I AM THAT (WHO, WHAT) I AM!
by Robert Schmid, April 2004

It is a known fact that one can not step into the same river twice.

It is also a known fact that you are not the same person you were a second ago.

Why is this? Well, it is because everything created, from the smallest molecule to the largest planet, is subject to change. Not a once in a while change, but ongoing perpetual change like the hands on a clock that never stop moving. Just like time, that can not be stopped, so, change for everything created can not be stopped, whether we like it or not.

Time and change is what differentiates the created from the Creator. This is why the Creator God can positively and unequivocally state: “I (not ‘we’) change not”. When God said to Moses, “I am that I am”, one of the meanings is that God exists in the perfect present, not subject to a past (I am what I was) and not subject to a future (I am what I will become). God created time and is therefore not subject to time.

When we consider the Word of God, the Bible, it is clearly a book written primarily “in time”. There is a “beginning”, there is “history”, there are “prophecies”, there are “endings”. In other words the Bible is a book of “change”, because it is written to and for man who is born, lives and dies “in time”. There are however enough indications in the Bible for us to know that there is a spiritual dimension that has “no time.”

The most important and significant time event in the Bible is mentioned in Gal 4:5 where it says: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,…”. Undoubtedly, God had something to do with the fact that in the Old Testament time is counted from high to low (BC), and in the New Testament from low to high (AD), pointing to the most important event in human history, the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God.

What happened in the “fulness of time”? “The Word BECAME flesh and dwelled among us…”. In other words, The Word BECAME something that it was not BEFORE. The Word (of God) BECAME Jesus, the son of man and the Son of God by being born of Mary.

But, from God’s point of view who is not “in time”, Jesus, His Son was “…foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,…” Does that mean that Jesus existed before He was born, as some teach? Of course not. The Word, that was always with God, and was God, BECAME Jesus, the Son of God. The fact that He was foreordained before the foundation of the world and existed in the mind of God does not alter the fact that it all happened 2000 years ago.

Lets again consider John 1:1. We have two options, we can interpret or believe the verse. If we interpret the verse, we end up with all the various human definitions of the word “Word”, such as “the second person of the trinity”, “the Son of God”, “Jesus Christ”, the Spokesman”, “a member of the God Head”, a second co-equal God, i.e., in all cases, a separate, second God Being.

But if we take John 1:1 literally and simply belief it, then John 1:1 says: “In the beginning was the Word (who’s Word? The Word of God) and the Word (of God) was with God, and the Word (of God) was God (not “a” God, but was “the” God).

You were created in the image of God, so look at yourself in a mirror and personalize the verse for a correct understanding of John 1:1. In the beginning is my word, and my word is with me, and my word is me. That makes ONE person, not TWO. Your word is the first thing that you see and hear as it comes out of your mouth and mind. It is your word that emanates from you and reaches others through the miracle of sound and hearing. Others can not perceive your thoughts with their five senses. That’s why in the beginning is the word. Everything you want to communicate and accomplish you do with your word. That’s how God does it. The Word of God is God’s personal expression of Himself, i.e. there was only ONE God Being from the beginning, Yahweh Elohim.

Who was and is the God of the Old Testament? God Himself answered when He told Moses: “I am that I am”, “I am who I am”, “I am what I am”, say to the people: “I am has sent me to you”! The “I am” of the O.T. spoke all things into existence through and by HIS WORD, manifested Himself through and by HIS SPIRIT and revealed Himself through and by HIS WISDOM to His people Israel and the nations as a whole.

Jesus, the Word of God that BECAME the Son of God, is the “I am” of the New Testament because He totally and completely represents the “I am” of the Old Testament.

“Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 14:10).

For human beings, the moving river, just as the ever moving time, means endless change. For the Creator God, the “I am” of the Bible, all of the past and all of the future are contained in a perfect present state of being.

The good news is that physical “I am’s” too, will eventually be at rest, no longer subject to the restless river and the ever moving time. Men will be at-one with the great “I am”, God the Father, and the great “I am” Jesus the first born Son, and become spiritual “I am’s” themselves.

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