One God Report

Dr. Dustin Smith is currently Professor of Theological Studies at Reformed University near Atlanta, Georgia. Among other writings, he is co-author of the book The Son of God: Three Views on the Identity of Jesus" and he is the host of the Biblical Unitarian Podcast.

In this first of a series of three One God Report podcast episodes, Dr. Smith describes some differences between pre-millennialism and a-millennialism. Eventually we are leading up to the question: is the 1000 years in Revelation 20 to be understood as a literal 1000 years, or does the 1000 years symbolically represent something else?
Dr. Smith makes these points in the current episode:

Both pre-millennial and a-millennial views see two levels, or two tiers, two time-periods to the kingdom of God.

For pre-millennialism the two tiers are:

1) after the physical return of Jesus, a literal 1000-year rule of Christ on earth, and then

2) the eternal kingdom which begins after the 1000 years.

For amillennialism:

1) the kingdom of God and of His Christ has already been inaugurated with the coming of Jesus and his ascension to heaven at the right hand of God. And

2) the eternal kingdom is consummated when Jesus physically returns to earth. The amillennialism that Dr. Smith describes believes that Jesus will physically rule over a kingdom on earth, just not for an intermediate 1000-year period. Rather, Jesus’s return is the transition to his to an eternal rule on earth.

In this podcast Dr. Smith begins to explain some problems with the pre-millennial view.

1) Pre-millennialism maintains that even after Jesus returns and raises the dead, some non-believers, that is, mortals, will enter the millennial kingdom. But biblically, there are considerable problems not only with mortals entering the kingdom of God, but with people continuing to die after the resurrection which accompanies the second coming of Christ (Matt 25:46; 1 Cor 15:23-26, 54-55; 2 Tim 1:10; Rev 21:4).

2) Pre-millennialism maintains that the resurrection of the just precedes by 1000 years the resurrection of the unjust, that is, the righteous are resurrected when Jesus returns, but the unrighteous 1000 years later. But in the Bible the resurrection of the just and the unjust always occurs at the same time, (e.g., Dan 12:2; Matt 12:41-42; John 5:28-29; Acts 24:15; Rev 11:15-18). Specifically, the resurrection of all the dead occurs at the return of Jesus (1 Thes. 4:13-17).

Biblical Unitarian Podcast, Host Dr. Dustin Smith

I interview six different people in Israel to answer these questions:

Who is God and how do you know?

Who is the Messiah and what is his relationship to God?

Is there are specific Scripture or two that explain your view of God or the Messiah?

The people interviewed include:

02:28 Yaakov (Yaaki), a more or less secular Israeli who became a public high school Bible teacher.

09:00 Elena, who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union.

12:24 Moses (Moshe), a Jewish believer in Jesus who parents were Holocaust survivors.

18:52 Shaaban, a Muslim Arab (not Israeli).

22:30 A group of religious Jewish men.

26:14 Jonathan, an American Israeli Jew who believes in One God (the Father) and the human Messiah Jesus.

Bill Schlegel YouTube Channel:

This episode is a review of the recently published paperback edition of the book called, The Restitution: Biblical Proof that Jesus is not God, by Kermit Zarley*.

What? Biblical proofs that Jesus is NOT God? The average Christian has heard only the biblical proofs that supposedly declare that Jesus IS God.

But anyone who thinks that the Bible claims that God is a Trinity, or that the Bible claims that Jesus Christ is God, should read this book. The Restitution: Biblical Proof that Jesus is NOT God is a comprehensive study of biblical Christology. What does the Bible say about who or what Christ (Messiah) is? For some 1700 years Christian churches have answered that question by saying that Jesus is God, or a God-Man. Zarley challenges that answer. He maintains that the biblical view is not “God is Christ”, but “God in Christ”.

That is, the One God of the Bible, Yahweh, worked in and through His human Messiah, Jesus, to reveal Himself to mankind (John 1:18, Heb. 1:1), and to reconcile the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19).

There is a popular declaration among Christians the world over this time of year. Quoting the messenger at Jesus’s tomb the declaration is made, “His is risen!” And then people respond: “He is risen indeed!”. 

But that English declaration is actually incorrect, or is an incorrect translation. The angelic declaration about Jesus is not about what Jesus did, but about what someone else, namely God, did to Jesus. In Greek, the declaration is a passive.  Jesus was acted upon. He received the action of the verb in the sentence. A more correct declaration is “He has been raised!” or, “He was raised”.  That is, someone else raised Jesus.

For full text notes of this episode, click here:

https://landandbible.blogspot.com/2023/04/he-has-been-raised-he-has-been-raised.html

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 Did God Die

In Part 1 (the previous episode, #92) I began to respond to some of the claims made in the One for Israel video called “The Trinity and the Torah, a Jewish Defense of the Trinity”. I noted that the so-called “mysterious unity of (one-God-in-three-persons) is not a biblical mystery, but is a man-made mystery that comes from centuries after the Bible was written, from Gentiles land outside of the Land of Israel.

Also, that the idea of agency is a much better way to understand how God’s messengers can speak and act for God.  God’s agents or messengers even speak in the first person as God, as they are delegated and authorized by God to do so. When God’s messengers speak, God speaks.

In the current episode:

01:00  Appealing to Dr. Benjamin Sommer. The necessity to appeal to Dr. Sommer’s ideas for evidence of more one person in God is an admission that the Bible makes no such declaration.

02:47  An example of an essential biblical truth, which unlike the doctrine of the Trinity, is directly and consistently described in the New Testament: that God raised the man Jesus from the dead.

04:54  Since a multi-person God is not declared in the Bible, people, including Gentile Christians, long for some scrap of “Jewish” evidence that God can be multi-personal. This the appeal to Dr. Sommer.

06:06  Who is Dr. Benjamin Sommer? His views on the authority and origin of Scripture, the Documentary Hypothesis, and the Bodies of God. Dr. Sommer’s view is closer akin to Modalism or Hinduism.

12:32  Is the Trinity in the Old Testament? What about Genesis 1:26? Does anyone in the New Testament go to the Old Testament to find evidence that God is triune?

14:54  Is the Trinity in the New Testament? Constructing a god from hints and clues, first finding verses that allegedly claim that Jesus is literally a second deity figure. What about John 1? Romans 10:9, 1 Cor. 8:6 - verses appealed in the One for Israel video do not declare that God is triune, and in fact, declare that the Father is the one God.

19:37  Are Israeli Jewish believers in Jesus Trinitarians? Most would say no. The deceptive bait and switch: finding evidence in the Bible that Jesus is the Messiah, but then insisting that Jesus is literally God.

22:40  A Trinity claim is an attempt to denigrate the only True God, the Father. A challenge from Deut. 32:6, Malachi 2:10 and John 17:1-3

For an analysis of the Documentary Hypothesis, see:

0:00  Introduction. One For Israel, my own interest in Israel and the Jewish People

1:00  Why is “The Trinity in the Torah” a “hot topic”? Because the Torah does not proclaim that God is triune. There is no declaration in the Bible where the God of Israel says, “I am three persons in one”. If there was such a declaration, there would be nothing to argue about.

Which Stumbling Block?

The One For Israel video states that the “stumbling block” for the Jews is the Trinity, the deity of Christ and “incarnation” of one God person of a tri-personal god.  But such things are a non-biblical stumbling block to Jewish faith in the Messiah. These are post-biblical, man-made stumbling blocks that Jewish people are completely right in rejecting.

These man-made stumbling blocks prevent Jewish people from hearing and being confronted with the true New Testament declaration about the Messiah, Yeshua. As the Apostle Paul declared, the stumbling block for the Jews is “Christ crucified”. The biblical proclamation is that the Messiah was put to death, but was raised from the dead and exalted by God to God’s right hand. There is nothing in the New Testament about Jews not accepting the Trinity or incarnation of one divine person of a tri-personal God.

05:49  The “Mysterious Unity of God” which the One For Israel video repeatedly discusses is likewise a non-biblical mystery, entirely foreign to the Bible.

9:09  AGENCY: The biblical principal of “the messenger represents the one who sent him” (agency) is a much better way to understand the few passages that are put-forth as an attempt to show that there is a “mysterious unity of (more than one person who is) God”. Many Christians, including Messianic Jews who believe in the “deity of Christ” are not familiar with the concept of agency. Once agency is understood, the fog of the so-called “mystery” is lifted.

19:09 Summary. The Mystery Solved and Agency

22:09 Looking forward to Part 2 One For Israel: The Trinity and the Torah, a Jewish Defense of the Trinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7D2djAnAbI&t=146s

Trinitarian Christianity claims that the three-person-in-one God is a mystery that cannot be understood.

The Trinitarian claim goes something like this: “The Bible says there is only one God. But the Bible also says the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God - so God must be three-in-one. We are only finite human beings, so we can’t really understand how God is three-persons-in-one-God. It’s a mystery.”

In this episode we describe how the Trinitarian mystery claim is faulty, and can be “solved”. In the main, the Trinity is solved, or we can say dissolved, by the very fact that it is not a biblical mystery. No one in the Bible claims that the three-in-one-God is a mystery. Neither Jesus nor any apostle ever described the three-in-one-God or explained that it was a mystery.

The claims for the mystery of the three-in-one-God are all non-biblical, post-biblical claims. The New Testament never addresses the triune mystery because the triune mystery emerges only centuries after the Bible was written. It was called a mystery bus it was known that a triune God directly contradicted explicit biblical declarations that God is one individual, and that He (one person) is God alone.

This episode is a review and recommendation for the recently printed book: Little Known Facts About the Trinity

This episode is part 3 of my response to an article posted by Answers in Genesis, which reviewed several of my blogposts about the supposed “deity of Christ”.

Many Trinitarians turn to John chapter 1 for evidence that Jesus is God and that therefore somehow God is a Trinity. But does John 1 describe God as a Trinity? Are any of the Trinitarian claims about the Triune god presented in John 1?

To investigate the Trinitarian claims about John 1, we use the chapter called “A Master Piece: the Prologue of John” from Dr. James White’s book The Forgotten Trinity. Dr. White thinks that John 1 gives evidence that God is Triune. But we will see that none of the characteristics with which Dr. White defines the Trinity are found in John 1.

We suggest a better way to interpret John’s opening verses. John is intentionally appropriating language from Genesis 1, but is describing the new creation of God in and through the man Christ Jesus.

Web resources mentioned in this podcast:

See this link for an analysis of some of the Greek questions in John’s Prologue, and how questions still remain even after the Greek is considered:

In this episode I interviewed students and staff at the youth conference of the Church of God General Conference. The conference, called Fuel is held once a year and occurred July 17-22 at the campus of North Manchester University in North Manchester, Indiana.

It is a fun, exciting time when One God believing students from various US States meet, are encouraged and challenged by each other and by the conference staff. Maybe you know someone who should attend next year?

I hope you will be blessed by listening in to the excitement in the voices of the students and staff as the next generation learns that Yahweh is our God. He is out God forever and ever.

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Resources:

Original music: Tony Joe White Polk Salad Annie

As a former teacher in a Trinitarian Christian University, I did not know how and when Trinitarian scholars think the Trinity was revealed. But I wasn’t alone. Most Christians, including pastors and Bible teachers, don’t know either.

In this podcast:

We continue our discussion with Troy Salinger about the deity of Christ apologists claim that the “memra” of the Aramaic translations of the Old Testament (Targums) is evidence that there was more than one person in Israel’s God.

In this episode Salinger looks at Old Testament passages which are deity of Christ apologists like Dr. Michael Heiser say is evidence that the “word of God” coming to people in the Old Testament was as second divine being. Salinger shows why the claim to be faulty.

The word “memra” is not the Aramaic substitute for the Hebrew word “davar” (word). Salinger explains that the phrase “the word of God came to…” is a not a second divine figure coming to a human, but denotes God speaking to or communicating information to a person. Synonymous phrases like “and Yahweh said to me”, “this is the word that came to Jeremiah from Yawheh”, “the word of Yahweh concerning…” in the biblical text show that the “word of Yahweh came to”

Based on Numbers 12:2, Salinger describes the normal way in which God communicated to the prophets was through visions and dreams.

Timestamps:
02:00 Genesis 15:1 considered

03:38 How God normally spoke to his prophets, through dreams and visions

10:30  1 Samuel 3

11:20  1 Samuel 4

12:30  “The word came to” means verbal communication (often through dream or vision), not a personal being or entity (a “second Yahweh”).

15:26  The word of Yahweh coming to Jeremiah

Related links:

This episode exposes the progressive liberalism, indeed “woke-ism” of Trinitarian thought and language.

While Trinitarians insist that God is three persons, Trinitarians insist on referring to God with the singular pronouns “He/Him.” But if God is three persons, they should be referred to with the plural pronouns “They/Them.”

The “one-ness” of God, according to Trinitarians, is not a one-ness of a person, but a one-ness of an essence or a “what”. An “essence” or a “what” is not a person and should not be referred to as a person. The Trinitarian one-ness of God is an “it”.

James White in his book The Forgotten Trinity says “We dare not mix up the what and the who’s regarding the Trinity” (p. 24). But white does exactly that. He refers to the three persons of his god with the singular pronoun “he”. White mixes up the what and who of his Trinitarian god.

Links for this episode:

MN Churches of God Spring 2022 Conference, June 10-12

“New Creation in the Gospel of John”, Guest Speaker: Bill Schlegel

In this episode I give reasons to understand that the “Greeks” mentioned in two places in the Gospel of John (7:35 and 12:21) were not Gentiles but were Greek-speaking Israelites who grew up in Greek culture outside of the land of Israel.

The Gospel of John is using the word “Greeks/Hellenes” in a cultural and linguistic sense, not in an ethnic sense.

Understanding that the Greeks/Hellenes mentioned in the Gospel of John are Greek-speaking Israelites helps us interpret the Gospel of John better, and illuminates another evidence that the author gives to show that Jesus is the Messiah. As the Messiah, Jesus is the facilitator of the "gathering of the exiles of Israel". As the Gospel of John says it, "the gathering of the children of God who are scattered abroad" (John 11:52). 

This episode proposes that one of the main original audiences, perhaps even the main audience, of the Gospel of John were Greek speaking Hebrews.

A first step in understanding that a main target audience of John’s Gospel were Greek speaking Hebrews is to understand that in the Gospel of John the word often translated as “Jews” can and does mean “Judeans”.

Jesus is received by Hebrews (Jews or Israelites) in all regions outside of Judea. But the "Judeans", particularly the Jewish religious establishment in Jerusalem, did not receive him.

If “Jews” means “Judeans” then the Gospel of John is addressing an internal Jewish controversy.

John was not writing to Gentile audiences to declare “the Jews rejected and killed Jesus”. Rather, the author is writing to other Hebrews giving reasons to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, even though he was rejected in his own city Jerusalem, in his own region, by his own people, Judeans.

Judeans rejected Jesus, not all Jews.

We conclude a three-part interview with Dr. Andrew Perry on the Prologue of the Gospel of John. In this episode Dr. Perry:

1. Explains how he understands when and how “the word became flesh” (John 1:14). Dr. Perry understands the phrase “the word became flesh” to be about empowerment to speak and make things happen or come to be, and not about divine incarnation. Dr. Perry sees the baptism of Jesus as the event at which the word became flesh.

2. Explains what “the world came to be through him” means in John 1:10.

3. Encourages readers to be sensitive to Old Testament types (patterns and parallels) which Jesus and the authors of the New Testament employ. A failure to recognize the Old Testament types has led to a misunderstanding of the Prologue and other passages in the Gospel of John.

Resources:
Dr. Perry’s books and articles:

This episode is part 2 of our discussion with Dr. Andrew Perry about themes in the Prologue of the Gospel of John.

In this episode Dr. Perry explains why the human Christ Jesus is called the Word in John 1:1, and gives reasons how we can know that the man Christ Jesus is referred to in the Gospel’s opening statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

1. In parallel to Genesis creation, things “happen” or “come to be” through the spoken word of the man Christ Jesus. Jesus can heal the sick, heal the lame, calm a storm and raise the dead simply by speaking. Renewed creation, indeed new life, "comes to be" through God's Word. 

2. The phrases “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” have no precedence in either biblical or non-biblical literature in reference to either a second divine figure or to an abstract idea like “wisdom”. Rather, the phrases find a parallel in the biblical literature to human figures, especially to Moses.

3. The repetition of the phrase “This one was with God in the beginning” is an intentional contrast with John 1:7, a comparison between the man Christ Jesus and the man John the Baptizer, “this one came as a witness”. The persistent references and comparisons to John the Baptizer in the Prologue of John’s Gospel, and in the early chapters of the gospel indicate that the Baptizer is being compared to the man Christ Jesus (not to a pre-incarnate divine figure or to an "personified" abstract idea).

We also discuss what the phrase in John 1:14 means: “So the Word became/was flesh…”

Resource links:

Dr. Perry’s books and articles:

This episode is “New Creation in the Gospel of John 1, with Dr. Andrew Perry. A subtitle for the episode is “The Beginning of John 1:1 is a New Beginning, not the Genesis Creation”.

This episode is the first of a series in which Dr. Perry will explain reasons why the prologue of the Gospel of John is best understood to be introducing the new creation in the man Jesus, who is referred to as “the Word” in John 1:1.

Dr. Perry’s occupational background is in information technology, but he is now an independent researcher and author. His PhD in New Testament is from Durham University in England. His numerous articles and books are available on his academia.edu and Lulu bookstore (links below).

In this episode Dr. Perry begins to give evidence for why he understands that “In the beginning” of John 1:1 is best understood as referring to the new beginning that God brings about through the ministry of the man Jesus Christ. Dr. Perry explains that the author of the Gospel of John is re-using Genesis language to intentionally draw a comparison between the beginning in Genesis and the new beginning in Jesus.

The man Christ Jesus is referred to as the Word in John 1:1, because in a parallel way to Genesis, things “come to be” through God’s word. But in Jesus’s case, we are not talking about a material creation, but a spiritual creation. Life came to be through Jesus. John 1:3-4 explains, “that which came to be in him was life, and the life was the light of men”.

In this episode we show why the Trinitarian and “deity of Christ” understanding of Jesus’s words in John 8:58 are wrong.

In neither Hebrew nor in Greek is the phase “I am” in the Bible a title for deity.

In Hebrew, God says in Exodus 3:14 “I will be who I will be”. In Greek, it is the “Living One” who speaks to Moses.

“I am”, in Greek, ego eimi, is not a divine title.

We show that the “deity of Christ” interpretation of Jesus’s statement, “before Abraham was I am” contradicts the Apostle Peter’s belief (Acts 3:15), the disciples Steven’s belief (Acts 7), the author of the Gospel of John (John 20 30:31) and Jesus in the Gospel of John (John 17:3).

We give two possible meanings for Jesus “I am” statement in John 8:58. We favor the second interpretation.

1. Jesus’s statement relates to his superiority to Abraham in the plan and purpose of God. The Messiah Jesus was known by God before Abraham was called in God’s purpose.

2. Jesus is pre-eminent to Abraham in resurrection. Jesus was repeating what he said earlier in John chapter 8, “I am the light of the world”. All of the “I am” statements of Jesus in John 8 relate to his claim to be “the light of the world”.

We examine the Greek verb genesthai and see that especially in the Gospel of John it means to “come into being at some point in the future”. John 8:58 is best translated as “before Abraham comes to be”, that is, at some future point in time.

In this podcast I translate a few verses in the Book of Genesis (1:1, 26-27) in a way that many Trinitarians read or understand the text.

I address the question if the word for “God” in Hebrew Elohim, which is a grammatical plural, is a hint or means that God is more than one.

1. No, this grammatically plural form does not mean more than one numerically.

2. Hebrew grammarians call this the “plural of majesty”. It is used in an honorific way with titles like “God”, “master”, even “Baal” to refer to one individual.

3. No Hebrew scholar makes the claim that the grammatical plural Elohim hints or suggests that the God of Israel is more than one individual. The claim is a popular “man/pastor” on the street claim that ignores what Hebrew grammarians say.

4. If the word means a plural, it would be translated as “gods”, more than one god. It does not mean more than one person in a god.

5. Other Hebrew words that are grammatically plural but singular in meaning are mentioned.

6. Trinitarians are inconsistent since sometimes they claim Elohim means more than one person, but other times it means only one person. Sometimes the contradiction is in one verse right next to another.

7. Many times the God of Israel is referred to in the singular form El. The God of Israel is also referred to tens of thousands of times with singular masculine verbs, pronouns and adjectives. We ask which member of the Triune god is being referred to in the hundreds, thousands, of place, like here in Psalm 86:10:

 כִּי-גָדוֹל אַתָּה וְעֹשֵׂה נִפְלָאוֹת אַתָּה אֱלֹהִים לְבַדֶּךָ

8. We challenge those who make the claim that Elohim means a multi-personal god to explain why the Hebrew word for “master/sir/lord” also occurs in grammatical plural forms to refer to one individual person.

Additional resources:

A Trinitarian Baptist pastor says the Father veiled himself in flesh, bled and died.

Really? Why such confusion?

Does the New Testament really tell believers in Jesus to take a little wafer and cup of juiced or wine to remember Jesus’s birth? What did Jesus mean when he said, “Do THIS in remembrance of me”?

Resources for this episode:

This episode is part 3 of the three part series, “Finding the Deity of Christ in the Old Testament is not a New Testament Exercise”.

In Part 1 we saw that on the day of his resurrection, as recorded in Luke 24, Jesus appealed to the Old Testament Scriptures not to proclaim his deity, but to proclaim that the Messiah would suffer and die before being resurrected and exalted.

In Part 2 we saw that when Peter and Paul in the Book of Acts appealed to the Old Testament to declare who Messiah/Christ is, they never claim anything about the deity of Christ. Rather, like Jesus, they proclaim that the Christ had to suffer and die and then be raised by God to glory.

In this episode we examine two famous Old Testament texts that traditional Christianity has claimed to be evidence of the deity of Christ. We see that the New Testament never makes this claim. Rather, appeals to the Old Testament to proclaim the deity of Christ only come from church fathers of later centuries after Christ. The claims are tradition, not biblical.

We continue our discussion with Troy Salinger concerning the "Pre-incarnate Appearances of the Son of God in the Old Testament". In this episode we examine Genesis 18-19, where Yahweh appeared to Abraham via three messengers.  

No one in the Bible claims that these visitors were a literal pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus, but ever since the mid-second century AD, beginning with Justin Martyr, most of traditional Christianity has held that Abraham was literally visited by the pre-incarnate Christ. 

Salinger leads the discussion examining the pre-incarnate claim and like other Old Testament passages, explains that likewise this appearance of Yahweh is most simply understood as agency. That is, Yahweh God is represented by his agent messengers. When the messengers speaks or act it is Yahweh speaking or acting. And those to whom Yahweh appears via messengers can speak to Yahweh through His messengers.

Schlegel gives biblical evidence that the messengers in Genesis 18-19 were actually human beings, specifically, that one of the messengers was Melchizedek.

We continue our discussion with Troy Salinger on the “Pre-incarnate Appearances of the Son of God in the OT: Truth or Myth”.

In this episode Salinger leads us in a discussion about the “Commander of the LORD’s Armies” who appeared with a drawn sword in Joshua 5:13-15, just before the Israelites attacked and conquered Jericho. The Trinitarian world strongly suggests, sometimes insists, that this Commander of the LORD’s Army was a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus.

But was it?

Salinger gives good reasons why the answer is no, and suggests who this person really may have been.

We continue our discussion with Troy Salinger on the supposed pre-incarnate appearances of the Son of God in the Old Testament. In this episode we look at three events which Trinitarians have claimed to be a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament.

1. The burning bush incident in Exodus 3 (did Jesus claim in John 8:58 to be the God that appeared there?).

2. Melchizedek – was he a pre-incarnate Jesus?

3. Did Jesus appear “like one of the sons of God” in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?

The podcast is based on Salinger’s article:

In this second episode we continue to discuss the claim that Jesus the Son of God made pre-incarnate appearances in the Old Testament period.  We focus in this episode on the angel of the LORD.

No New Testament author claimed that Jesus made pre-incarnate appearances as the angel of the Lord. The claim begins in the AD 2nd century, with Justin Martyr being the first one on record to make such a claim.

Why is it that the angel (or Messenger) of Yahweh in the Old Testament is sometimes clearly said to be an angel, but then at other times actually seems to be Yahweh God? Is Jesus the angel of the Lord who is distinct from the Father but is someone still God?

Salinger first shows that the angel of the Lord is by no means always the same person or being in every case the angel/messenger appears. In fact, there are human beings in the Old Testament who are specifically called the angel(s) of the Lord.

Salinger explains that the key to understanding the passages about the angel of the Lord being distinct from Yahweh but sometimes speaking in the 1st person as Yahweh, or whose works are attributed to Yahweh, is AGENCY. The angel/messenger carries the authority and resources of God who sent him. God is considered to be personally present in the presence of the messenger He sent.

Some examples of agency, where the agent is considered to be the one who sent him, are given from both the Old and New Testaments.

There is no need for mysterious speculation about an angel who both is and isn’t God.

Resource links for this episode:

Interview with painter and theologian Troy Salinger.

In this episode (Part 1 of a 2 part episode) we examine and comment on John 5, where Jesus healed a lame man at the Pools of Bethesda in Jerusalem.

We focus on John 5:17-18: "And this was why the Judeans were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17But Jesus answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I am working." 18 This was why the Judeans were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was also calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God."

We show that the phrase "equal with God" is best understood in the biblical, Hebraic concept of "agency", an equality between the one sent and his sender.  "The one sent is equal to his sender".

The equality of the Messiah Jesus to God is as God's sent agent, not an equality of divine essence or nature.

The Christology of the Gospel of John is not "incarnation" (God taking on flesh, or becoming human) but "agency", God being represented and granting His authority to His appointed human Messiah Jesus.

The equality of the Messiah Jesus to God is as God's sent agent, not an equality of divine essence or nature.

For full written text of this episode and episode 2, see here:

https://landandbible.blogspot.com/2021/09/john-518-but-he-was-also-calling-god.html

Pakistani Haroon Gulzar was studying in a Catholic seminary when he began to understand that God is not a Trinity, but is one, and that Jesus is God's human Messiah.

In this interview Haroon's wife Maryam explains about how they came to a Biblical Unitarian faith, and how she, her husband and a team of others are ministering in Pakistan.

Related web links:

Abraham Church: Pastor Haroon Gulzar

Jesus said “I am the Root of David” (Rev. 5:5, 22:16, cf. "Root of Jesse", Isaiah 11:1, 10, Romans 15:12).

Being the Root of Jesse and the Root of David does not mean that Jesus is God, but rather that Jesus is a descendant of Jesse and David.

Some Trinitarians claim that since Jesus is called the Root of Jesse and the Root of David, Jesus must have preceded both Jesse and David, and is the source of their lives and is therefore God.

This podcast will explain why this Trinitarian claim is wrong. We will see that being the root of Jesse or the root of David, like being a branch from David, means that Jesus is a physical descendant of Jesse and David. The roots below ground, like the branches above ground, physically extend from the trunk of Jesse and David.

Many Christians seem to think that because Jesus is worshipped, he is God.

We examine that claim and find it lacking in a number of respects.

The claim "Jesus must be God, because he is worshipped" is:

1. biblically ignorant. There are many humans in the Bible that are properly worshipped.

2. anti-Christ, a denial that Jesus Christ is a man. The claim “Jesus must be God if he is worshipped” is in effect: "We will not have this one, this man, rule over us".

3. Contradictory: On the one hand: “Jesus is fully man” but on the other hand: “I’m not worshipping a man.”

4. Not a biblical claim. The Bible never says, “Jesus is worshipped so he must be God”. Rather the claim is based on a misunderstanding of word meanings and wrong philosophical speculation.


The biblical model for worship is:

There is only one God, יהוה, The Father.

We worship God as God. We worship no one else as God other than יהוה, The Father.

We worship Jesus as the Messiah who gave his life for us, and the one to whom God has given all authority in heaven and on earth, not only in this age, but also in the age to come.

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The Bible is clear that there is only one God. (Deuteronomy 6:4, 32:39, Mark 12:29, Isaiah 44:24, John 17:3. 1 Cor. 8:6, Gal. 4:6). 

The name of God in the Bible appears over 6800 times and is spelled with the four Hebrew consonants יהוה. Here is an example of what יהוה the God of the Bible says:

Deuteronomy 32:39 “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me.”

The Bible is also clear that the Lord Jesus Christ has a God. So, is the one God of the Bible, יהוה, who states that He alone is the only God – is He the Lord Jesus Christ’s God?

The only God, יהוה, must be, has to be, the Lord Jesus Christ’s God. So, the Lord Jesus Christ is not God.

We look at Scriptures that explicitly state that the Lord Jesus Christ has a God. We see that in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, God is the Father alone.  The only God, the Lord Jesus Christ's God, is the Father.

Why don't Trinitarians or those who believe in the deity of Christ, love those who believe that Jesus is the Christ?

Why do Trinitarians shun and reject those who believe that Jesus is the Christ?

Comments of 1 John 5:1: "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whomever has been born of him."

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“Where do we go when we die? Or, What has the Greek Philosopher Plato got to do with Christianity?”

Interview with Pastor Sean Finnegan

Sean Finnegan is pastor at Living Hope Community Church in Latham, New York. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Atlanta Bible College where he teaches courses in Church History, Apologetics, and Basic Bible Doctrine, and he is the host of the Restitutio Podcast. Website:

In this episode we continue thinking about what John 1:14 "and the Word became flesh" means, and we ask deity of Christ believers who appeal to John 1:1 and John 1:14, “So you believe that God became flesh?” Do you think that “God is flesh?”
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We give reasons why a better way to understand John 1:14 is that “the Logos, the Word was flesh”. In other words, the Logos, the Word - God’s communication to us - was the human being, the man Christ Jesus from Nazareth.

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This episode is an interview with Sir Anthony Buzzard, one of the most active One God believers of our time. Most listeners to this podcast will know about Sir Anthony. If by chance you don’t, you will want to become familiar with him and his work.
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Anthony taught for decades at the Church of God, Abrahamic Faith Bible college, now called Atlanta Bible College. He is the author of a number of books, including The Doctrine of the Trinity, Christianity’s Self-inflicted Wound, Jesus was Not a Trinitarian, The Coming Kingdom of the Messiah, Our Fathers who Aren’t in Heaven, Who is Jesus, and more. Some of them are available for free pdf download. See the links to his books and webpage.
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I wanted to ask Sir Anthony about some of the changes he has seen in the One God faith movement, and what he has thought have been, and should continue to be effective witnessing tools.
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One emphasis in the podcast that I would like listeners to note is the excitement and persistence that Sir Anthony has and continues to have in sharing about the One God and His human Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Apart from programs that may or may not be effective, I think every one of us can learn from Anthony about being excited and persistent in our sharing about the God of the Bible and His anointed, the Messiah Jesus. Be this face to face with our neighbors and others we meet, or through the modern media of the internet.
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Another emphasis that Anthony makes is that we should gain experience, practice in witnessing about our faith in the one God, and this experience is gained by doing it.
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We also discuss the “deity of Christ” and Jehovah’s Witness claim that “Jesus pre-existed”.
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At the end of the interview, I take the liberty of sharing one other element that I believe is, or could be, essential for an effective witness to God and His Messiah.
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Books: The Doctrine of the Trinity, Christianity’s Self-inflicted Wound (and more)

For many people who believe in the “deity of Christ”, a few words from John 1:1 combined with a few words from John 1:14 forms the #1 evidence that Jesus is God, and that therefor somehow God is a Trinity.

In this podcast we focus on the problems with the “deity of Christ” and Trinitarian interpretation of John 1:14, the claim that “God became man.”

There is no Trinity in John 1:1 or John 1:14 or anywhere else in John’s Gospel.

The incarnation, or “God became man” interpretation plucks a few words from the Gospel of John and creates its most important, essential, seminal doctrine, while ignoring nearly the entirety of the rest of the Gospel of John, and the Bible as a whole. Jesus’ own words in the Gospel of John, and the author’s own purpose statement are ignored.

Does the Greek word (egeneto) translated in most English Bibles in John 1:14 as “became” mean that one member of a multi-person godhead transformed into flesh? Did one member a godhead “become” man like the fairy tale prince became frog? Many “diety of Christ” believers seem to believe that one member of a godhead inhabited a human body like the human prince inhabited a frog body.

If God became man by taking on another nature, human nature (flesh), then why has the Trinitarian god been defined for hundreds of years as having only one nature?

Deity of Christ interpreters are like magicians who claim one moment that there God has one nature, but then the next moment insist that their god has two natures.

Why is the conception and birth of Jesus the Messiah not described at all in the Gospel of John, if the author wanted to communicate that God becameman? We call the incarnation “the Greatest Story Never Told”.

We explain why “deity of Christ” belief in a “trans-nature” god is similar to, and in some ways even worse, than the modern trans-gender claims. Christians who believe in a trans-natured god and condemn transgenders and homosexuals are being hypocritical.

We note how history is against the “God became man” interpretation of John 1:14, and see how the interpretation was developed in Greco-Roman-Byzantine philosophical speculation in lands outside of Israel. The Gospel of John must be understood from a 1st century Hebraic background, not from a 2-5thcentury Gentile viewpoint.

The worst aspect of the “God became man” interpretation is that it denies that Jesus of Nazareth is a human person. In the end, it tends to eliminate even the abstract “human nature” from Jesus.

This episode is a discussion with Kermit Zarley, retired professional golfer, and now author of a number of books, including The Restitution of Jesus Christ (see links below).

Formerly a Trinitarian Christian, Zarley briefly describes how he came to understand that the God of the Bible is one, and that Jesus is God’s human Messiah.

Then, we discuss the following topics:

· Did Jesus pre-exist as a person before he was a human being?

· What did Jesus mean when Jesus said that he “came down from heaven” and was “sent from God”?

· The use of figures of speech or metaphorical language in the Gospel of John, and the literary theme that many of Jesus’s listeners did not understand the metaphors.

· The Christological motif in the Gospel of John is not “Incarnational Christology”, i.e., that God became man or took on human flesh) but “Agency Christology”, i.e., that Jesus is God’s human representative agent, who speaks and acts empowered by God and representing God).

· At the end of the discussion, Zarley gives the most important tip for budding, amateur golfers.

Links:

"But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, being little among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days."

וְאַתָּה בֵּית-לֶחֶם אֶפְרָתָה צָעִיר לִהְיוֹת בְּאַלְפֵי יְהוּדָה מִמְּךָ לִי יֵצֵא לִהְיוֹת מוֹשֵׁל בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל וּמוֹצָאֹתָיו מִקֶּדֶם מִימֵי עוֹלָם׃

A passage often remembered around Christmas time, Micah 5:2 is quoted in Matthew 2:5-6 to describe that Israel’s ruler would be born in Bethlehem. Some Christian expositors and laypersons see the “eternal pre-existence” of the Messiah and therefore Messiah’s deity in the words of Micah 5:2 (in Hebrew, Micah 5:1): “whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”

However, even just a comparison of English translations reveals that “eternality” in this passage is not so cut-and-dry. Some English translations of the use a word like “everlasting”, while others translate the same phrase as “from ancient days”.

A word study and the context of the passages shows that neither Micah nor Matthew were declaring the “eternal pre-existence” of Messiah. Rather, the passages refer to the promise of God given to David centuries before.

The “eternal pre-existence” and “deity of Christ” claims from Micah 5 are based on presuppositions that force a wrong understanding of Hebrew words. The words miqedem "from before" and mimei olam "from ancient days" do not mean “eternal pre-existence” but refer to events in Israel’s past. Specifically, Micah 5:2 refers to the promise God made to David long ago, centuries before Micah’s day.

The “eternality” interpretation also ignores both the literary and historical context of the passage which speaks of a descendant of David who was to rule for Yahweh by the strength of Yahweh his God when the Assyrians came into the land.

The “eternality” interpretation also misses the meaning of the passage. Micah is trusting completely on God’s promise of peace and salvation through a king who would descend from David. There was an amazing, observable sample of that promised victorious peace in David’s descendant Hezekiah (see Isaiah 37:15-38), a sample which gives us concrete evidence and confidence that Yawheh our God fulfills His promises.

The ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to David is in Jesus. In an even greater fashion than in the days of David or Hezekiah, Jesus the descendant of David will shepherd and rule God’s people for God  in the strength of Yahweh his God, and in the majesty of the name of Yahweh his God.

Jon and Heather Kidwell come from a traditional, conservative Christian background. Heather grew up on the mission field. In this podcast the Kidwells tell their story about how they came to understand that God is one, and that Jesus is God’s human Messiah, who died and was raised from the dead by God.

While homeschooling her kids (Camden, Cate and Cara - we hear from them toward the end of the podcast), Heather was bothered by an emphasis even in Christian homeschooling curriculum on the study of Greek philosophy and culture. Why are we so fascinated with Greek history and philosophy?

She began to wonder if she was looking at life, and interpreting the Scriptures, through a Greek philosophical lens rather than through a Hebraic, biblical mindset. Was she teaching her children biblical truth? Or had some traditional Christian dogmas been formed by interpreting the Scriptures from Greek ways of thinking which she knew would twist the truth?

The questions set the family on a quest to find the truth. They began to discover that church teachings like the immortality of the human soul, going to heaven in a dis-embodied state, and eternal conscious torment in hell were all non-biblical ideas. Rather, the Scriptures teach that man is mortal, our hope is in the resurrection from death to new immortal life on earth, and that the wages of sin is death, perishing.

This episode is part 1 of a two part commentary on the Gospel of John 1:9-13.

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This episode focuses on John 1:9, where we take a close look at what 'the world" (the Greek word "kosmos") means in the Bible in general and in the Gospel of John specifically. We also investigate what the Gospel of John means by the phrase "coming into the world".
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We must understand the figures of speech, idioms and metaphors in the Gospel of John if we are to understand the Gospel correctly. It was those in opposition to Jesus that especially misunderstood his figures of speech. John 10:6, “This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.”
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The Greek word kosmos, although translated as “world” in John 1:9-10, does not mean planet earth. Rather kosmos means human society, or a segment of human society, specifically Jewish society.
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To go or “come into the kosmos, into the world” does not mean a person came from some heavenly or planetary realm into planet earth. To “come into the world” means to be a part of human society, to exist and be alive at a certain time and place. Everyone “comes into the world.” As fulfillment of God’s promise the Prophet of Deut. 18:15 “comes into the world” and the Messiah “comes into the world” (John 7:31, 11:27).
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The man Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah is the light who “came into the world.” This is made clear by the author both in the Prologue (the Baptizer was not the light) and in the body of the Gospel. Jesus said, “I have come as light into the world” (John 12:46, 3:19).

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This episode is a commentary on the Gospel of John 1:4-8.

John the Baptist was a prophet sent by God to testify about the man Jesus Christ, not about a pre-incarnate 2nd person of the Trinity, nor about an abstract pre-Genesis plan of God.

The life and light in the darkness introduced in John 1:4-5 refer to the man Jesus Christ and his ministry in the darkness which mankind finds himself in, not to the Genesis creation. The man and ministry of Jesus the Messiah is life in which is lightthat still shines.

The darkness tried to overcome the light, by putting Jesus Christ to death on a cross. But the darkness was not able to overcome the light, as Jesus’s death led to resurrection into eternal life. “the darkness did not overcome the light” is a reference already in John 1:5 to the death and resurrection of the man Jesus Christ from Nazareth, not to some pre-Genesis event.

The reiteration in the body of the Gospel of terms used in the Prologue, like word, life, light, and darkness, is evidence that the Prologue is introducing the man and ministry of Jesus the Messiah from Nazareth. The man Jesus Christ from Nazareth is the light of the world. Whoever follows him will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Interpreting John 1 as describing the Genesis creation doesn’t work, or ends up being confusion and contradiction since somewhere between verse 3 and verse 4 the author supposedly switched from the describing the Genesis creation to introducing the life of light in the person he is about to describe, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Also, the deity of Christ interpretation is confusing as it must postulate that that the ministries of Jesus and John the Baptizer being described in verses 3-13 are described before the supposed incarnation described in John 1:14.

A much better way to understand all of the Prologue of the Gospel of John is to interpret it as an introduction to the man Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who is the main topic of the book. The testimony ministry of John the Baptizer has no business being introduced in 1:6-8, 1:15 and 1:19-34 if “the beginning” of John 1:1 refers directly to the Genesis creation as the Greek philosophers understood it, referring to some pre-human “Logos”, some pre-human “Word”.

Rather, the ministry of John the Baptizer, his testimony to the light, and the contrast statement that John was not the light, is evidence that the prologue is about the man Jesus and his ministry, and that “the beginning” of John 1:1 is the new beginning of God in the life of the Messiah Jesus.

This episode is commentary on the Gospel of John 1:2-3.

Many traditional Christians claim that John 1:3, "all things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be" declares that Jesus created all things in the universe. 

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We look at key words in the original Greek of this verse and discover that the author of the Gospel of John is not declaring that Jesus created all the material universe. Theologically biased translations have given the wrong understanding of this verse. We suggest a much better way of understanding John 1:3.

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John 1:3 is not saying that Jesus was involved in the creation of all the material universe. “All things” never means the entire universe in the Gospel of John. Neither are the words “create” or “make” in this verse or anywhere else in John’s prologue. Rather, John 1:3 is introducing all the things that came about, everything that happened through the life and ministry of Jesus. And the main “everything” is the resurrection life of the Messiah Jesus of Nazareth, and the promise of life in the next age his resurrection holds for all.

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We also take a look at John 1:2 and see that already in John 1:2, “This one was in the beginning with God” begins the contrast between Jesus, the Word, and John the Baptist. The author of the Gospel of John early and often contrasts or compares John the Baptizer with Jesus and the titles used for Jesus (Word, light). This is evidence that Baptizer is being contrasted with the human person Jesus, not a pre-incarnate god-figure or abstract Logos. “This one”, Jesus, the Word was the light. But “this one” John the Baptizer was not the light. “This one”, said the Baptizer, “is whom I spoke about. He is greater than I”. “This one baptizes with the holy spirit”.  “This one is the Son of God”.

The biblical autumn festivals are coming up, including the of Festival of Tabernacles. John 7 describes how Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Tabernacles festival, only six months before he was crucified, buried and raised from the dead.

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In reading over John chapter 7, I’m struck by how the question on the people’s minds in Jerusalem at the Festival was not“Is this man God?”. Rather, the question people were asking themselves was “Is this man the Messiah?” For centuries, deity of Christ and Trinitarian theology have claimed that the Gospel of John is the book that presents Jesus as God. But to make that claim a person has to bring his own presuppositions to a few verses in John’s Gospel, while at the same time ignore the many times that John is really presenting Jesus as the Messiah.

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To proclaim “Jesus is God” and that the Gospel of John says so, is to proclaim a different Jesus, a different Messiah than the one the Gospel of John is proclaiming. “Jesus is God” is an anti-messiah claim, a claim that exchanges the real human Christ of the Gospel of John for another. It is a claim that is against the real human Messiah Jesus of the Gospel of John.

As presented in John’s Gospel, and indeed all of the New Testament, those that believe in Jesus do not believe that Jesus is God. Rather, those that believe in Jesus believe that Jesus is the Messiah. “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah has been born of God” (1 John 5:1).

It is a misrepresentation and perversion of Scripture to insist that “everyone who believes that Jesus is God has been born of God”.

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In the Gospel of John, “God” is never the Trinity. For instance, in one of the most well known verses of the Bible, whose reference is written out on posters at football games:

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
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Try substituting “God” in this verse with “the Trinity”.

“For the Trinity so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son…”

It doesn’t make sense.

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Many Christians think that the Gospel of John is the main New Testament book where Jesus is proclaimed as God, and that God is then somehow a Trinity. However, in not one occurrence of the 83 occurrences of the word "God" in the Gospel of John is God a Trinity.

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Trinitarian theologians claim that since God the Son “took on” humanity, Jesus was not a human person. Otherwise Jesus Christ would be two persons (one divine person and one human person). Trinitarian theologians call the non-human personhood of Jesus Christ the anhypostasis (“without personhood”), and the divine personalizing of the human nature the enhypostasis. Schlegel examines the anhypostasis theory from a biblical perspective and finds the theory to be anti-Messiah.

This presentation was given at the Theological Conference of Restoration Fellowship on 7/31/2020.

The Book of Revelation is “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him” (1:1). From the very first verse we are told that Jesus is not God. God is differentiated from Jesus. The God of Jesus Christ gave Jesus Christ this revelation.

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In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is called the Lamb of God. 

In this episode I interview Forrest Maready, author of the recently published book called Red Pill Gospel: Christianity, before it was ruined by Christians.

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Forrest has some notoriety in the vaccination and pharmaceutical world, having previously written seven books on vaccinations (see website below).

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Forrest and his wife have  come to see that the Scriptures reveal that God is one, and that Jesus is God’s designated human Messiah.

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Red Pill is a movie reference that has taken hold in modern culture to mean a willingness to step outside one's normal, comfortable circumstances and take an objective look at reality, even though doing so may be painful. In the case of Red Pill Gospel, this means taking a look at non-biblical doctrines like the Trinity. Calvinism, which claims that God desires to consign most people to eternal conscious torment, also comes under scrutiny.

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I recommend Red Pill Gospel as a book that One God believers can give to family and friends to help them begin to see that much of popular Christianity is un-biblical.

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Toward the end of the interview we mention recent discussions by one God believers concerning what Forrest calls “Amish 2”, or “geographical clustering” – the potential for establishing a neighborhoods or communities of like-minded believers and families.

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Relevant websites for this podcast:

In this episode we consider reasons why many Christians react negatively when hearing about faith in the One God of the Scriptures and in His human Messiah Jesus.

We break down the reasons for these negative reactions into two main categories:

1. Fear

2. Pride

After hearing this podcast we recommend this article for more analysis of peoples' reactions to faith in the One God revealed in Scripture:

For many Christians this phrase “and the Word was God” is the main biblical evidence for the deity of Jesus Christ. But is it?

There are many problems with the “deity of Christ” interpretation of John 1:1. I currently have a growing list of 12 major problems with the deity of Christ take on John 1:1. It will take a separate podcast to describe all those problems. In the current podcast we mention a couple.

For instance:

1. The deity of Christ claim breaks a main rule of biblical interpretation. That rule is: “we must interpret a less clear passage in light of clear passages”. The language in John 1:1 is concise and somewhat obscure. How could it be, after the author distinguished the Word from God in his previous statement, “the Word was with God”, that in the next breath he said “and the Word was God”?

In so many other places in Scripture the person Jesus Christ is distinguished entirely from God, but the deity of Christ interpretation must ignore all these other Scriptures and claim that this statement, 1/3 of a verse in John 1:1, combined with another half a verse in John 1:14, is proof that Jesus is God and that God is more than one person. No other Old Testament prophet described such thing, no other Gospel writer made such a claim, but then, the writer of the Gospel of John comes along and says in a verse or two, “Surprise!  God is not really one person, he, or really they, are two.” Rather than break what Jesus called the greatest commandment, that “Yahweh your God is one” it would be much better to explore other possible meanings for “and the Word was God”.

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2. Further, the deity of Christ interpretation of John 1:1 contradicts itself. Deity of Christ interpreters want to say that the word “Word”, Logos in the Greek of John 1:1, is the eternal second person of the Godhead, the “eternal Son”. And like John 1:1b says, the Word was with God means that the eternal Son was distinct from but at the same time with God the Father forever. Let’s see if John 1:1 makes sense by substituting eternal Son for “Word” in John 1:1.

“In the beginning was the eternal Son, and the eternal Son was with the Father, and the eternal Son was the Father.” Even from a deity of Christ perspective, you can’t say that the eternal Son was the Father”.

Another way to state this problem is, if the word for God, theos, in both John 1:1b and John 1:1c refer to the Father, then deity of Christ theology is wrong. And, we mention a couple very good reasons why the word “God” in John 1:1c “and the Word was God” refers to the Father.

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3. Another problem with deity of Christ interpretation of John 1:1 that we mention is that it does not deal adequately with the past tense of John 1:1. Why did John say “and the Word wasGod.” If the Word is the eternal Son, the second person of a Trinity godhead, why didn’t John write “and the Word is God”? Was the Word only God in the past? Did the Word cease to be God?

These are only samples of serious problems with the deity of Christ interpretation of John 1:1. We continue in the podcast by suggesting a couple other ways in which the phrase “and the Word was God” is better understood.

Bill Schlegel with Rivers O Feden

We begin an exegesis of the Prologue to the Gospel of John (John 1:1-18). In this podcast we give more evidence for why the Prologue should be understood as an introduction to the ministry of Jesus the Messiah, and not as a direct reference to the Genesis creation.

Since "In the beginning" of John 1:1 is not a direct reference or commentary on the creation account of Genesis, "deity of Christ" and Trinitarian interpretations of John's introduction are wrong. 

In this podcast we take a closer look at the historical context in which 1st century readers of John’s Gospel would have understood this Gospel to be about a new beginning. 

We will also see how other New Testament authors saw in Jesus a new beginning, the beginning of God’s new creation. 

Finally, we will note one big problem with the typical “deity of Christ” interpretation of John 1:1.

In a previous podcast, episode #7, we saw that the phrase “In the beginning” of the Gospel of John 1:1 relates to the new beginning that God began with Jesus the Messiah. “In the beginning” of John 1:1, while being an intentional allusion to the Genesis creation, introduces a new beginning or new creation that begins with Jesus the Messiah.

In this podcast we will examine further the New Creation theme that runs through the Gospel of John, in John's language, recorded events, and especially in the sign miracles that John records. All are evidence that through Jesus the Messiah, God is bringing about the New Creation.

There are two places in Scripture, both in the book of John, to which people go to claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead. The claim is that if Jesus could raise himself from the dead, he must be God. Or, because Jesus is God, he could raise himself from the dead.

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There are big problems with the interpretation that Jesus raised himself from the dead.  In this podcast I break the problems into two categories:

1. Biblical interpretation methodology (hermeneutics). The biggest problem from the perspective of biblical interpretation methodology is that the claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead contradicts a multitude of other Scriptures. The claim breaks one of the main rules of good biblical interpretation: “Interpret a less clear passage from the clear passage(s)”.

Part 1 of a two part series examining chapter 1 of the Book of Hebrews. In this episode we discuss Hebrews 1:1-7.  Part to looks at Hebrews 1:8-14.

This episode of the One God Report podcast is the second part of our two-part interview with Christian philosopher, Dr. Dale Tuggy, examining the historical development of the Trinity in the centuries following Jesus. If you haven’t heard part 1, you may want to listen to that episode first in which Dr. Tuggy surveyed major historical and theological developments of the 100s and 200s AD.

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We saw in the first episode that at least into the mid-AD 200s, none of the church fathers were Trinitarian in the sense that none of them believed in a tri-personal, co-equal, co-eternal god.

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In the current episode, Dr. Tuggy has us look at major developments leading up to and including the Council of Nicea in AD 325.

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Then we will hear about the three Cappadocian fathers (Cappadocian was a region in what is now central modern Turkey). The Cappadocian fathers laid the ground work for what led to the so-called 2nd Ecumenical Council, the Council of Constantinople of AD 381.

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Before the AD 381 Council of Constantinople, even though some church fathers believed in a second, lesser god they called the Logos, they insisted on their monotheism by emphasizing the One True God, the Father.

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However, after the 381 Constantinople Council, the title “God” began to be considered the Trinity, that is, one god in three persons. Dr. Tuggy explains that the first Christian Trinitarians - those who believed in three persons in one God - did not show up historically until the late AD 300s.

In other words, no Christian believed in a three-persons-in-one-God until some 350 years after Jesus lived on earth.

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In Part 1 of this two part series, Dr. Dale Tuggy leads us through the development of Christian theology of the AD 100s and into the AD 200s. 

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Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28).

To Trinitarians and those who believe in the “deity of Christ”, this verse is slam-dunk evidence that Jesus is God.

But is it?

This podcast examines how the "deity of Christ" interpretation ignores and contradicts the teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of John.

This episode is part 2 "What about John 1:1?"  - Jesus is the Beginning of God's New Creation.

We recommend before listening to this podcast, first listen to our previous podcast, #6) "What about John 1:1, Part 1".

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In this current episode we ask the question "What beginning does John 1:1 mean in the statement "In the beginning was the Word..."? We see that while John is echoing Genesis creation language, he is not directly describing the Genesis creation, but rather the renewal or new creation work of God in and through Jesus the Messiah.

Therefore, contrary to the "deity of Christ" interpretation of John 1:1,  Jesus, the Word of John 1:1 was not literally present or involved in the Genesis creation. Rather, Jesus, the Word of John 1:1, is God's channel of the New Creation.

Ever since I came to understand from the Bible that God (Yehovah, YHVH) is one, and that Jesus is God’s human Messiah (Christ) whom God raised from the dead, people say to me: “What about John 1:1?”. For my friends who believe in the “deity of Christ”, John 1:1 is biblical evidence that Jesus is God.

But is it?

In this podcast we begin to take a look at the Gospel of John and see that the Trinitarian or "deity of Christ" interpretation of John 1:1 is found wanting.

We show four "broader view" observations about the Gospel of John to see there is something wrong with the Trinitarian interpretation:

1.  The purpose for writing

The author of the Gospel of John tells us the purpose he wrote his book, or at least why he recorded the signs that Jesus did. “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are recorded so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31).

The Trinitarian "deity of Christ" interpretation of John 1:1 is contradictory to the author's own purpose statement.

We present what it means to be the "Son of God", describing biblical examples and characteristics, rejecting the definition of the Hellenized "church fathers" of later centuries.

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2.  No Trinity in John’s Gospel

One God Report correspondent Preston Macy, a former F-18 pilot in the US Navy, who still serves as a Navy Reserves flight  instructor, shares his testimony. Preston breaks his testimony into three parts:

1.  Being introduced to God, Jesus and the Bible.

2. Coming to a better understanding of the One God and His Messiah Jesus. In addition to be challenged by non-Trinitarian Christians, Preston shares how understanding from the Scriptures that the man Jesus has a God, helped him to see that Jesus is a human being distinct from God.

In Genesis 1:26, before the creation of man, God said, "Let us make man in our image".  The plural verb and pronoun ("let us make", "our image") is claimed by some Trinitarians to be evidence that God spoke to other members of a three-person "godhead".  

But is this claim correct? We think there is a much better way to understand Genesis 1:26. So does modern Trinitarian scholarship. One Trinitarian scholar, G. Wenham who wrote the evangelical Word Biblical Commentary Genesis writes: "It is now universally admitted that this was not what the plural meant to the original author."

But pastors and popular apologists don't appear to have gotten that memo since one still hears Genesis 1:26 proclaimed as evidence for the Trinity.

This podcasts explores the problems with the Trinitarian interpretation, and suggests a more biblically consistent way to understand Genesis 1:26.

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