Jesus is Michael the Archangel

by Fisherman 103 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Disillusioned JW

  Sea Breeze, some English translations say the "Revelation of Jesus Christ" and some say the "Revelation by Jesus Christ" (not just the NWT) and come commentaries say both meanings are plausible and that both might be correct. Namely the revelation is of Jesus in the sense of being about Jesus (a revealing of Jesus) and was also transmitted by way of Jesus. Furthermore, the translations of Revelation 1:1 agree that God gave the revelation to him/Him (namely to Jesus Christ) instead of directly to John. In verse one the NKJV has the word "him" capitalized as "Him" thus indicating divinity (according to Trinitarians), thus indicating Jesus Christ in that phrase instead of John. Verse one (NKJV) also says that "He", namely Jesus, "sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John". You in your quote of me you left out my words of "(by way of his angel?)" - perhaps I revised my post to include those words after you began composing your reply to me but before ou completed your reply to me.

  I thus drew my conclusion from "a plain literal reading of scripture".

  Update: Perhaps you think that the "He" mentioned in verse two is God instead of the "Him" (Jesus) mentioned in verse one. But the "He" in verse has to refer to Jesus otherwise it would conflict with verse one saying saying God sent the revelation to Jesus. The two verses combined are thus say that God (the Father) sent a revelation about Jesus to Jesus, that Jesus in turn sent it "by His angel" to John the servant of Jesus.
  
  
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  Sea Breeze

  But the "He" in verse has to refer to Jesus otherwise it would conflict with verse one saying saying God sent the revelation to Jesus.

  I already covered this in my last few posts regarding the tri-partite nature of man (Jesus). You would need to deny that truth (and the scriptures I cite) in order for your argument to have any merit. In short, you are still using an unbiblical premise for a perfectly sound argument.
  
  I would direct you back to the nature of Jesus. Learn that and everything else falls into place.
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  Disillusioned JW

  Sea Breeze, I am familiar with the idea of the tri-partite nature of man and I read your recent post about such, but some verses of the Bible seem to make a definite distinction between Jesus Christ and God, not just in regards to three persons making up one God (the trinity doctrine) but actually also as a way of distinguishing the Son (Jesus) form the Father (Yahweh) and some even implying that the heavenly Christ is not God. Yes I am resistant (like Charles Russel was and like the WT is) in accepting the idea of the tri-partite nature (as defined by you and many others) of humans, in regards to the spirit in humans, as being a biblical teaching.

  I know that the earliest extant Greek NT manuscripts (such as those of the Alexandrian text type) have fewer trinitarian and binitarian sounding phrases and verses than those manuscripts used the translators of the KJV. I also know that such applies a great deal to the manuscripts of the book of Revelation. Furthermore, I know that most modern translations of the NT are primarily based upon those older manuscripts, and that the NKJV has footnotes which in many cases state the wording of those older manuscripts.
  

  I am also aware that Church Fathers said the Ebionite Christians and some other Torah keeping very early Jewish followers of Jesus in their Gospel account rejected the divinity and the virgin birth of Jesus; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites .
  

  Some critical NT scholars even say that the Book of Revelation was later revised by Christians into being what we find our extant Greek manuscripts; see https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12712-revelation-book-of .That Jewish Encyclopedia says the following regarding the Book of Revelation. "The last book in the New Testament canon, yet in fact one of the oldest; probably the only Judæo-Christian work which has survived the Paulinian transformation of the Church." It also says that the book includes "Christian interpolations and alterations".

  Some scholars (including James Tabor) even say the original book of Revelation was a Jewish non-Christian text which was later Christianized into the text we have today. For example that see https://ehrmanblog.org/is-the-book-of-revelation-a-revised-version-of-a-non-christian-apocalypse-guest-post-by-james-tabor/ .

  joey jojo, I agree that the world makes much more sense when one rejects the idea that God or a god exists.
  
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  joey jojo

  Fisherman:

  "But that is how we see it as it seems to us. It is what is is and things are the way they are. We can logically try to find logical reasons for why but we can’t know for sure like the identity of Jesus is Michael is a conclusion. It is not outright defined in the Bible."

  I've said this before - this world and everything in it only begins to make sense when you have the courage to accept God does not exist.
  
  
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  Fisherman

  God does not exist.

  JJ

  The only thing I can say I know is a fact is that God exists. However. there are other things too I am convinced are true. But the existence of God is not a conclusion.
  
  
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  Disillusioned JW

  In the above mentioned article which I provided a link to, Tabor says the following.

  'One thing I had noticed in my own work on the book of Revelation over the years was that the explicit references to either “Jesus” “Christ,” or “Jesus Christ” outside the letters to the churches of chapters 2 & 3, are mostly clustered in chapters 1 and 22, with few in the middle chapters.

  But what is even more astounding, to me at least, was the observation that nearly all of these references can be easily removed without detracting in any way from the structure or flow of the passages in which they occur. In other words, one could get the distinct impression that references to Jesus Christ lay quite lightly on the text and could even be seen as secondary interpolations.

  In the references below I have put these interpolative elements bold italicized brackets. This exercise strongly suggests that these are later additions to an original Jewish text inserted to “Christianize” a book that in its origins had nothing to do with Jesus. This is a rather astounding phenomenon and once one sees it it seems clear that the underlying original text remains intact and makes complete sense without these references:'

  In the article Tabor also says the following. 'In contrast to these references to Jesus, that so clearly exhibit a heavy hand of Christian interpolation, one finds multiple references to the LORD (Yahweh/Yehovah) God Almighty, as well as “his Messiah,” that echoes closely the language of the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible. None of these contain explicit references to Jesus and clearly exhibit a textual integrity that reflects the language and thought world of pre-Christian thoroughly Jewish apocalypticism:'
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  Sea Breeze

  some verses of the Bible seem to make a definite distinction between Jesus Christ and God

  DJW,

  This is the same argument you just made. Your premise is just as faulty. At least take the time to understand a Christian position before rejecting it.
  
  Jesus being fully Man and Fully God at the same time... would have as many distinctions between him and God as there is between you or I and God.
  
  But, only he possesses the very essence of God (in his Spirit) and can claim it as his very own.... being the "only begotten".

  Why are you having such a hard time accepting that people are constructed with a soul, spirit and body?
  
  BTW, many millions of Christians do not trust Vaticanus & Sinaiticus. These two manuscripts are a train wreck for many reasons. They disagree with each other in thousands of places and have been written over at least twice since produced.
  
  Thousands of other manuscripts (the majority text), do not have these problems.
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  Ding

  Jude 9 says that Michael didn't dare rebuke Satan directly but left that to Jehovah.

  Yet, Jesus rebuked Satan directly many times (Matthew 4, Mark 8:33, for example).
  
• 

  Fisherman

  So, again. Only Jesus has the power and authority to kick Satan out of heaven.
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  Disillusioned JW

  Sea Breeze, regarding you saying "This is the same argument you just made' I said such in an effort to clarify to you my idea to you.

  In answer to your question of "Why are you having such a hard time accepting that people are constructed with a soul, spirit and body?" that should be obvious to you if you recall what I said about myself in number of posts. I was raised a JW and became very active as a baptized JW for about 25 years. During that time I firmly believed in the WT teaching (based upon verses quoted by them from multiple translations of the Bible) and based upon scientific knowledge (learned through the WT's quotes of scientific literature and directly outside of the WT in some science books and Humanistic books I read) that no human ever had an immoral spirit or immortal soul. I accepted the reasoning presented in the WT's literature that the biblical verses which speak of a spirit inside of living human bodies refers to the biblical idea of a "life force energy" which keeps humans alive until the force ceases to operate within the body. That is idea is consistent with what science teaches keeps biological beings alive, except that more modern science instead speaks of biochemical processes rather than mysterious spirit-like "life force".
  

  In fact the WT's teachings that humans do not have an inherently immortal spirit/soul, that there is thus no eternal hell torment, and that God is not a Trinity were what I thought were some of most well proven teachings of theirs (and for years I knew of no other Christian religion which taught those) and that my concluding such is largely why decided the JW religion was the one true religion and why I thus became baptized as a JW. Though I later stopped believing in much of the religion those teachings of the WT/JW still stuck with me well into my future atheism and are still very rational to me even if I see that some Bible verses might contradict those teachings. Though I now think that some Bible verses (such as John 1:1) say that Jesus is some sense God and even in sense Yahweh, that possible teaching of the Bible is still very irrational and very illogical to me! Furthermore it contradicts many verses in the OT and the people of the Jewish religion agree with me in that. As the Shema says, "the Lord our God is one" and as the Hebrew Bible says "Yahweh our Elohim (God) is one Yahweh"!
  

  i never ever believed that I (or other human) have(has) an immortal spirit or immortal soul. I continued to believe such after becoming an atheist and a scientific naturalist; and atheistic books promoting atheism and natural also teach that, and do say such based upon science. I later came to learn that some biblical OT passages speak of shadowy existence, as shades in Sheol, and that by the first century CE some Jews came to believe in a paradise compartment in Sheol for the righteous ones, but I still recognize that much of the Bible (especially the OT) teaches that dead humans do not have a conscious spirit or a conscious soul. As the book of Ezekiel says, 'the soul that is sinning, it itself will die'. Furthermore Ecclesiastes says that the dead have no thoughts (their thought do perish) - a teaching which is also in agreement with positive/strong atheism and Jewish religious books say that was a common belief of Jews before the Jews became exposed to Greek philosophy.