"Because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same, that through death he might destroy him who hath the empire of death. For nowhere doth he take hold of the angels, but the seed of Abraham, he taketh hold, wherefore, it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren" (Heb. 2:14-16). "Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God" (I John 4:2). "Many seducers are gone out into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh" (II John 1:7). Why do the New Testament writers lay so much stress upon the taking of flesh by Jesus Christ? Evidently we must see in those expressions (the Word was made flesh, etc.) more than a Hebraism, for "He became man" (Gen. 6:12; Is. 40:5). The inspired authors want to teach us humility by impressing upon our minds the excessive abasement of the Eternal Son of God in uniting his Divinity, not to the nature of an angel, but to that of an inferior creature, as man is. They have still the further aim of impuning the heretics, of the early days of the Church the Docetae, Cerinthus, Ebion, etc., who, attributing the flesh to an evil principle, and therefore holding it as utterly polluted, maintained that Christ had not a real body of flesh but only an apparent body. This we learn from SS. Irenaeus, Jerome, Clem. of Alex., etc. 7. Another proof that God is not an exalted man; that is, that he was not what we are now, and became perfected into God, is the direct statement of the Bible: "God is not as a man that he should lie, _nor as the Son of man that he should be changed_" (Num. 23:19). "I will not execute the fierceness of my wrath because I am God and not man" (Psalm 11:19). 8. Another most striking proof is to be found in God's immutability. The Latter day Saints teach that God was once imperfect, as man is; the Bible teaches the very opposite: "_Thou art always the self-same_" (Psalm 101:26). "_I am the Lord and I change not_" (Mal. 3:6). "_The Father of lights with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration._" (The Latin _alter_ means other. So the Lord is never other from all eternity.) (James 1:17.) 9. Finally, the Latter-day Saints' theory of the Man-God supposes a past and present with God. The Bible excludes that succession of time, and speaks of God as the Everlasting Present "I Am Who Am." "Before Abraham was, I am." "From eternity and to eternity thou art God" (Psalm 89:2). "His power is an everlasting power" (Daniel 7:14). PHILOSOPHICAL PROOFS OF GOD'S SIMPLICITY OR SPIRITUALITY. The "Mormons" admit that God existed from all eternity; consequently, there was no time at which God did not exist. Therefore, the Eternal Being, or God, must be simple. A compound is, at least by nature, posterior to its component parts. If God is a compound, he is posterior to his component parts. Therefore, he would not be eternal; therefore, not God.