The Meaning of Christ's Coming Forth From the Bosom of the Father

Jhn 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared [him].

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Dear Reader,

The issue of the Godhead is so crucial as regards righteousness by faith, the three angel’s messages and the message to Laodicea, that I continue to teach it from different perspectives in the hope that more will understand the seriousness of the truth regarding this issue. 

Ellen White says that coming forth from the bosom of the Father meant the Incarnation. The Holy Spirit was eternal. He is the ETERNAL Spirit of Christ from ETERNITY. He is the Divine Nature of Christ which He bequeathed to us at His Incarnation. At that time He (the Divine Nature of Christ) became the representative of Christ in the earth because Christ, combined with humanity, could not be everywhere at once. Also, the Son of Man (Christ) became the Son of God in a NEW SENSE, said Ellen White, because He became united with humanity FOREVER. The Holy Spirit was thus an eternal dignitary. He was and is the Divine Nature of Christ from eternity.  Christ forfeited His existence as His Divine Nature ONLY, when He took on humanity as part of His nature FOREVER.

There are many statements by Ellen White that mention the eternal existence of Christ, so we may deduce from the following statement that coming from the bosom of the Father meant the Incarnation of Christ:

 

“The Lord Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, existed FROM ETERNITY, a distinct person, yet One with the Father.” 5RH, 227.

 

“I and my Father are one.” John 10: 30.

 

“In speaking of His pre-existence, Christ carries the mind back through dateless ages. He assures us that there NEVER was a time when He was not in close fellowship with the eternal God.”  Evangelism, 615.

 

“Before men or angels were created, the Word was with God, and was God...Christ was God essentially, and in the highest sense. He was with God FROM ALL ETERNITY...a distinct person, yet one with the Father.”  1SM, 247.

 

“He is the eternal, SELF-EXISTENT Son.” Evangelism, 615.

 

Thus, we can conclude that Ellen White’s statements concerning the bosom of the Father mean something other than Christ having a beginning. They refer directly to his Incarnation.

 

“The Eternal Father, the unchangeable One, gave His only begotten Son, tore from His bosom Him who was made in the express image of His person, and sent Him down to earth to reveal how greatly He loved mankind.” R&H, July 9, 1895.

 

““Then joy, inexpressible joy, filled heaven. And the heavenly host sang a song of praise and adoration. They touched their harps and sang a note higher than they had done before, for the great mercy and condescension of God in yielding up his dearly Beloved to die for a race of rebels. Praise and adoration were poured forth for the self-denial and sacrifice of Jesus; that he would consent to leave the bosom of his Father, and choose a life of suffering and anguish, and die an ignominious death to give life to others.” 1SG, 26.

 

“Jesus was the Majesty of heaven, the beloved Commander of the angels, whose delight was to do his pleasure. He was one with God, in the bosom of the Father; yet He thought it not a thing to be desired to be equal with God while man was lost in sin and misery. He stepped down from his throne. He left his crown and royal scepter, and clothed his divinity with humanity. He humbled Himself even to the death of the cross, that man might be exalted to a seat with Him upon his throne.” Bible Echo and Signs of the Times, 03-15-93.

 

  “The sole object of this work should not be merely to increase our reward in heaven. Some are selfish in this respect. In view of what Christ has done for us, and what He has suffered for sinners, we should, out of pure, disinterested love for souls, imitate His example by sacrificing our own pleasure and convenience for their good. The joy set before Christ, which sustained Him in all His sufferings, was the salvation of poor sinners. This should be our joy and the spur of our ambition in the cause of our Master. In so doing we please God and manifest our love and devotion to Him as His servants. He first loved us, and withheld not from us His beloved Son, but gave Him from His bosom to die that we

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might have life. Love, true love for our fellow men, evinces love to God. We may make a high profession, yet without this love it is nothing. Our faith may lead us to even give our bodies to be burned, yet without self-sacrificing love, such as lived in the bosom of Jesus and was exemplified in His life, we are as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.” {2T 115.2}

 

 There was a very short time when I thought that being brought forth from the bosom of the Father meant that Christ had a beginning at some very distant time in the past, but I changed immediately when reading Ellen White's statement that coming froth from the bosom of the Father meant His Incarnation.

“Cumbered with humanity Christ could not be in every place personally, therefore it was altogether for their advantage that He should leave them to go to His Father and send the Holy Spirit to be His successor on earth. The Holy Spirit is Himself divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. He would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit.” E.G. White, (Manuscript Releases Volume 14 (No’s 1081-1135) MR No.1084.

"Christ declared that after his ascension, he would send to his church, as his crowning gift, the Comforter, who was to take his place. This Comforter is the Holy Spirit,--the soul of his life, the efficacy of his church, the light and life of the world. With his Spirit Christ sends a reconciling influence and a power that takes away sin.

In the gift of the Spirit, Jesus gave to man the highest good that heaven could bestow....

The Spirit was given as a regenerating agency, and without this the sacrifice of Christ would have been of no avail....

It is by the Spirit that the heart is made pure. Through the Spirit the believer becomes a partaker of the divine nature. Christ has given his Spirit as a divine power to overcome all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil, and to impress his own character upon the church." E.G. White, Review and Herald Articles, May 19, 1904, vol. 5, p. 42.

“What gift could Christ bestow rich enough to signalize and grace His ascension to the mediatorial throne? It must be worthy of His greatness and His royalty. He determined to give His representative, the Third Person of the Godhead. This gift could not be excelled. 6 BC, 1053.

The teaching inherent within the Trinity Doctrine that the Holy Spirit was always a third person other than the life and soul of Christ, thus, inherently implies the following heresies:

  • That the Divine Nature Holy Spirit of the Son NEVER became separated from Christ at His Incarnation to thereafter be His representative on earth, and be given to us as the Son's Divine Nature Holy Spirit, for the express purposes of regenerating man back into the image of God, and overcoming sin. This does not preclude the Holy Spirit being a heavenly dignitary from eternity, and being present when the plan of Salvation was hewn from the foundation of the earth.
  • All views of the Godhead regarding the Holy Spirit, other than the view set forth in this document, are heretical because they deny the HIGHEST GOOD, CROWING GIFT SACRIFICE, that was even greater than the cross sacrifice, namely, the Son’s laying aside of and emptying Himself of His Holy Spirit ONLY existence, to be combined with humanity FOREVER. This was the GREATEST GOOD, CROWNING GIFT (SACRIFICE) THAT HEAVEN COULD BESTOW. Why? Because it provided the cure for the sin problem, without which Christ’s death on the cross would have been to no avail but to save us IN SIN, and pardon a continuum of sin FOREVER. 
  • There was a great sacrifice other than the cross when the Son of God laid aside His existence as DIVINITY ONLY, to become combined with humanity FOREVERMORE. The Trinity Doctrine, which teaches that the Holy Spirit was a separate person from eternity OTHER THAN THE LIFE AND SOUL DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST, thereby denies the great sacrifice the Son made by giving up His DIVINE NATURE ONLY existence and giving it to us for overcoming sin. That is the gift of the Holy Spirit which is the GREATEST GOOD, CROWNING GIFT that heaven could bestow. But mainline Christianity teaches that the cross was the greatest good gift.

 

“Now, while our great High Priest is making the atonement for us, we should seek to become perfect in Christ…It is in this life that we are to separate sin from us through faith in the atoning blood of Christ. Our precious Saviour invites us to join ourselves to Him, to unite our weakness to His strength, our ignorance to His wisdom, our unworthiness to His merits…It rests with us to cooperate with the agencies which Heaven employs in the work of conforming our characters to the divine model. None can neglect or defer this work but at the most fearful peril to their souls” GC, 623.

 

The pure evil and sacrilege of the Trinity doctrine is that it does not teach the "Highest good, crowning gift" that heaven bestowed at the Incarnation--the Divine Nature Holy Spirit of the Son of God, given to man for overcoming and regeneration into the image of God. The Trinity doctrine does not teach that there was any SACRIFICE greater than the cross at the Incarnation.

 

Ellen White does teach that the "HIGHEST GOOD, CROWING GIFT" sacrifice was the bequeathed gift of the Divine Nature Holy Spirit of the Son of God, without which, His sacrifice on the cross would have been no avail BECAUSE THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO CURE FOR SIN without the sacrificial gift of the son's Divine Nature Holy Spirit which indwells those who die to self and are born again. This is the "HIGHEST GOOD, CROWNING GIFT," involving the sacrifice of the Son of God relinquishing His Divine ONLY existence forever. That was the greatest sacrifice made for man. He then became combined with humanity FOREVER. That was part of the HIGHEST GOOD, CROWNING SACRIFICE made on behalf of man. By that sacrifice, man is enabled to overcome all known sin and every propensity to evil.

 

Bible Text and Ellen White Statement Showing Which Person of the Godhead Empowers us in Turning From Iniquity

 

Act 3:26  Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.

 

God says that Christ turns us away from our iniquities!

 

"The Power of God in the Third Person.--The prince of the power of evil can only be held in check by the power of God in the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit.-- Special Testimonies, Series A, No. 10, p. 37. (1897).

 

Ellen White says that only the Holy Spirit can hold the prince of the power of evil in check. Both are correct because the Holy Spirit is the former life and soul of Christ’s Divine Nature before the Incarnation.

 

Ellen White says the same thing as the Bible (above) in the following statement. Mainline Christianity does not FOCUS on or teach the essence of this HIGHEST GOOD, CROWING GIFT sacrifice of the Son of God that was sacrificed and given to us in order to turn us away from our iniquities. That is the sacrilege travesty of the Trinity Doctrine. To teach that the Holy Spirit was a totally separate person FROM THE SON for all eternity, denies the HIGHEST GOOD, CROWNING SACRIFICE, that the Son made for man's redemption, AND THAT WAS NOT THE CROSS, as important as the cross was and is.

 

Mainline Christianity teaches the popular myth that Christ saves us IN SIN, rather than FROM SIN, and that heinous doctrine is supported by the Trinity Doctrine, which does not teach what was really involved in the GREATEST GOOD, CROWNING sacrifice that was designed to be the cure for sin—the gift of the DIVINE NATURE HOLY SPIRIT OF THE SON OF GOD. The Trinity doctrine says that the Holy Spirit involved another person other than Christ. That is a diabolical lie, when we are told by Ellen White that the Holy Spirit is the life and soul of Christ—the life and soul that He bequeathed to us at His heavenly Sanctuary sacrifice before the earthly sacrifice on the cross. 

 

"But through the power of the incarnation of Christ, God manifest in the flesh, the strength of God is revealed in gentleness and beauty. To 'as many as received him, to them gave he POWER to become the sons of God.' By this POWER we may OVERCOME OUR EVIL TENDENCIES and so modify our imperfect dispositions that the will of God may be fulfilled in us."--Letter 79, May 7, 1903, to J.A. Burden and wife. The Upward Look, 141.

  

"The Holy Spirit is the breath of spiritual life in the soul. The impartation of the Spirit is the impartation of the life of Christ. It imbues the receiver with the attributes of Christ. Only those who are thus taught of God, those who possess the inward working of the Spirit, and in whose life the Christ-life is manifested, are to stand as representative men, to minister in behalf of the church." Desire of Ages, 805.

 

Ellen White's teaching on the Holy Spirit thus accords with Scripture and is very different from the Trinity doctrine and it’s teaching that the Holy Spirit was always a separate person from the Son of God, and was thus not critically involved as the life and soul of Christ’s former DIVINE ONLY NATURE, which was bequeathed to us as the HIGHEST GOOD, CROWNING SACRIFICE, made for man, and without which the sacrifice on the cross would have been to no avail.  

 

To summarize it simply, the Trinity Doctrine subterfuges the GREATEST GOOD, CROWNING SACRIFICE that heaven could bestow, by implying that the person of the Holy Spirit was never involved in any heavenly sacrifice such as was made by the Son of God, in giving us His Divine Nature life and soul Holy Spirit as a gift for regenerating us back into the image of God and for overcoming sin—iniquity.

 

If Christ’s great sacrifice on the cross is supposed to motivate love for Him, what if man fully understood the GREATEST GOOD, CROWNING SACRIFICE made by Christ? Would that motivate many more to buy gold tried in the fire—faith that works by love—the self-sacrificing love of Christ—or righteousness by faith—which is the three angel’s message in verity? I believe it would and will. Ellen White said that there is a special truth for every age, and God has shown me that this is a special truth for Laodicea, that should impress upon her the need to buy gold tried in the fire and how sin is to be overcome in this life.

Ron