What the heck is a Godhead?

by Rattigan350 31 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • abbasgreta
    abbasgreta

    Ding answered this question. YHWH ("our God is One") appears in the bible as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But NOT in the NWT, I keep repeating this point. All clear references have been tampered with. Not a version but a PERversion.

  • Terry
    Terry

    Not a version but a PERversion.

    Elegant turn of phrase!

  • abbasgreta
    abbasgreta

    TERRY: Hi, Wish I could say I thought it up. Was said by a Professor on Youtube discrediting TOTALLY the jw translation. I've just finished another How to Read the Bible book. In the section "The Basic Tool: a Good Translation",the authors will not even include it in a comprehensive list of them, stating "it is theologically biased, an extremely literal translation filled with the heretical doctrines of this cult". And,"One can usually recognise the cults, for example, because they have an authority in addition to the Bible. But not all of them do; and in every case they bend the truth by the way they select texts from the bible itself. Every imaginable HERESY or practice, from the Arianism (denying Christs Deity) of the Jehovah's Witnesses.......claims to be "supported" by a text." UGGHH!! I HATE those responsible for knowingly and blatantly nurturing our former "faith" on what another expert calls "the most anti-Christian piece of literature on the planet".

  • QC
    QC

    Rat350,

    The 4 th century model is impure Christian theology, described here.

    It's not pure as 1 st century Christian theology.

    JW leadership is like Judas, unfaithful to Jesus (all Jesus’ disciples are of the “anointed”). Plus their manipulation of the name Jehovah is a profanity.

  • Rattigan350
    Rattigan350

    You all are just as mistaken as that preacher on the radio.

    He was talking about Ananias and Saphira. The part where it said that he lied to the holy spirit and also played false to God. The speaker equated them saying that the holy spirit was God. Not so. The holy spirit is the means that God knows things. Jehovah God does not know things because he is God. He knows things because the holy spirit acts to convey to him

    In response to honesty's comment "I didn't believe it when I got saved." This is another topic, but no one is saved as everyone has died.

    Sarasmile, you are wrapped up in that aren't you?

  • Honesty
    Honesty

    Rattigan350:

    In response to honesty's comment "I didn't believe it when I got saved." This is another topic, but no one is saved as everyone has died.

    You don't know me from Adam and you have not experienced what I have experienced.

    Therefore, you are posting out of ignorance.

  • adamah
    adamah

    This is a situation where understanding how ancient men viewed how nature operates helps us to put ourselves in their ancient frame of mind. Otherwise, modern men are likely to project OUR modern understanding and beliefs of natural processes onto them, leading to anachronisms, or worse, thinking they have more insight into how nature operates than we do, which gives their ideas much more credit than they deserve (by being so mysterious). Their models of reality are really just vestiges of their ignorance of physical science as it existed 3,000 yrs ago, an attempt to explain their observations.

    Ancient people didn't know that SOUNDS came from someone's voice box, travelled through air molecules as waves, entered the ear canal of the listener to stimulate their cochlear nerve, which converts the sound into electrical impulses that carries it to the auditory processing centers in the brain: that kind of neurological insight came millenia later.

    Instead, ancient men who wrote the Bible conceived that ideas travelled across empty space as a mysterious 'spirit', coming from the sender to enter into the listener's lungs (they noted the eustachian tubes that connected the ear to air passages which descended into the lungs). Once in the lungs, they thought the spirit was processed in the heart, which they conceived of as the center of cognition (no, they didn't know what the brain did).

    Hence, ALL mortals possessed a spirit which they used to communicate with others, or to motivate a particular action from a distance in other people. The word 'spirit' is Greek, and lives on in words like 'respiration' (note the reference to the lungs), or even 'inspiration'. So the Holy Spirit was simply the agency which God used to communicate with mortals, or to grant mortals the gift of speaking in tongues (after being "filled with Holy Spirit"), perform miracles of healing, etc. It was conceived of as God's active force, which is not really any different from any mortal's active force, and hence why it has the adjective "Holy" attached in front. You can see that the phrase, "inspired by Holy Spirit" is actually a circular reference: it's thus like saying "Xeroxed by a Xerox machine".

    That's why Jesus said that the only unforgivable sin was to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit: he said that after the Pharisees had suggested that the source of Jesus' power for performing miraculous healing was actually the Devil, and not God; in effect, Jesus was saying that to doubt the source of his power being from YHWH was the only unforgivable sin. M'kay, seems a bit like taking the passive-agressive approach rather than simply striking them dead, "Ananias and Sapphira" style.

    In the meantime, Christians have conflated this means of communication and source of agency as a separate being, part of the Trinity, which in moderns seems so mysterious, which is in keeping with the whole "mysterious ways of God" meme. You know what ELSE is mysterious? How some people can be bamboozled by nonsense, that's what! :)

    Again though, this is an explanation that is so gobsmacking unenlightened and rooted in ignorance of ancient men that it alone should serve as incriminating evidence that YHWH, the God of the Bible is not the "intelligent designer" of ANYTHING, if he even doesn't know the BASIC principles of his own creation (physics, human anatomy, cosmology, climatology, biochemistry, etc).

    Adam

  • sarahsmile
    sarahsmile

    Not so. The holy spirit is the means that God knows things. Jehovah God does not know things because he is God. He knows things because the holy spirit acts to convey to him


    Now that is a different twist! Through out the bible Jehovah Almighty had messengers. He ask different messengers ,angels, to perform certain tasks and report back to him. So do you think Jehovah God knows thing because the angels convey it to him. Other than that he Jehovah would not know anything.

    How do you get that thought from Acts 5?

    Acts 5

    5 But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; 2 with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. 3 ‘Ananias,’ Peter asked, ‘why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us [ a ] but to God!’ 5 Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. 6 The young men came and wrapped up his body, [ b ] then carried him out and buried him.

    7 After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8 Peter said to her, ‘Tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price.’ And she said, ‘Yes, that was the price.’ 9 Then Peter said to her, ‘How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.’ 10 Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. 11 And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.

  • abbasgreta
    abbasgreta

    Father Son and Holy Spirit present at Creation. Father Son and Holy Spirit feature at Christ's baptism. Christians are baptised in the NAME of the Father Son and Holy Spirit, they are declared righteous and justified equally by the Father Son and Holy Spirit. The Father knows all things. The Son knows all things. The Spirit knows all things. The Father is omnipresent. The Son is omn ipresent. The Spirit is omnipresent. The Father prophesied. The Son prophesied. The Spirit prophesied. (Refs available in any reputable bible!) When Jesus said, "You want to kill me because I said I am God's son", to THE JEWS, whose culture regarded someones son as equal to their Father, THEY KNEW HE WAS CLAIMING TO BE YHWH and were outraged. Again, exegesis is EVERYTHING in bible reading! The wt lied about the unique nature of God using subtle omissions in their Trinity brochure. Scholars are outraged. No wonder the Society have withdrawn it. Arius instituted the "Jesus is a created being and therefore not God theory". The bible teaches all three are fully divine. Period. In fact its full of it.The Council of Nicaea debated Arius and his hangers-on in the 4th Century. Arius' theory was discredited. The "Trinity" was NOT 'formed' at Nicaea. Greek "In the beginning the Word WAS" of John 1:1 is past aorist tense, meaning there was NEVER a time when the Word was not with the Father.We have only a sense of time and not eternity. Phill 2:6 "Though EQUAL to God" (Greek ISOS - "exactly the same"). "He has been given THE NAME above every name (Greek is YHWH). Oh there is just loads of this sort of stuff. It is so easy to want an active force possessing God who has a Son etc., who you can "fit into your pocket".

  • The Quiet One
    The Quiet One

    Sounds like a question the Pope should ask..

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