Two Images, Two Adams

[Seth]

I've been following the Genesis 1 & 2 thread and it got me thinking about the first and last Adam. It's really mind boggling when you think of it. Some ideas I have, roughly conceived and could be wrong, but I thought I would throw them out there. L. Ray Smith once said something I really took a liking to. Paraphrasing, he said something to the effect that if you want to know what the Bible is about, and boil it down into a single sentence here it is: "Let us make man in our image..."

I can see that in the scripture. I think that is what New Covenant is about, and also the Old Covenant. From glory to glory...from image to image.

1) BOTH Adam and Eve were created without human fathers, not just Adam
2) I doubt I need to go to great lengths around here to establish Eve as representing the Bride of Christ
3) There are TWO in ONE, Adam and Eve, with Eve created from the stuff of Adam, and therefore they are one flesh, meaning there is only one: Adam
4) Christ is both the first Adam and the last Adam. The first Adam was made in the image of Christ, being a type of Christ, not made with human effort, and so the second Adam as well.
5) The Old Covenant was a type of Christ being itself a first Adam. The New Covenant is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant being itself the last Adam.

I've always wondered what it meant that God made man in his image. Because we read: "When we see him we will be like him, for we shall see him as he truly is." So, obviously, we are not LIKE God, at least not completely yet. We await, we hope, we have faith in the unseen.

So in what way was Adam made in the image of God? I am leaning away from the idea that this means God has arms and legs etc, etc, as I did when I was a child. I am leaning more toward the idea that there are TWO images:

1) IMAGE 1: God made Adam into his own image, by creating Adam as a type and shadow of Christ to come, physical characteristics notwithstanding because God is spirit, not flesh. Man worshipped living creatures, so he made IMAGES of those creatures as representatives. They did not bear physical appearances of the worshipped things. If you look at the engraved images, the physical appearance did not have much to do with anything. It was the representation that counts. An idol of a hawk was nothing more than a proxy for a real hawk. Just like Adam was a proxy for Christ, only in the sense of being a type and not the VERY thing (ie Adam sinned, Christ did not).

2) IMAGE 2: God made Adam into his own image being a type of Christ to come. Then came the second image, Jesus Christ, in the flesh, which itself was a veil. But Christ was unlike Adam in action, the former being without sin, the latter having sinned. Nevertheless, the image is becoming clearer here. Jesus died on a physical cross and put the flesh to death in a physical way, thereby removing the veil.

3) THE REALITY BEHIND THE VEIL: Christ in the Spirit. He puts his Eve to death in a spiritual way on a spiritual cross, to put away sin in the mind. And when the work is completed, the image will be like unto God completely, without the needed qualification "only in type and shadow." When we see him for who he truly is, THEN will we will be like him.

Thus, I see it that God created man in his image TWICE, and IS creating man in his image, the consummation of which is the fulfillment of all symbols, images, promises, events, and covenants in the Bible.

[micah7:9]

I really like that, immediately after the first reading, so now I am slow reading, but it really is pretty solid. :dsunny:

[Seth]

It can get so complex and rich the more you think about the correlations.

Today, we have things in descending order administering through the Spirit: The Father > The Son > The Church

The church is wedded to Christ. BUT ALSO, the Son was FIRST wedded to the Father (yes in the flesh it makes no sense, like saying I am a male bride, but the flesh has its weaknesses in explaining the spirit). But the Son was a bride to his Father in the same sense of the church being wedded to Christ. The wedding symbolizing the ONENESS of two beings.

In the Garden of Eden you have the
1) Father and
2) Adam and
3) Eve

BUT, since the Father used Adam to create Eve, Adam took the role of Mary in a sense. Eve was created by the flesh of Adam, but by the power of the Father. I'm not sure how helpful that is, but the whole concept of MANY into ONE can become a real trip when you think about it.

It just gets me thinking about how BOTH man and woman were made in the image of God, not just Adam.

Genesis 1:27
So God created man (Adam) in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

The Bible says that Christ is the first Adam, not the first Adam and Eve. Yet in a way Christ IS the first Adam and Eve. But the manner by which we inherit our brotherhood with Christ in that there is ONE son, and all other people (male and female) have their son-ship in the ONE.

Men are Brides
Women are Sons

....and vice versa


:laughing7:

[Seth]

To me, though the Bible is first and foremost the written word of God, without error in its original form, it's also a great piece of literature. It creates these complexities which boil down to the simple and back to the complex like a flower constantly opening and closing. It's pretty remarkable really.

[micah7:9]

I am quite happy for your responses. It would seem that there is not much interest on this subject, save for EW, who I thank. I know that religion's theology has pretty much set in stone how the christian religion and her denominations think and accept about this, and that is sad, for it means growing and maturing stops, just as the tent stakes in the wilderness were driven in as home, the children were comfortable where they rested, this is it. They were always dismayed and disappointed when they were shown by the pillar of fire, or the cloud, that they were to move on, this was not the final place of rest.
I believe we are still in a forward moving.....under direction.....we listen....but are we hearing...?

[Seth]

Great observations about the pillars

[micah7:9]

Seth, what is so fearful, is that going forward, beyond what some great spiritual leaders of insight (especially from Azuza and the Latter Rain) have offered and caused the believer to grow yet as well have leased an lethargic sleep, to stop learning, crippling, in a sense from going forward, past what we at this point, assume as all we know.
I have come to a place where, whatever theology and the christian religion has to offer, is miss leading, to say the least. :dsunny: But that is just me.

[JulieTang84]

Great responses by all. The Scriptures tell us that Christ is the beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega.

I believe that we are created in his image SPIRITUALLY. We are told first the natural and then the spiritual but I say no. The natural is just A side show, mascarading as the truth. Father is the truth.as is his  Christ. As soon as we realize that nothing but Love, Faith and Trust towards Father is required. Then a new page is opened for us and the old just fades away. There is a longing for Father  that cannot be quenched with anything this Earth has to offer.

But this is the key to the golden door. It is not any one thing that fulfills our need, but the entire creation, for it is not until we can Feel Father in every sunrise, every storm and cloud (read everyghing) That the bonds of the physical life is loosened enough to allow the light.of Spirit in. This is where the truth lies, just as Jesus promised.

We are all in effect the first Adam, metamorphing into Spirit a flicker of light at a time.
,
All takes on a new form when seen and felt through and because of LOVE.

JESUS said be perfect as Father is perfect. Something the first Adam, is incapable of, but which the second Adam was born tho be. Lean not on your understanding, Become as little children and love Father before anything and everyone else as yourself. And Trust what you know in your heart of hearts is right, not what you think. Father is waiting for us to come home to him. Jesuss never left.

Love Julie   :HeartThrob:

[micah7:9]

What is SPIRIT? And the natural is not just a "side show", the natural is what we live, it's real, it is alive waiting for death.
So I ask, what is love, explain love to me. As I also ask what is spirit....explain spirit to me. These words are bandied about by believers as like I've said them now do you get it? I myself love, and say it a lot, but I do not get a total comprehension of what they mean..in other words, I need help from all of you folks who use love and spirit in your conversation. I am a slow learner

[Seth]

Love in scripture is not about you feel, but about what you do. You can feel love for someone, while hating him through action, and even vice versa. God places more importance on what you do rather than feel.

I wrote about it in a short paper: http://www.mercifultruth.com/doesgodhate.html

As for the Spirit, the closest we can understand is the it's like breath or wind. I don't think we can understand past a certain point. The scripture doesn't go into the greatest detail

[micah7:9]

I believe in Spirit, and I try to understand Spirit, it is more than a theological word in offering, I have come to KNOW that Spirit is of greater substance than any solid material thing I or you may ever hold. Spirit is a real thing of volume, silly to use that word..volume, it's man made...spirit is....In the Beginning God.... now that is spirit, but we still don't get it.

Love is a word that christians and those who believe in Jesus use. But that's just it...its a word that christians and believers use. Agape, love, compassion, His love, what is love, it is a lot deeper than a human being saying the word. WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS LOVE?

[Seth]

2 John 1:6
This is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.

[micah7:9]

Yes. But what does it mean. I read, take to heart, is my life doing this? I, me, this one person sees no evidence of what love I have given. What is this love you speak of? When and How do or can I know that what I do is love? Love is as illusive as Spirit and I stand by that.

[Seth]

To me, even if it has deep implications, it comes back around to the simple. Love is to do what he says.

[micah7:9]

Yeah, I do, I try, you do, you try...it is an offering from "us" we feel good and that is good, yes it was ignited by love, that offering, giving; we (man) call it love, listen all we do as humans is give what our sentient offers] as love, which in essence is simply our "feelings" feelings which we[man] has come to call love, man, as far as I know can not even contemplate what LOVE is.

[JulieTang84]

What is SPIRIT? And the natural is not just a "side show", the natural is what we live, it's real, it is alive waiting for death.
So I ask, what is love, explain love to me. As I also ask what is spirit....explain spirit to me. These words are bandied about by believers as like I've said them now do you get it? I myself love, and say it a lot, but I do not get a total comprehension of what they mean..in other words, I need help from all of you folks who use love and spirit in your conversation. I am a slow learner

Dear Micah, you are not a slow learner, just an open and honest one. Look deep within you dear brother and you will find the answers in which you seek. Love and Spirit are so much more than mere words.

1Jo 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

1Jo 4:16
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

Spirit and Love are so entwined that for the sake of continuity, when speaking of Love we also speak of Spirit.

John 4:24 
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Ah? "the natural is just a side show" Micah, while ever the ritz and the glamor of life (there is plenty, just turn on the TV or walk through a magazine section of a store) one can easily become distracted enough to forget about Father, Love and who we really are.

Really are? Who am I? Am I the body and the fingers typing this now? Am I the one telling my fingers what to type? Gosh who is telling my fingers to type misspelled words and things I didn't mean?  :dontknow:  What about the voice, the constant chatter in mind, saying things like: "You can't write that, they won't understand!!!" and the same voice, rebutting with: "Of course they can understand, they can read can't they" Sounds weird, but this constant back and force banter is coming from somewhere? Is it really me???  :Chinscratch:

Of course not, I'm listening to it. Well, who am I? What am I? I am not my body as it ages, but I do not. It is not whatever is controlling my motions and speech, as clearly sometimes things just do not come out right. My body is just a vehicle, controlled by a driver that is not me!!!! I know this because after doing or saying something stupid, I ask: Why the heck did I do that? There is no easy answer and we go through life pretending this is who we are. It isn't. It never was.

I am sure you know what I am talking about. This is the sideshow!!  :Peace2:

It's filled with perceptions, questions and doubt. Filled so many illusions that seeing what really is, is impossible. EVERYTHING is BEAUTIFUL and PERFECT when we remove our imposed conditions preventing it from being so. Like hearing its a lovely morning and responding with; it's to cold or is it, the traffic was terrible, etc, etc. Seeing past the fluff, and it is all fluff, one realizes that NOTHING MATTERS, but the morning itself and it is truly beautiful because I got to see it, live it, feel it and Fathers gift of Life and Beauty didi not go unnoticed. Nothing else matters when ALL the the things I THOUGHT I was are dismissed. This is who I really am. I am NOT the one reaping all I sowed, just the one seeing "me" reap what I sowed. I am, we all are Spirit of Love.

Micah, some of this might be new to you, but if you just take a moment to step back and listen and watch what goes on in your day to day life, you might even begin to think it is not a sideshow but a circus.   :eek:

Worshiping Father, Loving and Honoring Him is letting go of the walls that we have built all around ourselves for "protection." These walls are not real, the life we live for the most part is not living but existing. Should not everyday be a day to try something new like walking on water? Life is opposite to what many believe. I have come to understand that it is not what I gain the defines who I am, but rather what I can let go. Letting go just a little bit allows Love & Light to flow in and out in all that I do and say.

Love is not a feeling, or a state of mind. LOVE IS A STATE OF BEING, and this being is SPIRIT.

Jesus never forgot who and what he was. Sometimes I think he was shocked at how easily we have. There is no doctrine in LOVE nor Spirit.

Gal 5: 22, 23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Love you bro   :HeartThrob:
Julie

[eaglesway]

I note that Jesus says, "BEHOLD (open your eyes, perceive, understand receive a spirit wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God) I am making(continually investing, reviving, renewing and deepening) all things new(everything that ever really was, is, and everything that really is, will be, always ever renewing itself in the Spirit of Newness).

As we look we see more of the depth of the wisdom of the Father in the jewel that is Jesus, the Logos(expressed thought) of God. I just love John 1 and Hebrews 1:1-3 and 2 Cor 3:16-18 and 2 Peter 1:15-21

For me the word is all about being transformed into the image of Christ the image of God....becoming like Him, in nature.

1 Pet 1:20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

There is a book by a man named Frank Bartholomew about Azusa and he was intimately involved with it. He gives the inside story (good & ill, beauty and ugliness). It was really very short-lived thing. The reason was made clearly evident in his narrative- they began to split over hairs of understanding.

Instead of submitting all to the greatest revelation of God in Christ, that union of love in the spirit as partakers of the divine nature in one body. I believe Paul summarizes this in these verses out of Ephesians, the letter that I personally believe reveals the true nature of the Bride of Christ best of all....

Eph 3:14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,  from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the [m]saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen

But the touch of the Spirit that fell because of the intercessors (who disappeared behind the growing hoopla and struggles for recognition and doctrinal supremacy) was so powerful, meager as it was by the standard of the book of Acts, is still influencing millions today(i good and bad ways ;o)

[dajomaco]

 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper as his complement." 19 So the LORD God formed out of the ground every wild animal and every bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, and to every wild animal; but for the man[n] no helper was found as his complement.

God waited for Adam to decide on which creature would complement him.

God waited for Adam to name all of the creatures.
After Adam had named all the creatures .
There was no creature that Adam called Helpmate.

So God :
    So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept. God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. 22 Then the LORD God made the rib He had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 And the man said:
This one, at last, is bone of my bone
This one at last means of all the other creatures God had created
and flesh of my flesh;
this one will be called "woman,"
for she was taken from man.

Adam says at last (meaning he was looking at the other creatures as maybe a Helpmate)

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame.

Image begets image
What image had Adam seen that would validate this saying

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.

I believe In the beginning God the father and God the son where the creators of Adam.

They where the Father and Mother of Adam.

God the Father and Adam  where the father and mother of Eve.

Adam and Eve where the mother and father of .............

[Seth]

God the Father and Adam  where the father and mother of Eve.

Colossians 1:16
For by him (the Son) were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth

The Son was not removed from the process of creating Eve. It was The Father > through the Son > according to the flesh of Adam > to create Eve.

[dajomaco]

God the Father and Adam  where the father and mother of Eve.

Colossians 1:16
For by him (the Son) were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth

The Son was not removed from the process of creating Eve. It was The Father > through the Son > according to the flesh of Adam > to create Eve.

God the Father and Adam  where the father and mother of Eve.

Colossians 1:16
For by him (the Son) were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth

The Son was not removed from the process of creating Eve. It was The Father > through the Son > according to the flesh of Adam > to create Eve.

Adam was the Son

[Seth]

Adam was only a type of the Son, the one through which all things were created. A type is not the very thing.

[eaglesway]

As I see it, Adam was a type of the thing to come and also Adam was in fact a son, and the seed of the thing to come  "......Abel the son of Adam, Adam the son of God." Adam was the the clay in the potters hand, made, marred, then broken(destroyed) in the hand of God, i the remade in the second Adam into transcendent, lifegiving spirit as was always the plan(subject to futility by the will of the one who made him Ro 8).

Behold I looked and the earth(clay) was without form and void, and darkness moved on the face of the deep, ad My Spirit hovered over the waters ad I said, "Let there be light" and there was light, and it was good.

God see things that are not as if they were.

"And may God who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness shine in your hearts to reveal the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

God speaking and revealing Himself through the things that actually are, even as Israel was a message to us(Paul says), even as He destroys them and remakes them into the thing that will be(holy nation, kingdom of priests, children of God).

"Behold I am making all things new"   :dsunny:

[dajomaco]

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame.

This verse seems to be placed to early in scriptures.
Who was Adam talking to.

Adam self identified as (the man).
Who was Adam leaving?
Had he already left his Mother and Father.
During his deep sleep.
when he awakes he has a wife Eve.

When the words are spoken :
let us create man in our image. 
Did Adam see who had spoken ?
Did he see a Mother and Father.

[dajomaco]

Adam was put in to a deep Sleep by God .
When awoken he was now, the groom.
He also was the seed of the bride.

Adam was both the bride and the groom.
As we are now.

When we sleep (die) we will be awaken for the marriage.
I believe the parts of our being that come through the testing fires,
will be part of what makes up the bride.

We will see as the groom, that the bride is one with us .
We will all recognize that we are indivisible.
No Mother or Father no male or female only one.
We will be one   

[micah7:9]

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame.

This verse seems to be placed to early in scriptures.
Who was Adam talking to.

Adam self identified as (the man).
Who was Adam leaving?
Had he already left his Mother and Father.
During his deep sleep.
when he awakes he has a wife Eve.

When the words are spoken :
let us create man in our image. 
Did Adam see who had spoken ?
Did he see a Mother and Father.

Personally I like that.