This is part 7 of a series of threads which discuss verses used by the watchtower and others to "disprove" the Trinity and deity of Jesus Christ. Each thread looks at a different verse. Please restrict your comments to the verse or closely related concept. The subject of this thread is the verses which describe knowledge which the Father seems to have exclusively.
Matthew 24:36
"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." Matthew 24:36
The following is from David Reed:
http://www.cftf.com/comments/ntansw01.html
"Jehovah's Witnesses use this verse to argue against the doctrine of the Trinity and to support their teaching that the Father alone is God while the Son is the first angel God created and the Holy Spirit is a mere impersonal force, like electricity, that God uses to accomplish his will.
Before attempting to answer them on their misuse of this verse, we should first note a fundamental difference between Jehovah's Witnesses and Christians: They feel that they can neatly fit all known facts about God into a simple framework of clearly-stated beliefs, while we recognize much about God to be beyond our limited human understanding and comprehension.
We know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit personally and intimately as a little child knows and trusts its parents, but we are also like that little child in its inability to grasp fully the relationship between its father and mother--how their sexual union makes them "one flesh," the principles of husbandly headship and wifely subjection, the legal and emotional aspects of the marriage bond, and so on. Similarly, how one of the Persons of the Godhead can know something and another not know is beyond our minds to understand. And if it is beyond our grasp, how much more so is it beyond the comprehension of Jehovah's Witnesses! ("The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."--1 Corinthians 2:14, NIV)
When we offer the possible explanation that the Son may not have known "that day or hour" because he was speaking in his human incarnation, the Witness may shoot back the challenge, "But why does the holy spirit [sic] not know?"--a question prompted by the JW handbook Reasoning from the Scriptures, page 426.
While we can freely acknowledge that it may be beyond our human brain capacity to grasp how one member of the Godhead can know something and another not know--and that we can know only the details God chooses to reveal to us in human terms--we can also offer this possible explanation: Namely, that Jesus was taking it for granted that the Holy Spirit knows everything the Father knows. The JW New World Translation says at 1 Corinthians 2:10-11 that "the spirit searches into all things, even the deep things of God," and that "no one has come to know the things of God, except the spirit of God."
By the way, notice that the verse says, "no oneŠexcept the spirit of God." So the Holy Spirit is someone, rather than some thing. (If you ask people to fill in the blank in a sentence such as, "No one knows my address except ________," they would fill in the blank with someone's name--not with an impersonal thing like a book or a computer.) So, by saying, "No oneŠexcept the spirit," the New World Translation reveals that the Holy Spirit is someone!"