GLORIOUS

Scripture, in the English, underestimates the Creation; it says, “God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Gen 1:31). 

So much is in there: (1) God exists, (2) He has characteristics like us — “He saw,” (3) He created it all indicating that He was truly Almighty God, (4) and every thing theretofore was good. It goes onto say that it was finished, not in six days as translated, but six yom, or periods of hotness (Strong 2006).

Those periods could be seconds, hours, days, weeks, months, years, millennia, or eons. Whatever they were, they were all processes before time began. Shortly, that subject will be presented.

That they were “very good” is not quite accurate; things were meod tob, in the Hebrew… “vehemently good” (ibid) and done so with almighty energy. That seems to be the epitome of glorious.  

After six days of energy expended, God rested on the seventh period. That indicates something that few consider. It took virtue (goodness) to make every thing glorious.

When God came to Earth as a Man, He healed a woman with a blood issue, she was not glorious because something was wrong with her blood. Then she touched Jesus and, “Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that virtue had gone out of Him” (Mark 5:30).

Imagine the loss of virtue that the LORD GOD felt when He lost extreme, or vehement, virtue to create all things; enough that even God sought rest!

From the woman with the blood issue, it is learned that God lost virtue to fix her blood that was not right in some manner. The Greek word for virtue is dynamis — an extreme force, or power. Jesus had made the woman with the blood issue very good again, or ‘made whole’ as the case may be.

That woman “came short of the glory of God” like all others. When she latched onto Jesus, she regained the Glory of God within herself within her blood.

Jesus finally said to comfort the woman who sensed a change, “Daughter, your faith has made you whole; go in peace and be whole of your plague.” (Mark 5:34)… mastix in the Greek, literally whatever was eating at her. Jesus fixed her blood, and some thing indeed was eating at it, “…the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8).

It seems that her issue of the blood was spiritual as well as biologically for “made whole” repairs all things. In other words, the woman, before incomplete, was now made glorious, and then after raising the dead girl from her sleep, Jesus rested (Mark 6:2), just like He did in the beginning!

Jesus called her “daughter.” She was not His biological daughter but He had transferred to her a part of God. Daughter in that context is like ‘son’ — she was then of the gens of Jesus. He had made her whole by giving to her His genetics to replace what was missing on hers. She was ‘born again’  (John 3:7) by Jesus engendering her from above.

In that gospel story, ‘glory’ is defined by what it is not. Inglorious is having a blood issue. That issue is iniquity in the blood, what theologians call ‘original sin.”

Iniquity is depravity and any amount of depravity makes a person non-glorious. Like King David, everyone, due to original, or genetic, sin have depravity in their blood; in fact in every nuclear cell of their bodies. Since “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” (Rom 3:23), then everyone since the first sin are inglorious and each person has a blood issue. Sin is engendered in their genome (their corporate DNA), to speak in modern terminology.  In other words, the flesh of humankind is inglorious. That is what ‘glorious’ is not.

Adam was created in the Image of God. Since God alone is Good and without sin, Adam was created without sin.

Moses sang to God after deliverance, “Who is like unto you, O Lord, among the gods? who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Exod 15:11).

Moses defined glorious for us: Holy, Awesome, and working wonders. Holy is without sin — righteous. Awesome is extraordinary — super or terrific, and working wonders is doing good things. God is glorious in that manner, and Adam was made in that Image. Adam (mankind) was made Holy, Awesome, and powerful, having dominion over all the other kinds. That sums up very good quite well.

But that describes only the nature of the original man. God is invisible so that is all that is required for Him to be glorious.

Just what was the Image in which Adam was made?

Scripture begins with, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen 1:1). The beginning, from the Hebrew, is before time or essentially a ranking — first things first. The first thing was creating heaven; that seems to be the event in Genesis chapter one. God created the lofty things first. The psalmist, probably King David, knew the answer to those things when he sang these words: 

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the Son of Man, that You visits Him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels and have crowned Him with glory and honor. You made him to have dominion over the works of your hands; You have put all things under his feet. (Psalm 8:4-6)

 Angels are immaterial. Man is Adam. He was made lower… just a little lower… than the angels and so was Jesus, the “Son of Man.” Jesus was made honorable and glorious and so was the first Adam. Adam was made without sin just like the ‘Last Adam,’ Jesus.

Adam was made innocent just like Jesus. He was honorable and recognized his place in the cosmos. He was not God, so he honored God.

 Adam was ‘upright’ both physically and spiritually. He, like Jesus, had no fault in him. Adam had no blood issues and no spiritual issues; he came short of the Glory of God in no way at all. Adam was already as God when he was created. The ‘Serpent’ suggested that Adam would become what he already was (Gen 3:5) — “as God.”

What made Adam lower than the angels? He was made flesh; “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man (Adam) became a living soul” (Gen 2:7).

Implied therein was that the soul was formed first, part of the heaven in Genesis 1:1. His loftiness was made before his earthliness.

What was the Image in which the soul of Adam was made? Selem in the Hebrew — a ‘Shadow’ of God (ibid) — a phantom image of the LORD GOD. The soul of Adam looked like God, but was of no visible substance, at least in this domain.

Albeit invisible here on Earth, in the realm of heaven, it is clearly seen. Remember, what Eve said about their bright eyes that go with their bright nature (in an earlier commentary), well their souls could be seen because they were glorious!

Remember what Paul wrote? “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Rom 1:20). That applied to Jesus, to Adam, and to the other realm.

Adam was clearly seen although he was a mere phantom of God. In the Old Testament, the patriarchs clearly saw the ‘Shadow’ of God — the Word — as Jesus because they had bright eyes and bright natures. Suffice it to say that the woman with the blood issue looked at Jesus and saw God, and for that reason, she was made whole. The repentant thief on the Cross could see Jesus closely and surely saw the Shadow of God in Him, and as it turned out, the Holy Ghost.

Adam was created with the same Substance as Jesus. The phantom that was in Adam was the Holy Spirit of God which upon death would be Adam’s Holy Ghost. Of course, by that time, Adam had a blood issue as well because he had sinned. God put a ‘Band-Aid’® on Adam and Eve to keep them safe until they would be made whole when Jesus died for their sins.

As such, Adam was made glorious again because Jesus redeemed his sins. Hence, justification is making a sinful person holy and honorable again, not just as they never sinned, but like Adam was before sin.

The Image of God was the Spirit of God that took the shape of the man, Adam. The first phase of generation was that God made an invisible vessel in which to pour His Spirit. That vessel which Jesus called a ‘cup’ was then filled with the Spirit of God. The ‘Shadow’ of God took the form of the first Adam as it did the Last Adam.

What did glorious Adam look like? Look at Jesus; they have the same Genome of God. Was Adam handsome? He was brilliantly so, even more beautiful than the angels because He was more than a ‘Shadow,’ he was the Light of God that cast the Shadow of Him into Adam.

As a Shadow of God, how did Adam walk? Every move that Giod made, Adam would follow. When he no longer followed God, the Shadow disappeared in the presence of the false light of the Wicked One, and God could no longer be seen in Adam.

By grace, just as with Cain, God put a different skin (Gen 3:21), inglorious skin, on the male and the female so that those with dim eyes could see them and they would be safe, just as with Cain (Gen 4). That skin is what humans have to this day and it is not glorious but depraved and temporary.

What human beings are now is inglorious, bastard sons of the Wicked One. Look at human beings and you will not see glory! It is so easy to define what can be seen.

Perhaps God gave us flesh to reveal the lack of glory that we have. Flesh is ordinary, and Spirit extraordinary. Those who follow Jesus should be seen for what Jesus is making in them. They should shadow Jesus, and if they do not, then are they becoming glorious or are due for a spiritual ‘abortion’ on the part of demons — to be devoured by them?

Look at me and look at yourselves. We are not glorious. What glorifies those who shadow Jesus by walking the Way He walks? Death! (John 7:39; KJV). That is why in Christ, death is gain (Phil 1:21). Death reveals the glory of God in Christians when the flesh is gone or of no importance.

What does glory look like. On the mountain of the transfiguration, Jesus revealed to Moses, Elijah, and several of the apostles, His Glory. He revealed to them that He was the Shadow of God, and that God is the Light that cast His Shadow.

The repentant thief, the centurion who pierced Him, and Pontius Pilate saw the Glory of God come out of Jesus in the form of the Holy Ghost as His ‘cup’ was emptied and God was torn apart to reveal to those who questioned Him, the God within Himself.

So, what did the Holy Ghost of Jesus look like?

When Jesus was baptized, “The Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him, and a Voice came from heaven, which said, ‘You are My beloved Son; in you I am well pleased’” (Luke 3:22). The Shadow of God in Jesus looked like both Adam and Jesus. It did not look like a dove at all, as so many of you have been misled. Their Holy Ghosts looked like themselves because their gens were both of God. It is not that there were two Saviors but one Savior and another who failed the temptations of Satan. Adam would not be the Savior God because he sinned, but Jesus was the Savior because He was without sin.

It is safe to say that glorious is without sin. it is in the same Image that was in Adam and Jesus.

Adam was gloried when he was created but failed, and he and his kind got an issue of the blood; we all have a blood issue and only the blood of Jesus will correct those sins that are past (Rom 3:23).

Our souls look like us. We were not made in the Image of God but were shaped in the image of the Wicked One (Psalm 51:5). It is Jesus that reshapes those who are willing to walk with Him. He takes our ‘cup’ that looks like us and reshapes it to look like Himself.

As such, Christians walk the Way that Jesus walked — all the Way to the Cross to be glorified, to wit: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mat 16:24). Added was that “he that taketh not his cross, and follows after Me, is not worthy of Me.” (Mat 10:38).

How to see glory? Look at how Jesus walked and walk like Him; wherever He goes, you follow!

Where does that walk end? In Gloryland where things are much like things in the Garden. Like a snake, Christians must shed their skins to be like the Image of God in the flesh of Adam and to reveal their glory.

Suffice it to say, that glory cannot be seen without the Light of God.

Jesus said, “I am come a Light into the world, that whosoever believes on Me should not abide in darkness.” (John 12:46) Jesus is the Light of God that cast the Shadows. When there is enough Light and it is directly overhead, then there is no longer a shadow at all. That is what happened when things turned dark and back to light during the crucifixion. The Shadow was gone, and the Light revealed.

The onlookers saw one of two things: (1) a change in the world, or (2) that Jesus is God. The crucifixion revealed that the Man who cast a Shadow while on the Earth was the Light in Heaven. The Glory of God was revealed, and God showed them just who He Is. So, if you really want to know what glorious means, consider Jesus after He was crucified and walked unrecognized among mankind.

Like Jesus, Christians will be glorified in the twinkling of the eye (1 Cor 15:52) and our fleshes will be changed from corruptible to incorruptible and we will look like us outwardly and like Jesus inwardly… “the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

The flesh that God put onto Adam before sin was glorious. It was incorruptible but sin made it corruptible. It may be that Adam looked the same before and after sin, but the man inside had died and as soon as he realized it, along with Eve, they covered their newly acquired genitals.

The Books of Adam and Eve compared their original bodies with their changed ones: Before, they had no organs, not even digestive tracts. Food, if they ate would decompose, so in Paradise, they would not eat organic things that would decay.

But does not scripture say that they ate herbs (Gen 1:11)? No, their food was glossy, according to the Hebrew. What was glossy in scripture? Job understood! 

Has the rain a father? or who has begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who has gendered it?” (Job 38:28-29)

 That hoar frost was manna from heaven (Exod 16:14). It was the glossy thing that they had for food, and if it is recalled in scripture, it required no digestion to disappear.

There is no sexual intercourse in heaven. “In the resurrection (glorification) they neither marry (couple), nor are given in marriage (coupling), but are as the angels of God in heaven” (Mat 22:30).  Implied therein is that there is no multiplication in heaven except by converts from Earth. That was the intention in the Garden, that Adam would reproduce in the same manner that God reproduced him in the woman.

Also, implied is that since angels do not marry in heaven, in the domain if Earth, they can marry (couple) and did (Gen 6:4). As such, glorified creatures will never pleasure their flesh in Paradise, so if sex is your stronghold here, it won’t be there! Abstention is practice for that. Why would God want a man-whore in His domain?

There is much more to glorification than that, but it is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; just as with Jesus (John 14:6); it is walking with Jesus and doing things the Way that Jesus would do them. (It may be that Jesus never ate and certainly may not have drank; that manna from heaven was enough for Him. It was not His last supper, but the last supper of Judas; John 13:2).

Since glorification is somewhat understood, and a big part of glorification is that there will be no decay, then next time will be examined.

(picture credit; Shutterstock)