Who were the three men who appeared to Abraham in Genesis 18?
The three “men” were angels.
They also represent the three persons of the Blessed Trinity.
I heard one of them was God.
It’s a little complicated, but here’s how I understand it:
In the Old Testament, it’s not uncommon for God to sometimes speak (in the first person)
through an angel – “angel”, by the way, means “messenger”.
Take for example this passage from Exodus 3:1-4:
"Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the LORD appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So Moses decided, "I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned. When* the LORD saw him coming over to look
at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!” He answered, "Here I am."*
Notice the switch from “angel of the LORD” to simply “the LORD”. But it’s not a contradiction. It’s
both, at the same time. God is speaking
through the angel, using the angel as a sort of spokesperson. And if you want to dive deeper into theology, you’ll realize that
every time God (the LORD) interacts with someone in this world, He really
has to be doing so through an angel, because He is eternally immutable and unchangeable – by His very nature, He does not (can cannot) act and speak in time like His creatures do. In order to act in time (well, up until the Incarnation, that is), He must be doing so through a messenger – through an angel.
My mother says that this verse proves Jesus was on earth before His Incarnation.
Nope – at least not if she means what I think she means. Before the Incarnation, Jesus was “on earth” only in the same way that the Father and Son have always been. But after the Incarnation, He became “on earth” in a way that He
never had been before – as
man.
