Christians Can Do Better By J. Dan Gill

Christians do not need to embrace the eastern religions, “New Age,” or other philosophies. We do not need to discover Judaism, the Law of Moses, or Islam. Christians today need to rediscover original Christianity. Let us reclaim the spirit and heart of the first Christians. Let us recover their devotion to Jesus as the true Messiah and to the Father alone as the only true God. Let us again embrace YHWH’s own first priority: He is the only one who is truly God. Let us choose to obey from our hearts his prime directive: We shall serve him as the only true God and no one else.

I am a Christian — a Gentile Christian — but above all a Christian. As such, I have determined that my allegiance must be to Christ himself: not to (C)catholic or “orthodox” Christianity, post-biblical church fathers or extra-biblical church creeds. It is interesting to see many Protestant Christians today who on one hand disavow allegiance to the bishops of the “high” churches, while “in” the other hand clutching the non-biblical doctrines which came from just such bishops in earlier centuries.

My refrain is that of the wonderful hymn:

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.[1]

We as Christians can do better — in Christ! I believe that we can and must do better in terms of our understanding about the one true God and his Messiah. And we owe it to Christ, to ourselves, and to all of humanity to do better in our conduct: better in our relationships with the people of this world and better in our conduct with one another as Christians. That is particularly the case with ill-treatment of minority (non-orthodox) Christians. Is it not Jesus himself who said that his followers are to be the salt of the earth — the light of the world? We as Christians can do better![2]

If Christians today are saved, it is not because they believe in a complicated configuration of God called the Trinity. Unfortunately, too many Christians have bought into the strange contradiction that God wants people to be saved, but in order for them to be saved they must confess faith in the complex, incomprehensible, theologically loaded idea of multiple persons being one God. Does that not cast a roadblock in the path of many people? Why would God condition salvation on such a confusing and contradictory concept?[3]

The Trinity – A Doctrine In Search of Proof

The doctrine of the Trinity is a theory forever in search of proof. If it were actually biblical, the Jews who knew God before Christianity would have been declaring it all along. If it was really true, people would just read it in their Bibles and no one would even have to ask questions. The confusing post-biblical idea about multiple persons being one God never deserved to be believed by Christians — much less elevated to become the central doctrine of the church, a belief which is supposed to identify a person as a Christian.

We can understand how post-biblical Gentile Christians were derailed in this matter. They had their own religious and philosophical pasts against them. For example, in their pantheons, had they not long believed in such ideas as various “persons” who were deity and of the same substance? Did not that create a mindset which could more readily slip into the notion of multiple persons being one (God) substance in Christianity?[4] Such ideas may have been acceptable to those Gentile Christians, but should we as Christians today still rest our faith on such reasoning?

We can understand that Christians adopted a view that God is multiple persons under the weight of persecutions by emperors who suppressed any other understanding of God. But we as Christians today are no longer under the decrees of “Christian” emperors. Now, we have only self-imposed requirements to conform to our own Gentile church tradition. But why should we? The truth is better!

Will we really believe that bishops and philosophers, centuries after Christ, somehow became the fathers of the Christian church? And will we today still discount the fact that Christians over the centuries acted with cruelty against their fellow human beings in the name of Christ? Will we excuse them on the utterly lame pretext that “things were different then”? When will we become enough like Jesus that we no longer avert our attention from evil deeds or diminish their significance because it was “Christians” who were doing them?[5]

And perhaps it is the case that ordinary Christians of early centuries were often unable to read the Scriptures for themselves. But what is our excuse now? We have the Scriptures massively available to us. Great numbers of us as Christians can read them. Will we then always rely on our clergy to tell us what we “must” believe in regard to the very God whom we worship? Our clergy are often wonderful people with admirable qualities. However, we must remember that typically they themselves grew up being told what to believe in the matter of defining God. They are people who likely had to confess faith in multiple persons as God or be denied entrance into a Christian seminary. The result has been a clergy that is often more wedded to Gentile church heritage than to Jesus and the Scriptures themselves.

And how long will we entertain people who come to us asserting that they can “prove” the doctrine of the Trinity? Will we forever allow ourselves to be mesmerized by proof-texting, faulty syllogisms and non-scriptural examples? Will we always permit long lists of convoluted arguments for a multiple person God to stand, instead of what should be clear and direct scriptural statements about God? Will we continue to allow the allure of a supposed “mystery” to steal from us the power of the simplicity of the one true God and his Messiah?

And will we cling to the notion that we are invincible? We need to quit believing our own Christian propaganda that Christianity could never be wrong in the matter of defining God. We can read in our New Testament that God declared the Jews — his own chosen people — to be in error in refusing the Messiah. The Apostle Paul tells us as Gentile Christians that we must not think too highly of ourselves lest we should also fall short (Rom. 11:20, 21). If God’s people, the Jews, could err en masse, do we imagine that we as Gentiles cannot?[6]

Let us embrace again the simplicity of the one true God and stop insisting that people must accept a complex notion about multiple persons as God — a notion that we ourselves agree we have never understood. When will we stand up for the sufficiency of faith in YHWH who alone really is God (John 17:3)? When will we defend Jesus as being what he said he was: the Christ of God — God’s son? When will we stand up for those who are seeking to come to Christ and defend them from the burden of confessing the one God as being multiple persons? That is a confession that no one in the Bible was ever instructed to make.

We must no longer be content to live in the haze that lingers over these critical issues. We who have been heirs of confusion must now become the people who celebrate the glory of the Father as the only true God and Jesus as God’s true human Messiah. We as a generation of Christians today can do better. And if we can — then we must.

Gill, J. Dan (2016). Christians Can Do Better. In, The One: In Defense of God (pp. 260-264). Nashville, TN: 21st Century Reformation Publishing.

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[1] Edward Mote, “The Solid Rock,” c. 1834.

[2] Have we not reached a point where we as Christians can dialogue on issues without condemning one another “to hell” on the basis of post-biblical doctrines and creeds? Can we not abandon intimidation, name calling and coercion in favor of persuasion with mutual Christian respect?

[3] See my article, J. Dan Gill, “Yet Another Music City Miracle! Must One Believe in the Doctrine of the Trinity to be Saved?”

[4] For a summary of the debate over homoousios see William Placher, A History of Christian Theology — An Introduction (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), 75–79.

[5] The rationalizing of such persecutions by Christians can still be seen today. A notable example of this is the zealous defense of John Calvin by some modern Calvinists regarding the awful “Servetus Affair.” For a balanced consideration of that matter, read the analysis of attorney and former Calvinist, Stanford Rives, Did Calvin Murder Servetus? (Charleston, SC: Booksurge Publishers, 2008).

[6] In all of this, it should never be thought that Christ intends that there be a separation between Gentiles and Jews within Christianity (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). There is to be one Lord over all (Rom. 10:12). Jewish Christians have at times brought separation by promoting the Law of Moses and failing to grasp the sufficiency of the eternal Torah of the Messiah (Gal. 2:16; 3:26–29; Heb. 13:20). On the other hand, it was post-biblical Gentile converts who developed and promoted critical differences regarding who God is. When Gentile Christians evolved the notion of God as multiple persons, they were separating themselves from the roots of Christian faith in that matter. Those roots run deep in YHWH alone as the only true God and Jesus as the Christ of God ( John 17:3).

The above article was taken from here

Shema! - The Creed of Jesus By J. Dan Gill

Christians today often recite creeds which were devised by post-biblical Gentile Christians centuries after Christ. They do that, while at the same time having never learned the Shema, the biblical creed which God himself gave to Moses. It is that creed which Jesus affirms. When he is approached by a Jewish man who asks him which is the most important of all of the commandments, Jesus responds that it is:

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. — Jesus (Mark 12:29)

Christians today seldom reflect on those amazing words which were spoken by the founder of our faith. That is unacceptable. It is tragic that a great many Christians are unaware that Jesus even spoke those words, words which he himself pronounced to be of paramount importance. Has not our attention been drawn away from the essential teaching of Jesus about God and diverted to creeds developed centuries after the Bible?

Why has the creed of Jesus been so tragically neglected by post-biblical Christians? Isn’t it because his creed does not teach the later dogma that God is multiple persons? Isn’t it because his creed does not assert that he himself is also God in addition to his Father? Furthermore, isn’t the creed of Jesus neglected — perhaps avoided — because it declares that only one individual is God, thus completely disallowing that two or three persons are the one God?

When will we as Christians stand up boldly for Jesus and his teaching about God? When will we join with the man who asked the question, “which is most important of all?” and respond as he did to the words of Jesus? —

Well said, teacher! You have truly said that he is one and there is no other but him (Mark 12:32).

When will we as Christians come to love and celebrate Jesus’ creed and affirm that only one individual is God? When will our children learn the words of Jesus about God? When will our clergy finally abandon a stubborn affirmation of post-biblical ideas that they themselves admit have never made sense? When will a clergyman run to Jesus, and against all others, unceasingly speak his words about God? Again, it is Jesus who said that his Father is “the only true God” ( John 17:1–3).

And notice again, as was the case in Deuteronomy 6, that the pronouns in Mark 12 allow for no other possibility than that the one who alone is God is a “him,” not a “them.” Jesus’ declaration in v. 29 (“the Lord is one”) has a singular verb of being. Even a first year student of New Testament Greek can affirm that more literally the phrase is, “the Lord ‘he is’ one.” In that light, the man speaking with Jesus goes on to say:

And to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mark 12:33).

And how does Jesus respond to the man’s affirmation?

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34).

Jesus recognized that the man had “answered wisely.” On the other hand, what would Jesus say to us today who come ignoring the words he spoke, while at the same time we sternly affirm and defend the words of Gentile Christian orthodoxy that multiple persons are the one God? Might not Jesus say to us that we are not speaking wisely, but foolishly? Will we incur the wrath of Jesus by loving and clinging to the creeds of the Gentile church fathers, while minimizing or disregarding his own words? Can we not at least honor and respect him in this matter as much as the good man did in Mark’s account above? Might not that man who inquired about “which commandment is most important” and then rightly affirmed to Jesus that there is no other God but YHWH stand against us in the day of judgment?

Church creeds and statements of faith which propose multiple persons as one God simply must give way to the creed of Jesus: only one individual is God — the Father. Likewise, our various post-biblical statements of faith must give way to YHWH’s own words: “I am God, and there is no one like me” (Isa. 46:9). Why not let go of our post-biblical Gentile Christian traditions about a multiple-person God? Why not revise our statements of faith? Let us boldly rewrite them so that they rest upon and quote the actual words of Jesus in Mark 12:29 and John 17:3. Let our statements of faith quote the words of YHWH himself in Isaiah 46:9.

As a Christian, deciding about this matter is not difficult for me. It is the creed of God given by Jesus which is to be relied on unconditionally. Words found in the Bible itself are of necessity always preferable to those of later theologians and church councils. In the case of those later decisions and writings, inspiration may be doubted. Utmost confidence should be placed in the Bible, and Christians should all agree that in Scripture true inspiration is certain. We must put an end to interpreting the Bible through the lens of later theologians and councils. Rather, we must reverse that approach and test later doctrinal developments by the Bible itself. When we do, those later innovations all collapse.

The above article was taken from here

Did Jesus raise himself from the dead? by Carlos Xavier

In John 2.19 Jesus did not say, “I will raise myself up.” The word translated “raise” [egeiro] simply means to get up or to wake up. So when we normally speak of someone waking up from sleep, we have no problem. But because the context here has to do with the resurrection, many in the Jesus-is-God movement have tried to use it as some sort of “proof text.” This view is propagated by the Orthodox teaching of the immortal soul that clearly contradicts the biblical view of the state of the dead as total inactivity in the grave (Eccl 9.5, 10).

The fact is that the immediate language in John 2 is figurative since Jesus was comparing his body with the temple and spoke of it in the third person. The point is Jesus' resurrection from the dead as a sign to his unbelieving fellow Israelites, not how it would happen. 

Note that John did not go on to say “So when Jesus raised himself from the dead” but “when he was raised from the dead,” i.e., by God. This is typical resurrection language for Jesus throughout the rest of the NT. This is what the disciples preached and the NT is witness to more than 60 times. They never preached Jesus raised himself from the dead.
Note v. 22: “his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the saying that Jesus had spoken.”

Again, the issue is to believe what Jesus had said about his resurrection from the dead.

Furthermore, the typical resurrection language for Jesus throughout the NT clearly shows that someone else raised him from the dead, namely God the Father. This is what the disciples preached. They never preached Jesus raised himself from the dead.

As Walter Balfour said in his Three essays: On the intermediate state of the dead:

“This the apostles never asserted, but constantly affirmed that God raised him from the dead. If he was the Supreme God he must have raised himself…if the doctrine of disembodied spirits is true, why could not Christ’s disembodied spirit have raised his body from death, allowing the power by which he raised others was derived…unless all his power ceased at his death? Christ always declared his dependence on God for life, and all he possessed.”[1]

Finally, whatever role Jesus played in his own resurrection is to be viewed in terms of the destiny foretold about the Messiah in the OT. That is, by choosing to keep himself as the perfect lamb sacrifice, “without spot or blemish,” he could repeat the words of the Psalmist and be assured that God “would not abandon me in the grave.”

[1] The resurrection from the dead and the Greek terms rendered Judge, Judgment, Condemned, Condemnation, Damned, Damnation, etc., in the New Testament, By Walter Balfour, p 133

The above article was taken from here.

Concerning 1 John 5:7 & 1 Timothy 3:16 by George F. Simmons

 Here is an excerpt from George F. Simmons' 1839 tract entitled

"Who Was Jesus Christ?"

I quote a portion of his tract which deals with the spuriousness of
1 John 5:7 & 1 Tim 3:16 :-

• 1 John 5:7. "For there are three that bear record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth] the spirit, the water, and the blood…"

  Thus reads our English translation. But the words enclosed in brackets are spurious; that is, they are no part of the Bible, no part of the epistle as it was written by John, but have been added without authority at a later time. This is not a matter of any doubt; it is a certainty, and universally allowed at the present day by the advocates, as well as by the opponents, of the Trinity.

  A writer in the Eclectic Review, for instance, "the religious character of which is unsuspiciously orthodox," writes thus of the passage: "We are unspeakably ashamed that any modern divines should have fought for the retention of a passage so indisputably spurious. We could adduce half a dozen, or half a score of passages of ample length, supported by better authority than this, but which are rejected in every printed edition and translation."

  Bishop Lowth, also a Trinitarian and a learned man, is equally decided. "We have some wranglers in theology," he says, "sworn to follow their master, who are prepared to defend anything, however absurd, should there be occasion. But I believe there is no one among us, in the least degree conversant with sacred criticism, and having the use of his understanding, who would be willing to contend for the genuineness of the verse 1 John 5:7."

  I do not therefore dwell on this text for the sake of making its spuriousness any more evident, but because its history will illustrate the manner in which some few other corruptions have crept into our text.

  The books of the New Testament are written in the Greek language from which our English Testament is a translation. Before the invention of printing, the Greek text was handed down by means of manuscript copies of the different parts, on parchment or paper, each taken from one more ancient, and so originally from the autograph of the apostle or evangelist himself. Of these manuscripts we have a large number preserved to us, of different degrees of antiquity, dating probably from the seventh century downwards. Of this epistle of John between one and two hundred codices have been examined; and from this number only one is found containing our present text, or rather, I should say, containing a form of words nearly resembling our present text. That one is the Dublin manuscript. When Erasmus published his edition of the Greek Testament about the period of the Reformation, knowing this verse to be spurious, he of course omitted it; but when his first and his second editions appeared without it, the uninformed "Orthodox" of the day, who had been accustomed to read the text in their Latin translation, "the Vulgate," raised a great clamor against the learned Editor for omitting their favorite stronghold. He answered that it was no part of the epistle of John, and that if they would produce a single manuscript containing it, he would insert it. This Dublin manuscript was finally produced, and in his third and subsequent editions he did insert it, for the sake, as he says, "of avoiding calumny." Thence it has come into the common editions of the present day. But Luther rejected it in his translation, as well as others in theirs; and in some versions and editions it is enclosed in brackets.

  The corruption of the Dublin manuscript is discovered, by certain signs which it would be out of place to explain here, to have been imitated from the Latin Vulgate, which was the version in common use throughout Catholic countries. It appears in the greater part of the copies of this version, although from the best manuscripts of that also, it is cast out. It is quoted by none of the Greek Fathers, although in the Arian controversy which arose in the fourth century, we find the Scriptures ransacked from beginning to end, and even the verse succeeding this cited to furnish confirmation to the doctrine of the Trinity. It was not quoted by them because it was not there. Nor do we find it in the writings of any Latin writer, till Vigilius Tapsensis at the end of the fifth century. It was possibly first inserted in the Vulgate by him, for it was his habit to put his own words in other people’s mouth, and he is supposed to be the author of the creed which goes by the name of Athanasius. But it may, more probably, have been first written in the margin, according to the custom of that age, as a note or gloss, and by a subsequent transcriber have been incorporated into the text, by mistake, or as an authority convenient to the advocates of the Trinity and supposed to be conformable to the true opinions of St. John. It has thence stolen into the fashionable texts of different languages, and stands there like a thief in the crowd, whom everybody knows but nobody seizes. We would better now lay hands on it at once, and cross out the suppositious words in all the Bibles we may possess.

  In this state of the case, it is a very wicked treachery to use this text in argument; and it is also wrong, as it seems to me, to read it from the pulpit without comment, as a part of the epistle, thereby imposing on the ignorant and giving countenance to forgery. The former offense we have to charge on no writers of consideration at the present day; but the latter, I believe, is the prevalent custom in the Trinitarian churches. ...

• 1 Timothy 3:16. It thus reads in our English: "And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."

  The true Bible reading is decided to be "He who was manifest in the flesh" (i.e. Christ) "was justified in the spirit, seen of angels…" It being admitted by men of all modes of belief who have examined the matter that the present is not the true reading, the only doubt is between "which" and "he who." And you will easily perceive by merely looking at the Greek letters how the word "God" might have arisen from either of these. The Greek for God, contracted, as is usual in the manuscripts, is ΘS. The Greek for "he who" is OS. The Greek for "which" is O. Now the copyist seeing O might have added S to make it OS, or finding OS might have added the two dashes which convert it into ΘS signifying God, either by mistake, or more probably from thinking that they had been omitted from mistake by his predecessor, and his theological opinions would have led him to prefer the latter reading. This conjecture is made probable by its having been discovered that the two dashes in question have been added to several of the important manuscripts by an after hand, and with a different ink from that in which the rest is written. But however these conjectures of the manner of the corruption may be received, it is placed beyond any reasonable doubt that the word "God" is no part of the genuine text.

  The manner in which the passage is often cited is an instance of the looseness with which thoughtless readers generally interpret texts of a like kind. It is frequently quoted as if it read "Great is the mystery of the Godhead," but "godliness" means nothing of the sort. Godliness means piety, which it is the great burden of the epistle to enforce. You will perceive from reading the previous and succeeding chapters that certain schismatics had arisen in the church of Ephesus, who inculcated celibacy and an ascetic life as that which was acceptable to God. And there were those also who professed to reveal the hidden philosophy of religion, the mystery of the faith, the secret things of heaven and of futurity, against whom the warning in the last verses of the last chapter is pronounced, and to whom History traces much of the gradual corruption of Christianity. To these teachers Paul alludes in the present text. He has instructed Timothy that with regard to officers of the church, the great concern is that they should be pious; for however much value might be set on other pretended mysteries, yet "the pillar and ground of the truth, and without controversy great, is the mystery of piety. He who was manifest in the flesh, was justified in the spirit" was not justified by knowledge of a dark philosophy, but by the state of his soul, by inward purity, "was seen of angels," even to higher Intelligences was a spectacle of moral beauty, "was preached unto the Gentiles," ... "was believed on in the world," and among the believers were the Ephesians themselves, and finally was "received up into glory," which was a sign of confirmation and acceptance ... All this is a strong enforcement of the great principle that "the pillar and foundation of the faith is" (not asceticism, nor a knowledge of mysteries, but) piety, "godliness," a mysterious bliss, a state of the heart known only to the few who experience it. So that this text, far from favoring the way of thinking called orthodox, is one of those which might perhaps, without injustice, be turned directly against it; for I apprehend that those who follow that way are apt, like the Ephesian Gnostics (although the virtues of the truly devout are continually operating to counteract the tendency), to rely rather on their theological zeal and their knowledge of mysteries than on spiritual purity and heavenly-mindedness; or, at least, that they set a disproportionate value on the former class of virtues.