Who Was the Bible Referring to When He Said Let Us Make Man in Our Own Image?
1) Direct Answer
It was the one God speaking in counsel with His own Word—His Logos—the expression of Himself by which He would create all things and later be manifested in Jesus Christ. It is not three persons, and it is not angels.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- Genesis 1:26-27 says, “Let us make man in our image… So God created man in his own image.” The very next verse returns to the singular—one Creator.
- Isaiah 44:24: “I am the LORD that maketh all things… that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.” God did not share creation with another person.
- John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God… All things were made by him.” The Word is God’s own expressed thought made manifest—God creating by His Word.
- Ephesians 1:11: He “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” God’s “us” is His own divine counsel—God communing with His Word.
- 1 Timothy 3:16: “God was manifest in the flesh.” The image God had in view would be fully revealed in Christ, the true image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).
Now notice: Genesis 1 shows man created in God’s image (spirit nature and dominion), and Genesis 2:7 shows man formed from the dust. First the image; then the body.
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- If “us” meant three divine persons, we would have three creators—yet God says He made all things alone and by Himself (Isaiah 44:24).
- Angels did not create the world.
- “Us” is God deliberating with His own Word, His plan, His self-expression. As a man speaks within himself, God spoke with His Logos.
- “In our image” points to God’s nature reflected in man—spirit, holiness, and dominion—and finds its perfect fulfillment when God Himself was manifested in Christ.
4) Reinforcing Statement
It’s one God, not three. The “us” is the one Lord counseling with His own Word, creating all things and purposing to reveal Himself perfectly in Jesus Christ.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
It wasn't so from the beginning
60-1127M §16
Therefore when God once does anything or makes a decision, as I've often quoted, that He always has to stay with His decision. How that ought to enlighten our faith, see. When God says something, all heavens and earth will pass away, but that cannot pass away. Therefore it should give us character. It should give us faith to take that Word which He has said and with all of our life hold on to it because He cannot change it. It's true. Now, God in the beginning He made all things. He made it in form of seed first. I...
Five definite identifications of the true Church
60-0911E §106
So the first thing He created... Now, some of you want to know about my Genesis story. God said, "Let us make man." The first thing He created was angels, to worship Him, then He become God. Then when He said, "Let us make man after our own image," what kind of a man did He make? Spirit man. Then when He made that man, He give him control. Then He made man out of the dust of the earth; then he fell. Then He become a Saviour. A God, then a Saviour. Sin brought on sickness; then He become a healer. Hallelujah! There...
Fellowship
55-0813 §25
Recently a Christian Science woman, she said, "Reverend Branham, you put too much emphasis on Christ. You make Him divine. He wasn't divine," she said. "He was a good man. He was a teacher and a prophet, but He wasn't divine." I said, "He was either God, or the greatest deceiver the world ever had." I said, "Do you...?" She said, "If I prove to you by the Bible (You said you was a fundamentalist.) that He was only a man, will you accept it?" I said, "If the Bible said He was just a man, and wasn't divine, I would b...
Identification
63-0123 §54
We want to be ... make this Bible our looking glass, and let ourselves be molded by his character, having his character, his mind---letting the mind that was in Christ be in us. His mind was always... What was his mind to do, the mind that was in Christ? Always to stay with the Father's Word. No matter what looked glossy, and what looked this way, it didn't make any difference to Him. The Father's Word's what counted. Everywhere when He met the devil He never even used his power to defeat him. He used the Word, bec...
Questions and Answers on Hebrews, part 3
57-1006 §18
Genesis 1, where He created man in His Own image, which was in the theophany. And in Genesis 2, He made man out of the dust of the earth, which was the human man that we have now. And then, in 3 was the fall, and was kicked from the Garden of Eden; and then the children ... begat children. And Cain took his wife and lived with her in the land of Nod, outside, because God had separated him from the fellowship with his own brother (because of the death of Abel). And that's who he had, his own sister, and married her;...