JESUS WAS NOT ALL-POWERFUL AND WAS THEREFORE NOT GOD

The Christian faith is based on the doctrine that Jesus is God made man. He is all God and all man. As God is almighty judge and Jesus was neither almighty or a qualified judge that cannot be correct.

JESUS WAS NOT ALMIGHTY

Study Matthew 28:18. Jesus declares that he has all power in Heaven and earth. But we read that he could do no great work in Nazareth except cure a few sick people (Mark 6:5). In Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, Haley says that this does not challenge the awesome infinite power of Jesus but only says that he could not do miracles among those without faith only among some believers. This is a lie for even Mark has Jesus doing miracles among people who were insane and did not believe in him and he had to do his first miracles among unbelievers to get believers. He appeared to unbelievers following his resurrection. It would be dangerous and fascist and unbiblical to say that he could not cure unbelievers. If Jesus did miracles for the believers then he did unnecessary ones for miracles are for causing faith and they have got it unless he wanted to deepen their faith. The only reasons Jesus could have for doing no miracles before unbelievers is that it would be forcing them to believe or that they will mock. Miracles should be done before unbelievers. But if the forcing excuse is true then he can’t do them before believers either for it forces them to stay believing and/or believe more. And if the mocking is inevitable and will only advertise the miracle for the people will notice the cure. But the person might change and might not mock for he knows he will only make a fool of himself. The verse plainly suggests that Jesus wanted to do miracles but could not when we know the author through that unbelief made no difference. If the lack of faith in others was stopping Jesus he could have put the others in the presence of believers for he had plenty following him about. He did not do this so it was impotence that was his obstacle. Proving this, Matthew and Luke who had a higher estimate of Jesus’ superhuman powers dropped the verse.

Jesus was not omnipotent and so was not God. He was not the future Isaiah called Mighty God if that title is to be taken literally. And Christians take it that way and say it refers to Jesus.

OTHER TEXTS

1 Corinthians 11:3 says that man is woman’s boss like God is Christ’s. If Jesus were God he could not have a head. A head is the person who runs your life or to whom you must refer to for permission before you do anything you think he might not want you to do. If Jesus were God he ran his own. If God and Jesus are just pretending then they need mental treatment. If Jesus was God then he could not sin and could have had no head to tell him to do right. Robots that have to do what you want don’t need a boss. Paul is saying that Jesus can sin though he does not and perhaps never will.

After condemning human wisdom and recommending the foolishness of Christianity, Paul forbade Christians to be proud of anything human (1 Corinthians 3:21). His Jesus was an ordinary man until he was turned into something new and better at his resurrection which made him the Son of God. He condemns the pre-resurrection Jesus and he says he was sinless when he died and is silent on whether or not this means he was always impeccable. His Jesus was not God. (Paul meant his doctrine that his foolishness must be preferred because he admitted and all know that the doctrine of the cross of Christ is absurd to our minds.)

Revelation 1:1 says that God gave the revelations in that book to Jesus to be revealed to the author through an angel. If Jesus were God he would not have needed to receive the revelations himself. Christians explain that Jesus as man had to receive the knowledge just like God loading the knowledge from the divinity into the humanity. It is hard to believe that such an unsophisticated Church and revelation writer would have had such an advanced theological insight and been willing to hint at it to the confusion of the people. Moreover, Jesus did not need to be given the revelation when God could have given the revelation to the angel for him to give it to John. Jesus must have got the revelation because he wanted to know it.

Jesus then is not all-powerful and does not have the knowledge to be God.

CONCLUSION

Jesus Christ was not God even if he claimed to be God. We have no evidence whatsoever that he made this claim. The primitive Christians didn’t believe he was God and it was an invention of the apostate Church. With man-gods, if they deny they are divine it is taken as confirmation that they are and if they affirm it that is taken as confirmation as well. Jesus himself did not stay unscathed from that problem.

BOOKS CONSULTED

A CALL TO HERESY, Robert Van de Weyer, Lamp Press, London, 1989
ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated
ASKING THEM QUESTIONS, Various, Oxford University Press, London, 1936
CHRIST IS GOD, Rev JP Arendzen DD, Augustine Publishing Company, Devon, 1987
CHRIST OUR LIGHT, J Buys SJ Geoffrey Chapman and Gill & Son, London-Melbourne, Dublin 1966
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED Ed John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship Inc, Minneapolis, 1973
DID JESUS CHRIST REALLY COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN? Alan Hayward, Christadelphian ALS, Birmingham
DO CHRISTIANS BELIEVE IN THREE GODS? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1992
EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
FOUR GREAT HERESIES, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1975
GOD AND THE HUMAN CONDITION, F J Sheed, Sheed & Ward, London 1967
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1994
HONEST TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM Press, London, 1963
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES John Wijngaards, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1998
JESUS AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN THE GOSPELS, Daniel J Grolin, George Ronald, Oxford, 2002
JESUS GOD THE SON OR SON OF GOD? Fred Pearce Christadelphian Publishing Office, Birmingham
MERE CHRISTIANITY, CS Lewis, Fontana, Glasgow, 1975
MIRACLES, CS Lewis, Fontana, London, 1960
PRIESTLAND’S PROGRESS, Gerald Priestland, BBC, London, 1981
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE, Henry Morris, Moody Press, Bucks, 1988
SET MY EXILES FREE, John Power, Logos Books, MH Gill & Son Ltd, Dublin, 1967
SOME MODERN FAITHS, Maurice C Burrell and J Stafford Wright, Intervarsity Press, Leicestershire, 1988
THE CASE FOR CHRIST, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins and Zondervan, Michigan, 1998
THE EARLY CHURCH, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
THE GODHEAD EXPLAINED, Christadelphian Press, Beverley, South Australia
THE METAPHOR OF GOD INCARNATE, John Hick, SCM Press, London, 1993
THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE, John Hick ed., SCM Press, London, 1977
THE NEW CULTS, Walter Martin, Vision House, Santa Ana, California, 1980
THE SPIRIT OF GOD, John Bedson, Lightstand Burbank CA 1984
THE UNAUTHORISED VERSION, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1992
UNDERSTANDING THE CULTS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Campus Crusade for Christ, San Bernardino, 1983
UNITARIAN CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER ESSAYS, William Ellery Channing, The Bobs-Merrill Company Inc, Kansas, 1957
YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER IN PARADISE ON EARTH, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, New York, 1982

THE WWW

http://www.christadelphia.org/wrested1.htm

http://www.kevinquick.com/kkministries/books/reasoning/nwt.html,
Kevin Quick discusses the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the Bible never says that Jesus is God

www.gospelassemblyfree.com/facts/fathersonwayne.htm
Father and/or Son by H Wayne Hamburger