by speechless 31 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
This question applies to those exJWs who are at peace with God:
Do you now believe in the Trinity?
For myself, it took awhile for me to accept the Trinity doctrine, but I finally came to believe!
My reasoning? We are made in the image of God -- we are a person (this would be God) whom speaks (this would be Christ) and takes action (this would be the Holy Spirit). In the end, though, we are but one person.
I'm curious for your comments?
I am an ex-witness who is now a christian and the trinity was one of the biggies for me when I was starting to question the society. The WT misrepresented it so much and called it names that I wasn't sure what to do. I studied the Bible and found that basicly the whole thing taught the idea of the trinity and so I accepted God's truth.
You are right We are made in Gods image and I see that in the fact that we humans have 3 parts- Body, Soul, and Spirit. The Bible teaches that these are all distinct and separate parts of a person and make up one person together. Not that God has 3 'parts' to make one God but it is a picture of his nature. Notice Genesis 11:26*27 where he says (to someone!) LETS US MAKE MAN IN OUR IMAGE IN OUR LIKENESS......GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE.....
Nice to meet ya <>< ANGIE
Understanding and Believing in the Trinity is an awesome thing.
In John 1, it states "In the beggining was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
It's just cool then to look back at Genesis and see that it says "Let US make man in Our image, in Our likeness..." Us and Our meaning the Trinity. Jesus was right there with God in the beggining.
I have been an exjw for over 5 years now. Within the last year I have finally began to work through issues and find peace with God and I came to one answer that works for me. Jesus is not God. So no I do not believe in the trinity. In fact my spiritual journey has lead me past the bible. I beleive the bible has a lot of great lessons and some truth, but I do not believe it is all truth. I believe Jesus was a great man and was inspired by God and had a lot of great teachings, but I do not believe my salvation rests in accepting him as my savior. Recently when praying, I can feel an overwhelming peace come over me when I truely open myself to God. That is how I know this is the correct path for me. Now that I have started to find some beliefs I have began to look for a community and I am finding a home with a unitarian universalist chruch. It works for me. I hope everyone can find a spiritual place that works for them...
Yes like you said we are made in the image of god.
We are three
Mind - god
Body - jesus
Spirit-holy spirit
Preach it, toribabe!!!
You might add the Heart [mind, will, emotions] to your list, which is what the Heavenly Father searches within each person.
Now, on the Trinity, realize please that Jesus and his Father are not the same by location. So they are separate by location. This should be easy to realize, right?
So, this leads us to look at the meaning of "Jesus being God," as such.Jesus is God by this means and only by this means:So, one should ask, Then just how is it that Jesus is supposed to be God, if they are in different locations."
That ALL the divine fullness of God WAS GIVEN to Jesus by his Father, his God, as the scripture says.So, if by this, one wants to say that Jesus is God, fine; but again, one must understand how it is that he is God.
What Jesus is, and what he has position over, as in everything in Heaven and in Earth, WAS GIVEN TO HIM by his Father.
The phrase everything in Heaven and in Earth does not mean he became higher than his Father, his own God.Everything... does not include the One who gave everything.
The giver is apart from this.
So, Jesus is over everything except his Father, his God.So, does Jesus ever give everything back to his God, his Father? YES he does, after his 1000 year reign. Then all things are again under God, his Father.
So Jesus and God are two separate persons, both divine, right. Jesus became a powerful God, but he is not his own God, his Father is.
There seems to be two types of Trinty argument:
(1) from those afraid to believe in the Trinity, and(2)from those not afraid to believe in the Trinity.
Well, it might help to realize that the Trinity is not a Divine Statement and it is not inspired of God. It came from a religio-political assemblage of men discussing their at-the-time beyond-the-scriptures belief system.
In this way one is free to really think for themselves and can discuss the topic in mutual sincerity, rather than trying to adapt to men's statements.
Moreover, I feel the Trinity goes beyond scripture, and adds to the word of God. It even has its own vocabulary and expressions, made by uninspired men.
Thomas Poole,
Then just how is it that Jesus is supposed to be God, if they are in different locations.
as a Christian I feal I must point out the fallacy of this reasoning the church teaches that God is outside of space time, without location.
Why oh why is the WT always trying to make God a creature bound in time and occuping a finite space?
The Great and Powerful Oz:
pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
GOD’S NATURE: TRINITY, THE ONENESS PENTECOSTAL VIEW, UNITARIAN OR ANOTHER? The Trinity teaching is that there is one God (here meaning Godship, see Romans 1:20) consisting of 3 distinctively different but equally divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
A second view of God’s nature is the Oneness view held by many Pentecostals in particular. Back in the 3rd century Sabellius a Libyan priest in Rome taught God is one person who manifested himself and performed in the form of the Father (Jehovah) as creator, next as Jesus the Son who performed as our savior atoning for sins, and later as the Holy Spirit working to transform our lives, although of the three manifested forms Jesus is is the ultimate expression of God, which means Jesus is Jehovah or the Holy Spirit
As alluded to, this teaching by Sabellius called modalism died but began again in the 1800s in the American Holiness movement and entered the Pentecostal movement April 15, 1913 at Los Angeles when R.E. McAlister did not baptise not in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit but only in the name of Jesus (Ac 2:38), as he viewed Jesus is God Almighty Himself rather than only God’s distinctively different Son.
The Oneness teaching is now often called "Jesus Only" theology since it claims Jesus is the ultimate and only Person in the Godhead and that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are merely names, modes, offices or forms of Jesus. The United Pentecostal Church and many smaller groups called Apostolic churches teach it, thus forming the Oneness Pentecostal movement which also teachs God’s name is Jesus and requires baptism for salvation. Oneness Pentecostals often claim other churches teaching the trinity are actually teaching polytheism, that is that there are multiple gods.
Via the Word Faith Movement, the modalism teaching has begun to replace the trinitarianism of some traditional Pentecostals. The Assemblies of God rejected the modalism or Jesus Only belief, in 1916 requiring adherence to the Trinity concept so that 156 pentecostal preachers formed a separate Oneness group.
Views called Unitarian may vary but in general it is that there is God Almighty, His son Jesus Christ, and God’s holy spirit, that the three are totally different as persons or entitites (holy spirit being God’s power rather than a person) and differing in power and age although one in purpose. Among groups with the view are Unitarian Universalists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
So, should you base your fellowshipping with only persons of a certain view about God, or should you base it on love? The Bible itself says that the strongest bond is love. Christ pointed out the greatest commandment is to love God and fellow humans. In fact God provides for us all, both good and bad. Hebrews 6:1-2 tells the simple basics for being a Christian, and Romans 14:1-5 says to allow peaceful persons even skeptics freedom to differ in views.
But regardless of our imperfect understandings about God, surely the main thing overall about God's nature is not His age or power or substance, but His love. This, not a group of rigid beliefs, is the "narrow" road that all too many do not trod well. If we really think about it, it is incredible that God loved us so much that He sent His only born son so that "all" people might be saved rather than die forever. (Jn 3:16) jahchristian at hotmail.com
Willy_thought
...the church teaches that God is outside of space time, without location.Well I wouldn't push a "strict" meaning of that thought on other people, as a teaching, especially to push the Trinity meaning, neither to explain anything else beyond that of mere conjecture.
The scriptures show us God has location in the Universe, thus he also is relative to some [physical] time frame, being within a physical universe--a thousand years as a day.
Now, if He were to exist outside the limits of the Universe(s), as perhaps he did before the time of Genesis 1:1 [before creating the heaven and the earth], I would conjecture that time and space would not be applicable characteristics in explaining God's "place."
Here, I am defining the universe as God's creation.
So, in a sense here, if God choose to be, he could be outside the bounds of time and space [movement implied]; that is, outside his created universe. I sometimes conjecture the universe to be the-house-that-God-built. He comes and goes into his house.
Anewperson... I would not consider a Pentacostal source of hype-driven information or worship[or mindset ] to be a reliable source of thought.
A tongue-driven way of worship opens the door for Satanic infiltration.
