There is often much debate over what is meant by the spirit of Christ existing long before the time of Christ. This is such a mysterious subject. Jesus said “Before Abraham was born, I am”. The apostle Peter wrote that prophets such as Isaiah, who lived and prophesied and wrote prophetic scriptures centuries earlier, wrote about Christ because of the spirit of Christ influencing them. It is a mystery, just as so much about ‘spirit’ is a mystery.
It was in the early and mid nineties when I most definitely experienced Jesus Christ. Looking back now at this, it stands out that the events mostly took place in a manner of spirit.
There is something in us which is capable of experiencing influences of a higher order than our imagination and intellect. If you have ever had a dream which educated you or gave you some kind of warning or enlightenment you might understand me saying that it takes you beyond your own capabilities of reason and inference. It might even tell you things you find to be true but could not possibly have known for yourself. Knowledge of the future might be one element of this: Precognition, as it is technically called. At times this might stand out in how it evidences the existence of spirit beings of one kind or another. The dream is interacting with our consciousness in some mysterious way. Science tells us so little about this because it is known subjectively with little evidence that can be studied by scientific objective means.
There is something in our makeup which transcends our physical capabilities and can be communicated with by others by this same means. If you extend this into the paranormal you might realise that a spirit of a person can outlast their physical life by many years. That spirit of a person, sometimes witnessed as a ghost, somehow encapsulates the essence of that person. The things the person tended to do and say can be infused into their spirit and outlast that person’s lifetime and if we accept testimonies of some people and cultures, can be encountered by others who are still physically living. This infusing of a spirit with the manners, customs, thoughts, actions, words of its owner is so important to our understanding of what spirit means. I do not know whether the spirit is infused or whether the spirit infuses. Similarly, the word ‘infusion’, merely a possible analogy with how essences are infused into water or alcohol, is just one possible model for this mystery. But with Christ I find that the experiences of him, which I constantly ponder from decades ago, strike me as fitting this model, where the spirit of him communicated with me at what appeared to be the innermost level of my own spirit the same kind of actions and words and miracles of Jesus Christ as we find recorded in the gospels. He works via his spirit. The Holy Spirit too is imbued with this same Christ.
Of course, the Holy Spirit can reach many all at once. The record in the book of Acts tells how the Holy Spirit descended upon the congregated disciples of Jesus after Jesus returned to the Father. The Spirit separated into a tongue of fire upon the head of each disciple as they all prayed together and they all started prophesying in languages they had never learned. Others from various countries crowding outside heard them speak in their foreign native languages. This shows, as we accept it today, that the Holy Spirit can act upon many all simultaneously, like the many tongues of fire resting on many individuals at once. So this Holy Spirit can minister the manner and actions and words of Jesus all at once to many.
This transcends time too. The Holy Spirit sees the thoughts of God who tells the end from the beginning. So even thousands of years before Christ was born, the Holy Spirit knew the things of Christ, his manner and words and actions.
There may be more to it than this, in that the actual spirit of Christ might spiritually have existed through all the ages before Christ’s birth. Once we learn of things of spirit the matter of pre-existence becomes clearer. Yet it is still like a faint reflection of all that can be known. We can join the dots but the more dots there are, the easier and more certain it becomes.
What did the apostle John understand in addition to all this? It appears from the first part of his gospel that he was given understanding that this can be extended back to before the universe, that it was all true back then. God still could foresee all this. The Holy Spirit still knew these things of God and of the Christ. The Christ was spirit even back then. Thus all the created universe had these things sewn in. The word was there in all of this. He, the word, is divine with God the Father.
If we look at the ancient scripture collection called the Book of Enoch we find this spirit of Christ called the Son of Man (probably a translation from Sumerian originally and more lately from Ge’ez, both serving as sacred scripture languages in ancient times). The manner, actions, customs, sayings of this Son of Man, his name, has power, it says in Nature via what chief governing spirits called the Oath. So we see the manner, actions, customs, sayings of the Christ being there in most ancient times in the domains of chief spirit beings. The gospel sayings and teachings of the Holy Spirit even today mirror these ancient writings. Jesus’ sayings and those of his apostles aligned closely with them. They proclaimed the importance of this name in salvation and righteousness and faith, leading to eternal life. Those who hold to these teachings and believe in this Son of Man, a chosen man mediating between mankind and God, are the disciples of Jesus who are in fellowship with him this way and he will one day raise them from the dead if they die, or if they are still alive when he comes, he will give them immortality together with those he raises. Then he will be judge of the living and the dead and there will be himself, his disciples and the Father together forever, kept free from sin by this Son of Man and his Father who is God the king above all spirits.
