@A Freeman
I appreciate your sincere compassion. In equal sincere love for the truth, I will also tell you that you are not qualified (by far) to explain to others logics or Christian doctrine. You don't even seem Christian to begin with. You seem to be more in line with world religions such as Baha'ism or Noahidism in stripping Jesus of His divinity while claiming ownership of Christianity nonetheless. What did your friend
@Phithx say? Unwitting antichrist?
Anyway, I'm gonna highlight the essential arguments of your post.
You've ignored the key information that was cited, which clearly admits: "there is no such precise authority in the Gospels,” for the pagan, satanic trinity doctrine (the traditions of men).
You say I cherry pick and ignore the key information.
Then, you reply to the part where I replied to that key information:
Artful Revealer said:
And the Trinity doctrine is a human inference from scripture, but therefore not necessarily in contradiction with scripture.
You rebuke this with a passage from Deuteronomy 4:
Ye shall not ADD unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the Commandments of the "I AM" your God which I COMMAND you.
Firstly, you say we're not to add or diminish from scripture, yet you substitute the "Lord your God" with "I AM".
You can't do that.
There's way too much syncretic amalgamation in the Old Testament to simply start identifying the "Lord" with a deity if you're unaware of this syncreticism. That's changing scripture to fit to your view, which you accuse me of doing:
False logic you employed: tu quoque (falsely accusing someone else of doing what you are actually doing).
Secondly, you seek authority in pre-Christian scripture to override the Gospel,
actual Christian scripture, when it is in fact the Gospel that overrides the Torah.
The Father had remained unrevealed until the Son came down from Heaven. You rebuke this by simply identifying the Son who revealed the Father with Elijah, completely unscriptural, completely out of context, and completely against anything the early Christians, to my knowledge, interpreted this as:
Matthew 11:27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and [he] to whomsoever the Son (Elijah - the "Revealer of God") will reveal [Him].
--------------------------
About the scribes and Pharisees not seeing God, you say the following:
The reason the scribes (lawyers) and pharisees (politicians), both of whom were also the priests of that time (i.e. the self-professed religious experts) could not "see" The Messiah/Christ WITHIN the human body of Jesus is because they were blinded by their own arrogance/ignorance.
This is true, but why were they arrogant and ignorant? They basked in their wisdom of the law, but it was the law that blinded them.
The sabbath is a perfect illustration of this. They were so consumed by the Law that it prevented them from recognizing good deeds (eg. Christ healing a crooked woman). Obedience to the law superceded acts of goodness. Or interpreted differently, acts of goodness were dismissed as transgressions because of the law. Either way, they were blind. This is what is meant by Paul when he said hearts are veiled in reading the Old Testament:
2 Corinthians 3
13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. 14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
It is not by the Law that we become free, but by the spirit, which means that if you need a law to tell you what is good and evil, you are doomed.
You are the Pharisee.
The Law (Ten Commandments) exposed sin. It did not give the knowledge of good.
All human inference is adding to scripture something that wasn't there, and doing so is ALWAYS in contradiction with Scripture (i.e. satanic).
Deuteronomy 4:2 Ye shall not ADD unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the Commandments of the "I AM" your God which I COMMAND you.
Deuteronomy 12:32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
Yet you and your brethren use a bible, this king of king's bible, that, from the passages that I've been presented with, contains additions that are nowhere to be found in scripture, well, except your own. An example:
Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy The Law, or the Prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fully preach The Law (The Torah) and fulfill the prophecies about the first coming of the Messiah.
What's this? Is that not an addition to scripture? Are you now the antichrist?
A Freeman said:
Artful Revealer said:
No one knew the Father but the Son and those to whom the Son revealed Him. (Matt 11:27)
That means whoever is talking in Numbers 23:19, isn't Jesus' Father.
False logic you employed:
non sequitur (it doesn't follow, as it is a faulty comparison).
The reason the scribes (lawyers) and pharisees (politicians), both of whom were also the priests of that time (i.e. the self-professed religious experts) could not "see" The Messiah/Christ
WITHIN the human body of Jesus is because they were
blinded by their own arrogance/ignorance. ("the blind leading the blind" -
Matt. 15:14). Father allows only the humble to "see" the Truth (
Psalm 111:10), which is why the religious leaders and their unwitting(?) victims/children could not see Father's Eldest/Firstborn Son within the human body of Jesus.
Completely off-target. We're not even talking about the Pharisees and elders during the time of Jesus. The verse says: "No one knew the Father but the Son." If this verse is confusing, take this one:
John 6
46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.
No one knew the Father, nor had anyone seen the Father but the Son who was sent by Him, who is from Him. Who is this Son? Archangel Michael? Are you telling me that it was Archangel Michael speaking to the old testament prophets, to Moses on Mount Sinai, to Abraham, to Jacob, etc?
Christ was revealed in the New Testament. Christ's Father was revealed in the New Testament. Therefore, no one in the Old Testament had seen the Father. This is not a non-sequitur. This is pure logical deduction.
Your entire theory just collapsed.
A Freeman said:
Perhaps it isn't ironic then that you would
falsely and very foolishly claim that it isn't Father speaking in
HIS Law, i.e. in
HIS Commandments to us. Do you even realize that in claiming it isn't Father (Who is obviously the Father of Christ-Jesus - see the Lord's Prayer in
Matthew 6:9-13) speaking in
Numbers 23:19, that you are actually arguing that it was Satan (the liar) who made that statement?
No wonder you don't understand Who or What God is, as you seem to have everything upside down and backwards (
Isa. 5:20-21).
This is just priceless. My interpretation you call "adding to scripture". I click on your "HIS Commandments" hyperlink and I see:
This is getting ridiculous.
Look, the
10 Commandments are ordained by the Most High. The Father was unrevealed before Christ's revelation. You do the math.
A Freeman said:
NO ONE NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND THE MAN-MADE UP DOCTRINE OF "CHRISTOLOGY"! What everyone
NEEDS is to read the
TRUE Teachings of Christ, as they are found in the Gospel accounts of Him, without the filter of one of the "blind leading the blind".
ONLY Christ can show us the true nature of God, exactly as Christ stated in Matt. 11:27, which you previously quoted.
There is only
ONE Mediator
between God and men: Christ (
1 Tim. 2:5). Do you really not understand what the number "one" means please? Do you really not understand what a "mediator" is?
Yeesssss, I know! lol
Read it yourself!
1 Timothy 2
5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,
It is
the man Jesus. The scripture explicitly says man to show you that it's about the human Jesus!
A Freeman said:
The
ONE True God
DOES NOT HAVE A GOD, or He wouldn't be God,
by definition. Do you really not understand what the term
"The Most High" means?
Likewise, do you really not understand what the term "cognitive dissonance" means please (
James 1:8)? You admit Jesus has a God while at the same time trying to argue that Jesus is God. Do you really not see that you are contradicting yourself?
The
man, the
human nature of Jesus has a God.
Am I speaking in riddles?
A Freeman said:
The reason we can know with absolute certainty that there is no trinity is because the Scriptures tell us so in no uncertain terms. You are claiming that the Son is not a created Being, which is provably false. That is the entire basis for your argument, which is an erroneous assumption that is completely unscriptural.
John 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
You understand that this is pre-creation, right?
A Freeman said:
Both Christ (the Spirit-Being, Who is Father's Eldest/Firstborn Son of MANY Sons) and Jesus (the human son born of the virgin Mary) WERE CREATED BY FATHER, Who IS The Most High God.
John 1
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
You understand that the Word (pre-creation) received a body (post-creation)?
A Freeman said:
*Note well: that the First
BORN Son clearly did
NOT exist before He was
CREATED according to Scripture. The Firstborn Son was the beginning
OF the creation
OF God, as one would
logically expect from the definitions of Father and Son.
The
INVISIBLE God is
NOT "metaphysical"; God is a
SPIRIT (
John 4:24), as are all of His
CREATED Offspring (sons/children). And it is His (Father's) Holy Spirit that connects us to Him. Father's Holy Spirit is certainly not a third member of some divided, schizophrenic pagan deity.
So your entire argument is non sequitur, and has no basis in Scripture, which very clearly tells us that the Son (Christ) was
CREATED by Father (
THE Creator) as His Firstborn Son.
Here's a brain teaser. Prior to the Son being born, the Father wouldn't have been a father, right? Or the Father was always the Father in which case the Son was always the Son.
The Father
He existed before anything other than himself came into being. The Father is a single one, like a number, for he is the first one and the one who is only himself. Yet he is not like a solitary individual. Otherwise, how could he be a father? For whenever there is a "father," the name "son" follows. But the single one, who alone is the Father, is like a root, with tree, branches and fruit. It is said of him that he is a father in the proper sense, since he is inimitable and immutable. Because of this, he is single in the proper sense, and is a god, because no one is a god for him nor is anyone a father to him. For he is unbegotten, and there is no other who begot him, nor another who created him. For whoever is someone's father or his creator, he, too, has a father and creator. It is certainly possible for him to be father and creator of the one who came into being from him and the one whom he created, for he is not a father in the proper sense, nor a god, because he has someone who begot him and who created him. It is, then, only the Father and God in the proper sense that no one else begot. As for the Totalities, he is the one who begot them and created them. He is without beginning and without end.
The Son
Just as the Father exists in the proper sense, the one before whom there was no one else, and the one apart from whom there is no other unbegotten one, so too the Son exists in the proper sense, the one before whom there was no other, and after whom no other son exists. Therefore, he is a firstborn and an only Son, "firstborn" because no one exists before him and "only Son" because no one is after him.
- Tripartite Tractate
A Freeman said:
Agreed. But you are not doing that, are you? Instead you are promoting the traditions of men (man-made doctrines) which have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to have no basis in Scripture.
It is the Torah which is full with man-made doctrine. Why else would Jesus rebuke the scribes? The scribes are they who write the scripture!
This ... was not good. For your brethren's sake it would be best for you not to post too often. But appreciate the love. It is reciprocated.
Best wishes.