ANNOUNCER: All this week on Grace and Focus Radio, we are looking at the Old Testament prehistoric pre-incarnate appearances of Christ in bodily form. We call them Theophanies or Christophanies, but how is this able to happen? Thank you, friend, for joining us today. We’re glad to have you with us. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. And we have an online seminary, Grace Evangelical Theological Seminary, which is underwritten by our generous donors and offer scholarships for those who want to study and earn an MDiv degree. If this sounds interesting to you, we are right now in our application window and also in our registration window for the fall semester. So why don’t you go to our website and get the information you need? Go through the application process and get signed up. We would love to hear from you. It is faithalone.org/seminary. 

Now with today’s discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin along with David Renfro. 

BOB: Well, David, our next question is about appearances of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, before He was born. Did Jesus appear to people in bodily form in the Old Testament? And of course, this is kind of like “The Outer Limits” or some of those things because how could someone appear before they were born? 

DAVID: This is the time to have really creepy music. I like it. 

BOB: Okay. So here’s the point I would make is that the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, probably a few years BC, maybe three or four years BC because our calendars are off a bit. But that doesn’t mean that was the first time He had bodily form. We know that there are appearances of God in the Old Testament. What do we call theologically an appearance of God?

DAVID: A manifestation. 

BOB: A manifestation. Yes, but if we use the Greek word Theos, what kind of an appearance is it? 

DAVID: Theophany? 

BOB: That is correct. Ding ding ding ding ding! And if you have an appearance of Jesus, the Messiah, the Mashiach, or in Greek, the Christos, what do we call that? Christos, that’s in modern Greek, because Christos is the way you learned in the seminary, but Christos is if you were in Athens.

DAVID: If you were in Athens, you’d have to say Christos, otherwise they’d make fun of your Greek. 

BOB: So an appearance of the Christ in the Old Testament was called a…

DAVID: Christophany? 

BOB: Christophany. Ding ding ding. That’s correct. So an appearance of God in the Old Testament would always be an appearance of Christ, that is every Old Testament Theophany would be a Christophany if no one has ever seen God the Father. Well, is there any verse in the Bible that says, “No one has seen God at any time, but His only Son has revealed Him”? Doesn’t that sound familiar? 

DAVID: Sounds very familiar. Where is that? 

BOB: John chapter one, we have the same thing in 1 John. And the point is, if no one’s ever seen God at any time, then any Old Testament appearance of God is an appearance of the second member of the Trinity. So can you give me some examples, David? Give me an example of somebody in the Old Testament that saw God. 

DAVID: Well, there’s several. The first one is Adam and Eve. 

BOB: Okay, Adam and Eve. 

DAVID: In Genesis. And what is interesting about that passage is it talks about the Lord God walking around in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve heard the Lord God walking.

BOB: And by the way, the Lord God is Yahweh Elohim. 

DAVID: Yahweh Elohim. 

BOB: And so it’s got both those names of God. 

DAVID: Right. And just to quickly understand the difference based on my studies, Yahweh is the covenant name for God. You know, we know Him. 

BOB: The one who keeps covenant. 

DAVID: The one that we have a covenant with. Yeah. Elohim is the creator God. He’s the God of everything. And it implies or emphasizes His all power, omnipotence, that kind of thing. In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth. You see, and Elohim is used all the way through that, the creation passage, not Yahweh. Yahweh doesn’t occur until later. So that’s how when I see Elohim used or Yahweh used, it says to me a lot. And of course, in the New King James, Yahweh, you’ll see the word Lord in all capital letters. And so, you know, just you’re not going to see the word Yahweh in that translation. 

BOB: So Genesis 3:8, after Adam and Eve had sinned, they were hiding behind trees in the garden as they heard the Lord God walking through the garden. And they were hiding because they now knew that they were sinners and they knew they had sinned. And they were only covered by fig leaves. So they were kind of embarrassed that.. 

DAVID: They said that they sewed the fig leaves together. Who taught them how to sew? 

BOB: Yeah. See, that’s the thing. 

DAVID: I get the idea that there was a lot of fellowship between with the Lord before the Fall.

BOB: Adam and Eve were created with language, they were created with knowledge. And they were geniuses. And so I would think they developed needles, they developed thread, they developed all that. And whether the Lord taught them that or not, they were smart. Probably the smartest people that ever lived. But anyway, there’s one example. And he couldn’t be God the Father because God the Father can’t walk. God the Father has no body. 

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BOB: How about somebody else that the Lord Jesus appeared to in the Old Test? 

DAVID: The one I like, which I think is fascinating is Joshua. Joshua chapter five, what it says is this is right before the big battle of in Jericho, where the walls come tumbling down. 

BOB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. 

DAVID: Yeah, I like to sing soprano. And it’s interesting, it says right before the battle. And this is at the very beginning of the conquest of the land, the Promised Land. Joshua sitting in his tent, when you just—every time I study this passage, I went, what was going through Joshua’s mind? Am I up to this? You know, you just all sorts of things come to your mind. And what happens is that he’s sitting there by himself and all of a sudden it said he looked up and behold, a Man, capital M of course, stood opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand. And of course, that would cause a lot of anxiety, I would think. And so Joshua asked the correct question, are you on our side or their side? And I love what the Lord says in verse 14, Joshua 5:14, he said, no, isn’t that interesting?

BOB: no, I’m on my own side. 

DAVID: Yeah, the answer is no. And that jumps out at you in the text. He says, no, but as the commander of the army of Yahweh, and actually the word there for army is part of another word for the Lord, Yahweh Sabaoth, which is the Lord of hosts. And it is the Lord of armies, but it’s that same word. And he’s the Lord of the army. And I’ve come, the whole point. And of course, what happens is Joshua realizes who, he recognizes them as the Yahweh of the Old Testament. And so he does what all people do in the presence of the Lord, he falls on his face. 

BOB: Which we call worship. He worships Him. 

DAVID: Many, many years ago. I heard a sermon by Dr. Charles Ryrie and I love the title of his sermon. It was called “Learning in the Lord’s Presence.” And he makes that point that if you go through the Bible, everybody that sees the Lord like Joshua did, what do they do physically? They fall on their face, they fall down, they bow down. And of course, Ryrie says they all do that. So that’s not the sermon. But he says, what did they learn in the Lord’s presence? And he would go, he went through several examples. And it was one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard. 

BOB: Absolutely. Well, okay, how about Genesis 18: three men come up to Abraham. Right. And so Abraham prepares a great meal for them, and he meets with them. And who are these three men that Abraham meets? Well, we know that two of them end up going over to Sodom. And Lot evidently brings them into his house and the men of Sodom are wanting to have carnal knowledge of them. And it turns out those two were angels, right? 

DAVID: I would think so, yeah. 

BOB: But who’s the third man? 

DAVID: Well, if you read the text, it talks about Abraham standing before the Lord, before Yahweh. 

BOB: And he ends up getting into a little dickering with him, about how many righteous people do there need to be in Sodom? 

DAVID: Let’s make a bet. That’s a thing. 

BOB: Well, yeah. And he says, look, if there are fifty righteous people in Sodom, will you spare it?

DAVID: Let’s make a deal.

BOB: Yeah, let’s make a deal is better. Will you spare the city if there are fifty righteous? And the Lord’s like, okay. 

DAVID: That’s grace, by the way. 

BOB: Right. And then he says, don’t get mad, but how about forty-five? Okay. How about, please don’t get mad, but forty. So then he keeps going, thirty. Okay, twenty. Okay. How about just ten? If we can find ten righteous people, what you’ve already got a lot in his wife and his two daughters, can’t you find six more people? If there are just ten righteous people in the city, would you spare it? Now, by the way, I don’t think he’s talking about ten born again, people. I think he’s talking about ten people who are living righteously. 

DAVID: Based on the standards of Yahweh. 

BOB: Right. So in other words, you might have fifty born again people in Sodom, but if there aren’t ten that are living righteously, that wouldn’t qualify. So the Lord agrees to ten. Well, the angels get over there. There aren’t ten. And so he tells Lot and his wife and his two daughters to flee because he’s about to destroy the city. Well, they met the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ too. And so there are lots of examples. 

BOB: Well, look, we’ve just scratched the surface. So we’re going to continue this, David, on the next one, because there are so many more examples of Old Testament people that the Lord Jesus met with. Philippe Sterling did a series in our magazine called the Messianic thread. And he talks about how the Messiah is found in pretty much every book in the Old Testament. And in fact, if you look at our Old Testament commentary, volume one, at the bottom, there’s a thread that goes along and extends to the back cover. And then that thread is meant to illustrate the Messianic thread found not just in the Pentateuch, which is what volume one is about, but in the entire Old Testament.

Well, thanks so much, y’all. And thank you, David. And let’s keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: pre-incarnate Christophanies to Abraham. We would love you to join us. In the meantime, keep grace in focus.