Gwen Frangs / Cambridge, UK / 3 February 2022
Imagine that you have died and you go to Heaven. Who do you see sitting on the throne of God in Heaven?
You will not see God, the Father, because He cannot be seen. The Bible makes it clear that God the Father is an invisible Spirit and, therefore, cannot be seen (Colossians 1:15 ; 1 Timothy 1:17 ; Hebrews 11:27).
However, you are there in Heaven, in front of the throne of God and you can see Someone Who is seated on it. Who is it that you are seeing seated there on the throne if it is not possible to see the Father?
God the Father revealed to Moses Who the Being is Who is seated on the throne in Exodus 6:2-3:
2 And God said to Moses, “I am Yahweh—‘the Lord.’[a] 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob in El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty’[b]—but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh, to them.
Although commonly translated as God telling Moses that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, this is not what the verse actually says. The correct translation of the verse says that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in El Shaddai.
In English prepositions are words in their own right and we have phrases like ‘on the table’ or ‘under the bed’ where ‘on’ and ‘under’ tells us the position of something. However, in ancient Hebrew, prepositions form a part of the word that they are describing. In Exodus 6:2-3 the preposition בְּ is attached to the beginning of the word אֵ֣ל. The word אֵ֣ל is the ‘El’ of El Shaddai. In Exodus 6:2-3 the preposition on the word בְּאֵ֣ל means either ‘in’, ‘at’ or ‘with’ in the ancient Hebrew (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%91%D6%BE). It does not mean ‘as’ because כְּ is the preposition which means ‘as’ (8af3842462324e4d5443b28852f9368b3e9aa672.html). If you look at the blue parts of speech under the original Hebrew text the preposition is listed as Prep-b. Prep-b, according to the Hebrew parsing, means ‘in’ (https://biblehub.com/hebrewparse.htm). Therefore, the verse does not read:
….. I am Yahweh and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shaddai…
Rather, the verse reads as:
….I am Yahweh and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob in El Shaddai…
Although the preposition can also mean ‘at’ or ‘with’ we can know that in this case it means ‘in’ because Jesus confirmed this when He came to earth. He told His disciples that the Father was ‘in’ Him:
Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me…
John 14:11a
In the ancient world people believed that if they made an image of a god, that the god came and lived inside of the image. They must have gotten this idea from God, because God the Father is living within El Shaddai.
You are probably feeling very confused at this time because you may have been taught at church that the name of God the Father is El Shaddai. So, you are thinking if God the Father is not El Shaddai, then Who is El Shaddai?
The apostle Paul provides us with the answer to Who El Shaddai is in Colossians 1:15, when He calls the Holy Spirit the image of the Father:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation…
Colossians 1:15
In fact, the Greek word εἰκὼν, which was used by Paul in Colossians 1:15, and is translated ‘image,’ can also be translated as the word ‘statue’:
Strong’s Concordance
eikón: an image, i.e. lit. statue, fig. representation
Original Word: εἰκών, όνος, ἡ
https://biblehub.com/greek/1504.htm
Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine
Transliteration: eikón
Phonetic Spelling: (i-kone’)
Definition: an image, statue, representation
Usage: an image, likeness, bust.
We know that Paul is talking about the Holy Spirit in Colossians 1:15 because the Bible makes it clear that Jesus did not exist as Jesus, the Son of Man, in the Old Testament. He existed as the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit Who became incarnate as a man and came to earth. The apostle Paul reveals the identity of Jesus, as the incarnate Spirit of God, in 1 Corinthians 3:17:
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
2 Corinthians 3:17
Colossians 1:15-17 must be speaking about Jesus’ pre-existence as the Holy Spirit because the Son of Man was only begotten after there were already nations on the earth:
7 “I will declare the [a]decree:
Psalm 2:7-8 NKJV
The Lord has said to Me,
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You
The nations for Your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession.
There were no nations present on the earth in Genesis 1 because God was creating everything. Therefore, the Son of Man was not present in Genesis 1 as the Son of Man, but was present in Genesis 1 as the Holy Spirit. Paul says in Colossians 1:16-17:
16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:16-17 NIV
He must be speaking about the Holy Spirit, because the Son of Man was not present in Genesis 1, when all things were being created, because He had not yet been begotten because the Son of Man was only begotten after there were nations on the earth (Psalm 2:7-8).
In Zechariah 3, the second last book of the Old Testament, the Father is speaking through the Holy Spirit about the Branch. In verse 8 Yahweh says: ‘I Am bringing forth My Servant the Branch….’ Zechariah 3:8. He is describing a future event. He is not describing something that had happened in the past, prior to creation, because Jesus was not present at creation as Jesus, the Son of Man, but was present as the Holy Spirit.
Also, take a look at the meaning of the word ‘begotten’ in https://biblehub.com/hebrew/3205.htm. You will see that the word is derived from the word meaning ‘to bear, bring forth, beget’. The word translated ‘begotten’ in Psalm 2:7 means that the Son of Man was begotten. The fact that He was begotten means that He had not existed, as the Son of Man, prior to having been begotten. The Son of Man was begotten only at the beginning of the New Testament when Mary became pregnant with Him, as a result of the Holy Spirit overshadowing her. When the Holy Spirit took up residence in the body that the Father had prepared for Him, the Son of Man was begotten:
5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
Hebrews 10:5-7
but a body you prepared for me;
6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
I have come to do your will, my God.’”[a]
The Son of Man did not exist prior to that point. The speaker in the verse makes it clear that He sees Himself as separate from the body that was prepared. In other words He is not the body. He is in the body. To understand Colossians 1:15-17 you have to understand that Paul understands that the body and the Person inside the body are different from each other. He understands that the Person within the body is the Holy Spirit:
6 Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:6-8
In verse 6 above, Paul is referring to Jesus’ pre-existence as the Holy Spirit. Human beings have three parts, the spirit, the soul and the body. Jesus’ spirit is the Holy Spirit. The apostle Luke makes this very clear when he says in Acts 16:
Paul and his companions travelled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to .
Acts 16:6-7
Jesus is the incarnate Holy Spirit and He consistently spoke with that authority saying that: ‘before Abraham was, I Am’ (John 8:58) and calling Himself the Holy One that had been set apart by God (John 10:36). The Trinity came into being when the Son of Man was begotten by the Father. Prior to that there was only the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus confirms that He is the Holy Spirit when He says in Matthew 18:20:
20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.
Matthew 18:20
In John 14:18-20 Jesus identifies Himself as the Holy Spirit when He says:
18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
John 14:18-20
In John 17:22-26 Jesus again identifies Himself as the Holy Spirit when He says:
22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you[a] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
John 17:22-26
The only way that Jesus can be inside a Christian is in the form that He pre-existed in before coming in the flesh and that is in the form of the Spirit of God. The apostle Paul called this a mystery:
24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Colossians 1:24-27
The Holy Spirit is the tabernacle of the Father. When the Holy Spirit dwells inside us, the Father dwells inside us because He is in the Holy Spirit, Who is His tabernacle.
For an explanation regarding why Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit in the third person in the Gospel of John when He Himself was the Holy Spirit see (https://www.topicsinbiblicalstudies.com/jesus-speaks-of-himself-as-the-holy-spirit-in-john-14-and-15/).
Colossians 1:16 and John 1:1-3 make it clear that Jesus, as He pre-existed as the Holy Spirit, was both present at creation and that everything was created through Him. When translating Colossians 1:16, the Bible Hub interlinear Bible translates the word εἰς as ‘unto’. That is a mistranslation of this Greek word in this instance. If you click on the number above the word, you will see that it means ‘into’. It is shocking to see that most of the English Bibles do not translate the word correctly in this verse. The NIV, the English Standard Version and the New King James translates it as ‘for’. However, if you understand that the Holy Spirit is the subject of the verse, then you recognize that the Greek word εἰς means ‘into’ in Colossians 1:16. When speaking about Jesus in Colossians 1:16 Paul says:
‘Because in Him were created all things in the heavens and upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things through Him and into Him have been created.’
Paul is saying that everything that was created was created inside of Jesus. We are all inside Jesus. We can only be inside Jesus in the sense that He is the incarnate Holy Spirit.
In John 1:1-3 we are told:
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word. He was in the beginning with God. All things through Him came into being and without Him came into being not even one thing that has come into being.
John 1:1-3
It is clear that John is referring to Jesus as the Spirit of God, Who is spoken of at the beginning of the creation event in Genesis 1:2 and Who created everything.
At the beginning of this article I spoke about how Someone is seated on the throne in Heaven. We have now seen that the Being on the throne is El Shaddai and that El Shaddai is the Holy Spirit. Let us explore what the Old Testament tells us regarding Who the Holy Spirit is.
In Exodus 23 God told Moses that He was sending an Angel with him and that His Name was in the Angel:
20 “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. 21 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. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.
Exodus 23:20-22 NIV
The Patriarch Jacob wrestled with this Angel. Hosea 12:4-5 reads:
And, yes, he struggled with the Angel and prevailed. He wept and sought favour from Him. He found him in Bethel and there He spoke to us, that is Yahweh God of Hosts. His memorable name is Yahweh.
Hosea 12:4-5 Interlinear
The prophet Isaiah described seeing Yahweh God of Hosts as follows:
6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Isaiah 6:1-7 NIV
Unfortunately, the words ‘Lord Almighty’ which are used by the NIV translator in Isaiah 6:3 and Isaiah 6:5 do not actually appear in the original Hebrew text. If you take a look at the original Hebrew it says יְהוָ֥ה צְבָא֖וֹת which should be translated as ‘Lord of Hosts’. Check it out in the Interlinear Bible at this link Isaiah 6.
Therefore, the seraphim are calling out: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts’ in verse 3 and Isaiah says: ‘….my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts’ in verse 5. They are not calling out: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty’ and Isaiah does not say ‘….my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’ as the NIV translator would have us believe. The mistranslation is covering up something very significant.
If you read Hosea 12:4-5 in the original Hebrew, you will see that the title ‘the Lord of the Hosts’ is used as the name for the Angel that Jacob wrestled with. Check it out in the Interlinear Bible at this link Hosea 12:4-5. Therefore, the Angel Whom Jacob wrestled with and the Person that Isaiah saw on the throne in Heaven are one and the same. The Old Testament is making it clear that an Angel is seated on the throne of Heaven.
I do not know why the NIV translator was trying to obscure this fact that an Angel is the Ruler in Heaven. However, things get even more interesting because in Isaiah 63 the Angel Whom God sent with Moses in Exodus 23 is described again. He is called the Angel of His Presence:
8 He said, “Surely they are my people,
Isaiah 63:8-10
children who will be true to me”;
and so he became their Savior.
9 In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.[a]
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
10 Yet they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he turned and became their enemy
and he himself fought against them.
Notice that verses 9 and 10 say that the Angel of His Presence is the Holy Spirit. You will recall that the Father revealed in Exodus 6:2-3 that He lives in El Shaddai. Clearly, El Shaddai is the Angel of His Presence and this angel is the Holy Spirit.
If what I am saying sounds unbelievable to you, consider Hebrews 1:7 which says that the Father makes His angels spirits. Also, I am sure that you agree that Satan is a fallen angel. We know that Satan entered Judas Iscariot in order to make him betray Jesus. This indicates that an angel is able to become a spirit and enter a person’s body and motivate them to act in a particular manner. Therefore, it is absolutely scriptural that the Holy Spirit is an angel Who the Father can transform into a spirit to indwell the believer and to assist the believer to live righteously. When the Holy Spirit manifests in His angelic form, He is the living statue, or image, within Whom the Father is living.
If the reader finds what I am saying confusing, please refer to my article about the Holy Spirit in which I discuss the fact that, the Old Testament makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is an angel https://www.topicsinbiblicalstudies.com/the-holy-spirit-2/.
The image of the Father, the Angel of His Presence, is also called the Angel of Yahweh in the Old Testament. The Angel is called the Angel of Yahweh because Yahweh is living in Him. A number of scriptures in the Old Testament make it clear that to see the image of God is the same as seeing God Himself. In Genesis 16:13, Hagar calls the Angel of Yahweh, God and in Genesis 48:15-16, Jacob calls this same Angel, God. In Judges 13:22, Manoah calls the Angel of Yahweh, God and in Exodus 3, when the Angel of Yahweh appears as fire in a bush, He is referred to as God by the author, both in verses 4 and 6. In Genesis 22:12 the Angel of Yahweh calls Himself God and, in Zechariah 12:8, God the Father calls the Angel, God. Also, Hosea calls the Angel, God in Hosea 12:4-5.
The Holy Spirit is called the Angel of Yahweh in the Old Testament and is also called El Shaddai, Yahweh (the visible Yahweh), the Word of God and the Ancient of Days. Any time that someone saw God in the Old Testament they were seeing the Holy Spirit. In order to relate to His creation God, the Father, lives in and expresses Himself through the Holy Spirit, El Shaddai.
When you kneel before the throne in Heaven, you will be kneeling before El Shaddai, the Holy Spirit. He is the Angel of Yahweh, the Angel of Presence. So, you will also be kneeling before the Father, because the Father is present within the Angel.
They will also be able to relate to you through Jesus because they are both in Jesus, because the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Jesus and the Father lives within the Holy Spirit. That is why the Bible says:
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,
Colossians 2:9 NIV
Growing up I was taught that God is three in one, which is absolutely correct because all three Persons are present in Jesus. However, we can also say that God is three of One, because God consists of the invisible Father, the Angel Who is the image of the Father and within Whom the Father tabernacles and the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, Who is the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and within Whom the Father dwells. I am so looking forward to going to Heaven to see the Holy Spirit, El Shaddai, sitting on the throne with the Father within Him and to see them both in Jesus.
I grew up thinking that the Holy Spirit was an amorphous Spirit Who was able to move inside church buildings during church services and Who can live within you. I did not know that He is actually an Angel, Who can manifest as a Spirit, or that He is the One Who is seated on the throne in Heaven and that His name is El Shaddai.