TRIUMPHS OF TRUTH: CHRIST - MEDIATOR 3...

[ed. This is the tenth of the 27-part-series from a pamphlet by Elder Wilson Thompson titled, The Triumphs of Truth. Or The Scripture A Sure Guide To Zion's Pilgrims.]


CHAPTER 9 THE MEDIATOR CONTINUED.
As God he was doing his own will, but as man, he was doing the will of him who sent him. As God he did all things of himself, but as man, he does nothing of himself, but as his Father taught him, so he speaks. But why need I reason thus on this chapter, as I promised at the commencement to prove my doctrine by the language of scripture. Let us read the 40th verse, where Christ says, “But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God.” Then Jesus was here speaking of himself as man, and calls himself a man, that hath told the truth which he had heard of God. This same man says, “Before Abraham was, I am;” this man was sent, and came down from heaven, not to do his own will, but the will of him that had sent him; this man says, “I seek not my own glory,” but surely his errand into the world was in a great degree to glorify God on the earth; yet this man says, “If I honor myself, my honor is nothing,” etc. 

If he said all this of himself as God, he not only said his divine nature was a man, and he as God did not come into the world of himself, but that God sent him; but that he as God did not honor himself, or if he did, his honor is nothing; and that he as God spake that which he had seen and learned with his Father. This cannot be the truth, for as God he never was a learner, but was the independent and only wise God. Had he here been speaking of his divinity to the Jews, they would not have been so much offended, but rather pleased, to hear him say, he was a man, and made no pretensions to divinity, only such divine knowledge as he had been taught of God, they would have seen at once that he pretended to nothing more, even in his divine nature, than that of a man exercising a delegated divinity, like the prophets; and the Jews themselves were ready to own, “He is a prophet;” nay, even one of the old prophets risen from the dead; and if he had been speaking in the above mentioned chapter of his divinity as doing, speaking, and knowing nothing but as he was taught of God, he surely made no more pretensions to divinity than one of the prophets; for they declared that they were taught of God to speak as they did; and if Jesus as God only knew, and spoke, and taught as God taught him, and if he did nothing of himself, I think the Jews, Arians, Socinians, and Deists, have good reasons to deny his underived divinity. 

But the truth is, he was not here speaking of himself as God, but as man, and the Jews so understood him, and were enraged at him for his saying he was from above, had come down from heaven, was before Abraham, etc. They thought he was not yet fifty years old as man. If he had been speaking of himself as God or of his divine natures when he said, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day,” and they replied, “thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham;” would he not have let them know their mistake? They certainly did mean, that as a man he was not yet fifty years old; and he surely knew what they did mean, and as a teacher sent from God would he not have undeceived them by saying, I am not speaking of my human nature, or of myself as man, but of myself as God; but instead of this, [although he knew he must immediately hide from the stones they would hurl at him] he said, “before Abraham was, I am.” 

Now it is no very fortunate circumstance in favor of those who deny the pre-existence of the man Christ Jesus, that the Jews opposed the same, and stoned him for preaching it; but let those who preach it now remember, that if they are reproached for it, Jesus was stoned by the Jews for preaching the same. All that have been orthodox writers, have thought, that there were two whole and distinct natures in the Mediator, and that he was both God and man, yet one Christ. I believe the same; but the difference between some of them and myself on this subject lies in these two points. 

First, they think that as God he was the second divine person in the divine Trinity, and that as such he was begotten by what they call eternal generation, while I hold him as God, to be exclusively God, unbegotten, underived, independent of eternal filiation, or in any sense deriving [as God] either his essential or personal glory from any other divine person. 

Secondly, they think his human nature never had an existence before he was born or conceived of Mary; and then for the first time the second divine person of the Trinity assumed human nature; while I hold that as man, or in the human nature, he did exist before all worlds; and that as man, he was in existence as a mediator between God and men, from the unknown period when the elect were chosen in him, [which was before the foundation of the world] and was the man in whom the invisible God was revealed to men, from the creation down to the close of the New Testament times; and that man never could, cannot now, nor ever shall have access to the invisible Jehovah, but as he is accessible in the mediator, the Man Christ Jesus, without whom there never was, is not now, nor ever will be, any way of approach to God. 

So the reader will perceive that I think the blessed Jesus to be worthy of more honor, than they are willing to allow him to have. They say, as a divine person, Jesus was begotten, and this begotten person, distinct from him that begot him, was the divinity of Christ, and that his human nature never existed until his birth of Mary. This I think is too degrading an idea of Christ, both as it respects his divine and his human nature; and while I admire and prize these champions for truth on many other points, I must differ from them in these points; for I do believe that, as God, he was never begotten by any, but was the underived God, and as man he never derived his human existence from Mary, who was one of the fallen race, but he was before Abraham, nay, before all worlds, and was the mediator between God and men, through the first four thousand years of the world, as really as in, any latter times. 

If there be danger of giving Christ too great honors, I do not remember of any caution in scripture against it, or of any penalty for committing this crime; but much is there said against giving him too little; and if I have erred in having too exalted ideas of the Mediator, in either, or both of his proper natures, I know of no penalty annexed to my crime; but if my opponents should err in refusing to allow him this primordial glory, and honor, it argues a want of love to him, especially when they oppose it with warmth and bitterness; and Paul says, “If any man love no tour Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.” For Enoch, the seventh from Adam prophesied of this, saying, “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” 

There is then very tremendous penalties against those who rashly and with rancor of heart, oppose the very existence of the mediator in the patriarchal and prophetical age of the world.