1 John 4:12:No one has ever seen God.
When mankind fell,God couldn't be reached directly by them without some sort of cleansing or mediation.He couldn't literally dwell amongst them any longer or even be seen by them without their perishing.The ground was cursed,as was humankind and animals etc. after sin entered the picture because of God's perfect justice.Sin deserves recompense.The wages of sin is ultimately death,understandably.God,however,remains holy,perfectly pure and inherently incorruptible,immortal,and benevolent.He is not to be compared to a man in that he could never die or be tempted or suffer corruption as man can.Make no mistake..the milk of the word makes it clear that God CANNOT be seen by men currently except IN those he inhabits by spirit as he speaks and works through them.Yes people can "see" God in those he inhabits. As they deliver his word and speak in his name.As they fulfill his word and demonstrate his wisdom,like Yeshua did far above all others who ever had.
Let's examine with great care and contemplation,seriously and soberly,precisely what occurs when one of the greatest servants and prophets of Yahweh's ever,Moses,wants to see God face to face:
Exodus 33:17 And Jehovah went on to say to Moses: “This thing, too, of which you have spoken, I shall do, because you have found favor in my eyes and I know you by name.” 18 At this he said: “Cause me to see, please, your glory.” 19 But he said: “I myself shall cause all my goodness to pass before your face, and I will declare the name of Jehovah before you; and I will favor the one whom I may favor, and I will show mercy to the one to whom I may show mercy.” 20 And he added: “You are not able to see my face, because no man may see me and yet live.”21 And Jehovah said further: “Here is a place with me, and you must station yourself upon the rock. 22 And it has to occur that while my glory is passing by I must place you in a hole in the rock, and I must put my palm over you as a screen until I have passed by. 23 After that I must take my palm away, and you will indeed see my back. But my face may not be seen.”
This is a description of someone so remarkable and glorious that Moses didn't even have to see his full glory to have his own face shine from the encounter.(Ex. 34:29)
It is truths such as these and that this same God created the wonders of the universe and mankind that inspires poetic men like the Psalmists and others to ask questions like these:
Psalm 8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,4 what is man that you are mindful of him,and the son of man that you care for him?
It is precisely because of God's "otherness" and incomprehensibility( in that we're so fallen while he's indescribably holy and to a great extent unknowable by human peabrains) that impelled thoughtful and conscientious men (who recognize our vast inferiority to our maker ) to ask God for some realistic way to reach him.Job said:
"God is not a mortal like me, so I cannot argue with him or take him to trial.If only there were a mediator between us, someone who could bring us together."(Job 9:32,33)
Yes,we naturally feel unworthy to approach God,even to receive eternal life though we have an innate desire for immortality, because of our corruption and fallen state.Yes,even as we do good,bad is in us somewhere.However,God, in his infinite love,affection,consideration,and awesome mercy provided an escape route and even foreordained a mediator and savior to rescue,cleanse,redeem,and reconcile us to him.These words of Job foreshadowed all that God has done for us in Christ!When the full limit of time (Gal. 4:4)had arrived for God's purposes for man to be fulfilled from the beginning to the end of time,Yah sent forth(commissioned)a perfect man born of his spirit through a virgin womb to fulfill what Job longed for and his prophecies from the first book (Gen. 3:15) to the last!
2 Corinthians 5:19: in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation
Jesus was said to be Immanuel,God with us.Trinitarians will automatically,on autopilot,think he's the preexistent Son of God with us.But no,he's the father with us *in* the Son.And it is this Son who is the "incarnation" of God's *word*..of the father himself in a sense.God revealed himself,manifest his personality,wisdom,word and will in Christ so fully that Christ could say to see him was to see the father!
John 14:8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
Make no mistake.I am not advocating modalism or a trinity but rather the bible's clear communication of God in his Son.God revealed in the Last Adam(a perfect sinless man!) by spirit.So Christ wasn't the "incarnation" of a preexistent Son but rather a revelation of God the Father's own self expression and will for mankind,his own love and works and determination to reach us in the way that Job had so desired! As well as the many of us along with Job who recognize a deep seated profound need to reach God in good conscience.(1 Pet. 3:21,Heb. 9:14)God in Christ provided not only a model of his own personality reflected in his beloved for us to hopefully adopt as well but an imputed righteousness to all who exercise faith and love according to the spirit's proddings.God works so exceptionally and fully THROUGH the agency of his beloved Son that Jesus was definitely God with us in many respects!This doesn't make him either that same God(just because God was in him) OR a person of his own God(because God was with him,again.)Finally what Job had hoped for God to make happen,Yahweh has fulfilled for all of us who crave a worthy mediator and blemishless redeemer!
Said of our Messiah:
Colossians 2:9: For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,
because..
Colossians 1:19: For in him all the fullness of God was *pleased to dwell,*
The fullness in Christ was of the father,not the Son.In fact Christ emptied(humbled) himself by fasting and constant prayer,by goodness and faithfulness,so that the father could fill him with that spirit as we're supposed to do.It was the father alone,the God of Abraham,Isaac,Jacob,and Jesus that dwelled in Jesus fully with pleasure BY means of his spirit.And this is why Jesus did and said what God would say and do!Even Moses was "God" to Pharaoh because he represented God to Pharaoh and God worked through him quite exceptionally.(Ex. 4:16,7:1)So how much more the Greater Moses,the Last Adam that Moses prefigured be so termed "God" by the monotheistic 1st century faithful Jews and Christians perhaps on occasion.All it meant at that time in history was that Jesus represented God and had power over others,a God given authority.It is through this historical lens we need to look for accuracy in how to determine what it means when others besides the Most High are so termed "God" and not our modern lens of presuppositions gone askew.He was God's Grand and irreplaceable Amen!His Son who he can dramatically pour out his affections and love upon and then through,by making him mediator and Lord,do the same to us!Because,again,we're too unholy to directly reach God.He provided a way,Jesus, through whom he spoke truth and gave us life!(John 14:6)The incarnation of his self expression,character,and revelation.His Son was not the same God,but rather a true man,the Last Adam,born from above as our forerunner to the same kind of adoption and new birth.We're (Christians are) vessels and stones being built up into a spiritual temple for God to inhabit by spirit.Christ made this possible.:)
Examine Jesus' amazing Messianic claim:
Matthew 11:27: All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
We have the revelation from Jesus himself that we too can have this intimate knowledge and relationship with God similar to what he has with him!Christ,as the way,truth and life opened up the way for us to be anointed sons and daughters of God,to likewise be beloved children and to receive of the "fullness of God."
Ephesians 3:19: and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
It is precisely because of Jesus's true humanity,true temptations,true sufferings,and genuine death that God gave him authority to judge.
John 5:27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment,* because *he is the Son of Man.
This is wonderful because we know we have someone like us(only glorified and exalted beyond what anyone else will ever be) interceeding for us
No one in the presence of Christ thought he was the God of Deut. 6:4.When the crowds saw his miracles they would glorify God for giving such authority to a MAN,the Messiah.It is because Jesus was a man like us that God gave him the authority he has because he can empathize with and understand us like someone who has never been a man ever could.
Why must we go beyond the bible's simple revelations as follows?:
Matthew 9:8:When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had *given* such authority to men.
Matthew 28:18: And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been *given* to me.
No these miracles didn't prove he was the God of the Shema, who he confirmed with the scribe in Mark ch. 12(verses 28-34) was his father ALONE,but rather that God was with and in him working fully through him by spirit.As proclaimed in:
Acts 2:22: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know
Jesus doesn't accomplish or know anything without God's spirit working through or bearing witness to him.He doesn't judge..doesn't even know the Revelation(1:1) with out God's granting and allowance.
Acts 17:31 because he(Yahweh) has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a *man* whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
So this text proves it is God in Christ judging but it is because of Christ's own sufferings and genuinely being a glorified-beyond-measure true man that he has the gifts he does.:)
Some significant profound texts worthy of serious contemplation and consideration by those inundated in their presuppositions are these that tell us who Christ was.We should take heed and care deeply.
Hebrews 2:16:For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants. 17For this reason *he had to be made like his brothers in every way,* in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.
I don't know about you but I would never call someone *fully God*(except in that God indwelled him fully just like he can Christians) just like mortal men in every way.In other words,Jesus was a real man,not just a *nature* of one.I think it's blasphemous to say otherwise.I don't personally know how trinitarians in good conscience can say Jesus was a "man nature" as opposed to a real man.If I told you I was God with an added "woman nature" would you say I was a genuine woman?
Hebrews 5:7: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.
He wasn't heard because he's God.He was heard because he FEARED GOD.This is a heartfelt declaration of Jesus's own human & poignant reliance upon his creator but also of the fact that reverence in our prayers can equal our own adoption,glorified resurrection,and exaltation.Not equal to Jesus's but nevertheless a gift from above worth seeking with everything we have!Just like Jesus we need to seek,pray,sacrifice,rely,trust,remain faithful and true,earnestly seeking the kingdom prize and God's favor.
More evidence *why* Jesus has been given mediatorship,kingship,and judging privileges:
Hebrews 5:1 For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2 He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.
How awesome is it that because of his own weaknesses,sufferings,death and true state of being a man,though sinless due to prayer and faithfulness and goodness,that Jesus can now intercede for us in sheer empathy and heartfelt care?How moving is it that we have a glorified Lord who was a genuinely mortal man,really tempted,seriously obedient to a God he himself worshipped and served in fear?And that now that One has been given a position second only to Yahweh's at his own God's right hand?Ever interceding,ever loving and caring.Just a moment's consideration of his willingness,eagerness even,to feed the hungry,heal the sick,raise the dead,and feed the sheep would make even a heart of stone melt to the floor.When he walked the earth the kingdom was in everyone's midst indeed!
Is there any reason we should doubt that a God who is the very epitome of love and grace and generosity would fervently desire to gift his Own beloved Son the world?Why would Christ have to be the SAME God who gave him everything he has to be worthy to receive it all?God sustains Christ and lets Christ sustain us.Because he can.
John 5:26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
The father is automatically an immortal life giver.God gave Jesus the same gift,to be an immortal life giver,upon his resurrection from a genuine death.We cannot live outside nor apart from Christ.He was and is our provision to obtain eternal life from the father through Jesus' agency.For it isn't God nor angels who walk the earth as their main habitat but rather Jesus when he returns and all the sons in him,given to him.The Last Adam and all his faithful followers.Our identity is in him.Our lovely and extraordinary mediator.Who loves us deeply and intercedes for us without hesitation.This was the man who forgave sinners and healed them just because they had faith.We can love and trust and thank him..hopefully forever.This wonderful man prayed:
John 17:21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
And how did he love him before the world was founded?As his second person or as an archangel or perhaps some other way?Let's let scriptural authority establish the truth!
1 Peter 1:20: He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you
I know there are many theological *mystery* theories that are read into a plethora of texts.People need to be deprogrammed from the conditioning that God had to become or even wanted to become a man when the easy succint biblical truth is that he foreordained a Son to be the Last Adam.A vessel through whom he could work and make himself,the father, known like never before!This man was an incarnation of God's will,word,self expression,self revelation,person,love,mercy,capacity to redeem and reconcile,care,consideration,you name it.Jesus was and is so full of the father,as opposed to a preexistent son,that we know God because of him more than we ever could have without him.So much like us in every way that God gave him all authority to mediate and judge on behalf of those with whom he could legitimately empathize,having suffered similar ordeals.That,my friends,is the beautiful truth.Jesus was and is the epitome of God working fully through and inhabiting a perfect man,as opposed to the trinitarian definition of a *Godman.*A "nature" nor a "body" with no Jesus the *person* in it could possibly be responsible for our redemption.It's time to throw the trinity philosophies by the wayside and embrace the simple truth.These philosophies lead to more lies and deceptions like the supposed inability to annihilate a soul and even hellfire where these supposedly unkillable souls must have a place to dwell in unimaginable horrors.I honestly believe there could be a truth revolution in regards to these three phenomenally tragic orthodox lies if people would first admit that Jesus *himself* (as opposed to simply a "nature" or "body" with no *Jesus* involved)actually died for the salvation of mankind.Then eyes and minds would light up with revelatory truth and we'd have a Christian movement on our hands.We'd have Muslims,Jehovah's Witnesses,Jews,atheists and others more attracted to the Christian message.One without incomprehensible mysteries that make zero sense.
Purpose statement:
I am not judging anyone's eternal salvation when I expose what I think are their false doctrines.I have no idea who is or isn't genuinely born again and loved (unto salvation)by Yahweh.I am here,simply,to expose the lies,injustices,hypocrisies,and bloodguilt I perceive in the Watchtower organization and much of "Orthodoxy."To bring every thought into captivity to Christ's as I tell what I believe is the truth,promoting justice(and that would include the cessation of gross condemnation of people who think Jesus is Lord and Christ and king without being the same God his own God is,without confessing The Messiah as the second person of a triune Greek substance.MANY have been tortured,banished,killed even, for not being willing to embrace a trinity).I hope everyone will know or come to know that their systems of worship originating from Rome's apostasies(whose origins are ultimately Babylon mysteries) are bloodguilty every bit as badly,if not much more so,than the WT society that they so freely condemn hypocritically.May God free us all from these false religious systems and their unjustified dogmatisms in his Son whose spirit can only guide us into all truth if we love him more than our comfortable heritage and traditions."Christians" shouldn't really be condemning people to a Dante's infinite inferno for confessing 1 Tim. 2:5 ,John 17:3 and Deut. 6:4 as their creeds instead of some Nicene Hellenization of the much less "mysterious" biblical record.Yes,doctrine is important,and that is why I don't *just* preach "Jesus" and "love" but also what Jesus taught while I expose what I think he would've as well.Again:lies,injustice,hypocrisy,and bloodguilt.We all need to repent daily,seek first the kingdom,& above all love God,Jesus,and people.Let's stop trying to kill people with venomous condemnation to a lake of fire that supposedly never consumes just because they don't believe a philosophical Platonic inference you try to bully them into embracing.I'm perfectly willing to call anyone who says they're a Christian my brother or sister(because I refuse to be so presumptuous as to assume who Jesus would or would not call his brothers and sisters) but they will only call me a heretic who's dead.People need to wake up and start caring.Because WHAT IF me and my unitarian brothers and sisters are loved & approved by Jesus while you trash us and condemn us to your twisted version of gehenna?Fact is if I just make ONE person actually think..if I just plant some little seed anywhere at any time that God can make grow..then I am perfectly content to do so.Even if these blogs do little else than encourage my fellow unitarian brothers and sisters to understand they're not alone and other people "get it"..then I'm also perfectly content with that as well.
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