The ''pre-incarnate'' Jesus and JW's idea of Jesus being Michael

I have come across a strange teaching on certain Christian websites that Jesus made an appearance before his birth to Mary....as an angel. According to some Jesus was ''the angel of The Lord'' who was the fierce, unforgiving angel of exodus, the same angel who blessed Hagar and appeared to Jacob in a dream and to Moses as the fire on the bush. The reasoning used to conclude that the ''angel of The Lord'' was Jesus is that the angel had ''the Name of God'' in him and did things that only God does - bless and cause to multiply(Hagar) and declare ''I am God'' (Jacob + Moses). It appears that since Christians believe Jesus is the ''son of God'' and Jesus said no man has seen the Father, some Christians have concluded that this angel had to have been Jesus, who according to trinitarians, is God-the son. Going by the Old Testaments premise of monotheism, I believe the angel was a mouthpiece through which God was speaking. The angel would have been a visible represntation of the divine. In the NT, Jesus never claimed to be this angel, yet some Christians claim that this powerful angel was a ''pre-incarnate'' Jesus. This idea of Jesus being an angel before his birth is identical to the Jehovahs witnesses claim that Jesus was actually the archangel Michael. And ironically, this JW teaching is dismissed by many Christians as heretical. Thoughts on this?

JW is one of the Kingdom Cults of Mathew 13 ,along with their cousins the Mormons . So if you find some strange beliefs within those groups ,use much salt .peace

the2ofusr1
JW is one of the Kingdom Cults of Mathew 13 ,along with their cousins the Mormons . So if you find some strange beliefs within those groups ,use much salt .peace

I was talking about NON-JWs claiming Jesus showed up as an angel. Probably protestants.

The Seventh Day Adventists also believe Jesus was the archangel Michael.

reply to post by sk0rpi0n



I think you've misunderstood the claim a little. Either that or it was poorly stated in whatever you read.

The claim isn't that Jesus Christ was an angel before His incarnation (yes, I know JW's claim this, but you're not referring to that, so neither am I)...

The claim is that the title "Angel of the Lord" is a title used to describe the pre-incarnate Christ, and to suggest that Christ Himself appeared numerous times in the Old Testament (e.g. to Gideon, to Abraham prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, wrestling with Jacob etc.).

The title is significant; the meaning even more so... however, don't assume that the word "angel" necessary means that He was an angel - after all, the word translated in English as 'angel' simply means 'messenger'. THAT would be considered to be the correct interpretation here; that Christ was sent as a messenger.

Obviously, under this same viewpoint, Christ cannot be an angel, because "through Jesus Christ, all things were made; without Him, nothing was made that has been made", and "to which of the angels did God ever say 'you are my son; today I have become your Father'?".

Likewise Jesus is "the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world", and so on, and so forth. He is the "eternal Father" in Isaiah 9, too - so the title of 'messenger' here is indicative of a function or purpose, and not indicative of him being, in nature, an angel.

To further that point:

Could Michael the archangel be Jesus?
No - Colossians 2 states that "in Him (Jesus) dwells all the fulness of God in bodily form". Angels are not, nor can they claim equality with God. Yet Hebrews says that for Jesus, "it was not robbery to claim equality with God...", and that he is "so much greater than the angels..." (1:4).

I could go on, but I won't bother. Scripture is pretty clear; Michael is an archangel, and one of the "chief princes". Jesus is "the image of the invisible God". The two are not synoymous, either in Title, in Rank, in greatness or in person.

@ Awen24....The claim isn't that Jesus Christ was an angel before His incarnation.
The claim is that the title "Angel of the Lord" is a title used to describe the pre-incarnate Christ, and to suggest that Christ Himself appeared numerous times in the Old Testament (e.g. to Gideon, to Abraham prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, wrestling with Jacob etc.).

both angels and prophets are messengers of God. That doesn't mean we confuse human messengers with angelic messengers. Also if Jesus, who you consider to be ''God'', wrestled with Jacob and.... LOST... Does that mean Jacob defeated God???

sk0rpi0n

@ Awen24....The claim isn't that Jesus Christ was an angel before His incarnation.
The claim is that the title "Angel of the Lord" is a title used to describe the pre-incarnate Christ, and to suggest that Christ Himself appeared numerous times in the Old Testament (e.g. to Gideon, to Abraham prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, wrestling with Jacob etc.).

both angels and prophets are messengers of God. That doesn't mean we confuse human messengers with angelic messengers. Also if Jesus, who you consider to be ''God'', wrestled with Jacob and.... LOST... Does that mean Jacob defeated God???

edit on 17-2-2014 by sk0rpi0n because: (no reason given)

This is a discussion about a Christian teaching, not an Islamic one. You're imposing a Muslim viewpoint on a Christian text. The word 'angel' literally - LITERALLY means 'messenger'. The word 'prophet' does not. Prophets are not referred to as messengers of God in Christianity, nor in Judaism.

...now, as far as Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord...
nowhere does it say that anybody lost. What *is* said is that Jacob has "wrestled with men and with God, and prevailed". The reference to 'prevailing' isn't regarding physical wrestling, but Jacob's struggle, spiritually; this, too, is typified by the fact that wrestling puts Jacob's hip out of joint (dislocated), but he continues to wrestle, and doesn't give up.
Note too that Jacob says "I have seen God face to face" (v. 31) in that passage.

The so called "pre-incarnate" Christ idea is actually a Hebraic/Christian concept tracing back to the first verse of Genesis. You will notice in most translations of the Bible, in some verses God Himself says "God did this thing from God out of heaven" or "I YHWH swear by YHWH" etc. because the literal interpretation and translation of the text demands it. Many Jewish theologians who did not even believe that Yeshua was the Messiah acknowledged and speculated for years that the Messiah would in fact be of a divine origin. That the Word of God was not merely words or language, but alive itself.

If we look to the Aramaic Targum translations of the Old Testament, we find this concept demonstrated quite clearly. It is clear that the Apostle John was at least familiar with the Targums when speaking of the "Word of God" in the Gospel of John. It also brings a whole new meaning to when the prophets would say "the Word of the LORD came unto me saying." According to the Targums and throughout the Bible the Word of God is God and an extension of God, equal to God, makes decisions, etc. For example the first chapter of Genesis reads like this:

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

The Hebrew understanding in the Aramaic helped clarify the text. Here is the same verse in the Targum translation in Aramaic to English.
And the Word [Memra] of the Lord created man in His likeness, in the likeness of the Lord, the Lord created, male and female created He them."

And I will establish my covenant between My Word [Memra] and between you

Targum Onkelos Gen. 17:7

Gen. 17 [7] And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.

Gen. 22: [14] And Abraham called the name of that place Yehovah-Yireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.

And Abraham worshipped and prayed in the name of the Word [Memra] of YHVH, and said, "You are Lord who does see, but You cannot be seen."

And the Word [Memra] of the Lord caused to descend upon the peoples of Sodom and Gommorah, brimstone and fire from the Lord in heaven.

Targum Jonathan on Gen. 19:24

Gen. 19 [24] Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;


And Israel saw the great strong hand of God, what He did to the Egyptians. They feared God and believed in His Word [Memra] and in His servant Moses.

Onkeles Targum on Exodus 14:31

Exodus 14 [31] And Israel saw that great work which the LORD did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, and his servant Moses.

Genesis 15:6 - And Abraham believed in the Lord.

Targum - And Abraham believed in the Word of the Lord.

Genesis 20:3 - And God came to Abimelech.

Targum - And the Word from before the Lord came to Abimelech.

These are just a few examples. This same Word of God that created the Universe is in fact God and came down as a ransom for humanity, especially for the northern House of Israel, to bridge the gap and take back His bride legally.

As far as the divinity of the Messiah, Yeshua, remember that when a cat gives birth to a cat, that cat is still genetically a cat and just as much a cat, and when a woman has a baby that baby is just as much a human being as the mother and father, thus when God has a Son it can't be any less than God. He lives in a dimension outside of our own, governed by a different set of physics, or do physics even apply there? Who's to say what He can and can't do? He can be a Word, Spirit, and Himself all in one. Not three, one. Think of it as a glass of water being poured into another vessel. The water is the same water, just in a different representation.

Here are a few more examples of the Word of the Lord being a conscious extension of the Creator.

Exodus 14:31 - And they believed in the Lord.

Targum - And they believed in the Word of the LORD.

Exodus 20: 1- And the Lord spoke all these words.

Targum - And the Word of the Lord spoke all these words

Exodus 25:22 - And I will meet with you there.

Targum - And I will appoint my Word for you there.

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Leviticus 26:9- And I will turn to you.

Targum - And I will turn through my Word to do good to you.

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Numbers 10:35 - Rise up, O Lord!

Targum - Rise up, O Word of the Lord!

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Numbers 11:23 - Is the hand of the Lord shortened?

Targum - Is the Word of the Lord detained?

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Deuteronomy 1:30 - The Lord your God who goes before you, He Himself will fight for you.

Targum - The Lord your God who leads before you, His Word will fight for you.

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Deuteronomy 18:19 - I myself will require it of him.

Targum - My Word will require it of him.

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Deuteronomy 31:3 - The Lord your God will pass before you.

Targum - The Lord your God, His Word will pass before you.

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Joshua 1:5 - As I was with Moses I will be with you.

Targum - As my Word was in support of Moses, so my Word will be in your support.

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Judges 11:10 - The Lord will be witness between us.

Targum - The Word of the Lord will be witness between us.

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Isaiah 45:17 - Israel will be saved by the Lord.

Targum - Israel will be saved by the Word of the Lord.

Exodus 3:14 "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Rabbi Tzvi Nassi cites the Jerusalem Targum to Shemot (Exodus) 3:14:

And the Word [Memra] of the Lord said unto Moses: "I am He who said unto the world, ‘Be!’ And it was; and who in the future shall say to it, ‘Be!’ And it shall be." And He said: "Thus thou shalt say to the children of Israel;

‘I Am hath sent me unto you’."

See how clear it becomes that the Word of God is God and yet a sort of messenger or "angel?" After all an angel simply means messenger. A postman in the literal sense would be an angel. We just tend to associate them with celestial beings.

A partial Targum also expresses that the Word of YHWH was the Creator.

Exodus 12:42...The first night, when the Word of YHWH was revealed to the world in order to create it, the world was desolate and void, and darkness spread over the face of the abyss and the Word of the Lord was bright and illuminating and He called it the first night. (Fragmentary Targum)

Psalm 33:6 "By the Word of YHWH were the heavens made, And all the hosts of them by the Spirit of His mouth."

The whole JW theology is flawed and no one has it perfect. The Word of God is mentioned in the Gospel of John as coming in the flesh and interacting with us in the person of Jesus Christ (Yeshua the Messiah.) They change their translation to suite their own theology and it's been proven time and time again. In fact the name Jehovah is a mixed Latin transliteration from a Hebrew tradition to insert the vowels of Adonai into the Divine Name for fear of pronouncing it. So they have quite a bit to learn and quite a bit deliberately misleading. I hope that helps clarify the concept is far older than Christianity and in fact a central tenet of the faith.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy

The Seventh Day Adventists also believe Jesus was the archangel Michael.

Some prominent members of the denomination thought so, a hundred years ago, which is where the Jehovah's Witnesses founders picked it up from.
I don't think I have ever heard anyone say that in church since the early sixties.
It's one of those things that is in the old literature but people generally ignore, like things about people on other planets, and people becoming angels.

reply to post by jmdewey60


Didn't Jesus say in heaven we are like angels?

reply to post by Akragon

Didn't Jesus say in heaven we are like angels?

Not the same thing as literally becoming angels.
But that is not where the idea comes from in the SDA church.
Not that I am an expert since I'm not aware of it ever coming up in discussion when I was around where I would have head it.
In the writings, it is connected with the Satan myth of how one third of the angels fell with him.
The argument is that there is a certain number of angels which should exist, so the ranks need to be filled.

The problem with this teaching is this;

I too can cherry pick bits and pieces from the bible and come up with my own seemingly logical teaching on who Jesus is. (This is not an actual teaching, merely a demonstration of what one can construct)

In Genesis after God creates Adam, he is feeling very pleased with himself and says "now he looks like us" The word us implies that God is supreme leader of a race of beings. If God were on his own up there, he would have said "now he looks like me"

If one reads through the bible, they will note that God's miracles and signs are manipulations of nature. i.e. when the Israelites sound their trumpet and the walls of Jericho fall because an earthquake conveniently happens immediately afterward. Based on the assumption that the story is true as per what is written, then God used some sort of power to make an earthquake. Same thing can be said when the red sea was parted, when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed etc etc.

So, knowing that God is a superior being and has all the knowledge that we possess today and probably infinitely more again one can make the following assumption;

Jesus is a clone of God.

Why? Well it explains the trinitarian theory of Jesus being God - He is God's genetic copy placed in the womb of a human to be born upon this earth. So it would then be possible for God to be a trinity as described. God the father (Allah for the Islam folk) is the original creator. The mysterious and elusive holy spirit is God's psychic abilities manifesting i.e. when the holy spirit comes down, it is God using advanced psychic abilities to remotely manipulate physical things here on earth. Jesus is also God, but not the origianl God because he is a clone of him.

See what I did there, I created (well expanded upon UFOlogist ideas) a new idea by interpreting what is written in a new way.

Doesn't mean it's true though......

Awen24

sk0rpi0n

@ Awen24....The claim isn't that Jesus Christ was an angel before His incarnation.
The claim is that the title "Angel of the Lord" is a title used to describe the pre-incarnate Christ, and to suggest that Christ Himself appeared numerous times in the Old Testament (e.g. to Gideon, to Abraham prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, wrestling with Jacob etc.).

both angels and prophets are messengers of God. That doesn't mean we confuse human messengers with angelic messengers. Also if Jesus, who you consider to be ''God'', wrestled with Jacob and.... LOST... Does that mean Jacob defeated God???

edit on 17-2-2014 by sk0rpi0n because: (no reason given)

This is a discussion about a Christian teaching, not an Islamic one. You're imposing a Muslim viewpoint on a Christian text. The word 'angel' literally - LITERALLY means 'messenger'. The word 'prophet' does not. Prophets are not referred to as messengers of God in Christianity, nor in Judaism.

...now, as far as Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord...
nowhere does it say that anybody lost. What *is* said is that Jacob has "wrestled with men and with God, and prevailed". The reference to 'prevailing' isn't regarding physical wrestling, but Jacob's struggle, spiritually; this, too, is typified by the fact that wrestling puts Jacob's hip out of joint (dislocated), but he continues to wrestle, and doesn't give up.
Note too that Jacob says "I have seen God face to face" (v. 31) in that passage.

And at this point I will chime in with genesis 32 30, where Jacob named the city he met God, his pineal, and his struggles to pervail meant to perfect, to love and be kind, to overcome his body, his anger, his reactions, and programming/judgements to be a good, loving decent person with purity, and the more he did this overcome his ego to give into his weaknesses, the higher up the ladder he could go in frequency.

Such is the real meaning.

And who did help him in his purification, God did. God was with him every step of the way. Plus there is the whole defining of God, who is God, the Creator of this universe, Mom/Dad, the Great Spirit of Peace and Love that connects all good advanced and progressed souls? In whom we enter and exit for lessons? Or is it the Family of Love and Peace, connected by that Spirit of Peace and Love. What I know is God is Good, and really really Love.

Now there are probably more ancient mysteries, and writings, some gnostic and some masonic or mystery school. Because the Michael/Christ is somewhat of a mystery. Atom/Adam/Michael/Christ. Christ Yeshua/Jesus is called the Sun/Son, and for example, Japan is the House of the Rising Sun, BC is also a sun flag, setting sun??? And in Japan, traditionally Buddhist, even Tao, there were 2 cities bombed during ww2. One had a real Catholic population set up, and they always sacrifice the Christian Lambs. This was associated with Michael/Christ, and the nuclear is the anti christ, or the anti or artificial sun. Its happening again with Fukushima and targetting there and even BC.

I can't actually remember all the articles I read some of this from. But its in my mind now, a mystery.

Our inner Michael defeats our inner dragon. But so did Krishna defeat the black snake of the world, and then again there is Christ who overcomes Satan. The whole thing is symbolic and inner work. Such as Jacob overcoming his flesh and seeing through the world, humbling self and climbing that ladder higher and higher.

So, who is Michael is a better question really? Why so many who wake up to Michael's presence? Or feel that Michael is a great tree and we are like seeds from this tree. Who is Michael in relation to humanity, is he like a Father?

Im more interested in searching who Michael is, that is the clue to the mystery. And more interested in more ancient myths or legends or knowledge than what may or may not be hinted at, in the bible.

If this is just going to be a discussion on the meaning of the Holy Trinity, I guess I'll give my two cents worth.

Holy Spirit is above

God the Father and God the Son,

but they are all One.

The Holy Spirit is the essence of God, it is the Word of the LORD, it is the only truth in all of creation. It is the Light shining in the Darkness.

I call it Consciousness.

For any Consciousness to be labeled GOD, it has to have power over everything it perceives.
It must know all, see all, do all, and be All There Is.
Sounds pretty boring if you ask me.
But GOD is a clever beast, He created a way for Him to be All There Is, but without knowing it.
He did this by giving birth to a Son. The Son had all the same power as the Father, but without having control over the Father, himself. The Son was given authority over all that was below him, but the Father was to remain above the Son for all of time, because the Father was First. From these two Greatest Lights, arose the entire Kingdom of Heaven and it Reigns Forever.

Holy Trinity in a nutshell. Just my understanding of it, anyway, so don't get your stones gathered up in a pile.

reply to post by GodIsRelative


Interesting concept, but you have only adequately explained father and son. Being a trinity, there is a third part.

How do you explain the holy spirit in your version?

reply to post by markosity1973


The Holy Spirit is what allows them both to be Eternal, yet for there to be more than One Father and One Son.

When the Father made the Son, the Father allowed the Son to have Sons of his own. The Father then becomes GrandFather, and the Son becomes the Father to his own Son. With me so far?

The Holy Spirit is that one which we call the "Most High." The Father of All Fathers. His name by science is Consciousness, but also the Universe. He is One that is in Many, yet also how Many become One.

I apologize if this isn't clear enough, I'm trying to be as pointed and accurate as possible, but with a subject like God, I think it may be impossible to use too many words.

reply to post by GodIsRelative


Thankyou for that fascinating explanation. It just goes to show how many takes on the trinity and ultimately just who Jesus is in all of it there could be.

A wise priest once said to me we are not meant to know the exact answer because it interferes with the intended messages in the gospels. Those messages being about love, hope, salvation and moral teachings.