And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
-Matthew 4:3
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. What does this term mean? The answer is: many things, dependent upon the context.
Adam
Luke’s genealogy describes Adam as the “son of God” (Luke 3:38) and Paul compares Christ with Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). Adam was a direct creation of God, whereas other humans, according to the biblical narrative, were the product of Adam and Eve and their descendants (and there may have been humans who came about before Adam and Eve, depending on how one parses the language in Genesis 1-2).
Adam was created to rule over the earth, acting as God’s vicegerent, and the executor of the wishes of the Divine Council.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
-Genesis 1:26
Adam was by nature mortal, but he had access to the tree of life. His immortality was conditional upon obedience to the will of God: disobedience meant forfeiting the eternal life of Paradise.
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
-Genesis 3:3
Jesus, as the Adamic Son of God, came to restore what Adam had lost: by His refusal to give in to the Serpent’s temptation, by His obedience to the Father, dying on the tree of punishment and shame, He regained the kingdom of the earth and brought eternal life to “Adam’s helpless race”. The desert temptation forms a mirror to the temptation in the Garden, the tree of the Cross to the tress of life and knowledge, the resurrection to the death of Adam, victory to defeat. The heavenly Eden breaks out in pockets now through the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church: salvation, healings, ethical reform, overcoming adversity. The global Eden is coming with Christ at His Parousia.
And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: and they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.
-Revelation 22:1-5
How does the mention of the Son of God in Daniel fit into your thoughts? Or are you going to continue to develop your thoughts here in (2)?
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I’m going to develop those thoughts in a later post, but you can see some of it in the Cloud-rider post. My earlier posts at AATW were criticised for being too long, so I try and break up topics like this one that cover a lot of space.
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Understandable, my friend. As I’ve blogged, I’ve come to find 300-500 words the best if you people to read all of it and not more than 500-700.
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Yeah. The short answer to your question, is when Daniel sees “a son of God”, leaving aside the question of whether it’s Jesus for now, he is seeing a member of the Divine Council. I’m hoping to make use of my Ugaritic texts in one of the posts to back this up.
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Yep, I’ve found for me that about 800 is maximum, sadly I exceed it often, my average is about 900. But in my defense, I’m often doing topical stuff and a second part is usually not warranted.
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Very good post. I do have some observations: In Genesis 1:26 God gave them dominion over the whole earth. This implies that the Garden of Eden was to expand. Adam and Eve were expected to remove Satan from the earth. All they had to do was obey one law! That’s right one law. When Christ rose from the dead he gave His followers back the dominion. Paul eludes to this in Romans, “For the report of your obedience has reached to all; therefore I am rejoicing over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.”
Romans 16:19-20 NASB.
Interesting reference to the tree of knowledge,”be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.” He also references Eve’s blessing,“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”
Great post! Love it! Sorry I was responding from my phone, did not mean to be choppy in my thoughts.
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