What would be your reaction if you discovered that the god you worship is one you created in your own imagination and not the God of the Bible? Would you be willing to change your perspective or would you defend the god you created, the one you prefer, the one you're comfortable with, the one that asks little of you, the one who loves you just the way you are without any hint of transforming you into an ins…
A pastor might say to sinners, "Give Jesus your heart," but this is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ and this is not the way to be saved . All you can "give" to Jesus is your sin, not your heart, not your will. The person who has not yet been made alive spiritually--born again, born from above, regenerated--cannot give Jesus his heart (1 Cor. 1:18, 30, 31; 2:6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1…
Whatever happens in my life is governed by my heavenly Father, in and through my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by the effectual power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. If God is for me, and nothing can separate me from His love (Rom. 8:31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39), then that includes depression and mental health issues that at times negatively and severely impact me. This past week I have been living on the…
How is it even remotely possible that a born-again believer and disciple and follower of Jesus Christ could struggle with depression, or mental health issues, when he or she is indwelt by (John 14:17) the captive-freeing (Rom. 8:2) and life-giving Holy Spirit (John 6:63; Rom. 8:10; Titus 3:5)? The two notions do not seem to go together. All children of God "live according to the Spirit" (Rom. 8:4, 5, …
In my Southern Baptist rearing as a child, I viewed God the Father as loving us poor sinners because Jesus died for our wretched sins, and I think we all often felt that the Father begrudgingly loved us out of pity and only because the Son interceded and mediated for us devils. God was to be feared, awed, and obeyed. If you did not obey then you would incur the Father's wrath, or severe chastening, and I w…
God is Creator of all that exists, of all that is, seen and unseen, including each human being ever to exist (Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:7; 5:1, 2; 9:6; Deut. 4:32; Job 4:17; 10:8, 9, 10, 11, 12; 31:15; 33:4; 34:19; Ps. 8:3, 4, 5, 6; 89:47; 95:6; 100:3; 104:30; 119:73, 74; 138:8; 139:13-16; Eccl. 3:11; 12:7; Isa. 17:7; 42:5; 43:7; 44:24; 49:5; 64:8; Jer. 1:5; 27:5; Zech. 12:1; Mal. 2:10; Matt. 19:4; John 1:3; Acts 17:26,…
I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness [writes Paul] ... For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jes…
The apostle Paul writes to the believers at Philippi: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped" (Phil. 2:6 NRSV Updated Edition 2021, which no longer hyperlinks). This verse, in this translation--"did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped"--is used by some to…
We claim that God knows all that can be known. Open Theists and Process Theists agree and suggest that, since future events have not yet occurred, God cannot know future events and, so, there is nothing for Him to know. That conclusion presupposes, even if inadvertently, that God can only know what materializes. They then argue that God can know what He can (is able to) bring into future-history and accomplish …
As noted in a previous post, "getting Jesus wrong" is to "get God wrong." 1 The first-century church in Corinth is willing to accept a false conception of Jesus, a false ontological (related to His eternal nature and being) Jesus (2 Cor. 11:4), and the apostle Paul warns them. He writes concerning the same to the church at Galatia (Gal. 1:6-9). How we conceptualize Jesus--the Jesus of the u…
Unitarians and other self-identified non-Trinitarians who consider Jesus as merely an exalted man , but who also claim to revere / worship / perform obeisance to Him, are guilty of idolatry (the worship of any reality that is not God in Trinity)--not only because they worship the wrong Jesus (cf. 2 Cor. 11:4; Gal. 1:8) but also because they worship a mere man and not God the Son. God Himself confesses that o…
The third-century heresy known as Arianism (which has views in common today with Unitarians, Unitarian-Universalists, Modalists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Oneness Pentecostals and all other non-Trinitarians) derives its theological origins from Arius of Alexanderia in Egypt (256-336 CE), teaching falsely that Jesus did not pre-exist (contra John 1:1 NLT), but was a created being through whom God created every…
God said: "You cannot see My face; for no one shall see Me and live" (Exodus 33:20). Not one of us sinful human beings would survive even a passing glance of the Face of God. Moses was granted to look upon some semblance of the back of God's passing presence and left that experience with his face shining ablaze (Exodus 34:29-35). Paul writes: God alone has "immortality and dwells in unapproac…
An atheist friend inadvertently challenged me. He gave his reasons why he does not believe that the Jesus of the Christian scriptures was / is who the authors claim He was / is; nor, he admits, does he think that the believers in the second, third, and fourth centuries knew any better about Jesus than did the "misguided" people in the first century. Simply, there was an historical figure mentioned by …
Of the primary seven atonement theories, there is one that, above others, offends the senses of many today, one that they claim causes them to reject Christianity: Penal Substitution. Such people forget that, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin (Heb. 9:22). Their problem, then, is with Scripture. Such people should rip Leviticus and Hebrews out of their Bibles and invent their own rel…
Unitarians and non-Trinitarians (Modalists, Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarian-Universalists) suggest Jesus is considered worthy of worship, and that He is counted as divine "in some sense," but merely in "a figurative sense." If the divinity and deity of Jesus is figurative then what does it figure? If the deity / divinity of Jesus is symbolic then what does it symbolize? My view is that Unita…
If Trinitarian theology exists in Scripture then what would we expect to find to support the notion? In other words, if the One God exists in Three co-eternal, co-equal Persons--because many passages appear to indicate as much--then what kind of language would we expect the authors to employ? We agree that the word "Trinity" or "Triunity" (the Three-Personed Union of the Godhead: Father, Son…
"Hear, O Israel: The L ORD our God, the L ORD is One [ echad ]" (Deut. 6:4 ESV; cf. "the L ORD alone," NRSV, NLT--the verb "is" cannot be found in the Hebrew text). The great Shema (lit. "to hear") of Israel is an affirmation of her One and Only God, the L ORD [the Tetragrammaton, or four-lettered Name of God, YHWH (Yahweh), cf. Exodus 3:14, 15; see John 17:6, 11, 12;…
Unitarians often perpetuate confusion as to Personhood of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the Trinity. Dr. Dale Tuggy, for example, writes: "In standard formulations of Trinitarian theology nowadays, one says that there is (only) one God 'in three Persons.' But what does this mean? We can ask about how these 'Persons' relate individually or collectively to the one God. How exactly are they…