Question: I've read 100 pages of the Amazing Aims and Claims of Jesus, and it is all very interesting, but I would like to know your explanation of John 17:5 which suggests that Jesus was alive before the world began. I look forward to hearing from you.
Jon
Answer:
And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."
This verse is interpreted by Trinitarians to mean that literally Jesus existed "before the world was." However, did he literally exist as a person or in God's foreknowledge, "in the mind of God?" Jesus did not literally exist except in the mind and plan of God the Father. We can compare this to an architect who can give details of a plan for his building he has designed before one stone is laid on the actual construction site. In the same way, God the Father, the Architect had a divine plan. Christ was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8).
God had a plan concerning the Messiah way before his birth where Trinitarian belief would have us believe that Jesus was praying about glory he had with God as though he literally existed before his birth.
Trinitarians fail to see that when Jesus was praying, he was also praying in verses 20-22 for his disciples and future disciples who do not yet exist, but yet Jesus has given future disciple, past tense, this same glory.
"And I have given them the glory which You have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one."
If John 17:5 is to mean that Jesus literally existed before the world was, then all the disciples at the time and future disciples existed before the world was, before they were born, but Trinitarians ignore their own inconsistencies of interpretation.
Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7:39) but is simply praying about his future glorification as if he currently has it. Jesus was glorified when God raised him from the dead.
Luke 24:26 says, "Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?"
Acts 3:13 says, "The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His son Jesus, whom you delivered up, denying Him in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to let Him go."
1 Corinthians 15:41-45, "There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, "The first man Adam became a living soul," the last Adam life-giving spirit.
