Jesus is Michael the Archangel
by Fisherman 103 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Earnest
Thanks for that, TD. Would you be willing to identify the reference works so I could consult them myself.
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DesirousOfChange
Who gives a rat's @$$?
Is Santa really Satan?
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Fisherman
Thank you, TD.
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Fisherman
It is what it is.
At 1 Thessalonians 4:16 the voice of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ is described as being that of an archangel, suggesting that he is, in fact, himself the archangel. This text depicts him as descending from heaven with “a commanding call.” It is only logical, therefore, that the voice expressing this commanding call be described by a word that would not diminish or detract from the great authority that Christ Jesus now has as King of kings and Lord of lords. (Mt 28:18; Re 17:14) If the designation “archangel” applied, not to Jesus Christ, but to other angels, then the reference to “an archangel’s voice” would not be appropriate. In that case it would be describing a voice of lesser authority than that of the Son of God. —Insight on the Scriptures, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
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Disillusioned JW
An influential commentary agrees with something I said on pages two and three of this topic thread. On page two I said "... Jesus (by way of his angel?) delivered God's message of the "Revelation of Jesus Christ" to John." Sea Breeze on the same page quoted my words as 'Jesus delivered God's message of the "Revelation of Jesus Christ" to John', leaving out the portion which said "(by way of his angel?)". He then said "How could you possibly come up with that conclusion with a plain literal reading of scripture?" In reply I said on page three of this topic thread that Revelation 1:1-2 say "... that God (the Father) sent a revelation about Jesus to Jesus, that Jesus in turn sent it "by His angel" to John the servant of Jesus." Today I learned that both the "Augmented Third Edition" and the "Fully Revised Fourth Edition" of The New Oxford Annotated Bible edition of the NRSV with the Apocrypha (the latter being copyright 2010), very influential commentaries, agree with what I said. Regarding Revelation 1:1-2 they both say the following.
"This revelation came from God through Jesus Christ and was communicated to John by an angel (referred to again in 22.16)." That is the same point I made, except the commentary uses the phrase "through Jesus" instead of "Jesus delivered" or "Jesus sent". Revelation 22:16 (NRSV) says "It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches."
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Riley
Isn't there pretty much a word for a word description of Jesus in the book of Revelation that is the same as a figure in the book of Daniel ?
In the book of Daniel this figure calls upon the Arc Angel Michael in some battle in the spirt realm. It pretty much eliminates Jesus as being the Arch Angel Michael.
My two cents.
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Vanderhoven7
10 reasons why Jesus cannot be Michael the Archangel.
By Robert Skynner BD (Hons).
Scripture mentions Michael five times at: Daniel 10:13, 21, 12:1, Jude 9 and finally at Revelation 12:7. However, none of these verses states openly or even hints that Jesus Christ is Michael. The Watchtower did once teach that Michael wasn’t the Son of God (Zion’s Watchtower, November 1879, page 48), but this position has subsequently been reversed; (Watchtower 15th February 1979 on page 31).
1. Hebrews 1:4 states that Christ isn’t an angel, for he’s: “so much better than the angels.” The explanation is given in the previous verse, where the image of an image stamped by a seal in hot wax is made, to illustrate the fact that Christ and the Father share the same divine nature. So this is why he’s superior to the angels.
2. At Acts 17:31 and 1st Timothy 2:5 Christ in his post-resurrection state is described by the apostles Luke and Paul as still being ‘a man!’ Indeed, Acts 17:31 even states emphatically that it will be as a man and not as an angel that Jesus Christ will judge the world, at the judgement at the consummation of the age.
3. The angels refuse to accept worship see Revelation 22:8-9. And yet at Hebrews 1:6 God the Father here directly commands the angels to worship his Son; Jesus Christ. “Let all the angels of God worship him” (Hebrews 1:6, 1961 NWT, and all other translations).
4. Michael was unable to rebuke Satan, and instead said; ‘the Lord rebuke you’ (Jude 9, TEB), also translated as ‘may Jehovah rebuke you’ (Jude 9, NWT 1961 edition). Yet Jesus Christ rebuked Satan, and clearly did so himself at Matthew 4:10, where the 1961 edition NWT states that Christ rebuked Satan by stating: “Go sway Satan! For it is written, ‘it is Jehovah your God you must worship, and to him alone you must render service.’ ”
5. At Daniel 10:13 Michael isn’t identified as God’s Son, and neither is he spoken of as unique in any sense. For Michael is identified in the plural as “one of the chief princes.” So as Michael is only one angel amongst a company of fellow senior angels as Daniel 10:13 so clearly states. Then Christ, who is uniquely the ‘only Son’ of God (John 3:16, 1st John 4:9-14), and that by his ontological nature (Hebrews 1:3), cannot also at the very same time also be Michael, a mere archangel, and one angel amongst a company of similar angels.
6. At Hebrews 1:13 God the Father makes a direct quotation of Psalm 110:1 specifically with regard to Jesus: “But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?” Now if Christ were really Michael the archangel, then this verse wouldn’t make any sense. For the entire purpose of this passage is to convey that Christ only sits at his Father’s right hand, which in Jewish terminology means a position of authority and rank, purposely because he isn’t an angel at all, but because he’s God’s Son.
7. We read at Hebrews 2:5 concerning the world to come, which Jehovah’s Witnesses must interpret as their promised paradise earth that it will not be a world which will be in subjection to angels. However, at Hebrews 2:8, in this age to come we notice that all things, which must include the entire earth itself will be complete subject to Christ. So Christ therefore cannot be an angel.
8. How can Jesus be Michael the Archangel, when according to John 14:9 to see Jesus is to see God the Father: “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” But how can a mere archangel, who is someone other than Yahweh God, reveal God the Father (Yahweh) to us? For only Yahweh God can genuinely reveal himself, and it’s utterly impossible for someone other than God to reveal God to us. Could you the reader for instance reveal God to me by the force of your own will, can this be achieved by effort and determination? Of course not, and for the obvious reason that because you yourself are not God therefore you can’t reveal someone or something that you are not. One final point, Jesus’ use of the Greek verb for ‘see’ which is ‘horao’ means that he wasn’t claiming that he (Jesus) was God the Father as modalists such as Oneness Pentecostals and Branhamites will claim. If he had wish to imply this, then Jesus would have here used the Greek verb ‘blepo’ instead of ‘horao.’
9. When Christ returns at his second coming, we’re specifically told at 1st John 3:2 that at our own resurrection that “we shall be like him.” But, the Bible states at Acts 17:31 and 1st Timothy 2:5 that Christ in his post-resurrection state is described by the apostles Luke and Paul as ‘a man!’ (Greek: anthropos). There’s no mention of Christ being Michael the Archangel. However, if the Jehovah’s Witnesses do indeed believe that Christ was recreated as an archangel, then because we’ll be just like him, if he’s now an archangel, then that would mean that in their paradise earth, all Jehovah’s Witnesses will also lose their own human natures and be made into archangels, just like their own false Jesus!
10. 1st Corinthians 6:3 speaking of God’s people, states that they will soon judge angels: “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” However, if Jesus Christ is the Archangel Michael, who became this angel once again after his crucifixion, when his body dissolved into gasses, but was then recreated by Jehovah as the archangel Michael. Then to be consistent shouldn’t Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that one day they’ll judge Jesus Christ?
© Robert Skynner 16th June 2006. Duplication and posting of this essay online is encouraged, provided that this work isn’t edited or changed other than stylistically. My e-mail address should anyone wish to contact me is: [email protected] I’m a former Oneness Pentecostal now saved by grace rather than by my own works.
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Disillusioned JW
On page 6 of this topic thread I mentioned my revised ideas of what the Bible says in use of the words commonly translated as "soul" and "spirit". After further study since then, I have revised my views even further. This post relates to what I further found about those topics.
I have an edition of Cruden's Complete concordance which appears to have been printed in the latter part of the 1800s, and it's front fly sheet even has an ink stamp saying it was distributed by a company of Charles Taze Russell. [The ink stamp says the following. "BIBLES AT COST. TOWER TRACT SOC'Y. BIBLE HOUSE. ALLEGHENY. PA. BIBLE-STUDY HELPS." The Proclaimers book confirms that Tower Tract Society was a WT affiliated company.] I also have a newer printing of the same edition. This edition (of both of my copies) has a copy of the "Preface to the Octavo Edition" and that preface has the date of 1823 (the most recent date in the book), but the book has no copyright date and no printing date. Both printings of the edition I have include a concordance to the Apocrypha, not just to the OT-NT Holy Bible! Wow!
Under the heading of "Soul" the book says "This word in scripture, especially in the style of the Hebrews, is very equivocal. " It then lists 5 categories/types of usage for the word, namely as follows. (1) "For that spiritual, reasonable,and immortal" [note: that latter word is my correction of broken type of the printed word] "substance in man, which is the origin of our thoughts, desires, and reasonings ...."; (2) "taken for the whole person, both soul and body"; (3) "taken for the life of man"; (4) "taken sometimes for death, or a dead body"; and (5) "taken for"desire, love inclination". Notice that usages 2 through 4 and perhaps also usage number 5 are those which the WT claims is what the biblical meaning of "soul" is.
Under the heading of "Spirit" 19 types of usage are mentioned! I won't bother to list those here.
The edition of Cruden's Complete Concordance of the OT-NT Bible which is copyright 1930 by The John C. Winston Company, is a re-edited edition and one in which a number of the explanations of words were revised to embody "the latest Scriptural interpretations and the results of the most recent discoveries of archeology". It is also owned by me.
That edition says the following under the heading of "soul". '(This word is used in the Bible in much the same variety of senses as it is used to-day. The Hebrews used the word rather more generally, and the renderings of Hebrew expressions given in the margins of many editions of the Bible frequently contain the word when it does not appear in the text, but some other word, as mind, life, or persons, is used. Frequently, where the word soul is used in the Authorised or " King James " Version the revisions have changed it to life)' By 'the revisions" the book means that the (English) Revised Version of 1881-1885 and the "American Revision" (possibly of the American Revised Version [as described in appendixes of the American preferred revisions to the RV and later incorporated into the 1898 ARV], but probably of the American Standard Version of 1901, or possibly of both revisions).
That same edition (the one copyright 1930) under the heading of "spirit" gives 8 categories of usage. Number 3 says "Signifies the soul, which continues in being even after the death of the body, Acts 7:59". Number 7 says "For the breath, the respiration, the animal life that is in beasts, Eccl 3:21." Number 8 says "Spirit is also taken for the wind, Amos 4:13 ...."
Under the heading of "hell" the 1930 copyright edition says the following. "This word is generally used in the Old Testament to translate the Hebrew word Sheol, which really means simply the place of the dead, without reference to happiness or the reverse.... In other passages there is an idea of punishment. ...." The older edition of the Concordance said the place of the dead referred to by Sheol sometimes meant the grave or pit. That is the meaning which the WT assigns to the words Sheol and Hades and to the word hell (when "hell" is a translation of either of those words).
The Bible thus expresses a range of views of what happens to humans after their bodies die, and in regards to whether humans have an immortal component or not. Furthermore, when it says or suggests there is an immortal component, it also states competing views of whether it is conscious or not. These observations are further mentioned in another book I own, one called THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE BIBLE, Edited by Metzger and Coogan. This book is copyright 1993. Note some of what it says, in the following.
The entry of "Afterlife and Immortality" "consists of two articles on views of life and death within the historical communities of Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity." Some of things said in the first article of that entry say the following.
'Israelite views of the afterlife underwent substantial changes during the first millennium BCE, as concepts popular during the preexlic period eventually came to be rejected by the religious leadership of the exilic and postexilic communities, and new theological stances replaced them. ...
Because many elements of preexilic beliefs and practices concerning the dead were eventually repudiated, the Hebrew Bible hardly discusses preexilic concepts at all ....
Like all cultures in the ancient Near East, the Israelites believed that persons continued to exist after *death. It was thought that following death, one's spirit went down to a land below the earth, most often called Sheol, but sometimes merely "Earth," or "the Pit (see hell). In the preexilic period, there was no notion of a judgment of the dead based on their actions during life, nor is there any evidence for a belief that the righteous dead go to live in God's presence. ...
The exact relationship between the body of a dead person and the spirit that lived on in Sheol is unclear, since the Bible does not discuss this issue. ... during the late eighth and seventh centuries' [BCE] there were 'laws against necromancy' which 'assume not that it was impossible to summon the dead from Sheol but that it was inappropriate. ...
During the exile, when the "Yahweh alone" party finally came to control the religious leadership of Judah, a further step was taken', and several texts from that period 'suggest that it is not only improper to consult the dead but actually impossible to do so.' [Note that the WT also teaches that only Yahweh is God (at least in the full sense) and it teaches that it is both improper and impossible to consult the dead - except possibly those they consider to be resurrected anointed JWs in heaven.] 'A new theology developed that argued there is no conscious existence in Sheol at all. At death all contact with the world, and even with God, comes to an end.' [This is what the WT teaches, except they don't say it is a new biblical theory, and furthermore they teach the hope of a resurrection.]
The second article in the entry describes how the Jews, "owing to the widespread influence of the platonic idea of the immortality of the soul (see Human Person)" came to believe in immortality and resurrection and that there would be "reward or punishment" for those who die, and that those ideas were adopted by Christianity. That article also says that such ideas created a tension between ideas both in Judaism and in Christianity.
The entry/article called "Human Person" says the following.
"The Hebrew word for the human being is nepeš, which among its wide range of meanings connotes both flesh and soul as inseparable components of a person." But how they be viewed as inseparable, since later on the article says the following. "At death, the person's flesh dies, and the soul dwells in Sheol, a shadowy place for the dead (see Afterlife and Immortality; Hell)." Perhaps the explanation lies in the next two sentences of the article which say the following. "There is no notion in what may be called orthodox Israelite religion of a separate existence for the soul after death. Death is accepted as a natural part of the life cycle, but it is not welcomed, for the person who dies loses his or her being." After referring to Psalms 30:9 the paragraph later by says the following. "Death is thus perceived to be the end of all sentient life.
Later the article says the following. "In the New Testament, the still prominent idea of bodily resurrection (see especially the resurrection narratives in the Gospels and also 1 Cor. 15) implies that the soul and body are inseparable, but the notion of a human being composed of a separate soul and body slowly gains ascendancy."
Note that parts of the Bible teach that humans do have an immortal soul, but that some of those parts teach the soul of the human dead is unconscious whereas some other verses teach that is conscious. Furthermore, note that other parts of the Bible teach that humans do not have an immortal soul at all.
The above content to me is enormous further proof that the Bible's theological teachings are not the word of God, but merely human ideas of theology, and that such human ideas evolved over the centuries. The Bible are the words (and ideas) of humans (including conflicting views between various human writers of the Bible, not just pertaining to the topics mentioned above) and not the Word of God. Since the Bible is not the word of God, of any god, humans should not feel obligated by the Bible to believe anything the Bible teaches. People thus should feel free to decide which teachings of the Bible, if any, are correct - just as we would do for any nonreligious secular writing or teaching. I encourage believers in the Bible to question what the Bible teaches.