Melchizedek

As for Melchizedek being preincarnate Christ and living forever in the flesh - um, where is he now? *No one said he had to stay on earth.* *So he went to heaven with a real physical body, which he left up in heaven when he became a baby? Where did he go when Christ was born?* You're saying that he lived forever (no beginning of days or end of life being interpreted literally) then that he was a real bodily man. *Hebrews 7:8 Here mortal men receive tithes, but there he receives them, of whom it is witnessed that he lives.* *Okay. I wasn't trying to say Melchizedek wasn't fully man. He was. And that's the point. No other Christophany lived for decades. They appear for short amounts of time - they weren't kings and stuff. Just here to reveal Christ a little more, and then gone. Melchizdek didn't do that.* But how can a man have no beginning of days if he's real and physical? EVEN CHRIST HAD BEGINNING OF DAYS AND END OF LIFE!!!!! *Um, no. Christ is eternal. Romans 9:5- Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.* *Um, yeah, that's right. Never said anything to the contrary. Amen and amen. But if you're talking about his physical body, which we were from the context, it is perfectly valid to say he had beginning of days and end of life. Maybe I should have said Jesus rather than Christ.* Yes, He is resurrected and His physical body is now living in heaven, but you're making Melchizedek even more miraculous than Christ. A real man with a real body, but never born and never dying - even tho later on in history this same man was born of a virgin, lived a perfectly righteous life (which btw he had already been livng for centuries under the name Melchizedek) and died to redeem sinners on the basis of that perfect life as Jesus, even though technically he didn't have to come and live perfectly this second time at all because He had already done that for decades as Melchizedek... *Ah, but He didn't die as a perfect sacrifice if He was Melchizedek.* *Why the heck not? Why live as God incarnate for decades (for forever, according to you) amassing perfect righteousness all that time as the God-man......why do all that and then just blip up to heaven one day? Why not just die then and there? All the righteousness needed would be in place, so why the heck didn't old Mechizedek die for me? Why did he...I dunno, go up to heaven and switch bodies and come back in the first century as a baby named Jesus? Why would he become incarnate once again? More importantly, why would Christ become incarnate in the first place if it was no plan of his to become a sacrifice for sins in that incarnation. That's the whole point of incarnation. So that as a real human He could be a representative of the human race as their perfect sacrifice. I repeat. No Christophany of Christ lived long before or after the time of the Christophany. For that limited time in which He was revealing Himself in a Christophany, Christ took on a veil of flesh. This is not incarnation. Incarnation involves becoming fully human. It involves humiliation. Being made under the law, born of a woman, subject to bodily weakness. Being mysteriously both God and man (body and soul). Incarnation is a theologically huge subject. It only happened once. And it was climactic - the final stage of God's self-revelation. We're still exploring the bounds of that revelation through the New Testament writings. Incarnation has a unique, singular, unrepeatable time and place in the history of salvation. What you are suggesting is an incarnation that serves absolutely no integral purpose of redemption. And if you're not saying that it was a full incarnation, you're saying that this specific Christophany was maintained by Christ for many yearsin which it did not serve any self-revealing purposes, which is the whole point of a Christophany in the first place. A decades-long Christophany that only functioned as a Christophany for about six hours? Something doesn't line up here. Why is this so hard to see? David was a type of Christ. Solomon was a type of Christ. Christological typology is rampant throughout Scripture. Melchizedek is another one of those types.*

And something else to think about. No Christophy ever took on a human name. Look through them. He was called the Angel of the Lord, captain of the Lord's army, ectc….but never EVER is any Christophany given a human name. They are always left blank. Why? Because Christ just created a temporary body for himself that wasn't fully human in the full sense (no soul, just a body).
But Melchizedek is both given a human name AND his position within human society is firmly announced, which is another thing every Christophany is unclear on.

Areth,
ka

ps - I don't want to be a bug and know I wrote a lot, but you only addressed some of my arguments in your latest post…

The power of an endless life!