Polytheism explains Revelation(Jgnat) and Jehovah quite succinctly IMO. God the Father is the literal Father of all people and the main 'God' (Genesis Chapter 1 is a spiritual creation and planning session for 'the Gods'?) one of His children is Jesus - also known as Jehovah. Jesus and other notable ones fight against the rebellious Lucifer. What did they fight about? - the assumption of God the Father's power. Jesus maintains God the Father as supreme, Lucifer wants to attain leadership over all (including Father). Lucifer cast out and becomes Satan - once a God and now a fallen angel. Jesus and everyone who fought for God the Father then get lined up for earthly existence. Knowing the Fall had to happen to introduce death(the way home otherwise this earth would be a beautiful prison) one God , Michael is chosen and becomes Adam. Jesus then follows at the appropriate time to complete the circle and overcome the worst effects of death (separation from God - spiritual death, and separation from the body - mortality) so we can then have an eternal soul (body + spirit.) Prior to ceoming the mortal Christ, Jesus mediates for His people as Jehovah and fulfills God the Fathers will. The Holy Spirit (the un-named God and one of our brothers) is given the role of communicator and testifier of truth. Jesus is a God who rules under the Father and sits at His right hand, the Holy Ghost is a God who teaches and all followers of Christ are promised that they can become Gods also if they so desire. It all fits together quite neatly to me and the scriptures don't rely on 1984 doublethink anymore. To all of us there is one head God (God the Father whom we and Jesus worship as such) and then there are other Gods (Jesus, Holy Ghost, Adam etc..) who are made joint heirs and are 'one' with our Father in purposes and aim but quite physically separate.
About early christianity: Good link!
by Hellrider 43 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Hellrider
Deputy Dog: About Matthew 4,7:
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:
" 'He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"7 Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test."
Jesus is not calling himself God here...The "He" in verse 6 refers to the Father (shown by the phrase "He will command his angels concerning you").
Other than that, I agree. Good point about Deu 6,16.
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Deputy Dog
Hellrider
So you think that Satan, is tempting Jesus, to tempt the Father?
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Hellrider
I think so, yes. But the point is that God can be tempted (as you showed with Manassah, Deu 6). And therefore, Jesus is not excluded from being God/part of God (whatever you wanna call it). On the other hand, Jesus is also tempted in that passage in Matthew 4, because Satan is offering him all the kingdoms of the world. So I guess it could be argued that Jesus is here also referring to himself (or at least that he is including himself in the "Godhead"), but there is nothing that indicates this on the surface, in passage 6.
Leolaia, are you reading? What do you think about Matthew 4,5-7. Does it smell of trinity, or not?
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Deputy Dog
Hellrider
Why do you think Satan missquotes Psa 91"For he shall give his angels charge over thee"... and leaves out "to keep thee in all thy ways" from verse 11?
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Hellrider
I wouldn`t call it a misquote. He`s adapting the saying from Psalms to make it fit the particular situation he and Jesus is right there and then:
" 'He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone"It means the same as in Psalms. Why do you think that the alteration of the verse is significant for the meaning of Matthew 4?
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Deputy Dog
Hellrider
Psa 91:11
- For he shall give his angels charge over thee,.... Created spirits, so called, made by the Lord, and are at his command; who are ministering spirits to his people, who encamp about them, and are concerned in the preservation of them; they being committed to their care and charge by him who is Lord of heaven and earth: Satan applied this passage to Christ, Mat_4:6 , nor did our Lord object to the application of it; and it can hardly be thought that he would have ventured to have done it, had he been aware that a misapplication might be objected; or that it was not the received sense of the place: what he is to be blamed for, in quoting it, was the wrong purpose for which he produced it, and for leaving out the next clause, which he saw was against his design;to keep thee in all thy ways
; in walking and travelling from place to place, as Providence calls and directs; and in all civil ways, in all lawful business and employment of life; in all spiritual ones, as the ways of God and religion: what Satan tempted Christ to was neither of these ways; it was not a natural way of going, nor the duty of his office, nor any of the ways of God.John Gill
Just a thought!
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Leolaia
I agree with Hellrider. The symbolism of the story is that Jesus, as a new Moses figure (cf. the nativity narrative in ch. 2, which has many parallels to Moses), reprises the role of Israel in wandering through the desert for 40 years (cf. Numbers 14:34, Ezekiel 4:6, in which 40 days symbolizes 40 years), being tempted to see if he would keep God's commandments. Tertullian recognized the Israelite exodus-wilderness typology involved in the story of Jesus' temptation (cf. De Baptismo, 20).
Like Jesus, Israel was tempted by hunger and Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 8:2-3 LXX: "Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord". Similarly, the Devil takes Jesus up a high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world (Matthew 4:8 = Luke 4:5 which has verbatim agreement with the language in Deuteronomy 34:1-4 LXX), a scenario that replays Moses on Mount Nebo being shown all the kingdoms of the Promised Land which Israel will be given. The story is even closer to the haggadah which claim that Moses' vision was of "all of the world" (Sifre Deuteronomy, 34:1-9; cf. Pseudo-Philo 19:10), and that the Devil accompanied Israel during its journey through the wilderness (Exodus Rabbah 43:1). The Devil's request for Jesus to worship him, an act of idolatry, is related to the idea that Israel's lapses into idolatry in the wilderness involved the worship of demons (cf. Deuteronomy 32:17, Psalm 106:37-38, 1 Enoch 99:7) or the Devil (cf. Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 45, which claimed that the Devil was inside the golden calf, or Ascension of Isaiah 2:1-7, which Manasseh worshipping the Devil in his acts of idolatry). Jesus rejected the idolatrous act by quoting Deuteronomy 6:13 LXX.
The episode in Matthew 4:5-6 is along the same lines. The Devil quotes from Psalm 91:4, 11-12 LXX: "He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge .... For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone". That this psalm had relevance with Israel's experience in the wilderness can be seen in the parallel in Deuteronomy 32:10-12, which states that Yahweh found Israel in "a desert land" and "shielded him and cared for him ... like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, and spreads its wings to catch them and carry them on its pinions". Similarly, God tells Moses in Exodus 19:4 that he "carried you [Israel] on eagles' wings and brought you to myself". Isaiah 63:8-9 LXX describes this deliverance from Egypt as being lifted up through the help of an angel: "In all their distress he too was distressed and the angel of his presence saved them, in his love and mercy he redeemed them, he lifted them up and carried them".
In response, Jesus shows that the Devil is twisting the words of Psalm 91 by noting the commandment: "You will not tempt the Lord you God". This is a quotation from Deuteronomy 6:16 LXX: "You will not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted him in the temptation at Massah". In other words, the Devil is asking Jesus to reprise the role of Israel in putting God to the test. The allusion to the incident at Massah is one in which the Israelites lacked faith that God would provide for them and Moses characterized them as "putting God to the test (lit., "temping God")" (Exodus 19:1-7). Compare also Psalm 95:8-10: "Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation" (cf. the quotation in Hebrews 3). Paul also cites the wilderness experience as proof that "we should not test the Lord as some of them did" (1 Corinthians 10:9). Israel underwent testing and temptation (Deuteronomy 8:2-3), but Jesus refuses what Israel did in return: putting God to the test. He already had complete faith in God's providence and did not need to demonstrate it. Thus, it goes against the grain of the symbolism of the narrative to claim that Jesus is here making a declaration of deity.
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Ade
Butters,
You wrote "Look, it doesn' t matter what people believe. IT's what the bible says. The bible plainly says that God is never tempted ever! Jesus is. The bible says that God never dies ever! If God died on the cross, the whole universe would collapse and existence end. God didn't die! Jesus died, and Jesus is Yoseph and Mary's son. He was fully human and not God. There is only one God, and that is the Father. (1 Cor 8:4,6)... Leolaia, Helenistic Judaism is wrong too! I don't care for any religions."
However two days ago you were promoting messianic judaism. ??? apparently though you dont care for Religion
Respectfully
Ade -
greendawn
Not a chance that there is trinitarianism in the NT, the son is definitely subordinated to the Father who is often called his God but the Father never ever calls the son "my God". What happened in those days was that the Church was presented with a problem: the Son is to be worshipped yet only God is to be worshipped. The problem can be solved by making the Son part of God, the Son is an aspect of God just as the Father is another aspect of God so he can be worshipped without violating the inviolable principle of Monotheism. So they came up with the Trinity formulation from quite early on.