Introduction to “My Online Bible Study”…

LESSON RESPONSE FORM:

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Thank you for your response. ✨

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MAIN POINTS IN THIS LESSON?

1.) The words in the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, NASB)… sets forth the reality of an “Ultimate Super Intelligence,” the One who is the Creator of heaven and earth and the Giver of and Sustainer of all life. The Bible says, “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things hafe been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together – (Colossians 1:16-17, NASB).

2.) Did you know that the word, “God,” as used in the book of Genesis, and elsewhere in scripture, is actually a plural word—it’s the Hebrew word, “Elohim” (denoting: more than one) —as opposed to the singular— “El” or “Eloah”, meaning only one?  And yet, Parsons (2012) informs me that:

  • The masculine plural ending does not mean “gods” when referring to the true God of Israel, since the name is mainly used with singular verb forms and with adjectives and pronouns in the singular… However, the form indeed allows the plurality within the Godhead (or, what many have come to call, the Trinity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit).

(Parsons, 2012, para. 2)

3.) Just looking at this ancient Hebrew word, “Elohim,” itself, we can determine that God cannot be contained, or limited to, our meager human understanding of an intelligence, or a personality. God is multiple intelligences? He is multiple personalities? God is a collection of intelligences… or a “collective” (if you will). And this is why the Book of Genesis tells us that, after the creation, when God later determined to create humanity:

  • God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

(Genesis 1:26-27)

Looking carefully at this passage of scripture, we can see the duel nature of Deity; that is, both the plural and the singular nature of God.  First, God says, “Let Us make man in Our image,” then the scripture goes on to say, “God created man in His own image.”  So, God is multiple intelligences!  But these multiple intelligences present themselves, at least to humanity, as an infinitely unified collective – just one God! What do we mean when we say, God is multiple intelligences?  We know from the scripture that God is at least three divine entities, don’t we?  God is the Father, God is the Son, and God is the Holy Spirit – THREE in ONE!  Beyond that, the Bible does not tell us anything more about the plural nature of God.

4.) As a human being, before you are anything else, you are an intelligence, an intellect, a personality…  yes, like the animals, you too are flesh, and bone, and sinew, and brain matter, and all sorts of electrical and chemical reactions… you are a mammal.  But first and foremost, beyond on all that, you need to know – and deep in your mortal soul you DO know – that your animal body has been infused by your Creator with something more than what any of the other animals possess – no matter what their respective level of “intelligence” might be – because you have made in the image of God.  The Bible says:

  • “What is man, that You remember him? Or the son of man, that You are concerned about him? You have made him for a little while lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, and have appointed him over the works of Your hands; You have put all things in subjection under his feet.”

(Psalm 8:4-5 & Hebrews 2:6-8, NASB)

5.) Created Beings include:

  • Animal Intelligence – some far more “intelligent” than others.
  • Angelic Intelligence – way above all the animals, there are the angels, who appear to be capable of an inter-dimensional existence, and who for eons have been living, growing, gaining knowledge, wisdom, and insight in the very presence of God. 
  • Human Intelligence – somewhere between the animals and the angels, just a little lower than the angels, but still bound to this earth, at least for a while, we have humanity.  Like the angels, we are created in the image of God.  That is, we have been created to be an autonomous, self-aware intelligence with the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking… and, we might add, a perpetual existence!  We are “like God” in those ways – that’s what it means to be created in God’s own image.  God, the ultimate singularity, the grand designer, the architect of the universe, in His infinite wisdom, has determined that YOU and I would exist and that we would, in respect to our intellect, our mind, be like Him.

According to scripture, He willed your existence and fashioned a vessel in which you as an autonomous intelligence, a self-aware intellect, that “person” who is YOU was meant to dwell.  The Bible says:

  • For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your bookbefore one of them came to be.

 (Psalm 139:13-16, NIV)

6.) As a human being, are more than a mere cosmological accident – you do not exist (against all odds) simply because you got “lucky.”  And, you are far more than just a “slightly more intelligent mammal” dwelling here upon the earth for a little while; you are, ultimately, a spiritual being – like God – a spiritual being having an earthly experience.  And long after we are done with these physical, mortal, animal bodies in which we are now living for a little while, that being, that intelligence, that intellect, that personality, that “mind”… that is you and I – will continue on in whatever form or embodiment God will have provided for us.

7.) The Bible says that ultimately when the Lord Jesus returns on that great and final day, in the resurrection on that last day, the One who created you, the One who willed your existence and who created you to be an autonomous, intelligent entity – God – will give you, and me, and each one of us, a new body.  According to the Bible, it will be some kind of a new, immortal, indestructible body – not made of flesh and blood – in which our spirit, our intellect, that self-aware body of intelligence that is our mind, will dwell forever.

  • “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory!”

(I Corinthians 15:51-54)

So, we know that there is only one God but, also, that this one God is described in scripture as consisting of multiple divine intelligences, or entities, or beings:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

8.) When Jesus was asked by some of the people who were following Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29-30, NASB). Sometimes, THAT can be the most difficult “work” of all.  We as carnal minded, fleshly thinking human beings often find it difficult to believe in what we cannot see with their own eyes, or experience physically in this material world, or somehow test scientifically.  But how can anyone even begin to know the unknowable or explain the unexplainable or test the untestable?

9.) While we simply cannot explain God, the fact of God—that fact that God exists—is evidenced all around us.  We cannot see Him; as the Apostle Paul said, God “alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (I Timothy 6:16, NASB); and yet, His presence is abundantly evident. 

10.) Jesus once said, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24, NASB). God is spirit… mind, intelligence, intellectual energy!  And, according to the Bible, there is a vast world of intellectual beings that exists just beyond the perimeters of our physical perception. 

  • The Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians living in the city of Ephesus saying, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12, NASB).  According to this verse, the rulers, powers, world forces of darkness, and spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly (or spiritual) places manifest themselves here upon the earth in various ways; and Christians, even here in this physical realm, have to contend with them.
  • Paul also writes to the people living in the city of Corinth saying, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.  We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5, NASB).
  • According to this verse, Christians do NOT wage a physical, flesh & blood, battle against these spiritual forces of wickedness; but, rather, it is an intellectual battle.  Paul mentions “SPECULATIONS,” and every lofty thing raised up against the “KNOWLEDGE” of God, and taking every “THOUGHT” captive to the obedience of Christ.  Spiritual warfare is warfare of the mind!  As Christians, we are in a battle for the hearts and minds of people.

11.) Essentially, our “spirit” is our self-aware, conscious, autonomous intellect – our “mind” and all the intelligence, feelings, emotions, memories, experiences, personality, and unique character traits that it contains.  After we have departed this physical body, this carnal vessel, in which we must live for a little while here upon the earth, our “mind,” our “spirit,” we as conscious “beings,” will continue to exist.  As the Apostle Paul says, “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man (our flesh) is decaying, yet our inner man (our mind) is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16, NASB). 

12.) God is a mind so vast, so powerful, so energetic that He transcends all the matter and energy of this material universe – it is all subject to Him and He simply cannot be contained.

  • The Bible says that there is “one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6, NASB), and “all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17, NASB).
  • Jesus said: “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8, NASB).
  • Spiritual things and spiritual beings, like God, are like the wind; they cannot not be seen, but still, they are very real, and can be experienced.  The evidence of God’s existence is abundant, it’s all around us.  From the relatively simple design of a living plant to the incomprehensible engineering of the human genome, evidence for the existence of an intelligence so vast that He defies imagination encompasses us.

CONCLUSION: While we will never entirely comprehend just “what” God is, we can know and do know “that” God is!  And the holy scriptures assure us that THAT is enough; for the Bible says: “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible…” “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe THAT HE IS and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11: 3 & 6, NASB).

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Resources/References

Parsons, J.J. (2012). Hebrews names of God: Elohim and Elohei constructs given in Tanakh. Retrieved from the Hebrew for Christians website at: http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Names_of_G-d/Elohim/elohim.html

Shermer, M. (1992-2015). The work of Michael Shermer. Scientific American. Retrieved from: http://www. michaelshermer.com/ 2002/01/shermers-last-law/

Scripture taken from:

NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright (c) 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Copyright (c) 2026 – Philip R. Stroud

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