Is the Son really the Son?

 

“Christ was the Son of God before He was born of a woman. … We are dealing with a metaphorical use of the word 'son.'” “The Son is not the natural, literal Son of the Father.” Ángel Manuel Rodríguez, Adventist World, A Question of Sonship, November 20151 .

A metaphor. What does that mean? A metaphor is like a simile, except without the words, “like” or “as”. Therefore, the meaning of Ángel Rodríguez’ statement is that “ Christ was [like] the Son of God before He was born of a woman.” But He wasn’t really the Son of God. He was not really begotten, but simply played that part. In all actuality, He was one God among three.

But, the scripture is clear, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten^G3439 of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14).

G3439

μονογενής

monogenēs

mon-og-en-ace

From G3441 and G1096; only born, that is, sole: - only (begotten, child).

Total KJV occurrences: 9

Because theogians have a title after their name, they are due the respect of the people. And the people love to have it so. Because the heads of NIST had titles after their names, their 9/11 official story must be accepted, despite all the 9/11 eye-witness testimonies that many bombs were exploding inside the world trade center buildings 1 and 2. And because the head of NIH has a title after his name we must believe everything he has to say about a pandemic.

“So there was a division among the people because of Him.” (John 7:43). The people had such a fear toward their leaders that most could not stand decidedly for their Messiah. Their leaders wore flowing robes with all the acoutriments that demanded respect.

And another biblical precedent for this is the way Satan during the Dark Ages caused the whole of Christendom, and how at the end he will lead the whole world, to admire and worship the beast. In either case, whether Papacy or Pharisim, Satan gives his agents great authority and esteem so that ultimately Satan gets the authority and worship.

“And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” (Rev. 13:2-4).

What about us Adventists? Are we repeating history? We see our religious leaders who hold, D.D. or Th.D. as the next thing to God, and we stop thinking for ourselves. Isn’t this why Christ was crucified? Degrees and titles may serve a purpose, as well as other objects of outward show, but Jesus came without any of those trappings. “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isa. 53:2,3).

Let us bow before the condemnation of the Law of God, and be justified by the suffering Servant of God. We will then be given the Spirit of God for discernment. We will take the word of God and the Spirit of Prophecy, and we will be taught of God. The false prophets and false priests will be exposed, and their Trinity god of persecutions will be exposed to be the fraud that it is. The only true God is the Father of creation, and the only true Lord is His only begotten Son.

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.” (1Jn. 2:22-24).

“But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name.” (John 20:31).

John's holy Spirit experience

John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit during his whole life because he was loved by parents who, like Hannah, Abraham, and Sarah, had longed for a child during their whole adult lifetime. Having suffered in the flesh and spirit they had completely ceased from self, and could be perfect parents. No self-indulgence, self-pity, self-exaltation, or selfishness marred their parental upbringing of John. They perfectly represented God to him. They perfectly represented the God of love; and the baby, the child, the youth, and man, had responded in kind. Under the barrage of love, John surrendered to all the Law that his parents had trained him up in. The Law was written in his heart, and there the holy presence of God abode and was shed abroad in his heart.

Sin was not wholly expunged from John, he being subject to the fallen nature of every descendant of Adam. But, his constant effort was repentance to God and faith in His mercies, a consistent repentance for his weakness and failures, and an effort for the expulsion of his sins. And he always knew that, like his loving parents had ever been to him, the God of heaven could be gracious toward his lack when no one else could be gracious toward him, that his God could accept him when no one else could, that his God could be patient with him when no one else could be, that his God loved him when no one else did. By faith he saw the invisible character of the King, and was humbled by the sight. God was his Rock, rock-steady like no man could ever be for John, making his spirit rock-steady in holiness like the holy Spirit of his God

The Holy Spirit is the holy presence of God abiding in His children. It is not another person in a trinity god, but an experience, a state of being, a transformation. It is redemption. The holy Spirit is encapsulated in the holy word of God that has found lodgment in the soul, written there by its Redeemer. The holy Spirit of God in the holy words of God in the soul is His means for purifying the soul through truth. “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” (John 17:17). “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15:7).

“Fathers and mothers were to instruct their children that the law of God is an expression of His character, and that as they received the principles of the law into the heart, the image of God was traced on mind and soul.” The Desire of Ages. p. 69.

“Every child may gain knowledge as Jesus did. As we try to become acquainted with our heavenly Father through His word, angels will draw near, our minds will be strengthened, our characters will be elevated and refined. We shall become more like our Saviour. And as we behold the beautiful and grand in nature, our affections go out after God. While the spirit is awed, the soul is invigorated by coming in contact with the Infinite through His works. Communion with God through prayer develops the mental and moral faculties, and the spiritual powers strengthen as we cultivate thoughts upon spiritual things.” Ibid. p. 71.

The holy Spirit uses holy truth, being, as it were, present with those words, and giving them power to quicken the whole soul, mind, and body, and to redeem the soul. The Spirit has access to the person through the conscience. And as the word of truth comes into contact with, and attaches to, the spirit in the conscience, the presence of truth there can only result in “sanctification of the [s]pirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” (1Pet. 1:2).

“But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the [s]pirit and belief of the truth; whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2Thess. 2:13,14). I decapitalize “Spirit” because King James’ translators were working with Koine Greek, which was written in all lower case letters, and they used their best knowledge of the gospel to capitalize words that had divine significance.

But they also worked under the strong Constantine-like demands of an unanointed, Evangelical King, whose fractionalized kingdom, like Constantine’s, was being destablized because of conflicting religions. So, King James, as did Constantine the Great, used religion to cement his realm together again. The translators therefore were subject to the King’s erroneous requirements of interpretation. He had neither the interpretive skill and knowledge of the educated Koine scholars, nor the anointing of the persecuted Puritan preachers, to demand his spin on the new translation.

Therefore there is an obvious unhealthy bias in favor regarding the Spirit in the King’s authorized New Testament and a prejudice against the Old Testament in regard to God’s holy Spirit. We see this in that His Spirit must be manipulated into a person. “The Spirit of Him that raised Jesus from the dead”, “His Spirit”, was always slanted to invent a Spirit with its own personality, person, and place in a trinity of Gods. This was not intended by Paul and the apostles and prophets, as can be seen by a candid reading of Romans 8:11. “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”

And the prejudice can be further seen in the translation of God’s Spirit in the Old Testament.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. 

Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. 

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.” (Psa. 51:10-12).

[Note that the “Holy Spirit” was neither capitalized nor given third person attributes. It was clearly God’s possession, a faculty of His omnipotent mind, the expression from His very being, a function for the restoration of David’s joy, His healing property for David’s salvation. The parallelism of verse 11 equates “thy holy spirit” to “thy presence”, and verse 12, “thy free spirit” to “thy salvation”. To David “thy holy spirit” was no different than “a right spirit” and “a clean heart”, in verse 10. This is because our spirit under the stronger influence of Christ’s Spirit, and His Spirit dominated by His Father’s greater SPIRIT, is the Spirit proclaimed by the Bible. As it is written in 2 Corinthians 6:17, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” (Notice Paul here utterly rejects any third being of a trinity usurping the blessed experience of the holy union between the converted soul and its God. The third entity within the triune Godhead must be the synergistic atonement of the Father with a newly reconciled child of Adam through His one, only begotten God-Man.) Romans 8:16 also makes this plain. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”)]

In those early days of the Reformation, so surrounded by dark ages of devilish papal heresies, its understandable that the blasphemous trinity god would naturally still be perpetuated by the clearest minds of religious scholarship, even by both opposing factions of the gospel.

The great familiar spirit

"Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." (1John 1:3).

Every epistle introduction involves two persons at the throne of heaven. And there are only two thrones.

"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." (Rev. 3:21,22).

And there is no third throne for a third divine being, because Jesus was the the Person who said those words. Jesus is the Spirit. He is our Comforter. Don't let anyone steal Jesus from you. Don't let His tenderest care for you and all of His children be taken away, and be attributed to somebody else claiming divinity.

Three is a big number in religious matters, and can be seen from the most ancient archeology. It appeared long before Christianity. Hecate was possibly the earliest myth of a divinity that had the attribute of three. Long before there was a Zeus or Hera. Long before Osiris or Isis. And Baal or Ashtoreth. Hecate seems to predate all the gods. Wicca is called the oldest religion, and Hecate is older than Wicca.

Hecate is a goddess. She is the goddess of the sky, the earth, and of the underworld. That translates to ruler over heaven and Earth and hell. What infamous being do we know who lays claim to the same? Wouldn't Satan represent the antitype of Hecate? Wouldn't Satan usurp the number three for his spiritual habitation? Who could run from a god who rules all that men can conceive? Who would not feel terror living under such a manifesting potentate?

This is just as the narcissistic master of manipulation would have it. This background explains why Christianity has a Trinity of unbiblical gods. Satan refused to accept his expulsion from the government of heaven.

"The Sovereign of the universe was not alone in His work of beneficence. He had an associate—a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” John 1:1, 2. Christ, the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God." Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 34.

"The Father wrought by His Son in the creation of all heavenly beings. “By Him were all things created, ... whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him.” Colossians 1:16. Ibid.

"So long as all created beings acknowledged the allegiance of love, there was perfect harmony throughout the universe of God.... There was no note of discord to mar the celestial harmonies. But a change came over this happy state. There was one who perverted the freedom that God had granted to His creatures. Sin originated with him who, next to Christ, had been most honored of God and was highest in power and glory among the inhabitants of heaven. Lucifer, “son of the morning,” was first of the covering cherubs, holy and undefiled. He stood in the presence of the great Creator, and the ceaseless beams of glory enshrouding the eternal God rested upon him." Ibid. p. 35.

In Lucifer was found a condition that he harbored even after long instructions from the King through His Princely Son. When infinitely wise love seeks the restoration of a drifting soul, and cannot penetrate that soul's stubborn resistance, eventually its condition becomes incurable. Every appeal turned down, however politely, however nicely, however affectionately, hardens that soul into an infidel hardihood. 

Once Lucifer, filled with proud self-justification, arrived at that utterly lost state, then he sought to turn others of the angelic family into his path of self-exaltation. Once he committed that intentional affront to God's autocracy, then God arraigned him as treasonous, and shut him out of the glorious and life-giving presence of the only self-existent One. The reality of God's permanent disposition toward him finally occurred to him and settled in. That's when despair gripped him, only too late. He had shaken his fist at the Most Holy One too many times to justly overlook. 

How could God maintain discipline and order in His kingdom if He gave undue respect to the deceitful pretenses of the most ingenious of the powerful angels who excel in strength, both physically and mentally. That would be subordinating Himself to a weak created being. How could the infinite universe be governed and upheld by a created being, the Father allowing the highest creature to play games with his Creator?

"Satan in heaven had hated Christ for His position in the courts of God. He hated Him the more when he himself was dethroned. He hated Him who pledged Himself to redeem a race of sinners." Desire of Ages, p. 49.

So, to this day, Lucifer has tried to reinstate himself to the position he had at the beginning. But if he could never have it in reality, he would at least play the part, imagining himself not only in the presence of glory, but, as he had come to yearning for, himself the center of glory. To have such recognition and worship could only happen by forcing the human race to turn away from Jehovah Father and Son, and receive a new construct. Satan would own the whole throne as God does. 

He would appoint himself to be Vicar of God. He would take over God's office as Comforter/Lifegiver. Thus, he could make himself appear to recognize God's government as legitimate, but really place himself in the most involved office and most pleasing to a quintessential narssissist, the office that works the affections. The human being no longer under th strong spiritual control of the holy God, they could be lured around by stimulating their need for acceptance. The undue familiarity of the familiar spirits.

"Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God." (Lev. 19:31).

"And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people." (Lev. 20:6).

"And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity." (Eze. 23:3).

And to keep up the pretense of honoring the government of heaven, the vicar of God has instituted his own high priest, the vicar of Christ. That must be why Jesus represented the Revelation's dragon and  beast similarly, both having seven heads and ten horns, and both war-mongers.

No heretical matter, one straight chain of truth

"And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." (Rev. 12:17).

This beautiful confession from Mrs. E.G. White mandates that there must be a revival of past SDA history for the purpose of showing that what she had written, before and after 1898, was "a straight chain of truth" without a single heresy.

Ellen White purportedly changed her non-trinitarian theology to worship the Trinity post-1898. A war is underway. The fifth trumpet beast from the bottomless pit has overcome us, and will soon kill us spiritually. Our spiritual death will, to some degree, come from adopting the ancient Baalpeor, worldwide Trinity god by Ecumenical inducements, bribes, and the threat of Nicean-like persecution--and then worshipping the pagan god over the Father, who the Bible says is above all.

"One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." (Eph. 4:6).

Such a blatant departure from the everlasting only true God the Father, and the only begotten Son of His bosom, must result in a similar purging of His precious Advent movement as it did His equally precious Exodus movement. 

"With the merciful Thou wilt shew Thyself merciful; with an upright man Thou wilt shew Thyself upright; 

With the pure Thou wilt shew Thyself pure; and with the froward Thou wilt shew Thyself froward." (Psa. 18:25,26).

The years 1885-1887 were the European mission referred to in the Ellen White letter below. At the latest then, 1885 could be a kind of marker to commence a non-trinitarian SDA history and a "straight chain of truth" "without one heretical sentence", extending past 1898 to 1905 when the following letter was written.

This shows that 1898 was not a benchmark for a Godhead doctrine reform, but rather a continuous period of an unbroken, undisturbed platform of truth during the 20+ years that surrounded the date that The Desire of Ages was published, with its "three living persons of the heavenly trio".

"I am now looking over my diaries and copies of letters written for several years back, commencing before I went to Europe, before you [Mabel] were born. I have the most precious matter to reproduce and place before the people in testimony form. While I am able to do this work, the people must have these things to revive past history, that they may see that there is one straight chain of truth, without one heretical sentence, in that which I have written."— Letter 329a, 1905, pp. 1, 2. (To Mabel White, November 16, 1905.)

And doesn't that sound like something Jesus said?

"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Matt. 5:17).

And David,

"The works of His hands are verity and judgment; all His commandments are sure. 

They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness." (Psa. 111:7,8).

Yet, Satan has raised an outcry against those immutable statements also. But the truth remains, "I am the Lord, I change not." (Mal. 3:6).

The mystery religion

 "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." (1Cor. 1:19).

"Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (2Tim. 3:7).

"The rebelling mind can recreate the truth and call it truth. It can remodel the truth, and then drum up many arguments to prove its new truth. The unregenerate mind will study and study and study nature and revelation to hopefully stumble upon some evidence until it finds the missing link. Does not the Bible call us to “light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till [we] find it?” (Luke 15:8). Yes, but from the context of only true God."

Much controversy has erupted on the Trinitarian front. Can we find the hidden issues behind the contending parties? Here's one.

The fallen nature seeks salvation the easy way. In spiritual things faith alone can attain it. But faith is not obtained overnight. Neither is the road to it a rose garden. Redemption is precious, that is, it costs infinite riches. It costed the most precious life of the Prince of heaven. Salvation is deliverance from Satan and sin. And it will cost the life of everyone who lays claim to it. It will cost them their idols and every god that vie for our heart.

Therefore, conviction of sin has always been the foundation of the kingdom of God. And the evasion of conviction was ever been the foundation of the kingdom of Satan. Therefore we have these two axioms:

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in the them." (Isa. 8:20).

"Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." (Gal. 3:24).

Only the religion of God will lead to God. And only the religions of Satan will end at Satan. Satan's religions can never lead to God. The Law of God is the Law of love, the Law of righteousness. But the law of the devil is the law of lust and sin. The two laws are as far apart as the North Pole to the South Pole. God's Law is self-sacrificing; Satan's law is self-indulgent. God's Law is self-depricating; Satan's is self-exaltation. Love "seeketh not her own"; but lust is the only object and subject of self. Disinterested love serves others; self-interest forces others to serve it. Love is meek and trustful; lust is proud and trusts no one. The wine of God brings health to the body, brain, and soul. The wine of Babylon promises wholeness but never delivers. Love is everlasting life; but lust eternal desolation and bitterness.

God's humbling conviction of sin speaks of a loving Father. Satan's school of self-preservation speaks only of a mean opportunist. True life comes only through death. Real death comes through dodging death to self.

In Satan's religion, under his rule, the mystical, the unknowing is the object of study. It's a system of ever learning to know nothing. It's a school that teaches a round of busywork.

This is the motive behind the worship of the Trinity. "You can't understand the three in one God! It's a mystery! You can meditate on it for eternity and never know how three equals one! We worship three divine Beings, but not three Gods! It's a mystery! God the Father is highest in rank among the three, but they are all co-equal in every respect. It's just another mystery!

Sometimes the anti-Trinitarian battle can go hard

"Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." (Psa. 55:6).

I just read an asitreads post, "Separate worship for the Spirit?" I came away with my head spinning. Did Ellen White really sing praise to the Holy Spirit? What's going on here?

Now where do I go? Is Jesus everything to us, i.e. the Holy Spirit/Comforter, or is He not all that? If she did believe believe Jesus is the Holy Spirit, as she said on occasion, then why would she treat the Spirit as a separate person/being in a heavenly Trio?

This is getting way too hard to explain, not only to ourselves, but to others. It boils down to a few measures. 

1) Let alone Ellen White's confusing statements, and stick to the Bible's clearer descriptions of the Father, Son, and Their Spirit,

2) Keep in mind that the Abomination of Desolation is using the "blessed Trinity" as the focal point of its Ecumenical evangelism, and to keep resolved to remain as distant as possible from the Trinity god, which is Baal, Ashtoreth, and Tammuz,

3) Repent to the Lord for my dull brain, to broaden my strength of conceptualizing, and for my slowness of heart to have simple, powerful trust in Jesus

https://www.asitreads.com/blog/2017/12/23/separate-worship-for-the-spirit?rq=worship

Ellen G. White's living will

"...one straight chain of truth, without one heretical sentence, in that which I have written. This, I am instructed, is to be a living letter to all in regard to my faith.

Did the servant of the Lord stop being an anti-Trinitarian after 1898? Her own written admission should be sufficient to silence all post-mortem attempts to make her a Trinitarian.

"I am now looking over my diaries and copies of letters written for several years back, commencing before I went to Europe, before you were born. I have the most precious matter to reproduce and place before the people in testimony form. While I am able to do this work, the people must have these things to revive past history, that they may see that there is one straight chain of truth, without one heretical sentence, in that which I have written. This, I am instructed, is to be a living letter to all in regard to my faith.” (Letter 329a, 1905).