I wanted to talk a little bit about Christophanies today. If you are totally ignorant of what a Christophany is, you can read this sickeningly basic primer. It is an appearance of Jesus Christ (or The Lord) on earth outside of the bounds of His historical physical life (in the Old Testament). Note that this does not include any appearances after His resurrection. He was raised bodily, not just in spirit.
Note that not all scholars agree that these appearances are the pre-incarnate Christ, but many do, and I tend agree with them. Many Christophanies are denoted by the use of the term "the Angel of the Lord" (malach elohim in Hebrew) to portray Christ, while at other times the term “an angel of the Lord” is used to portray angels or other beings. The word Malach in Hebrew, although translated into English as “angel”, actually means “messenger”. The title itself means "Messenger of God". That could, quite honestly, refer to a lot of things. Thus you do not necessarily get that these appearances are Christ simply from the title given Him.
The most important element in recognizing a Christophany for what it is (seeing that the text is referring to Christ and not an angel or other being) is to look at the text surrounding the appearance, the context. Never read just one Bible verse. If you do, you can come up with all sorts of weird stuff (much like journalists twisting the words of the people they interview by taking them completely out of context). When the text is talking about the pre-incarnate Christ, the being (malach) referred to is attributed things which we know from elsewhere in scripture only apply to God. Following are some examples of this (this list is by no means exhaustive):
- The man with the sword who appeared to Joshua in Josh. 5:12-15 (He identified Himself as the captain of the Lord’s army) told Joshua to take off his shoes because he was standing on holy ground. The angel also allowed himself to be worshiped, something that angels do not allow (Rev. 19:9–10).
- The Lord with two attendants ate dinner with Abraham and then went to see if the reports He had heard about the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah were true (Gen. 18). He is called “the Lord” in this passage and says “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” Then Abraham barters with the Lord for the lives of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. This is not angel talk.
- In Genesis 16 the angel of the Lord appears to Hagar, Abram’s concubine (mother of Ishmael, traditional father of Islam) and tells her “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count”. Attributing this action to himself is not something an angel would do. Contrast this birth announcement with that of Jesus in Luke 1:28–37 in which the angel constantly references that God will do it, the Spirit will do it, etc. Not the same attitude.
- Possibly in the garden of Eden, because it states clearly that God walked through the garden (Gen. 3:8). The idea here is that God is spirit and thus does not walk on earth, whereas Jesus has a physical body. When God walked through the garden and had a face to face conversation with Adam and Eve and the serpent, he then went on to sew together animal skins (the first sacrifice for sin in recorded history) for clothing for Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21). Even in Gen. 1:2 it clearly states that the Spirit of God “moved upon the face of the waters” (KJV) or “was hovering over the waters” (NIV), making a differentiation between the way the Spirit moves and the way it describes the Lord “walking” in the garden.
There are several other examples of apparent Christophanies which appear all throughout the Old Testament. The reason I wanted to talk about this is because I came across a possible Christophany in the book of Exodus that blew my mind. I have read the account of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt a thousand times and never saw this before. Here it is: Ex. 14, 24.
Let me describe the backdrop here (Ex. 7-13). The Israelites have just been delivered out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt, from the hand of Pharaoh, by God’s mighty judgments displayed in the "plagues" on Egypt. The Lord caused several supernatural disasters to occur in Egypt which devastated the land, all because Pharaoh hardened his heart against God and would not let the Israelites go. God then led Israel through the desert Himself, manifested as a pillar of cloud by day (for shade) and as a pillar of fire by night (for light). The Egyptian army is coming after them and the Israelites are terrified.
As a side-note, I’m always amazed to realize the scope of this thing. Ex. 12:37 says 600,000 men left Egypt (and they were all armed for battle, Ex. 13:18). This number did not include their wives and children or the old and sick men, so we are conservatively dealing with about 2 – 3 million people here. This is 3/4 the population of Los Angeles, along with everything these people owned and everything they had plundered from the Egyptians (Ex. 12:36). There were 600,000 armed fighting men who had been slaves their whole lives, employed in landmark building (think pyramids), so they were built like Arnold. These men were terrified by the size of Pharaoh’s army which was coming after them. To terrify 600,000 behemoths with weapons, Pharaoh's army must have been gigantic. We know they had bigger, badder weapons (Ex. 14:7-9) than the Israelites did. Bottom line, though, is that there were A LOT OF PEOPLE involved in this scene, on both sides. Think 1 - 1.5 million soldiers (roughly the number of soldiers America currently has in active duty in all branches of the military) and probably 1.5 - 2 million women, children and grandpas altogether. These two enormous armies were preparing to clash in the middle of an arid desert. Exodus 13:21–22 says that the Lord went before them and never left from in front of them. He led the Israelites as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He led them straight to edge of the Red Sea. This is where God parts the waters (no, it wasn't Chuck Heston, it was God) so the people could cross before they were massacred by Pharaoh's army.
As a side-note, I’m always amazed to realize the scope of this thing. Ex. 12:37 says 600,000 men left Egypt (and they were all armed for battle, Ex. 13:18). This number did not include their wives and children or the old and sick men, so we are conservatively dealing with about 2 – 3 million people here. This is 3/4 the population of Los Angeles, along with everything these people owned and everything they had plundered from the Egyptians (Ex. 12:36). There were 600,000 armed fighting men who had been slaves their whole lives, employed in landmark building (think pyramids), so they were built like Arnold. These men were terrified by the size of Pharaoh’s army which was coming after them. To terrify 600,000 behemoths with weapons, Pharaoh's army must have been gigantic. We know they had bigger, badder weapons (Ex. 14:7-9) than the Israelites did. Bottom line, though, is that there were A LOT OF PEOPLE involved in this scene, on both sides. Think 1 - 1.5 million soldiers (roughly the number of soldiers America currently has in active duty in all branches of the military) and probably 1.5 - 2 million women, children and grandpas altogether. These two enormous armies were preparing to clash in the middle of an arid desert. Exodus 13:21–22 says that the Lord went before them and never left from in front of them. He led the Israelites as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He led them straight to edge of the Red Sea. This is where God parts the waters (no, it wasn't Chuck Heston, it was God) so the people could cross before they were massacred by Pharaoh's army.
Okay, so now we’re in the middle of the Red Sea and we come to Exodus 14:19. Here you get a shift. Remember in 13:21 it had said “the Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night”. Ex. 14:19-20 says:
“Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long.”
Did you notice what happened? What was “the Lord” in Exodus 13:21 is now “the angel of God” and “the pillar of cloud”, both moving individually, both present at the same time, and both serving different functions. Also notice the terminology, "The angel of God", not "an angel of God". Okay, so now we get a little farther on to Ex. 14:24-25 and we see this:
“During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He made the wheels of their chariots come off so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, ‘Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.’”
Did you notice that? Now the Lord is looking down from “the pillar of fire AND cloud”. So this is putting the attributes of the one on the other, which it had already called “the angel of God”.
I thought this was pretty significant, but it gets even better. So moving on in the account, Moses holds his staff up and the waters fall back over the Egyptians and crush and drown them all. Not a single one is left alive and the Israelites watch their bodies wash up on the shore (Ex. 14:27-30). This is a bloody massacre. So the Israelites sing some praise songs about how great God is (Ex. 15:1-18). God then leads them farther out into the desert and gives Moses laws to give to the people, including the famous "10 Commandments" (Ex. 15:19 - Ex. 23) . Then in Ex. 23:20-21 God says this:
“‘See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.’”
Did you notice that? “Do not rebel against him; HE will not forgive your rebellion”. Let’s compare this with Mark 2:7
“Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
And with Matthew 9:6
“‘But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins …..’ Then he said to the paralytic, ‘Get up, take your mat and go home.’
So what happened here is that God told the Israelites to listen to His Angel (who is still in the form of the pillar of cloud and fire as you find out in later chapters) and told them that HE (being the Angel) would not forgive them if they rebelled against Him because My (God’s) Name is in Him. CHRISTOPHANY! This is kind of hard to deal with because if I am right, Jesus is appearing here in a form that is not a physical human body like he does in other places of the scriptures. This could very well be an Old Testament appearance of the Holy Spirit instead of the Christ, which would make it a Theophany, not a Christophany. But in any case, there were two of the three of the Godhead leading Israel out of Egypt. That, my friends, is fascinating to me.
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