“Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?”— John viii. 57.
How much comfort did His answer give them? More confusion—
“Before Abraham was, I am!"—Verse 58. Now the modern blind guides grasp a corrupt translation of Exodus iii. 14, and because the Septuagint was the only Greek copy of the Old Testament in Christ's time, therefore infallible—and because JESUS said “I am,” therefore He was the original Father of Himself. Paul said exactly the same thing of himself when he said:
“I am [ego eimi] debtor both to Greeks and barbarians.”— Rom. i. 14.
When JESUS said:
“I am [ego eimi] the true vine, and ye are the branches,” John xv. 5,
what relation did that particular form of speech have to the false tense in the Septuagint of Exodus iii. 14? It is simply a natural construction. This verb of existence forms a frequent circumlocution with the participles of other verbs. There is no special doctrinal significance in its use any more in John viii. 58, than in any other occurrence of it. Paul addressed the people at Jerusalem, thus:
“I am [ego men eimi] verily a man of the Jews, born in Tarsus.” “I am indeed.”—Acts xxii. 3.
But enough to show the baselessness of the “I am" speculation. Dr. Adam Clarke truly said “The original words, Exodus iii. 14, literally signify: “I will be what I will be.’” This saying had its memorial significance in pointing Israel to the future when JESUS truly said: “I am.” Then the memorial name, while still YAH had its completeness in YAH-oshua, YAH's Deliverer or Savior,
“To the glory of God the Father,” [hence], “every knee shall bow, of things in earth, under the earth [the dead who must rise], and in the heavens,”—Phil. ii. 10,11,
all is subject to Him as Lord, absolute, of the living and the dead. Now we confess Him Lord, and believe in our hearts that God raised Him up from the dead, and thus redeemed us, and made us heirs of the life He has been put in possession of; yes, God highly exalted JESUS, and gave Him His own great name to which all must bow. The Father, before JESUS, is always reckoned as “He who did put all things under Him as excepted, among the all things,” “for “God is all the things in all” of this great system, and JESUS is subordinate. We never confound Him of Whom we shout: “Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord!—YAH ;” with YAH, the Father, Himself. He is no “incarnation” of a plurality of three gods in one, according to anti-Christ's poly-theistical riddle, 3 × 1= I, and 1 × 3= 1, and 1=3 × 1. All the ingenuity of the doctors in trying to defend the trinity fiction, can not deceive one of God’s chosen, who understands the doctrine of redemption in Christ.
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