Jehovah’s Witness Myopic View Of Jesus (IV)

                                      “I and my Father are one.”

       In one of their itinerant propensity that brought them to my house I pointed at the epithetic ‘mighty God’ of Isaiah 9:6. And what was his denigrative defence? “The Bible did not say ‘Almighty God,’ it says ‘mighty God’ which is less in status.” So let us see what the Hebraic definition of ‘mighty God’ is. The Hebrew for ‘God,’ in this verse, is ‘êl (ale): ‘strength; as adjective mighty; especially the Almighty (but used also of any deity).’ It is quite apropos for the Spirit of God to put ‘êl in the prophetic utterance of Isaiah to exhibit the might of Jehovah’s character.

If this entity, in proper context of Isaiah’s prophecy, is to shoulder the universal government, then He must be the Creator Himself. The word ‘mighty’ is gibbôr (ghib-bore’) meaning: ‘powerful; by implication warrior, tyrant.’  Is He not said to be ‘mighty to save’ in Isaiah 63:1? Put the definitions together in contextualisation and you will discover the meaning of this epithet to be ‘Almighty warrior.’ Who else is Almighty save Him the LORD God? Remember the pantokrator of Revelation 1:8? Jesus introduces Himself in Revelation 1:8, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending ……which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”

Ask yourself why He should throw at His disciples, the conundrum of John 14:10, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” The phrase ‘I am’ is, interestingly the Greek egō (eg-o’) esti (es-tee’). Esti is the third person singular of eime. Eime speaks more of ‘existence’ than of ‘being.’ Egō eime is exactly what the Septuagint explains God’s response to Moses’ question of Exodus 3:1, “And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?” Why would Jesus arrogate I AM THAT I AM to Himself; when this epithet is the same as Jehovah!

 

…firstborn from the dead (Col. 1:18) {to get born again}

             Should the answer to the above Mosaic question be farfetched in the light of John 14:9, “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” Philip’s ignorance is well captured in John Gill’s commentary: “Surely you cannot be so ignorant as this comes to; as you have seen me with your bodily eyes, as a man, you must, know that I am God by the doctrines I have taught you, and the miracles I have wrought among you: and

he that hath seen me; not with the eyes of his body, but with the eyes of his understanding; he that has beheld the perfections of the Godhead in me:

hath seen the Father; the perfections which are in him also; for the same that are in me are in him, and the same that are in him are in me: I am the very image of him, and am possessed of the same nature, attributes, and glory, that he is; so that he that sees the one, sees the other:

and how sayest thou then show us the Father? such a request is a needless one, and betrays great weakness and ignorance.” This commentary, if you ask me, exposes the ignorance of Jehovah’s Witness Organisation as well. A striking scriptural endorsement of the deity of Jesus is encapsulated in John 10:30, “I and my Father are one.”

…in all things he might have the preeminence (Col. 1:18)

It is pellucidly understood that the ‘Father’ in this verse is none other than the One who will forever be seated on the throne of celestial splendour i.e. God the Father, the First Member of the Godhead. The pronoun ‘I’ is egō. The conjunction ‘and’ is kai (kahee): ‘and, also, even, indeed, but. Origin: apparently, a primary particle, having a copulative and sometimes also a cumulative force.’ There is a spiritual copula that does make the Father nonexistent without the Son, as far as the scripture is concerned to mankind. The personal ‘my’ is in italics meaning that it is not in the original Johannine script. Anytime I see this I just do what Rev. Chris Okotie has taught, I read it without the italised and it comes out forceful. ‘Are’ is esmen (es-men’) which is the first person plural of eime: “to be.”

A conundrum! Only faith can uncurtain it!

‘One’ is heis (hice) ‘(Including the neuter [etc.] ἕν -en- {hen}); a primary numeral; one.’ Heis is a noun. As a numeral it is a neuter gender. The genderlessness of heis is what engenders the phenomenal understanding of this verse. The next verse, John 10:31 reports: “Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.” Why would they decide to sentence Him to a stoning death? Heis speaks of essence in definition. It has an implicit conception that Jesus and the First Member of the Godhead are essentially of the same nature. This spelled the equality of Jesus with the Father in clear capital letters to the unenlightened Jews. Beyond the narrative of the Father having the same mind as His divine Son is the unbelievably mind blowing fact the Father and the Son are of the same essence. The uncomprehending scriptural naivety that characterised their view of Christ is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses are seen wallowing in, today. Amen!

You can get born again by praying this prayer with all your heart and truthfully: Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe in my heart that Jesus died for my sins and You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and I receive Him as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory, Amen.      (…to be continued…)   

Click here to read part III   

Click here to read part V

Jehovah’s Witness Myopic View Of Jesus (III)

(…continued from part II)

Once I asked, “What makes you teach that Christ is an angel?” The answer from the Jehovah’s Witness people, they explained, is in 1Thessalonians 4:16 “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” They teach that the archangel is Michael therefore archangel Michael is actually Christ Jesus. Nowhere, in the Bible, is Christ designated Archangel. He is the Creator and not one of the angels.

As the Angel of the LORD, He received worship. Hebrews 1:6-7 says in verse 6, “And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. 7. “And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” In Jude 1:9, Michael told the devil, “The Lord rebuke thee;” which proves that he, Michael, is not the Lord. Did Jesus use Michael’s rebuke when He had an encounter of temptation with Satan in the wilderness? The Lord of glory, King of kings and the Lord of lords will shout and the vocal chords of the heavenly host will echo the Lord’s. This is what Paul is teaching in this verse.

          In defence of their doctrine, one of them challenged me to explain why He is the first born of Colossians 1:15, “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:” taking this to mean that He was the first intelligent being of creationism. Is there any mention of Adam’s birth. Who did labour through, to the parturition of the angels? Angels and our pristine parents were sculptured, one after the other personally, by Christ.

Why debate Christ’s angelic birth or creation? There is no need for it.

Verse 18 answers that question of verse 15. “And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence” [Colossians 1:18]. Paul divinely ascribes the beginning to an angel? He is the Creator. He must be preeminently first in all things. In this verse He is first to conquer death. He is the first from His mother’s womb. From eternity, He is the first begotten of the Father in verse fifteen; making His primogeniture a threefold.

Too stubborn to give in to a superior argument based on scriptural fact the avowed disciples of Charles Taze Russell contend still with Proverbs 8:22 to prove that Christ was definitely an entity of creationism. “The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old” [Proverbs 8:22]. Qânâh (kaw-naw’) is the Hebrew word for ‘possess’ and it means: ‘to erect, that is, create; by extension to procure, especially by purchase (causatively sell); by implication to own.’ Is the possession wisdom? If the LORD had to possess wisdom before embarking upon all His creative works, therefore, an urgent need to create wisdom for Himself arose, can these people not see the implications of the portentous blasphemy? It portends the lack of wisdom on God’s part before creating anything. One who is deficient in wisdom is indubitably dumb. Is this what Jehovah God is?

God will have to continue to acquire more wisdom to remain preeminently the origin and source of wisdom. The attainment of wisdom requires a pedagogue. Tell me, if you know, from whose hands the display of pedagogical prowess God did receive the certificate of wisdom? If God is absolutely complete in all ramifications ere creation then He did not need to acquire any facilitating faculty in His ways of old. When you pull out a scripture indiscriminately for the sake of teaching, the resultant effect breeds an illogical conclusion of God’s protocol. They did not take cognizance of the thirtieth verse.

You can get born again by praying this prayer with all your heart and truthfully: Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe in my heart that Jesus died for my sins and You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and I receive Him as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory, Amen.              (…to be continued…)

Read part II  here

Read part IV here

Jehovah’s Witness Myopic View Of Jesus (II)

The Trinity: God’s Divine essence.

 (…continued from part I)

It reads in John 1:3, one of my favourite scriptures, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” If this verse fails to settle the deity question of Christ what else can? The verbal ‘made’ is ginomai (ghin’-om-ahee) which means: ‘to cause to be (“gen”-erate), that is, (reflexively) to become (come into being), used with great latitude (literally, figuratively, intensively, etc.).’ If He did ’cause to be’ then He created the first things out of nothing! Thereafter, He, the Christ, made others out of the existing materials. Only the LORD God could perform this preternatural feat.

Let us bring it to a logical conclusion by looking at this analogy. If there are a million objects in a receptacle and a particular one of the whole lot is said to have created everything, tell me, what did create the particular one, as far as the items of the container is concerned? Nothing, absolutely: you will agree with me. Christ Jesus, through whom all was created, is not in any way a product of the effort of creationism. God alone creates ex nihilo (out of nothing) as the Greek puts it.

Ask yourself why Jesus must be a known entity to all and sundry? John 1:4 “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” The import of the fourth verse is strengthened by the 9^th: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Now you can understand why every religion must talk about Jesus. He has, providentially, been made available to all; and for a religion to escape being labelled a fake, Jesus must be involved. If Divine protocol must be observed then do not tread the way of the Lord à la Jehovah’s Witness induction.

If this Light is the Author of life how different is He from the One of whom it is said in Acts 17:28 “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring?” There is no difference. The two are the one and the same Jehovah. The One, Father, sits eternally in heaven and the Other, His express image, is Jesus Christ. Amen. Cannot we just see that without God there is no life and that if it is lucidly understood that Jesus is the true Light then man’s search for the deity of Jesus is over. Amen.

Shall we peruse the fourteenth verse? “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” [John 1:14]. Does the clause ‘made flesh’ support the indoctrination of Jehovah’s Witness prop? It certainly does not. The clue to my submission is in the main verb ‘made:’ for it speaks not of creation of Him, as the Christ. Ginomai (ghin’-om-ahee) is the Greek word for ‘made’ meaning: ‘to become, i.e. to come into existence, begin to be, receive being.’ Our observation, from scriptural standpoint, clearly apprises us of the fact that Christ exists before creation. If He became flesh it was simply because He was not flesh, in the true sense of it, before getting into the toga of this habiliment. This is the climax of the first chapter of the book of John. The unprecedented evolutionary Incarnation of God!

This is the consummation of the prophetic Emmanuel. The word ‘dwelt’ is skēnoō (skay-no’-o) ‘to tent or encamp, that is, (figuratively) to occupy (as a mansion) or (specifically) to reside (as God did in the Tabernacle of old, a symbol of protection and communion).’ He had come to perfect the scriptural, “I will never forsake nor leave thee.” Christians have become His Tabernacle. This is not an angel of Jehovah’s Witness teaching, an indoctrination which, undoubtedly, is reeling from an impairment engendered by a spiritual view of myopia.

TRINITY

You can get born again by praying this prayer with all your heart and truthfully, say: Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe in my heart that Jesus died for my sins and You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and I receive Him as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory, Amen.              (…to be continued…)

Read part I here

Read part III here

Jehovah’s Witness Myopic View Of Jesus (I)

Who is this Yehoshua? The God-man, the LORD, Jesus.

It is quite appalling when one observes the intransigent denial of the deity of Jesus by the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine. “Jesus can’t be God,” they go knocking, from a door to other available doors. Do I wonder how they read John 1:1, the lucidity of which stipulates, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God?” The intransigence of their scriptural stance will not let me.

The word ‘beginning’ is archē (ar-khay’) in Greek, and it means: ‘(properly abstract) a commencement, or (concrete) chief (in various applications of order, time, place or rank).’ The commencement is not, in any way, in reference to God’s or Christ’s existence. Time is absolutely too weak to ever measure the agelessness of the Divinity. The ‘beginning,’ ergo, is the embarkation of His work. Now if at the embarkment of God’s creation there was another entity, it then follows that He was not alone. If the Bible says, “In the beginning” it also means that nothing, of creationism, had been brought into being yet. Amen!

Simple logic should inform anyone that whatever or whoever exists before creation is indubitably as eternal as Jehovah! ‘Word’ in the Greek is logos (log’-os): ‘something said (including the thought); by implication a topic (subject of discourse), also reasoning (the mental faculty) or motive; by extension a computation; specifically (with the article in John) the Divine Expression (that is, Christ).’ Logos is the totality of God’s mind, thought, word and being. Did God have to create the Word before creationism? That will be tantamount to His Divine dumbness ere creation. So, the correct answer will be a resounding, “No! He wasn’t dumb.”

THIS IS JESUS: the express word of Jehovah

Ergo, the Word is the Eternal One also. The Word is intrinsically of God, the Father! Is there any difference between a person and the word of his mouth? None, I believe. John 14:10, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” They are, as the WORD reveals in this verse, co-eternal.

The very first word of John 1:1, ‘in’ is an interesting en (en) Thayer Definition: ‘in, by, with etc. Origin: a primary preposition denoting (fixed) position (in place, time or state), and (by implication) instrumentality (medially or constructively), i.e. a relation of rest {it is an intermediate between eis (ice) ‘A primary preposition; to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etc.); also in adverbial phrases;’ and ek ex (ek) ‘A primary preposition denoting origin (the point whence motion or action proceeds), from, out (of place, time or cause; literally or figuratively; direct or remote}.’ The definition of ‘in’ proves that as God was contemplating what and how to create, the eternal Word, Logos, was already in existence.

The seated Father, the Saviour Son & the ubiquitous Spirit: The Trinity.

The Word, and God, and of course the Holy Spirit were the real Creators –constituting one worshipped God (and there’s a reason for that). John would not have penned, “and the word was a god” as wickedly scripted in the Jehovah’s Witness’ “New World Translation” of their bible. The Septuagint does not have an article before the last ‘God.’ Now, when the Greek uses the definite article before a person or object it is a way of designation or pointing out that object. But when the article is left out, the Greek is bringing out the inherent nature or quality of the object or person. This is a Greek idiom called the anarthous. What John meant by leaving out the article is: “and the Word was of the very nature or quality of God.” Is it not on the American judicial record that Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Jehovah’s Witness, did not know Greek?

The Ancient of days; who became the Infant of days! JESUS!!

You can get born again by praying this prayer with all your heart and truthfully: Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe in my heart that Jesus died for my sins and You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and I receive Him as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory, Amen.        (…to be continued…)

Read part II here

 

I AM GRATEFUL TO JEHOVAH (II)

 

       My son, Ogoluwa, an IT giant, designed this on my 61^st birthday.

 (…continued from the 1^st part)

The word ‘terror’ of Psalm 91:5, in the Hebrew, is pachad (pakh’-ad) and it means: ‘object of dread; a (sudden) alarm (properly the object feared, by implication the feeling).’ The Lord God delivered me from the torturous goal of Satan, his demons and his human agents. ‘Pestilence’ of the 6^th verse, is deber (deh’-ber) which comes from [dâbar (daw-bar’): ‘to speak, declare, converse, command, promise, warn, threaten, sing] used (in the sense of destroying); a pestilence.’ I was wise enough to talk to Jesus, the express Word of God, for which reason the imprecatory resolve of the enemy could not bear any evil fruit upon my life. The power of Jesus made sure of that. ‘Walketh’ is hâlak (haw-lak’) ‘to walk (in a great variety of applications); lifestyle.’ The devil’s lifestyle is to move about in the surreptitious cloak of darkness. The light is of Jesus and my walk with Him has destroyed the ossified Jericho stand of Lucifer. ‘Destruction’ is qeṭeb (keh’-teb) meaning ‘to cut off; ruin.’ Knowing my divine mission on earth, his only preoccupation was to have my life severed at the tender age of fifteen, in the year of 1970.

‘Wasteth’ is shûd (shood) ‘to ruin, destroy, spoil, devastate.’ ‘Noonday’ is tsôhar (tso’-har) ‘a light (that is, window); dual double light, that is, noon; by extension happiness.’ The thing is: we do not see these satanic arsenal when they are sent flying ominously at us. God’s angels are always on guard; thwarting Satan’s incessant diabolical toils of enmity. Lucifer has done his worst to clothe me in a perpetual state of unhappiness. In a spate of two years about five years ago I had slumped four times. Look at me now, I am punching the keys on the laptop and the phone because I am alive and well to testify of the beneficence of the Most High. This is a rare opportunity: to speak on behalf of God! I must expose the nefarious ways and the failed deeds of the Devil: that I have told Satan. What can he do? Nothing! Is he not a failed and conquered foe in the name of Jesus? Selah!

There are some times one sees things spawned by a psychological effect of ill health on the brain. Satan knows what nerves to tamper with to induce the worst cerebral form of terrorism. He could make you see twenty illusory venomous ophidian-meandering on the floor even as you wake up from sleep early in the morning! But the LORD God would not allow the evil intent to fructify, to the glory of His name. It is just the same way we do not see the destructive missiles of Psalm 91. The Lord has constantly thwarted the devil’s crazy intentions to turn us into raving lunatics. The LORD is good!

Psalm 34:19 informs, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.” ‘Afflictions,’ in this verse, is ra‛ or râ‛âh (rah): ‘bad, evil (adjective), disagreeable, malignant [with an intent to cause misery].’ ‘Righteous,’ tsaddı̂yq (tsad-deek’), means: ‘just, lawful.’ For those who are minding their businesses lawfully, please, do not be deterred by these satanic braggadocios. Now, the word ‘delivereth’ is nâtsal (naw-tsal’) ‘to snatch away, whether in a good or a bad sense:’ and in this context, it is the Lord’s duty to remove satanic influence that is badgering your soul. The epithet ‘LORD’ is the Hebrew yehôvâh (yeh-ho-vaw’) BDB Definition: Jehovah = “the existing One.” Strong’s Definition: (the) self Existent or eternal; Jehovah, Jewish national name of God.’ I believe now you know who is watching the backs of born again Christians. He does it always because the verb ‘delivereth’ is in the habitual tense: and herein lies my boasting confidence. The God I serve is the LORD, the One whose existence is by His own power! He is dateless, no beginning, no ending. He created all and controls all. Amen.

God used the willing brain of Noah; the eager and enthusiastic thinking organs of Isaiah and David. He knows how readily I am to do everything about His Word. The enemy knows also what danger my continued existence spells for his usurped kingdom. He will be stupider than what I know of him if he should stand idly at akimbo watching me prospering unheeded. Jehovah has decreed to use my compliant understanding of Jesus. There is absolutely nothing he can do to veto God’s precept. For the very great things the good Lord has done, the medium size aids, the small ones and for the very tiny, inconsequentially looking things He has done, I am full of gratitude. Jesus is Lord! Amen!!

  Be wise, get born again. Say this simple prayer: “Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I receive Him now as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen!”       (Concluded)

 You can get the 1st part here

 

       FEAR NOT!!! SATAN IS A CONQUERED FOE!