MIKE: Hi Colin,
2 John 1:9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.
Christ is simply God manifest in the flesh for the purpose of redemption, that we might come back to God. He is the only way to the Father. And this verse is saying the same thing.
COLIN: Is Christ simply God manifest in the flesh while He was on Earth? Where is He now? In body or in Spirit?
MIKE: Christ is in glorified body right now, acting as intercessor/High Priest, ever living to make intercession for us. And there is the Spirit of Christ.
2 John 1:9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.
In other words, if you accept not the doctrine of Christ... Christ come in the flesh to die on the cross and redeem man by His blood, then you simply cannot come to the Father.
COLIN: ...but he states that if we abide in the doctrine of Christ, we currently have both the Father and the Son. How can we have both if they are simply manifestations of the One God?
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
He is the DOOR. As Son He is the Door. But notice Jesus also said this:
John 10:14 I am the good shepherd,
John 10:9 I am the door:
John 1:29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
He is the lamb.
The Father is Jesus and the Son is Jesus. They are just two different manifestations of the single person of God. The Son is God expressed.
COLIN: I don't understand how you are making the connection. Jesus is not the Father, He is the Way to the father. he is the Lamb of God, not God (the Father). Please clarify how you, from the verses listed above, make the claim that Jesus is Father and Son. See 1 John 1:3. The Holy Ghost clearly states that the Father is Not His Son Jesus.
MIKE: The SON is the way to the Father. You are thinking in trinitarian terms, and nowhere is the name JESUS limited to that of the SON. Try to think in my terms. For example, I am Mike. I am a father and a husband and a pastor. The role as pastor is not the role of father. But Mike is both pastor and father. You are ever saying the name of Jesus is limited to the SON alone. So when I say SON, you immediately think of Jesus. To you, Son is named Jesus, but Father is not named Jesus. Therefore you think I am teaching that the role of Father is the same role as Son when I say that Jesus is the Father and the Son. I am not saying that. I am saying the PERSON of the Father is the Person of the Son, yes. But I am not saying the role of Father is the role of the Son.
I am not saying that those verses prove that Jesus is the Father. I use other verses to prove that. I am saying Jesus is the Father and the Son in the same way that He is, in those verses, lamb and door to the sheepfold and shepherd. Different roles are distinguished by the same Person, Jesus. The verses show that Jesus is BOTH SHEPHERD AND DOOR to the sheepfold, and yet He is one person. by the same token, Isaiah 9:6 says that Jesus is the everlasting Father -- Father of eternity -- as well as Son.
Hebrews 1:3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
The Son of God is the WORD OF GOD. One's word is one's expression. Your word is your expression to me given to me in order to manifest your thoughts and self-opinion to me. You are your word. "No man is any better than his word."
COLIN: My word is not "me". It is clearly distinguished and is an extension of me. But the Word of God created the world, and was with God in the beginning. Are you saying that the Son of God is merely an expression of God?
MIKE: No. The Son is God manifested in flesh. And your word is certainly yourself in the sense that John said the Word was God.
3056 logos {log'-os}
from 3004; TDNT - 4:69,505; n m
AV - word 218, saying 50, account 8, speech 8, Word (Christ) 7, thing
5, not tr 2, misc 32; 330
1) of speech
1a) a word, uttered by a living voice, embodies a conception or idea
1b) what someone has said
1b1) a word
1b2) the sayings of God
1b3) decree, mandate or order
1b4) of the moral precepts given by God
1b5) Old Testament prophecy given by the prophets
1b6) what is declared, a thought, declaration, aphorism, a weighty
saying, a dictum, a maxim
1c) discourse
1c1) the act of speaking, speech
1c2) the faculty of speech, skill and practice in speaking
1c3) a kind or style of speaking
1c4) a continuous speaking discourse - instruction
1d) doctrine, teaching
1e) anything reported in speech; a narration, narrative
1f) matter under discussion, thing spoken of, affair, a matter in dispute,
case, suit at law
1g) the thing spoken of or talked about; event, deed
2) its use as respect to the MIND alone
2a) reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning,
calculating
2b) account, i.e. regard, consideration
2c) account, i.e. reckoning, score
2d) account, i.e. answer or explanation in reference to judgment
2e) relation, i.e. with whom as judge we stand in relation
2e1) reason would
2f) reason, cause, ground
Even a Trinitarian said this about the word.
MATTHEW HENRY:
The plainest reason why the Son of God is called the Word, seems to
be, that as our words explain our minds to others, so was the Son of God
sent
in order to reveal his Father's mind to the world.
That is what I mean.
COLIN: On the same theme, please explain Hebrews 1:8. How can God address the Son as God?
MIKE: Hebrews 1:8 But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.
He is God because He is the one person of God manifested in a manner to redeem mankind. God manifests simultaneously as Father, Son and Holy Ghost because He is God. This does not demand that he be three persons. His almighty power simply has the ability to manifest simultaneously in these three manners. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are titles, denoting different manifestations for one great purpose of redemption, of the single person of God Almighty.
COLIN: Personal attributes are attriubted to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit... The Father loves the Son; how can these be merely titles if there is interaction between them?If there is no personal distinction between God the Father and the Son, how can God the Father personally address the Son... as God?
MIKE: The Son is addressed as God because Son is the single person of God distinctly come in flesh to redeem mankind. It is not another person from the Father. Of course there are personal attributes assigned to Father, Son and Spirit, but that does not demand they are informing us that each one of these manifestations is a person apart from other persons. There are seven spirits of God in Revelation. Are they each seven persons because they are said to have personal attributes such as searching across the world and looking for things?
There is love between Father and Son because if God were to truly manifest in flesh as man and thereby identify with mankind, then that man Christ would have to experience a love between Himself and DEITY. You are seeing a contrast of deity versus humanity when you see Father loving Son.
We distinctly see reference to Jesus in the days of His flesh. And in that distinction, we are told that He prayed.
Hebrews 5:7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared
That is because "in the days of his flesh" refers to humanity and cannot be considered apart from humanity. He was 100% humanity and 100% deity. It is the deity loving the humanity, as He loves you and I as humans. Christ identified with us perfectly to the extent that deity actually loved that humanity He held in Himself as a nature.
By the same token, can you tell me how it is that Alpha and Omega is JESUS in Rev. 1:11-13 and Revelation 21:...
Reve 21:6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the
beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain
of the water of life freely.
Reve 21:7 He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be
his God, and he shall be my son.
The Son, Jesus, is the Alpha and Omega in Rev. 1, and in Rev. 21 he says that we will be his SONS. That makes Him our Father.
COLIN: Often in Scripture titles or acts are attributed to two persons within the Godhead. In so much as the Son of God, Jesus, is my God, He is my Father. But He also referred to God the Father as His Father. The fact that He is my Father does not make Him God the Father.
MIKE: If He is our Father and yet He is not God the Father, then that means we have two heavenly fathers, according to you. So we should pray "Our heavenly Fathers..." :-)
Alpha and omega distinctly points to being absolutely everything, not allowing anyone else to hold the same title. How many alpha and omegas are there, any way?
How is it, also, that the Holy Ghost overshadowed Mary and she conceived if the Holy Ghost is not the Father?
COLIN: You are confusing eternal generation and the physical act of impregnating Mary. Scripture says that God the Father sent the Son into the world, yet it was the Holy Spirit who actually caused Mary to be pregnant with Jesus. The two are completely different.
MIKE: You did not prove there is an eternal generation. Where did you get that from? Its not in the Bible. The following verse proves that.
Luke 1:35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
This verse above proves that the REASON He is called SON OF GOD was due to the fact that there was a literal MOTHER and FATHER, which FATHER happened to be God. And since the culture is to address the Son as Son of the male parent, we read He is Son of God. You cannot have a SON WITHOUT A MOTHER. If you say He is literally a Son, then by definition, you have to say there is a mother. To say there is an eternally-generated Son is to say there is an eternally begetting Father and an eternally birthing mother. You cannot have a SON WITHOUT A MOTHER. Otherwise He is not literally a Son, and only LIKE a son.
John warned about denying that Jesus is literally a Son.
1Joh 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
If there is no eternal mother, then there is no eternal Son. And the reference to "Son of God," according to Gabriel, is totally anthropomorphic in nature.
COLIN: I know these are classic Trinitarian verses and you've seen them before. I've read all Bernard's material, but have never seen these two verses addresses in a way that satisfies me.
MIKE: The error of trinitarianism, in my opinion, is that trinitarians do not believe God revealed Himself in nature in the Old Testament, but rather only in the New. But the only aspect of God that was not known until New Testament times was the GOSPEL. Not God's nature. So base your thoughts of God's nature on the Old Testament first. This was what the New Testament saints did, because we see absolutely NO TEACHING by Jesus or them about the concept of a "trinity." That teachings came after the New Testament was written, and not until the fourth century.
COLIN: Everything I believe about the Trinity I base on Scripture, not on history.
MIKE: I disagree. You have to have post biblical writings to form a paradigm in your eyes so that everytime you look at Father and Son, you immediately think of two persons. If your doctrine were correct, there would have been so much shock in the minds of the disciples when Jesus said He is Son, implying another person aside from the Father, that everything would have required a complete explanation and chapters of teaching the so-called fact that all along God was not what the Hebrews thought He was. But the Hebrews detest christianity to this day because of one major thought among others, that they incorrectly feel that true Christianity is represented by the trinity doctrine. They would never accept that.
COLIN:That argument is superfluous. Are you really saying there are no references in the early church to the Trinity prior to 4th century?
MIKE: Yes!
COLN: Why is it an error to believe that God revealed more of His nature in the New Testament?
MIKE: Because nothing in the New Testament teaches about His nature being a mystery. Only the Gospel is a mystery.
COLIN: What scripture do you use the base your premise that God has completely revealed Himself in the OT?
MIKE: The fact that there is no teaching any different in the New Testament in contrast to the Old Testament. Show me one explicit teaching in the New Testament explaining that God is three persons.
COLIN: The trinity is certainly alluded to in the OT, but the NT brings full revelation.
MIKE: "Alluded to"? A person can say a million things are "alluded to" in the New Testament, but without explicit teachings we have no foundation. We cannot base our faith on an "allusion." And where does the New Testament expound explicitly on God being eternally three persons? Where does it expound explicitly that God is a trinity. Where does it explicitly teach this?
COLIN: Verses like Psalm 110:1, Isaiah 48:16, etc., mean a lot more in the light of the NT.
MIKE: But you cannot find any explicit teaching on the trinity in the entire bible. In fact, you have to believe that God continued to reveal His nature after the the Bible was written, in extra-biblical writings if you believe in the trinity doctrine. The Roman Catholic doctrine of tradition and magisterium teaches that God continued to reveal truths long after the Bible was written. And that such truths are to be regarded as foundational as scripture. You took their doctrine of trinity but left behind this other necessary doctrine. (Unless you are RCC.) If trinity was explicitly taught in the New Testament, then there would have been no need for councils and creeds afterwards demanding faith in and explaining the doctrine of trinity.
Nowhere is eternal generation taught in the bible. Nowhere is eternal persons taught in the bible. Nowhere is three persons taught in the Bible. None of these are taught explicitly. The JW's will tell you that it is ALLUDED in the New Testament that Jesus is actually a former archangel name Michael, too.