pwfaith
Active Member
Yes and neither were ever men first.
Christ became man. He was fully man and fully God. Man cannot become God, without already having been God to begin with.
Find a dictionary and look up everlasting, infinite and invariable. If Scripture says God is everlasting God, and does not change, how then can he have changed from man into God?
There is only one God; but He consists of three distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He gave up his heavenly home to become a man, and yes his human man body lived, died and rose. He always remained God but his Godliness never changed. Again he was still fully God. He did not give up being God and then become human and go back to being God.
I only read your OP, nothing further and responded to it.
"People of Israel, you are my witnesses," announces the Lord. "I have chosen you to be my servants. I wanted you to know me and believe in me. I wanted you to understand that I am the one and only God. Before me, there was no other god at all. And there will not be any god after me. [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Verdana][SIZE=-1]Isaiah 43:10[/SIZE][/FONT]
If there is only one God, how can we all be gods?
"I am the Lord. That is my name! I will not let any other god share my glory. I will not let statues of gods share my praise. Isaiah 42:8
Is it true this doctrine was not presented initially by Joseph Smith, but was developed after the production of the Book of Mormon and that the Book of Mormon actually contradicts later Mormon revelation?
I looked up information on John 10 and found the following:
On this occasion, He appealed to an Old Testament context to deflect the barb of His critics. Psalm 82 is a passage that issued a scathing indictment of the unjust judges who had been assigned the responsibility of executing Gods justice among the people (cf. Deuteronomy 1:16; 19:17-18; Psalm 58). Such a magistrate was Gods minister (Romans 13:4) who acted in the place of God, wielding His authority, and who was responsible for mediating Gods help and justice (cf. Exodus 7:1). In this sense, they were gods (elohim)acting as God to men (Barclay, 1956, 2:89). Hebrew parallelism clarifies this sense: I said, You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High (Psalm 82:6, emp. added). They did not share divinity with Godbut merely delegated jurisdiction. They still were mere humansalthough invested with divine authority, and permitted to act in Gods behalf.
This point is apparent throughout the Torah, where the term translated judges or ruler is often elohim (e.g., Exodus 21:6; 22:9,28). Take Moses as an example. Moses was not a god. Yet God told Moses that when he went to Egypt to achieve the release of the Israelites, he would be God to his brother Aaron and to Pharaoh (Exodus 4:16; 7:1). He meant that Moses would supply both his brother and Pharaoh with the words that came from God. Though admittedly a rather rare use of elohim, nevertheless it shows that the word translated god in that place might be applied to man (Barnes, 1949, p. 294, emp. in orig.). Clarke summarized this point: Ye are my representatives, and are clothed with my power and authority to dispense judgment and justice, therefore all of them are said to be children of the Most High (3:479, emp. in orig.). But because they had shirked their awesome responsibility to represent Gods will fairly and accurately, and because they had betrayed the sacred trust bestowed upon them by God Himself, He decreed death upon them (vs. 7). Obviously, they were not gods, since God could and would execute them!
Jesus marshaled this Old Testament psalm to thwart His opponents attack, while simultaneously reaffirming His deity (which is the central feature of the book of John20:30-31). He made shrewd use of syllogistic argumentation by reasoning a minori ad majus (see Lenski, 1943, pp. 765-770; cf. Fishbane, 1985, p. 420). Jesus is here arguing like a rabbi from a lesser position to a greater position, a how much more argument very popular among the rabbis (Pack, 1975, 1:178). In fact, it is an argument which to a Jewish Rabbi would have been entirely convincing. It was just the kind of argument, an argument founded on a word of scripture, which the Rabbis loved to use and found most unanswerable (Barclay, 1956, p. 90).
Jesus identified the unjust judges of Israel as persons to whom the word of God came (John 10:35). That is, they had been appointed judges by Divine commission (Butler, 1961, p. 127)by the command of God; his commission to them to do justice (Barnes, 1949, p. 294, emp. in orig.; cf. Jeremiah 1:2; Ezekiel 1:3; Luke 3:2). McGarvey summarized the ensuing argument of Jesus: If it was not blasphemy to call those gods who so remotely represented the Deity, how much less did Christ blaspheme in taking unto himself a title to which he had a better right than they, even in the subordinate sense of being a mere messenger (n.d., p. 487). Charles Erdman observed:
This point is apparent throughout the Torah, where the term translated judges or ruler is often elohim (e.g., Exodus 21:6; 22:9,28). Take Moses as an example. Moses was not a god. Yet God told Moses that when he went to Egypt to achieve the release of the Israelites, he would be God to his brother Aaron and to Pharaoh (Exodus 4:16; 7:1). He meant that Moses would supply both his brother and Pharaoh with the words that came from God. Though admittedly a rather rare use of elohim, nevertheless it shows that the word translated god in that place might be applied to man (Barnes, 1949, p. 294, emp. in orig.). Clarke summarized this point: Ye are my representatives, and are clothed with my power and authority to dispense judgment and justice, therefore all of them are said to be children of the Most High (3:479, emp. in orig.). But because they had shirked their awesome responsibility to represent Gods will fairly and accurately, and because they had betrayed the sacred trust bestowed upon them by God Himself, He decreed death upon them (vs. 7). Obviously, they were not gods, since God could and would execute them!
Jesus marshaled this Old Testament psalm to thwart His opponents attack, while simultaneously reaffirming His deity (which is the central feature of the book of John20:30-31). He made shrewd use of syllogistic argumentation by reasoning a minori ad majus (see Lenski, 1943, pp. 765-770; cf. Fishbane, 1985, p. 420). Jesus is here arguing like a rabbi from a lesser position to a greater position, a how much more argument very popular among the rabbis (Pack, 1975, 1:178). In fact, it is an argument which to a Jewish Rabbi would have been entirely convincing. It was just the kind of argument, an argument founded on a word of scripture, which the Rabbis loved to use and found most unanswerable (Barclay, 1956, p. 90).
Jesus identified the unjust judges of Israel as persons to whom the word of God came (John 10:35). That is, they had been appointed judges by Divine commission (Butler, 1961, p. 127)by the command of God; his commission to them to do justice (Barnes, 1949, p. 294, emp. in orig.; cf. Jeremiah 1:2; Ezekiel 1:3; Luke 3:2). McGarvey summarized the ensuing argument of Jesus: If it was not blasphemy to call those gods who so remotely represented the Deity, how much less did Christ blaspheme in taking unto himself a title to which he had a better right than they, even in the subordinate sense of being a mere messenger (n.d., p. 487). Charles Erdman observed:
By his defense Jesus does not renounce his claim to deity; but he argues that if the judges, who represented Jehovah in their appointed office, could be called gods, in the Hebrew scriptures, it could not be blasphemy for him, who was the final and complete revelation of God, to call himself the Son of God (1922, pp. 95-96; cf. Morris, 1971, pp. 527-528).
There are no other gods in the sense of deity, i.e., eternality and infinitude in all attributes. Jesus verified this very conclusion by directing the attention of His accusers to the works that He performed (vs. 37-38). These works (i.e., miraculous signs) proved the divine identity of Jesus to the exclusion of all other alleged deities. Archer concluded: By no means, then, does our Lord imply here that we are sons of God just as He isexcept for a lower level of holiness and virtue. No misunderstanding could be more wrongheaded than that (1982, p. 374). (link)
"I am the Lord. That is my name! I will not let any other god share my glory. I will not let statues of gods share my praise. Isaiah 42:8)
