The Son of Man Revealed

Let us continue our study of the spirit of God in man by taking a look at Luke 17:24-37. Jesus had just dropped the hammer on the religious-minded, on the kingdom-minded. He told them, and us as well, not to look outside ourselves for the kingdom. The kingdom is not on the outside, he said. The kingdom of God is within.

Then Jesus predicted what they should look for. It is not like the arrival of an army in a cloud of dust, it is more like a revelation. It will be a realization. When the kingdom and the king are finally realized, it will be all at once. It will illuminate everything. He said this in Luke 17:24, “For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven, so shall also the Son of man be in his day.”

We have sayings such as, 'your day will come', and. 'every dog has its day'. The predicted day of the Son of man will be the natural outcome of all that has gone before. Things will come to a head, so to speak. What has been developing all along will finally bear fruit. There will be a sudden all-encompassing flash of illumination. We will, at last, when the Son of man is revealed, understand everything. It will all be clear.

Who is the Son of man? People around Jesus did not call him the Son on man; it was Jesus, alone, who styled himself thus. We get this from Wikipedia: The Hebrew expression "son of man" (בן–אדם, ben-'adam) appears 107 times in the Hebrew Bible, the majority (93 times) in the Book of Ezekiel. And this: The New Testament features the indefinite "a son of man" in Hebrews 2:6 (citing Psalm 8:4), and "one like a son of man" in Revelation 1:13, 14:14 (referencing Daniel 7:13's "one like a son of man"). [9] The four gospels introduce a new definite form, "ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου", literally "the man's son." It is awkward and ambiguous in Greek. [1] In all four it is used only by Jesus (except once in the Gospel of John, when the crowd asks what Jesus means by it), and functions as an emphatic equivalent of the first-person pronoun, I/me/my.

Scholars seem confused as to the exact application of the expression. They suggest it shows the unreachable Holiness of God as opposed to the attribute of man's utter commonness. I would like to suggest something else.

God, a spirit, knows what it is like to be a father, i.e. the expression “only begotten son of God.” God has an opinion about the whole 'son' thing. Men, as flesh imbued with spirit, share that opinion. A son is the better part of the father. The father is proud of, or knows great joy in the son and lifts him up. The father paves the way for the son, gives him all that he has.

My suggestion is that son of man is the mortal equivalent to son of God. The two are connected in a spiritual sense and combined, act as a bridge between the lost state of man and the redeemed state of man.

When the only begotten son of God called himself the Son of man, I see a natural extension of state between the son and all who are one with the son. Consider the earnest prayer of Jesus found in John 17, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”

How can mortal man be one with a spiritual God? The answer is this: they must be on the same spiritual page. I think the beginning of that is the realization that man is not separate from God – he is built around the Godcore – spirit is mind.

That realization will come. The seeds have been planted and everything develops according to a predetermined schedule. Among spirits in man, there are those who embrace their spirituality and those who reject it as so much wish fulfillment. The realization will come to all, but to some, it will be an 'oops' moment.

It will be like the fable of the grasshopper and ants. All along, the ants were preparing, developing, embracing. The grasshopper – well, he just wasn't the type. He laughed at the ants and made no preparations of his own. He cared not to develop. He may have been successful at ignoring it all summer, but when the cold winds began to blow, the realization came to him as well. It came in a flash.

Jesus made that point to his audience: the time will come. The realization will come, just as it did to all those who ignored and laughed at Noah, just as it came to all those who ignored and laughed at Lot.

The revelation will be a realization. All of a sudden, it will be everywhere and everything. We will no longer be able to laugh at it or ignore it. It will not be outside of us and unaffecting. It will be within us and we will be forced to take it personally.

The coming of the kingdom of God will be the revelation of his son, whom he has exalted. The son is one with the spiritual father and we are one with the son – it is internal. The kingdom is within, us right, now developing. The king is in his kingdom. His son is with him. We are all in here together. We are on a trajectory toward revelation. We travel from the inside to the inside. The revelation of the Son of man is, by extension, our revelation.

Jesus said there will be, at the realization, two men in one bed (we have a modern expression regarding bedfellows, allies due to circumstance.) One will have an oops, the other will not. One will be accepted into the ark, the other will drown. There will be two women grinding at the same mill. One will fly high, the other will crash and burn.

I just hope your moment of realization is not an oops.

If you find yourself on a higher plane than the world you inhabit, consider yourself developmentally sound. Do not turn back to the world. If you are in your field on a trajectory toward harvest, let it grow. Some of us are wheat, some of us are chaff, but we all develop along the same trajectory. To turn back is to drive the wrong way on a very crowded highway.

The legend of Lot's wife is an admonition against turning away from the progress you have already made. Jesus said in Luke 9:62, the plowing man who turns back proves himself unfit for the revelation.

The realization will be a dark time. Jesus described that time with the words, “in that night.” It will be the oops moment of everyone not in the ark. It will be, for many, a time of stumbling and a time of weeping. The realization cuts deep.