Isaiah: True Witness of True God

I've been continuing to engage in regular dialogue with a Jehovah's Witness, and now more recently his wife as well. They come visit my house at 10am on various Saturdays, sometimes by appointment, other times just to see if I'm home. The focus of our conversation is generally focused on the Trinity, as I am more concerned about their view of Christ than of anything else. The gospel, after all, centers around Him, and without the true Christ, there is no true God, true salvation, or true life. I find it interesting that even my pagan professor of last year realized John intention in collecting all the "I am" statements of Christ and compiling them, while skirting most parables, etc. This is a reference to the I AM self-identification of God in the Old Testament. Unfortunately, the New World Translation (JW version of the Bible) has so mangled the translation of the tense that no Jehovah's Witness can see the obvious connection.

I just thought I'd share a few verses that glorify our Lord Jesus Christ as Yahweh incarnate. The incarnation is quite probably the most glorious miracle ever performed by God, greater even than converting sinners (which, if you know anything about your own sinfulness, is saying something).

I was reading through the daily reading bookmarks that we just handed out in High Point, and came across this verse in John 12: "Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him" (v. 41). The context makes it clear that the pronoun "him" is referring to Jesus Christ. "These things" refers to two quotations from the book of Isaiah that John quotes in the verses immediately preceding verse 41. The first quotation is from Isaiah 53:1. We know that Isaiah 53 is a prophecy of Jesus Christ, but it is the second quotation that I really want to focus on. The verse in John 12 tells us that Isaiah speaks Isaiah 6:10 because he "saw [Jesus'] glory." If we go to the context of Isaiah 6, the vision Isaiah has just seen is a vision of "the King, the LORD of hosts" (v. 5):

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

"Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!"

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

Do we realize what's going on here? Jesus the Christ does indeed make appearances in the Old Testament, and this is one right here! This is the glory of Jesus, not of an angel, but of Yahweh! How much more glorious does this make the incarnation, not to mention sacrifice, of Christ? He had been on His throne in His temple, and stepped down, becoming a... pooping baby?! Stand in awe of your God this Christmas (and always!); He loves you with a love we will never grasp.

California Christian Apologetics Conference (IV)

For my first elective session I had the privilege of hearing from Pastor Harold C Felder. There were five different options to choose from at each session, but I opted for the Jehovah’s Witness (JW) seminar because I’d been meeting with one Witness in particular rather regularly. Harold is co-pastor of the Journey Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. Not a very famous guy (at least I’ve never heard of him before!), but certainly passionate about the Lord. His energy and enthusiasm were exhilarating, and he even “caught himself preaching” a couple times. His session was on a subject I’ve written about before here and here, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Origins, Beliefs, and Dangers. The full PowerPoint presentation can be found online here at his website. I especially appreciated this session for the documentation it provided of Jehovah’s Witness beliefs.

Quite a bit of hearsay was brought up throughout the 1 hour seminar, and I thought Harold dealt with it well: he didn’t comment on something he was not familiar with, as far as I remember. He did not pretend that every charge brought against the Watchtower was legitimate just because a Christian said it or just because the Watchtower obviously teaches false doctrines. Just because they lead a false religion does not mean that everything they teach is false; let me just get that on the table!

That said, he spared no expense in making abundantly clear that the Watchtower organization is not one in which any “seeker” will find the light of the Gospel or the gracious forgiveness of God. And for this reason he added a disclaimer to the beginning of his talk, to biblically justify the stance and the method he was approaching the subject with. Lest some might object to his “pickin’ on folk,” he quoted three verses from Titus and Timothy exhorting their respective recipients to pay close attention to doctrine and refute false teaching (Titus 1:9,2:1; 1 Tim 4:16). These are great verses that we should all have memorized. Why not do it this week?

He then moved on to make his point that the Watchtower is indeed a force to be reckoned with. He quoted some statistics concerning their membership. As of last year the Watchtower’s official membership is at 6,741,444 in 236 countries; they have a total of 99,770 kingdom halls; they conducted an average of 6,286,618 Bible studies last year (averaging to over 17000 bible studies per day); and they baptized 248,327 new members! This is not an insubstantial number of people! Clearly the Watchtower has significant influence on people’s minds. By comparison, the Southern Baptist denomination (the largest protestant denomination in this country) only baptized approximately 100,000 more people than the JW’s did last year, and even that number has been decreasing slowly over the last few years.

Then, before getting into any actual refutation, Harold spent time going over some of the particularly identifying marks of Jehovah’s Witnesses, practices and beliefs. Harold disappointed me with respect to his documentation in this section, unfortunately, but there is grace for him. I understand as one who writes (and makes bold claims!) myself that documentation can be possibly the most boring part of preparing some sort of refutation, but it is so comforting and refreshing the those reading that the stuff you’re feeding them is not just hearsay, but accurately represents the views of the ones being refuted. Anyways, without further ado.

The practices that set JW’s apart from the rest of Christianity are as follows (there may be more, but these are the most common, well known ones):

- door to door witnessing is necessary for salvation;

- they are governed by the “governing body” in Brooklyn, New York;

- members meet in Kingdom Halls (church) five times per week;

- they reject the celebration of cultural, national, and religious holidays as pagan and idolatrous;

o they also reject the celebration of birthdays along the same logic;

- members who disobey these rules can be disfellowshiped;

- they are not allowed to read any material other than the Watchtower’s;

- reading the Bible without the aid of Watchtower literature is forbidden.

I had known most of these before I came to this meeting, but the first one struck me as being incredibly works-righteous. Also, a lot of people think they are rather stupid (to put it bluntly) for rejecting holidays, but to think so is a bit hasty. The Watchtower mandates it because (they claim) they want to exalt only God and not share his glory with another. This is commendable and I even know about some Christians who have decided not to celebrate Christmas (not the gifts part anyways) so that they would train themselves to not be so focused on earthly treasure and such. This is commendable for those whose consciences are pricked in that area of their lives. However, in my chat with Jim and his wife (the JW’s that had been visiting me), I confronted them with the fact that the Bible says “freedom” while the Watchtower says “forbidden.” I pray this made them consider the Watchtower’s stance on other things as well. Perhaps it could simply be the pebble in their shoe, as Greg Koukl likes to say, that gets them running from the Watchtower. Please pray for them.

Harold then moved on from practices to beliefs. The sections we got through were God, the Holy Spirit, Christ, Salvation, and the Afterlife. Of course, they believe that Jehovah is the name of God and seem a bit overzealous about pronounced that name in order to be saved. After all, their translation of Romans 10:13 says that “all who call on the name of Jehovah will be saved.” Unfortunately, the word “Jehovah” is neither in there nor anywhere in any New Testament manuscript. In fact, no one even knows exactly how to pronounce the tetra gram YHWH. Jehovah is simply gotten by adding the vowels from Adonai in between the consonants. He reviewed this along with the standard refutation of the claims against the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity, and then moved on to the section that I personally found most helpful and extremely encouraging in my personal walk with God: the Holy Spirit.

Not much attention is paid to the Holy Spirit in Bible teaching these days, and unfortunately so, since he shares in the same glory as the Father and the Son. However, I learned and was reinforced as to the personality of the Holy Spirit as Harold gave his defense. Harold showed that the Holy Spirit has all the attributes of personhood: a mind (Rom 8:27), emotions (Eph 4:20), and a will (1 Cor 12:11), but the most striking to me was the verse brought up wherein the Holy Spirit talks about himself. This, I perceive to be glorious beyond comprehension. In Acts 13, “while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” This absolutely blew my mind. Here is the Holy Spirit speaking and commanding on his own authority, his own divine authority. You don’t see it very often because the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son; but here He is, gloriously sanctifying Saul and Barnabas for the work He has called them to. Praise the Holy Spirit (don’t hear that every day, do you?).

After demonstrating the personhood and divinity of the Holy Spirit, Harold went after the person of Jesus, clarifying that He is not in fact, Michael the archangel, as the JW’s believe. He also persuasively demonstrated Jesus is Divine, God in flesh, 100% man 100% God, and was raised physically, even by simply using in a consistent manner several verses that JW’s use inconsistently. For example, in Colossians 1, the word “other” is added four times total in verses 16 and 17. But actually, the word “other” is not there and since it totally distorts the meaning, it certainly is not warranted to ‘clear up’ confusion in the verse. It makes perfect sense all by itself – unless you are a Jehovah’s Witness. Also, four aspects of Jesus resurrection prove that it was indeed physical and not spiritual (i.e. he wasn’t raised as a spirit or phantom or ghost of some sort): 1) The tomb was empty, so the body was definitely gone (Matt 28); 2) Jesus bore crucifixion scars (John 20:27); 3) He predicted He would raise HIS body in 3 days (John 2:19); 4) 1 Cor 15:44 was referring to a Spirit-controlled body, not a phantom. For added support of his interpretation of 1 Cor 15:44, he quoted Galatians 6:1 – “if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” This is not talking about those who are ghost-like in appearance!

The last aspect of Jehovah’s Witness doctrine that we really dug into was their doctrine of Salvation. This is so key, because after the Watchtower is done with the doctrine of justification, grace is no more grace (Rom 11:6). Salvation in the Witness religion is based on works, pure and simple. Now, they’ll say it’s by grace, but their grace is God graciously giving humans the ability to earn their way to heaven! “To get one's name written in the book of life will depend on one's works” (Watchtower, Mar 15, 1962). Furthermore, one must acknowledge the Watchtower as from God in order to receive eternal life (Watchtower, Feb 15, 1983). Of course we know, and Pastor Harold proved to us, that salvation is solely by the grace of God and not by works (Eph 2:8-9), and that salvation comes by faith in Christ, not an earthly organization, or even in His church (Jn 5:24).

And at this point I am going to cut! We went over the afterlife for a bit, but you’ll have to check out the website for yourself if you want to read about it!

On a personal note, I was extremely convicted during this session of my intense arrogance. At one point when we were going over the admittedly strange doctrines of the Watchtower organization, one of the attendees gagged “This is so stupid…” in quite a haughty manner. After noticing how repulsive this sort of response was, realizing that it drips with pride and is dry of compassion, I remembered all the times my mother confronted me ever so graciously on my own attitude in this area. Praise God for opening my eyes to this sinful attitude, for “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). That was a stinger, but I am confident that realizing this face will benefit anyone’s evangelism efforts greatly.

California Christian Apologetics Conference (II)

Lee Strobel (author of The Case for series, the newest of which is The Case for the Real Jesus) kicked off the second session of Friday night by telling us how much he loves evangelism. (And you know what that means – I love him!) He loves evangelism because he finds it simply amazing that God can use us to draw His own to Himself, and he gets to use apologetics too! Lee let us know about a time he was invited to come to a young lady’s house to talk to her entire family over dinner about Jesus. He was ecstatic about an opportunity to share his (new found) faith with some people. However, as soon as he walked in, he noticed sizable stacks of books piled up all around the house which all aimed to refute the claims of Jesus and Christianity. He began to worry, and as he sat down to dinner his fears were confirmed. As he took his place and began the conversation about Jesus, the father of the young girl who had invited him began firing as many of the toughest questions as he could muster. And they were difficult. So difficult that Lee had no answer for them… So he had to tell the man: “You’re questions are tough, and I don’t have an answer for them. But I suspect that in 2000 years, you won’t be the one to bring Christianity to its knees. Give me some time, and I’ll get you some answers.”

At this point, he introduced the concept of “Spiritual Vertigo” that we apologists are especially prone to. Spiritual Vertigo is when someone asks you questions that you can't answer and your head begins to spin and you begin to doubt your faith. He warned: “If you don't feel this, you will soon. If you never feel this, your kids will.” Why? Because there are 3x as many atheist/agnostics professors in the universities as there are in the general public. He told us about an email he got once from a young man where it was especially evident that he was experiencing spiritual vertigo: "Please help me… I was raised in the church and I'm now 26 years old. This book has devastated my faith. I don’t want to be kept in the dark: I want to know what really is going on in the Bible and what I should believe, even if it goes against what I've believed since I was a little boy."

It’s no wonder, then, that 1 Peter 3:15 commands us to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…" – 1 Pet 3:15 (NIV). Lee also encouraged us with this verse: "The first to speak in court sounds right - until the cross-examination begins." - Pr 18:17. This is why we should "Test everything. Hold on to the good." - 1 Thess 5:21. Because someone may sound right when they get up and give testimony, but once the cross-examination begins, they don’t look so good. That is why the title of Lee’s talk was “Cross Examination.” And I’m sure there was some sort of pun intended, given that it’s about Jesus!

For this one, Lee stepped through 3 rising theories about who Jesus was and then cross-examined them. I’m pretty sure I got some flavor of all of these at Stanford this past year, so I know how closely Lee is hitting it on the head, and he does it quite well.

First, Lee addressed the mythological theory of Jesus. The story goes that the disciples borrowed beliefs about Jesus from earlier “mystery” religions, especially that of Mithraism (the worship of Mithras). The battle cry here is that “Nothing in Christianity is original” (The DaVinci Code). The story goes that Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave on December 25, that he was a travelling teacher with 12 disciples, and that he was sacrificed for world peace, buried in a tomb, and raised 3 days later. Does this sound like anyone you know? Of course it does! That’s Jesus! But no… it’s actually the god Mithras. All this information is from a god who came before Jesus, so obviously the Christians plagiarized other religions to make theirs more palatable!

Enter the cross examination. When one goes back to the sources of information that you can gather about Mithras, we find that he was born fully grown out of a rock wearing a hat. There is no virgin involved, and the only cave to be spoken of would be the hole he left in the side of the rock from being born out of it. Not that it would matter anyways; Jesus wasn’t born in a cave after all! The claim that Mithras was born Dec 25 is irrelevant, because no one who knows any better would claim that this is the actual date of birth for Jesus of Nazareth. We don’t know when He was born, so touting Dec 25 as a similarity is simply… irrelevant. The idea that he was a teacher with 12 disciples is completely false as well. He was thought of as a god, but in the Roman story he has only one follower and in the Iranian version, he has two in total. He was neither sacrificed for world peace; all he’s known for is killing a bull. By the way, Jesus wasn’t sacrificed for “world peace” either, so that “similarity” is also irrelevant. Lastly, his touted burial and resurrection is simply false. There is in fact no record of Mithras ever having died, let alone buried in a tomb and risen on the third day.

Furthermore, when we research Mithraism, we find that it didn’t even exist in the west until after Christianity. The “resurrection” myths entered the scene after Christianity started gaining ground, so if anyone is plagiarizing anyone else, it is Mithraism doing that to Christianity. There is simply no “mystery religion” that serves as a parallel to Christianity whatsoever! So when push comes to shove, the Mithras theory simply doesn’t hold up.

At this point, Lee moved on to tackle the Gnostic theory of Jesus. He started by comparing classical orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism. In the historic Christian faith, believers have claimed that Jesus is a Redeemer. In Gnosticism, Jesus is treated as a Revealer. The world and physical things are inherently evil, created by an evil (!) creator. All of these ideas come from one of the Gnostic gospels called the Gospel of Thomas, which the Jesus Seminar scholars accepted as just as accurate as the 4 standard works! It teaches that we each have a little divine spark in us. Furthermore, as opposed to salvation being forgiveness of sin for all who would believe, it teaches that salvation is for an elite few who are smart and cunning enough to figure out the secret information necessary to gain salvation and escape the evil world.

However, upon cross examination, we find that assuming this gospel to be totally on par with the 4 standard works is an unwarranted assumption. One rule of thumb when deciding which text to trust to give you facts about history is to figure out how close to the actual events the text was written. Now, even liberal scholars will admit that all 4 gospels were written in the first century. On the other hand, the gospel of Thomas was written late second century (AD 175) at the earliest. We know this based on various internal evidences such as word patterns, familiarity with the other gospels, and similarities between it and the Diatessaron – an AD 175 “harmony” of the 4 gospels written by Tatian. Furthermore, there are some outright ridiculous statements attributed to Jesus found within its pages, a few of which I’ll give you right here:

"Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."

Does this make any sense to you? Me neither.

"If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will (hurt yourselves)."

Sounds like a good Jewish Rabbi to me! Oh wait…

"Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of heaven.’"

This does not sound like the Jesus we know, or ANY of his followers! Considering all these evidences, there’s no reason to worry that Jesus actually subscribed to the Gnostic view of Christianity.

Lastly, Lee addressed the misquoted theory of Jesus. This view has been popularized by the likes of Bart Ehrman, whose book I reviewed a while ago. You might be interested to know that this book is the one that caused the young man to doubt so harshly. The idea here is that no one has any idea what Jesus was really like, because the records we have are so damaged by unavoidable changes, whether accidental or intentional, changes introduced in the process of copying and passing down the texts. Furthermore, we do not have access to the originals, so it’s impossible to check how accurate the copies are. To make matters worse, there are an estimated 200,000 – 400,000 discrepancies between the available New Testament manuscripts, surely a number that absolutely destroys the perceived reliability of the New Testament. The New Testament texts are simply unreliable, certainly too unlike the originals to bank your eternity on their message.

Or are they? There is a side of the story that hasn’t been mentioned, so let’s begin the cross-examination. One pertinent fact to keep in mind is that the New Testament has far more partial or whole manuscripts than any other ancient document. And even if we had lost all copies of the New Testament, we have millions of quotations from early church fathers. Furthermore, many of the copies we do have are centuries closer to the original writings than other comparable ancient manuscripts. For example, we have 9 copies of the writings of Josephus, and the earliest copy is dated approximately 1000 years after the original writing! The next most reliable text next to the New Testament is the Iliad, which we have 2000 copies of (part or whole). I’m blanking on how close to the original they were. By comparison, of the New Testament we have 30,000 manuscripts in part or in whole, with the earliest copies dating to within, if I remember correctly, 1-2 centuries from the original. Furthermore, 99% of the “discrepancies” between New Testament manuscripts are completely irrelevant. Many of them don’t even come out in translation. Also, the reason 200 – 400,000 is a reasonable estimate is because we have so many fragments. Where one is different, the discrepancy is multiplied by however many manuscripts contain that passage or section, hardly much to worry about.

Lee then told us about an experiment that was done (I have yet to verify this) where groups of lay “scribes” and lay “textual critics” were gathered and there was an attempt to replicate the process of documents changing due to copying errors and then the process of textual criticism by which you attempt to reproduce the original (without having the originals on hand of course!). This experiment was performed a substantial number of times (50 is the number that comes to my mind) to check for consistency. These copies had far higher error to word count ratio in them than the copies of the New Testament. The results were that the “critics” always had outstanding success. The reconstruction was never off by more than three words, and that only happened once! Keep in mind that these people are completely untrained in the art of textual criticism. If amateurs untrained in textual criticism can reconstruct so quickly a text so terribly corrupt, can trained textual critics slaving over these issues for life not figure out with sufficient accuracy the original text of the New Testament which is far less riddled with errors?

I think so. And this is the same conclusion that Bruce Metzger, the leading expert of New Testament textual criticism came to during his lifetime. When Lee asked him whether it had damaged his faith, he responded: "On the contrary, it has built [my faith]. I've asked questions all my life, I have dug into the text, I've studied this thoroughly, and today I know with confidence that my trust in Jesus has been well placed… Very well placed."

In conclusion, the Mythological Jesus is just that, mythological. The Gnostic Jesus fails the test of history. And the Misquoted Jesus is much ado about nothing.

To finish the story of the man who asked all the tough questions of Lee - questions that made him doubt, questions that apparently had no conceivable answer – after doing some research, Lee found that there were answers for every single one of the man’s questions. “You’re just going to have to deal it!” Lee told him. Soon after, that man became a Christian.

The moral of the story? When you get Spiritual Vertigo, don’t freak out; check it out! The research you do will deepen your faith and prepare you to answer objections later on. I hope this post has been encouraging to you, to know that we serve and know Christ in truth. Go and proclaim him all the more boldly!

JW 2: Discerning Truth from Error

This is my rebuttal of Jehovah's Witnesses' most troubling false doctrines, found in the booklet/tract Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Life. The numbers in parentheses are page numbers.

Knocking on the door of works-salvation
-"God accepts as his worshipers people from all nations, but only those who conform to his righteous ways - Acts 10:34,35" (30)
-"if we do God's will and avoid activities that reflect this world's spirit, we can have the hope of everlasting life!" (50).

One commonality in every false religion I know of is that you are always trying to earn your way to heaven or a right relationship with God if you are a part of them. Rule #1 of Christian theology: You are not good enough! God has provided His salvation apart from any merit that you can contribute to the equation (Eph 2:8-9). If you are saved, you will do good works (Eph 2:10), but that is not the same as earning God's favor, which is utterly impossible (Is 64:6). Always clear up this discrepancy in pseudo-Christian theology as of first importance. You need to both understand that people cannot earn their way into heaven. If they try to contribute anything at all they are damned (Rom 11:6; Gal 5:4)! This is therefore a very important issue! Make that clear gently.

Denial of the Trinity
-"Therefore, those who accept the Bible as God's Word do not worship a Trinity consisting of three persons or gods in one" (31).
-"In fact, the word Trinity does not even appear in the Bible (John 14:28; 1 Cor. 15:28)" (31).
-"The true God is one Person, separate from Jesus Christ" (31).

I don't know that I've met any person who denies the Trinity with a full and complete understanding of what the doctrine is. I will tell you: It is the teaching that God is three distinct persons, of which the Father is first, the Son is second, and the Holy Spirit is third. This numbering of personages is meant to reflect the apparent authoritative hierarchy contained within the Trinity. Each person is fully God, fully Divine. This is extremely confused for most people because we don't generally think of one being have the property of existing as three distinct persons "at the same time." To help, I will define what it means to be a person.

Personhood in the Trinity means: self-awareness, choice, can reason, love, possessing a will and consciousness, can speak, be lied to, etc.

As we look at the Bible, we clearly see that there are three entities with these characteristics in the Godhead. All one needs to do to find the Trinity in the Bible is to prove that only one God exists (Is. 43:10-11), that Jesus is God (John 1:1; Heb 1:8), that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:4 cf v.9), and that each one is not the other (Matt 3:15-17).

There are many many other verses compounding and solidifying the case for the Trinity, and I invite you to find those on your own.

The most common objection I hear to the Trinity (and one which the JW's love), which is that "it doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible" is simply man's foolishness. The word "monotheism" does not appear in the Bible, yet I'm sure we all can agree that the Bible teaches monotheism.

Denial of Jesus' Divinity
-"The true God is one Person, separate from Jesus Christ" (31).
-"[Some] have distorted Jesus' role, worshiping him as Almighty God" (32).
-"Jehovah created [Jesus] directly" (39, 62).

This is the most common objection to the Trinity that I know of. Many people are not willing to admit that Jesus is God. However, He is. John 1 and Hebrews 1 are great passages to go to, but the JW will undoubtedly have some Greek original language stuffed up their sleeve which the average Joe will not and should not be required to know about. So I've found it's best to go about it like this: Point to Isaiah 44:24 and prove that God didn't get any help making the universe. Then point to John 1 and Colossians 1:16 and prove that Jesus created all things. God created everything by Himself. Jesus created everything. I guess Jesus is God!

The reason this point is so crucial is because Jesus said that anyone who does not believe that Jesus is God is not saved (John 8:24), and also because a Jesus who is not God has no efficacy on the cross! Also, God said that He Himself would be the Messiah in Zech 12:10 - "they will look upon Me, whom they have pierced."

Denial of the Personhood of the Holy Spirit
-"God's holy spirit is not a person. It is Jehovah's active force, used by the Almighty to accomplish his purposes. - Gen 1:2" (31).
-"holy spirit, or active force" (40).

This is the most baffling of all the heresies, but I suppose it goes hand in hand with denying the Trinity. You can't have another person in the Godhead without some sort of unity in plurality. I have several very practical problems with this doctrine.

Impersonal forces...
1) Cannot be grieved, yet the Holy Spirit can be grieved (Is 63:10).
2) Do not have gender, yet the Holy Spirit has gender (John 14:26).
3) Do not speak, yet the Holy Spirit speaks (Mark 13:11; Acts 13:2).
4) Do not teach things, yet the Holy Spirit teaches (John 14:26).
5) Cannot be lied to, yet the Holy Spirit can be lied to (Acts 5:3).

I think it's pretty obvious that the Holy Spirit has all the attributes that indicate personhood, and the only reason JW's reject this teaching is because they don't like the Trinity.

I hope this helps you bolster your faith in the orthodox and historical doctrine of the Trinity. We serve an amazing and mysterious God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him,
and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:1-3

The True Gospel of Christ

"But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed." - Galatians 1:8

That's harsh. With a promise like that, it becomes severely important that we get our facts straight. Recently I had the chance to talk to a Mormon about his beliefs. He opened up with "Yes I'm LDS. We're Christian." I have a serious problem with that, and so does the Bible. Basically what this experience confirmed to me is that it is vitally important to know what you believe and be able to prove it from Scripture. If you dont know, you could be tricked into believing someone who is cursed! This recently happened to a friend of mine and it breaks my heart. It seems like a lot of "Christians" don't know exactly what they believe or exactly where to draw the line between God's truth and false doctrine. My goal in this blog is to draw that line. Clearly.

"Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ." Colossians 2:8

1) There is only one God. There never has been another; there never will be another. He exists in three persons, the Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. He is not three gods that fill some sort of office. He does not have a goddess wife. He is not an exalted man. We cannot ever become gods. We are not his spirit children that preexisted with Him in heaven. God is not a person. He is three persons. One God, three persons. This is called the Trinity and this is what Scripture teaches.

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one." Deut 6:4
"Before Me there was no God formed, Nor shall there be after Me." Isaiah 43:10
"Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." Psalm 90:2
"The Spirit of God descending... a voice came from Heaven... my beloved Son" Matthew 3:16-17

2) Jesus Christ is God. He is the only way to have a relationship with God. Anyone who says otherwise is, to put it bluntly, lying or deceived and has a false religion. Do not believe them! Jesus Christ is not a god. He is God. He is not a created being. He is not literally begotten of the Father. He is not our spirit brother. He is not the Devil's spirit brother. He is God in flesh. He has two natures, human and divine (for you theology geeks who like big words - yes that'd be me - it's called the hypostatic union). He was born of a virgin, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. He actually physically historically lived on earth and literally died on the cross, and was literally buried in the ground and physically resurrected the third day he had been dead.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1
"...the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel." Isaiah 7:14
"For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Colossians 2:9
"...Christ died for our sins...He was buried...He rose again on the third day...He was seen...He was seen...He was seen...He was seen..." 1 Cor 15:3-7
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." John 14:6

3) We are saved by grace through faith. Works do not earn salvation. You do not need to be baptized to be saved. The faith through which we are saved produces works. The lame man got up and carried his bed home, the blind man opened his eyes and saw, the fruit of the Spirit pourds out of anyone indwelt by Him. The Holy Spirit comes into you when you become a Christian. He will not leave you. Salvation is assured and cannot be lost. We do not need to do works to stay a Christian or keep the Holy Spirit in us.

"For I am persuaded that [nothing] shall be able to separate us from the love of Christ." Romans 8:37-39
"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." Eph 2:8-9
"...your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God" 1 Cor 6:19
"not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit," Titus 3:5
"Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." James 2:17

These are three central doctrines to Christianity that most cults and false religions get wrong. So if you ever run into someone that says they are Christian but doesn't believe these things, you can be sure that they are involved in a very dangerous religion, and basically serving demons. We need to witness the true gospel to these people in love, and prayer is always a good idea. After all, without the help of God, where would we ourselves be?