I hope you had a great week! We started our first week back to work in the new year, and so far so good. Sara Gene is doing a lot better, getting her strength back, and even started with a few work meetings here and there! Praise the Lord for helping her with her recovery! This week, we're looking at a couple topics that are fundamental beliefs for Christians: Jesus as God and the Trinity as the Godhead.
We've touched on the former briefly in a previous newsletter, but it's worth a deeper look. The Trinity, on the other hand, is a somewhat difficult topic to understand, and even I admit that I don't fully understand it! In my opinion, it's one of the things that we have to accept that we won't fully understand until we see Yehovah face to face and He explains it to us. So, we're going to look at verses that describe the Trinity and try to understand it as best we can.
First, let's look at the divinity of Jesus. There are a lot of people out there, from atheists to those claiming to be Christian, that deny that Jesus is God. Some claim He can't be God because He never said He was God. In fact, when they accused Him of claiming to be the Son of God, His response was they were the ones to say that, not Him (Luke 22:70). However, there are plenty of examples showing Jesus' divinity. For example, He stated that He and Yehovah are one (John 10:30). We can also look back to the Old Testament to correlate this.
If we take a look at Isaiah 44:6, we see something interesting. This is a, "Thus saith," verse, and in this case it's a, "Thus saith Yehovah." But, we see there's a second entity in this verse: Yehovah's Redeemer, the Yehovah of Hosts. Now, if we take a look at this word translated to "hosts," it's tsaba, which means army. So, this second entity is the Yehovah of armies. Remember that!
This verse says BOTH Yehovah, King of Israel and His redeemer, Yehovah of armies say they are the first and the last. Now, where have we heard that before? We see the same verbiage in Revelation 1:8 and 22:13, both verses record words spoken by Jesus, the Messiah!
So, we've got a link between God and Jesus with the words, "I am the first and the last." Now, what about this "Yehovah of armies," title? Let's look again at Revelation. We see someone named Faithful and True riding a white horse, who judges in righteousness (Revelation 19:11). We also see His name is The Word of God and He is the leader of the ARMIES of heaven (Revelation 19:13,14). Finally, we see that He gives the wrath of God (Revelation 19:15).
We've got the link that Jesus is God with the words He spoke and the fact that He is the leader of the heavenly armies that will come wage war on the unrighteous at His return to reign on earth, but let's put a bow on it and look at this Word of God title from Revelation 19:13. The first few verses of John's gospel are some of my favorites out of all scripture, and they make this last link. We are told that Jesus is the Word because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), and that the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1).
This leads nicely into our second topic, but before we move on, there are also other indications of Jesus' divinity. Jesus did not correct Thomas when he called Jesus God (John 20:28). Jesus said whoever sees Him sees God (John 12:45, 14:9-11). And Jesus tells us He is building His church (those called out to be His) on the fact that He is God, namely the Son of God (Matthew 16:16-18).
So, we've got this confusing idea of Jesus being with God, and being God at the same time, and then we've got the Holy Spirit which make up the trinity of God. Some try to combine God with the Holy Spirit, but these are two parts of the same entity just like Jesus and God are two parts of the same entity as we just proved scripturally. How do we know this? Jesus tells us, of course! He told the disciples He would send the Comforter FROM the Father and the Comforter would bear witness of Jesus (John 15:26). This is, in my opinion, the clearest proof of the trinity all in just one verse. There's no way any of these parts of the entity of the trinity can be the same and this verse be true. Another great one is Jesus' baptism, as we see Jesus, the Holy Spirit as a dove descending on Him, and Yehovah speaking all at the same time (Matthew 3:13-17). And just to be clear, the Comforter, Jesus tells us, is the Holy Spirit (John 14:26).
To close, I want to point out that these beliefs were considered important doctrines by some of the first Christians. I'm reading a very interesting book that talks about the writings of what are called the "ancient church fathers," and the divinity of Christ and the trinity were two topics they wrote about. They rebuked those people during their time that were spreading false doctrines that went against these beliefs. To give more credence to their words, some of these individuals were only once removed from a disciple themselves. For example, Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of John himself, and he wrote, "Jesus is God."
I encourage you to take a look for yourself, and let the Holy Spirit guide you to the truth. These are key aspects of Christianity, and Satan's deceit has been successful over the past two thousand years in leading some believers away from these truths. And if someone approaches you claiming otherwise, let them know the truth as well!
Shabbat Shalom and God bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
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