Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
Do you understand that I have covered this already.....it is grammatical, "autos" is masculine gender in Greek.
The NWT translates "autos" as "that one" because it means "he, she, they, who" it is not gender specific unless you translate it that way....the "comforter" is masculine gender so all the pronouns follow suit. The holy spirit is not a person. When God and his son are spoken about together, the holy spirit is invariably missing, most notably in John 17:3 where 'knowing' Jehovah and his Christ are imperative to gaining everlasting life...but apparently one does not need to "know" the holy spirit....for obvious reasons....there is no one to know. It is something to know about.
Have you ever learned French? Same thing.....everything is given masculine or feminine gender....nothing to do with actual gender, just a quirk of grammar.
The apostles did know who Jesus was....they knew who their God was too. They had no confusion.....that was created later by the church, not God. Jesus spent three and a half years instructing the apostles who said....
"Indeed, even though there are so-called gods in heaven and on earth—and there are in fact many gods and many lords— 6 for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things are and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and through whom we exist." (1 Corinthians 8:5-6 NCB) There you have it....a direct statement in the simplest of terms.
Their "one God" was the Father...and their "one Lord" was Jesus Christ.....again, no holy spirit mentioned.
.....what they did not fully understand was that they would be going to heaven....they were Jews with no expectation whatsoever as to being chosen to go assist Christ in heaven. Their final words to the departing Jesus...."As they were all gathered together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the dates or the times that the Father has designated by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and then you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem, but throughout Judea and Samaria, and indeed to the farthest ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:6-8 NCB)
Jewish belief was that Messiah would establish his Kingdom on earth and the Jews would then officiate in a rebuilt Temple here on earth.....their anointing with holy spirit at Pentecost opened their eyes of understanding and implanted a strong desire to leave this earthly life and go to where their "Lord" was....he had promised them a place and he was going to prepare it for them.
Heaven was where the true Temple was, and the elect would serve God there. That is what they came to understand. The Jewish system of worship, with its Temple and its priesthood, was a shadow of the heavenly reality. Once Jesus had offered the ultimate sacrifice, an earthly Temple was no longer necessary. Jesus went back to heaven to offer the value of his sacrifice to God. He is our High Priest....
Hebrews 9:23-24 (NCB)...
"Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves required still greater sacrifices.
24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, so that he now appears in the presence of God on our behalf."
Paul mentioned Jewish observances and said that "Those things are a shadow of the things to come, but the reality belongs to the Christ." (Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 8:5)
Arianism simply claimed that the trinity was false....Jesus was not God....you have to understand that adopting a triune god altered the whole nature of the Creator and his relationship with his son. It did not become accepted right away because it was such a departure from what the first Christians believed about the "one God" of Israel. (Deuteronomy 6:4).
There is no such thing as "hypostatic union" in Christianity. This is a Greek philosophical idea, absent from the minds of the first Christians. The strangest part about Roman Catholicism is that the worst heretics were the first ones to point fingers at those who disagreed with their own heresy and dished out the most heinous punishment to those who dared to tell the truth.....the trinity was a complete departure from anything taught by Jesus Christ. But as the church gained power, it became more and more corrupt.....no one can deny its ugly history.....sorry, but I can never understand anyone reverting to such corruption of Christ's teachings, and promotion of a religion with such obvious falsehoods.
