A. I believe when Jesus agreed to become a man, He voluntarily set aside His Godly powers and limited Himself the the powers available to mankind.  This is why He attributed His ability to perform miracles to the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:28), was in daily prayer with the Father, claimed not to know certain things (Matt. 24:36), and promised us we could do even greater things than he had done (John 14:12).

There are at least 3 reasons why we know this is true.  First, God can’t be tempted (James 1:13), but Jesus was tempted in every way and yet was without sin.  (Hebr. 4:15)  Second, according to the Law of Redemption He had to become a man to redeem what Adam had lost (Lev. 25:25) and save us, and third He had to become a man so He could be put to death.  It’s impossible to kill God.

A. Mormons believe God was created.   Some even believe he used to be a man and that might be what prompted the question.  But no one created God because God is the Creator of everything. When you translate the Hebrew name for God, it means the One who always was and always will be. In Isaiah 43:10 God said, “Before me no God was formed, nor will there be one after me.” In Isaiah 44:6 God said “I am the first and the last. Apart from me there is no God.” Between Isaiah 43 and Isaiah 50 that thought is repeated 7 times.  Our God is called The Eternal One for that reason.  He had no beginning and will have no end.

A. Let’s put the whole thing in perspective.  In Matt. 7:7-8 Jesus said that whoever asks for salvation will receive it.  No one is ever refused.  Paul confirmed that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13).  In Ephes. 2:8-9 Paul said the faith to be saved is a gift from God, and is not of ourselves.  And finally, Romans 8:30 says that everyone He calls is justified.  In other words no one refuses His call.

Since all these statements have to be true, God must have known in advance who was going to ask and when, otherwise some who ask might not receive, and some who are called might not respond. Sure enough Romans 8:29 says that those God foreknew, He predestined.  That means God knew in advance who would ask for salvation and reserved a place for them in Heaven.  Then at the proper time in their lives He calls them by investing them with the faith to ask, already knowing that they will.  When they do He cleanses them from all their sins (justifies them) and at the appointed time, either the resurrection or the rapture, He will glorify them. (Romans 8:30)  Once we understand that God is not limited by the constraints of time, all this makes perfect sense.

A. The Bible says that without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). Right from the beginning, God has required the life of an innocent being to pay for the sins of the guilty. At first is was an animal, but that only made things right temporarily.  Eventually it was His Son, the only sinless man ever born, who had to die for us.  No one knows why He requires this.  Some have said it’s the only way He can demonstrate how repulsive sin is to Him.  Others think it’s the only way He could express the true nature of His love for us.  I think it’s both.  His righteousness requires that sins be punished, and His justice requires the death penalty.  But His love requires that sins be forgiven.  His death on our behalf was the only way to reconcile this conflict and make peace with us. (Colossians 1:19-20)  Now all we need to do is ask to receive His forgiveness (Matt. 7:7-8).

A. All the time Jesus spent on Earth was in the form of a human.  Once, on the Mt. of Transfiguration, He momentarily assumed His glorified body. Matt. 17:2 tells us His face shone like the Sun and His clothes became as white as the light.  Mark 9:3 described Him as appearing in clothes brighter than any one in the world could bleach them. Luke 9:29 says His face changed and His clothes were as bright as lightning.

This was obviously not His normal appearance while He was here, and after a few minutes He changed back to look just like other men again.  Isaiah 53:2 said the messiah would have no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, and nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.  Jesus fulfilled this prophecy by looking like an ordinary man.   But His glory was not taken from Him.  He set it aside to become a man, so He could save mankind.

As for His pre incarnate position, in Psalm 2:7, written 1000 years before His birth, The Father said to Him, “You are my Son.  Today I have become your Father.” And in at least one encounter a demon addressed Him as the Son of the Most High God (Mark 5:7).  This seems to indicate that in the spirit world He was known as the Son of God even before people on Earth recognized Him as such.

A. I think the Lord had prepared Himself to endure the physical pain involved in His crucifixion.  What He wasn’t prepared for was the spiritual loss He suffered when for the first time in eternity He experienced separation from His Father.  We’ve always been separated from God so we can’t imagine what it would feel like to be one with Him.  He had always had union with the Father and wasn’t prepared for the pain that being separated would bring.

Personally, I think that in ways we can’t begin to understand the Trinity was changed at that moment, torn apart by our sins.   Jesus, trapped in the body of a man, took all the sin of mankind upon Himself, literally becoming sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21).  God could not bear the sight of it and had to turn His back, taking the light from the world in the process.  For the first time in eternity, Jesus was left completely alone, at the mercy of His tormentors.  It was too much, even for Him, and for the first and only time in the entire ordeal cried out in anguish,  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

A. The Bible was written for the Age of Man so it contains almost no information about either what happened before man was created (eternity past) or what will happen when the Age of Man ends (eternity future).  We can infer from the Bible that God, Satan, and the angelic host all existed before the Creation (Job 38:4-7) but almost nothing is said about their activities.  The one exception appears to be Satan’s rebellion, which probably took place in the interval between Genesis 1:1-2.  And believers can also be certain of an eternal life that will extend beyond the end of the Millennium. (John 3:16)  But again, no detail is given.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

A. In John 4:24 Jesus said, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” He also said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).  Paul said Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). The writer of Hebrews said the Son is the exact representation of the Father (Hebr. 1:3).  Jesus is the one member of the Trinity who we know has a physical body. From these statements, I believe we can assume that for all practical purposes, the Son is the physical presence of the Father.  If so,  the Father has no need for a glorified body.

A. I’ve answered questions about Enoch and Elijah before but always in connection with the two witnesses.  Yours concerns them being “taken into Heaven” before the cross.  The simplest answer is that they went to the place of comfort in Sheol to await the cross, like Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).  But I think they also serve as a model of the Rapture, passing directly from this world into the next, since the Bible says a matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses (Deut. 19:15).   Also, one was technically a gentile (Enoch lived before Abraham when there were no “Jews”) and the other was Jewish, so together they make a good sample of the Church (Gal. 3:28).

Finally, remember that special provision was made for Isaiah to stand in the presence of God at the time of his calling, 750 years BC.

“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.”
Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.   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 6:5-7)

Maybe something similar happened with Enoch and Elijah.

A. The Lord hasn’t  explained all the details of His plan to us, and it’s His right to keep some things to Himself.  Colossians 1:16 says all things were created by Him and for Him.  Satan is a created being (Ezek. 28:13), so that tells us he must serve some ongoing purpose in God’s plan. Since the Bible doesn’t explain how God can tolerate having Satan in His presence, any explanation I could offer would be pure speculation.