What About The TRINITY? Part 1

You're entering outer brightness. In 2012, I published a book called A Biblical Defense of Mormonism. When it came to attacking Christianity, my specialty was the Trinity. There was something about it that provoked me. I couldn't resist tearing into it any more than I could resist tearing into a bag of cotton candy. It felt like a fragile doctrine that could be dismantled easily, and I believed that if the Trinity were proven false, it would pave the way for people to accept the LDS view of the Godhead. As a Latter-day Saint, I was appalled that anyone could reject what I considered so beautiful. God was literally our Father, and as such, He had a physical form just like ours.

Someday, I would be able to give Him an actual hug. There is something familiar about the Godhead. God is our Father. Jesus is our elder brother. The Holy Ghost is… well, He's related to us somehow. Going to Heaven would be like a family reunion, and as children of God, we would become Gods ourselves and continue the cycle.

How could someone choose a giant three-headed blob over that? The Trinity is truly a stumbling block for Latter-day Saints. In this episode, your host, the Sons of Light, will be tackling some of the challenges I issued in my pro-LDS book. I'm Michael, the ex-Mormon apologist. Sometimes, I'm Matthew, the knucklier Calvinist. Sometimes, I'm Paul Bunyan.

That's modalism, Patrick. All right, so I thought about reading the Apostles' Creed. I figured it's not going to be a 20-minute long Creed.

It's pretty good. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who is conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. All right, so I'm just going to go over some of the questions that I, or some of the challenges that I issued back when I was an LDS apologist, so let's get into some of these. On Mars Hill, Paul found an inscription to the unknown God. He said, He who you ignorantly worship Him declare I unto you. Doesn't this imply that God can be worshipped in ignorance, and that Latter-day Saints have just as much a right to the term Christian as anyone else? Paul, I'd like your thoughts on this.

I would say no. So, my thought on this is, Paul didn't preach to the Athenians merely to give them a right view of God's person and attributes. Though he does touch on those things within his sermon, Acts 17 16 indicates that the Athenians were idolaters.

So it says that the city was full of idols. That inscription that Paul keys in on to begin his sermon to the unknown God was merely a way for the Athenians to hedge their bets. If they couldn't please one of the many other idols that they worshipped, maybe an unknown God would need to be worshipped as well in order to get what they were seeking. And so, Paul's statement isn't implying that they were already worshipping the one true God just in ignorance. Rather, he's using that ironically, their own idol, to call to their minds the basic question of life, who is the true God? Paul's preaching that's recorded there in Acts, when reading in the context of his audience, is a direct and biting commentary on the beliefs of the Stoics and the Epicureans. His audience would have heard it for what it was, and they would have heard it differently than we may hear it today, if we are only making a cursory reading of Acts and not paying attention to the context. So Paul is calling idolaters to repent and worship the one true God. He is not telling them that they're just fine going on living and worshipping the way that they were. Tanner Iskra Do you have any thoughts on that Matthew?

Matthew Feeney Yeah, I agree entirely with that. I'm not sure. I don't know. I thought a lot about this earlier and it's, I'm wondering if you're asking if it's this kind of syncretistic idea as, you know, like there's only one God for everybody on the planet and we all kind of just worship him differently. I'm thinking that's kind of the intent behind the question.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we know that there are certain parameters by which we must worship God and must come to God. Like Jesus, he said that he is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father, but through him. And so that already precludes certain religious systems that deny Christ entirely, whether they believe he's God or not God. So any religious system that tries to get through God outside Christ is not acceptable. So we can see that even in just in that one respect, we can see that God doesn't accept the worship of every single religion or every single person with different ideas. So, and then as we read through scripture, we understand that there are certain things that we need to know about God. We need, Jesus said, and I believe it's John chapter eight or six, where he says that unless that you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. Elsewhere, we learn that Christ is God.

Second Peter one, one, John one, John 17. We learn all throughout scripture that he is God. So to worship God or to worship Christ as anything less than God would be displeasing or unacceptable to God. So I think there are certain things that we need to know and believe in order to perform correct worship. We can't just simply worship however we please and, and God will accept it.

You know, I was, I was thinking back on this too a lot because this was just a few years ago when I was thinking this way and I've just come to see things so differently. But I mean, I remember writing in my book too and saying, you know, it's that Jesus said all manner of sin and blasphemy will be forgiven to the children of men. So I was like, so what if we say something wrong about God or, or we don't, we don't worship him correctly. But the other thing that comes to my mind is that the Bible says that there would be false Christs. And if you're worshiping a false Christ, how can you be a Christian, like a true Christian? But the LDS mindset seems to be if you're, if you're just believing in the name Christ, it really doesn't matter what his attributes are.

And I think that's definitely false. I mean, there's a, there's a guy in Russia that looks like the paintings of Jesus and the LDS church, and he's claiming to be Christ. And, you know, based on that, that argument, all those people could say they're Christian. Right. And I think it's interesting too, when LDS make that, that kind of retreat to say, well, we believe in Christ.

And so if we don't have the attributes correct, so what? When the whole basis of the LDS system is that this idea that God restored a correct understanding of himself to the world that had been lost, including the idea that God has embodied. So I think when, when that retreat is made, it's, it's, I just think it kind of betrays that their own position, which, which used to be in my mind, and, and at least in the LDS church that I grew up in, used to be a strong position of, Hey, we've got the truth about, about God and everybody else has been worshiping God in ignorance.

And it's just interesting to see that retreat being made more and more these days. Oh yeah. I mean, there was like a quote, you guys may have heard this, but Joseph Smith in his first vision, like just in two seconds, learned more about, you know, God than in the whole like history of the world. Right. Like LDS theology has always been based around the concept of revelation that you cannot know God except the revelation.

And I would actually wholeheartedly agree. We would just disagree as to the source of revelation. We believe that the preserved word of God for us today is, is what we rely upon and they believe in continuing revelation. And when you go back to that first vision, it's interesting because that's what they're taught to believe that, that Joseph Smith knew immediately when he saw that first vision, that God, the father's a human being just like us, and he has a separate glorified body, just like the Lord Jesus. But then when you read all these varying first vision accounts, like the 1832 account, it doesn't even mention the father, let alone that the father has a body of flesh and bone that came later in 1838. So you see this evolution of the account, but then now they're using the later, more developed account to say, oh, this is what actually happened. And this is how he learned that the Trinity was false.

And this is how he learned this and this and that. But really that was added later. So what I'm trying to say is that they, they, they claim to this event as the light of revelation, disproving the Trinitarian God, but in actuality based on the evidence, it doesn't, we don't have evidence of that at all.

Yeah. And there's no, no evidence from the first vision account that they're using right now that they even had bodies of flesh and bone because Joseph Smith never touched them for one thing. And in the Book of Mormon, it depicts the Holy Ghost as being visible and being a human in form and shape and everything. So, you know, it doesn't really prove anything either way. Yeah, that's true.

I think it wasn't, it wasn't until at least the 1840s, right? Where in Doctrine and Covenants 130, where it says that the Father has a body of flesh and bone as tangible as man's. In what way are we formed in God's image?

I'll throw this one to you, Paul. Yeah. So it's a good segue from what we were just discussing. And I have to admit, as, as I was kind of transitioning out of, out of Mormonism and into Christianity and going through the process of rethinking my theology and realigning my beliefs with the Bible, I have to admit, this is one of the things that really for a while tripped me up because of the LDS teachings that were, that were so strong on that idea that, that God is embodied and he's a, he's a glorified man and had progressed to be such and that that knowledge was restored to the world through Joseph Smith. And so as I was making that transition, trying to understand God as anything other, but other than embodied was, was difficult for me.

It was, it was just a challenge to, to get beyond that concept in my mind. And I think it's fair to note here that the Bible doesn't state explicitly what the image of God and humanity is. And so there's various ways that, that Christians understand the image of God.

Some note that it seems to refer to qualities or attributes that are present in a person. So the image of God would be like human reason or will or personality. Others see the image of God as something that's present when a person is in relationship to God. In fact, the image of God is that relationship and still others see the image of God as something that a person does.

And I think that there's truth to all three of those views. But as I studied through the passages that specifically talk about image and likeness, I'm convinced, convinced by the context of Genesis that humanity's intended role within creation is the image of God. So when we look at Genesis one here as elsewhere, we can't just take the Bible at face value and say that it means what we think it means in our context.

We have to understand the Bible on its own terms. So the question is, what did the terms image and likeness mean in the ancient Near East? There's an Old Testament scholar that I like quite a bit, John H. Walton, and he states, quote, throughout the ancient Near East, an image was believed to contain the essence of that which it represented. The essence equipped the image to carry out its function. Thus, in an image, it was not physical likeness that was important, but a more abstract, idealized representation of identity relating to the office or role and the value connected to the image, end quote. So with that context in mind, it's illuminating that in Genesis one, directly after God creates humanity in his image, he gives them their mandate.

They're to multiply and replenish, subdue the earth, and have dominion over it. So in context, God created humanity not to look like him, but to be his image bearers within his creation. It's also further enlightening to look at a passage which Mormons will often bring up to suggest that the image of God is physicality, and that's Genesis 5-3, which describes the birth of Seth, Adam and Eve's third son. That passage states that when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered his son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.

Several questions should be raised in our minds by this passage. Why are we given this second account of the birth of Seth? Genesis 4-25 also records Seth's birth. Secondly, why does only this account of Seth's birth contain the terms image and likeness in reference to Seth? Another question, why do the births of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4-1 and 2 not say that they were born after Adam's image and likeness?

Of what significance is it that Genesis 5-1 does not mention Cain, the first born son, and Abel, the second born son, in the list of Adam's descendants? And how should all of that inform our understanding of what image and likeness meant in relation to Seth? Indeed, Cain and Abel presumably both looked like their father in physicality, so why are these terms reserved in the text for Seth?

With these questions in mind, it's reasonable to conclude from the context that image and likeness refers not to physicality, but to what a person does, their role within creation. Seth is the son who continued Adam and Eve's mandate. Cain did not, he went away from the presence of the Lord, Genesis 4-16, and Abel did not because he was murdered by Cain. All of this is touched on in the first reference to Seth's birth, where Eve says, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him, Genesis 4-25. Seth's name in the Hebrew language is a wordplay on the Hebrew word for appointed, suggesting that Seth's role in the family carried the mandate. And so, although these passages threw me for a time, as I really dug in and studied them within the context of ancient Near Eastern literature and wordplay that goes on and descendant lists within the Bible, it all kind of fell into place, and I realized that it makes more sense to see image and likeness as being the mandate for what God intended humanity to be in the world, rather than image and likeness where, as we might understand those terms on faith's value.

Okay, I really liked what you had to say there. It really got the wheels turning in my head too, because I was thinking about how the New Testament says that Jesus is the express image of the Father. And when I was LDS, I just, you know, assumed that meant that, you know, they're basically twins, like in the LDS paintings and everything. But I mean, Jesus says no man has seen the Father at any time, and that he'd come to reveal him. And it's interesting because, you know, we couldn't, they couldn't see the Father, but they could see Jesus. And Jesus was revealing the Father, so he was the image of that invisible God. And so us as image bearers, it's kind of an interesting thing to think about too, because, you know, people that we go and witness to, they don't see God, but they see us. And so we have that opportunity for them to see God through us. Yeah, it kind of ties together, doesn't it? It does.

It makes a lot of sense, actually. You got any thoughts, Matthew, or should I keep going? Yeah, I was going to say, I left for a couple seconds to go find a book that I found really, really helpful to me.

It's called Getting the Garden Right by Richard Barcelos. And he talks a little bit about the image of God. And I think it would probably just be reiterating what Paul had already said, but he kind of wraps it up by, he quotes several passages of scripture like Ecclesiastes 7.29, which says, Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, that they have sought out many devices. And Colossians 3.10, where it says, And have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge, according to the image of the one who created him. So yeah, agreeing with you, that image does not mean physical image. It means God created us with certain qualities, namely that He wanted us to be upright and having true knowledge of God, which is what God gave Adam in creation.

And after the fall, we've kind of lost, we haven't lost it entirely, but that image has been marred. And so it's only through Christ and redemption that we can have our images or the image of God restored or renovated to what God had intended. So I think, I think Paul went to much more detail, but I think we pretty much agree there. So what about all these passages in the Old Testament that describe God as having hands, face, and back parts? First off, I'm going to lean on my theology professor, Dr. Jack Cottrell. In his book, The Faith Once for All, Bible Doctrine for Today, he talks about this. He says, God does not have any of the innate limitations of material stuff and should never be thought of as having a physical body, contra-Mormonism. Biblical references to God's bodily parts, for example, face, eyes, ears, feet, are anthropomorphic. This means that God has spoken of figuratively in human terms in order to make His actions and attitudes concrete in our minds. And I'll also note that the Old Testament also refers to God as having wings, among other things. So to read the passages that speak of God's hands, face, et cetera, as to read those literalistically as meaning God has a physical human body, one would also have to read the other passages that refer to God as having wings literalistically. And what are we to conclude that God is a bird in addition to being a human? So I think it's better to understand things in the way that Dr. Cottrell has described that these types of attributes are given to us figuratively to help us understand God's attributes in concrete ways.

So help us understand His power, His glory, His whatever else it may be, but not literalistically as in God has a physical body. I remember I got an email one time from somebody who read my book and he just gave this really simple answer and it really made me mad because I worked really hard with all my mental gymnastics, you know, proving that, you know, God had a physical body and he just said one real simple thing to me and it really just threw everything into questions. And I'd been learning about Christophanies and there's actually one in the book of Ether where he sees the brother of Jared sees Christ's finger, you know, writing on the stone and he says, because you have faith, you've seen that I will take, you know, a fleshly body. And so, I was like all about these Christophanies. And so, this guy sent me an email and he's like, how do you know that all these instances in the Old Testament aren't Christophanies, you know?

And I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I just pretty much ignored him because I couldn't think of anything to say back to that. I'm not saying that is the answer, but just how easily it was to just dismantle everything that I worked so hard trying to prove that it was the Father and really none of it proved that that was the Father at all. And as you know in LDS theology, Jesus hadn't taken a body yet at that point. So, if it's not talking about the Father, it really tears down the whole LDS argument right away. Chris Well, I was thinking about the instance of when Moses saw the burning bush.

Let me just look that up. So, Moses takes off his shoes because God commands him to. I think it's in Exodus 3 and he speaks with the Lord in the bush, but the bush isn't consumed. And it says at some point that he actually sees the Lord or the angel. Okay, verse two, there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush.

He looked and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. So I think most commentators would say that in that instance, that many times in the Old Testament when it speaks of not just an angel, but an angel of the Lord, many times that's a pre-incarnation Christophany. So that in that case, it would be Christ that appeared to Moses in the bush and the many times that God appears to mankind when God appears to man in various forms, the burning bush being one example. But we see physical appearances of God to man in Genesis where Jacob is wrestling with God. And in that passage, God is wrestling with Jacob all night. And it doesn't appear to be God, you know, there's no glory or light or any kind of indication that it's anything other than a normal man.

But at the end of it, he realizes that it wasn't just a normal man he was wrestling with, but it was God. And so in that case, God appeared as a man to him. And so we see that there are possibilities of these appearances of God to man, but it's not as if that means that that is literally what God the Father looks like on his throne. Just as the Holy Spirit appeared at the baptism of Jesus in the form of a dove, that doesn't mean that if you were to see the pure essence or what the Holy Spirit actually is, it's not saying that the Holy Spirit is a dove, but God can appear to us in different forms. Like, so whether it's figurative language or not, depending on which passage you're talking about, that doesn't necessarily mean that that is exactly what God looks like.

I think that makes sense. You know, just because you see something doesn't mean that you can assume. I mean, when you have a theology that says, you know, God is the same species as you and has a human body and you see verses like that, you jump to that conclusion. But I mean, that'd be like seeing the burning bush and being like, okay, God is a plant.

You know, he has leaves as tangible as the bushes in my front yard. But that's not the case. Right. And there's another instance where I just came to mind. It was in Genesis 18, where three men appeared to Abraham and they predicted that Sarah would have a son in one year's time. And so the men in Abraham, they walked towards Sodom and the Lord shares us with Abraham. So we see that it describes that among these three men, that one of them was the Lord that had appeared.

That's in verse one of Genesis 18. So in God's essence, he is spirit. However, just as angels have appeared to men, yet angels have their they're not physical either. They have no physical body, but they can choose to take the form of men as with the angels that appeared outside Christ's tomb. They can they can show some kind of appearance to man, but this doesn't mean that they have physicality. And I think that's where I think that's the problem with Latter-day Saint theology is that if you see something with your eyes, that must mean that it must have physical, tangible flesh. Whereas if we think about it, the God of all creation could do many things to have us see something, whether it's have our mind like place an image directly into our minds, or do some other kind of manipulation of space, of physics to make us see something, or if it's actually a spirit that somehow kind of takes form. There's so many different ways that God could appear to us as a man without having it require that he actually has flesh, is what I'm trying to say. kind of like how in Galatians, it says that Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, but it doesn't mean he's actually an angel of light kind of thing. Is that what you're saying? Right, absolutely.

Yeah. And I think many of the appearances in the Old Testament of God as a man are pre-incarnate visitations of Christ. So when we do talk about seeing his back, whether if you want to take the position that it's figurative, I can see that. But even if it weren't figurative, if Moses were actually to see the back of God, well, we know that Christ has a back. So why couldn't it have been Christ that appeared to Moses?

So in interpretation, it doesn't bother me. It doesn't require that God the Father—it doesn't require that it be God the Father, first of all, that appears, and it also doesn't require that they have a physical, tangible body. In 1 Kings 19, 11 through 12, Elijah goes to communicate with God, and we read that God was not in the wind, he was not in the earthquake, and he was not in the fire. Does this challenge his omnipresence?

So I'll swing at this one, but just know that I'm spitballing. So when we think of God's omnipresence, we shouldn't think of that in terms of the essence of God is present everywhere at all times. Classical omnipresence means that God is outside of time, and his plane intersects ours at all points, but that does not mean that his essence is present at all points. And so I would say that, no, this passage doesn't challenge God's omnipresence when omnipresence is understood as it has classically been understood within Christian theology. All right. I'm going to just do some spitballing too.

How about that? Because I just, I remember bringing up in the forums back when I was LDS and talking about this and just being like, you know, if God's omnipresent, then he must be present in the most sinful environment possible on earth. And if he's present, isn't he consenting to it? And that was kind of my my attacks on omnipresence. And what some of the people would tell me is, you know, God is capable of being present at all times and in all places, but he doesn't have to be. It was kind of an interesting way to to look at it.

And I really like what's been said. Gosh, I'm trying to remember his name. See, if I was a Calvinist, I would know he just died recently. R.C. Sproul. Yeah.

R.C. Sproul said, you know, I like how he how he talks about God's sovereignty, too. And I think I think that definitely has a play here where it's like everything that happens comes before God's eyes and he has the power to say, no, this is not going to happen, but but it's him approving or declining things, things happening. There's no there's no particle.

There's no rogue particle in the universe. You know, everything is under his sovereign control. And and that's definitely just I think his sovereignty is in a way, you know, him being present with all things as well. Mm hmm. That's good. Hey, can I just make a point about this question, Mr. Ex-Mormon Apologist?

Yeah. I kind of feel like it's a trick question, because if you take it on Mormon theology, God isn't omnipresent, right? Well, no, but but if I would argue back back in the day, I would argue that he could be because I would say he was out of time as well. And if time's not a factor, then even with a physical body, he could still kind of be omnipresent. Not according to Joseph Smith, though.

He can't live in every human heart. That's an old sectarian notion, according to Smith. So technically on Mormon theology, he's not omnipresent. So why would you even seek to challenge omnipresence? I mean, I guess as a Mormon, you might if you if you're taking Mormonism consistently. But it seems almost like a trick question to me, because it's Mormons aren't arguing that God is omnipresent. So it's, I don't know.

See what I'm saying? Right. But since Mormons aren't arguing that he's omnipresent, they're free to attack omnipresence.

Right. But it just seems like an odd thing to attack, because in a sense, it's God's omnipresence that makes it possible for God to be present when I am praying to him in Kentucky and you are praying to him from Dallas and Matthew from New York and in many millions of other points in the world. And so it seems like attacking omnipresence kind of would undercut what I would think for a Mormon would be a pretty strong commonality with Christianity in that Mormons believe that God hears and answers prayers. And so it's just another one of those areas where Mormon theology, taken to its logical conclusion, kind of falls. And I guess that's why they have to. It's one of the reasons why we were three of us were talking earlier about some of the ad hoc nature of Mormon theology.

And that's why the Mormon theology describes the Holy Ghost as unembodied, because that it's by the influence of the Holy Ghost that God is present to everyone. And that's where I was going to cut in. I was going to say, you know, first of all, there's no way that I would drive three hours to Dallas to go pray to God when he can hear me just fine here in Austin.

That's right. You're not in Dallas. So I had to go. You wouldn't drive three hours to pray? No, not now that I'm a Christian. But then, yeah, I think like I remember one of the things about LDS theology, too, is like, oh, like God himself is an omnipresent, but his influence fills the universe.

You know, I made that point in my book. And so I had no problem attacking God's actual presence, you know, being omnipresent. But I would still have said that, you know, he can hear prayers from everywhere and that his influences, they're kind of like the sun, you know, the sun's in one place, but we feel its effects all the way here on earth, even though that's a bad example, because half the earth doesn't anyway. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think that's sort of a retreat towards more classically Christian use of omnipresence than what, say, Joseph Smith presented in Doctrine and Covenants 130. And in what he said about, you know, the Father doesn't live in all human hearts. It's the Holy Ghost that makes all of that possible on Mormonism because the Holy Ghost is unembodied. So there seem to be limitations, spatial limitations, even in the ways that Joseph Smith presented his teachings. There seem to be spatial limitations for God. A pillar of light comes down from heaven and two beings descend within the pillar of light, right? And the same thing with Moroni and the appearance of Moroni in his bedroom. There seems to be very, as Matthew was saying, like what you see with your physical eyes has physicality.

What appears to you has spatial limitations and has to travel through space in some way versus an omnipresent God. Yes. Oh, no, go ahead.

Go ahead, Michael. I was just going to make one last point, you know, to Paul saying that it's a trick question. I mean, I pretty much agree.

I mean, all my points were trick questions back in the day. But if I thought that if LDS theology was consistent, then I would be LDS still. But I found that it wasn't. So I was thinking from, if you read 1 Kings 1911, it says, And he said, Go forth and stand on the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. If we were to take that from the LDS perspective, it says that he passes by, but the Lord was not in the wind. Well, if they believe that God is a physical God that's localized in space and time, and he passed by, but he wasn't in the wind, how is that possible? Because they don't see God as being in more than one place at one time. So if you take it as literal, as the Lord must have literally passed by, but he wasn't in the wind, I don't understand if you take that literally how a Latter-day Saint would understand that. He passed by so fast that he made the wind. Like Sonic the Hedgehog.

Like the Flash. But in thinking about this passage from the Christian perspective, so I do think that God is everywhere present, but not in such a way as God is dependent upon creation. So his spirit is unlimited in space and time, but not in such a way that, for example, if you were to burn something, that it would somehow hurt the Lord in some way because you'd be damaging his spirit.

It's not like that in any way. God's spirit is completely autonomous from creation. But in Scripture, we often talk about the presence of the Lord coming upon somebody, or like the Day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. It says that the Holy Spirit descended upon the believers.

But if we believe in the omnipresence of God, it's not as if the Holy Spirit's presence wasn't there, and then it descended, and then it came there. It's more that God is demonstrating his gracious presence. He's demonstrating that and making it visible or apparent to the believers.

So if we think about this passage in 1 Kings 19, I think what we can say is that the Lord passed by, but he was not in the wind. So you could say that God is still only present, but he didn't demonstrate his glory to Elijah. When we talk about the glory of God as with Moses, there was a huge cloud that surrounded the Lord and his glory. But from what I understand, it would be seeming that God is saying that he wasn't in demonstrating his entire glory.

Of course, we can't have – we'll talk about that later, but we can't visibly see all of God's glory. So it's kind of like God's glory was veiled in that action that he performed in 1 Kings 19. So it appeared as if it were just like to Elijah. It would appear just as if it were wind passing through, and then there was fire and an earthquake. But it would appear or seem to be mostly natural. The occurrence was supernatural.

It was the working of God, but to the visible senses, it seemed like it was just nature doing its thing. We thank you for tuning into this episode of the Outer Brightness Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Please visit the Outer Brightness Podcast page on Facebook. Feel free to send us a message there with comments or questions by clicking Send a Message at the top of the page, and we would appreciate it if you give the page a like. We also have an Outer Brightness group on Facebook, where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast, past episodes and suggestions for future episodes, etc. You can also send us an email at outerbrightness at gmail dot com.

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Stay bright, Flyerflies. Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God. The Word made fresh, the risen Son. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. All of this world is in decay, but the Word of our God through ages remains. Lord, You promised that we, as Your church, would remain upon this rock and the gates of hell will not prevail against us.

Cause You have power to keep Your word unspoiled in purity. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. All of this world is in decay, but the Word of our God through ages remains. As the rain falls down from heaven and waters the earth, bringing it life, so the Word that goes out from Your mouth will not return empty, but does what You desire. Lord, we hear Your word and believe in You. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. All of this world is in decay, but the Word of our God through ages remains. The Word of God remains.