Let US make man

A question for christians who believe the creation story in Genesis, why would GOD say let US create man? God is perfect and needs no one's help in making anything! IT seems more than one entity made man and that each entity required the the aid of the others to make man, yet this is not what is preached. Would anyone like to comment please? This has always troubled me.

You are precisely right......like I said in another thread, in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, but the Heavens were first. If God created the heavens, he created life, which he gave license to [pro]create other life.....

I understand what you're trying to say but it states that God makes man, it states that it is GOD who said let us make man. So what you say doesn't hold up see? GOD is presented as plural then, which is odd to say the least so then by the bible's own account, whoever made us was not God? the first commandment God gave to Moses further confuses the issue, u know he is God and you must not have any other Gods before him cuz he is a jealous God(now how on earth could God be jealous he presents it as a sin later, so this makes him imperfect which gives me more incentive to believe he was not the Real God(would explain a lot of his actions throughout the bible)) I know what i'm saying is controversial but surely we can discuss these things?

God says "let us" because God is the Godhead. the Trinity.

Elohim is grammatically a plural word.

In the beginning Elohim created [...]

In the beginning God (YAH: YAHVEH [the Father], YAHSHUA [aka Jesus, the Son] and the HOLY SPIRIT) created [...]
--------------------------

then by the bible's own account, whoever made us was not God?

you can't say that because the bible says: "and God said, "let us..."
--------------------------

he is God and you must not have any other Gods before him cuz he is a jealous God(now how on earth could God be jealous he presents it as a sin later, so this makes him imperfect which gives me more incentive to believe he was not the Real God(would explain a lot of his actions throughout the bible)

Jealousy is desiring what rightfully belongs to you. Envy or covetousness is desiring what does not belong to you.

Do you get the difference?

Different bible translations will use different words for various concepts.
The sin isn't "jealousy" or "covetousness" or envy", but desiring what doesn't belong to you (and different words are used to express that concept) ...so it can be a little tricky.

That is why the Holy Spirit must live in you to understand anything pertaining to the Kingdom of God!! Unless a man is born of spirit he cannot really comprehend and understand the Kingdom of God in the slightest of ways.

thanks for that reply but how can God be jealous if he is perfect he has nothing to be jealous of and "needs" nothing from you or me does God "need" our worship, i think God is the one doing us a favor and not the other way around, so what is God jealous of? To state that God needs our worship implies that he has an ego and that is not perfection,is it? And why do things like this happen, christians are murdered, recently three girls were decapitated and later the same night i read of this event i was watching a televangelist healing people, what is going on? we have free will so God does not interfere to save the lives of innocent people babies etc but at the same time is healing old ladies?

[edit on 15-11-2005 by Elijio]

Originally posted by Elijio
thanks for that reply but how can God be jealous if he is perfect he has nothing to be jealous of and "needs" nothing from you or me does God "need" our worship, i think God is the one doing us a favor and not the other way around, so what is God jealous of? To state that God needs our worship implies that he has an ego and that is not perfection,is it? And why do things like this happen, christians are murdered, recently three girls were decapitated and later the same night i read of this event i was watching a televangelist healing people, what is going on? we have free will so God does not interfere to save the lives of innocent people babies etc but at the same time is healing old ladies?
[edit on 15-11-2005 by Elijio]

btw, I'm not into philosophy... stuff about ego etc.

Anyway. God doesn't need out worship.

But HE really desires our fellowship. HE deserves our worhsip and rightfully so.
HE is worthy of ALL glory, honor and praise now and into eternity.
God made us to worship HIM. Because HE is love...like that is HIS substance. humble, selfless love. HE wants to lavish HIS love on us.
The bible says HE is love and light. God created us so HE could love us. Not a matter of perfection or imperfection (though HE is perfect).

We do have a free will, but I believe in predestination at the same time...
(weird, yes. doesn't make sense? logically you would think that.
But, it actually works out:

I believe that the Bible makes it clear that there is such a thing as predestination (Rm 9:11-12). This not only means some people are predestined to heaven (vessles of mercy [righteous souls]) and others to hell (vessles of wrath [reprobate souls]); it also means that our days are ordained by God (Ps 139:16; Prov 20:24). At the same time, I believe, the Bible also makes it clear that we have a free will; for example, the Bible says it is God's will for all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:3-4 and 2 Pet. 3:9), but not all men will be saved (Mt 25: 31-34, 41, 46). [...]

journals.aol.com... )


This is really short. Its 3 min. and about suffering. (For a Christian suffering is a "good" thing. [not really good/fun, but it refines us and brings us into closer intimacy w/God] check out Phillippians 3: 1-11)

www.fireonthealtar.com...

www.fireonthealtar.com...

Well, on suffering:
God didn't make the world w/suffering. The bible talks about the "law of sin and death" in Rom c6-8ish and elsewhere. But it basically says "you sin, you die" (Ezek 18; James 1:15). So when sin entered the world, so did Death and Hell and suffering, decay etc... At the end of the Age God will destroy all that and everyone who refuses to repent.

seawater999 Good post…

You have voted seawater999 for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

Elijio You would be surprised what a difficult concept it seems to be for people that God allows bad things to happen to good people. I even hear Christians ask that question all the time, and I realize that many just do not get it. That there is no sinless, “good person”, that we all have sinned, and that bad things happen as a result of sin’s presence in the world.
Basically to me it shows lack of maturity in a Christian when they blame God for things, but we all feel persecuted at some point and want to point the finger elsewhere. The ones with the “Ego”, is us; not God, and if anyone deserves to have an “Ego”, it is God. We as humans tend to try and judge God by mans understanding of right and wrong, but in truth to understand things you must try and see things from the other perspective, to see/judge man from Gods perspective. That is a hard concept even for many Christians.

These people will never admit the truth the Bible .(Pick a translation)
is so full of contrdictions I couldent list them all on this post.
There is such a thing as faith theres also such a thing a Blind faith
Or fools faith as I like to call it.
Now mabby there is a God .who am I to say . But the more you read the bible and anlize it the more you relize (that god described there is mans invention )
How manny times God broke his own rules is behond belife .
Try answering this . Adum and eve .Two people (the ONLY TWO)
this means INSEST is the only way to keep the human race alive .
this is clearly against Gods rules .
And farther down the line theres another storie Of a man who moves into a Cave a God blesses his union with his daughter.
Also this loving forgiving God Destroys manny of city and not just the sinners but children to .Mosses brings the first born to mind .
Why would any loving God Kill the children because the parents are Bad.
Like I say though I could Go on all day with this but theres no point .The only thing Ill say to you is continu to question it.
After all TOMMIS questioned it and God was ok with that.

perhaps a different point of view will help.


Hypostasis of the Arcons,

[ because of his] power and his ignorance [and his arrogance]
he said..., " It is I who am God; there is none [other apart from
me]." When he said this he sinned against [the Entirety]. And
a voice came forth from above the realm of absolute power,
saying, " You are mistaken, Samael," which means " god of the blind"


On the Origin of the World
... he boasted continually, saying to (the angels)... I am God, no other
one exists except me." But When he said these things, he sinned
against all of the immortal ones... when Faithsaw the impiety of the chief ruler,
she was angry.... she said, "You err, Samael (blind god)." An enlightened,
immortal humanity exists before you.


Secret Book of John

in his madness ... he said, "I am God and there is no other God beside me,"
for he is ignorant of ... the place from which he had come.... And when he saw
the creation which surrounds him and the multitudes of angels around him
which had come forth from him, he said to them, " I am a jelous God, and there
is no other God beside me." But by announcing this he indicatedto the angels that
another God does exist; for if there were no other one, of whom would he be
jealous?

Considering the Bible is written by a lot of different people, things will be different. Take for example the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Although the main message is the same, their accounts do differ slightly. Also, God is not a physical being, Heaven is not a physical place. It gets complicated, but I was taught it last year in RE class.

Lastly, the main part is that God is a mystery and faith allows us to follow, believe, worship and love him. If God doesn't exsist, then it was nice to get on Sundays. If he does exist, say hallo to Satan for me.

Originally posted by Elijio
A question for christians who believe the creation story in Genesis, why would GOD say let US create man? God is perfect and needs no one's help in making anything! IT seems more than one entity made man and that each entity required the the aid of the others to make man, yet this is not what is preached. Would anyone like to comment please? This has always troubled me.

I like easy questions. When God said, "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26), was He speaking to another person in the Godhead? No. Isaiah 44:24; Malachi 2:10 has your answer.

You may find this page helpfull. gracecathedral.org

"Our" image? Who, you might wonder, is "us"? Perhaps God is using the royal "we," which would be natural, especially given that the word the Priestly Author ("P") uses for God (Elohim) is the polite plural in Hebrew. Or perhaps the author imagines God addressing other divine or semi-divine beings, but such beings haven't been mentioned heretofore in Genesis. (So-called "sons of God" do show up in Genesis 6, as we shall see in the forthcoming excerpt, "There Were Giants in the Earth in Those Days.")

Also you might want to send a u2u to either roger_pearse and/or NEOAMADEUS (just click each name). They're both very knowledgable when it comes to biblical interpretations and translations and both, i think, can read the original Hebrew and Aramaic as well as the New Testament Greek. Translating these languages to English isn't exactly an exact science, so far as i know it's something akin to translating hieroglyphs(trying to explain a concept or idea with a single word). IOW if you ask 10 bible scholars this question you may just get 10 different answers.

As a believer i know there's one true GOD( Yehweh), the most high..., and have accepted that Yeshua(Jesus) is the prophesied Messiah and my Lord and personal Saviour(the accepted names for GOD and Jesus and what they mean are even controvercial). But if you asked me to qualify it, i don't know that i could. Are there 'lesser' gods or how exactly did the whole creation thing go down? I'll be the first to admit, as someone who likes to study up on such things, that i don't know as some sort of explicit fact beyond my faith. I'm a sinner who misses GOD ....and i'm just trying to get back home.

Some say that this is because there is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hence, "We"
while,
some say that it is that royale manner of speaking in such a style....

While others say that people should place threads in the right forum, and others said that decent spelling and staying on topic is quite ok, too; even in SimCity.

Thanks for the replies guys i found another version of the creation story if anyone is interested i'll post the link here. Why would God tell people to kill other people? i'll try and find the passage, it's in the Old Testament btw. I know everyone has sinned but do you think those girls who were decapitated deserved such a death while murders and rapists etc are at large? seems unfair to me. Another thing if we have free will it means that God does not interfere, so who is working the damn miracles? Why heal one bunch of sinners and do nothing for others(to those who think one sin is no different from another) and there are good and bad people. If you sin it doesn't make you a bad person. There must be some measure to sin else we are all doomed. I don't consider my mother a bad person, do you yours?. If you get baptised and accept Jesus and the whole works, your still gonna sin, not because you're bad but because you're not God and cannot be held to the same standards as a perfect being.
p.s sorry for any lack of coherence

[edit on 15-11-2005 by Elijio]

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
Some say that this is because there is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hence, "We"

I was about to post the same thing.

Also note that this is not the only place in the bible where God speaks like this.
....


Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?


Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech

...

God, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit

maybe we create them in our image.

Perhaps God is a plural, from a perspective. Plural, but one in the same.

Incidently, Eloheim (I've been told) is plural for god. And Eloheim is how God is mentioned in the first few books of the bibile in it's original text.

Try not to think of God as a single being in the external in respects to you, unless you want your God in one place in some far off destination.

Hey SeaWater:

Yes, Elohim is indeed a masculine plural form of the strange word Eloah (fem sg). But it governs a singular verb BARA in the book of Bereshth (Genesis).

The singular form of "Eloah" occurs in the Poetical sections to the book of Job written in a strange Elamite Hebrew dialect from around 600 BC (chapters 3 onwards is the POEM proper, and it continues to the end except the last paragraph which is like chapters 1 and 2, written in prose and uses YHWH and introduces the idea of Satan and the Divine Council of the gods with YHWH at the head).

Literally, the opening sentence of Genesis says: "When Elohim ("the gods") he began to create..." BARA is the QAL imperfect tense.

YHWH is not introduced into Genesis until the 2nd Creation myth begins in Chapter 2:4b where it occurs as a duple: YHWH elohim ("the gods Yahweh..").

Hebrew sometimes uses plurals to show things that change form, e.g. life (Chayyim) or Water (Mayyim) or Heavens (HaShamayyim) or the word for Face (Phannim, literally Faces, since one can have several expressions).

Perhaps the writers were playing on this idea of flexibility of form by making Eloah Plural instead of the Masculine singular, e.g. the Canaanite Bull god EL, which occurs in the Dead Sea Scrolls so often...

But the text had been re-written so many times, especially during the time of Ezra with the new Aramaic square letters---one wonders how much of the original preExilic polytheism of the Jews went...such as Yahweh's wife Asherah and their divine son Baal...?

Originally posted by Elijio
Thanks for the replies guys i found another version of the creation story if anyone is interested i'll post the link here. Why would God tell people to kill other people? i'll try and find the passage, it's in the Old Testament btw. I know everyone has sinned but do you think those girls who were decapitated deserved such a death while murders and rapists etc are at large? seems unfair to me. Another thing if we have free will it means that God does not interfere, so who is working the damn miracles? Why heal one bunch of sinners and do nothing for others(to those who think one sin is no different from another) and there are good and bad people. If you sin it doesn't make you a bad person. There must be some measure to sin else we are all doomed. I don't consider my mother a bad person, do you yours?. If you get baptised and accept Jesus and the whole works, your still gonna sin, not because you're bad but because you're not God and cannot be held to the same standards as a perfect being.
p.s sorry for any lack of coherence

[edit on 15-11-2005 by Elijio]

When you sin it is against the Law of the old testement. Israel slayed an animal and layed the sins on it by the preist laying on hands. They sent it into the wilderness to roll the sins one more year forward. That is until calvary. There Jesus the Christ took the sins rolled forward onto his flesh. When you repent, your telling God I am sorry and I'll try to not do that anymore. When you are baptised (dunked) in the name of the one who paid that price (Jesus), your sin dies with him. When you do this, it is the first part of "born again" spoken of in the Gospels. Then when you thank and praise Jesus for the work He did, he fills you with the Holy Ghost (His Spirit). How do you know he did. Evidenced by speaking in tongues (as found all thru the book of Acts) this is the second part of the "born again" experience. Pretty cool huh?

[edit on 16/11/05 by OneGodJesus]

[edit on 16/11/05 by OneGodJesus]

Originally posted by Elijio
A question for christians who believe the creation story in Genesis, why would GOD say let US create man?

Not to mention, who was there to record this statement?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Ring a bell?

Who was the Word?

Jesus.