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

 

SPIRIT RELEVANCE (Part one)

The first time ‘spirit’ is used in scripture is in the Book of Genesis. In the Hebrew, Genesis is bereeshith, which, taking its seminality from the first scripts of the Bible, means ‘in the beginning’, speaking of generation, that is, creationism.

“And the Spirit of God moved…” The Hebrew ‘moved’ is râchaph (raw-khaf’) meaning: ‘to brood; by implication to be relaxed.’ The Holy Spirit’s co-creatorship is the source of generative power of the Divinity. The ‘moved’ is Hebraically expressive of a mother hen brooding over her eggs, generating the necessary energy to enable the hatching success. When you come across scientific didacticism pointing to creation as taking its seminal point from an egg you should know where they got it from (albeit a scriptural anomaly).

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

The word ‘spirit’ is rûach (roo’-akh) in Hebrew, meaning, fundamentally, ‘wind’ i.e. ‘breath of life.’ It is the vital principle or animating force within a living being. The seat of life. The spirit that God put inside man became man’s rendezvous with God. God is a spirit, the Bible teaches. A certain spiritual vacuousness took over man’s constitution when he partook of the sinful nature. Adam died spiritually when he sinned against his Maker.

After the fall man lost that fellowship with the Divinity as we read in Genesis 3:8, “And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.” The word ‘walking,’ in the Hebrew, is hâlak (haw-lak’): ‘to walk (in a great variety of applications, literally and figuratively) i.e. to go, walk, come, depart, proceed, move, go away, to die, live, manner of life (figuratively);’ and in this context, God’s lifestyle. Every evening they enjoyed a spiritual rendezvous with the LORD God in their Eden home, which is God’s house. God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, attracted the LORD God into that earthly abode, making this fellowship the first Church on earth.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        The Spirit: generating effective power

The Bible says, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” [Genesis 2:7]. ‘Breathed’ is nâphach (naw-fakh’): ‘to puff, in various applications (literally, to inflate, blow hard, scatter, kindle, expire; figuratively, to disesteem).’ What He blew was not an ordinary wind, it has life just as his Maker. It was a rational wind; the ‘breath’ is neshâmâh (nesh-aw-maw’): ‘a puff, that is, wind, angry or vital breath, divine inspiration, intellect or (concretely) an animal;’ and the word ‘life,’ chay (khah’-ee) is: ‘alive; hence raw (flesh); fresh (plant, water, year), strong; also (as noun, especially in the feminine singular and masculine plural) life (or living thing), whether literally or figuratively;’ it is actually chaiyim i.e. ‘lives’ (two lives: spirit and soul). This made man to be different from animals. But at the sinful fall the Holy Spirit left the third and spirit realm of Adam. Spiritual death.

Before the fall, man was sinless, living in the age of innocence or the dispensation of innocence. Christ, the LORD God, their Creator, came physically to have Church (having called or chosen them from large available clay) fellowship with them. God, the Father, did not come to them. There would not have been a salvaging second chance for the Adamic race, if He, God the Father, should appear physically to man. He is a Judge. Man made use of his conscience, to demonstrate his free moral agency, when he sinned. This brought him into the second dispensation of conscience in God’s calendar. He must use a blood carrying living animal to bring himself back into fellowship, having agreed with the Holy Spirit’s silent confirmation of blood sacrifice. This is what the obduracy of Cain repudiated. He spurned the leading of the Holy Spirit! From then the Holy Spirit came to place Himself on man’s head and not inside of him. It is for this reason the Old Testament will have, “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me” [Psalm 51:11]. He left anytime man sinned (1Samuel 16:14, 28:15; 1Samuel 10:6, 16:13).

Cain’s repudiation automatically empowered Lucifer to set up his religious hegemony over the man of the earth. Spiritual dichotomy. Antediluvian saints like Enoch humbled himself before God, and was led by His Spirit: for of him it is said, “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” [Genesis 5:24]. The Holy Spirit is the same worshipped Jehovah, whose physical presence (albeit in His characteristic invisibility) was seated in the third, holy of holiest, compartment of the Jerusalem Temple. He received worship as the Jehovah God of Israel.

(…to be continued…)

Read part two here

I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE (i)

               THE HAND THAT BROUGHT THE GRACE OF GOD TO MANKIND

Beyond the contextual apprehension of John 10:30, “I and my Father are one;” is the esoteric profundity couched by Jesus to unveil the truism that characterizes the personage of the Revelator.

Jesus did not use the personal pronoun, ‘my’ which happens to be the translators’ insertion. ‘My Father’ looks, therefore, like ‘the Father,’ with the definite article. Now, the thing is: If Jesus Christ were not God, could he have said these words without being guilty of blasphemy? The word ‘are,’ esmen, is a plural masculine gender. So, by the utterance of “we are one,” it is meant: in nature and essence, and perfections, particularly in power; since Christ is speaking of the impossibility of plucking any of the sheep, out of his own and his Father’s hands. Whatever is in His Father’s hand is also in His hand. He is as protective as His Father is.

The Jews asked Jesus in the twenty-fourth verse, “If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.” So, what you read in the 29th “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand;” is a vindication of the mental synchronism that exists between the two of them, attested to by verse 30.

The first word, ‘I’ is the Greek egō (eg-o’): ‘a primary pronoun of the first person ‘I’ (only expressed when emphatic).’ The conjunction, ‘and’ is kai (kahee) it means: ‘and, also, even, indeed, but. Origin: apparently, a primary particle, having a copulative and sometimes also a cumulative force.’ ‘Are’ is an interesting esmen (es-men’): ‘first person plural of “to be” which is indicative of eimi (i-mee’) ‘a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; “I exist” (used only when emphatic).’ ‘One’ is called heis (hice): (a neuter gender) ‘a primary numeral; one.’

God revealed His covenant name, I AM, to Moses. The Septuagint rendition of I AM is Egō Eimi. Esmen, the plural of Eimi, has helped to reveal more than a Personage in the Godhead just the same way Elohim (Hebraic plural for God) establishes the Trinitarian concept in the Godhead, of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God….” The unseen Father in heaven is the Incarnation of the visible Revelator whom Isaiah prophetically called ‘The everlasting Father’ in chapter nine of the sixth verse of his Book. ‘I AM THAT I AM’ is what we call JEHOVAH. My first son, at about age eight to ten, told me how overwhelmed he felt anytime I defined JEHOVAH which is ‘self-existence’ or, better still, in the mind-blowing, ‘A One who exists by His own power’, which my son finds too ecstatically overpowering! This is the revelation of Jesus! The Incarnate God.

Jehovah does not mean, ‘one who comes into existence’ for ‘to come’ will give an impression of chronological timing. It is anti-theology to equate God with time. It gives an illogical opinion of the Divinity. It is an insult to place God and time side by side as equals. He had been in existence before creationism. He created eternity from which He drew out time for our use. He did not come into existence; He is existence Himself. Amen! And this is all I am trying to show anyone who wishes to know more about the Lord, Jesus!

For the information of those who see Jesus as a created being, the grammatical cumulation of kai lends credence to the neuter ‘one’. It cannot be overemphasized: the momentousness of this word ‘one’. “I and my Father are one.” It goes beyond a certain synchronous mental evaluation prowess they exhibit. The rapturous truism of the connotation of this little word ‘one’ is that it is saying that the Christ and the Father are of the same essence! Check out the reaction of the unbelieving religious deportment of the antagonistic Jews. John 10:31, “Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.” Jesus asked them, in the 32nd verse, “Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?” Without wasting time, “The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God” (John 10:33).      “I and the Father” is reminiscent of Proverbs 8:22, “The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old;” and the more appropriate 30th verse, “Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him;” as if they share a common paterfamilias as they grew up to, and from, adolescence to maturity. Let me reveal a gleanable theological truism from “Many good works have I shewed you from my Father” of the 32nd verse of John chapter 10. If the words of Jesus are always true, then what He was telling them is, “Many good works have I shewed you from Myself!” The Father and He are one! Jesus is the attested, “The everlasting Father” of the book of prophet Isaiah.

Emmanuel! The very God of very God!

God’s protocol, the Scriptures, is readily acquiescent to this oneness. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life;” in Scripture, the word ‘life’, zoe, in the Greek, which is ‘God’s kind of eternal life,’ gives a connotation of Jesus being the existence Himself! When He made the categorical statement of John 8:58, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am;” He used the same covenant name of Egō Eimi. This is why I call Him J.J. (JEHOVAH JESUS). When He said, “I am the resurrection,” what He simply voiced was, “Jehovah, the resurrection,” placing His hand of Divinity on His holiest chest: for the avoidance of ambiguity! Mark 2:28, “Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” This asseveration is pregnant with profundity.                       (…to be concluded…)