by I_love_Jeff 224 Replies latest jw friends
Do you know that as a JW I never realized that people in the OT had the Holy Spirit? I thought Christ had to die first. But now I see examples. I was just reading one by David in the Psalms.
I like what your mother said Tammy. I have actually discussed this with my husband. We noticed that the disciples (some of whom were not with Christ) had the power to perform miracles and expel demons when Christ was on earth.
Now I need to read the rest of the thread.
"We noticed that the disciples (some of whom were not with Christ) had the power to perform miracles and expel demons when Christ was on earth."
Um no they did not. The Bible may say they did, but that is not the same thing.
The Holy Spirit is anything you want it to be, since it is not only invisible, it does not exist.
I find the concept of the Trinity unworkable. How could God have miraculously and mysteriously walked the earth as Christ? Those that believe that way, they are required to do so without questioning the validity of the "mystery."
When the Bible says that they are one it means they are one in unity not trinity, otherwise this is robbing Christ of the true glory due to him because he did not have to do what he did for us! It was a decision Jesus made with his own free will that he lowered himself for a time and came to earth as Jesus Christ and later voluntarily die for our sins.
Jesus is the mediator, as pointed out at 1 Timothy 2:5-6: "For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, a man, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself—a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time." Also Jesus can not be greater than himself if he is God.
John 14:28: "You have heard Me tell you, 'I am going away and I am coming to you.' If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I." Is he going to ascend to himself? In heaven Jesus is still subject to his Father: Matthew 20:23 "He told them, "You will indeed drink My cup. But to sit at my right and left is not mine to give; instead, it belongs to those for whom it has been prepared by My Father."
John 13:16 " I assure you: A slave is not greater than his master, and a messenger is not greater than the one who sent him." Jesus was saying he is not greater than his Father. John 8:42 "Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, because I came from God and I am here. For I didn't come on My own, but He sent Me." Jesus did not come on his own - His Father sent him. If Jesus was God, he would have come on his own, because he could not send himself. John 10:30 "The Father and I are one."
And at John 17:20-22 he further explained: "I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in Me through their message. May they all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so the world may believe You sent Me. I have given them the glory You have given Me. May they be one as We are one."
According to Trinitarians, this would mean we are also God, because Christ said at John 17:20-22: "May they all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in us...I have given them the glory You have given Me." Being a sharer in that given glory does not make us Christ, anymore than the Trinitarians can make Christ equal to God.
As the Word, Christ had a beginning as pointed out in Proverbs as being the master craftsman. Yet, God had no beginning. He has always existed. On the other hand, the Word was the beginning of God's creation. Consider 1 Peter 3:22 "Now that He has gone into heaven, He is at God's right hand, with angels, authorities, and powers subjected to Him." Note that Jesus is not sitting at his father's throne, he is as his "right hand". Philippians 2:9 "For this reason God also highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name," If he was God, he would already have been exalted, and he would not need a name that was above every name but Yahweh's.
John 20:17 "Don't cling to Me," Jesus told her, "for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to My brothers and tell them that I am ascending to My Father and your Father—to My God and your God." He said "My Father and your Father—to My God " If he is GOD, why say that he had a God, if he was indeed God Almighty himself? And, why would he have to ascend to himself? It is ridiculous for anyone to even try to argue that Yahweh and Christ are the same spirit.
Mark 15:34 "And at three Jesus cried out with a loud voice, " Eloi, Eloi, lemá sabachtháni?" which is translated, " My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" I guess those who believe in the Trinity think Jesus must have forsaken himself.
1 Corinthians 8:6 "yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ through whom are all things, and we through Him."
The Bible does not say that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are equal, coeternal or one single God. Matthew 28:19: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This simply shows they are in unity with each other, not that they are all one in the same.
I can see why some people have issues and confusin with the Trinity doctrine, that don't knwo what it means.
It is a doctrine of Nature and substance and essence, IF Christ shared the same nature and essence of God then Christ is God.
If the HS is God's spirit then it is God.
Christ is NOT His father, LOL !
The father, Son and HS share the same essence, the same substance and nature.
The son is equal in nature but not in authority.
As for Christ being created, no, there is NO WHERE in the bible where you will find that he was created, begotten Yes but not created, as for WHEN?
There is no when before creation so that is a moot point really, but there was no time when the Father existed that the son did not exist since there was no time before time came to be IN creation.
Man putting limitations on God is just Man trying to "box" God into a nice neat package that Man can define.
Good luck with that.
johanthan,
I was unable to use the quote button on your reply, so copied here....my comments in red
each one is believed to be God but they are lumped together as one single God.
Not really lumped together. One God Almighty, YHWH, with a triune nature.
“Person” should be regarded as a contemporary misnomer, an imperfect expression because it connotes a separate rational and moral individual. It is a word erroneously derived from the Latin persona and misapplied in the English modern era, as the Jehovah's Witnesses have done.
Persona: A Latin word regularly used to refer to the three ‘persons’ of the Trinity and to the one ‘person’ of Christ. It therefore fulfills the role in Latin theology performed by hypostasis in Greek. The natural translation into ‘person’ in English is misleading. Persona originally meant a ‘mask’ and then a ‘role.’ It is used to indicate an individual in his or her external presentation, and does not convey the idea of self-consciousness or the internal psychological content suggested by the English word ‘person’ with its close link to the word ‘personality.’ (Oxford, 1210)
http://www.144000.110mb.com/trinity/index.html#2
I'm afraid you lost me here!!! There are only two persons, Christ, the Word, and his Father, Yahweh. The Active Force is spirit energy. When Yahweh made the Word, he was door hinged onto himself and then afterwards Christ created the Universe using his Father's energy.
There is only one almighty God who is the Father,
Trinitarians agree. And that Almighty God is YHWH
This we can agree on
the mighty god being his son Jesus,
This is a false teaching, and mischaracterizes the Trinity. Jesus is the Mighty God, as it says in Isaiah 9:6, but that God is YHWH and not some little "a god,", as it says in the next two words: the child born to us is Mighty God, "Eternal Father." That is but one of many reasons. Immanent trinity, the nature of God in himself before creation, does not include Jesus who was not yet born. Jesus is God-Man, God the Son. And because the Word is eternal, he could not be created.
This is where we disagree. For a period of time, Christ ceased to exist in heaven, his life force was transferred to Mary, so how could this be considered a trinity?
who was God's first creation.
This is arianism, and another false teaching.The Word was not created, and the evidence is overwhelming. Some of it is right here:
The eternal Christ was not created - (Isaiah 9:6)[Top]
In addition to Jesus Christ’s omnipotence, he is and always has been eternal, a Scriptural truth strongly denied by the Jehovah's Witnesses who teach, incorrectly, that Jesus is a created being granted immortality only after his resurrection. But even Isaiah 9:6 in the Jehovah's Witnesses’ New World Translation disproves that theory where Christ is referred to as “Eternal Father.”
For there has been a child born to us, there has been a son given to us; and the princely rule will come to be on his shoulder. And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
The preexistent Christ’s eternal nature is not the result of a forward-looking grant of immortality as the Jehovah's Witnesses teach, but is a condition that has always been because “He is before all things” (Colossians 1:17), and he created all things (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). There are only two options: He was created or He is eternal, but since He was before all things and created all things, He must be eternal.
Jesus was given the title of a God and only he was permitted to be along side his Father, Yahweh, outside of the reality he later created for us. That is why Jesus asked that Father glorify him alongside Himself, not within, as was done before the world was created. At one time Christ existed outside in eternity along side his Father in sharing His glory. All things were created in the heavens and upon the earth, no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments. All things came into existence were created through Christ and for Christ.
To counter this, Colossians 1:15-17 in the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation (NWT) inserts the word [other] four times so that it reads:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation; 16 because by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All [other] things have been created through him and for him. 17 Also, he is before all [other] things and by means of him all [other] things were made to exist.
The Jehovah's Witnesses’ insertion of the word [other] does not change the clear language and meaning of Paul’s discourse. They reason:
(3) In harmony with everything else that the Bible says regarding the Son, NW assigns the same meaning to pan’ta at Colossians 1:16, 17 [similar to Luke 13:2] so that it reads, in part, “by means of him all other things were created … All other things have been created through him and for him.” Thus he is shown to be a created being, part of the creation, produced by God. (Reasoning, 408 - 409)
Such an arbitrary addition is based on a distorted reading of Luke 13:2 and the supposed over-all “context” of their Bible. They justify inserting “other” in four places here because the overall context of the Bible, in their opinion, requires it, and because some other Bibles insert “other” into Luke 13:2 where it had not existed before (Reasoning 408, 409). Luke 13:2 provides:
At that very season there were certain ones present that reported to him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. So in reply he said to them: “Do you image that these Galileans were proved worse sinners than all other Galileans because they have suffered these things? No, indeed, I tell you; but, unless you repent, you will all likewise be destroyed.” (NWT)
“The death of the Galileans at the hands of Pilate” were “timely reminders of the need for all to repent, for the victims of these tragedies should not be considered outstanding sinners who were singled out for punishment” (NAB notes 13, 1-5).
Equating Luke 13:1-3 with Colossians 1:15-17 is improper because inserting “other” into Luke 13:2 was not necessary and did not change the nature or status of the Galileans referred to. In the English language “other” might have helped clarify the object of the sentence but it could have been omitted. Leaving verse 2 as it was would still convey the same meaning - that of all Galileans, those killed by Pilate were not particularly worse sinners. Adding “other” here does not convert the Galileans into something entirely different; it does not turn them into Martians.
Inserting “other” into Colossians 1:15-17, on the other hand, fundamentally alters the object of those verses, Christ the Word, by downgrading Him from eternal God the Son to that of a creature; from God to not-god. Nothing could be more radical, theologically speaking, or heretical.
Furthermore, such unsubstantiated alteration of Scripture violates the context of verse 15, Hebrews 1:3, Philippians 2:6 and 2 Corinthians 4:4. Hebrews 1:3 states that Christ is “the express image of His essence (Green’s Literal Translation). Here, image (Greek charaktar) denotes that the Son is “literally equal to” God, “of whose essence He is the imprint. It is the fact of complete similarity which this word stresses” (Strong and Vines, 269).
Philippians 2:6 says that the Word existed in the form (Greek morphe) of God prior to His incarnation. Here, form (morphe) means nature or essence, but not in the abstract, subsisting in the individual (Strong and Vine’s, 167). “It includes the whole nature and essence of deity” (ibid.). And at 2 Corinthians 4:4, the “image of God” means that Christ is “essentially and absolutely the perfect expression of the Archtype, God the Father” (Strong and Vine’s, 77).
[I]n Colossians 1:15, “the image of the invisible God “gives the additional thought suggested by the word “invisible,” that Christ is the visible representation and manifestation of God to created beings; (5c) the likeness expressed in this manifestation is involved in the essential relations in the Godhead and is therefore unique and perfect; “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” John 14:9. (ibid., 77)
As such, Luke 13:2 cannot serve as justification for altering the very nature and identity of Christ. Inserting “other” into Colossians 1:16, 17 in order to convert Christ to nothing more than a man or a created angel would obliterate all parallel contextual verses which show that the Word Christ was and is the exact imprint of deity, a perfect match, an exact equivalent with the divine essence. Inserting “other” would result in a “created” Christ being something far less than what He truly is.
"I was formed before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began."
When Jesus spoke of the earth, he was not merely speaking of this planet. All earth throughout creation is of the same ball of energy that makes up planets like the one we live on. God taught Jesus how to explode that energy that was combined with much more of His components that make up the visible creation, and how to form the stars, planets and moons. Everything in the visible creation came forth from a single explosion as if by giving birth to the visible reality. We see God's creative ability by the volcanic eruptions that form islands. In this way Christ formed and shaped this planet as they cooled from the process of bicreation.
When determining what context within which to assess the nature and identity of Christ it is best to start at the beginning and move forward in time, to reach back as far as possible. And in the beginning there was the Word (John 1:1) and the Word was before all things (Colossians 1:17) and all things were created by Him and through Him and for Him (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). This is the proper context within which to begin to analyze subsequent Scripture. You don’t end here.
By now it should be evident that the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t conform to context, they create it.
It is understandable why the Jehovah's Witnesses altered the Bible to accommodate their idea of what they wish it said. Had the preexistent Word been a created being he could not have been “before all things,” nor could He have “created all things” (Colossians 1:16, 17) which would by necessity have included himself. But, since the Bible says that the Word was “before all things” and “without Him nothing came to be” (John 1:3) Christ the Word cannot have been created. It is absolutely impossible … unless you change the Bible.
Lastly, as expounded on in section 19(A) the baptismal formula at Matthew 28:19 reflects in one sentence the Trinitarian doctrine of three Persons as one by virtue of the singular “name” into which Christian believers are to be baptized. By means of logical deduction Christ must be eternal in accordance with the baptismal formula.
For example, the Jehovah's Witnesses would have Christians baptized under three distinct and separate authorities which is scripturally unfounded. If they were right, and the Son is separate from the Father, the Holy Spirit must also be separate from the Father, but that in turn would imply that the Father was without His electrical current or authority and He is not all powerful. If, on the other hand, the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the Father then neither can the Son be separate from the Father because Christ is the Spirit.
To illustrate further, Paul taught at Romans 8:9-11 that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ and 2 Corinthians 3:17 teaches that Jehovah God (or the Lord) is the Spirit (NWT; “the Lord is the Spirit” RSV). And, it is this Spirit, the Holy Spirit, that dwells within the Christian believer. Thus, there are not two separate Spirits that reside within, God’s and Christ’s, but one Spirit, according to Ephesians 4:4.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Sprit of God really dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. (Romans 9:8-11 RSV)
Jehovah is the spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17 NWT; “the Lord is the Spirit” RSV)
However, if, as the Jehovah's Witnesses falsely teach, the preexistent Christ is a created creature only, then the Holy Spirit must also have been created and accordingly there would have been a time when there was no Holy Spirit and therefore God would have lacked power and authority and would not have been omnipotent, according to their theory. But, since the Holy Spirit is eternal, which the Jehovah's Witnesses must concede, and the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ, and this Spirit is the Holy Spirit, Christ the Word must be eternal.
Not surprisingly, the Jehovah’s Witnesses changed Romans 8:10 by inserting the word “union,” so that Christ is not in the believer, but only in union with the believer, writing: “But if Christ is in union with you, the body indeed is dead on account of sin …” NWT).
http://www.144000.110mb.com/trinity/index-5.html#20
The mystery of the Trinity is no more mysterious than unity which is what bonds the Father, the son and the Spirit or God's active force together.
Not sure what you mean by this. The trinity doctrine isn't all that mysterious and it is perfectly reasonable, even if some people don't understand it.
Dear SA, I wrote a detailed response, and lost connectivity on an unsecured site....all to say...no problemo. ;o)
PSacramento,
You said: "The son is equal in nature but not in authority."
This alone destroys the Trinity doctrine. They cannot be all equal if they are not equal in authority. I get the "grouping" of the three entities, God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit. But they are seperate. And only two of them are persons.
Hi TS,
Re. The Trinity
My background is IBSA. It took time, but I now see Jesus Christ as my Lord and my God.
However, I was a child of God long before I came to accept the Trinity. One has to know (ginosko) Jesus Christ and the Father through Him to be saved. If one is not indwelt by the Holy Spirit, one is not sanctified and one may know many things about Jesus without actually knowing Him.
The Holy Spirit reveals Christ to our inner man (faith is divine revelation); He makes Jesus real to our spirit. All this can happen without great ontological understanding of God's being and nature.
Many people believe the Trinity and don't know and love the Lord Jesus Christ; many others don't believe the Trinity and also do not have the indwelling Spirit of Christ and the witness that they are the children of God and joint heirs with Christ.
Sometimes Christian theology makes salvation more complex than it really is. It takes the applying of the work of Christ to our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
And how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him
PSacramento,
You said: "The son is equal in nature but not in authority."
This alone destroys the Trinity doctrine. They cannot be all equal if they are not equal in authority. I get the "grouping" of the three entities, God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit. But they are seperate. And only two of them are persons.
Persons NOT as we define persons but persons as defined in the 4th century context.
They can indeed be of the same substance and essence and NOT be equal in authority because substance is about nature and authority is NOT about nature.
And ex: My father and I share the same nature (human) but as my Father He has authority over me ( by virture of being my father and because I give myself to his authority).
Vanderhoven,
Thanks, I enjoyed reading your post and agree 100%.
Truthseeker
