work of creation is manifest from Gen. 1:26 -- "Let Us make man in 'Our' image after our likeness." If the Jehovah-spirit had been solitary in the work, He would rather have said, if He said anything: "I will make man in my image, after my likeness." What was said is recorded to reveal to the reader the true relation of things. The mandate issued from Jehovah that man be made in the Spirit-type, and so constituted, that divine intelligence and power should be displayed through his organism. That spirit-type was the angel elohim after whom Adam and Eve were made. In form and likeness the same, only in nature of inferior quality. This was Jehovah's pleasure, and it was done by the fingers of His power. In reference to this, we read in Psalm 8:3, "When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the Son of Man that Thou visitest him? For Thou hast made him a little lower than the Elohim,"* etc. Quoted in the New Testament by Paul, the word mai-Elohim is rendered by "than angels," (Heb. 2:9); because Elohim are the agents or executive fingers of the Spirit. "The Spirit of God" and "the fingers of God" are synonymous, as appears from Matt. 12:28; Luke 11:20; and Elohim are spirit, being out of Ail. What the fingers of the hand are to the brain, such are the hosts of Elohim to Ail; they are "Unity of Spirit," which is "God."  

End of Third Article. - Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come. John Thomas, M.D. Mott Haven, Westchester, N.Y. Feburary 1858 Volume 8 Number 3  

Fourth Article. - Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come. John Thomas, M.D. Mott Haven, Westchester, N.Y. Feburary 1858 Volume 8 Number 4  

As we have seen, Moses and the prophets teach One self-existent, supreme fountain of Power, AIL who is Spirit, and self-named I SHALL BE, or Jehovah: that is ONE YAHWEH-SPIRIT POWER is "God" in the highest sense, and constitutes the "Godhead," or FATHER IN HEAVEN; and He is the Springhead of many streams, or rivers of spirit, which assume "organic forms," according to the will of the Jehovah-Spirit Power, and that when formed after the model, archetype, or the pattern, presented in HIS OWN HYPOSTASIS, or Substance, they become SPIRIT-ELOHIM, or sons of God; and are Spirit, because "born of the Spirit" -- Emanations of the formative Spirit being out of him. The Spirit-Elohim was also "God"; nevertheless they are created. They are formed and made out of and by that which is uncreated. They are Spirit-Forms, the substance of which (spirit) is eternal; while the forms are from a beginning. Each one is a God in the sense of partaking of THE DIVINE NATURE, and being therefore a Son of God.  

Now, if we understand this, we shall be able to discern the force and beauty of the expression Jehovah-Elohim, which occurs so frequently in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jehovah is the name of Uncreated Power, Elohim, the organizations of that Power after its image and likeness, whether they belong to the sun, moon, and stars of the universe, or to Israel. Hence also the beauty and the fulness of the phrase, "I am He the Mighty Ones, that formed the earth and made it -- I Jehovah and none without" -- ani-hu ha-elohim; ani Jehovah.  

If we comprehend this multiplication and manifestation of Divine Unity, many obscure passages in the English version of Moses and the prophets are easy to be understood; and the mind is prepared to understand the otherwise abstruse teaching of Jesus and the apostles concerning "God." And I would here remark that in making a new translation of the Scriptures into English, the original words, misrepresented in the common version by the Anglo-Saxon words Lord and God, or in combination Lord God, should be left untranslated, but printed in small capitals and italics; and at the beginning of the book a literal definition of the words be given, without regard to "theology," or "plurals of majesty or excellence." The English reader might then be able to perceive how no man has seen God at any time; and yet that Jacob had a personal encounter and wrestle with God; and that Moses talked with Him face to face.  

When then we read "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness," we find Moses teaching the contemporary existence of a plurality of Gods before the creation of man but we do not therefore find him teaching a plurality of Eternities in One Eternity, or Three Gods in one Godhead. This is the notion, not of Moses and the prophets, who positively declare the contrary, but the crotchet of the Old Man of the Flesh, who, professing to be wise, became a fool, "and changed the truth concerning God into a lie." Paul and Moses agree in this, as we have shown before, saying: "There be that are called Gods, whether in heaven or in earth, as there be Gods many and Lords many." There is, consequently, no room for dispute on this point. Paul affirms the plurality of Gods, and Moses shows that they existed before the creation of man.  

But then, both Paul and Moses teach that there is One who is surpreme over them all. This is AIL, who created them, and who is alone to be an object of adoration, not with the blank amazement of superstition but of an adoration in an earnest belief of His promises, and willing and loving obedience to His commands. Of this supreme God it is that Paul and Jesus say: "There is none other God but one." He is the only Head of the universe, who will permit none to take precedence of himself in the affection and adoration of His creatures. He does not, however, manifest Himself to all the intelligences who reside in the sun, moon, stars and earth, through the same medium. To us on earth, He presents Himself, not through Gabriel, but through Jesus as the medium of manifestation -- incipient manifestation, for the manifestation is not yet complete -- "To us there is but one God the Father out of whom are all things and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Anointed, on account of whom are all things, and we through him."  

Down to the third verse of the second chapter of Genesis, the creation of all things is affirmed of "God", that is of Elohim or Gods. But from the fourth verse to the end of the third chapter, where the divine power is mentioned, it is not simply "God" but "Lord God", that is Jehovah Elohim. The common version would merely indicate by prefixing Lord to God, that the Lord God was the supreme God. But if this were admitted, we should be unable to reconcile the saying of John, and Jesus, and Paul, who all declare that "no man hath seen God at any time" (John 1:18; 6:46; 1 Tim. 6: 16). Now Adam and Eve saw and conversed with the Lord God; and multitudes saw Jesus. But we remark that "Lord God" is not used by Moses to express POWER IN-CREATE UNVEILED, or Ail; but as a word-combination synonymous with "Spirit of God" of Gen. 1:2, or literally Ruach Elohim, spirit of Gods or mighty ones -- the "One Spirit" veiled in the mighty ones through whom He made all that was made.  

This Spirit was the Father-Spirit, but what was His name? This was not known until 2,463 years after the creation. Adam Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were all unacquainted with the name of the Spirit." "I was apparent," said the Spirit "to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as Ail-Shaddai; but by name, IEUE was not known to them." This name consists of the four letters printed in small capitals, and styled in Hebrew yod, hay, wav, hay. It is sometimes styled the quadrilateral name, because it consists of four letters. The pronunciation of these letters does not affect the meaning of the word. Jehovah is the pronunciation authorised by the Massorites, who from superstitious motives, declined to mention the name according to its true pronunciation. * It is doubtful whether in Exodus 6:3, the name was originally written, for we find in chapter 3: 14, it is written "AEIA"* which, without the point.s, may be pronounced aya, with the English sound of a in far. The probability is that the Massorites have substituted IEUE all through the Bible for AEIA. Be this as it may, the latter word is the name, three times used in Exodus 3:14, which the Spirit conferred upon himself. In his address to the Sanhedrin, Stephen told them that "there appeared to Moses, in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, an "Angel" of the "Lord" in a flame of fire, in a bush; and that the "Voice" of the "Lord" came to him, saying: "I am the 'God' of thy fathers" (Acts 7:30). This was a Spirit-manifestation. The Messenger was a spirit -- a Son of power --but not the Supreme Power, "whom no man hath seen at any time"; but an organised spirit-body, through whom the Supreme Power, by His Spirit, conversed with Moses; and with whom He was veiled. The words of the messenger were the Voice of the Spirit that came to Moses; so that when we read what was spoken, we do not read the words of the angel, but the declaration of the Spirit by whom he was angelized, or sent with a message.  

Moses was commanded to return to Egypt, from which he had fled forty years before, and to go to his oppressed countrymen, and tell them that "the Elohim of their fathers" had sent him to deliver them from the power of the Pharaoh. Though they served the gods of the Egyptians, they had not forgotten their own history. They would remember the three Elohim that visited Abraham and partook of his hospitality (Gen. 18:1-5), and which is termed "Jehovah appearing to him." They would not have forgotten about their departure to Sodom, and how Lot invited two of them to sojourn with him, saying: "My lords, turn in, I pray you"; and how they said: "Jehovah hath sent us to destroy Sodom." The vision of Jacob's Ladder was not forgotten, in which he saw angels of Elohim -- messengers sent of Elohim -- of their number, and above them all, at the top of the ladder, Jehovah; and He said: "I am the Elohim of Abraham, thy father, and the Elohim of Isaac" (Gen. 28:13). They would remember this, and, consequently, not be ignorant of a plurality of Mighty Ones. But these Mighty Ones were not the Mighty One of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; they were only the official spirits who performed service for them as heirs of salvation; for He that stood at the toy of the ladder, above all the ascending and descending Elohim, said ani Jehovah Elohai Avrahhahm, "I Jehovah Elohim of Abraham." Moses knew that they were acquainted with the many Mighty Ones of their history; and that, consequently, if he should present himself to them as a messenger of Elohim, they would say to him: "What is his name"? As if they should say: "We have heard of many gods; what is the name of him who sends you"? As Joshua says, they were worshippers of other gods than Jehovah at the time Moses went to them; Moses was aware of that, and, therefore, felt the importance of being made acquainted with the name of Him who sent him, that he might be able to answer their question should they ask it.  

Under these circumstances, the Spirit imposed upon himself a name, and embodied it in a Memorial, by which he was to be known henceforth. Some 430 years before he had said to Abraham, ani Ail Shaddai, "I, the strength of the Mighty Ones" (Gen. 17: 1), i.e., "All those Mighty Ones of whom you have heard, who were engaged in forming the heavens and the earth, and who recently confounded the speech of all the earth, and are about soon to overwhelm Sodom and Gomorrah -- I AM THE POWER by whose spirit they did it all; therefore, walk before ME and be thou perfect."  

This was a great principle established in the minds of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses -- that it mattered not how many mighty ones they might see, or have interviews with, they were not objects of worship for them, but were, themselves, created powers, whose existence, glory, and might were all of Him --the "Uncreated and Eternal Spirit." They, then, were not the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Spirit claimed this for His individual self. Not that there were one, two, three, or a multitude of Elohim of Abraham then actually existent in the Godhead: but, it was the pleasure of the Eternal Spirit that there should, at a future period, be a multitude of Abrahamic Elohim, who should constitute "a Divine Family," and not a whit inferior to "the Stars of the Dawn, the Sons of God," who shouted for joy when they beheld the results of the wonders of the creation-week. Hence, the Eternal Spirit, in imposing upon himself a name, selected a word which should point toward this wonderful future manifestation of spirit. There had been previous manifestations of spirit, and the then already-existent Elohim were its fruit. But now a new manifestation was pre-determined -- a manifestation of Elohim, or Sons of God, out of human flesh and spirit.  

With reference to this, "Elohim said to Moses," i.e., they who delivered the words of the spirit, the Eternal Spirit sent them to say for Him, "I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE: tell Israel I WILL BE has sent me, Moses, unto you. I WILL BE, the Mighty Ones of your fathers, the Mighty Ones of Abraham, the Mighty Ones of Isaac, and the Mighty Ones of Jacob: that is MY NAME for an Olahm (Aion or Millennium} and this MY MEMORIAL for a generation of the race" (Exod. 3:14, 15).  

The memorial, in its simplest form, is ehyeh asher ehyeh, "l will be who I will be." Asher, "who," the relative pronoun in this memorial, is both singular and plural, masculine and feminine. It will, therefore, stand for "ten thousand times ten thousand," as well as for two or three persons. The other two words of the memorial are the first person singular, future tense of the verb hahyah, "to be." In this memorial the Eternal Spirit is the "I", and the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are the "who," of whom it is memorialized they "shall be." The reader will observe that it is not "I will be who tihyenah, they shall be"; but "who I will be"; for although "who" refers to a plurality, that plurality, when developed, is but the manifestation of the One Eternal Spirit.  

When this Spirit-manifestation is developed, it contains the name for an Olahm. The word olahm signifies anything hidden. The name is, for a period, still hidden in the future: and, therefore, without defining the length of the period, termed simply olahm, hidden. The name is multitudinous, embracing "ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands" (Dan. 7:10; Rev. 5: 11), at the head of whom is He who is "altogether lovely" (Cant. 5: 16); nevertheless, all One Spirit out of whom, and for whom "they are manifested." 

This name was not apocalypsed or revealed in the Mosaic Olahm. It was verbally defined, and in that definition we find "Name" and "Glory" used synonymously. Moses said: "I beseech Thee show me Thy Glory"; and the Spirit replied: "I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the Name of Ehyeh before thee; but thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live" (Exod. 33: 18, 19, 20). Glory and Goodness in Spirit-organization constitute the Name of Ehyeh. It was verbally proclaimed in the words "Ehyeh, or Jehovah Ail, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and sin, and that will not clear (the disobedient); visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth" (34: 6). "Thou shalt worship for Ail no other; for Jehovah whose name is Jealous, a jealous Ail is He" (ver. 14). In passing, we would remark that this Jealous Name was presented in vision to Ezekiel, in whose writings it is styled "the Image of Jealousy": "the Glory of the Elohim. of Israel" (chap. 8:3,4).  

In Exod. 24: 10, Moses tells us -- at least the Common Version does that he and seventy-three others "saw the God of Israel." We should err, however, if we supposed that he meant they saw Ail, the Uncreated Spirit, "no man can see Him and live." He says they saw "the Elohim of Israel" depositories and embodiments of the Eternal Spirit, who shone out in glory in the presence of the Elders. The appearance under the feet of the Elohim, whose feet were also the feet of the Spirit, and, therefore, styled "His feet, was, as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven for clearness." The whole was a Spirit-manifestation, and illustrative of what is yet to appear in the midst of Israel, when the Elohim of Abraham, constituting the name of Ehyeh, shall be apocalypsed on Mount Zion.  

Let our Jewish readers make a note of this, that the Memorial Name exhibited in Moses' writing, is not simply a word of four letters given to an abstraction for a name, as men give names to their children; but a name memorial of a future manifestation of the Eternal Spirit; which manifestation will not be of One through One Only; but of One in and through ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands: that the name covers them all; and that consequently, the thousands of thousands are but "One Jehovah."  

This was precisely the relation of things before the formation of the Adams, first and second. Before Adam the first, there were thousands of Elohim, yet only one Eternal Spirit. The Name of those thousands was not Ehyeh, or Shall be"; but, as implied elsewhere, Howeh we-Hahyah, "He is and He was" --the One Eternal Spirit in plural manifestation, by which, as a whole, the earth was "created and made." And at the birth of the second Adam, "He is and He was," as manifested in the "multitude of the Heavenly Host," was praised in having glory ascribed to Him in the highest heavens (Luke 2: 13, 14).  

In regard to a name being representative of a multitude, we may refer the reader to the fact that the name of Ehyeh is even now comprehensive of all the saints living and dead; for everyone who believes the promises and the things concerning Jesus; and is immersed into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is "in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Anointed" (1, Thess. 1: l), and Christ is in Him by faith (Eph. 3:17). He is thus "in the Name" which is named upon him, and of the Elohim elect, "waiting for the adoption or redemption of the body," which results in "the manifestation of the sons of God," at the Olahm, for which they are prepared.  

End of Fourth Article. - Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come. John Thomas, M.D. Mott Haven, Westchester, N.Y. Feburary 1858 Volume 8 Number 3  

Fifth Article. - Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come. John Thomas, M.D. Mott Haven, Westchester, N.Y. Feburary 1858 Volume 8 Number 5  

It has been well observed by some one whose name escapes me, that "there exists in the universe only One Generic Spiritual substance, the Sole Primary Cause, efficient, formative, and substantial, of all secondary causes, and of all appearances whatever, but indued in its highest degree with a supreme providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emanate from it, apart from revelation." This is perfectly Scriptural, and therefore in harmony with the teaching of Moses and the prophets, among whom are included Jesus and the apostles.  

In another place we were treating of the Eternal Spirit in relation to His Name. We continue to remark here, that this name is not a mere tetregrammaton, which superstition forbids or fears to pronounce; nor is it a mere word bestowed by the Spirit upon himself, as a father affixes a word to a son, which we call a name, by which to distinguish him from his other sons; nor is it the name Father, and the name Son, and the name Holy Spirit, three names, into which those "who know not God, the Only True One, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent," are immersed. AIL, the Eternal Spirit, has not "three names." He did not say to Moses: "I will proclaim the names of Jehovah before Thee"; "I send an angel before Thee .... obey His voice, provoke Him not, for He will not pardon your transgressions, for my names are in Him"; nor did he say, "In all places where I record My names I will come unto Thee." The Eternal Spirit did not speak after this fashion, but uniformly in the singular, having only One Name, and not three, as some very erroneously imagine and inculcate.  

Elohim Developed from the Seed of Abraham

The Divine Name defines what the Eternal Spirit is in manifestation. "Jehovah whose name is jealous is a jealous power." Here "name" defines what exists. "The name of the wicked shall rot," that is, the glory, honour, power, substance, that exist, constituting the wicked and their attributes, shall perish. Hence, when the Eternal Spirit is fully manifested on earth according to His revealed purpose, that manifestation is "His Name," or the name of Ehyeh, the I-will-be manifestation of the Spirit.  

This name was proclaimed to Israel by Moses in the formula so often quoted by the Jews in their controversy with the friends - Jesus has left on record an infallible rule by which his friends may be distinguished from the Demons. The rule is expressed in his words, saying: "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you." "The Demons" is a phrase, in its application to that signifies those who believe that Jesus is the anointed Son of God, but "do not receive his words," nor do what he commands. This is not the only sense of the word but the sense in which it is used in this place, because the possessed of old confessed, but did not obey the truth. (Dr. Thomas) - of Jesus, and with the Demons also, who presume to cry out that they know that he is the anointed Son of God. In Deut. 6:4, Moses says: dxa hwhy wn:yhla hwhy larsy emv  

This is incorrectly rendered, both by Dr. de Lara in his letter and in the English version. The doctor renders it "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one!" In the English version it reads: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord!" But neither of these is a translation. "Lord" and "God" do not express the sense of the original. As we have shown already, the word Jehovah or Ehyeh,** has not the remotest affinity to the English word "Lord." We must, therefore, reject the above, which are mere paraphrases or transformations, and translate the formula literally, that knowing what Moses really did say, we may be able to understand what he said. And doubtless, it must be an important proclamation concerning the Invisible One, or he would not have called the attention of the whole nation of Israel to his words. The literal translation, then, is  

This is the proclamation in plain English. There is no word in it which is not perfectly intelligible. It announces a Person who shall be; and if you ask Moses who that Person is, he tells you in Exod. 3:14-16, and 6:3, that the person who shall be is that same One who, four hundred and thirty years before was known to Abraham as the Strength of the Mighty Ones who visited him from time to time, and whose messenger appeared to himself in the bush. This answer is equivalent to saying that the subject of the proclamation to Israel is "One who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Pantokrator, or Strength of All." He is while Moses makes the proclamation; He was in Abraham's time, and from an antecedent eternity; and He shall be when He comes as the Prophet like unto Moses. Nothing short of this can be educed from the words of Moses. Had we lived in the days of Moses, speaking the Hebrew as our mother tongue, his proclamation would have created in us an expectation, that, at some future time, 'He', the Possessor of the Heavens and the Earth, the Most High, who admitted Abraham to His friendship, would appear in the midst of Israel; and that then, consequently, whatever His name might be called, He would be lawnme lmma-nu-ail, "God with us."  

Now for this result to be manifested, one of three things was necessary; either that "Ail," the Eternal Spirit Himself, should descend from unapproachable light, and plant Himself in the midst of the Hebrew nation unveiled; or, that a portion of free spirit, emanating from His substance, should be embodied, constituting "Holy Spirit Nature," or God veiled; or, that the Eternal Spirit should create a body from the material race of Adam, and fill it with His own power and wisdom without measure. In either of these events, it would have been God with Israel, dwelling in the midst of them. But the first alternative was impossible: for God unveiled in any nation would be its destruction, for Moses testified that Jehovah declared to him: "There shall no man see Me, and live"; and Paul, who taught the same doctrine as Moses, says: "No man hath seen, or can see Him"; and Jesus also bears the same witness, that "No one hath seen the Father, except he who is from Theos (Divine Power) : the same hath seen the Father."  

The purpose of the Eternal Spirit to become Elohim to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, through their seed, excludes the second supposition. Mighty Ones in Holy Spirit Nature often appeared in the midst of Israel, and were, for a time, God with them. There is a notable instance of this on record in Exodus 24:10. It is there recorded that "Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, saw the Elohim, or Mighty Ones of Israel: and under HIS feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the body of the heavens for clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel HE laid not HIS hand; also they saw the Elohim, and did eat and drink. And YAHWEH said unto Moses, Come up to me in the mount, and be there : and Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua; and Moses went up upon the mount of the Elohim. And he said unto the elders, 'Tarry ye here for us, until we come unto you'." In this narration the distinction is maintained between Jehovah and the Elohim; Jehovah referring to the Eternal and Invisible Spirit; the Elohim to the individualized, or embodied, manifestations of power. The Elohim were visible; for Moses says the nobles of Israel saw them, and ate and drank in their presence. The Elohim had spread for them an entertainment of good things, and welcomed them to eat and drink without alarm: for "upon the nobles of the children of Israel HE (the invisible Jehovah) laid not His hand." Moses does not say that they saw Jehovah. He and Joshua alone were permitted to ascend to the mountain top; but even there, they did not see Jehovah; for "no man could see Him and live." They heard, but saw not.  

In this scene, Moses and Joshua are types of Messiah in his approach to the Father; while Aaron, Hur, and their associates in company with the Elohim, are types of the saints, the immortal nobles of Israel, in the setting up of the Gospel-Kingdom. The Elohim were the representatives of the personages to be manifested from the seed of Abraham in the Age of glory; the same Eternal Spirit being the substratum, or hypostasis of the representatives, and of those whom they represented; for which cause "He" and "His" are affirmed of them. The Elohim and the Devouring Fire on the top of the mount were the typical manifestation of Jehovah's glory; which finds its antitype in glorious display of the things represented also in Ezek. 1:10; 43:4; Rev. 4:5; 15:2.  

All these displays are Mighty Ones in Holy Spirit Nature, and therefore God : and God with them in the midst of whom the manifestation is made. The purpose of Jehovah excludes the Elohim of Sinai from the Elohim of the proclamation. This purpose is the development of Elohim from the Human Race equal to the Elohim of Sinai; or, as it is expressed in the words of Jesus, isaggeloi, "equal to angels." The Scripture reveals the principle upon which the Elohim of the Universe are developed by the Eternal Spirit. They are immortals, but were not always so. The Eternal Spirit, dwelling in light, is alone essentially immortal, without beginning; but all the Mighty Ones, or Gods, He has created, have at some period of their history, been subject to evil even as we. Moses teaches this in Gen. 3:5, 22. The sagacious serpent, who had seen and heard the Elohim in Paradise"the Stars of the Dawn and Sons of God" -- told Adam and Eve that if they ate of "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they should be as the Elohim ('gods') knowing good and evil." The lie he told did not consist in saying this; for the Jehovah-Elohim admitted that, in the eating, and its consequence, they had become like one of them, to know good and evil. "Behold," said He, "the man has become as ONE OF US, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of the Lives, and eat and live for Olahm; therefore Jehovah-Elohim sent him forth from the Garden of Eden." When this was affirmed of Adam and Eve, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked," and they were both ashamed and afraid. This was the form of the "evil" which they experienced at that crisis; and Jehovah-Elohim testifies, that it was an evil they themselves had been the subjects of. Those who were Elohim contemporary with Adam had once been the subjects of shame and fear; and as these are symptoms of an evil conscience, they had once been sinners; and as it is the law of the Eternal Spirit's empire, that sin works death, so they must have been once mortal : which is a conclusion in agreement with Paul's testimony, that the Invisible One "only hath immortality." Hence though in His universe there are multitudes of Immortal Sons of Deity, yet in all that universe there is but One whose immortality is underived and that august person is He who created them. Thus all immortals but Himself were once mortal -- sinners subject to death; and while so subject as much in need of a remedial system as we.    

But at the fitting up of earth as a new arena for the display of the power and wisdom of the Eternal Spirit, they who figure in the work, had attained to their eternal redemption; and had become "spirits" -- Holy Spirit corporeal intelligences -- because they had been born of the Eternal Spirit or Father. To what orb or planet of the universe they are indigenous, is not revealed; but as they are not ab-original to an earth-born race, they are not sovereign here; but only, as Paul says, "public official spirits, sent forth for service on account of those thereafter to inherit salvation" (Heb. 1:14).  

These, then, are not "OUR Elohim" - they are not the Elohim of Abraham, nor the Elohim of Israel, to whom the "Sh'ma Yisraail" refers. These Elohim or Sons of Power, are to be developed from the earth-born seed of Abraham, upon the great moral principle of the intellectual universe, expressed in the two words "faith" and "obedience" -- an obedient faith, tested by trial. This principle necessitates the existence of evil in the system where the development of God is in progress; for there can be, no trial where evil does not exist. The Eternal Spirit has, therefore, wisely created evil -- first as the punishment of sin and secondly, to afford scope for the manifestation of the approved. Upon this principle, Abraham's faith was tried and perfected; and upon the same principle, though not in the same way, the faith of all scripturally recognized as "his seed," is tried and perfected to this day.  

The Sh'ma proclaims a plurality of Elohim, but does not define the number. Moses tells us elsewhere that they should be as the stars of the heavens for multitude--"So, O Abraham, shall thy seed be." To this agrees the testimony of the Apocalypse, where it is written "I beheld, and lo, a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and with palms in their hands." "These are they who came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple; and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes" (Rev. 7:9, 14, 17). These are they whom Ezekiel saw in a vision, moving onward in victorious career. "In their going," says he, "I heard the noise of their wings like the noise of great waters, as the voice of Mighty Ones, o pantokratwr, or in Hebrew shaddai: (shaddai, of Mighty Ones) the sound of the speech was as the sound of a host" (Ezek. 1:24). Daniel also saw them in vision. "I beheld," says he, "until the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool' his throne the fiery flame, and his wheels burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the Judgment was set, and the books were opened" (Dan. 7:9-10). Whence came all these thousands of the fiery stream? They are all the Sons of Power: Spirits born of the Spirit; Israel's Elohim, or Mighty Ones; who were once Jews and Gentiles in unprofitable flesh: sinners under sentence of death, but justified by an intelligent and obedient faith. These are the Elohim of the Sh'ma Yisraail, the hypostasis of whom is the ONE YAHWEH -- the One Eternal Spirit multitudinously manifested in the Sons of Eternal Power. When these become apparent, "at THE ADOPTION, to wit, the redemption of the Body" (Rom. 8:23) -- the "One Body" -- then will be revealed the Mystical Christ -- the seed of Abraham -- the "Son of Man clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the breasts with a golden girdle; his head and hairs like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if glowing in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters" (Rev. 1:13-15) -- the voice of the redeemed of all kindreds, and nations, and peoples and tongues.  

Such is the hidden mystery of the Sh'ma Yisraail, revealed in the Nazarene proclamation of the Moses-like prophet and his apostolic associates. Hear, O Israel, the Eternal Spirit, who has surnamed himself 'Ehyeh,' or Jehovah, because He will be for a Starry-Multitude of Sons of Power for Abraham, is nevertheless, but One Eternal Father, and they in Him are One! "To us," then, "there is but one POWER, 'the Father,' out of whom are all, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Anointed, on account of whom are all, and we through him." All this development: of an earthborn family of Sons of God, who shall take their stand in the universe as Seraphim and Cherubim of Glory, is through and on account of Jesus Christ. He is the foundation, the chief and precious corner stone of this new manifestation of the Father-Spirit. Truly, as Moses says, it is a "Glorious and Terrible Name --Eth-Jehovah Elohekha--the I shall be thy Mighty Ones, O Israel'."

We think that by this time our readers will have comprehended the Mosaic teaching concerning God, which is the basis of the revelation which the Eternal Spirit hath given of Himself in the subsequent communications made to Israel through the prophets, Jesus and the apostles. We have seen that Moses did not teach three persons, three essences, or three anythings in One Godhead. By Godhead is meant the source, spring, or fountain of Deity -- the Divine Nature in its original pre-existence before every created thing. He teaches that this Godhead was a Unit --a Homogeneous Unit, undivided into thirds, or fractions.  

But enough for the present; in our next we shall resume.  

We think that by this time our readers will have comprehended the Mosaic teachings concerning God, which is the basis of the revelation which the Eternal Spirit hath given himself in the subsequent communications made to Israel through the prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles. We have seen, that Moses did not teach three persons, three essences, or three anythings, in One Godhead. By Godhead is meant the source, spring, or foutain of deity - the Divine Nature in its original preexistence before every created thing. He teaches that this Godhead is a Unit - a Homogeneous Unit, undivided into thirds, or fractions.  

At this point of the inquiry, the true believer meets the Jew face to face in the approving presence of Moses and Jesus. They all agree on this point, and say in the words of the sh'ma, "there is One Jehovah." Compare Deut. 6:3 with Mark 12:29-32. By doing so, the reader will see that Jesus was as emphatic and precise in his teaching concerning God as Moses: and that those who heard him teach understood him in the Mosaic sense; for a Scribe (and all the Scribes were students of the law, and zealous for their interpretation of Moses) said to him: "Well, teacher, thou hast said the truth : for there is one God; and there is none other but He": upon which Jesus remarked: "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God."  

But here the agreement ceases at the threshold; for not content with one Eternal Spirit named Jehovah, the rejector of Jesus contends for only one eloahh. But Moses nowhere teaches that there is but one eloahh; nor does he use the phrase One Elohim -- a singular numeral with a plural noun. On the contrary, he teaches the existence of a plurality of Elohim. The Sh'ma does not say "Jehovah our Eloahh is one Jehovah, or one Eloahh"; but "Jehovah our Elohim is one Jehovah." Moses and Jesus are agreed in this also; for if either of them had taught that there was but one eloahh, they would have been in opposition, or of both of them had so taught, they would have left no room for a Messiah who should be called Jehovah-Tsidkainu, as in Jer. 23:6; 33:16, He shall be our righteousness; and Elohai kol-haretz, "Elohim (plural) of the whole earth," as in Isaiah 54:5. To have taught the doctrine of only one Eloahh, as well as only one Jehovah, would have been to set aside the doctrine of a Messiah altogether, so that there would be neither a personal Christ, nor a multitudinous Christ, the latter being constituted of all in him, the personal.

Well, then, Moses and Jesus both taught a plurality of Eloahhs. Jesus said: I am Eloahh, and my Father is Eloahh, and the children of God by resurrection, each one is Eloahh; and all together we are thy Elohim, O Israel, and yet but one Jehovah. But the Jews repudiate such a God-Name as this. It is incomprehensible to them; and in their opinion, nothing short of blasphemy. It was so repugnant to their notions of things that when Jesus taught it "they took up stones to stone him"; and declared that they did so because that he, being a man, made himself Eloahh in saying: I am the Son of All (John 10:33-36). Like Dr. de Lara, they objected to the idea of Jehovah having a son; and that son being a man; and that man consequently EIoahh or God. Hence, when Jesus asked them: "What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?" They did not answer: "He is the Son of God" -- to have done so would have been to admit that he would be equal to God, which they considered blasphemy. They, therefore, adhered to the fleshly view of the matter, and replied: "He is the Son of David." This was equivalent to saying that he was equal with David only; and consequently, not equal with Deity. But this position was pregnable, and easily turned. Jesus saw their weakness, and immediately exposed it by inquiring: "How then doth David in spirit call him Adon (lord, superior, ruler, &c.,) saying: Jehovah said unto my Adon, Sit thou at my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Adon, how is he his son?" They could not answer this; "no man," says Matthew, "was able to answer him a word" (Chapter 22:41-46).  

The point in this argument is a question of equality; and therefore of Deity, or of mere humanity. If Messiah were to have been simply son of David, then he would be equal in natural descent, and inferior in rank. If equal in natural descent he would have been no more than a son of Jesse; and if simply David's son, he would have been socially inferior, inasmuch as in society, and especially in Hebrew society, fathers take precedence of sons. This being admitted as contained in their premiss, upon what known principle could David speak of such a Messiah as his Adon or Sovereign Lord? Here is a notably weak point in the Jewish understanding of the doctrine concerning the Messiah. As in the days of their fathers, so to the present time, "They judge after the flesh." They can only see in Christ a son of David, having no higher origin than blood, or the impulse of the flesh, or the will of man. They have no conception of a Christ, who should be formed by the Eternal Spirit from the substance descended from David, as Adam was formed by the same Spirit from the dust; and therefore generated by the will and power of Ail, still less did they see that such a Son of Power should become a son of a spirit-generation from among the dead. The Jewish mind cannot penetrate "the veil of the covering"; so that all his reasonings begin and end in flesh, "which profits nothing." It is not to be wondered at, then, that the Jews, as Dr. de Lara says, "reject with scorn and ridicule the idea of God having a son; of coming down from heaven and enacting with the Virgin Mary the scene related by Luke." Their minds are so sensual and earthly that they cannot ascend to the contemplation of "heavenly things." What they know naturally, as brute beasts, of these things they can speak; but higher than flesh they cannot rise until the Lord shall come and take away the veil.  

But, as we are taught in the Old and New Scriptures that a remnant of Israel shall be saved, we would, in the hope of our writings meeting the eyes of one or more of that remnant, reason with them concerning the Christ. We would invite them again to the question Jesus put to their fathers, saying, "What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?"  

But no one, Jew or Gentile, can give a reasonable answer to this question who is ignorant of Moses and the prophets. And the reason of this will be obvious to every intelligent person from the consideration of the facts that "Christ," as the subject matter of a system of knowledge, is peculiar to their writings. Moses' writings may be said to have started the subject. It is true that the Christ-idea was in the world before Moses lived. Adam and Eve received the first promise of his appearing in listening to the sentence upon the serpent in Gen. 3:15. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, predicted his coming with his ten thousand saints; and Abraham saw his day, and was glad. Still the convictions and hopes of these ancients would have been lost but for Moses, who was caused by Jehovah to put them on record, and to commit the writings to the custody of the Hebrew nation. It is, therefore, exact enough to say, that, as far as we are concerned, the Christ-idea and the Christ-doctrine, originated with Moses. He treats of it at large in his five books. After him the Christ-idea was dramatized, not related, but represented by Joshua at the head of Jehovah's hosts in the conquest of the Holy Land from the Gentiles. It was also dramatized in the history of David and Solomon, and the Mosaic doctrine concerning Christ, amplified by Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and all the prophets. The idea and teaching, then, concerning Christ being a special system of inspired knowledge peculiar, exclusively peculiar, to the prophetic writings, how can a man rationally answer the question: "What is the truth concerning the Christ? Whose son is he?" in ignorance of what they testify? It is impossible. We must study Moses and the prophets, or we can know nothing as we ought to know it concerning the "Wonderful One," through whom the knowledge of the "Eternal Spirit Name," or God, is revealed. It is impossible to know God apart from the Christ-doctrine of Moses and the prophets; for the knowledge of Christ is the knowledge of God-manifestation to man. Let us put it in another form, thus: blot out from the oracles of God the instruction concerning Messiah, and there would remain no revelation of God behind. The Christ-doctrine is the key to the Sh'ma; to the Memorial Name for a generation of the race; to "the glorious and Fearful Name," and to all the remarkable combinations of words, grouped together without regard to grammatical rules, and so thickly distributed upon the sacred page. Let us then, hear Moses and the prophets: "for they wrote of me," says Jesus: and "if ye believe not their writings, how can ye believe my words?" (John 5:47). Jesus had no hope of a man, in a scriptural sense, believing his doctrine, who did not believe Moses, and if he and Moses were not credited, the ignorance of the unbeliever alienated him from the life and blessedness of God; for, he says, "this is Aion-life, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent" (John 17:3).  

The first idea, then, that Moses gives us of the Christ is that--

1. He was to be born of Adam's race;
2. He was to be the seed of the Woman and Son of God;
3. He was to be killed;
4. He was to rise from the dead; and
5. He was to destroy the power that killed him.

All this is expressed or implied in Gen. 3:15. It teaches us by implication that he was not to be begotten of the impulse of the flesh, nor of the will of man; so that in being born of the human nature, he would be directly Son of Woman, and only indirectly Son of Man. But, if he were not directly Son of Man, he must have been directly Son of Power as Adam was, who had no human father. Adam's father was the Eternal Spirit, self-named Jehovah, who formed him from the dust. Eve seems to have understood that the Seed of the Woman was to be somehow related to the Spirit, afterwards named Jehovah; for when, in her inexperience, Cain, her first-born son, came into the world, she said: "I have gotten (a play upon his name Cain) a man eth-Jehovah" (Gen. 4:1). In the English version, the text reads: "I have gotten a man from the Lord." But "from" is not in the Hebrew. There it reads ish-eth Jehovah, a man the Jehovah. But was Eve acquainted with "Jehovah" as the name of the Spirit? Abraham was not. If she were not, the words would seem to imply that she regarded Cain as the promised acquisition; or she may have considered that she acquired him of the Spirit, whom Moses, in the record, styles eth-Jehovah, in which case ish would be in construction, and signify man of. If she said a man of the Spirit, then she regarded Cain as begotten of the Spirit; but if she said a man the Spirit, in both cases Moses substituting Jehovah for Spirit, she regarded him as the seed of the woman promised; and still from the Spirit, rather than from Adam. Be this as it may, the event proved that he was neither "of the spirit," or a Spirit-man, but of the flesh, in the rebelliousness thereof, and therefore earthly, sensual, and demoniac.

Abraham seems to have been taught representatively, that the son of the woman was to be in his origin a son of power, that is, of God, and not of the will of man; he was taught this representatively by the case of Isaac. Isaac was as much a Son of Power as Adam and Jesus, in relation to the flesh. Had there been no preternatural interposition of Spirit power, there would have been no Adam, Isaac, nor Jesus. Now Isaac was a type of Christ; for Moses writes that Ail-Shaddai said to Abraham, "in Isaac shall be chosen for thee a seed." Isaac in his generation, or circumstance of his begettal; and in his figurative sacrifice and resurrection, was the representative of the Christ to his father Abraham; by which he was taught

1. That Christ the Son of Woman, was to be of preternatural paternity; and therefore, Son of Power or God; and to descend from Isaac;
2. That he was to be killed as a sacrifice; and
3. That he was to be raised from the dead.

These things were expressed, and implied in the representation; so that, had the question been put to Abraham, "What thinketh thou of the Christ? Whose Son is he?" He would have replied: "He shall be Son of God."

But this, perhaps, may be objected to as only inferred, and not positively declared -- that Moses does not say in so many words, that the Seed of the Woman was to be Son of God. But it may be replied, that the doctrine of Sonship to God is a peculiarity of the Christianity taught by Moses. What is the idea of ish eth-Jehovah but that of a Son of God, whether we read it, "a man the Jehovah," "a man of Jehovah," "a man of the Spirit," or a "man the Spirit"? It is a man of preternatural paternity in the estimation of the speaker. The Jews regarded Adam as the Son of God, and the idea came to them from Moses, who gives him the paternity. See Luke 3:38.

It is truly absurd for Jews to talk of "shrinking back and standing sternly aloof, the moment they are told that God has a Son"! Were Moses in their midst he would certainly be ashamed of them. If they will not hear Jesus, do they not hear Moses deliver God's message to Pharaoh, and say: "Thus saith Jehovah, Israel is my Son, my first-born. And I say unto thee, Let my Son go that he may serve Me; and if thou refuse to let him go, behold I will slay thy son, thy first-born" (Exod. 4:22-23). Upon what principle was the Hebrew nation Jehovah's Son? Upon precisely the same principle that the Son of Mary claimed to be Son of God -- upon that of Spirit-paternity. Isaac was the father of the nation, and his begettal was miraculous. The nation descended from him was a "miraculous conception"; and Jews consider those who believe that God has a Son, and in the miraculous conception, of that Son, "should be set down as demented, and only entitled to pity, and to a cell in an asylum." All that the Jews say against the narrative of Matthew and Luke concerning the birth of Jesus, might be turned with equal force against Moses' account of the birth of Isaac. Matthew says, that "Mary was found with child of the Holy Spirit"; and Moses clearly shows that if the Holy Spirit had not affected Sarah, there would have been no Isaac, and consequently no Hebrew nation. The peculiarity of Isaac's paternity is the ground of Jehovah's claim upon Israel as His son. "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt" (Hos. 11:1). These are the words of Jehovah by Hosea; and though spoken of a multitude, in that multitude is included the Messiah, who federally speaking, was in the loins of Nahshon at the Exodus; and personally, came out of Egypt at Herod's death.,/P>

The idea, then of God having a son is Mosaic, and not of Nazarene origin. But we are not left to inference and implication in relation to the Christ being the Son of God. That he should be both Son of Man and Son of God -- "of man," by his mother, and "of God," by his Father--is expressly stated in 2 Sam. 7: 14; 1 Chron. 17: 13. In the Berith Olahm, or Covenant of the Aion, recorded there, Jehovah informed David that he should have a Seed or Descendant, who should be resurrected to sit upon the throne of the House of Israel; and that Jehovah would be his Father, and he, the Seed, should be His Son. Hence, David expected that the Son of the Woman who is to bruise the Serpent's Head, would descend from himself, and therefore be Son of Man; but that he would be begotten in one of his female descendants by the Spirit of Jehovah, and therefore be Son of God. This was the kind of Christ expected by David; and therefore in Psalm 110 he styles him "Lord," although His son.

The berith or covenant, that promised this, was ever present to the mind of David. The truth of this is apparent abundantly in the Psalms; besides that, he would constantly have before his mind, what he tells us was "all his salvation, and all his delight." He understood that the subject of this covenant was the Second Adam; for when it was delivered to him, he exclaimed: "Who am I, Jehovah Elohim; and what is my house, that Thou hast brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in Thine eyes, Elohim; for Thou hast spoken concerning the house of Thy servant to a far distant time; and Thou hast regarded me according to the oracle of the ascending Adam, Jehovah Elohim" (1 Chron. 17: 17). And in 2 Sam. 7: 19, he says of the covenant: "This is the oracle of the Adam, Jehovah Elohim."

David's mind then, was full of this remarkable idea, that the Son of God was to descend from his loins. No Jew can refute this proposition. They are as dumb in its presence as when Jesus silenced their fathers that they could not answer him a word. To the carnal mind the idea is no doubt absurd and incomprehensible, because it judges according to the flesh. How could the Son of God be born of a woman? This is "a great mystery," says Paul, "God manifested in flesh"; and with all the love of mystery, and acuteness of the human mind, Jews nor Gentiles can make nothing of it apart from Moses and the prophets.

Now look at a few sentences from David's pen, as illustrative of his views of things in connection with the Son of God, who was to descend from him. "The truth to David Jehovah swore; He will not turn from it; saying, from the fruit of thy body I will set for thee on the throne. If thy sons will keep my covenant (berith) and my testimony which I will teach them; even their sons shall sit on the throne for thee until AD de-yde. adai ad. Because Jehovah has chosen (to be) in Zion; he has desired it for a dwelling for Him. This, saith He, is My rest until AD; here will I dwell, for I have desired it. There I will make a Horn to bud forth for David. His enemies will I clothe with shame; and upon Him shall his crown flourish" (Psalm 132:11-18).

1. From this we learn, that the Davidian Son of God is to be a King upon a throne in Zion, where David's sons have already reigned.
2. That the throne on which they sat is to have existence until AD.
3. That it should continue from David's time until AD, on condition of his sons keeping the covenant and the testimony.
4. That the Son of God Jehovah would consequently be the Ascending Adam, Jehovah Elohim, whom in Psalm 110 David in Spirit sees at the right hand of power.

We may remark here that da adis a remoter period than Mlwe olahm. Ad does not arrive till olahm has passed away. It is an indefinite series of ages beyond the thousand years of Messiah's Aion. David's throne is for this period, styled in Daniel, "a season and a time." Olahm ends where Ad begins; so that "until Ad" is to the end of Olahm. Paul refers to this when he says, in 1 Cor. 15:24: "Then cometh the END when he, Christ, shall have delivered up the kingdom to God even the Father that God may be all things in all men" (Ta Panta en pasin). This is what obtains beyond olahm, or in Ad. When the end of Olahm touches the beginning of Ad, a change in mundane affairs again ensues. It is the epoch of the crushing of the serpent's head, which occurs 1,000 years after his being bound. "The Son of God reigns until He (the Eternal Spirit) hath put all enemies under his feet." This is Paul's testimony; and that "until" is the "until Ad" of Psalm 132: 12, 14. When "all enemies" are destroyed, there will be no occasion for any more reigning; for to continue a reign after the last enemy is destroyed, and God is "all things in all," would be for God to reign over Himself, which is absurd.  

Now David's throne would have continued from David's time until Ad, without interruption, if his sons had kept Jehovah's covenant and testimony; even that testimony which should be delivered to them after David wrote -- "which," says he, "I shall teach them." This testimony was the Gospel of the Kingdom, which the Eternal Spirit had sent Jesus of Nazareth to proclaim to Israel -- the Spirit's words put into the mouth of the prophet like unto Moses, which a man can reject only at the hazard of damnation (Deut. 18:15-19). But they despised the Covenant of Promise, and therefore the sons of David were excluded from the throne at the Babylonish captivity; and the throne itself abolished until the Son of God should come as "The Repairer of the Breach; the Restorer of the paths to dwell in" (Isaiah 58:12).  

But David saw that the Son of God would not be allowed by the kings of the earth and their partizans to enter peaceably upon the possession of his throne; in fact that they would do their best to prevent it. In his last words he styles them "a thornbush to be thrust away, and consumed": and though they should fill the Son of God with iron and the shaft of a spear, he should nevertheless smite them (2 Sam. 23:5-7), and by the power of the Eternal Spirit, be established in Zion as King over the nations to the utmost bounds of the earth, as testified in the second Psalm. Will a Jew read this, and persist in denying that Jehovah has a Son? In that testimony he will find predicted a conspiracy to murder "Jehovah's Anointed," and so get quit of his yoke. But that it is only temporarily successful, because of the interposition of Divine Power. Jehovah laughs their impotence to scorn, and tells them that notwithstanding all efforts against it, He will set His King on Zion, after He has raised him from the dead, according to the words, "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten thee; and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them to pieces as a potter's vessel" (Psalm 2). 

In two places David refers to the Mother of the Son of God. In his last words, he tells us "that Jehovah's Spirit spoke by him, and that his word was upon his tongue." He spoke then, by inspiration. The Spirit, then, afterwards, incarnate in the Son of God, says in Psalm 116: 16: "Jehovah, truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, the Son of Thine Handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds." This deliverance is in answer to his prayer in Psalm 86: 16: "O turn unto me, and have mercy on me; give Thy strength unto Thy servant, and save the Son of Thine Handmaid. Show me a token for good; that they which hate me may see, and be ashamed; because Thou, Jehovah, hast helped me, and comforted me." The person here styled Jehovah's Handmaid, is the woman of Gen. 3: 15, and, as Christians believe, the Mother of Jesus, whom Elizabeth, her cousin, styled "the Mother of our Lord"; and Gabriel, "the highly favoured of the Lord," whose handmaiden she averred herself to be. "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee," said Gabriel, "and the power of the Highest One shall overshadow thee; therefore also, that Holy One that shall be born of thee, shall be called 'the Son of God'." Creative power was to be preternaturally exerted as in the formation of the first Adam and of Isaac; and therefore the product was the Son of Power, that is of God.  

We see, then, from Moses and David, that Christ was the Son of Woman and the Son of Jehovah: will the Jews, who object to Jesus on the ground of what they call his illegitimacy, which if proved, would make him unholy or unclean, show us how such a Christ could be born upon any other principle than that narrated by Luke? But we must conclude for this time, with the remark for further elucidation hereafter, that that which is born of God is God, as Jesus has declared. - EDITOR.  

No. 6  

IN our previous articles expository of the scripture revelation which the Eternal Spirit has given concerning "God," we have shown --  

1. That Moses, the prophets, and Jesus all teach that the Godhead is one AIL, or Power and that this unity is absolute;
2. That they teach, that the ONE SELF-EXISTENT ETERNAL AlL hath never been seen by any mortal man -- that He is an undivided and invisible unity, pre-existent before the beginning of all things, intelligent and material;
3. That they teach. that He dwells in unapproachable light;
4. That they teach, that SPIRIT emanates from His substance; and the SPACE, which is unbounded, or infinite, is filled with this SPIRIT--Spirit which is seen in the lightning: and heard in the thunder, "the voice of God";
5. That they teach, that all created things are ex ou out of this Spirit, and by it; and therefore out of and by the Eternal Power: who is consequently "the Father" of whatever exists;
6. That they teach, that "there be Gods many and Lords many," which are called Elohim, Shaddai, Adonai, and so forth; and that these are created intelligences -- corporeal manifestations of the Spirit of the light-inhabiting ETERNAL INCREATE;
7. That they teach expressly or by implication, that these created deities have all been originally subject to evil even as we; and that they have become Immortal Gods after the moral and physical type exhibited in the biography of Jesus of Nazareth;
8. That they teach, that all immortals are "the sons of God" -- of Him who only hath immortality as an essential quality of His self-existing and uncreated substance;
9. That they teach, that in seeing God, men saw embodiments of the Spirit of the Eternal lncreate, not the Eternal Himself, "whom no man can see and live"; and that these embodiments are Sons of Power, i.e., of Deity;
10. That they all teach, that the doctrine concerning God reveals the multitudinous manifestations of the ONE ETERNAL IN-CREATE by His Spirit; which is styled "the Manifestation of the Sons of Deity";
11. We have shown, that these Sons of Power ("sown in weakness, raised in power") in the aggregate constitute THE NAME OF YAHWEH -- a Name of Multitude; a myriad-manifestation of THE SPIRIT OF THE INVISIBLE GOD -- THE ONE I SHALL BE: "God manifested in flesh"; which is a grand mystery, but apostolically revealed;
12. We have shown, that Sonship to the Eternal One is an Old Testament element of this great mystery; and that an individual son was as necessary to the development of the "Many Sons," as an Isaac was to "Israelites indeed"; we through Jesus."

These things having been demonstrated: much rubbish has been cleared away. Trinitarianism and Unitarianism have both received a quietus. There are not three Gods in the Godhead; nor are there but three in manifestation; nevertheless, the Father is God and Jesus is God; and we may add, so are all the brethren of Jesus gods; and "a multitude which no man can number." The Godhead is the homogeneous fountain of the Deity; these other gods are the many streams which form this fountain flow. The springhead of Deity is one, not many; the streams as numerous as the orbs of the universe, in which a manifestation of Deity may have hitherto occurred.  

"God," said Jesus "is spirit" -- pneuma ho qeos pneuma ho Theos. Heathen Greek writers, whether poets or orators, generally meant by Theoi, the plural of Theos, nothing more than supernatural beings of a higher order than men. The word, in itself, had attached to it none of those more metaphysical conceptions which belong to our term Divine as significant of the uncreated and eternal. The great teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, did not use the word Theos at all, inasmuch as he discoursed not in Greek. The probability is that he used the word Ail; and that John, who wrote in Greek, selected Theos in the singular number, and appropriated it to a Hebrew signification, which the teaching of Jesus would explain. "There shall not be there other Elohim before Me." This was said by Jehovah to Israel. When Jesus, therefore, spoke about God in relation to bowing down, and serving or worshipping Him, he had doubtless referred to Ail-Shaddai, who afterwards named himself Jehovah, commonly pronounced Jehovah. "Theos is Spirit," then, is equivalent to saying AlL or Jehovah is Spirit. But the proposition of Jesus is not limited to individual unity; its scope is multitudinous. Spirit is Theos; that is, whatever is Spirit is Theos -- is of a higher nature than that of mortal men. Hence he declared to Nicodemus, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit." Here are two natures the Man-nature and the God-nature. We all know by experience what flesh is. It is a wind that passeth away. It is vanity and "profiteth nothing." We do not, however, know experimentally what the God-nature is: all we can at present know is what is testified concerning it in the teaching and experience of Jesus and the word. He was flesh, having been born of the flesh, though not by the will of man; and he is now Spirit, having been born of the Spirit from the grave to incorruption. Jesus then is Spirit. Paul styles him "a life-imparting Spirit," and "the Lord the Spirit" Being Spirit, he is therefore Theos or God. He is now no longer flesh and blood; but HOLY SPIRIT NATURE - a flesh and bones embodiment of Spirit; and therefore of the One Jehovah.  

Jesus is the type, or pattern, in whom is illustrated the plural manifestation of divine and multitudinous unity -- ONE in many, and yet that many ONE, as symbolised in the Mosaic Sh'ma Yis-raail. This idea was the basis of the doctrine, which Jesus said was not his, but the teaching of Him that sent him -- that is, of the Eternal Spirit or Father. "My doctrine is not mine," says he, "but His that sent me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" (John 7: 16, 17). His doctrine consisted of "the words" which Moses predicted in Deut. 18: 18, the Eternal Spirit, Jehovah, would put into his mouth; and to which, if anyone will not hearken, "he shall be destroyed from among the people" (Acts 3:23). We hope all who contend for the sufficiency of the faith of the demonized in the divine Sonship of Jesus will defer to this. We repeat, for the illumination of such speculators in Old Man theology:

That justification unto life and glory in the kingdom of God, is predicated upon three things:--  

1. Upon believing the testimony concerning Jesus Christ;
2. Upon receiving the doctrine of the Eternal Spirit he delivered to the world; and
3. Upon one so believing, yielding an assured and affectionate obedience to the precepts he enjoins.

"Thou hast," said Peter to him, "the words of eternal life; and we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (John 6:68). In this Peter connects the words and the personality of Jesus as the subject-matter of faith. This is to "believe on Jesus" -- to accept him according to his claims; and to receive his words as reported by them whom he commissioned to preach them. And "this is the work (ordained) of God, that ye believe into him whom, (eis hon), He hath apostolized,"or sent forth. "As my Father hath taught me," continues Jesus,"I speak these things"; and "If ye continue in my word ye are my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth which I have heard of God, and 'the truth' shall make you free" (John 8:28,31, 32, 40). Hear also what he said. on another occasion, in regard to this matter. "He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me"; which is equivalent to saying he believes the doctrine I am sent to teach -- doctrine which originates not from me as Son of Mary; but from the Eternal Spirit who sent me, and, by His effluence, dwells in me, speaking through me, and working by me. Therefore, he said, "If any man hear my words, and believe not (those words), I (the son of Mary) judge him not." Who shall judge him then? God, certainly; and because God's doctrine is not believed; for says Jesus, He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath that which judgeth him; ' word which I speak,'that shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father who sent me. He gave me a commandment what I should make known and what I should treat of" (John 12:48-49). Nothing can be plainer, more intelligible, or emphatic than this. We may confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, as did the demonized of ancient and, still do, of modern times, but this will give us no right to the things comprised in "the great salvation"; we must not only believe this, but we must also intelligently believe the doctrine which that Son was sent to teach the Jews. If we are ignorant or ashamed of this, we shall be condemned, though we may make the loudest professions of faith in, and of love and devotion to, Jesus. What can be more to the point than these sayings of Christ--"If a man love me, he will keep my words: he that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings; and the word ye hear, is not mine, but the Father's who sent me" (John 14:23-24). A man cannot keep the words of another if he be ignorant of those words, neither can he believe them : hence, no one scripturally loves Jesus who is ignorant or faithless of his teaching. A man ignorant of the truth taught by Jesus, though ever so sincere in his belief of error, is in his sins, and under sentence of death; for it is only that truth believed and obeyed that frees from sin and its consequences. "Sanctify them through thy truth, O Father; thy word is truth" (John 17: 17). This is the sanctifying element of Christianity: and that truth is the word of the kingdom hearkened to and understood by the honest and the good of heart (Matt. 12:19, 23; Luke 8: 15). But they who, in the face of these plain statements of Jesus persist in averting that a man is justified, and becomes one of the saints of God, and obtains a right to the life, honour, glory, power and riches of the kingdom, by acknowledging the paternity of Jesus, while he is ignorant of the doctrine he received from the Father, and delivered to the apostles, are neither honest nor good of heart in the Scripture sense of the expression. They are the Ecclesiastical Know-Nothings, of whom Paul writes in 1 Tim. 6:3, 4, saying: "if any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, 'the words of our Lord Jesus Christ', and to the teaching which is according to godliness, he is smoky, knowing nothing -- destitute of the truth," and so forth. This is the condition of the clergy, ministers and scribes of universal "Christendom," as it is called; and of the leaders of the people whom they cause to err. The wholesome words of the Lord Jesus are ignored by them all; for if they do not in so many words declare that he lied, they practically convert his teaching into falsehood by their abominable traditions. He declared, that if a man did not believe the gospel of the kingdom he and his apostles preached, that man should be condemned; but they in word or deed say: "No; a man may be saved though totally ignorant of the whole matter." For what else is the language of the religion-gettings and "consolations of religion"ministered by the clergy to their ignorant dupes on every side? They make void the doctrine of Jesus by their traditions and practice, and speak evil of the truth they pretend to preach. And it is but pretension; for of that truth they are obstinately ignorant in all its details, knowing neither the Father, nor Jesus Christ whom He has sent; and treating with contempt or indifference and neglect the words he delivered, if by any chance or accident any of them happen to come before them. But of such the Lord hath said: "Whosoever shall be ashamed of me 'and of my words', of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he shall come in his own glory, and in the Father's, and of the holy angels" (Luke 9: 26).

But to return from this digression penned for the especial benefit of those who pay but little regard to the doctrine taught by the prophet like unto Moses; who are willing to honour Jesus with empty words of piety and love, but are positively averse from being troubled with his hard and inconvenient instructions; we proceed to remark that in the words of eternal life which he delivered, he declared the principle that "the flesh profits nothing." When, therefore, he said, "He that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me"; and elsewhere, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," he excludes the idea, that the Flesh born of Mary's substance was the Father. This was not the Father, but flesh: for "that which is born of the flesh," said he, "is flesh."  

He that seeth the Spirit, then seeth the Father; for it was the Spirit that uttered the words through Jesus, as clearly appears from his saying: "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, He performs the works," or miracles. The Flesh, or Mary's Son, was the earthen vessel, the Cherub, hidden as a polished arrow in the quiver, or shadow of the power of the Eternal Spirit; in other words: "The Spirit of Jehovah rested upon him" after his anointing. He was filled with the Effluence-- ( By effluence we mean that which flows from, or out of The substance of the Eternal Father. We use it in the sense of the phrase Spirit of.) -- of the Eternal Substance, and covered with it as with a halo of power, so that he was hidden, covered, or protected from the machinations of evil doers, and from evil influences, which could not harm him until the protecting effluence was withdrawn. This resting upon, indwelling and covering, was the sealing and anointing of the Father, foretold in Dan. 9:24 -- "Sealing the vision and prophet, and anointing the Holy One of the holy ones." And John the Baptist bears record of this saying: "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode (or rested) upon him." The Spirit Dove was the seal or mark of the Father; the form or shape assumed by the Divine Effluence in the anointing of Jesus. John saw this Spirit Dove, and so did all the surrounding multitude; for Jesus said to them: "Have ye not at any time heard the Father's voice, or have ye not seen His form? Or have ye not his declaration abiding in you; that him whom he hath sent, to this one ye should not give credit"? In these inquiries, he referred to what was well-known to all who attended John's proclamation. The Father's symbol was the Dove, and "the voice," the declaration, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." They had seen and heard this, the sealing and acknowledging the prophet the Father bearing witness to the Son -- yet did they not give credit to the doctrine he set forth.

This sealing and anointing of the bwrk, Cherub was the subject of the following testimonies. "And the Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the reverence of Jehovah, and shall make him of quick understanding in the reverence of Jehovah; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears, but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and contend with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins" (Isa. 11:2-5). But this was only partially accomplished at the epoch of the anointing. The judging of the poor, the contending with equity, the smiting of the earth, or nations, and the slaying of the wicked, are events hereafter to be developed in the day of the power of the Son of Man. The testimonies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, abundantly illustrate the former, or inceptive part of Isaiah's prophecy which, in its fulfilment, became the earnest of the certain and literal accomplishment of the rest.  

In Isaiah 49:2, the effect of the anointing is thus foretold: "Jehovah hath chosen me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother (Mary) hath He made mention of my name (by Gabriel). And He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand (or power) hath He hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in His quiver hath He hid me; and said unto me, thou art My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." Here the Cherub of the Spirit bears the name of his ancestor Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, which signifies "Prince of Power," i.e., of God, in our vernacular - la-rs in the original. His mouth was truly like a sharp sword, for it cut deeply into the hearts of the self-righteous hypocrites of his day, who gnashed upon him with malice and dislike. When he opened his mouth to speak, the "word of power" uttered wisdom, counsel and knowledge; and of this word, Paul says in Heb. 4: 12, "It is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." In Eph. 6: 17, he exhorts the saints to take it as the weapon of their warfare against all crotchets and imaginations that exalt themselves against "the knowledge of God" -- the knowledge revealed by Him. "Take," says he, "the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God"; and with this "stand against the devil's wiles" (verse 11).  

But the Cherub of the Eternal Spirit in the days of his flesh and blood did not wholly fill up the idea presented in the phrase "made my mouth as a sharp sword." In his future manifestation, he is represented in the Book of Symbols as having "a sharp two-edged sword issuing forth from his mouth." We refer to Apoc. 1:16, and 19: 15. In the latter place, the use he is to make of the sword is stated in these words: "that with it he should smite the nations." The interpretation is, that at his approaching advent, he will assume the position indicated in the chapter in relation to his associate Cherubim, on the one hand, and the hostile nations on the other. Being the Commander-in-Chief, or "Captain of Salvation," the Word of Power goes forth from his mouth. He commands that the nations be smitten, and his orders are obeyed; and though they make great resistance, they are finally overcome by the energy whereby he is able to subdue to himself (Phil. 3:21).

When we contemplate the Cherub before his sealing and anointing, we see only the Son of Mary "the Seed of the Woman," in the words of Moses; and Son of God, in the same sense that Adam was. The New Testament writers give us very little information concerning Jesus during thirty years of his sojourn in the covenanted land. All we learn concerning him after his return from Egypt is, that he dwelt in Nazareth, and was subject to Mary and Joseph; and worked at the trade of his mother's husband. He knew his real paternity was not of Joseph: he never went to school; yet was he wiser than those who assumed to be his teachers, being filled with wisdom, the grace of God being upon him; and was the beloved of all who knew him (Matt. 1:23; Luke 2:40, 46-52; Mark 6:3; John 8: 15; Psalm 119:97-104). He was clearly in an intellectual and moral condition parallel with Adam's before he transgressed. The "grace of God" was upon Adam, and imparted to him much wisdom and knowledge; but still left him free to obey the impulses of his flesh if he preferred it, rather than the Divine Law. This was the case also with Jesus, who, in his discourses, always maintained the distinction between what he called "mine own self" and "the Father Himself" who dwelt in him by His effluence. "The Son," said he, "can do nothing of himself"; and this he repeated in the same discourse, saying, "I can of mine own self do nothing."? He refers all the doctrine taught, and all the miracles performed to the Father, whose effluence rested upon and filled him. If this be remembered, it will make the "hard sayings" of his teaching easy to be understood.

Thus, in John 6:38, Jesus says: "l came down from heaven": "I am the bread that came down from heaven the bread of life; if any man shall eat of this bread, he shall live in the Aion, and the bread that I will give is my flesh." These sayings caused the Jews who heard them to inquire: How can this man have come down from heaven whose father and mother we know? And, how can he give us his flesh to eat? These inquiries were prompted by their rule of interpretation, which has been the rule of their posterity through all ages to this day. They interpreted the discourses of Jesus by the principles of the flesh. "Ye cannot tell whence I come," said Jesus, "and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh." They only conceived of the flesh born of Mary coming down from heaven, and of their eating that flesh as they would eat meat. They did not recognize the voice of the Father in the words that came from the mouth of Jesus. If they had, they would have understood that it was the Spirit that had come down, and was to "ascend where he was before"; that the Spirit claimed the Cherub born of Mary as "His flesh," because it was prepared for Him (Psalm 40:6; Heb. 10:5); and that he gave this flesh, which he calls "my flesh," for the life of the world; which flesh Paul says, "through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without fault to God." Judging according to the principles of flesh-thinking, they did not understand that it was an intellectual eating and drinking of the Spirit-and-life words, or teaching, that came down from heaven concerning the Christ and him crucified. "Thy words were found, and I did eat them," says Jeremiah (Ch. 15: 16); but the contemporaries of Jesus had almost as little taste for such eating as ours. When a man marks, reads, and inwardly digests the subject-matter of the Father's doctrine, he eats and drinks it, and is "taught of God," (John 6:45), as all must be who would be saved. That doctrine sets forth the things of the kingdom of God, and the things concerning Jesus Anointed, among which is the sanctifying of those who believe the promises covenanted, through the offering of the body of Jesus once. They who understand the doctrine of the Father and believe it unto obedience, eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man; for, saith he, "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him" (John 6:56). This in-dwelling is by faith of the words which are spirit and life, as appears from Paul's exhortation to us, saying: "Let Christ dwell in your hearts by faith" (Eph. 3:17). When the words or doctrine, of the Eternal Spirit concerning the kingdom and name are the subject matter of our faith, we dwell in Christ and Christ dwells in us. The Jews did not see into this, because they judged after the flesh, which, in this great matter of God and salvation, is altogether ignored as unprofitable. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I speak unto you are spirit and life" (John 6:63); therefore, if these words dwell in us, "Spirit and life" dwell in us, otherwise not.  

We must judge then, after the Spirit, for "the deep things of God," which are "the things of the Spirit of God are spiritually discerned." There is a sense then, attached to the spirit-and-life words of Jesus enunciated by him, in preaching the gospel of the kingdom, which the natural man, judging after the flesh, cannot receive. It is evident that the son of Mary, the body laid in the sepulchre, was never in heaven till his ascent thither after his resurrection' how then, says the man who thinks only after the flesh, can "the Son of Man ascend ( See Appendix) where he was before"? This is as incomprehensible to him as the eating of the flesh and the drinking of the blood of a slain man imparting life to the eater; and he exclaims with Nicodemus' "How can these things be"?  

To this question, the answer, in principle, is, that "that which has been born ek ek, of, from, or out of, spirit, is spirit"; and as "God is Spirit," is therefore Deity. "The Spirit breathes where he pleases, and thou, Nicodemus, hearest his voice; but thou perceivest not how he is come, and in what he goes away; thus is everyone who has been born of the Spirit." Nicodemus and his contemporaries heard the voice of the Spirit, breathed forth in the words of spirit and life, uttered by Mary's Son, who they knew was a teacher come from God . But they did not perceive that this teacher was the Eternal Spirit, nor did they comprehend how he came. Judging by flesh-appearances, they only saw Mary's son, as they saw Isaiah or one of the prophets, as teachers from God. They did not perceive that Jesus was "a body prepared" by special Spirit-creation, the Cherub upon which the effluent power of the Eternal Substance rested; and that upon him, and through him, he walked through the country breathing forth his voice in the doctrine taught, and his power in the miracles performed not perceiving this, still less did they comprehend that the Effluent Power would so thoroughly change the constitution of the "Body Prepared," that it should be no longer corruptible flesh perpetuated in life by blood and air, but should be transformed into spirit-flesh and spirit-bones, constituting a Spirit-Body -- a material, corporeal substance -- essentially incorruptible, glorious, powerful, deathless, and quickening; and that in this, as corporealized spirit, the Effluent Power that had "come down from heaven" -- from the abode of the Eternal Substance, "which no man can approach unto" would "ascend where he was before." They did not see into this any more than our Trinitarian, Arian, or Sabellian contemporaries do. These accept symbols created by the controversies of past ages, but can explain nothing, having no scriptural understanding of the "heavenly things." The Son of Man born out of the flesh was flesh -- mortal blood and flesh, but he is no longer so. The same Son of Man has been transformed into incorruptible spirit-substance, and is therefore spirit; and as spirit (not as flesh) is "where he was before." He is "Jehovah the Spirit," the fleshly element being an accretion to the Effluent Power, which does not change the constitution of the Spirit, but is spiritualized thereby.  

Between the two living manifestations, was interposed the death-state. In this state, the Cherubic Flesh was deserted by the Eternal Substance. The effluent spirit forsook Jesus when he exclaimed upon the cross, "My AIL, my AIL, why hast Thou forsaken me?" The effluent power by which he had taught and worked was withdrawn from him for some time before he died. The Spirit no longer rested upon the Cherub, yet that Cherub continued to live as other men. In process of time he expired. He was now, like the Cherubic Veil of the Temple, "rent in twain." It was no longer affirmable that "I and the Father are one"; but that "I and the Father are twain"; for the Father was no longer in him, nor he in the Father. In the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, the body was in the condition predicted in Psalm 38: "Jehovah's arrows stuck fast in it, and His hand pressed it sore. There was no soundness in the flesh; its wounds stank; and its loins were filled with a loathsome disease; feeble and sore broken, his lovers and friends stood aloof from His stroke, which had consumed him, and laid him low in a horrible pit." This was the death state of the Cherub. Will any one affirm that that dead body was the Father? That it had lived in the world before the world was? That it was the Creator of all things? Nay, it was the flesh only in which sin was condemned: and had it been left there, it would have crumbled into unprofitable dust (Psalm 30:9).  

But, in the wisdom of the Eternal Substance, this could not be permitted. This flesh must be born again, and its ears must be opened (Psalm 40:6; Heb. 10:5). The Eternal sent forth His spirit, and "healed his soul" of that "evil disease," which his enemies said, "cleaved fast unto him, that lying down, he should rise up no more" (Psalm 41:4, 8). But the Eternal Power defeated their machinations, and proved them to be liars; for He turned the body into Spirit, and made it "one in nature" with Himself-the Spirit-Son of the Eternal Spirit, equal in power and glory -GOD.  

In this Holy Spirit Nature, the effluence of the Eternal went away. "In what he goes away, Nicodemus, thou dost not perceive." He did not comprehend that the emanation of the Father's substance, converged and localized, and rendered visible in the Spirit-Dove-that the Spirit which had thus come, would go away corporealized in a body born from the grave, to the place in which he was before, and there rejoice in the glory possessed before the world was.  

These things being understood, it is not difficult to understand the import of the sentence; "thus is every one that has been born of the Spirit." He is first in the flesh, subject to disease and death. This, however, is to be superseded; and those who are "taught of God," and by that teaching are enlightened by the spirit-and-life words of the truth, which brings them to "the obedience of faith," are transformed or "fashioned like unto the body of His glory." This occurs at the epoch of the resurrection, termed by Paul, "the redemption of the body" -- the One Body --"the manifestation of the Sons of God," who all become "like him" in body, as they have been in faith and practice -- Spirit, because born of the Spirit, and therefore God, because, "Spirit is God."  

Well may the apostle exhort believers to "walk worthy of God, who has called them to His kingdom and glory." It is indeed "a high calling," and a great manifestation of divine love, bestowed upon men by the Father, that He should invite them to become His sons, and when manifested in the divine nature, be in them "all things for all." When we contemplate such a destiny, that we are to be elements of the Spirit-glory, the Cherubic manifestation of the Eternal Spirit, which is to fill the earth as waters cover the sea, we ought, indeed, to "purify ourselves, even as He is pure," and to live superior to the mean and petty considerations of time and sense. "Walk worthy of God" -- worthy of a position in which we shall be isangeloi, isaggeloi equal to the angels, "the sons of God being the children of the resurrection." But here we must leave the matter for the present. We shall now resume the consideration of the Cherubic manifestation of the Spirit.  

No. VII

The subject of this article, in relation to the Old and New Testament revelation of "God," is the Effluent Manifestation of the Eternal Father in the Cherubim.  

The first place where "Cherubim" occurs, is in Gen. 3:24, which we translate thus: "And He caused to dwell at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of destruction (lit. of the sword) turning itself to guard the way of the tree of the lives." From this and the context, we learn, that the dwelling place of the Cherubim was eastward in Paradise and contiguous to the tree of lives, to which none could approach who were unfaithful and disobedient. This is the teaching of Moses, who though acquainted with the Egyptian dogma of "immortal souls" in the mortal bodies of all men, women, and babes, taught there was no immortality for faithless and wicked men. In this, Moses and all the prophets, Jesus and the apostles, are all agreed. Men must become Cherubim, they must dwell in Paradise and there eat of the tree of life, as the condition of an interminable existence. All others are obnoxious to "the flame of destruction," styled by Daniel "a fiery stream that issues and comes forth from before the Ancient of Days; in whose presence minister thousand thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand stand." In this, Daniel exhibits the allegorical signification of the Mosaic narrative respecting the devouring flame. It issues and comes forth from before the Ancient of Days and his thousands, at which time, Daniel testifies, "the judgment sits, and the books are opened." The Eden Cherubim, and Daniel's Ancient of Days and company, are doubtless allegorical, the former of the latter; for Moses wrote not only of the literal, but of that in such a way that he intended something else than is contained in the words literally taken. His writings are therefore both literal and allegorical; and to understand them in their allegorical sense we must pay strict attention to their literal significance, which is "the form of the knowledge and the truth." The literal narrative is "the form"; the "knowledge and the truth" the allegorical signification of that form.  

Daniel's Ancient of Days and the ten thousands that surround him in judgment, are equivalent to "the holy messengers and the Lamb," in Rev. 14: 10, where we find fire and brimstone before them tormenting their enemies -- the full allegorical development of the Eden Cherubic flame that guarded against all approach to the "tree of lives" by the unfaithful and disobedient. "Whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life, was cast into the lake of fire burning with brimstone" (Rev. 19:20).  

The etymology of the word "Cherubim" is said by Gesenius to be obscure; and he suggests what he calls "a new derivation." He says "if the word be of Semitic origin, perhaps we may take the root charav as having a meaning like khuram "to prohibit from a common use." Hence, to consecrate, etc. "So that 'cherub', would be keeper, warden, guard, that is, of the Deity, to guard against all approach." Hyde, in his Religion of the Ancient Persians, page 263, supposes that "'cherub' may be the same as Kerub, the first letter being koph, instead of caph, and signifying one near to God, His minister -- one admitted to His presence." Both these derivations are in accordance with the truth concerning the Cherubim -- nevertheless, not satisfactory to our mind. We believe that the word is derived from the root rachav, "to ride" whether on an animal or in a vehicle. By transposing the first two letters and heemantively inserting wav before the last, we have "cherub" or that which is ridden -- in the plural, "cherubim." This convertibility of' the verb rachav into the noun "cherub" is illustrated in Psalms 18: 10, thus:  

In Psalm 104:3, the clouds are styled Jehovah's r'chuv or chariot, which is "ch'rub.," with the first two letters transposed.  

The "Cherubim," then, constitute a vehicle, in and upon which the Eternal Power self-styled "Ehyeh" or "Jehovah," otherwise "Jehovah," rides as in a chariot. Hence, David, in speaking of them in 1 Chron. 28:18, terms them ham-merchavah hak-cheruvim," "the chariot of the Cherubim" which, he says, "spread out and covered the ark of covenant of Jehovah." The Spirit is the rider, and the Cherubim the "clouds," the "horses," the "chariots," the "living creatures," the "wheels," the "great waters," the "winged host," upon which He rides. Hence, of the Eternal Spirit it is said: "Behold, He cometh with clouds" -- the clouds of His witnesses, of whom the present evil aion, or course of things, is not worthy (Rev. 1:7; Heb. 12:1; 1 Thess. 4:17); and again: "Was Thy wrath against the sea that Thou didst ride upon Thine horses, Thy chariots of salvation? Thou didst march through the sea with Thine horses, through the heap of great waters" (Hab. 3:8, 15); also, "Whither the Spirit was to go the living creatures went .... and they ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning. And the noise of their wings was like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, as the noise of a host" (Ezek. 1:12, 14, 24; Rev. 1: 15; 19: 14). In this last citation, wings, great waters, Almighty, and host, all refer to the same company -- a multitudinous embodiment of the Effluence of the Eternal Father, who soars on these wings of the Spirit. Wy-yaide-al chanphai ruach (Ps. 18:10).    

But the Eternal Spirit not only "rides upon," "soars upon," and "flies upon," but the Father by that Spirit also "inhabits the Cherubim." David, in Psalm 80, and Hezekiah in Isaiah 37:16, say in their address to Jehovah, "O Jehovah of Hosts, Elohim of Israel, inhabiting the Cherubim, shine forth, Thou, He, the Mighty Ones (athtah-hu ha-Elohim). Thou alone of all the kingdoms of the earth; Thou didst make the heavens and the earth." In this passage is a remarkable combination of titles and pronouns in the singular and plural numbers. Jehovah or Jehovah is singular; Elohim, plural; athta-hu, two pronouns in the singular joined to hah-EIohim in the plural: athtah signifies thou, and hu, he in the third person, which in the original text are connected by a hyphen, thus Thou-He. The common version has it "thou art he" in many places, but in the text before us they have omitted the "he" altogether, and instead of the literal rendering, "Thou-He, the Mighty Ones," they have substituted what was not written, namely, "Thou art the God."  

The words of Hezekiah literally translated into English are: "O who shall-be hosts, Mighty Ones of Israel, inhabiting the cherubs, Thou-He, the Mighty Ones, Thou alone of all the kingdoms of the earth: Thou didst make the heavens and the earth." This affirms that the Eternal Spirit is the sole creator of all that exists. He is one, and that unity is expressed by the singular verbal noun, Jehovah, "He who Shall-be," and the pronouns, athtah, "thou," and hu, "he." The Eternal Spirit (Heb. 9: 14) as Creator, is necessarily before all things, and is, therefore, the "Theos," and the "Logos" of John 1:3, where it is testified that "all things were made on account of Him; and without Him was made not one thing which exists." This same Eternal Spirit was effluently in Noah, in Moses, in David, and all the prophets, in Jesus and the apostles. One Spirit in these many persons. In the Mosaic system the Effluence of the Eternal Power was represented by "an oil of holy ointment," or "a holy anointing oil" an unction that was not to be commonly used upon pain of death (Exod. 30:25; 1 John 2:20, 27). It was compounded of myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil, after the art of the perfumer. The tabernacle with all it contained, with the altar of burnt offering and all its vessels, the laver and its foot, were all anointed with it, and thereby became most holy, so that whatsoever touched them became holy. Aaron and his sons were also consecrated with it when "the diadem of the anointing oil of his Elohim" was said to be "upon him" (Lev. 21:12). The holy anointing oil was not to be used apart from these, for "upon man's flesh," saith the Law, "it shall not be poured."  

The Cherubim were anointed with the most holy unction, by which also they became most holy. It was one holy anointing oil for many things, which in and of themselves differed nothing from that which was common. This principle of "One in Many" is thus foreshadowed in the law and the prophets-- One Eternal Spirit-Power which "shall be" in the "mighty ones of Israel" as it was and is in Jesus of Nazareth -- "Thou," Eternal and Anointing Spirit, art "He" in "the Mighty Ones of Israel," the "Theos and the Logos creator of the heavens and the earth."  

The "Holy Anointing Spirit-Oil," is styled by Peter in 1 Peter 1:11, "the Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets": because "Christ" signifies "Anointed," and the Spirit that was poured out upon Jesus and constituted him anointed also, anointed them; hence it was said of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, "touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets no harm" (1 Chron. 16:22). Speaking of the same Spirit, Nehemiah says: "Thou gavest Israel thy good Spirit to instruct them; and many years didst thou forbear them, and testifiedst against them by thy Spirit in thy prophets; yet would they not give ear: therefore gavest thou them into the power of the peoples of the lands" -- as at this day (Neh. 9:20, 30).  

By this Spirit-Effluence the Eternal Power inhabits the Cherubim. The common version makes David and Hezekiah say that Jehovah "dwells between the Cherubim." But the preposition "between" is not in the original text. The words there are these: yoshaiv hak-cheruvim, "inhabiting the Cherubim." Hence, whatever the cherubs may prove to be, the Eternal Spirit, self-styled Jehovah, dwells in them. Thus Jehovah will dwell (in the holy land) for ever. The chariots of mighty ones (are) two ten thousands, thousands of glorified ones. The Adonai among them in Sinai, the holy. "Thou hast ascended on high; thou hast led captive captivity; thou hast received gifts for 'the Man'; yea, even for 'Yah' Elohim to inhabit rebellious ones" (Psalm 68:16,18). This testifies the future presence of Jehovah or Yah-Elohim, as Adonai or Lords in the holy mount, in the midst of thousands of mighty and glorified ones, as in the days of Moses. These are the chariots of the Spirit -- the Intelligences prefigured in the Cherubs. It testifies also that the Lord "from all eternity" (the Father) and the lords "for all eternity" (the Man), having as "Yah," the Spirit, first, necessarily, descended, afterwards, as the Man ascended on high: that, in ascending, the "Yah-Adam" led captive Death, which made a captive of him, as it does of all mankind, and therefore, styled "captivity"; and that then "as the Man," styled by Paul, who spoke the same things as David, "the last Adam," and "the Second Man," he received gifts -- "spirits" or spiritual gifts; to the end that "Yah"-Elohim --.the Spirit of the Mighty Ones -- "might dwell in the rebellious"; that is, in Gentiles, "by nature sinners," but enlightened by the Gospel of the kingdom, and subjected to "the obedience of faith."  

To such, that is, to once rebellious, but now obedient men and women, Paul, speaking of this indwelling, says that "the One Father-Power has decreed the subjection of all things to the last Adam, except Himself; and that when this subjugation is perfected, the Adam shall himself be ranked under the Eternal Power who subdues all things to the Adam that Theos, the Eternal Father, may be "all things in all men." This is Moses and David's teaching of One in Many the effluence of the Eternal inhabiting men, and being "over all, and through all, and with all of them"; as it is also written: "I will dwell in them, and walk in them, and will be a father unto them, and they shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty": and again, "He that sitteth upon the throne shall dwell among them" (1 Cor. 15:27; 2 Cor. 6:16, 18; Eph. 4:6; Rev. 7:15; 21:3).  

Here then are the Old and New Testament writers all teaching one and the same doctrine concerning the terrestrial manifestation of the Eternal Power -- one central power over, through, and with many persons by its effluence, each person being eternal power incarnate, and these in their glorified aggregate represented by the Cherubim; the cherub-chariots of the Spirit.

Now that a cherub is representative of an exalted Power is evident from Adonai-Jehovah's address to the Tyrian Royalty, in Ezek. 28:12-19; as  

* That is, Nothing of thee in Eden till "the time of the end," which immediately precedes and terminates in Olahm, or the Millenium. (Dr. Thomas).  

In this quotation, more correctly and, therefore, more intelligibly translated than in the common version, a political power, headed up in the King of Tyre is styled an Anointed Cherub; and the reason appears to have been because Jehovah had "constituted it a Protector" of people, which function is signified by outspread wings, which are an important element of the Cherubic symbol. The Tyrian Power was an "anointed" Cherub in the same sense in which the Pagan Cyrus, King of Persia, was "Jehovah's Anointed," or Messiah, who was surnamed of Jehovah before his birth, and 176 years before he appeared upon the page of Bible history (Isaiah 45:1-4). The Eternal Spirit created and rode the Tyrian Power, as in a chariot; and developed it as an element of that system of powers, whose relations to Israel in the days of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were allegorical of "the powers that be" in their relations to the Hebrew nation, when the Russian Nebuchadnezzar shall make war upon the Anglo-Syrian protector of the Jews in "the holy mountain of the Elohim," and cast it out in the epoch of the thief-like apocalypse of the Ancient of Days and his company of glorified myriads.  

The Cherubim stationed as guards at the east of Eden's garden were certain Elohim or powerful Ones, detailed by the Eternal Spirit for the protection of the Life-Imparting Tree, and "the Way," that led thereto. Hence, all communications from the Eternal throne for the instruction of mankind would pass through them. Themselves corporeal localizations of Spirit, they were vehicles in and by which were conveyed "the mysteries of the faith," into which they desired to look, but were not able (1 Pet. 1:12; Mark 13:32). These "conveying vehicles" or chariots of the Eternal Spirit, were "public official spirits sent forth for service on account of those hereafter to inherit salvation" (Heb. 1:14). Hence, they are styled Malachim Jehovah, angels or messengers of the Eternal Power, self-styled Ehyeh or Jehovah. David, addressing these Angel-Elohim, says: "Bless ye Jehovah, ye His angels, mighty of power, executing his command, hearkening to the voice of His word. Bless ye, Jehovah, all ye His hosts, His attendants, executing His pleasure"; and elsewhere "O Jehovah, my Elohim"! -- O Eternal One, my Mighties -- "Thou art very great, covering Thyself with light as a garment, spreading out the heavens as a curtain; who makest dark clouds His chariot; who goes on the wings of spirit, making His messengers spirits, His attendants a flaming fire. He established the earth upon its foundations, that nothing shall be moved during the age and beyond" de:w Mlwe (Psalm 103:20; 104: 1-5).

No. VIII

The angelo-elohal cherubic executors of the mandates of the Eternal Power, through His effluence, created our terrestrial system, which is subjected to their secondary administration in all its relations, until "a New Order of Cherubim" shall have been manifested to supersede them. Until then, all things pertaining to this present "evil world," aion, or course of things, are under their supervision and control. They cause all things to work together for good to them who love the "Eternal Ail," and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). That purpose is the polar star of their administration; so that nothing among the kingdoms and empires of the world is permitted to prosper that would contravene it. "The powers that be" are subordinated to divine power; for "there is no power but of God; the powers that be have been placed under the Theos" (Rom. 13:1) that is, no power is permitted to exist contrary to and independent of His will. In this sense they are apo Theou "of God"; and that the powers may not run riot in trying to develop their own policy, they are subjected to the guardianship of invisible potentates, which is expressed in Paul's words by the phrase "have been placed under the Theos." The truth of this is amply illustrated in Scripture. Is anything to be accomplished in relation to "Jehovah's" purpose in respect to individuals? He sends three Elohal-Men to Abraham and two to Lot; Jacob saw an encampment of them at Mahanaim, and wrestled with one, who put his thigh out of joint, and surnamed him Israel, at Peniel. He called the place of this contest Peniel, because he had seen ynp "the faces of" , la, power; "for," said he, "I have seen Elohim faces to faces, and my soul escaped" (Gen. 32:30) that is, his life was not taken away. It is unnecessary to cite any more instances. The reader's recollection will suggest many.  

In relation to national affairs, the Eternal Power employes armies of them. When He gave Israel the law, He descended to the top of Sinai in fire, amid thunders and lightnings, and thick darkness. Clouds of Elohim attended, sounding trumpets long and loud. Moses spake, and the Elohim answered him by a Voice. The words of that voice were written in a book, called the "Book of the Covenant," and are set forth in Exod. 20 to 23 inclusive. When he had dedicated the book with sprinkled blood, Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the Elders of Israel ascended Sinai, and saw the Mighty Ones of Israel, and did eat and drink. None of these were permitted to approach the top of Sinai, but Moses and Joshua, his attendant. All the remaining seventy-two stayed at a lower elevation of the mountain with the Mighty Ones, or Elohim, eating and drinking, and "worshipping afar off." The order was that "Moses alone shall come near YAHWEH," with his attendant. The reader will perceive the distinction here between the Elohim and YAHWEH. The nobles of the children of Israel came nigh to the Elohim, and saw them; and did not see Him. Even Moses, who did come near to the Eternal- did not see His face; for said he, "there shall no man see me, and live; thou shalt see my back parts, Moses, but my face shall not be seen" (Exod. 33:20). Paul testified the same thing in I Tim. 6: 16, saying: "the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords only hath immortality, dwell ing in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see." The Hebrew nation saw the symbol of YAHWEH'S presence on the mountain top "The glory of Jehovah like devouring fire," the original Eden-Cherubic glory -- but neither they, Moses, nor their nobles, saw the face of the Eternal Substance himself.  

Here, then, are two grand occasions upon which Jehovah visited the earth in His Cherubic-Chariot -- first: "when He laid the foundations of the earth; when the Stars of the Morning sang together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy"; and, secondly, when He descended to Sinai's top and proclaimed the law. These myriads of attending Elohim are "the wings" of His celestial forces, "full of eyes," with which, as the Great Charioteer of the universe, He "wheels" through the infinitude of space "as the appearance of the lightning's flash." If the necessity of one of His prophets in the execution of His mission demand the succour of Omnipotence, He is near with His cherubic legions -- His "twelve legions of angels" -- to afford it, as in the case of Elisha at Dothan, who was surrounded by horses and chariots of fire, more than all the cavalry and war-chariots of Syria, despatched to seize him (2 Kings 6: 17). 

The elohal superintendence of the affairs of the "thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers" of the world, is clearly revealed in the book of Daniel. In the fourth chapter of this prophet it is declared that the matter set forth therein was revealed to teach "the living that the Highest One is the ruler in the kingdom of men, and that He giveth it to him whom He shall please, and sets up over it the lowest of men." Besides this it shows, that though the ruler or Lord, He does not administer the government alone, but associates with Himself others, styled Nyrye irin "watchers," who are, like Himself, Nyvydq kaddishin, "Holy Ones." These Holy Sentinels -- such as kept guard in the Garden of Eden over the tree of the two lives --are the rulers, or "lords" and "kings," alluded to by Paul in 1 Tim. 6:15, and John, in Rev. 17: 14; 19: 16, in the name that no man knows but He whose it is -- "KING of Kings, and LORD of Lords." The temporary dethronement of Nebuchadnezzar, when he was driven from the society of men, and was compelled to dwell with the beasts of the field, to eat grass as oxen, and to be drenched with the dew of heaven, until seven times, or years, had passed over him -- allegorical of the fate that awaits the representative of His image-power in our latter day future -- the dethronement, I say, of this Chaldean potentate was, by the decision of the Sentinels, whose report caused the Holy One to decree the punishment of his pride.  

These Holy Ones and Elohal Sentinels associated with the Most High and Holy One -- the Eternal Power Jehovah -- in the government of the world, are aggregately styled a:ymv shemiayah, "the heavens," in Dan 4:26, as "thy kingdom shall be continued to thee from (the time) that thou shalt know that Njlv shallitin, THE RULERS (are) a:ymv shemaiyah, THE HEAVENS." This class of watchers and holy ones is the heavens to which David refers in Psalm 50, saying "AIL, ELOHIM, YAHWEH (Power, the Mighties, He who shall be), spake, and made proclamation to the earth, from the rising of the sun to its going down. Out of Zion, the perfection of splendour, ELOHIM (the Mighty Ones are) caused to shine forth. Our Elohim shall come and not keep silence; a fire before His (Jehovah's) faces (the Elohim) shall devour; and around Him it is very tempestuous. He will make proclamation to the Heavens (the Holy ones and Sentinels, styled in Matt. 24:31, "His Angels with trumpet of great sound" --compare Deut. 30:3-10) --from above, and to the earth, in vindicating his people, saying, Gather ye to me, my saints, who cut up my meat for eating in a sacrifice. (*) Thus He showed THE HEAVENS His righteousness; for Elohim (the Spirit-Powers, "born of the Spirit, and, therefore, Spirit" -- the Eternal in many) is Himself the Judge, Selah!" i.e., weigh, or consider!  

* Footnote

This is the literal rendering of the words of the Spirit of David, xbz-yle y:tyrb ytrk, chorthai berithia lai-zahvach in the English version expressed by the sentence "those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice." The literal expresses what was done in the institution and confirmation of promises. The promises to be fulfilled were stated; animals were then slain and divided, or "cut up", and separated into two parcels, between which the parties concerned passed. The words of the promise were then sworn to, and the parties of the first and second parts, sitting down together, cut up the meat provided, or eat it in a sacrifice; not as a priestly offering. but as an immolation by private persons, at their own cost." Thus the victim slain and the promise made and confirmed being elements of the same transaction, came each of them to be styled berith, "an eating," or covenant. In illustration of this exposition, see Gen. 15:9-18; 21:22-32; 26:26-30; 31:43-54

Among the Elohal Sentinels of the kingdoms are Gabriel and Michael, "lords" and "princes" of the heavens. Gabriel was employed as a messenger of the Eternal Spirit, symbolized in Dan. 10:5-9, to give the prophet skill and understanding (8:15-18: 9:20-23). He communicated to him the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks, in which he fixed the time of the covenanting, or "cutting off, of Messiah the Prince"; and it was that same Gabriel (or Man of Power, as his name imports) who appeared to Zachariah, the priest of the course of Abia, and declared to him that his wife Elizabeth, one of the posterity of Aaron, should become the mother of John, who should "go before Jehovah their Elohim," to prepare a people to receive him; and who also afterwards appeared to a virgin of the house of David, and informed her that she should become the mother of Yah Elohim, i.e., "He who shall be Mighty Ones" (Ps. 68:18), or as he is named in Jer. 23:6, Jehovah tzidkainu, "He who shall be our righteousness"; or as the latter occurs in the Greek le-sous, which is a corruption of Yaho-shaia, contracted Yeshua. "He shall be salvation." "Thou, Mary, shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins"; in which Joseph, her husband, acquiesced.  

Now when Gabriel appeared to the old people of Aaron's house, he said, "I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of AIL" -- the Supreme Power of the heavens. Upwards of five hundred and thirty years before, he appeared to Daniel with an answer to his supplication; and on that occasion told him that he had been sent with an answer to his supplications concerning the "desolations" of the Holy Land, and of "the city where Eloah's name was proclaimed"; and that he had come to show (for he was greatly beloved) that he might understand "the word," and comprehend "the vision" set forth before him at Shushan, the palace in Elam, by the river Ulai, as in chapter 8.  

This seems to have ended Gabriel's mission to Daniel; for, after delivering to him the prophecy of the restoration of the City and Commonwealth from the Chaldean overthrow; and the subsequent appearance and CUTTING OFF, or covenanting of the guiltless Messiah; and the after-destruction of the City and Commonwealth again by the Romans, which was to be succeeded by a long desolation -- we read no more of Gabriel in the book. But, though he disappears from the theatre of events till the nine months preceeding the birth of YAH ELOHIM, or Jesus, another Revelation appears to Daniel, as described in chapter 10.  

In this chapter he records a vision of very remarkable character, which he saw while in company with certain persons on the banks of Hiddekel or Tigris. The basis of what he saw was ish-echahd, THE MAN OF THE ONE, rendered in the English version, "a certain man." It was not a real man, but "the appearance of a man" (ch. 10:18), or "like the similitude of the sons of Adam" (ch. 10: 16). Hence, it was a symbolical representation.--A symbol is a form of comprehending divers parts. As a whole it is a compendious abstract of something else than itself -- much in a con densed form. A symbolical representation is the act of showing by forms or types the real thing intended--it is the shadowy form of a true substance; and in the chapter before us that substance so potentially foreshadowed is Christ personal and corporate. (Dr. Thomas). It was the shadowy representation of "the Man of the One" ETERNAL SPIRIT. It was, therefore, truly "a certain man," not an uncertain one. The son of the old age of Zachariah and Elizabeth "saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a Dove" (John 1:32); and Daniel saw the same Spirit, "like the similitude of the sons of Adam". Now, the description he gives us of this SPIRIT-FORM is, that he was clothed in linen, having also his loins girded with fine gold of Uphaz; his body was like the beryl and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass,and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude." He saw this in Eden, by "the third" of its rivers, "the Hiddekel,"where "the Cherubim and the devouring fire" were originally located (Gen. 2: 14; 3:24). This that he saw there was the same that Moses and the Israelites. beheld on Sinai's top; and the effect of the sight on Daniel and his companions was the same as upon them -- "all the people in the camp trembled" -- so also, though Daniel only saw the vision, "a great quaking fell upon them that were with him, so that they fled to hide themselves"; and as for Daniel when left alone, he says, "there remained no strength in me, for my brightness was changed within me into corruption, and I retained no strength . . . Neither was there breath left in me" (Vv. 8, 18).  

Here, then, was a symbolic man blazing in glory and power: and representative of the Eternal Spirit hereafter to be manifested in a NEW ORDER OF ELOHIM -- aggregately ONE MAN --the One Man of the One Spirit, whom the true believers shall all come unto …A PERFECT MAN --- into the measure of the full age of the fulness of the Christ: who is THE HEAD, from whom the whole Body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint (heir) supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the Body unto the edifying of itself in love" (Eph. 4:3, 4, 13, 15, 16). Daniel saw the "perfect man" -- the Eternal manifested in the glorified flesh of a multitude -- symbolically represented in the measure of his full age.  

The "thing" that was revealed to the prophet at the Tigris was also seen of John in Patmos. "I saw," saith he, "in the midst of the Seven Lampstands a thing like (homoion) to a Son of Man, having been clothed to the foot, and girt around the breast with a golden girdle; also his head and the hairs white, as it were wool white as snow, and his eyes as a flame of fire; and his feet resembled transparent brass, as if they had been burning in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters: and having in his right hand Seven Stars; and proceeding forth out of his mouth a two-edged broadsword; and his face as the sun shines in his strength." This represents the One Body, of which Jesus is the head, prepared "to execute the judgment written." It is that One Body in its post-resurrectional development invested with omnipotence the apocalyptic Spirit-Form, symbolical of the saints glorified in power.  

Daniel informs us that the Spirit-Man he beheld was "clothed with linen"; while John tells us only that he was "clothed to the feet." Now this clothing is significant of the character and office of the persons represented by the symbol. The holy garments of Aaron and his sons were of linen, "to cover their nakedness," that when they ministered in the holy places "they bear not iniquity and die" (Exod. 28:42,43). Nakedness and iniquity are convertible terms in Scripture; as also are "clothed" and righteous or holy. Hence, in Rev. 19:8, it is said of the Lamb's Wife, that "to her it was given that she should be arrayed in fine linen, pure and bright." Now they that constitute the bride "are called, and chosen, and faithful" (Rev. 17: 14); "they follow the Lamb withersoever he goeth" (14:4); as his horse guards, "clothed in fine linen, white and pure," which is declared to be the righteousness of the saints," (19: 14, 8); who are "redeemed from among men"; and made for God "kings and priests to reign on earth." Hence their clothing, which is sacerdotal and royal. The reader will understand, then, that the clothing peculiar to a symbol indicates the class of persons to which it refers. Thus in Rev. 15:6, "the Seven Angels," or messengers of the Spirit, who consummate the wrath of "the seven last plagues," are symbolical of the saints, including Jesus as their Head or Chief; for they are described as "clothed in pure and bright linen, and girded about the breasts with golden girdles."  

The linen and the gold are associated both by Daniel and John. The Spirit-Man symbolized to Daniel was "girded with fine gold of Uphaz." This Uphaz is the Ophir of other passages. In the times of the prophets it was the gold region of the earth, whence the most abundant supplies of the finest gold were obtained. The fitting up of the temple, which in its places and furniture was "the patterns of things in the heavens" figures of the true heavenly things themselves were all of gold, or of precious woods overlaid with gold; to wit, the Cherubim, the Ark of the Testimony, the Mercy-Seat, the Altar of Incense, the Seven Branched Lampstands, the Table of Shew Bread, spoons, tongs, censers, hinges, staves, and so forth. And besides all this, the "holy garments for glory and beauty," worn by the High Priest, who officiated in this golden temple, were brilliant with gold and precious stones; such as, the breastplate of righteousness, the ephod, the mitre, or "helmet of salvation," etc. This was chosen as the most precious of all known metals, to represent the most precious of "heavenly things" before the Eternal Spirit--FAITH PERFECTED BY TRIAL, which is "much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be refined by fire," and "without which it is impossible to please God" (Heb. 11:6; James 2:22; I Peter 1:7; 2 Peter 1:1). It is the basis of righteousness unto life eternal; for "we are justified by faith" -- the fine linen of righteousness is girded about the saints by the golden girdle of a tried faith. "When God hath tried me," saith Job, "I shall come forth as gold." Thus David, in celebrating the future glory of the New Order of Elohim, consisting of the King and his Brethren, styles the latter "the Queen" in Psalm 45:9, saying to his Majesty, "the Queen hath been placed at thy right hand in fine gold of Ophir." He then addresses the Consort of the Great King, who being the Eternal Spirit manifested in David's son, is both Father and Husband to the Bride ("thy Maker is thine Husband; Jehovah Tz'vaoth is His name; the Elohim of the whole earth shall be called" Isaiah 54:5) saying: "Hear, O Daughter and consider and incline thine ear; and forget thy nation, and the house of thy father; and the King shall greatly desire thy beauty; for He is thy Lord, therefore do thou homage unto Him. So the Daughter of Tyre with tribute, the rich of the people, shall supplicate thy favour. The Daughter of the King is all glorious within; her clothing is of interweavings of gold; in embroideries shall she be conducted to Thee; the Virgins her companions, following her, shall be brought to Thee. They shall be conducted with joyous shouts and exultation; they shall enter into the palace of the King" (Psalm 45:10-11).  

Thus David sings of "the Spirit and the Bride," clothed in the holy garments of righteousness and faith, for glory and for beauty. They are apocalyptically represented as "a Great City," styled "the Holy City, New Jerusalem, having been prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband" -- "a city of pure gold like to transparent crystal"; "the precious sons of Zion," saith the prophet, "are comparable to fine gold" (Lam. 4:2), for in their glory they are the spirit-incarnations of a tried and precious faith.  

Daniel next informs us concerning the Spirit-man "the Man of the One" that "His body was like the beryl." The "body" here is the "One Body" of which Paul speaks in his epistles; as, "the Ecclesia which is His body, the fulness of Him (the Spirit) who perfects all things in all" saints. When the fulness is brought in the body will be complete (Rom. 11:25; Eph. 1:23); and it will then be "like a beryl." The original word in Daniel for this precious stone is Tarshish. It is said to have been so called because it was brought from Tarshish; but the learned are not agreed as to what particular gem is meant. The Greeks called it beryllos; hence the word in the English version beryl; and Pliny says, it was rarely found elsewhere than in India, the Tarshish of the Bible. The prevailing opinion is that its colour is a bluish or sea-green. But the interpretation of the original depends upon the teaching in connection with the word, not upon the colour of the gem.  

"His body was like a Tarshish." This word occurs in six other places in the original. In the first two it designates one of the three precious stones in the fourth row of the Aaronic breastplate of righteousness, and answered to the tribe of Dan which signifies "judge"; and of Dan's career in the latter days, Jacob prophesied, saying "Dan, as one of the tribes of Israel, shall avenge his nation. There shall be a Judge, a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, biting the heels of the horse, so that its rider shall fall backward. I have laid in wait for Thy salvation, O Jehovah"! (Gen. 49: 16-18; Heb. 2:7). That is, Jacob, who was about to die when he uttered these words, foresaw that he would sleep in the dust until Dan, as a lion's whelp, should leap from Bashan (Deut. 33:22); that then, "in the latter days," would be the era of deliverance, when he would himself be saved, and all the tribes would do valiantly, and the Judge of Israel would avenge his nation, to the overthrow of their oppressors (Deut. 32:29-43).  

Here, then, is a destroying and conquering power associated with the tarshish or beryl in the breastplate of judgment. It is similarly associated by Ezekiel with the wheels of the Cherubic chariot. He says, "the appearance of the wheels and their work was as the aspect of the tarshish"; and their felloes were full of eyes, and so lofty, "that they were dreadful." And "the Spirit of the Living One was in the wheels." Hence they are styled, in Dan. 7:9, "The wheels of the Ancient of Days," whose description identifies him with "the Man of the One," and the apocalyptic "Son of Man .... His garment white as snow, and the hair of his head as pure wool; his throne flames of fire, his wheels a consuming fire." The eighth foundation gem (answering to the priestly tribe of Levi) of the wall of the golden city on which the name of an apostle is engraved, is a tarshish or beryl (Rev. 21:20, cp with Rev. 7:7). We conclude then, from these premisses, that the tarshish-like body of the Spirit-Man seen by Daniel, is a priestly body or community, in which is incarnated the spirit of the Eternal; and that in the latter days, it will eventuate the great salvation in concert with the tribes of Israel, as a destroying and conquering power. This God-manifestation "is a consuming fire."  

Such is the doctrinal interpretation of tarshish as a representative precious stone. The root from which it is derived, is also in harmony with the exposition; for tarshish is derived from rah-shash, "to break in pieces to destroy," which is the mission of the "Stone" Power, when the time comes to smite the Babylonian Image upon the feet (Dan. 2:34, 35, 44, 45).  

Herald of the KINGDOM AND AGE TO COME

Volume 9. No. 4. April, 1859

IX.

HIS FACE AS THE APPEARANCE OF LIGHTNING

Literally "his faces" as the appearance of lightning; that is, the Faces of the Spirit through which the Eternal expresses His favour or indignation towards the posterity of Adam in the age to come. Every individual element of the heavenly Adam is a face of Daniel's symbolic man by synecdoche; a figure by which a part is taken for the whole, and is of general occurrence in the construction of symbols. It is by the expression of the face that the workings of the brain of one man are manifested to others. It is so, also, with the Eternal Spirit Jehovah. But as He hath said, "no man can see His face, and live"; His face then, when seen, is not His face peculiar to His person, but to certain other persons, the expression of whose faces is the exact representation of the workings of the Eternal Mind. During the times preceding Messiah's, the Elohim who appeared to Abraham, Job, Jacob, Moses, and the seventy, Manoah, Daniel, Zechariah, Mary, Jesus, and the apostles (of whom the only ones named are Gabriel and Michael), are the faces of Jehovah, with respect to man; but when Messiah's times arrive, new faces will flash upon the world, and give expression to the pent-up fires that burn in the Eternal Mind against the kings, the clerical orders, and the intoxicated peoples of the earth. All these faces of Jehovah, both old and new, are "against them that do evil"; but "shine upon" the heirs of salvation. The faces of the Eternal Spirit are symbolized by the faces of the Cherubim in Ezekiel 1:10; 10:14; Rev. 4:7. But as we are not now engaged upon these passages, we shall not enter further upon their exposition at present.  

When Jehovah is angry (and "He is angry with the wicked" and therefore with the clergy "every day") and when the time arrives for the manifestation of His wrath, His anger flashes up into "His Faces," and they become "as the appearance of lightning." Now lightnings shooting forth from a divine countenance, are not indications of favour and kind affection. They express the contrary. They represent great fury and consuming indignation against them "that know not God, and obey not the gospel of the Lord, the Anointed Jesus"; the Aion Destruction -- from the face (Hebrew faces) of the Lord, and from the glory of His might, when He is apocalypsed from heaven, with the messengers of His power, (the other faces associated with Him) in devouring fire (2 Thess. 1:7-9).

The nature of symbolical lightning may be readily deducted from the use of the word in Scripture. Thus, in that grand description of Messiah's advent to punish the sons of Belial with aion-destruction, David in spirit says: "The earth shall shake and tremble; and the foundations of the mountains shall be troubled and shaken, because there was wrath with Him. In His anger a smoke ascended, and fire from His mouth shall devour; lightnings kindled from it. And He shall bow the heavens and descend, and darkness under His feet. And He shall ride upon the cherub and fly; and He shall soar on the wings of the spirit. He will make darkness His hiding place: the circuits of His pavilion the darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies. Because of the brightness before Him, His thick clouds passed away; hail and lightnings of the fire. Jehovah also will thunder in the heavens, and the Most High will give forth His voice; hail and lightnings of the fire. Yea, He will shoot His arrows and scatter them; yea, He flashed forth lightnings and will put them to the rout. Then the channels of the waters shall be seen; and the foundations of the habitable shall be laid bare, because of Thy rebuke, O Jehovah, because of the blast of the spirit of Thy nostrils" (Ps. 18:8-16).

The reader will have no difficulty in perceiving that this passage is descriptive of a great break-up of the foundation of the political organization of the world for the wrath of Jehovah expends itself, not upon inanimate and unoffending nature, but upon the unrighteous and rebellious. These are "the earth," and its civil and ecclesiastical organization, "the mountains," "the heavens," "the channels," and "foundations of the habitable"; while that which is to overthrow, destroy, lay bare, and abolish, is the smoking fire of His indignation, flashing forth its lightnings and crashing thunders through Israel and their kings -- the lightning-faced Elohim of all the earth.

"The lightnings of the fire" are flashings kindled by the avenging wrath of Jehovah. The fiery abyss from which they shoot forth is said to be "His mouth," because it is by His command His mighty ones go forth against the enemy as a storm of lightning, thunder and hail. The fire typifies the Eternal Spirit in wrath. "Our God," saith Paul, "is a consuming fire." Hence, the flashing fires are "the lightnings of the fire."

"Bow Thine heavens," saith David in another place, "and come down, O Jehovah, touch upon the mountains, and they shall smoke; flash forth lightning, and Thou shalt scatter them; shoot Thine arrows, and Thou shalt put them to the rout" (Psalm 144:6). Isaiah puts an interpretation upon this in the exclamation: "Oh, that Thou wouldst rend the heavens, that Thou wouldst come down, that the mountains (or kingdoms) might flow down before Thy faces as the burning of liquid fire the fire shall cause the waters to boil -- to make known Thy Name to Thine adversaries: Before Thy Faces the nations shall tremble. At Thy doing of terrible deeds we shall not confide in, Thou descendest; before Thy Faces the mountains were poured out, and from the age u-mal-olahm, (from the beginning of the Mosaic Economy) men have not heard, they have not given ear to, the eye hath not seen besides Thee, O Elohim (mighty ones) what He shall prepare for him that is waiting diligently for Him" (chap. 64:1-4). Paul quotes this in 1 Cor. 2:9, in such a way as to show that the "Elohim" apostrophized by Isaiah, as the many in one who alone hath given ear to the things that shall be prepared, are the saints in Christ; for he saith to this class of persons, "God hath revealed them to us by His Spirit . . . that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. For all things are ours and for our sakes" (chap. 3:21; 2 Cor. 4:15). The Elohim only have heard and given ear to, and seen by the eye of faith, the all things to be inherited. Thus saith Isaiah. But Paul also saith, that he and his brethren discerned them; therefore, admitting Paul to be a competent witness in the premisses, "the saints in Christ Jesus" who are finally approved, and the Elohim of Isaiah in the text before us are the same.

The "lightnings" and "arrows" of the Eternal Spirit are to scatter and put the armies of the nations to the rout. "Jehovah's arrows shall go forth as the lightning" (Zech. 9: 14). An arrow is an instrument of death, and requires a bow for its projection, strong and well strung, to give the arrow the velocity and deadliness of lightning. Now, the prophets tell us that Judah, Ephraim, and the resurrected Sons of Zion, are Jehovah's bow and arrow, battleaxe and sword. But before they are developed in this character, they are "prisoners of hope in the pit where no water is" of life, physical or national. They must, therefore, become the subject of a personal and political resurrection; those who are dead in the grave, of a personal; and Judah and Ephraim dispersed among the nations, politically dead and buried there, of a national resurrection, "standing upon their feet an exceedingly great army" ready for action as the result (Ezek. 37: 10).

With reference to this crisis the Spirit of Christ in the prophet saith, "Fear not thou worm Jacob, ye men of Israel: I will help thee, saith Jehovah, even thy near kinsman,* the Holy One of Israel. Behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument, having teeth; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them; and thou shalt rejoice in YAHWEH (He who shall be), and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel -- i.e., Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" (Isaiah 41:14-16).

Again, the spirit in another prophet, in addressing Israel, the rod of Jehovah's inheritance, saith "Thou art my battle-axe and weapons of war; for by thee will I break in pieces the nations, and by thee will I destroy kingdoms; and by thee will I break in pieces the horse and his rider; . . . and by thee will I break in pieces captains and rulers. And I will render unto Babylon, and all the inhabitants of Chaldea, all their evil that they have done in Zion, in your sight, saith Jehovah" (Jer. 51:20). But Israel has never been the conquering power indicated in this testimony since it was delivered. From that time to this they have been oppressed, and in a state of punishment. Therefore, as Jesus truly taught, seeing that "the Scripture can not be broken," it yet remains to be accomplished when the Faces of the Spirit shall shine upon them, and scatter their enemies with the lightnings of His fury.  

* The word is Goail from Gahal to redeem. Now the interpretation of Goail, rendered in the English version, redeemer, must be sought for in the Mosaic law of redemption. According to this, all the first-borns of man and beast in Israel are Jehovah's, and were all to be sacrificed to Him, except the first-born of an ass, and the first-born children, being males (Exod. 13:1, 13-15; 34:20); fields, houses, cities and servants (Lev. 25:25-34); all these, when sold were returnable to their original owners, because these, as Jehovah's representatives, had the fee simple right in them, and could therefore not convey an unlimited right. The absolute fee simple right was in Jehovah; first, because He brought Israel's first-born out of Egypt while he slew those of the Egyptians (Exod. 13:14); and secondly, because He claimed the Holy Land as absolutely His, the Israelites being only strangers and sojourners with Him (Lev. 25:23). The firstling of a cow, of a sheep and of a goat, were not redeemable from death; they were to be sacrificed to Jehovah, being typical of Messiah the prince in his cutting off (Num. 18:17).  

The redemption of redeemable things was to be effected by a blood relation of the nearest kin. Hence, GOAIL stands for the nearest relative, a blood relation, the next of kin or a redeemer in this sense. It was his duty in redeeming to pay a stipulated price, so that the near kinsman became a purchaser, and the first-borns and so forth, a purchased people, and purchased things. Under the law, the price was blood and money. Now all this was a pattern of heavenly things. It was an illustration of the substance expressed in the text words: "Jehovah. Goail of Israel"; that is, "He shall be the nearest kinsman of Israel." This necessitates that the Effluence of the Eternal should become an Israelite, or as Paul expresses it, "He," the Spirit, "took upon himself of the nature of Abraham; for in all things it behoved him to be made like his brethren." The Spirit becoming thus a blood relation, and by resurrection Son of Power and first-born, he is the one of right to redeem the Holy Land and Israel by a blood-price out of the hand of strangers, who desolate and oppress them. They are the Eternal's, and His near kinsman is Jesus the Holy One of Israel. (Dr. Thomas).  

Again also the Spirit of Christ in yet another prophet, predicts that the king of Zion and Jerusalem, who, at one period of his history, was to come to them in humility, "riding upon an ass, even upon a colt, the foal of an ass," "should speak peace to the nations," and have universal dominion. Having declared this, the Spirit, addressing the just and lowly Monarch of Israel, saith, "As to thee, through the blood of thy cutting off, I will call forth thy captives out of the pit wherein are no waters." Then apostrophizing the captives, He saith "return to the stronghold (Zion) ye prisoners of the hope; this day itself he causes to announce that I will cause to restore double unto thee." Having announced this redemption at the price of the king's blood, the Spirit characterizes the day of redemption, or "year of his redeemed," as a "day of vengeance," "when I have bent Judah for Me, have filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy Sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the Sword of the Mighty One. And Jehovah shall be seen over them, and His arrow shall go forth as the lightning, and the Adohal Jehovah (the Faces of the Spirit) shall blow with the trumpet, and go with the whirlwinds of Teman. And Jehovah Tz'vaoth shall protect them, and they shall devour and conquer the slingers of stones . . . And in that day Jehovah Elohim shall save them as the flock of his people; for THE GEMS OF THE DIADEM are exalting themselves upon His land" (Zech. 9:9-16). And, illustrative of these last words, the testimony may be added that in that day shall Jehovah Tz'vaoth be "for a crown of glory and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people, and for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them who turn the battle to the gate" (Isaiah 28:5-6). "Thou, O Zion, shalt be a crown of glory in the hands of Jehovah, and a royal diadem in the palm of thine Elohim" (Isa. 62:3).

From these premisses we learn, that on the day of the manifestation of Daniel's great vision of the Spirit-man, Judah will be the battle-bow; that Ephraim, or the Ten Tribes of Israel, will be His arrow; and that with the Judah-bow in one hand, and the Ephraim arrow in the other, strung to the utmost bent, the tribes will shoot forth from His faces with the velocity and destructiveness of lightning against the nations. The Man of the One Spirit is Jehovah, Goail and Holy One of Israel; styled in many passages Jehovah-Tz'vaoth, which signifies "He shall be hosts": that is "He shall be Captain of the armies of Israel"; for Moses says:"Jehovah is a man of war" (Exod. 15:3). Thus, in "the great day of the war of the Almighty Power" (Rev. 16: 14) upon the kingdoms of the world, wherever there is a section of the Jewish captivity -- prisoners in their Gentile houses of death -- there will be an army of the Jehovah-Man, styled by Paul, "the man, the anointed Jesus"; the Man of Multitude, "in whom" are all the saints a constituency attained through the blood of his covenant or cutting off. In the day of approaching vengeance, the sons of Zion, according to the flesh, will be a sharp two-edged broadsword, proceeding forth from the mouth of this mighty Man of War, the Sons of Zion according to the Spirit. Thus com manded, their armies shall be among the Gentiles as a lion among the beasts of the forest, and as a young lion among flocks of goats, who, going through, treads down and tears in pieces, and none can deliver (Mic. 5:8). "The slingers of stones," or as we term them in modern technique, the gunners, cannoniers, or artillerists, whose ordinance is the glory and strength of the armies of the world --the fire and brimstone of their warfare shall be conquered; "they shall conquer the slingers of stones" (Zech. 9:15 -- R.V.), and scatter their hosts as chaff before the whirlwinds of Teman.

Having said enough in illustration of the facial similitude of the Jehovah Man, we proceed to the contemplation of . . .

"His Eyes as Lamps of Fire"

The eye is the symbol of intelligence: for, "the light of the body is the eye." The extent, and, perhaps, the degree of intelligence, is indicated by the number, and its character by the expression of the symbol. Daniel does not record the number of the eyes of the glorious Man of Multitude: but tells us that their appearance was "as lamps of fire," which would give them a flaming, and therefore, terrible expression to those whom they will neither spare nor pity (Ezek. 5:11).

The symbolical number of these flaming orbs is revealed in Zechariah. In chapter 3, the Eternal saith, "Behold, I will bring forth my servant, the Branch": or Messiah. "For, behold, the stone which I have placed before the Faces of Joshua (or Jesus, in Greek), upon the same stone shall be SEVEN EYES" (verses 8, 9) : and "they shall rejoice and see the stone of separation in the hands of Zerubbabel, even those Seven. They are the eyes of YAHWEH scourging in all the earth" (chap. 4: 10). In this testimony and its context, the Eternal Spirit sets before us several representative men --Joshua and his brethren, and Zerubbabel: the former, the High Priest and his household at the time of the restoration from Babylon, and the latter, governor of Judah and of the house of David at the same crisis. They were constituted a symbolical group, and were so regarded by their contemporaries in Jerusalem; as it is written "they are men wondered at," or anshai mophalth, "Men of Sign," that is, men representing others besides themselves.

But as the things to be represented by them required other symbols than those furnished by the human form, priests, and governors, the deficiencies are supplied from other sources. Joshua and his brethren represented Messiah and his brethren in name and office; as did also Zerubbabel as a governor of the house of David; and as a group of sign-men, they symbolized the kings and priests. of the Eternal Power of the house of David, occupying their places over Israel in Messiah's times, commonly styled "the millenium." But it was required also to represent that the Spirit's servant, "the man whose name is the Branch," styled in the New Testament "Jesus Christ," was the same who had been styled by Jacob, David, Isaiah and Daniel, "the Stone"; that the precious gem in its brightness and splendour was to blaze forth in the glory of the Spirit; that, as a consuming fire, he and his companions were to scourge the wicked; in short, that Israel was not to expect redemption by their own prowess, apart from the Man of.the Eternal Power, according to "the word of Jehovah to Zerubbabel, saying: Not by multitude nor by strength, but rather by my Spirit, saith Jehovah Tz-vaoth" (chapter 4:6). To represent these requirements, a stone was placed before Joshua, by which action a relation between them was established. It is afterwards seen in the hand of Zerubbabel, by which also he becomes identified with it. Hence the stone comes to represent at once the High Priest and Governor of Judah - "a Priest upon the throne" of the house of David, which indicated a change in the constitution of the kingdom of Israel. !n the hand of Zerubbabel it is styled the "Stone of Separation," by which we are taught that "the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel" will be a purifier of his nation from all alloy; for "He is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap. And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto Jehovah an offering in righteousness. Afterwards shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto Jehovah, as in the days of old, and as in ancient years" (Mal. 3:2-4).

But the nature of the case demanded that intelligence and multitudinousness should be symbolized in the Stone. To answer this, "Seven Eyes" are placed upon it with the inscription: "I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day." These eyes, we are told, are "the eyes of Jehovah": that is, the eyes of the Spirit, self-styled Jehovah.

Now, John in Patmos saw the same vision: and in his description of what he saw, uses the words of Daniel and Zechariah, which he blends together. He says there were "Seven lamps of fire burning before the throne." He then tells what they represent, saying, "which are the Seven Spirits of power," or of God. "Grace and peace" were sent through John to the Seven Ecclesias from these Seven Spirits in concert with Jesus Anointed (Rev. 1:4-5); who, in chapter 5:6, is symbolized "by a lamb that had been slain." Now, the description of this lamb identifies it with the Stone of Joshua and Zerubbabel; and with the Eyes of Daniel's Man of the One Spirit. The slain lamb had "seven horns and seven eyes, which (Horns and eyes) are," or represent, "the Seven Spirits of Power, sent forth into all the earth" (chapter 5:6).

The symbolical number is "seven." This is a sign-number, signifying more or less. That it does not signify less than seven, is evident from other symbols of the Spirit. The Four living Ones of Ezekiel and John are symbols of the Spirit, multitudinously manifested; for "whither the Spirit was to go, they went," "as the appearance of a flash of lightning" (Ezek. 1:14,20; Rev. 4:6). Their actions are identical; therefore the Spirit and the Living Ones are the same -- "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Ezekiel tells us that what he describes was "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Jehovah," or of the Eternal Spirit. It was not the thing itself, but its similitude : the reality pertaining to the New Order of Elohim, to Jesus and his brethren. Now, Paul teaches that we are invited to the glory of God through the gospel; and Peter, that "He hath called us to His Eternal Glory." Hence, the Four Living Ones that John saw, are represented as celebrating in song their redemption by the Lamb, that they might reign as God's kings and priests upon the earth. The Living Ones are, therefore, spirit symbols of the Sons of God in glorious manifestation. Their Eyes, however, are not limited to "seven," but are numberless; for "their whole body, their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and their wheels were full of Eyes round-about" (Ezek. 10:12). This is also John's testimony who says: "the Four Living Ones were full of eyes before and behind . . . and within; and they had six wings," which identifies them with Isaiah's Seraphim.

We conclude, then, that the symbolical number "seven" in the case before us, is representative of a great and innumerable multitude -- "a multitude which no,man can number," because its amount is not revealed. The eyes of Daniel's symbol are identical with the eyes of the cherubim: each eye being the representative of an individual saint. In the aggregate they are "as lamps of fire," whose mission is to slay the beast, and to destroy his body, and to give it to the burning flame (Dan. 7: 11); and to take away the dominion of the rest of the beasts (v.12) : or as John expresses it, to burn Babylon utterly with fire: to torment her adherents and the kings of the earth with fire and brimstone, and the sword; to bind the Dragon, and take possession of the kingdoms of the nations in all the earth (Rev. 18:8: 14:8-11: 17:14; 20:2; 11:15): all of which is implied in the words of Zechariah, that the Seven Eyes as lamps of fire, "are the Eyes of Jehovah scourging in all the earth."

No. X.

"Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened to Jehovah? O, Jehovah Elohim of Hosts, who is a strong Yah like to Thee? Thou hast a mighty arm; strong is Thy hand, and high is Thy right hand" (Psalm 89). "Behold Adonai Jehovah with strong hand shall come, and His arm be ruler for him: behold his reward is with Him, and his work before Him" (Isa. 40:10). "Jehovah has sworn by the arm of His strength : I will gather you, O Israel, with a stretched out arm, and fury poured out" (Ezek. 20:33-34). "There is none like the AlL of Yeshurum who rides upon the heavens in Thy help, and in His excellency upon the skies. The Mighty Ones of the East thy refuge, and underneath the arms of the Olahm; and He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone" (Deut. 33:27).  

From these passages and many others that might be produced, it is evident that "arms," in a symbolical use of the word, signi-fies power, forces, sovereign authority; and when outstretched, power in energetic and furious operation. "The arms of the Olahm," referred to by Moses in his song, and termed "the everlasting arms" in the English version, are in the highest sense, the armies of Israel, of which the Eternal Spirit our Messiah and his Brethren is, in that manifestation, Jehovah. Hence the name of that spirit-incorporated community, Jehovah Tz'vaoth: an enigmatical title, signifying HE SHALL BE COMMANDERS OF THE ARMIES of Israel. These Spirit Commanders are each focalisations of the One Eternal Power. Hence the ungrammatical expression, HE the Commanders. These are the Arms of the Olahm -- the arms to be outstretched in "the Hour of Judgment"; and which are to break the Bow of Brass (Ps. 18:34). Moses styles these Arms in his song Elohai kedem, "Mighty Ones of the East," in the English version rendered "the Eternal God." But John, in Rev. 16:12, justifies our translation. He there styles them hal hasilelai hai apo anatolon heliou, "the Kings from risings of a Sun"; but in the English version "the Kings of the East." The kedem of Moses is the apo anatolon heliou, of John. John paraphrases Moses. The Helios or Sun, is the "Sun of Righteousness" spoken of in Mal. 4:2, who is to heal, and afterwards to send forth the sparkling gems of the Eternal, to tread down the wicked as ashes under the soles of their feet, in the day that Jehovah shall do it. The Jewels of Malachi, and the Elohim of Moses are the Kings of John, and the Arms of Daniel's vision. Each individual King is a rising of the healing Sun, in the sense of being brought from the grave and quickened by his vitalising beams. Collectively, the Kings of Power or of God, are the "risings of a Sun"; and that Sun is He who proclaimed himself "the Resurrection and the Life," even the Eternal Father, who raises up the dead by the anointed Son of Mary (2 Cor. 4: 14); styled by her royal ancestor, "the Handmaid of Jehovah" (Ps. 86: 16; 116: 16); and so recognized by Gabriel, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna, all instructed and proficients in the law. When their mission is accomplished, they also will sing the song of Moses, "and of the Lamb," the prophet like to him (Exod. 15; Rev. 15).  

These "Arms" of Daniel's vision, are represented by John in battle array in the train of their Commander-in-Chief, "the King of the Jews" (Rev. 19:14; Isaiah 55:4). John styles them "the forces of the heaven, following the Faithful and True One upon white horses, arrayed in fine linen, white and clean." Collectively, they are the Four Chariots of the heavens seen by Zechariah emerging from between the Two Mountains of Brass, which it is their mission to reduce to a molten furnace, glowing with intense heat. In the symbol of "the Lamb slain," the "Arms" are equivalent to the "Seven Horns," or Spirit Powers, which are as innumerable, but equal in number, whatever its amount may be to the "Seven Eyes."  

Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the captains of the warriors who went with him: "Come near; put your feet upon the necks of these kings." And they did so. Then Joshua said to them. "Fear not, nor be dismayed, be strong and of good courage; for thus shall Jehovah do to all your enemies against whom you fight." He then slew them, and hanged the five kings on as many trees, until evening (Josh. 10:25-26).  

The history of Israel is not only as strictly literal as any other histories, and truer too than those of the nations contemporary with their prophetic times, but is also allegorical, which theirs are not. Joshua and his Captains were like Joshua, the High Priest, and his companions, "men of sign"; and represented Messiah and his Captains in their future wars with "the Kings of the Earth, and of the whole Habitable (Rev. 16) whom they are to "tread down as ashes under the soles of their feet."  

In Psalm 18:32, the Spirit inquires: "Who is Eloah beside Jehovah? And who a Rock except our Elohim -- the AlL girding me with might? Even He will make my way complete. He causes my feet to be like hinds, and He will make me stand upon my high places. He is training my hands for the war; so that the Bow of Brass might be broken by my arms. Thou wilt cause my going to extend under me; and my ankle joints have not wavered. I will pursue my enemies, and shall overtake them, and I will not return till they be destroyed; I will wound them so that they shall not be able to rise; they shall fall under my feet. Thou wilt gird me with might for the war. Thou wilt subdue under me those who rise up against me. And Thou hast given to me the neck of my enemies; and those who hate me, I will cut them off. They will cry for help, but there is none to save them -- unto Jehovah, but He answered them not. Then will I grind them fine as dust before the Faces of the Spirit; as the mire of the streets will I pour them out. Thou wilt deliver me from the contentions of the nations; Thou hast appointed me for Prince of the nations. A nation which I know not shall serve me. At the hearing of the ear they shall obey; the sons of the foreigner shall submit to me; and the sons of the foreigner shall fall, and tremble from their strongholds."  

47.--"Jehovah lives, and blessed be my rock; and He shall raise the Elohim of my salvation. The AIL that giveth avengements to me, even He will subdue the nations under me."  

49.--"Thou wilt exalt me: from the Man of Violence (Paul's 'Man of Sin', the Lawless One) thou wilt deliver me. Therefore, O Jehovah, I will give Thee thanks among the Gentiles, and sing psalms unto Thy name, magnifying the deliverances of HIS KING and performing the promise to HIS MESSIAH, to David, and to his seed for the Olahm."  

In this passage, the Eternal Spirit through his prophet, speaks of Messiah in the crisis of his controversy for Zion, in which, as the representative and chief of Daniel's "Man of the One Spirit," he puts his feet upon the necks of the kings of the earth, scatters their armies like dust before the wind, and becomes Prince or Head of the nations in their stead. But this is true also of all the individual members of this NEW MAN (Eph. 2:15; 4:24; 2 Cot. 5: 17; Gal. 6:15). If the New Adam himself thus make war upon, and trample in the mire the kings and armies of the Old Adam nature, He has promised that all true believers "in Him" -- all who are Abraham's seed by being Christ's -- that is, all the Saints, shall do the same; and shall share with Him in the fruits of his and their victory. 

In proof of this we refer the reader to the following passages: "The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. So that a man shall say, Verily, there is a reward for the righteous: verily, there are Elohim ruling in the earth" (Ps. 58: 10, 11).  

All the horns of the wicked I will cut off; but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted (Ps. 75: 10). He shall put off the spirit of princes; He is terrible to the kings of the earth (76:12). Arise, O Elohim, judge the earth; for Thou shalt acquire possession in all the nations (Ps. 82:8). He will exalt the horn of His nation; the glory of all His saints; of the sons of Israel, a people near to Him (Ps. 148:14). Israel shall rejoice in Him that made him; the sons of Zion shall exult in their king ....The saints shall exult in glory; they shall shout with joy upon their couches. The high things of AlL shall be in their mouths; and a two-edged sword in their hands, to execute vengeance upon the nations and punishment upon the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their honoured ones with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgment written; this honour have ALL HIS SAINTS (Ps. 149).  

Now the phrase all His saints is comprehensive of Messiah and his brethren, who collectively form "the Man of the one Spirit," or Paul's "New Man." Hence, the same things are affirmed of them that are predicated concerning Him. Their feet will be like hinds -- swift in the pursuit of their enemies, whom they will overtake and destroy. These will fall before their power; and as Malachi says, they will trample them as ashes under the soles of their feet; and, when they have got the victory, they will rule with Messiah as "princes in all the earth" (Ps. 45: 16). The resurrected "Elohim ruling in the earth." The Elohim of "Messiah's salvation."  

This is the teaching of the Old Testament, with which the New Testament is in exact conformity; for they harmonize upon every subject, as might be expected from the declaration of its writers, that they taught none other things than Moses and other prophets had predicted.  

Now the apostles have proved beyond all confutation that Jesus is the Messiah or Christ of Jehovah promised to Abraham, David and Judah. Hence, all that is said about the Christ in the Old Testament must, sooner or later, be fulfilled in Jesus. But the prophets exhibit the Christ, not as a solitary man only, but also as a man of Multitude, as we have abundantly shown. Therefore, Jesus and his apostles preached the Christ in the same form -- as One Person, and a Multitude in that One, in and through all of whom the Eternal Spirit would dwell and manifest His power. "I and the Father," said Jesus, "are One" ONE YAHWEH; and concerning his apostles, and all Jews and Gentiles believing into him through the apostles' testimony, he also said, "I pray that they all may be one; 'as' Thou Father art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be ONE IN US -- that they may be one even as we are one; I in them and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one" (John 17:21) -- in One YAHWEH; that is, in the one perfect Man of the Spirit, styled Jehovah, Jehovah, or Yah, because HE SHALL BE. "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, our Mighty Ones is One Jehovah." This is the "incommunicable name" as ye term it -- a Name of Multitude, which Isaiah saith, "is coming from afar, His anger burning, and the violence of a conflagration; His lips are full of indignation, and His tongue as a devouring fire, and His breath as an overflowing stream shall reach to the neck for the scattering of the nations with the fan of destruction" (ch. 30:27). It is the Name of Multitude expressed in the formula or symbol, into which the believers are baptized - "The Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"; every such believer when so immersed, being a constituent of that name; and therefore addressed by Paul as "in God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Anointed" (1 Thess. 1:1). This is that "glorious and fearful Name-Jehovah E1oahaikha," O Israel, which your fathers would not enter into by obeying; and on account of which, as Moses forewarned you in Deut. 28:58, the Eternal Power has made thy plagues wonderful to this day.  

Daniel's "great vision" was of this consuming Name -- the mystical or multitudinous Christ -- to every accepted member of which "One Body" it is said by the Spirit, "that which ye have, hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh and keepeth my works to the end, to him will I give dominion over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the earthen vessels they shall be broken to pieces; even as I also received of my Father" (Rev. 2:25). And again, "He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem descending out of the heaven from my God, even my new name" (ch. 3:12). "He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and sit with my Father on His throne" (ch. 3:21). To write upon one who has gained a victory over himself and the world, the name of Deity, and the name of the city of Deity, is to declare him a constituent of the name inscribed upon him. Messiah and his brethren are "joint heirs" -- the eyes, and ears, and arms, and feet of Daniel's Spirit-Man, whose name is YAHWEH-ELOHIM.  

John says that the feet of this Man, whom he also saw in vision, are "like unto incandescent brass, as if they had been glowing in a furnace" (Rev. 1:15). The arms and the feet are symbolized in brass to connect them with the temple-pattern of heavenly things. The altar of burnt-offering and the laver, and the two pillars of the temple-porch, and many other things pertaining to the Court of the Priests, were all of brass, or overlaid therewith. The brass pertaining to the temple was all holy. The Brazen Altar was "most holy," so that whoever touched it was holy (Exod. 29:37; cp. Math. 23: 19); no Israelite, however, was permitted to touch it unless he belonged to the seed of Aaron; and even they were not permitted to approach the altar till they had first washed their hands and feet in the Brazen Sea.  

The Altar of Burnt-Offering prefigured the Messiah's Body in sacrificial manifestation. The idea of an altar of sacrifice representing a personal and divine plurality is frequent in Scripture. Thus, Jacob erected an altar at Shalem, in the land of Canaan, and called it AIL-ELOHAI YISRAAIL, that is, the "Strength of the Mighty Ones of Israel" (Gen. 33:20); and Moses, before the law was given, and in memory of the victory of Joshua over Amalek, "built an altar, and called the name of it YAHWEH-NISSI"; that is, He shall be my Ensign--He who was symbolized by the altar (Exod. 17:15; Isa. 11:10, 12; 18:3; 31:9; Zech. 9:16).  

This Jehovah-nissi-altar was superseded by an altar overlaid with plates of brass. These plates represented "the flesh of sin" purified by fiery-trial. "Gold, silver, brass, iron, tin and lead, everything," said Moses, "that may abide the fire, ye shall make go through the fire, and it shall be clean; nevertheless, it shall be purified with the water of separation; and all that abideth not the fire, ye shall make go through the water" (Num. 31:23). The connection of the plates with sin's flesh, is established by their history. They were the "censers of those sinners against their own souls," Korah, Dathan, Abiram and their company, two hundred and fifty of them, who rebelled against the Strength of Israel. He commanded Eleazar, Aaron's son, to melt them, and roll them into broad plates, for "a covering of the Altar," and "a sign to the children of Israel" (Num. 16:38). The Brazen Altar, which was four-square, had four Horns of Brass, one at each corner; and in sacrifice the blood was applied to the Horns by the Priest's fingers; and the rest was. all poured beside the bottom of the altar (Exod. 29:12). These Horns represent the same things as the Four Cherubims, the Four Carpenters, and the Four Living Ones, of Ezekiel, Zechariah, and John; only in the Brazen State which precedes the Golden Olahm, or Millennium. As Horns of Brass, they "execute the judgment written" as a consuming fire; for brass and offering by fire are the association of things in the type.  

The Brazen Altar and its Horns of Brass, then, are symbolical of AIL, the Eternal power in Elohal, or sacrificial and judicial manifestation in flesh. "Eloah will come from Teman," saith the prophet, "the Holy One from Mount Paran: consider! His glory covers the heavens, and His praise fills the earth: and the splendour shall be as the light; He has Horns out of His hand; and there is the covering of His Strong Ones. Before His faces shall go pestilence, and from his feet lightnings shall proceed. He stood, and measured the earth; He beheld and caused the nations to tremble; and the mountains of antiquity were dispersed; and the hills of the Olahm did bow; the goings of the Olahm are His" (Hab. 3:3-6).  

The Horns of the Brazen and Golden Altars are His Eternal Spirit's strong ones, who disperse the empires of antiquity, and subjugate the kingdoms of the latter days to Him and His Anointed; so that the current of the world's affairs will be directed by His Elohim, in the ensuing thousand years, or Daniel's "season and a time."  

The saints, then, are the brazen arms and feet of the Man of the One Spirit, who have all passed through the fire, and the water of separation, and been consecrated by the blood of the covenant; and "are partakers with the Altar," even Jesus (1 Cor. 9:13; 10:18; Heb. 13:10, 12); and those of them who have been slain, have been poured out "beside the bottom," or "under the altar," from whence the cry ascends to the Father, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell upon the earth?" (Rev. 6: 10; 11:1). Hence, those who dwell upon the earth, being like Israel of old, grievous re-volters, brass and iron, corruptors all (Jer. 6:28), are to be cast into a furnace glowing with the heat of Jehovah's indignation. Israel has been passing through the process for ages. They have been trampled under foot of the Gentiles in a great furnace of affliction; for punishment was to begin first at the Jew; and afterwards to be visited upon the brass and iron of the Gentiles. Ezekiel's description of Israel's punishment by Gentile agency will illustrate that of the Gentiles by the agency of Israel, under the direction of the men "whose feet are like incandescent brass, glowing in a furnace"; and will furnish an obvious interpretation of the text. "The word of Jehovah," says the prophet, "came unto me, saying, Son of Man, the house of Israel is to me become dross; they are all brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace; they are the dross of silver. Therefore, thus saith Jehovah Elohim, because ye are all become dross, behold, therefore, I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it to melt it, so will I gather you in my anger and in my fury! and I will leave you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof. As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I, Jehovah, have poured out my fury upon you" (ch. 22: 18-20). Israel in the flesh are here compared to brass and other metals, full of dross. This drossy nature of the brass is the characteristic by which they are distinguished from "the fine" or "incandescent brass" of the Man of the One Spirit, or Israel in the Spirit, in glowing or burning operation upon the subjects of Jehovah's fiery indignation.  

Israel as dross is exemplified in the denunciations of the prophets. Their drossiness is seen in the abominations they practised in burning incense to reptiles and filthy beasts, and idols of every sort; in their women weeping for Tammuz, the Adonis of the Greeks; and in their worshipping the sun between the porch and the altar with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah (Ezek. 8:7, 8). They are still in the drossy state with the curse of Moses on them. With the exception of circumcision (which, however, was not from Moses, but from Abraham) they do nothing he commanded them to do; and, therefore, disregarding him, they necessarily reject Jesus, of whom he wrote. "Cursed is every one," says Moses, "that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." Israel lives in the perpetual violation of the law, and yet seeks justification by that law, which only thunders the curses of mount Ebal in their ears. "Cursed be he," saith Moses, "that taketh reward to slay an innocent person." This Israel did in paying Judas thirty pieces of silver for the betraying of Jesus, and in their priests taking the price of blood returned to them, and purchasing therewith the Potter's Field. The Pagan judge pronounced him faultless; and in this declaration convicts the Jewish nation of the crime of "TAKING THE REWARD OF TREACHERY PAID TO EFFECT THE DEATH OF AN INNOCENT PERSON." And the crime being committed, the people shouted the "Amen," saying: "Let his blood be upon us, and upon our children!" These children, or posterity, are with us at this day -- "the dross of silver in the midst of the furnace of affliction, 'left' of Jehovah, and 'melted'."  

But, if Israel be the dross of silver, the Gentiles are the dross of brass, iron, lead, and tin. The Gentile dross is no purer than Israel's. Israel boasts in Moses, and pays no regard to what he prescribes; and the Gentiles bepraise Jesus while their eyes are closed and their hearts steeled against his doctrine and commands; so that Jews and Gentiles are all guilty before God -- they only excepted who believe the Gospel of the kingdom and obey it. They have all, therefore, to be gathered into a furnace glowing with intense combustion, before they attain to the blessedness that is to come upon all nations through Abraham and his seed. Jews and Gentiles must he "melted in the fire of Jehovah's wrath," which fire will burn through the operations of the arms and feet of the Man of the One -- "the saints executing the judgment written," and "treading the wicked as ashes under the soles of their feet."  

The furnace in which Israel will become molten brass is "the wilderness of the peoples," where Jehovah saith He will plead with them face to face; rule over them with fury poured out, and purge out from among them the rebellious, whom He will not permit to enter into the Holy Land to live there in His sight under the government of His King--the Christ (Ezek. 20:33-44). When thus purged, the Jewish nation will be brass and silver well refined (Mal. 3:2-3). The rebellious dross will be cleaned out, and Anti-Mosaic-Judaism, by which they are now caused to wander out of the way, will have been destroyed from the earth. The refining furnace is the "time of Jacob's trouble," out of which he is to be delivered (Jer. 30:7); and though they are now "prostrate among the cattle pens," they will be "the wings of the Dove covered with silver and her feathers with the brightness of fine gold" (Ps. 68:13).  

But the Gentiles are to become molten brass as well as Israel. Their brass, therefore, is also to be gathered into the furnace, that it may be melted and refined in the fire of Jehovah's wrath, The place of the furnace is also "the wilderness of the people," that wilderness inhabited by the peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues -- the "many waters upon which the Great Harlot sitteth" -- that John of Patmos refers to in Rev. 17:1,15 -- Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Egypt; and, in short, all being the Meditteranean and Euphratean countries, being the territories of the four beasts of Daniel, constitute the furnace in which the Nebuchadnezzar gold, silver and brass, and iron, and clay--are made to glow with torrid heat of seven-fold intensity; and in which the four men of God -- the Cherubim -- walk to and fro, without hurt, "the fire having no power upon their bodies": as symbolized by Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, and by John's mystical Son of Man, in Rev. 1:15: Dan. 3:19-27. The melting and refining the Gentile brass in this Babylonian furnace, incandescent with the wrath of Deity, is Daniel's "time of trouble, such as never was, since there was a nation to that same time" (12: 1). It is "the day that shall burn as an oven" (or furnace) which shall consume the proud and all that do wickedness, with their anti-Christian Gentilism, by which the peoples are deceived; but which shall have no power for evil against the people represented by Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and the one like the Son of God; they shall come forth unharmed, unsinged, unchanged and inodorous of the fire. For these are the daughters of Zion, to whom the Spirit saith: "Arise and thresh: for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass; and thou shalt beat in pieces many peoples; and I will consecrate their spoil to Jehovah, and their wealth to the Adon of the whole earth" (Mic. 4:13). So that while Israel is passing through the furnace under the conduct of the saints, and are themselves being purged from dross, they are also made use of by their commanders as a torch of fire among the sheaves, or a lion among flocks of goats (Mic. 5:8; Zech 12:6), to destroy the power and kingdoms of the world, after the allegorical example of their transit out of Egypt into the land of their inheritance; for though passing under the rod themselves, they became also a rod of iron in the hand of Jehovah for the destruction of the nations, whose iniquity was full.  

This is the last characteristic of the symbolic Man of the One Spirit, noted by the prophet Daniel. In John's vision of the Mystic Christ, it is testified that "His voice was as the sound of many waters." These "many waters" are Daniel's "multitude"; for "many waters" signify, as apocalyptically explained, a multitude of people. In Ezekiel's "visions of Elohim," the voice of Daniel and John's symbolic man comes from the wings of the cherubim. "I heard," saith he, "the noise of their wings, like the noise of many waters, as the voice of Shaddai (Mighty Ones) in their goings, the voice of speech, as the noise of a camp: in standing, they let down their wings" (ch. 1:24). The meaning of this is, that Ezekiel heard the voice of a multitude of Mighty Ones, speaking as the warriors of a camp in motion against an enemy; and that when they were not in progress, their voice was not heard --"in standing they let down their wings," and, consequently, there was no sound of war. But the voice of Daniel and John's symbolic man was heard as the roar of a multitude -- the roaring of many waters; by which we are to understand that their Man of Multitude was in progress, leading on the body and wings of his brazen-footed battalions against the Fourth Beast, or the Apocalytic Beast and False Prophet, and the kings of the earth and their armies; the former consumed in the furnace, or "lake of fire, burning with sulphur; and the kings and their armies slain with the sword of the resurrected and glorified Mystic Man" (Rev. 19: 19, 20).  

Now, Daniel, as the representative of his people, saw the Spirit Man, while those who are no constituent part thereof see him not, but tremble before him, and flee, as the Old Adam did, "to hide themselves."  

The vision being apparent, Daniel is alone, after his companions have fled. At this crisis, the relation between the prophet and the man is peculiar. Daniel occupies the position of one dead -- his vigour was turned into corruption, and he retained no strength; he was in a deep sleep on his face, and his face toward the ground, and destitute of breath (ch. 10:8, 9, 17). While in this symbolic death, the symbolical man, the symbolical associate of which is "Michael, one of the chief princes," was near him. The man uttered his voice -- a voice to be responded to by the dead (John 5:25-29; Dan. 12:2), and Daniel heard it: "When I heard the voice of his words," saith he, "then was I in a deep sleep on my face." After the voice had awoke him to consciousness, the power of the Man raised him from his prostrate condition -- "a hand touched me," said he, "which raised me upon my knees, and the palms of my hands." This is the attitude of a man in the act of rising up from sleep on or in the ground after he had awoke. He was then told to stand upright, for that the Man of the vision was sent unto him -- He was sent of the Spirit to communicate to him certain things after his symbolical resurrection; for the things communicated in their crisis are to be accomplished after the literal resurrection of Daniel and his people by "Michael the Great Prince," at the end of the 1335 days (ch. 12:1,2,12,13). Hearing the command to stand upright, he obeyed, and says "I stood trembling." He was now alone in the presence of the august vision from which his attendants fled to hide themselves. He trembled; for though raised and erect upon his feet, he was not yet "in power." But the Man who had raised him from the ground came again to him, and touched him, and said to him: "O man, greatly beloved, fear not; peace be unto thee; be strong, yea, be strong." Then Daniel no longer feared and trembled, but became symbolically incorruptible, immortal, strong; for when the Man of the One Spirit had spoken to him thus, he says, "I was strengthened, and said, let my Adon (Lord) speak, for thou hast strengthened me."

Here, then, was Daniel's Lord in vision, seen also by Moses, Joshua, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. They all saw him as a man. The Spirit assumed this appearance in vision; and to represent to Daniel his future manifestation through the son of David as Prince of Israel, he, the Spirit, associates himself with the archangel Michael, whom he styles Daniel's Prince. "Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me," saith the Spirit, "and I remained there on the side of the kings of Persia. I will shew that which is noted in the Scripture of truth; and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael, your prince."  

Now the Michael with whom the Spirit co-operated on the side of the Kings of Persia against Babylon, must not be confounded with Michael, the Great Prince, who appears at the epoch of the resurrection (ch. 12:1, 2). The name Mi-cha-el signifies who-like-to-Ail, or the Eternal Power; and is applicable to any person, or community of persons, in whom Eternal Power is embodied, and manifested. It was therefore an appropriate appellation for the sar-tzevah-yahweh, PRINCE OF THE HOST OF YAHWEH, who appeared to Joshua by Jericho; and who had been appointed over Israel in the wilderness at the time the Spirit said to Moses: "Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for MY NAME IS IN HIM. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I shall be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary to thine adversaries. For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee into the land, and cut off its inhabitants" (Exod. 23:20-23; Josh. 5:14). This Angel-Prince is styled Michael in Daniel, because the Name, or power, of the Eternal was in him. He was therefore as AIL, or as men say GOD to Israel. He was not the Only Potentate whom no man hath seen nor can see, but His representative, who was to be obeyed as if he were the Eternal himself, because "his voice" gave "utterance" to the commands of the Spirit.  

But this Michael was not a son of man. He did not belong to the race of Adam, to which the dominion of the earth was originally and for ever given (Gen. 1:26). His viceregency therefore, could only be provisional. He had dominion over Israel as their prince until another personage should appear to assume the reins of government, who should be both Son of Man, Son of Abraham, and Son of David, to whom dominion over Israel and all other nations inhabiting the earth to its utmost bounds, has been decreed (Ps. 2:6-9; 8:6). Thus, as Jesus taught, "the Father hath committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father, who hath given him authority to execute judgment, because he is a Son of Man" (John 5:22-27).  

The Michael, then, contemporary with Moses, Joshua and Daniel, was only provisional viceregent of Israel till the Son of Man should attain to authority and power. Until this event, the "Aion" or course of things, was subjected to angels, as clearly appears from Jewish history. But when the Son of the Eternal Spirit, born of a Jewess of the house of David, was begotten from among the dead, the decree proclaims "Let all Elohim bow down to Him.." This was the person of whom it was said to Moses at the bush, Jehovah, that is, HE SHALL BE; and, concerning Him, David saith, in the same Psalm, "Thou art Jehovah, Most High above all the earth; greatly hast thou been exalted above all Elohim" (97:7, 9). This Jehovah was exalted by the Father Spirit. He was the Eternal Form, and, therefore, "thought it no robbery the being as God" saying "that God was his Father" (John 5: 18). "He made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in men's likeness; and being found in habit as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that to the name of Jesus every knee of heavenly ones and earthly ones, and subterranean ones should bow: and that every tongue should confess that the anointed Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:6-11). This high exaltation of Jehovah by the Eternal Ail placed him above the prince whom Joshua saw, whose viceregency over Israel terminated when the handwriting of the ordinances was nailed to the cross, and the principalities and authorities it established were spoiled, and made a spectacle of publicly (Col. 2:14, 15), the mission of the Mosaic Michael was consummated. Israel had "provoked Him", and "He would not pardon the transgressions." He had expelled the ten tribes from Palestine, where He had p1anted them, because of idolatry and its abominations; and now because Judah, Benjamin, and their priests had crucified one to whom he had bowed, and would not accept pardon in His exalted name, He stirred up the Roman Horn of the Goat against them, and would deliver them no more.  

Such has been the condition of Israel from that day to this. They have been abandoned by the Eternal's Archangel Michael, "the Angel of His presence, who saved them" (lsa. 63:9) in the days of antiquity; and they are repudiated by the Second Michael, whom they crucified and pierced. So that now they are "without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an erection, without ephod and teraphim" (Hos. 3:4), in short, without any "caphporeth", or covering for sin, and, therefore, under sentence of death, "being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them." What a pitiable condition for a people, formerly Jehovah's, to be in; a people, because abandoned of God for a time, styled Lo-ruhahmah and Lo-ammi. Such are Israel's names "till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled," the nation that has not obtained mercy,' the nation that is not my people saith Jehovah (Hos. 1:6, 8, 9). And how blind must be their Rabbis and Scribes, and the multitude led by them, who "whatever may be the real character of the Christianity of the not more enlightened Gentiles around them," cannot see that Israel and Judah are not the people of the Lord. The Eternal and "Michael their Prince" have turned their backs upon them, and as their royal prophet predicted, "their sorrows have been increased," because "they have hasted after another" than he whom they crucified, and God raised from the dead. As for him, the Nazarene, to whom the angel of the Eternal's presence bowed, he says concerning them in their Lo-ammi state, "I will not pour out their drink offerings of blood, nor will I take their names upon my lips" (Psalm 16:4).  

Well, then, the Mosaic Aion, which was subject to angels, has long since vanished away; and the times of the Gentiles also subjected to God or Elohim, are verging upon their close, and a New Aion or Course of Time, and the new oikonomia or administration of the oikoumene or habitable, all constituting what Paul in Heb. 2:5, styles he oikeumene he mellousa, "the Future Habitable," rendered in the English version, "The World to Come," concerning which, he writes in the l st and 2nd chapters, are about soon to be revealed. This administration of the Habitable in the approaching Aion, is the true CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION, and is styled by the prophet Isaiah, "Zion's times," in which "Jehovah is Israel's judge, lawgiver, and king" (chap. 33:6, 22). This dispensation, which is divided from the Mosaic by the long dreary, intermediate night of Gentile and Jewish superstition, wickedness, and folly, "is not subjected," says Paul, "to the angels" --to Michael, Gabriel, and other "chief princes" (Heb. 2:5); but, according to the teaching of Moses, David, Daniel, Jesus, and the apostles, to the Son of Man and his associates --MESSIAH AND THE SAINTS. These, in resurrected and glorious manifestation, are the Eternal Spirit manifested in flesh --in Spirit-flesh, or HOLY SPIRIT NATURE; and are styled by Paul in Rom. 8:19, 23, "the manifestation of the Sons of God," "the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" -- that, "one body of many members," the ecclesia, which is Christ's body, the fulness of Him who filleth up all things in all the saints (Eph. 1:22, 23).  

The germ of this one body symbolized to Daniel, Ezekiel, and John, is Jesus of Nazareth, or "Michael the Great Prince," to whom "Michael one of the chief princes," has done obeisance, and "on acount of whom are all things -- dia hou ta pauta, and through whom are we" the saints kia hemeis dia autou (1 Cor. 8:6). Thus, all things are "out of God," and "for Him," "on account of the Anointed Jesus," and "through Him." If there had been no Jesus, Son of David, and Son of God; or if, like Adam the first, he had been, but had become a transgressor, there would have been no "One Body," composed of saints resurrected or otherwise. These are all IN HIM; but, if in his development, he had not proved, like the brazen altar, most holy, he would not have imparted holiness to all that touch him by laying hold upon him through the faith. But becoming "partakers of the altar" by being "in him," they are holies or saints; and "through Him" become "kings and priests for God," who has made him heir of all things (and they joint-heirs with him), and therefore all things are "on account of him," and also "for their sakes."

The anointed Jesus (not the dead body lying in the sepulchre of the Arimathean Joseph) is eternal power manifested in flesh; and, therefore, AIL, or in Saxon "God." Now Mi-cha-lo? -- WHO-LIKE-TO-HIM among the sons of the mighty? (Psalm 89:6). Therefore, because there is none to compare with him the "child born" and the "son given" to Judah, is styled in Isaiah 9:6, AIL givbor, "the Mighty Power." Hence, when he appears in power and great glory to put a hook into the jaws of the leviathan, to slay the dragon in the sea, and to raise the dead, it will be said of him, Mi-cha-el? Who like to God? to "Jehovah the Man of War"? Who will contend with him? (Isaiah 50:8), with Jesus, the Eternal's king of the Jews?  

Jesus, then, the Son of David and Son of the Eternal Power by David's daughter, is Michael the great Prince of Israel, who comes to redeem his kinsmen and their inheritance, and to break in pieces their oppressors. But as he is not only a single individual, but also one containing many -- a manifold man -- whose symbolical number is 144,000; the many "in him" are constituents of "Michael the Great Prince," who delivers Israel in the time of trouble which transcends all the calamitous periods of human history since the Flood.  

The Son of Man, then, whom John of Patmos beheld in vision, was the Michael of Dan. 12:1 -- "the Alpha (or Eternal Spirit) and the Omega (Jesus and the saints) the Beginning and the Ending, the ONE YAHWEH, who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." "Jehovah," says Moses, "is a Man of War." Hence out of this manifold Jehovah-Man mouth, John saw a sharp two-edged broad-sword going forth, that with it he should smite the nations (chap. 1:16; 19: 15, 21). And when they are smitten, it is by a coup de soleil, for "his countenance is as the sun shining in his strength," not only dispelling the darkness, however, but "enlightening the earth with his glory" (Rev. 18: 1).  

Now when John saw this ALMIGHTY BODY POLITIC he became as dead at his feet -- like Daniel, symbolically dead; which represents that what he saw is fulfilled at the termination of the death state; for he is brought out of that state to write the things which shall be. When the things signified by what he saw, shall be complete, the united voice of the many waters will be, "I am the First and the Last! he that liveth and was dead; and behold I am living for the cycles of the cycles; amen: I have the keys of the invisible and of death" (Rev. 1: 18), and will therefor abolish death at the end of the Millennium (Rev. 21:4).  

END OF ARTICLES

Added by bro Thomas in Phanerosis  

Summary

If the question be asked, how came it that Christ's will always acted with the Father's as no other man's ever did, it is here that the object of God's manifestation becomes apparent. There never could have been such an obedient man if God had not produced him and made him what he was; but God does not stultify Himself in any part of His work. Therefore, though God, in Christ, produced one who was righteous under all trial, He did not tie or force His will, but gave him that complete independence of volition, and that ample opportunity of disobedience which gave acceptability to his obedience, and value and force to it as an example to us. The principle involved in God's procedure towards man absolutely required this. The object aimed at throughout is the voluntary consecration of independent will to His glory. It is for the development of this result that all these ages of evil are allowed. The prevalence of evil is the necessary foundation of righteousness. If it were not for this element of the work of God, the world's history is without an explanation. Take it away, and we are in darkness. The long reign of evil is the measure of the value God attaches to the voluntary obedience of independent will. The evil has come through the impartation of this power of independent will. Man has misused it, and hence the reign of evil; but the gloriousness of the obedience of a multitude who will come out of this great tribulation, is so great as to be more than a compensation for the night that broods over the world.    

Dr. John Thomas, M.D. 1858