The cry is heard, “God is a
Spirit.” Surely, we both believe and teach that. Now read it, “God is a Spirit,
John 4, 24, the indefinite article “A” in this quotation gives us to understand
that God is a Spirit, among more, and of the Angels, He saith, who maketh His
Angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire,” Heb. 1:7. Now this shows
clearly that while “God is a spirit,” yet so are Angels. He is an individual
Spirit among others, having shape and form. Your confession of Faith says, “In
Unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power and
eternity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.” Con. of Faith,
Ch. 2. If it be true that God has no form, then how can he be a “Substance.”
You forget, as do your church, that you speak of Christ as being one of the
three persons of the Godhead, and the same substance as the Father. May I ask
you to enquire of your Sunday School children, they will likely inform you that
Jesus was born and lived and Had a body, had parts, had passions, that He died,
and rose again, and that He ascended to heaven and sits on the right hand of
His Father, and that same Jesus who went to heaven will in like manner come
again to earth. Yet you sneer at me because I say God has a body, has a form,
has passions—Love is a passion. Now to be brief on this point, I affirm that
the Bible teaches that God has body, parts, and passions. The Presbyterian
Confession of Faith denies this. Now to the Bible. Just as it reads. I prefer
it to the Presbyterian Confession of Faith, or to your sermon, which
contradicts it. “And God said, let us make man in our own image, after our
likeness,—So God created man in his own image.” Gen. 1:26-27. You may say, this
was the moral image, or likeness of God. It does not say that. All the facts
disprove it, and your church teaches that man is morally depraved and most of
them were by your God foreordained for eternal torture. Of this more will be
said later. But to continue, And Adam lived an hundred years and begat a son in
his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth. Gen. 5:3. Here we
cannot avoid the conclusion that God made Adam in His image and likeness. Adam
begat a son in his image and likeness, and Paul caps the climax on this point
when he said, “Christ was the express image of His Father’s person.” Heb.
1:1-3. If you had an image of Napoleon the Great, carved in marble, and a good
likeness of Queen Victoria taken by a first class photographer, would you not
have a good idea of what these two celebrated persons looked like?
Paul wrote to the Philippians,
2:6, that Christ being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal
with God, and that same Jesus speaking to the wicked Jews said, (speaking of
the Father), “Ye have neither heard his voice nor seen his shape,” John 5:37.
Here we have something concerning God having Form, shape, A Person, the same
substance as Christ and that Christ was the express image of his Father.
That the Bible says that God
appeared unto men and conversed with them . I submit the following: Gen.
17:1-22; Gen. 18:1-33; Gen. 32:24-32; Gen. 35:9-12; Ex. 24:9-14; Ex. 33:9-23;
These all show that God Almighty appeared to men, that He talked face to face
with some of them. You may try and make it appear that at times God appeared
through the medium of an Angel, well I admit it, but we have learned that
Angels are spirits. Are Spirits immaterial beings, or are they material
substance? We hear of them coming and going, talking and walking, eating and
drinking. To me, this all proves that Spirits are material beings, and God is a
Spirit.
Yes, Doctor McKenzie, I believe
that God is a spirit, that he has form, that he has a body, parts and passions,
that he made man in his image and likeness, that Christ was the express image
of his Father’s person, that both the Father and Son will mingle with men in
the eternity be- yond death when this mortal body will become a spiritual body
and this corruption shall put on incorruption, when Christ shall change our
vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body. If you do not
know that this is the hope of both the former day saint as well as the Latter
Day Saint, then you have no right to make a profession of Christianity. (R. C.
Evans, Letter to J. A. McKenzie, February 28, 1917, rep. Controversy Between
Bishop R. C. Evans, of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints, Toronto Ont. and the Reverend J. A. McKenzie, of the Presbyterian Church,
Ont., pp. 19-21, Bound Tracts: no. 13, Community of Christ Library, copy
in my possession)
