Change implies potentiality, liability to become what it is not.
As God is infinitely perfect, all potentiality is excluded from him; in other words, there is no room for growth or more perfection. Consequently, no possibility of change. Therefore, God was never without the fullness of the Godhead, consequently, never a man.
NOR CAN MAN EVER BECOME A GOD.
Man is finite or limited in everything, ever changeable and changing, ever susceptible of improvement. What is finite can never become infinite. Supposing man grown or improved for billions of years; after that immense period, he could begin over again improving for billions of years, and yet ever remain short of infinite perfection, as no number of finite things can make the infinite. There is and always shall be a first and a last, to which could be added more and more. "When a man hath done, then he shall begin, and when he leaveth off, he shall be at a loss" (Ecclesiasticus 18:2).
A being cannot be at the same time infinite and finite, necessary and contingent, compound and simple, unchangeable and changeable, eternal and temporary, omnipotent and weak, actual being and potentiality, etc., etc.
Now if God were an exalted man, he would have all those contradictory attributes at the same time, which is absurd. Therefore, it is an utter impossibility that God should be an exalted man.
As to man becoming God, the idea is absurd. With far more reason might we contend that the gnat will develop into a lion, and the animalcules which we swallow in a sip of water will grow into gigantic giraffes and colossal elephants, as there is infinitely less distance or difference between those respective animals than between the most perfect creature and the Creator, the finite and the infinite. Bring all the scientists of the world together, the Darwins, the Huxleys, the Tyndalls, the Pasteurs, the Kochs, the Teslas, the Edisons, etc., etc., supply them with the most ingenious machinery, and the most complicated instruments, and with unlimited material, let them make, I will not say an imitation sun or moon, but simply a little worm as we often unconsciously crush under our feet, or let them produce not the magnificent lily or rose, but a tiny blade of grass. Before such a task, apparently so insignificant, those profound mathematicians, naturalists and chemists, will throw up their hands in utter impotence. Expert mixers can indeed make wines in their laboratories, but will President Roosevelt or Emperor William, or other sovereigns, ever give them an order to manufacture a little bunch of grapes or a few of the commonest berries?
What frequent accidents are there on our railroads, despite most careful and most attentive trainmen! Yet a collision never occurred between the millions of suns, stars and planets that whirl, rush, tear and bound wildly along their prescribed pathways for thousands or millions of years, at the rate of over one thousand miles a minute (our earth), and three thousand miles a minute (the planet Arcturus). Notwithstanding the bewildering speed of their movements, the stars and planets float through space with such regularity and precision, and along such well defined paths, deviating neither to the right nor to the left, that astronomers can foretell to a nicety—to within a minute—at what point in the heavens they may be found at any future time, say, next month, next year, or even next century. They can indeed predict transits and eclipses; but suppose astronomers from New Zealand on their way to America to observe this fall's moon eclipse, meet with an accident in mid-ocean, would they at once send this wireless telegram to the United States' star-gazers assembled say at Lick Observatory: "Belated by leak. Please retard eclipse two hours that we may not miss it." As well might all the telescopemen in the world combined, attempt to fetch down the rings of Saturn for the construction of a royal-race track as pretend to control movements of the heavenly bodies.
The helpless babe of yesterday may indeed rival Mozart, Hayden and Paderewski, but tomorrow he may rise with lame hands and pierced ear-drums; and millions of worshipers of the shattered idol are powerless to restore it to the musical world. Still Jesus healed the blind, the deaf and the palsied, by a mere act of his will, even without speaking a word.
"We have this treasure in earthen vessels" (II Cor. 4:7).