Did Jesus claim to be God?

[The Learner]

I think the who process of creating a lie, repeating it incessantly, and threatening those who don't accept are very effective methods in establishing false doctrines. The Apostle Paul warned Timothy to expect that:

1 Ti 3:15–4:5 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

The work of those we call the Early Church Fathers is one of Satan's greatest successes in that regard.

Except for those who have never accepted it and have been tortured or killed for refusing.

Even today, the belief in the dogma of the Trinity effectively turns Yahweh God into a liar and deceiver. They think that Yeshua was God in drag fooling people on Earth to believe He is just a man who could be obedient and even die. To think he is actually God means that He could not die so that whole crucifixion thing was a sham perpetrated on us and was no great loss to Yeshua. His surviving in the desert under the temptation of Satan was just playing a skit intended to provide an example of how Christians were to live. In short, believing Yeshua to be God is an insult to the work that Yeshua did and a sin against Yahweh as it violated Yahweh's commandment to have no other gods before Him. Well, that is, unless we are going to believe that God created another God which He never told us about. Oh, wait a minute, that He created two more Gods, right? That's because, since 60 years later another council said the God's spirit is another God. You know, the same Yahweh God that we proclaim never changes, right?

The fact is that the mantra of the Trinity has rendered Christianity an ineffective theology that has since failed, sinned, split, and denied the purpose for which Yeshua was born. Think about it, are we willing to keep committing the sin of having another god before Yahweh?

The early church fathers were taught by the Apostles. The only church in existence back then was Catholic. Your spew is

 

[Peterlag]

This is the close to that.

John 1:18
No one has ever seen God. The only Son is the one who has shown us what God is like. He is himself God and is very close to the Father.

John 14:7-9​

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Easy-to-Read Version​

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7 If you really knew me, you would know my Father too. But now you know the Father. You have seen him.”
8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father. That is all we need.”
9 Jesus answered, “Philip, I have been with you for a long time. So you should know me. Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father too. So why do you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

1 John 1:2
Yes, the one who is life was shown to us. We saw him, and so we can tell others about him. We now tell you about him. He is the eternal life that was with God the Father and was shown to us.

"
In some verses of Scripture, people see God. But, in other verses, it says they cannot see God? Is this a contradiction? It is not if you understand the Trinity and the context of those verses.

1. Has seen
   1. Gen. 17:1, “Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be blameless;
   2. Gen. 18:1, “Now the LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day.”
   3. Exodus 6:2-3, “God spoke further to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD; 3 and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, LORD, I did not make Myself known to them.”
   4. Exodus 24:9-11, “Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, 10and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. 11Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank.”
   5. Num. 12:6-8, “He said, ‘Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream. 7 “Not so, with My servant Moses, He is faithful in all My household; 8With him I speak mouth to mouth, Even openly, and not in dark sayings, And he beholds the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid To speak against My servant, against Moses ?”
   6. Acts 7:2, “And he [Stephen] said, ‘Hear me, brethren and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran…'”
2. Has not seen
   1. Exodus 33:20, “But He [God] said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
   2. John 1:18, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”
   3. John 5:37, “And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form.”
   4. John 6:46, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father.”
   5. 1 Tim. 6:15-16, “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.”

It is evident that God was seen. But, considering the “can’t-see-God” verses, some would understandably argue that there would be a contradiction. One explanation offered is that the people saw visions, dreams, or the Angel of the LORD (Num. 22:22-26; Judges 13:1-21) and not really God Himself. But the problem is that the verses cited above do not say vision, dream, or Angel of the LORD. They say that people saw God (Exodus 24:9-11), that God was seen, and that He appeared as God Almighty (Exodus 6:2-3).

At first, this isn’t easy to understand. God Almighty was seen (Exodus 6:2-3), which means it was not the Angel of the Lord, for an angel is not God Almighty; and at least Moses saw God and not in a vision or dream, as the LORD Himself attests in Num. 12:6-8. If these verses mean what they say, then we naturally assume we have a contradiction. Actually, the contradiction exists in our understanding, not in the Bible, which is always the case with alleged biblical contradictions.

The solution is simple. All you need to do is accept what the Bible says. If the OT people were seeing the Almighty God, yet they not seeing the Father (John 6:46), then who was it? They saw someone else in the Godhead. I suggest that they saw the Word before He became incarnate (John 1:1, 14). In other words, they were seeing the pre-incarnate Jesus.

If God is a Trinity, then John 1:18 is not a problem either because, in John chapter one, John writes about the Word (Jesus) and God (the Father). In verse 14, it says the Word became flesh. In verse 18, it says no one has seen God. Since Jesus is the Word, God then refers to the Father. This is typically how John writes of God: as a reference to the Father. We see this verified in Jesus’ own words in John 6:46, where He said that no one has ever seen the Father. Therefore, Almighty God was seen, but it was not the Father. It was Jesus before His incarnation. There is more than one person in the Godhead, and the doctrine of the Trinity must be true."

Has anyone seen God or not?

God was seen in the Old Testament in several places. Almighty God was seen but not the Father. It was Jesus before His incarnation.

carm.org

Something this big and this important and especially if it's required for salvation. Then it should have been taught by someone. Whole paragraphs or chapters should be able to be read where it is clearly stated. And there's no such teaching anywhere in the entire Bible. Not by the Jews or the Christians. Nobody taught it. All you guys put in front of me is possible solutions from pieces of Scripture that are scattered all over the Bible. And in every case I can see errors in those pieces such as a bad translation or how the verse was understood in the culture of their time.

 

[Peterlag]

Matthew 9​

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Easy-to-Read Version​

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Jesus Heals a Crippled Man​

9 Jesus got into a boat and went back across the lake to his own town. 2 Some people brought to him a man who was paralyzed and was lying on a mat. Jesus saw that these people had much faith. So he said to the paralyzed man, “Young man, you will be glad to hear this. Your sins are forgiven.”
3 Some of the teachers of the law heard what Jesus said. They said to themselves, “What an insult to God for this man to say that!”
4 Jesus knew what they were thinking. So he said, “Why are you thinking such evil thoughts? 5-6 The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. But how can I prove this to you? Maybe you are thinking it was easy for me to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ There’s no proof that it really happened. But what if I say to the man, ‘Stand up and walk’? Then you will be able to see that I really have this power.” So Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “Stand up. Take your mat and go home.”
7 The man stood up and went home. 8 The people saw this and they were amazed. They praised God for letting someone have such power.

Psalm 79:9
Our God and Savior, help us! That will bring glory to your name. Save us and forgive our sins for the good of your name.

Luke 5:21
The Jewish teachers of the law and the Pharisees thought to themselves, “Who is this man who dares to say such things? What an insult to God! No one but God can forgive sins.”

You quote to me what the unbelievers said. That the Jews of the New Testament said no one but God can forgive sins. That's what you put in front of me. I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

 

[The Learner]

See
https://www.reddit.com/r/BibleVerseCommentary/comments/tcvci6

Interresting

Bowman gives us a biblical outline of the Trinity as the title.

Concerning I John 5 text, I remember from Textual Criticism class that the compiler for the KJV Greek text was told to add that verse. He said something like, show me a greek text that has it. It is likely someone made up that text.

"

Latin manuscripts have the Comma​

Latin Vulgate and Old Latin​

“Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in cælo:
Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus:
et hi tres unum sunt.”(Clementine Vulgate)
The Comma appears in most Latin manuscripts, which are broadly classified into two groups: The Latin Vulgate & The Old Latin. The Latin Vulgate, translate by Jerome, is the more common Latin translation as it was commissioned by the Catholic church in the late 4th century. The Old Latin is a term used to describe the various Latin translations that existed before the Latin Vulgate. Old Latin translations were made since about the latter half of the 2nd century (F. H. A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the New Testament Textual Criticism, 4th Ed., Vol. 2, (New York: George Bell & Sons, 1894), p. 43).The oldest Latin manuscript having 1 John 5 is Codex Fuldensis or manuscript F from the mid-6th century. This is a Vulgate version and does not contain the Comma. However, Codex Frisingensis, or manuscript r or 64 (6th-7th century), contains the full text of the Comma. Codex Legionensis, or manuscript l or 67 (7th century) contains the Comma with slight variation in wording (Nestle-Aland: Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th revised edition (2006)). These two are of the Old Latin versions. Thus Latin manuscripts with and without the Comma exist from around the same time. Furthermore, Codex Fuldensis, dated 546 AD, contains the Prologue to the Canonical Epistles, purported to be by Jerome himself, which mentions the Trinitarian Comma in John’s first epistle:

...

A good number of Greek fathers were aware of the Comma:

Athanasius​

By “Athanasius”, it is meant Athanasius (c. 296 – 373 AD) or Pseudo-Athanasius (c. 350 – c. 600 AD). Athanasius quoted the Comma in Disputatio Contra Arium:

“Τί δὲ καὶ τὸ τῆς ἀφέσεως τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν παρεκτικὸν, καὶ ζωοποιὸν, καὶ ἁγιαστικὸν λουτρὸν, οὗ χωρὶς οὐδεὶς ὄψεται τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν, οὐκ ἐν τῇ τρισμακαρίᾳ ὀνομασίᾳ δίδοται τοῖς πιστοῖς; Πρὸς δὲ τούτοις πᾶσιν Ἰωάννης φάσκει· «Καὶ οἱ τρεῖς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν.»”

“But also, is not that sin-remitting, life-giving and sanctifying washing [baptism], without which, no one shall see the kingdom of heaven, given to the faithful in the Thrice-Blessed Name? In addition to all these, John affirms, ‘and these three are one.‘” (Translation by KJV Today)

"

Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7) - KJV Today

“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” (1 John 5:7, KJV) “οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τω ουρανω ο πατηρ ο λογος και το αγιον πνευμα και ουτοι οι τρεις εν εισιν” (1 John 5:7, 1894 Scrivener Textus Receptus) ...

www.kjvtoday.com

 

[Peterlag]

Too long to copy and paste: print it and do the study: https://www.calvarychapelboston.com/Biblical Basis Trinity Bowman.pdf

I'm looking for a teaching on it from the Scriptures. New or Old Testament.

 

[The Learner]

First John 5:7 and Greek Manuscripts

www.thetextofthegospels.com

The Greek Manuscripts of the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7–8)

An academic forum to discuss the Bible's manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.

evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com

"In the 16th century, when Desiderius Erasmus was compiling what became known as the Textus Receptus, he did not include the Comma Johanneum in the 1st or 2nd editions. Due to intense pressure from the Catholic Church and others who wanted it included because of its support for trinitarianism, Erasmus included the Comma Johanneum in later editions of the Textus Receptus. His decision resulted in the Comma Johanneum being included in the King James Version of the Bible and later in the New King James Version. None of the modern Greek texts (UBS 4, Nestle-Aland 27, Majority Text) contain the Comma Johanneum. Of all the modern English translations, only the New King James Version and Modern English Version include the Comma Johanneum."

What is the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8)? | GotQuestions.org

What is the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8)? Should the Comma Johanneum be in 1 John 5:7-8?

www.gotquestions.org

 

[The Learner]

Isa 6:1-10
6 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

God showed him a vision. He did not literally see something real. It was a vision given by revelation. Moses asked God if he could see him. And God said if you did you would die. I have to assume that He would be lethal for a human to see. Perhaps to much energy.

Vision is possible, but the text does not say it was one.

Isaiah 6
Easy-to-Read Version
God Calls Isaiah to Be a Prophet
6 In the year that King Uzziah died,[a] I saw the Lord sitting on a very high and wonderful throne. His long robe filled the Temple. 2 Seraph angels stood around him. Each angel had six wings. They used two wings to cover their faces, two wings to cover their bodies, and two wings to fly. 3 The angels were calling to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord All-Powerful. His Glory fills the whole earth.” 4 The sound was so loud that it caused the frame around the door to shake, and the Temple was filled with smoke.

5 I was frightened and said, “Oh, no! I will be destroyed. I am not pure enough to speak to God, and I live among people who are not pure enough to speak to him.[c] But I have seen the King, the Lord All-Powerful.”

6 There was a fire on the altar. One of the Seraph angels used a pair of tongs to take a hot coal from the fire. Then the angel flew to me with it in his hand. 7 Then he touched my mouth with the hot coal and said, “When this hot coal touched your lips, your guilt was taken away, and your sins were erased.[d]”

8 Then I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Who can I send? Who will go for us?”

So I said, “Here I am. Send me!”

9 Then the Lord said, “Go and tell the people, ‘Listen closely, but don’t understand. Look closely, but don’t learn.’ 10 Confuse them. Make them unable to understand what they hear and see. If you don’t do this, they might really look with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their minds. Then they might come back to me and be healed!”

11 Then I asked, “Lord, how long should I do this?”

He answered, “Do this until the cities are destroyed and all the people are gone. Do this until there is no one left living in the houses and the land is destroyed and empty.”

12 The Lord will make the people go far away, and there will be large areas of empty land in the country. 13 A tenth of the people will be allowed to stay in the land, but it will be destroyed again. They will be like an oak tree. When the tree is chopped down, a stump is left. This stump will be a very special seed that will grow again.

Footnotes

 

[GracePeace]

@Spyder What does it mean for Christ to be "equal with God"--and to be worshiped as God the Father is worshiped (proskuneo) and honored as God the Father is honored--yet without Christ being God?

 

[The Learner]

The Bible says that Jesus Christ is the “image of God” Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 4:4). If Christ is the image of God, then he cannot be God because a person cannot be himself and an image of himself at the same time. Jesus can be called the “image” of God because he always did the will of God, and because he was the image of God is why he could say you had seen the Father if you had seen him.

I am the image of myself.

"image--exact likeness and perfect Representative. Adam was made "in the image of God" (Gen 1:27). But Christ, the second Adam, perfectly reflected visibly "the invisible God" (1Ti 1:17), whose glories the first Adam only in part represented. "Image" (eicon) involves "likeness" (homoiosis); but "likeness" does not involve "image." "Image" always supposes a prototype, which it not merely resembles, but from which it is drawn: the exact counterpart, as the reflection of the sun in the water: the child the living image of the parent. "Likeness" implies mere resemblance, not the exact counterpart and derivation as "image" expresses; hence it is nowhere applied to the Son, while "image" is here, compare 1Co 11:7 [TRENCH]. (Joh 1:18; Joh 14:9; 2Co 4:4; 1Ti 3:16; Heb 1:3). Even before His incarnation He was the image of the invisible God, as the Word (Joh_1:1-3) by whom God created the worlds, and by whom God appeared to the patriarchs. Thus His essential character as always "the image of God," (1) before the incarnation, (2) in the days of His flesh, and (3) now in His glorified state, is, I think, contemplated here by the verb "is."

Who is the image of the invisible God - The counterpart of God Almighty, and if the image of the invisible God, consequently nothing that appeared in him could be that image; for if it could be visible in the Son, it could also be visible in the Father; but if the Father be invisible, consequently his image in the Son must be invisible also. This is that form of God of which he divested himself; the ineffable glory in which he not only did not appear, as to its splendor and accompaniments, but concealed also its essential nature; that inaccessible light which no man, no created being, can possibly see. This was that Divine nature, the fullness of the Godhead bodily, which dwelt in him."

 

[GracePeace]

@The Learner Clarification : I wasn't asking @Spyder a rhetorical question. I literally don't know what to make of the evidence.
I find strong arguments for both sides, and can't arrive at a conclusion either way.

 

[BreadOfLife]

I'm looking for a teaching on it from the Scriptures. New or Old Testament.

The teachings are there – YOUR refusal to believe, notwithstanding . . .

John 20:28
And Thomas answered and said unto him [Jesus], “My Lord and my GOD!”

Matt. 4:7
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your GOD to the test.’”

Phil. 2:6
...Who [Jesus], being in the form of GOD, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

John 8:58
Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM.”

1 Timothy 3:16
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: GOD was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

Hebrews 1:8 (Psalm 45:6)
But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O GOD, is forever and ever: a scepter of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.

Titus 2:13
Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great GOD and our Savior Jesus Christ

 

[GracePeace]

I'm grateful for many of you, from both sides, involving yourselves in this discussion, bc many of you raise such good points.

 

[Peterlag]

The teachings are there – YOUR refusal to believe, notwithstanding . . .

John 20:28
And Thomas answered and said unto him [Jesus], “My Lord and my GOD!”

Matt. 4:7
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your GOD to the test.’”

Phil. 2:6
...Who [Jesus], being in the form of GOD, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

John 8:58
Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM.”

1 Timothy 3:16
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: GOD was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

Hebrews 1:8 (Psalm 45:6)
But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O GOD, is forever and ever: a scepter of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.

Titus 2:13
Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great GOD and our Savior Jesus Christ

Those are not a teaching. Those are pieces (in this case 7 of them) that are scattered all over the New Testament. And again all of them are twisted. Here for an example I will do John 8:58

At the last super, the disciples were trying to find out who would deny the Christ. They said literally, "Not I am, Lord" Matthew 26:22, 25. No one would say the disciples were trying to deny they were God because they were using the phrase "Not I am." "I am" was a common way of designating oneself and it did not mean you were claiming to be God. The argument is made that because Jesus was "before" Abraham, Jesus must be God. Jesus figuratively existed in Abraham's time. He did not actually physically exist as a person, but rather he existed in the mind of God as God's plan for the redemption of man. In order for the Trinitarian argument that Jesus' "I am" statement in John 8:58 makes him God, his statement must be equivalent with God's "I am" statement in Exodus 3:14. The two statements are very different. The Greek phrase in John does mean "I am." The Hebrew phrase in Exodus means "to be" or "to become." God was saying "I will be what I will be."

 

[Peterlag]

I am the image of myself.

"image--exact likeness and perfect Representative. Adam was made "in the image of God" (Gen 1:27). But Christ, the second Adam, perfectly reflected visibly "the invisible God" (1Ti 1:17), whose glories the first Adam only in part represented. "Image" (eicon) involves "likeness" (homoiosis); but "likeness" does not involve "image." "Image" always supposes a prototype, which it not merely resembles, but from which it is drawn: the exact counterpart, as the reflection of the sun in the water: the child the living image of the parent. "Likeness" implies mere resemblance, not the exact counterpart and derivation as "image" expresses; hence it is nowhere applied to the Son, while "image" is here, compare 1Co 11:7 [TRENCH]. (Joh 1:18; Joh 14:9; 2Co 4:4; 1Ti 3:16; Heb 1:3). Even before His incarnation He was the image of the invisible God, as the Word (Joh_1:1-3) by whom God created the worlds, and by whom God appeared to the patriarchs. Thus His essential character as always "the image of God," (1) before the incarnation, (2) in the days of His flesh, and (3) now in His glorified state, is, I think, contemplated here by the verb "is."

Who is the image of the invisible God - The counterpart of God Almighty, and if the image of the invisible God, consequently nothing that appeared in him could be that image; for if it could be visible in the Son, it could also be visible in the Father; but if the Father be invisible, consequently his image in the Son must be invisible also. This is that form of God of which he divested himself; the ineffable glory in which he not only did not appear, as to its splendor and accompaniments, but concealed also its essential nature; that inaccessible light which no man, no created being, can possibly see. This was that Divine nature, the fullness of the Godhead bodily, which dwelt in him."

If you are the image of yourself. Then there's only one of you.

 

[Peterlag]

Vision is possible, but the text does not say it was one.

Isaiah 6
Easy-to-Read Version
God Calls Isaiah to Be a Prophet
6 In the year that King Uzziah died,[a] I saw the Lord sitting on a very high and wonderful throne. His long robe filled the Temple. 2 Seraph angels stood around him. Each angel had six wings. They used two wings to cover their faces, two wings to cover their bodies, and two wings to fly. 3 The angels were calling to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord All-Powerful. His Glory fills the whole earth.” 4 The sound was so loud that it caused the frame around the door to shake, and the Temple was filled with smoke.

5 I was frightened and said, “Oh, no! I will be destroyed. I am not pure enough to speak to God, and I live among people who are not pure enough to speak to him.[c] But I have seen the King, the Lord All-Powerful.”

6 There was a fire on the altar. One of the Seraph angels used a pair of tongs to take a hot coal from the fire. Then the angel flew to me with it in his hand. 7 Then he touched my mouth with the hot coal and said, “When this hot coal touched your lips, your guilt was taken away, and your sins were erased.[d]”

8 Then I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Who can I send? Who will go for us?”

So I said, “Here I am. Send me!”

9 Then the Lord said, “Go and tell the people, ‘Listen closely, but don’t understand. Look closely, but don’t learn.’ 10 Confuse them. Make them unable to understand what they hear and see. If you don’t do this, they might really look with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their minds. Then they might come back to me and be healed!”

11 Then I asked, “Lord, how long should I do this?”

He answered, “Do this until the cities are destroyed and all the people are gone. Do this until there is no one left living in the houses and the land is destroyed and empty.”

12 The Lord will make the people go far away, and there will be large areas of empty land in the country. 13 A tenth of the people will be allowed to stay in the land, but it will be destroyed again. They will be like an oak tree. When the tree is chopped down, a stump is left. This stump will be a very special seed that will grow again.

Footnotes

The text does not say Jesus is God. I mean God knew how to say it. It does not seem to be hard to write.

 

[The Learner]

I'm grateful for many of you, from both sides, involving yourselves in this discussion, bc many of you raise such good points.

light read for nex few papes here: Where does the Pope get his authority?

 

[The Learner]

Those are not a teaching. Those are pieces (in this case 7 of them) that are scattered all over the New Testament. And again all of them are twisted. Here for an example I will do John 8:58

At the last super, the disciples were trying to find out who would deny the Christ. They said literally, "Not I am, Lord" Matthew 26:22, 25. No one would say the disciples were trying to deny they were God because they were using the phrase "Not I am." "I am" was a common way of designating oneself and it did not mean you were claiming to be God. The argument is made that because Jesus was "before" Abraham, Jesus must be God. Jesus figuratively existed in Abraham's time. He did not actually physically exist as a person, but rather he existed in the mind of God as God's plan for the redemption of man. In order for the Trinitarian argument that Jesus' "I am" statement in John 8:58 makes him God, his statement must be equivalent with God's "I am" statement in Exodus 3:14. The two statements are very different. The Greek phrase in John does mean "I am." The Hebrew phrase in Exodus means "to be" or "to become." God was saying "I will be what I will be."

It is likely that Jesus was speaking Hebrew at the time, or perhaps Aramaic. He was addressing the Pharisees after all, and He very likely spoke to them in Hebrew. If He was speaking Hebrew, He would have said אהיה (hâyâh), which John would have rendered ego eimi in Greek. According to the Aramaic Targum Onqelos, it would be אֶהְיה(hâyâh - the exact same written form as Hebrew), which John would also have translated ego eimi in Greek ('I am' in English). From Albert Barnes Commentary... The expression I am, though in the present tense, is clearly designed to refer to a past time. Thus, in Psa_90:2, “From everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” Applied to God, it denotes continued existence without respect to time, so far as he is concerned. We divide time into the past, the present, and the future. The expression, applied to God, denotes that he does not measure his existence in this manner, but that the word by which we express the present denotes his continued and unchanging existence. Hence, he assumes it as his name, “I AM,” and “I AM that I AM,” Exo_3:14. Compare Isa_44:6; Isa_47:8. There is a remarkable similarity between the expression employed by Jesus in this place and that used in Exodus to denote the name of God. The manner in which Jesus used it would strikingly suggest the application of the same language to God. The question here was about his pre-existence. The objection of the Jews was that he was not 50 years old, and could not, therefore, have seen Abraham. Jesus replied to that that he existed before Abraham. As in his human nature he was not yet 50 years old, and could not, as a man, have existed before Abraham, this declaration must be referred to another nature; and the passage proves that, while he was a man, he was also endowed with another nature existing before Abraham, and to which he applied the term (familiar to the Jews as expressive of the existence of God) I AM; and this declaration corresponds to the affirmation of John, that he was in the beginning with God, and was God. This affirmation of Jesus is one of the proofs on which John relies to prove that he was the Messiah, to establish which was the design of writing this book (Barnes).​
​	prin abraam genesqai egw eimi PRIN ABRAAM GENESTHAI EGÔ EIMI Before Abraham came to be, I am GINOMAI (G1096) To become, i.e. to come into existence, begin to be, receive being (Thayer). EIMI (G1510) To be, to exist, to happen, to be present (Thayer). I am (egw eimi). Undoubtedly here Jesus claims eternal existence with the absolute phrase used of God. The contrast between genesthai (entrance into existence of Abraham) and eimi (timeless being) is complete. See the same contrast between en in John 1:1 and egeneto in John 1:14. See the contrast also in Psa 90:2 between God (ei, art) and the mountains (genesthenai). See the same use of eimi in John 6:20; John 9:9; John 8:24, John 8:28; John 18:6 (RWP).
F U R T H E R R E A D I N G​	I recently became aware* of how the WTBTS translates John 8:58 in the Greek NWT (that is, the modern Greek translation that Witnesses in Greece use). While one might expect them to leave it untranslated (as the verb eimi means the same today as it did in Jesus' day), they actually change it to ego huparchw (egw uparcw), which even though is roughly synonymous with "I am," can also mean "I began" or "I came forth." They do this despite the fact that in other modern Greek NTs, it is left as ego eimi("I am"). It seems the WT will go to any lengths to make sure Jesus does not identify Himself as ego eimi.​

 

[The Learner]

If you are the image of yourself. Then there's only one of you.

True and all three are the one G_d

 

[The Learner]

light read for nex few papes here: Where does the Pope get his authority?

 

[Peterlag]

True and all three are the one G_d

Why do you believe that...

a.) Because I was taught it.
b.) Because everyone else believes it.
c.) Because I like it since it sounds cool.
d.) Because the Catholics have never been right about anything so maybe they are right here.