JESUS IS NOT GOD

[onewithhim]

Here are Jesus' words, taken from the King James Version:


John 5:19: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."

John 8:42: "[To the Pharisees] If God were your Father, ye would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me."

(There Jesus says that he CAME FROM God. Obviously he thinks of his Father as "God." He differentiates between "God" and himself. He says God sent him. God is someone other than Jesus himself.)


John 10:34-36: Jesus' rebuttal after the Pharisees accuse him of "making himself God"...... "Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I SAID, I AM THE SON OF GOD?"

John 12:49,50: "For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say....Whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak."

John 14:28: "My Father is greater than I."

John 17:3: "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

John 20:17: "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to MY GOD and your God."

Revelation 3:12: (After Jesus returned to heaven, the Father is STILL greater than he is.) "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of MY GOD, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of MY GOD, and the name of the city of MY GOD, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from MY GOD: and I will write upon him my new name."




I welcome any comments. If you agree that Jesus Christ is not "God," I would very much like to know.

[Tcg]

Mysteriously - Jesus is God, the Father is God but they are separate persons, as you say. I don't see why, when you happily accept other mysteries and miracles, the concept of Trinity is so preposterous. It may go against your private convictions but I don't see that this should prevent God from doing or existing in whatever miraculous form he chooses.

A miraculous Virgin Birth is a very odd method for God to create a mere man. That step most certainly wouldn't be needed if Jesus were to be considered nothing but human.

The offspring of the Holy Spirit and Mary would not produce a human. At the very least, their offspring would be some sort of God/human hybrid. Neither pure God nor merely a man.


Tcg

[Elijah John]

Brian, if Jesus' FATHER is God, how can Jesus be God?

Don't the verses I quoted show quite plainly that Jesus and God are two different Persons?

Mysteriously - Jesus is God, the Father is God but they are separate persons, as you say. I don't see why, when you happily accept other mysteries and miracles, the concept of Trinity is so preposterous. It may go against your private convictions but I don't see that this should prevent God from doing or existing in whatever miraculous form he chooses.

The concept is preposterous because there is no unambiguous Biblical evidence that Jesus is God. He never says "I am God", and no one ever says to him, "You are God" nor about him "Jesus is God". So all we have really is Church say-so, and some very murky and infrequent NT passages that hint he may be. Other than that, there is no reason to believe this Jewish man from first century Palestine is the Almighty Creator and Sustainer of the Universe.

That a first century Jew is God himself is an extraordinary claim. Hadn't there ought to be extraordinary evidence to support this claim? We have none.

[Elijah John]

Mysteriously - Jesus is God, the Father is God but they are separate persons, as you say. I don't see why, when you happily accept other mysteries and miracles, the concept of Trinity is so preposterous. It may go against your private convictions but I don't see that this should prevent God from doing or existing in whatever miraculous form he chooses.

A miraculous Virgin Birth is a very odd method for God to create a mere man. That step most certainly wouldn't be needed if Jesus were to be considered nothing but human.

The offspring of the Holy Spirit and Mary would not produce a human. At the very least, their offspring would be some sort of God/human hybrid. Neither pure God nor merely a man.


Tcg

You are tacitly acknowledging that the Virgin Birth of Christ is a very important doctrine. Isn't it odd that the earliest Gospel, (and arguably the most reliable) Mark seems to know nothing about this legend?

Also even if the Virgin Birth actually happened, that would not in and of itself prove that Jesus is God. Muslims also believe that it happened that way but see it as only a demonstration of the Almighty's power. A third way for God to create a human being.

1) Adam, without a father or s mother
2) Most other humans with a father and a mother.
3) and Jesus without a human father.

So really, Jesus is no more Divine than Adam was, according to Muslims or any other person.

[otseng]

Moderator Action

Moved to Random Ramblings. Please review the Rules and Tips on starting a debate topic.

This would however make an interesting debate topic. Please create a thread with a debate question in the first post. Then in your second post start defending what you believe.

[Eloi]

[Replying to Tcg]

Jesus was not a hybrid as the son of the angels in Noah's time ... Jesus was totally human, born in a special way: it happened after his life was reduce to a normal male gamete. The only difference that we can think of him with a son Adam could have had before sinning, is that Jesus had an existence as a spirit before becoming a son of a human woman. He needed to learn how to walk, speak, and so.

Jesus didn't make miracles because he was God, but because the spirit of God was working in him.

Matt. 9:8 When the crowds saw this, they were struck with fear, and they glorified God, who gave such authority to men.

Mark 2:12 (...) So they were all astonished, and they glorified God, saying: “We have never seen anything like this.�

Luk. 5:26 Then one and all were seized with amazement, and they began to glorify God, and they became filled with awe, saying: “We have seen wonderful things today!�

Even his closest followers knew that:

Acts 2:22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus the Naz·a·reneʹ was a man publicly shown to you by God through powerful works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. 23 This man, who was handed over by the determined will and foreknowledge of God, you fastened to a stake by the hand of lawless men, and you did away with him. 24 But God resurrected him by releasing him from the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held fast by it.

As it is logical to think, everything in Jesus worked just as any human being would work in a state of perfection, with all his capabilities functioning fully ... so it is normal that he could even as a human, a perfect one, demonstrate more reasoning capacity than an ordinary and imperfect human being. Besides that, Jesus came to remember his life in heavens before becoming human and had authority and approval from his Father, God ... we, Jehovah's witnesses, think that started to happen after his baptism, the moment he was anointed with holy spirit by God.

[onewithhim]

Mysteriously - Jesus is God, the Father is God but they are separate persons, as you say. I don't see why, when you happily accept other mysteries and miracles, the concept of Trinity is so preposterous. It may go against your private convictions but I don't see that this should prevent God from doing or existing in whatever miraculous form he chooses.

A miraculous Virgin Birth is a very odd method for God to create a mere man. That step most certainly wouldn't be needed if Jesus were to be considered nothing but human.

The offspring of the Holy Spirit and Mary would not produce a human. At the very least, their offspring would be some sort of God/human hybrid. Neither pure God nor merely a man.


Tcg

Jesus was fully human, yet not "merely" a man. He was sent from heaven, and he was a perfect human being, just as Adam was when he was first created.

There was no human being on earth, descended from Adam, that could counter-act Adam's rebellion and sinful acts. ("None of them can ever redeem a brother or give to God a ransom for him." Psalm 49:7) Jesus could do that here on Earth because he was perfect and sinless.

"Through one man sin entered into the world and death spread through sin, and so death spread to all men because they had all sinned....So, then, as through one trespass the result to men of all sorts was condemnation, so too through one act of justification the result to men ...is their being declared righteous for life." (Romans 5:18)


You have good questions and interesting opinions. I think you might get quite a bit out of participating in a study of the Bible online, at www.jw.org . It's a new thing on the website and a great opportunity for people to delve into the Bible. It's worth checking out.

[Bust Nak]

William: It is not very clear that The Father is Jehovah either. People believe what they will when things are not made crystal clear and obvious.

Moderator Comment

Perhaps that should be left to another topic. This one is to do with the question of Jesus' Divinity, not Jehovah's.

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