From the moment God decided to speak into the vast emptiness of space, no one has seen him. He told Moses his name as the eternal being: I AM. Did Moses understand the esoteric parameters of this?

It is Doubtful.

But, if you think about it, how much more could God have said? Only recently have astrophysicists reached a theoretical conclusion that the Big Bang occurred in a time sequence of one trillionth of one second -- almost 14 billion years ago.

If true, this event included billions of stars in billions of galaxies all appearing at once. If God was the Creator of this vast and powerful explosion of light, energy, and matter, it seems obvious that we humans could never understand such a being.

How could we possibly understand the personality of such a phenomenal Creator?

So, a "Second Big Bang" occurred with the birth of an infant in the little town of Bethlehem -- the ultimate revelation of the Person of the Godhead; in the only form that we would possibly understand him -- as a human.

This revelation came completely, starting from the first moment of Son of Man conception to the last moment of Jesus' earth-bound life. "It is finished" then, becomes the denouement, the eternal meaning. God's living, personal, revelation of himself is complete. Jesus said of himself, "that he that has seen me, has seen the Father."

When Paul first told me that he was planning to write a book about the life of Jesus, my immediate response was, "Why bother!?" The disciples were direct witnesses of the life of Jesus and the Gospels they wrote were inspired by the Holy Spirit. What more could he possibly say? However, when I began to read it, I immediately realized that I was dead wrong. This book captivated me on every page and gave me a new look at the Jesus who I thought I knew so well. In these pages Morris makes no attempt to write to a religious community. I know this man well enough to believe it when he says it is written for everyone.

When I learned of the book's title, SON OF MAN, Memories of The Forgotten Jesus, I had questions. Surely the Paul Morris that I knew was clearly aware that Jesus also called himself the Son of God. I came to find out that Scripture expresses "Son of God" 41 times. It expresses "Son of Man" 178 times. Clearly, it was Jesus' favorite term for himself. I have now come to realize how profound the title of this work really is. For two thousand years, the church has neglected and forgotten the humanness of the One they worship.

This explains why he insists on being the servant instead of a celebrity. He humbled himself to be fully human. He chose to wash the feet of flawed, sinful disciples instead of kingly robes. Obviously, we now live in a new millennium, separated by over 2,000 years of history -- and have no real-life experience with the world in which Jesus lived.

What the book SON OF MAN does is to take you back into the dusty streets of Jerusalem, the screaming wind on the Sea of Galilee Foreword and the bloody scene at Golgotha. It gives you far more than the short Biblical accounts gave to its first century readers.

Among the many misguided ventures that have plagued the church, the Body and Bride of Christ, is the compulsion that elevates a the intellectual expression of words over the living expression of God. A million words cannot replace the One true WORD.

This is the reason for the subtitle Memories of The Forgotten Jesus. The church seems to have forgotten that Jesus came to reveal himself as a man -- because that's all we could hope to understand.

Morris started this book to show the manly, human side of Jesus. His work brings the real issue into direct focus -- the life of the Godhead in human form -- and it is right smack on target. It is the only way the Creator can be understood -- by humans knowing this human God.

Maybe understanding Jesus as a man can help all of us come together in love. That is the real message that SON OF MAN hopes to deliver -- a living, dynamic Jesus that on this side of eternity, we can never fully know or perhaps understand -- but one that we can love. This volume shows us how to embrace that exquisite reality.

Louis B. Tharp, Ph.D.