2009 European Bible Conference          October 20, 2009      Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,  Philippians 2:3-5 God Was in ChristHear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; He is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark sayings; and he sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?  Numbers 12:6-8 Let’s examine the prophets in detail now. Let’s compare these verses to First Peter chapter 1 verses 10 and 11. Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.  In the passage from the book of Numbers, it says that the Lord makes Himself known to a prophet in a vision or speaks to him in a dream. First Peter, however, says that the Spirit of Christ was in the prophets. How can First Peter say that the “Spirit of Christ” was in the prophets whereas the book of Numbers says the “Lord”?Many people interpret the Bible as they please. Some say that there was the time of God the Father, then that of God the Son when Jesus came into the world, and now is the time of God the Holy Spirit. This is also correct, but in the process of explaining such matters, we need to know whether we really understand this accurately according to the Bible. We need to establish who is meant by “the Lord” in the Old Testament. It is important to have a clear understanding of the Lord who appears in the Old Testament in order to fully understand Jesus as He appears in the gospels such as that of John in the New Testament, where He was confronted by the Pharisees, scribes and chief priests with their harsh criticisms. If not, you may come to think of the One who appears in the Old Testament, the One who appears in the New Testament, and the One who leads us as we live in the present time when the Old and New Testaments are complete, as being different.Of course, it is not incorrect to believe that the Old Testament is the age of God the Father, the time when Jesus was in the world as the age of God the Son, and our present age as that of God the Holy Spirit. This is because in the Bible we find that they are all one and the same God. Yet, if you examine First Peter chapter 1 verse 10 carefully, you will find that the God who met and spoke to the prophets was the Spirit of Christ. So it may be confusing as to who Christ is, who the Lord is, who God the Father is and who the Holy Spirit is. Nevertheless, just as the light shone when the earth was without form and void, those matters all fall into order little by little as the framework of thoughts that we have built up in the course of our lives is broken down and we see things through the light of the words of the Bible.Numbers chapter 12 verse 8 says, “And he sees the form of the Lord.” The God who moved the hearts of the prophets and spoke with them called Himself “Lord” in the Old Testament. In Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3 it says, “who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,” and speaks of the One who has the image of the invisible God. We usually think that God has no physical form, but the Bible says clearly, “he sees the form of the Lord.” How can we see the form of God who is invisible to the physical eye? If these were the words of some prophet, you might think, “He must be a false prophet,” but God said that Moses “sees the form of the Lord,” and the Bible refers to “the express image of His person.”References to “the Lord” are to be found throughout the Old Testament and this “Lord” appears at times to refer to God the Father and at other times God the Son. First Peter refers to Him as the “Spirit of Christ,” and so He also seems to be the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, we find a Man by the name of Jesus. After He was baptized and came up out of the water, a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” (Mark 9:7). If that is the case, who is the God who spoke those words, and who was the God who was baptized? Also as Jesus was coming up out of the water after being baptized, “the Spirit descended upon Him like a dove” (see Mark 1:10).If we research and examine the Bible carefully, we can see that the God who abides close to us is God the Son. We need to have a clear understanding of this. When the Bible says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16), we may simply think that this “only begotten Son” is the Jesus. Yet, in John chapter 1, it says “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (verse 18). This verse is somewhat difficult to understand, but the one thing that is certain is that God the Father definitely exists. He fills the heavens and the earth, but He is not visible to man’s eyes.In First Corinthians it says, “The head of every man is Christ … and the head of Christ is God” (11:3). We tend to think simply that Jesus is God and God is Jesus, but in the New Testament it says that the head of Christ is God. Does that mean then that Christ is not God? This is very difficult. But, in Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 19, it says, … That is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. First we read, “The head of Christ is God,” but in this verse it says “that God was in Christ.” Christ had the thoughts of God in His mind and put all of these words into action, just as the Spirit of Christ moved the prophets from within, and they relayed to their people the words given by God and wrote them down. So then who is Christ, and who is God?Let’s now think about the trinity from a doctrinal point of view. The One who appears in the Bible, who fills the whole world, who is everywhere and in the deepest parts of the world and yet cannot be found by man no matter how hard he tries to find Him, this is God the Father. It was God the Father who had hold of all the thoughts and ideas of Jesus Christ.The God who put into practice the will of God the Father, which He had planned and designed before the foundation of the world, was God the Son. The Bible describes His form as a mystery. God the Son carried out all the thoughts of God the Father who fills the heavens and the earth. As the Bible says, He was “the express image of His person” and, “he sees the form of the Lord”.Also, the God referred to in Philippians when it says, “Taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men” (2:7), was originally in the form of God, but gave up His glorious position and was born into this world as a Child through a woman. God the Father appeared in this world in the form of a Man. This was Jesus. The Bible refers to this Person who carried out the work of purging our sins as Christ. God the Holy Spirit witnesses and testifies of the fulfillment of the plans which were in the heart of God the Father and were accomplished by God the Son. So it is that when we realize the truth in the words of the Bible, our hearts are sealed by the Holy Spirit. What is the Bible? It is the testimony of God the Father who loves the world and bears witness to us that everything has been accomplished through God the Son. This is why these three are one.Now let’s think again about the verse in Numbers that says, “Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream.” Who do you think is the Lord who speaks to the prophet in a dream? Who was the God who met Moses? If we had to choose One of the three, it would be God the Son. Man cannot meet God the Father.God appeared before man several times in the Old Testament as a shadow of the time when He would come to the world in the body of a Man in the role of Mediator between man and God. When Adam ate the forbidden fruit and realized that he was naked, God walked in the garden looking for Adam and calling out, “Where are you?” (see Genesis 3:9). This was not a voice from heaven calling out, “Adam.” This was God Himself who came to look for him. This God killed an animal, made tunics of skin and clothed them in them.When Abraham was returning from a battle in which he had rescued Lot, he met with a priest to whom he gave a tenth of all he had received. The name of this priest was Melchizedek. He was “king of Salem … the priest of God Most High” (see Genesis 14:18). Furthermore, Abraham was the first forefather of the Israelites; He was the father of the entire nation of the Israelites. He himself should have received the tithes of others, and yet he gave a tenth of his gains to the One who was higher than he. The Bible also tells us that Moses saw the back of the Lord as He passed by (see Exodus 33:18-23). Who was this person? It was not Jesus. You must not think that He was Jesus. It was God the Son, who gave up all His glory and put on the body of a man as He came to this world as a bondservant. This was the man who was called Jesus. There is clearly a difference.If you do not make a clear distinction here, and if you just think, “God is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God. So it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are saved,” you will miss out on a lot. The Bible tells us that the prophets inquired and searched diligently, and we must do the same. If we do not, we will not know the Bible very well, and so when we encounter people of the world who speak evil against us as we carry out our mission to spread the gospel, we will not have the strength to fight against them. The last chapter of Ephesians tells us how we are to arm ourselves. Please be sure to read it yourselves some time. Also, as you are reading the Old Testament, when you come across the expression, “the Lord God,” think about who this God is. If you do this, you will see the Bible in a different light. God Will Raise Up for You a Prophet Like MeIn the law that Moses received on Mount Sinai, it says not to worship idols, the sun, the moon, or the stars (see Deuteronomy 4:15-19). Why did God say these things? Man was created in the likeness of God the Son who was in the form of God the Father. As the Bible says, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). God created Adam in the image of God. We cannot deny this fact. The Bible tells us clearly that man was made in the image of God. In the book of Ezekiel, however, we find a very strange scene recorded there. It says that a glorious image appeared like that of a man. (see Ezekiel chapter 1) It is not that Ezekiel dozed off and happened to see an image in his sleep so he wrote it all down. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit exist in a mysterious form and dwell in a mysterious place, such as we cannot imagine or understand with our limited minds. If you read a book such as John’s Gospel after reading the Old Testament, you will be able to see that the God who has been close to man is God the Son who has been with God the Father from the beginning, accomplishing His will. He is very close to us. The Bible says that God dwells in unapproachable light so we are not able to draw close to Him, (see 1 Timothy 6:16) but He is close to us. When God the Father was making the plans for all creation?things such as color, touch, temperature and gravity?it was God the Son, the Lord of creation, who fulfilled these plans and formed everything, as the Bible says, “I was beside Him as a master craftsman; And I was daily His delight” (Proverbs 8:30). It is this God who upholds the course of history in the Old Testament.If, when you study the Bible, you find you cannot understand God the Father no matter how hard you try, you just need to understand that the One who created this world and who has spoken to us is God the Son. This God created the world and made Adam according to His own image and likeness. He was the One who went looking for Adam when he disobeyed and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the One who appeared to the prophets, spoke to them and showed them visions. It is simply that our lives are short and we cannot comprehend the scale on which God works.This God appeared to the prophets. In the Bible, it says that Adam’s son Abel as well as Abraham were prophets. Moses recorded the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. We cannot know for sure who recorded the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First and Second Samuel. The books of First and Second Samuel bear the name of Samuel, but Second Samuel contains a record of Samuel’s death. So who wrote the books of Samuel? And who wrote the book of Job? If you read carefully through the book of Job, it seems as though Job lived in the era of the patriarchs?people like Abraham?which was about four thousand years ago, but we cannot say with certainty that Job wrote the book of Job. It was definitely written for the Jews; if this were not the case it would not have been included in the Bib

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