Are You Denying Jesus? #JesusFollowers

“Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 10:33)

Is there a sincere Christian on earth who would knowingly deny Jesus? No. I cannot think there is a true believer, in any denomination, who would designedly be guilty of such exceeding sinfulness. 

But, my friends, are we in no danger of ignorantly denying him? 

I fear we are. When I observe the weakness, and ignorance of humanity, when I witness the mighty influence of prejudice, and when the powerful effects of my early instruction, and early impressions, and early associations, I am compelled to fear we are in great danger of unintentionally denying Jesus.

You may deny Jesus in two different ways, either in word, or in deed. If you contradict his words and teachings, you deny him in word. If you disobey his commands, you deny him in deed.

An instance of the first kind of denial is found in the tenth chapter of John's Gospel. The Jews accused Jesus of making himself God! In so doing they contradicted his declarations; and consequently, denied the Lord Jesus.

He instantly denied the truth of their charge, in his usual mild and reasoning manner. 

“Is it not written in your law, I said ‘you are Gods?’ If he called them gods to whom the word of God came - and Scripture cannot be broken - do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” (John 10:22-39.)

In refuting their accusation, notice three things. First, he denied calling himself God. He had merely called God his Father, and asserted that his Father was greater than all, and then added, “I and my Father are one,” not one person, not one God, for he had spoken of receiving sheep from the Father, and not one equal being with God. 

Secondly, he denied being God. He asserted that he was sanctified and sent into the world by the Father.

If he was dependent on his Father for his commission and ability to execute it, he could not be the almighty God. 

And thirdly, he refuted the charge of blasphemy, from the scriptures. He had called himself the son of God. The scriptures had called men gods, merely because they received the word of God. 

If you say Jesus is God, you contradict his own declarations. Speaking of God, he said, “The Lord our God is one Lord.” Did he declare himself to be this one Lord? 

He said, “Why do you call me good; there is no one good but one, that is God.” He clearly separates himself from God. 

Speaking of his knowledge, he said, “Of that day, and that hour, knows no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the son, but the Father.” 

Do you believe his own words?

God cannot be tempted; but Jesus was tempted in all points as we are. God cannot receive assistance from any being; but an angel strengthened Jesus. God cannot suffer pain; but Jesus suffered exceeding agony. God cannot be sent by anyone; but Jesus was sent by the Father. God cannot be anointed; but Jesus was anointed by God. 

God cannot be murdered; but Jesus was crucified and slain by wicked hands. God cannot ascend to any place; but Jesus ascended to his God and Father. 

God cannot sit at his own right hand; but Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. God cannot pray to anyone; but Jesus prayed to his Father. 

Jesus said, “My Father is greater than I,” I dare not accuse him of uttering falsehood. For I would not knowingly deny the Jesus.

If you worship Jesus as God, you disobey his own instruction. 

His disciples wished to know the precise time when Jerusalem would be destroyed. He said, “Of that day, and that hour, knows no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the son, but the FATHER.” 

He either did know the day and hour when this event would take place, or he did not. Was he the all-knowing God?

You can place no dependence on his declarations. But if I cannot believe every word Jesus uttered, he is no Savior for me. 

I believe he had but one nature. And believing this, I receive his instructions as true.

My Friends, on this infinitely important subject, are you disposed to receive the plain, current, unembarrassed doctrine of Jesus’ revelation? 

Will you compare passage with passage, and exercise your common sense in their interpretation, to obtain their true meaning? You have your choice.

But remember, my friends, you are to be judged by a plain rule of Jesus: “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day,” 

Yes, you are to be judged by the very words Jesus has spoken, and which are recorded in the Gospels. 

Could you produce one passage in which he commanded anyone to worship him as God? 

At that solemn tribunal, it will be of no use to say that you were otherwise taught by your parents, your instructors, your creeds, your ministers. But not to any of these but to God alone are you answerable. 

Remember the words of Jesus. “Whosoever shall be ashamed of my words, of him also shall the son of man be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father.” (John 7:50, Mark 8:38.)

(Adapted and condensed from an 1827 sermon by Rev. Bernard Whitman)

The Words of #Jesus Will Outlast Men’s Doctrines! #JesusFollowers

Jesus says his words shall never pass away. Yet at first sight nothing seems more fleeting than a word. It is an evanescent impulse of the most fickle element. It leaves no track where it went through the air. Yet to this, and this only, did Jesus entrust the truth for the salvation of the world. 

He took no pains to perpetuate his thoughts; they were poured forth where occasion found him an audience - by the side of the lake, or a well; in a cottage, or the temple; in a fisher’s boat, or the synagogue of the Jews.

He did not even write his words in a book. With a noble confidence, the result of his abiding faith, he scattered them broadcast on the world, leaving the seed to its own vitality.

Looking at the Word of Jesus, at real Christianity, the pure religion he taught, nothing appears more fixed and certain. Its influence widens as light extends; it deepens as the nations grow wiser. But, looking at the history of what men call Christianity, nothing seems more uncertain and perishable.

In actual Christianity, there seem to have been, ever since the time of its earthly founder, two elements, the one transient, the other permanent. The one is the thought, the folly, the uncertain wisdom, the theological notions, the impiety of man; the other, the eternal truth of God.

Transient things form a great part of what is commonly taught as Religion. An undue place has often been assigned to forms and doctrines, while too little stress has been laid on the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to man. Religious forms may be useful and beautiful. They are so, whenever they speak to the soul, and answer a want of it.

Anyone who traces the history of what is called Christianity, will see that nothing changes more from age to age than the doctrines taught as Christian, and insisted on as essential to Christianity and personal salvation. What is falsehood in one province passes for truth in another. The heresy of one age is the orthodox belief and “only infallible rule” of the next. Since these notions are so fleeting, why need we accept the commandment of men, as the doctrine of God?

Doubtless the time will come when men shall see Christ Jesus also as he is. Well might he still say: “Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known me?” No! we have made him an idol, have bowed the knee before him, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews;” called him “Lord, Lord!” but done not the things which he said. Truth will triumph at the last, and then we shall see the Son of God as he is. Then will men understand the Word of Jesus, which shall not pass away.

Measure him by the best of men, how little and low they appear. Exalt him as much as we may, we shall yet, perhaps, come short of the mark. But still, was he not our brother; the son of man, like ourselves? His excellence, was it not human excellence? His wisdom, love, piety - sweet and celestial as they were - are they not what we also may attain?

But if, as some early Christians began to do, you take a heathen view, and make him a God, the Son of God in a peculiar and exclusive sense - much of the significance of his character is gone. His virtue has no merit; his love no feeling; his cross, no burden; his agony no pain. His death is an illusion; his resurrection but a show. 

For if he were not a man, but a god, what are all these things; what his words, his life, his excellence of achievement? It is all nothing, weighed against the inimitable greatness of Him who created the worlds and fills up all time and space! Then his resignation is no lesson; his life no model – to we, who are not gods, but mortal men.

While one generation of opinions passes away, and another rises up; Christianity itself, that pure Religion, which exists eternal in the constitution of the soul and the mind or God, is always the same. This truth we owe to God; the revelation of it to Jesus, our elder brother, God’s chosen son.

Come to the plain words of Jesus of Nazareth, and Christianity is a simple thing; very simple. It is absolute, pure Morality; absolute, pure Religion; the love of man; the love of God acting without let or hindrance. The only creed it lays down is the great truth which springs up spontaneous in the holy heart: there is a God. Its watchword is, be perfect as your Father in Heaven.

Compare the simpleness of Christianity, as Jesus sets it forth on the Mount, with what is sometimes taught and accepted in that honored name; and what a difference! One is of God; one is of man. There is something in Christianity which sects have not reached; something that will not be won by theological battles, or the quarrels of pious men.

The Christianity of sects, of the pulpit, of society, is ephemeral - a transitory fly. It will pass off and be forgot. Some new form will take its place, suited to the aspect of the changing times.

That pure ideal Religion which Jesus saw on the mount of his vision, and lived out in the lowly life of a Galilean peasant; which transforms his cross into an emblem of all that is holiest on earth; which makes sacred the ground he trod, and is dearest to the best of men, most true to what is truest in them, cannot pass away.

His words and example passed into the world, and can no more perish than the stars be wiped out of the sky. The truths he taught; his doctrines respecting man and God; the relation between man and man, and man and God, with the duties that grow out of that relation, are always the same, and can never change till man ceases to be man, and creation vanishes into nothing.

(Adapted from “The Transient and Permanent In Christianity,” an 1841 sermon by Rev. Theodore Parker)

Jesus: Redefined by Committee

Eastern Orthodox Icon, Council of Nicaea

On September 17, Americans celebrated Constitution Day, the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution by a convention of delegates in Philadelphia in 1787. It was the result of a grand compromise in which States received two representatives each in a Senate, and representation in a House based on population.

In the year 325, another group of delegates had met in the city of Nicaea, in what is now northwestern Turkey. But they met not to decide on the form of a nation, but on the very nature of God, and the relationship between God and Christ Jesus.

Two main camps had arisen by the 300s (Fourth Century.) One was a group that believed that Jesus had existed forever – as long as God had existed – and that he was, in fact, God’s “son” but also God’s equal. This group, led by Athanasius, was powerful in Italy and other western provinces of the Roman Empire.

The other group, led by a bishop named Arius, believed Jesus was a semi-divine, Angel-like Being who was less than God Himself, but greater than a “mere” man. It’s said that most Christians at this time were actually Arians.

The final vote wasn't even close, because the council was "packed" with allies of Athanasius. Of the about 300 delegates there, only two refused to sign the new creed that was developed – a creed still believed and recited by Roman Catholics, and unquestioningly believed by nearly all “Protestant” Christians. Those two delegates, along with Arius and all who believed in his view, were “anathema” or “condemned.” They lost their positions in the church and even their lives.

By the time the year 325 arrived, very little of the original conception of Jesus as a human man remained, due to two centuries of Greek and Roman ex-pagans carrying over their beliefs into Christianity.

The simplicity of the Gospels, and even in the book of Acts and in the writings of Paul of Tarsus, state clearly and without confusion that: Jesus was fully human being, fully subordinate to God, but called and “Begotten” and Adopted by God at his baptism as his Son, where he was Anointed (christos) to preach "Good News" (a Good and Beneficial Message – "Godspell/Gospel” in Old English idiom.)

Thus, Jesus was fully, 100% human, like us, and this human being’s morally excellent life leads us to believe that we, too, may achieve what he achieved – union with God the spiritual sense – and of course, Jesus himself commands this very thing, and says we may be forgiven by an all-merciful God when we fall short of this amazingly high goal.

Compare this simple belief, which was held by and preached by the earliest of Jesus’ followers, with the definition decided at Nicea, that Jesus was, “born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”

Thus Jesus became the Christ-Being who always lived in Heaven with God forever, who was "consubstantial" (of the exact same “substance” or Being – in other words, in all ways EQUAL to God – 100% God but also 100% man) and become a man when he magically entered into Mary’s womb, when he was already the Savior of the world from his first breath.

But by this definition, Jesus is no longer a man, chosen by God, but some kind of alien being, whom we must pretend was fully human, but, being all-knowing and all-seeing like God, cannot possibly be human like us. We are told that Jesus is a Son, but a Son equal in age with his Father, and sharing a mind with Him. Does this make any sense?

Sixty years later, another group of men came together to determine that the Holy Spirit was part of God, but also a separate BEING from Him. This made three Beings in this Godhead, each equal, each separate. Confused yet? Most are. And we are told by Catholics and "Catholic" Protestants who believe this, that it's simply a "mystery" we must accept. What's a mystery is why we continue to accept this false and ridiculous nonsense at all.

The proof is all over the New Testament that this doctrine of the Trinity was utterly unknown to both Jesus and the Apostles who knew him, who, while believing in the divinity of his mission and in the divinity of his doctrines, did not and COULD not (as Jews) believe a human being was equal to God. Jesus always says he is completely subordinate to and dependent on, God (though Trinitarians may speculate that he "chose" to pretend to be subordinate, this is wild speculation.)

Jesus is in no way diminished by seeing him as fully and completely human. We are commanded to be like him, obey him, and serve God in his name. We cannot do this is Jesus is a half-God/half-man Being. And if Jesus pretended to be fully human, while commanding us to obey him in all things (knowing this was impossible – and this is the teaching of some Christians today) then we must reject him as a liar and a fraud. Luckily for us, we need not do this, because Jesus was very clear about his mission and Nature.

Below are listed just a VERY FEW examples of what is ACTUALLY in the New Testament. Please know that scholars and most ministers have known that Jesus is subordinate for over 200 years, but pastors have not shared this knowledge with their congregations, or have explained them away.

Read these verses. Pray about them. And perhaps, for the first time, knowing what you know about this doctrine’s origins, you’ll see that Jesus was not God, but the one sent to us by God.

1. Jesus said he was utterly dependent upon God. After being accused of being God by some of the Jewish religious leaders, he does not confirm what they said, but instead says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise” and “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of Him who sent me.” (John 5:19;30)
2. Jesus says, "Why do you call me ‘good’? There’s only one that is good, God” (Matt. 19:17) Here is a clear, plain denial of his equality with God.
3. Jesus says, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” (John 7:16)
4. Jesus, praying, says, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, AND Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)
5. Jesus said, “I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28) God is not equal to the Son, says the Son.
6. Jesus was baptized and “anointed by God.” Jesus cannot be the same one being anointed and doing the anointing.
7. Jesus "increased in wisdom, and in favor with God and man," (Luke 2:52) God does not “increase in wisdom,” He is already perfectly wise.
8. “I am ascending to my Father, and your Father, to my God, and your God.” (John 20:17) Jesus has a God. Jesus himself is not God, by his own admission.
9. Jesus says (John 10:30) “I and the Father are one” which is used by Trinitarians to show that Jesus is equal to God. But Jesus later (John 17:20-21), while in prayer to his God (again, he did not pray to himself) Jesus says, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their message; that THEY MAY BE AS ONE, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they ALSO MAY BE IN US, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Unless we, too, are equal to God in Nature, this simply speaks of Spiritual unity with God, which surely Jesus had, perfectly.
10. Jesus never prayed to the Holy Spirit (God’s Spirit) nor did he pray to himself, or tell others to pray to anyone other than God, his and our Father. He never said that the spirit of God was a separate being to whom we should pray.
11. Jesus often prayed to God, in a way that showed he was NOT praying to himself. (Mark 1:35; Matt. 14:23;14:39; Luke 5:16; 6:12; 23:34; John 17:1; Hebrews 5:7)
12. Jesus seeks to honor only God, not himself, “If I honor myself, my honor is nothing; it is my Father that honors me” (John 8:54; also John 8:49-50)
13. About the End of the Jewish Age, Jesus says, “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Matt. 24:36) God is all-knowing, and we are told He knows the date. If the Son is ignorant of the date, he is not equal to God.
14. 1 Timothy 3:5 records that there’s “one mediator between God and men, the MAN, Christ Jesus.” Can someone be the mediator between two parties if he’s one of the parties?
15. 1 John 4:14 notes that “the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.” Can the sent be the same as the sender?
16. Paul declares that “the head of every man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.” Christ is our Lord, God is Christ Jesus’ Lord.” (1 Cor. 11:3) Jesus is our Master, but God is Jesus’ Master.
17. Paul repeatedly praises “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:6; 2 Cor. 1:3; Eph. 1:3; 1:17) and it appears in 1 Peter 1:3 as well. Jesus has a God.
18. "It is written in the Law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one who bears witness of myself, and the Father that sent me bears witness of me.” (John 8:17) This is TWO beings, not one, bearing witness. Otherwise Jesus here is speaking nonsense.
19. Acts calls Jesus a MAN, and apart from God: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, A MAN attested to you BY GOD.” (Acts 2:22)
20. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus is shown saying “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.” Jesus overcame, just as we are to overcome – as human beings.
21. Jesus said, from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46) It’s incomprehensible to assume this was said by the Almighty, All-Seeing Creator of the Universe.