I notice that some people over time change their thinking about Jesus from seeing Him as an important teacher in Jewish history who lived around 5 BC to maybe almost 30 AD to thinking with increasing certainty that Jesus existed before being born and even before the Universe came to be. This corresponds with contemporaries of Jesus recognising Him to be the Christ because the Christ or Messiah was considered someone who would come into the world. Into the world might have been a concept that people understand differently over time too from being merely born to being incarnated, as pre-existence become better understood to apply to the person prophecy had called The Christ, The Anointed Prince, The Messiah. Simon Peter was one in the time of Jesus' ministry around Roman era Judea and Samaria who came to an understanding that Jesus was the Christ who was to come into the world. Jesus firstly said this understanding was blessed because it came from the Holy Spirit as from God The Father Himself and secondly that Peter, renamed from Simon to Peter meaning stone or rock at that time, was to be first of many such stones with which Jesus as The Christ would build His Church, in fulfillment of prophecy of what The Christ, The Branch, would come to do - build the Temple of God. So to me it becomes clear that God's Temple is being built of the stones not cut by human hands by the Messiah Jesus and this temple is built by the forming together of people inspired by the Holy Spirit to understand Jesus is the Messiah or Christ who came into the world having pre-existed with God from before all things.
