Before we begin our study about the sons of God as found in the original Hebrew, it is important to understand the whole in comparison from the part. The word "God" in English is a term used for the name of deity. In our particular study the name "God" is used for the Christian God in contrast to the god of Mohammed, god of Buddah, etc.

But even that word "God" reveals only a partial aspect of the deity For in the study of the sacred Christian Scriptures we find that "God" has many names or manifestations This also is true of each of us At work you may be a supervisor or employee. You are a father or mother at home. In marriage you are a husband or wife. You are a child all of the time to your parents Each of us is many things to different people. Yet, you are a whole person, a composite of all these things.

So, also is the manifestation of God. He is revealed to us in the Christian Scriptures as God, Jehovah, the I AM, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Each is a revelation of a certain part of His nature from which we are to glean the deepest of life.

While it is important to study the SONS OF GOD as mentioned in Romans 8:19-20, it is equally important to be well versed with all facets of the Lord’ s manifestation.

Assuming that you have considered and have done research the on the various names of God, we shall consider only at this time His manifestation within the confines of "son of God."

Genesis 1:1 states: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Which beginning was this? It also says that the earth was already there without form and void, so we know that the earth had already been created. There are some theologians who think the creation of Genesis 1 is an actual second creation.

Besides this point we want to know which facet of God we are talking about. The word "God" in the Hebrew is Elohim. El meaning God and "im" meaning one God with a plurality (Son and Holy Spirit). Rather interesting that the noun "God" is singular but the verb is in the plural, which suggests the singularity and plurality of God (1:26) at the same time.

Now there are many facets to God in the Bible. There is Jehovah. There is also El Shaddai, the Almighty One or Full Breasted One or the One Full Of Life. El Elyon is the God of the kingdom. He is called the Most High God. Another name we see is that of El Gibbon. Hagar saw this side of God when He revealed Himself to her in the wilderness. He "saw" her plight, and she called Him the God who sees. We see Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is there, in the last verse of Ezekiel. We see Jehovah Shalom, the Lord is peace. We see Jehovah Jireh, the Lord provides. We see Jehovah Rophe, the Lord heals. And there are many more.

The word "God" is used at all times with the creation of the natural earth and natural heaven. It is important to understand the concept that the name "God" is always used within the natural sphere of life. Thus, God is very intimately and lovingly involved with His own creation.

Through these examples we want to show that El (God) is in relationship to creation and the God of creation. But what happens when all creation is created? What happens when everything that has been created fully enters into His purpose in His unfolding plan? El becomes no more. It is not that He is gone, but it is that facet or level of understanding of Him is no more - for some people.

How is that you say? As people mature in their faith in God, they begin to see a deeper understanding of His unfolding. He is no longer seen as a deity of creation only (most people recognize a "god" of creation), but also as a personal God. Let me further illustrate how we can see Him in a different vein or with a different understanding.

All persons, saved or unsaved, know that God is their creator. But they might not know Him as Jesus. Then upon coming to know Him as Jesus,

they surely might not know Him as the one who baptizes with the power of 1 Corinthians 12 - the Holy Spirit. Some might never come to know Him as El Elyon. It is true that El Elyon is the Most High and the God of the kingdom, you see Him as the reigning king within you (Luke 17:21). God is not confined to one manifestation or understanding but is continuously revealing Himself to each person in the way that person needs to see Him to grow into His nature.

The man who sees God as his creator sees Him as a Father who begat him. If there is a starting point then there is an ending point. That facet of God is confined in time. When we enter into the fullness of His salvation, we do not need to experience that initial work anymore. The same applies to entering the fullness of Pentecost. You must move on from that realm. Even the precious revelation of the Father must be seen as a facet and not the ending place of our understanding of Him.

God has also spoken that He is the I AM. That aspect of Him is even bigger than the very revelation of Him as the Father because it is outside of time. The I AM is the Living One or Ever Present One. This revelation of God is not bound to the earthly plane nor to our understanding of Him.

Let us see how far away He is! Revelation 20:11 speaks of the great white throne judgment. If we look at this verse in the traditional way, we see that the old heavens and the old earth are already destroyed, and there is a new heavens and a new earth. "And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them." We get excited when we think of a new heavens and a new earth. But here we see that no place can be found for either of them in the face of Him. We have a tendency to think that they are going to be fantastic places to be whether in the spiritual or the natural. But He says that even these are not close to Him! We think that the new heavens and new earth are something great because it is something that is close to us, but it is so far removed from closeness to Him that He can not even see it from where He is!

We get excited thinking we are moving closer to God in the new heavens (mind of Christ) and the new earth (incorruption). But I declare to you that it will never happen as long as we even have any type of body or mind. If we are tied to any natural plane, we can not grasp Him in a fullness. He is SO large and SO great that man can not even comprehend what God is going to do. The redeemed mind can not even comprehend it.

Look at the example of Christ. Jesus never used His mind. He had the total mind of Christ, for which we are all seeking, and He never used it. He said that He did nothing except what He saw His Father in heaven do. He did only as He was led by the Spirit. We think we are spiritual when we have a redeemed mind, but we are truly not spiritual. Grasping things even with the redeemed mind is of no avail. Likewise making our minds a blank so that things can come in is also wrong. God wants us to use our minds to concentrate so that our spirits can be led of His Spirit and come into union with God.

The mind of Christ was limited. He knew not the hour nor the time of the end of things - it was given to God He said. Luke 2:52 states that Jesus grew in stature and wisdom. But even He who was the very express image of God in the EARTH was LIMITED in His expression because He was no longer Spirit - but bound by time and the natural order of things while on the earth.

Thus, the natural heavens and the natural earth (or spiritually our minds and an incorruptible body) hinder a FULL revelation of God because they are finite. This planet can express God, as found in Jesus, but it cannot express the fullness of God. The only fullness that will be seen is as much of the fullness that can be expressed in a vessel of creation. This automatically puts limits to that expression.

The manifestation of the sons of God is a very tremendous revelation. But such a revelation is very closely tied to the earth, and thereby the revelation of the sons of God is limited in its scope. The manifestation of the sons of God as spoken of in Romans 8:19-20 is to release creation from the bands and bounds of corruption. The very function of the sons is to set free everything that is bound by the death throes of carnality. Their duty is to release creation from the old heavens and old earth into the NEW heavens and NEW earth. Such is the function of the sons of God (EL).

There are some that proclaim that they are already gods, however, such is not manifest in their lives. There is no drawing to these individuals as people were drawn to Jesus when He walked this earth. Also, if we follow the pattern, Jesus did not often openly declare that He was the Son of God. He revealed Himself personally to each individual.

He has called us to be like Him, and in order to do this we have to walk a thin red line - the Blood of Christ. Going off on the right or on the left will put you into error. The first part of the ministry coming forth right now is a Son of Man ministry, much as Jesus had on the earth. He demonstrated the Son of God ministry when He was crucified on the cross and in His resurrection He revealed His kingship. He was first a prophet (son of man doing healings etc.), then a priest (son of God on the cross) and then a King (kingdom ruling over death in the resurrection). In Jesus’ Son of Man ministry the people did not know who He was. Some of the more spiritual ones recognized Him as a prophet. None knew who He was. He alone knew.

We will not have our son of God ministry until we are crucified. We are not speaking of merely having our old nature crucified. If that has not been dealt with, then we are not even in the New Man. Romans 6:6 says we WERE crucified with Him. We have already passed through that experience. Now it is a matter of putting on and revealing His Life. We are looking through the cross and to the resurrection, seeing the ascended Christ.

Jesus was slain from the very foundation of the world, and we were slain with Him in the spiritual sphere. Now it may be that we will be literally slain by persecutions to come, but that has nothing to do with us, because we are not our own anymore. We have already been crucified. These persecutions should be as darts that we can take into us and push all the way through, because we are walking in light and they can not hurt us. We are not to ward them off, since we live in the kingdom order and can turn death into life. We are to take all things from the enemy and turn them back into life, because that is what Christ did (now the people who live in the church order, that Pentecostal order, use the shield of faith to ward off the darts of the enemy because they live in the heavens in which the enemy operates).

Our study on the Sons of Elohim will take us to the book of Ezekiel 28:2. We read of Lucifer here. There are many who say that Lucifer was a spirit, an evil spirit. However, as we read the following we see that he was a man and not a spirit: "Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God (Elohim), I sit in the seat of God (Elohim) in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God." Adam stepped outside into a new realm when he said, "I am a God." He then separated himself from his god nature. That caused a division in the garden whereby God remained in the garden and Adam moved to his outer flesh and lived in his outer man. He then developed a relationship with the flesh and the outer man. God walked in the midst of the garden and said, "Adam, where are you?" But Adam was not there. He separated himself and was hidden because he lived in the outer man. We see Lucifer as Adam in these verses. He was a light bearer. He was given a call, a word, a special anointing. (You might be interested in a tract that explains how Lucifer is Adam and not Satan which we have if you write us).

If you have a Strong’s Concordance you can look up the word "judge," and the number 430 is beside it. Upon looking that number up you see that the original Hebrew word for judge is Elohim. Looking at Exodus 22:8 we read: "If the thief is not found, then the master of the house shall be brought to the judges to see whether he has put his hand into his neighbor’s goods."

We see that the man who does wrong is taken to the Elohim. This "Elohim" is a plural word. God, although singular, is also plural; while one, He is many. God as Elohim said, "Let US make man in OUR image." This we know to be the image of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We begin to come into the image of the Son through a born-again experience. We begin to come into the image of the Holy Spirit through the Baptism of the Spirit. Now we are coming into the image of the Father which is all Spirit. When God, El, spoke this in Genesis 1:26, He was speaking prophetically. For He even now is creating man in His image and is bringing forth Elohim. He called Adam to be Elohim. He wants them in the same image as Himself. Here we see God, who was a Spirit, the great I Am, the ever-present one, the ever living one, who brings out a facet of Himself as El or God the Creator and says that He wants to make man in His image.

To clarify the point we must say that He did not say He was making us in the image of the I Am. We can never be the I Am because we are created beings. We will always be less than what He is, but will always be ever growing in His nature. To come fully into the His nature we need to come into what Christ had while He walked this earth. I believe that we will come into total spirituality, out of the carnal body, out of the redeemed body and into the Spirit’s sphere in the fullness of time. We will enter into Him unencumbered by a body.

As we come into the image of the Son of God we can release creation from the bondage of corruption. That is what He began through Jesus Christ for us, and the sons of God will finish it.

If we look at the judges mentioned in Exodus, we see men who had the power of life and death over everyone in Israel. God is calling a group to be the sons of God to have power over the house of Israel, over the brethren, the church, that they might become one and in righteous judgment deliver people from the bondage of carnality.

If we look at Luke 3:38 we see the genealogy of Christ. It reads: "The son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God." Adam was son of Elohim. He had that relationship and the fullness of life. When he separated himself from the life of God, God calls him a man rather than a son. God gave him a garment of skin (Genesis 3:21), which is what we all are wearing right now. But thank God He has a plan to lift us up to what we had before the fall so that we can ascend even higher than that.

Genesis 4:25-26 reads: "and Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and named him Seth. (appointed) For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel whom Cain killed." This seed that was newly appointed was a righteous seed. It was the son of God seed, for the lineage of Christ that we see in Luke comes from Seth. Look at how men called themselves at the time of the first generations. Genesis 4:26 shows us. "And to Seth, to him there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." Or "then began men to call themselves by the name of the Lord."(literal reference) Seth began to call himself what he was - a son of God.

In Genesis 6:1-2 we see another reference to the sons of Elohim. "And it came to pass, once men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." These sons of God were not angels that cohabitated with the daughters of men. They were men with a divine ministry who went down from that which they were called and instead cohabitated with the fallen nature. Thus God brought on the flood.

Eli's sons were also a type of the ministry falling and cohabitating with the lower nature, which was a step in the downfall of the nation of Israel. Eli, as a priest, was a type of God, Elohim. But his sons were wicked and even lay with women in the door of the tabernacle. He speaks to his sons in I Samuel 2:24-25: "Nay, my sons; for it is no good report that I hear: ye make the Lord's people to transgress. If one man sin against another, the judge (Elohim) shall judge him: but if a man sin against the Lord, (Jehovah) who shall entreat for him?"

If the church sins, the sons of God, the Elohim can stand there and judge them. They rule with a rod of iron and they rule and reign in righteousness. Their purpose is to set things on a higher plane. Hosea 10:12 says that if you sow in righteousness you will reap in mercy. Galatians 6 says that he who sows to the flesh reaps corruption, but he that sows to the Spirit reaps eternal life. It is very carnal to think that if you sow to the Spirit you will reap prosperity. Eternal life is totally on the spiritual plane not on the natural.

When the Elohim rule they do not do so with judgment unto death, but in righteousness they bring judgment with mercy in order to release that which God is raising up.

Exodus 7 shows us Moses as a son in action. God says to Moses, "See, I have made thee a god (Elohim) unto Pharaoh." If you have an understanding of history you know that the word "Pharaoh," whose name means "ruler of a great expanses" was viewed as a god and the high priest. Now Moses was told that he was Elohim to Pharaoh.

In these last days God has a Moses company who reveal themselves as Elohim. They do so with dynamics because they have come into that relationship. They can go to the thresholds of the highest religious order, the highest political order, to the highest economic or social strata and proclaim a word that brings these orders down. They do not have to say what they are. They are what they are because of what He has done.

We know that the man Moses was the meekest man who lived on the face of the earth. The forty years he spent in the wilderness were not wasted. However, the spies spent forty days in the promised land, ate all the choice things, then refused to accept the light and truth of which they partook. Beloved, that is where we are today. We are eating of the seventh day and the new order. If it does not do its work in us, we will be buried in the wilderness like they all were. Two of the twelve said that they could be Elohim, and Caleb and Joshua both entered the promised land in their generation.

In the book of Acts chapter 28 we see Paul as Elohim. The snake came out of the fire and bit him, and he did not die. The people looked at him for a long time and reasoned that he must have been a god (Elohim). They repented because of it. Paul said, "It is no longer I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Gal.2:20). Paul no longer identified with himself but with Christ. In Galatians 6:17 Paul says, "From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." These marks were from the whippings and persecutions he endured. Yet, it also means spiritually that he bore in his body the very sealing of the Lord, the

fullness of the nature of God. This is what testified from his life. He had that relationship with God and was a son of Elohim. Even when left for dead twice, because his life was hid in Christ, he raised himself from the dead. His railings were not part of the general resurrection but his own resurrection out of season.

Jesus said of Himself in John 10:17, "Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again." Jesus had this power within Himself, given Him by His Father. So also Paul had entered into the relationship of the garden experience. He was one with his Father while having the same body that you and I have right now. He was able to raise himself because he was one with God.

Finally, we will look at a reference made by Paul in Galatians 4:14 and this should be the testimony of us all. And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus." What he says here is that the people did not look at his outer man. We know that he was an ugly, short man who had trouble with his eyesight and perhaps some arthritis in his hands from years of sewing tents, yet these people could look beyond that to the Christ that indwelled him to such a fullness.

Let it be said that the Lord had come in Paul's life. Likewise has God called us to be Elohim in this earth. It is a marvelous thing that He is doing in these last days. Let us go on to perfection. While we may become, even have the power to become (John 1:12) sons of God, this is merely one facet or expression of God, for He appears in many ways, even as a man might appear as a father, son, husband, etc. all at once.

Let us not forget, that the very thing that we look for, the manifestation of the sons of God, is not the fullness of God, but the fullness of God made manifest in the flesh of the new creation man. We can never be I AM. But we can be an expression of Him who has begotten us with such a lively hope.

Sonship is based upon relationship. It based upon how well you know your Father, through His Son Jesus Christ. There is no other way to enter into the nature, the kingdom of God. Sonship is NOT what you do, but the character of God you reveal. Character or the nature of God can only be revealed by experiencing Him working within you. Then, you reveal the kingdom of God even as Jesus revealed the theocratic government of His Father in His life. Sonship is God ruling and reigning totally in your life to such a degree that people will think you speak with authority, even as they said of our Lord.