Disturbing

It was another boring-but-necessary day in the American Baptist Seminary of the West. The topic was the ‘image of God’ and the professor was confused. We entered into a futile discussion of what the image of God could actually be. Concordances were consulted, German theologians were consulted. No consensus. Decades later, I’d learned to let the Holy Spirit teach me and it became obvious. It was right there in the Bible! Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” This is very disturbing to the evangelical mind! God is male and female. It is obvious! I have heard it said there can’t possibly be female angels. Hummm. What do you do with Zechariah 5:5-11? And then there’s a problem with Malachi 4:2, “But to you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings; and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves.” The translators were so disturbed about this issue they chose to replace the obvious feminine with a male pronoun. The German Bible gets it right!  “Healing in her wings.” When you look at creation, everything, with only a few exceptions, are male and female. Now, something new has happened – increasingly often, when we discern angels coming there is a male and female. We asked the Lord why this was. His response, “You have not been willing to view my creation in My image – male and female.