Let me refer briefly to his premortal
existence. You remember what John said in the King James Version of the Bible, “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The
same was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2.) That scripture, as you know,
confused the sectarian people, who thought it meant that there was a
three-in-one God, that there could have been two Gods, but one in substance.
And it was all a great mistake.
I was glad when I read these words in
the Goodspeed Bible in John 1:1, “In the beginning the Word existed. The Word
was with God, and the Word was divine,” just as we have heard in this lovely
solo. (Edgar J. Goodspeed and J. M. Powis Smith, The Short Bible [Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1933], p. 515.)
The Authentic New
Testament, by Hugh J. Schonfield, puts it this
way in John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. So
the Word was divine.” ([New York: New American Library of World Literature, Mentor
Books, 1958], p. 389.) Isn’t it beautiful the way these new versions bring it
out?
The New World Translation, which is
the scripture of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has this interpretation or version, “In
[the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god”
(John 1:1). And I like that better than the others. The only thing I don’t like
about it is that in their Bible they refuse to give him a capital letter. They
use lower case when they said that he was a god—a lower case god. They
don’t believe in the divinity of Christ, and so they said, “and the Wore was a
[lower case] god.” And that bothers me because I thought they had such a good translation.
But this Word who was divine in the
beginning now became the physical, but still the divine, Son of God. You
remember that the Father so declared at the baptism of Christ. And then again
at the Transfiguration, he declared that Jesus was his beloved and Begotten
Son, in whom he was well pleased. And then Jesus, himself, frequently declared
his own divine Sonship. I especially like one of the instances in which he
spoke of this. It was when he healed the blind man, who was cast out by his
fellows. “Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he
said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who
is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, . . . It is
he that talketh with thee.” (John 9:35-37). (Mark E. Petersen, “Christ the
Creator,” in The Fourth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators’
Symposium on the New Testament [Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints 1980], 1-2)
