[Footnote A: Luke 24:36-39.]
[Footnote B: Luke 24:41-43.]
But not only did he do this, but with his resurrected hands he prepared a meal on the sea shore for his own disciples, and invited them to partake of the food which he with his resurrected hands had provided.[A] Moreover, for forty days he continued ministering to his disciples after his resurrection, eating and drinking with them;[B] and then, as they gathered together on one occasion, lo! he ascended from their midst, and a cloud received him out of their sight. Presently two personages in white apparel stood beside them and said: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."[C] What! With his body of flesh and bones, with the marks in his hands and in his feet? Shall he come again in that form? The old Jewish prophet, Zechariah, foresaw that he would. He describes the time of his glorious coming, when his blessed, nail-pierced feet shall touch the Mount of Olives again, and it shall cleave in twain, and open a great valley for the escape of the distressed house of Judah, sore oppressed in the siege of their great city Jerusalem. We are told that "They shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son," and one shall look upon him in that day and shall say, "What are these wounds in thy hands and in thy feet?" and he shall answer, "These are the wounds that I received in the house of my friends."[D]
[Footnote A: John 21:9-13 and Acts 10:41.]
[Footnote B: Acts 10:31, and Acts 1:2,3.]
[Footnote C: Acts 1:11.]
[Footnote D: Zech. the 12th, 13th, and 14th chapters.]
What think ye of Christ? Is he God? Yes. Is he man? Yes, Will that resurrected, immortal, glorified man ever be distilled into some bodiless, formless essence, to be diffused as the perfume of a rose is diffused throughout the circumambient air? Will he become an impersonal, incorporeal, immaterial God, without body, without parts, without passions? Will it be? Can it be? What think ye of Christ? Is he God? Yes. Is he an exalted man? Yes; in the name of all the Gods, he is. Then why do sectarian ministers arraign the faith of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because they believe and affirm that God is an exalted man, and that he has a body, tangible, immortal, indestructible, and will so remain embodied throughout the countless ages of eternity? And since the Son is in the form and likeness of the Father, being, as Paul tells, "in the express image of his [the Father's] person"—so, too, the Father God is a man of immortal tabernacle, glorified and exalted: for as the Son is, so also is the Father, a personage of tabernacle, of flesh and of bone as tangible as man's, as tangible as Christ's most glorious, resurrected body.
II.
THE ONENESS OF GOD.
There are some expressions of scripture to consider which speak of the "oneness" of God. Speaking of the question which agitated the early Christian Church about eating meats which had been offered to idols, Paul says: "We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one."[A] Moreover, Jesus himself made this strange remark—that is, strange until one understands it: "I and my Father are one;" and so much one are they that he said: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. * * * Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me."[B] Consequently our philosophers, especially those who lived when the present Christian creeds concerning God were forming, thought that by some legerdemain or other they must make the three Gods—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—just one person—one being; and therefore they set their wits at work to perform the operation.