Before we get into these misapplied texts, John
8, 52 through 9, verse 4.
In this 1950 edition, by the way, this
was the standard recognized edition, the only one
available, clear up until 1965.
Now they used this until 1965.
So for 15 years, this was the final
authority.
Now look at John 8, 58.
Jesus said to them, most truly I say
to you, before Abraham into existence, I have
been.
Okay, now, this I have been has been
inserted here because the Jehovah's Witnesses want to
get away from linking what Jesus said in
this verse to what Jehovah said to Moses
in Exodus 3, 14.
Remember when Moses was at the burning bush?
He said, what is your name?
Who shall I say sent me when the
people shall ask?
And God spoke from the burning bush.
And I believe this was a theophany.
This was Christ speaking to Moses, saying, I
am is my name.
And that's my name forever.
I am that I am.
And it, it's literally translated, he who is
the eternal one.
So the, the tetragrammaton that the Jehovah's Witnesses
use on the back of their cars, the
YHWH, which is the, the root from which
they derived Jehovah is that statement.
I am.
Now, if the Jehovah's Witnesses wanted to be
more correct, they should, if they wanted to
call themselves by God's name, they should say
I am because that is his name.
And Jehovah is only a, a traditional word
which people use to identify him.
Now there's only a, say a one chance
in five that Jehovah is correct.
And it's probably even less than that because
there's not even a J in the Hebrew
language.
So the YHWH has been used by the
Jehovah's Witnesses and by many scholars as the
base for God's name.
And they insert vowels in between those consonants,
but they don't really know which vowels go
in.
So there's no hard and fast rule that
Jehovah is the name.
Okay.
Now it's very important to look at John
8 58 and realize what Jesus was actually
saying.
He was saying, before Abraham sprang into existence,
I am.
He's using the same statement said to Moses
back in Exodus 3 14.
But look at the footnote at the bottom
of the page and see what the Jehovah's
Witnesses say about this.
You have seen Abraham.
Has Abraham seen you?
I have been ago, Amy, after the heiress
infinitive clause and hence properly rendered in the
perfect indefinite tense.
Okay.
They're trying to say that this is not
the same as the Exodus 3 14.
And the reasons they say it's not the
same is this is properly rendered.
I have been in the perfect indefinite tense
of the Greek verb to be.
There is no such Greek verb.
This is a complete fabrication.
The perfect indefinite tense is a watchtower fabrication.
It's a lie to cover a lie.
And later they've corrected it.
Now there's no way they can say that
this is a mistake.
You don't make mistakes in your footnotes.
The footnotes are to prove that you didn't
make a mistake in the text.
So this is a, it's just a bold,
flat lie.
There is no such tense, but they had
to get away from the fact that Jesus
Christ said, I am, and they, they have
gone on record as saying it's better to
have a lie told than to disrupt the
unity.
So we'll go into that next week.
Okay.
Now in the footnotes, in the margin of
the New American Standard, it will say, I
have been as a possibility.
That's a possibility.
But when you say it's properly rendered because
of such and such a Greek tense, that
is an unjustifiable lie.
And it's a, it's scholastic dishonesty.
So we have the possibility, the, it can
be translated, I have been, but we have
the, in the main margin or in the
main text, we have, I am, in almost
every Bible you'll see, it'll say, I am,
because that's the way it's generally, yes.
Well, I'm not sure exactly what the technical
tense would be, but with God, everything is
the present.
There's no past, future.
He looks at history through, he's not bound
by time and space.
When he looks at history, everything is now.
He can see back from before the foundation
of the world and Christ is the center.
And he looks forward into eternity and he
sees time as just a little parenthesis in
the long spans of eternity.
Right.
I have been is just one little part
of that tense.
It also encompasses, I have been, I will
be.
Back in Exodus 3.14, they say, I
will prove to be.
So they, they messed that up also.
Question.
Right.
It's, it's ho-on in the Septuagint.
It's the equivalent statement.
It's not ego ame.
I had Jim Harris go over that at
length and he wrote Greek on a page
that long explaining that ego ame is the,
is the exact equivalent statement of what the
Father or Christ said to Moses in the
burning bush.
Okay.
Any more questions?
Okay.
That's a, that's a real tricky verse because
the Jehovah's Witnesses don't like to admit that
Christ is a God, unless you're about that
verse.
Now, if you call them a polytheist, they'll
get upset because they, they say they believe
in only one God, but they say Christ
is a God.
He's not the almighty God, but he's a
mighty God.
Then they'll classify Satan in the same category
and say, he is called the God of
this system of things.
So he is a God.
The problem we have to deal with is
there is only one God by nature.
You can make a God out of anything
you want to, but that does not make
him a God by nature.
If you worship riches, you can make money
your God, but money is not a God
by nature.
There's only one God by nature.
And we find that in Isaiah 43 through
45, very heavily emphasized.
We'll look at a couple of those verses.
And in the New Testament, Galatians 4.8
is the main verse that we can fall
back on.
This is very important on this particular topic.
Galatians 4.8, albeit at that time, not
knowing God, you were in bondage to them
that are by nature, no gods.
Okay.
You see that verse, it's talking about people
being in bondage to demons, but those demons
are by nature, no gods.
They are called gods.
They are supernatural beings, but they're not gods.
They'll use the verse, there are gods many
and Lords many from the Old Testament, from
Psalms.
But even though we know there are many
gods, many Lords, there's only one by nature.
You have to keep going back to that
point because they'll get you going around and
circles on that.
Right.
Okay.
We've, we talked a little bit about that
last week and we're going to go into
it some more this morning.
Before we get into these misapplied texts, I've
got to say one thing.
Without the material we went over last week,
you're going to be crippled in using the
material for today because you've got, you've got
to have a foundation for interpreting these verses.
The thing you've got to do before you
can discuss a doctrinal verse with a Jehovah's
witness is to break down the authority of
the watchtower.
Once you've shown that the watchtower is dishonest
and inconsistent and unreliable, then in the light
of that, you can interpret verses.
But before you do that, you'll be going
around and around in circles.
They'll be saying, this is your opinion.
The watchtower says such and such.
So unless you demoralize them at the start
and prove to them that the New World
Translation is dishonest, then it's almost fruitless to
discuss anything else because they'll always go back
to the New World Translation as their final
authority and they'll say, but the watchtower translates
it this way.
And then you're nowhere.
You're back where you were before.
Okay.
The first verse, Revelation 3.14. We touched
on this last week.
These things sayeth the Amen, the faithful and
true witness, the beginning of the creation of
God.
Now the New World Translation says the beginning
of the creation by God.
They take that of God and they change
it to by God to show that they're
talking about Christ being created by the Father.
If we look into the Greek, we see
that it's properly translated of God, not by
God.
Now the problem we have at this point
is the word beginning.
Does that word beginning mean first thing created?
It says beginning of the creation of God.
So if you look in the footnote in
the New American Standard, you'll see it has
two possibilities there.
It's talking about the word beginning as being
properly translated or an alternate translation being origin
or source.
If we use the word origin or source
in place of the word beginning, the verse
becomes more clear.
These things sayeth the Amen, the faithful and
true witness, the origin of all God's creation
as the New English Bible states.
The origin or the prime source.
There's about five different translations that have origin
or source or prime source in there.
Okay, we have any questions on that?
Sometimes a Jehovah's Witness will say, no way
can the word beginning be translated origin.
But back in John 1.1 in their
1950 edition, I'll read this to you.
First word, originally.
Now we have the word arche in the
Greek.
Arche is the same word in Revelation 3
.14 as it is in John 1.1.
They have it translated originally the word was
and the word was with God and the
word was a God.
Okay, so there we have a prime example
that the word arche can mean either beginning
or origin or originally depending on the context.
So we can't prove conclusively that it should
be translated origin or source, but neither can
they prove conclusively that it should be beginning
and it makes Christ a creature.
It does not.
If you read it in the proper sense,
it shows that Christ is the origin of
all God's creation, which is also borne out
in Colossians 1.16 through 24.
Number two, Colossians 1.15. Who is the
image of the invisible God, the firstborn of
every creature?
Okay, this one is a little bit easier
to prove conclusively.
Okay, now the word that we're dealing with
here is the word firstborn.
And the word firstborn, the Jehovah's Witnesses will
tell you, is equivalent to first created.
They want you to see that word and
think Christ is a creature.
They want you to think Jehovah created Christ.
But let's look at what the word firstborn
really means.
Okay, the word firstborn in the Greek is
prototokos, which means the primary one.
We talked a little bit about this last
week.
We'll go into it in detail.
Prototokos is the word used in this passage.
The Jehovah's Witnesses want you to think that
the word is first created, which is a
separate Greek word, which is protoktosis, a completely
separate word.
If Paul wanted us to realize that Christ
was a creature, he would have used the
proper word, since there were two.
Since he used prototokos, the primary one, there
is no way we can construe this verse
to mean that Christ was the first thing
created.
By the way, the text that we're going
from is taken from Masters of Deception, page
12 through about page 27.
It's got all these verses listed, and after
that, it's got an explanation of each one.
And if you want detailed information on this,
I suggest you get the book from the
bookshack.
It's well worth the money.
It's got some of the best articles on
Jehovah's Witnesses that I've ever seen.
It's written in a little bit, the language
is a little too strong in the book
to hand it to a Jehovah's Witness and
say, read this, because they'll be offended.
And, you know, that's unfortunate.
But you can read it and kind of
tone it down a little bit, so you
don't turn these guys away at the door,
just thinking you're coming down hard on them.
You don't want to do that with a
Jehovah's Witness.
With a Mormon, yes.
But a Jehovah's Witness, they feed on that.
And they think when you're doing this, when
you're calling the shots and don't pull any
punches, that you're persecuting them.
And that, in their mind, reinforces their belief
that they are correct, because if they don't
get persecution, then they're of the world.
But they go out of their way to
get it.
So don't give it to them.
It just kind of feeds the fire.
Question.
It's the same word.
The word's primary one are an explanation of
firstborn.
We're going into that.
Now, in verse 18, it calls Christ the
firstborn from the dead.
Now, if it doesn't mean first created, then
what does it mean?
That's the problem.
In verse 18, Christ is said to be
the firstborn from the dead.
Now, was Christ the first one raised from
the dead?
No.
Christ raised Lazarus from the dead before he
died.
Therefore, that's at least one instance where somebody
was raised from the dead before Christ.
So that would eliminate the possibility of Christ
being the first one raised.
Back in the Gospels and in the Old
Testament, there were many more people raised from
the dead before Christ.
But Christ was the primary one.
Right.
But Christ was the primary one raised from
the dead.
It doesn't say anything about firstborn from the
dead in a glorified body.
It just says firstborn from the dead.
Question.
That's true.
But that's not what they're talking about in
this verse.
You know, you can say, well, he was
the first one to be raised from the
dead that could walk through walls.
You know, there's there's lots of things you
could say about that.
But we're talking about the word firstborn, meaning
the primary one.
In Colossians 117, it says, and he is
before all things.
If Christ was before all things, then he
couldn't be a creature.
Because things have been created and Christ is
before all things.
So this the whole context of Colossians bears
out the fact that Christ is not a
creature.
Look back at the beginning of the verse
we're looking at, who is the image of
the invisible God.
Christ is the image, the express image of
the father.
He is God in a body.
So keep that in mind when you're discussing
this verse.
What does God look like?
Yeah.
Nobody has seen him at any time.
Okay.
Now look at Micah 5.2. Micah 5
.2 is a very important verse.
You got to make sure that you remember
that one.
But thou Bethlehem, Epaphratha, which art little to
be among the thousands of Judah, out of
thee shall come forth unto me one that
is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings
forth are from old, from everlasting.
You see the significance of this verse?
Christ's goings forth are from everlasting.
Now you can't have a beginning if your
goings forth are from everlasting because everlasting goes
back as far as you want to go
and beyond.
So that verse coupled with Hebrews 7.2
are proof that Christ is not a creature.
Question?
Okay.
Now the father has never been seen by
anyone and we don't say that Christ is
the father.
Does that explain a little bit?
There's a lot of confusion.
When we say God, a lot of times
we mean the father.
Sometimes we mean Christ.
So it's best when we're talking about that,
whenever we can think of it, when we
want to be specific, use the father.
No man has seen the father at any
time.
Even when Moses was getting the law, God
put him in the cleft of a rock
and his glory passed before him.
That wasn't the father, that was Christ.
So even in the Old Testament where it
says the angel of the Lord or the
Lord or God, whenever somebody appears to an
Old Testament saint, it's never the father, it's
always Christ because he is the Word of
God.
Right.
But many times the Jehovah's Witness does not
have an accurate knowledge of what we believe,
but he thinks he does.
So in his mind, we believe that there
are three gods in one or one God
acting in three capacities.
But neither one of those is correct.
We believe that the Bible teaches that there
is only one God by nature.
And this God is manifested to us in
three persons, distinct and separate, the father, the
son, and the Holy Spirit.
And we can prove from scripture that each
one of these persons is God, yet there's
only one God.
That's the problem.
I can't logically understand how they can come
together and be one.
But I cannot, from the evidence in scripture,
say anything different than within the unity of
the one God there exists three persons because
there is only one God.
And no matter what you say about other
gods, there's only one God by nature.
And when we talk about a God, we
don't have to mention a specific name because
there's only one.
You can't confuse them with anybody else.
There's one God.
That's one of the reasons the Jehovah's Witnesses
call themselves Jehovah's Witnesses.
They have to be identified with Jehovah because
they believe there's so many other gods they
don't want to be confused.
Okay, any more on that verse?
Right, let's look that up.
Hebrews 7, verse 3.
Here it talks about Melchizedek, who is a
type of Christ.
And Christ is called a priest, not after
the order of Aaron, but after the order
of Melchizedek.
And Melchizedek, in the Old Testament, there's no
genealogy or records given of him because he
is a type of Christ.
And Christ had no beginning of days nor
end of life.
He is eternal.
And verse 3 says, without father, without mother,
without genealogies, having neither beginning of days nor
end of life, but made like unto the
Son of God, abideth a priest continually.
So that verse, coupled with Micah 5.2,
is evidence that Christ is eternal.
Also, Christ is worshiped.
We're not going to get into this.
This is a study in itself.
But Christ is worshiped all through the New
Testament.
And especially when we pray to Christ, that's
an act of worship.
And in John 20.28, Thomas says to
Christ, my Lord and my God.
If Christ was not his God, Christ would
have stopped that right then and there and
said, wait a minute, I may be your
Lord, but I'm not your God.
But he accepts that worship and that statement
from Thomas as being true.
And he says, blessed are those that realize
this, although not having seen it.
Okay, the main difference here in the New
World Translation is they have the statement, my
Lord and my God, in quotes, with an
exclamation point after God, saying that Thomas here
is using the name of God in vain.
He's swearing in front of Christ, saying my
Lord and oh my God type thing.
That's the Jehovah's Witness explanation of this verse.
From the very first chapter of John to
the very last, the theme is that Christ
was God in a body.
And we can see all through the book.
Well, it seems that you get a lot
of different explanations on what Thomas was thinking
when he said that, but we really don't
know.
All we know is what the Bible says.
And since Christ is truth, he would not
let a false statement like this be recorded
in God's Word for all time.
Now, if this was wrong, if this was
false doctrine, it wouldn't be in the Bible.
So we've got to accept it as being
true.
Okay.
Now, we had a question last week on
Proverbs 8, 22 and 24.
That's one of the three main verses that
the Jehovah's Witnesses use to prove that Christ
is a creature.
And real quick, in Proverbs 8, 22 through
24, it talks about wisdom personified, and that
wisdom personified is Christ.
Now, in 1 Corinthians 1, 24, Christ is
called the power and the wisdom of God.
Now, was there ever a time when the
power and wisdom of God never existed?
That is the statement you've got to ask
the Jehovah's Witnesses.
There never was a time when the power
and wisdom of God did not exist.
They say that when they're talking about this
verse in Proverbs, when it says, when there
was no depths, I was brought forth.
They take that statement brought forth to mean
that Christ was created by Jehovah at this
point.
But if he was, and he is the
power and the wisdom of God, as the
Bible says, then the Father was without his
power and his wisdom, and he was before
that time.
So this really doesn't prove anything.
Let me read you a quote from the
Masters of Deception, page 16.
What does this text mean?
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of
his way before his works of old.
In the dim ages of antiquity, before the
worlds were formed, beyond the beginning of time,
it was decreed in the eternal counsels of
God that the Son of God would be
the wisdom and power by which the worlds
were to be made.
This is not to say that the Son
was created at this point, for wisdom declares,
I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before
him, Proverbs 8.30. Notice the word always.
The Son was always beside the Father, but
now wisdom becomes the Father's master workman.
It is in this sense that wisdom was
brought forth.
Or to put it another way, the wisdom
of God became active in creation.
And we saw this in Colossians 1.16.
So that's the sense of the passage.
There's really no problem here because you can't
say Christ was created from this.
It just doesn't make sense to say God
was foolish before he created wisdom.
Okay, now here's the one that says, I
go to my Father, for my Father is
greater than I.
John 14.28. Is everybody familiar with Philippians
2 verse 5?
Okay, let's have Philippians handy when we look
at this verse.
Philippians 2.5, that kind of explains it.
That whole section is good.
We looked at verse 9 last time.
And verse 10 and 11, keep this mind
in you that was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although he was existing in God's form,
gave no consideration to a seizure, namely that
he should be equal to God.
Now, the Jehovah's Witnesses say that this verse
in Philippians is talking about Christ seizing the
power that belonged to the Father.
But what it really means is when Christ
existed in the form of God, he did
not consider equality with God a thing to
cling to.
So he let go of it.
He laid aside the attributes he had with
the Father and the prerogatives he had as
God.
And he voluntarily laid them aside and became
a slave.
Now, this verse that we're talking about in
John 14.28, Christ was speaking as a
man, not as God.
Christ was a perfect man when he was
on earth.
And the main statement to remember on this
verse is when Christ was on earth, he
was less than himself.
And then take the Jehovah's Witness back to
Philippians 2, 5 and 6.
Christ was less than himself.
He laid aside the glory he had with
the Father.
So if Christ was less than himself, of
course the Father is greater, but only positionally.
Okay.
Now, when we talk about positionally inferior or
the Father was positionally greater, we have the
illustration of a family.
We have the woman who has the man
as the head, and then we have the
man who has Christ as the head.
But when you're talking about a family relationship,
the man is greater than the woman.
But the woman is not inferior in essence
or quality.
She is of the same essence and quality.
She is only positionally inferior.
And Christ is not saying here that the
Father is better than I.
Another illustration I use sometimes is, I'm a
fireman.
The captain at my station is greater than
I, but he's not better.
He's just in a higher position.
I am no less of a human being
than my captain.
And Christ is no less God than the
Father.
But at this point in time, the Father
is positionally greater.
So just remember, one time I had to
say to a lady, at least ten times,
Christ was less than himself before she finally
understood what I was saying.
So just remember that.
Okay.
Number five.
Mark 13, 31, and 32.
Christ said, Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my words shall not pass away.
But of that day and hour knoweth no
man, no, not the angels which are in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Okay.
Now Christ didn't know that because he chose
not to know.
You can again go back to Philippians where
he laid aside the power he had and
the prerogatives he had, took on the form
of a slave.
Now he resisted all the temptations and everything
that we go through as a perfect man,
not God.
He did not have the powers of God
when he was on earth because he chose
not to use them.
It was like a captain sailing under sealed
orders in wartime.
He can open those letters, those orders, any
time he wants, but he chooses for different
reasons to sail under sealed orders.
The people that give him the orders don't
want him to know any more than necessary.
When Christ was on earth, he knew that
if he had all the knowledge and the
power of God, then he couldn't be a
perfect man and resist all these temptations.
There wouldn't be any question about it.
Of course, as God, he could resist anything
Satan could throw his way, but he voluntarily
limited himself.
But you've got to remember, when Christ rose
from the dead, he received all power and
all authority, and now Christ knows the day
of the hour because now Christ has all
the knowledge that he once had before the
foundation of the world, all the power he
had with the Father.
Number six, it is written, the head of
every man is Christ, the head of the
woman is the man, the head of Christ
is God.
Okay, here we have a divine example.
We have the father and the son and
the husband and the woman in kind of
a chain of command.
We also have the father committed to fulfill
the wishes of the son, and we have
the son committed to fulfill the wishes of
the father.
Now, you cannot have true submission unless there
is equality.
The best you can get is obedience.
You can't get submission from a dog because
he's not on the same level as a
person.
You can get obedience, but in order to
have true submission, it must be done voluntarily.
So we have the example written for us
to raise our family, that even the son
is subject to the father, but this only
takes place until the Christ's office of mediator
comes to an end.
Right now he is the mediator, and before
the foundation of the world, he was the
lamb slain.
So the mediatorial office of Christ goes back
to past ages, but there is coming a
time when Christ is going to put down
all rule and all authority and all power,
and that office is going to come to
an end.
And I don't know what's going to happen
after that, but the example here is so
we can raise our families and have a
divine principle to look up to.
It does not mean that Christ is inferior
to the father.
Just as we talked about that woman is
not inferior to the man.
Is that clear to everybody?
John 16.23 and Luke 2.51. This
verse talks about Christ being in subjection to
Joseph and Mary.
We read, where Jesus went down with them
and came to Nazareth and was subject unto
them.
Does this mean that Jesus was less than
Mary and Joseph at this point?
No.
Christ at that point was positionally inferior to
Mary and Joseph, but we can apply the
same verse to 1 Corinthians 11 and show
because Christ subjected himself to his parents.
It wasn't because he was less than or
inferior to them.
It was because that's the way it should
have been done and that's the way he
did it.
About the mediator, we've got 1 Timothy 2
.5. Christ is the one mediator between God
and men.
And in 1 Corinthians 15.24, we gather
that this office is only temporary.
Number 7, when all things shall be subdued
unto him, then shall the Son also himself
be subject to him that put all things
under him that God may be all in
all.
1 Corinthians 15.28. Revelation 13.8 is
the reference for the Lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world.
And that's when the mediatorial office began, way
back then, before the foundation of the world.
And in Hebrews 1.2, the Father used
the Son as mediator to create the worlds.
However, this is a quote from Masters of
Deception.
However, there is a time coming when Christ's
work as mediator will finally come to an
end.
And this comes about, or takes place, when
the mediatorial Son puts down all rule, all
authority, and all power.
The Son then enters back into the former
state of equality which he shared with the
Father before the creation of the universe.
And throughout the endless ages of eternity, the
triune God Jehovah will permeate the universe with
his love and glory.
And God will then be immediately known by
all.
The problem with the verse here is that
Jehovah's Witnesses try to prove that this office,
or this subjection, is going to extend on
into eternity.
But I don't think they can prove that
from this.
Any questions?
Exactly.
Just like we talked about before, you can
only have subjection when there's equality.
Now, there wouldn't be any problem, in my
mind, if Christ was to remain in subjection.
But from what we get from Scripture, it's
going to be temporary.
And, you know, I don't have the final
say-so, and I can't say, you know,
this is how it's going to be for
sure.
But there is no problem here, as far
as I'm concerned, either way.
But they use this verse to teach that
Christ is inferior to the Father.
This is a good one, number eight.
Jesus said to him, Why callest thou me
good?
None is good, save one, that is God.
Luke 18, 19.
Okay.
We've got to realize, when Christ made this
statement, he is not stating that I am
not good.
He's asking the guy a question.
Why do you call me good?
Do you realize that there is only one
that's good, and he's God?
Do you realize that I'm God?
He's not making a statement, he's asking a
question.
He's trying to draw this guy, draw some
faith out of this guy.
And at no time does Christ say, I'm
not good, only God is good.
Jehovah's Witnesses want to infer that's what he's
saying.
He's saying, do you realize what you're saying?
Christ claimed to be God.
He's not just, as some teach, a good
teacher.
Either he was God, or he was the
biggest liar that ever came upon the face
of the earth.
You can't have it both ways.
So Christ is saying to this guy, do
you realize I'm God?