Vital Truth About
Christ
by Ed Stevens
All who deny the deity of Jesus Christ reject the Bible doctrine of the Trinity — three divine Persons in one Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is thus put in the position of an impostor and deceiver, for He said, "I and my Father are ONE!" "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." John 10:30; 14:9. Did He lie? It naturally follows that deniers of His deity will also deny that He arose from the dead bodily, even though He said, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise IT up". "But this spake He of the temple of His BODY." John 2:19, 21. Did He deceive? No! He DID arise BODILY.
Why should men deny the deity of Christ, in spite of His flawless testimony? It can only be because they are deceived by and are lined up with Christ's great enemy, Satan. They are in the same company with those who murdered Him on a Roman cross! One cult in particular, the Watchtower Society, teaches, in denial of Christ's deity, that not until He was baptized by John did He BECOME the Christ, as God's "spiritual son". "He that is of God heareth God's words" (John 8:47), as in Galatians 4:4 and Luke 2 :11 — "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His SON, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law [i.e., under its condemnation as sinners that we might receive the adoption of sons." "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which IS CHRIST the Lord."
To nullify Christ's deity these people make John 1:1 to read, "Originally the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god". Upon questioning them here they will affirm that "God" is "the Almighty Jehovah", and "a god" is "Jesus the mighty one, created by Jehovah as a god". They profess to believe in one God but hold to the absurd teaching that there was a big God and a little god, and that the big one made the little one! One verse alone, Isaiah 43:10, destroys this absurdity. Speaking to Israel, God said, "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen; that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He: before me there was no god formed, neither shall there be after me".
In the Watchtower Society's "New World Translation" the deity of Jesus Christ is plainly stated, as follows: "Look! the virgin will become pregnant and will give birth to a son, and they will call his name `Immanuel' which means when translated, 'with us is GOD'. Matthew 1:23. Also in Revelation 1:8, 13, 17 Christ, the "son of man" speaks as "Jehovah God, the One who is and who was and who is coming, the Almighty . . . I am the first and the Last, and the living one; and I BECAME DEAD, but look! I am living for ever and ever and have the keys of death and of Hades".
Note well verse eleven of Isa. 43 with John 8:24 — "I, even I, am Jehovah; and besides me there is no Savior." (R.V.) Christ, "the Savior of the world" (John 4:42; Titus 1:3; 2:10), said to unbelieving Jews, "If ye believe not that I AM HE [the Jehovah Savior of the Old Testament] ye shall die in your sins". John 8:23, 24. Remission of sins is impossible to all who deny the deity of Christ, that He is coequal with God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit!
How strange that Trinity deniers continue to water-baptize in the names of the Trinity, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost".
The triune personality of the Godhead is clearly evidenced in the following references, which please read: Isa. 48:16; John 14:16, 26; 15:26; Acts 7:55. In Matt. 3:16, 17 the three Persons are actively apparent in three places.
This is the gospel (good news) whereby we are saved and wherein we stand, "how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; He was buried. He rose again the third day according to the scriptures, and was seen" of many witnesses. I Cor. 15:1-8.