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Helping the World to Count to One - Page 3
Note: Things which are held in store as divine plans for the future are said to be “with God.” Thus in Job 10:13 Job says to God, “These things you have concealed in your heart: I know that this is with You” (see KJV). “He performs what is appointed for me, and many such decrees are with Him” (23:14). Thus the glory which Jesus had “with God” was the glory which God had planned for him as the decreed reward for his Messianic work now completed. The promise of glory “preexisted,” not Jesus himself. Note that this same glory which Jesus asked for has already been given to you (see John 17:22, 24), before you were even born! The promised Christian reward was given as a guaranteed future blessing by Jesus speaking around 30 AD. This is obviously glory and reward as a promise for the future. Your Christian reward was given (past tense) to you and Jesus whom God loved before the foundation of the world (v. 24). You may therefore say that you now “have” that glory although it is glory in promise and prospect. Jesus had that same glory in prospect before the foundation of the world (John 17:5). You can have something “with God,” meaning that you can have something promised by God for your future, and it is laid up in store with God now and will be delivered to you when Jesus comes back. 2 Timothy 1:9 is similar: “grace was given to us before the ages of time began.”
Christians were already “in Christ” (Eph 1:4) before the world began and foreknown by God (1 Pet. 1:2).
Paul can say that we now already “have” a new body with God in heaven — i.e. we have the promise of it, not in actuality. That body will be ours at the return of Christ. We now “have” it in anticipation and promise only. “We have a building of God,” 2 Cor. 5:1). We do not in fact have it yet. But when we do get that reward in the future, we will be able to say “give me the glorified body” which I had with you, i.e., as promised.
Greg Stafford in his Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended (p. 222)misses this point about the promise of rewards. Not only does he ignore the accounts of the origins of the Son of God laid out explicitly in Matthew and Luke, he does not see that a pre-existing angel cannot be the descendant of David, and cannot therefore be the true Messiah. Stafford does not realize that in the future we will be given a reward which we “had” already. Paul says we “have” it now (2 Cor. 5:1) and in the future we will have it not in promise but in reality. Then we will be able to say “Give me now the reward which I had in your promise.” Jesus says the same thing: “Glorify me, Father, with the glory which I had with you.” Jesus said nothing about a restoration of glory, just as he said nothing about returning to God (although the NIV misleads us in this respect).
Peter speaks of a day being like a thousand years “with God” (2 Pet. 3:8). This is the proper sense of “with God” in John 17:5. Things which are “with God” are those things which He plans and prepares. Thus Jesus asked to receive at the end of his ministry the glory prepared for him “with God,” that is in God’s plans and in His mind. Revelation 13:8 states that the crucifixion happened long before the birth of the Messiah. The idea is of course that it happened in God’s plan, not in actuality. We must think as Hebrews, and thus with Jesus and John, and not just read our western language forms into the Bible. Of course the word was “with God,” in His mind. “With God” does not imply a Son-Father relationship at that stage. Galatians 2:5 speaks of the Gospel remaining “with” (pros) the Galatians, that is in their minds.
Why would you “go to heaven” when the Promised Land, promised to the descendants of Abraham — who are the believers (Gal. 3:29) — is the land of Canaan in which Abraham lived? (Heb. 11:8-9). Can you inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5), as Jesus promised, if you go “to heaven”? Can you rule with Christ “on the earth” (Rev. 5:10)? Can you be in the camp of the saints on earth (Rev. 20:9) if you are not going to be on the earth! Ponder all this carefully and prayerfully. Don’t forget the danger of being “moved away from the hope offered in the Gospel” (Col. 1:23). Love and faith are in fact based on and produced by hope (Col. 1:5). Therefore if hope is vague, love and faith are diminished and weakened. It is vital to know what you are hoping for and where Jesus will be in the future, so that you can be with him.
God promised Abraham and Jesus the Land (Gen. 12, 13, 15, 17; Gal 3:19), and this should prove that the Land is going to be available for Abraham and all the faithful in the resurrection. You cannot inherit a planet which has ceased to exist! The glory promised to the believers will be realized at the future coming of Jesus when he resurrects to immortality the saints of all the ages (1 Cor. 15:23).
Hebrews 1:10, the Hardest Verse
On the recent radio discussion I soon learned how Trinitarians think they can persuade us. They turn to Hebrews 1:10. Here in a catena (chain) of proof texts, the Hebrews writer seeks to prove that Jesus, the Son of God, is superior to angels. This approach ought really to show immediately that the writer did not think Jesus was Jehovah! You don’t need 7 verses to prove that Jesus is better than all angels or better than Moses, if you believe that Jesus is God Himself. All you have to say is “Jesus is God.”
Hebrews 1:10 says of the Son of God that he laid the foundation of the heaven and the earth.
There are three “proof texts” addressed to the Son in Hebrews 1:8-13. There is no hint in the text that they refer to someone other than the Son. Verse 8 begins, “But of the Son He [God] says…” (Heb. 1:8) Then follow three different quotes. The series ends in verse 13 with a proof that Jesus was not an angel: “But to which of the angels did He [God] ever say…” Psalm 110:1 is then quoted as referring to the Son, Jesus. That Son is the adoni of Psalm 110:1 who is not Yahweh.
Much of chapter 1 of Hebrews compares the Son of God with angels, showing that the Son was never an angel and is superior to them. This proves that the Son cannot be God! It is not necessary to prove God superior to the angels. It is obvious. Equally clear is the fact that the Son cannot be an angel or archangel as maintained by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both angels and archangels are angels! Jesus was never an angel, because high priests are “chosen from among men” (Heb. 5:1). And holy angels are immortal (Luke 20:36), which would make the death of Jesus the Son of God impossible.
What then of Hebrews 1:10? In what sense is the Son the founder of the heavens and earth? How can this be since Jesus nowhere claimed to be the Creator and it was not Jesus, but God who rested on the seventh day (Heb. 4:4)? Did Jesus get to do all the work and yet not rest on the seventh day? “God [not Jesus] made them male and female” (Mark 10:6) and “The Lord God [not Jesus] formed man of dust from the ground” (Gen. 2:7). Fifty texts say that God, the Father, created the heavens and the earth. Luke 1:35, Matthew 1:18, 20 and 1 John 5:18 (not KJV) say that the Son did not exist until he was created/begotten in Mary. Was Jesus both six months younger than John the Baptist and billions of years older? Was Jesus thirty years old when he began his public ministry and yet really billions plus thirty years old? What part of Jesus was thirty and what part was billions of years old? Jesus cannot be so divided up, split in two. Mary bore a human being. She did not bear an angel. She did not bear GOD. She did not bear “impersonal human nature,” as Trinitarian theory says. She did not take in a person from the outside. She conceived and bore a baby. Mary bore a lineal, biological son of David. Otherwise Jesus does not qualify to be the Messiah. Romans 1:1-4 says that God’s Son was a descendant of David, and he was later installed as Son of God with power at the resurrection, but he was not Son of God for the first time when resurrected.
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