It is not often that a person who has been around for more than a quarter or a half a century can admit error, or confess wrong, or change.
But, after months of regular fasting and praying, we are starting to see ‘change’. We have been praying that God would make His People humble, and able to receive His truth.
I had a person come up to me all excited about meeting a Jewish person, a Jewish believer. That person started asking questions about my faith. I suggested they read our ‘Beliefs’ page. They went and read the introduction and came back happy as a lark saying that we believed the same way. But, I knew there would be a bump in the road. I only hoped that it would not be perceived as a mountain.
We chatted: and when we got to the point where I said, “We do not believe that [and I ‘air-quoted’ the following:] “Jesus is God”; we believe He is divine, but He is not “God”.
O, the sadness. O, the immediate disappointment. But I hoped.
I told them that we do not take humbrage with saying that Yeshua is divine, but with saying that He is utterly “God”; because if that is the case, “God died”, I said; “and God cannot die”. “God is life”. And I further explained that if God died the universe would fold up, fold in on itself. Newton even said it: “And the fixed stars would, through their gravity, gradually fall on each other, were they not carried back by the counsel of the supreme Being.” This echoes the Bible, where we read in Hebrews, “for He is the brightness of His Glory, and the express image of His Nature, upholding all things by the power of His Word.” “God did not become a man”, I said.
They were utterly dejected, and walked away in obvious disappointment. This person avoided me for days. Weeks. But I just kept praying.
After a few weeks, this person sidled me and just stood there. I could just ‘feel’ that they wanted to talk; but, I was not going to start the conversation. Let it be divine. Let it be unsolicited by me.
They left and came back. And finally broached the subject. They said they’d been reading and studying, looking into the Greek and the Hebrew and checking word meanings. “Hallelu Yah,” said I, and I thought, finally, a Berean, someone who’s willing actually to look for themselves, and pray. “I think I agree with you!” They said; “But, I still just can’t wrap my head around it.”
So, I sent them to this article, Who Is God? The Unity of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and the ones linked at the bottom of it.
A couple of days later, this person came back, and said, “You’ve got my head swimming”. And we finally had a conversation that was devoid of preconception.
I reasoned again: “If ‘Jesus is God’, the result of that equation is that God, as He had been up to the birth of ‘Jesus’, is gone, whereas God said, “I am יהוה , I do not change.” I informed this person that it was Marcion who killed “The God of the Old Testament”. He was the one who said that there were two different gods in the scriptures; the ‘god of the old testament’, and the ‘god of the new testament’. This is proof that the Roman ‘church’ redefined God. They discarded everything about יהוה except what was expedient for the empire. They actually teach that He died.
“I cannot accept that,” I told this person. “I will not. And one day, perhaps sooner than later, it may get me killed, just like it did for thousands of people long ago, and many throughout the ages.”
When I explained in layman’s terms that God SENT Yeshua into the world, and that Yeshua had God’s NATURE in Him, making Him different that all other men, and that HE died and went into She’ol, and God raised Him from the dead, and that Yeshua, a man, is standing next to God’s corporeal presence in heaven [I had to define corporeal], then, it clicked.
“We really do believe the same, don’t we?!”
“Yes; I’ve been saying it all along; it’s a semantic issue. But most people are scared to let go of their perceived ‘orthodoxy’, for fear of being ‘lost’, and/or of being ‘cut off’ from other believers. I know I’ve been cut off; but, I am more certain than most of them of my Salvation in Yeshua, because I know He had to be a man, in order not to sin, and in order to die in my place.
Hallelu Yah / הללו יה . Finally. I hope this person goes further to understand God, and His desire for us all.
The message yesterday covered some of this too.