F4F | Daniel Zelli's False Kenotic Christ

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith here on YouTube. If you've ever been told that the way

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Jesus performed miracles was as a man under the power of the Holy Spirit and that he made no use of his deity, go ahead and hit the subscribe button and don't forget to ring the bell so that you get notified when we update our program.

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You've been deceived. That's actually a false understanding of Christ altogether. And we'll give you just a simple, you know, in this installment, a simple way of understanding that.

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Case in point, though, we are going to be listening to Daniel Zellie. I know we just did a segment from Daniel Zellie where Daniel Zellie was talking about how he's not a sinner saved by grace and that we've got to operate in miracles.

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If we want to be like Jesus, we need to operate like Jesus did in the miraculous. And the core foundation of this doctrine actually comes from their false

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Christology, the belief that somehow Jesus, you know, emptied himself of his deity or made no use of his deity, and we'll talk just a little bit about how that can't possibly be correct.

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So without any further ado, here's a little bit more from that sermon titled, Not a Sinner Saved by Grace, as Daniel Zellie of Glory City Church, that's right, in Brisbane, he works with Catherine Rinala, gives us a little literal false

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Christology as it relates to Jesus and how he did his miracles. Here we go. I learned this morning that how you see yourself is so important, and most people limit themselves in the area of faith, and in the area of healing, and being all that God has called them to be, because they say,

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Jesus can do that, but I can't. So you're limiting yourself if you say,

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Jesus can do that, and I can't. Hey Daniel, can you walk on water? I would like to have you give me a demonstration of your water -walking skills, because, you know, and no tricks, no nothing, and I want you to prove to me that you're not limiting yourself, you know.

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It'd be shown through Scripture, through the five stories that we went through this morning, that in fact, Jesus said, you heal the people, you feed the people, you have faith in God, that God can do something, you have faith in me that I can do something, but I still call you faithless, because you don't have the faith to believe that you can do something.

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Okay, now listen carefully to what he just said. No biblical text actually says that.

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What he's done is he's taken those stories out of context, reworked the punchlines to somehow make it that Jesus was basically saying, although he never said it,

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I'm trying to teach you that you are to do these things. That's not the point of those stories, especially like the feeding of the 5 ,000 and others, but this is where we need to rise as the body of Christ.

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There was a strong apostolic message that came through this morning, and so we need to rise in faith and understand who we are and our authority in Christ, and we need to stand up and be counted for all that God has called us to be, and step out with the authority of God upon us.

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Amen? So we learned that this morning, and so what you see about yourself is so important, and so that idea that Jesus is different, and that we can't operate like him, that belief that he was

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God and so like had an upper hand on things. So note here,

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I got to do a little biblical work or I'm gonna like literally crawl out of my skin, so let me duplicate something here.

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So the Gospel of John chapter 20, worth noting again, is that that Jesus actually performed miracles that were really impressive and notable, and it says this regarding Jesus.

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Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, okay?

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And so you'll note that John is saying that Jesus did a whole lot of other miracles, but these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in his name. In other words, Jesus's miracles, the miracles that he performed, are the proof that he is who he claimed to be, none other than the

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Son of God in human flesh. And so the recording of the miracles that Jesus performed was so that we might believe that he is the

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Messiah, that he is the Son of God, that he's bled and died for our sins by believing that we might have eternal life in his name and by his name.

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And so you'll note that by writing these things down, there is no expectation that the

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Church would continue to operate in these types of miracles, like none whatsoever, and so these were written so that we might believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God. And we're gonna note something here, that the verbs matter. Jesus did many other signs.

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It does not say that the Holy Spirit did other signs through Jesus, or that Jesus performed the signs through the

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Holy Spirit. It literally says Jesus is the one who performed them, and that's gonna be an important thing as we kind of flesh this out.

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So what Daniel Zelli is doing here is just bizarre, because now he's putting a heavy burden on people.

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Oh, you had better start operating in the miraculous, because this is what God expects you to do, because he expected the disciples to do the same thing, and we'll note that, like for instance 2

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Corinthians 12, if I'm not mistaken, explicitly notes the fact that the signs of a true apostle were performed among the people of Corinth, that the apostles like Paul and Peter, they were able to perform these signs and wonders, and this was the sign that they were true apostles.

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And so over and again, when God gives sign gifts like this, they to validate the basic claim that they were sent by God.

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The sign gifts were given to Moses, the sign gifts we see them again with the prophets

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Elijah and Elisha, which validates then the work that they were putting together as they were completing the

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Old Testament, and then again sign gifts show up with Jesus as well as the apostles, and there's no burden put on us.

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It's up to you to operate like this, and you'll note then what Daniel is basically telling people, they've got to do this stuff or else they're not doing what they're supposed to do, they're not being

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Christ -like, and yet nobody in these movements is actually performing these miracles. It's like the land of make -believe and pretend, you know?

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And again, if they were operating in apostolic quality or Jesus quality miracles, everybody has a video camera in their pockets nowadays, they're called smartphones.

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The interwebs would be flooded with miraculous film footage coming from these folks, but they're not.

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So again, this is putting a heavy burden on people that they can't fulfill, which then causes a lot of them to tell all these tall tales that they're the ones operating in these things when they're not.

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Disadvantages us, because we put him into another category, and say that, well, he's different to us, we can't do what he did.

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Now, before you all start to hyperventilate and think I'm preaching that we're all gods and things like that, settle down, everything's cool, let me explain the theology about that.

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Was he God? Absolutely. Did he deny his godliness? Meaning, did he reserve or put aside his godliness?

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Yes, absolutely, Philippians 2. No, he did not. Now, I'm gonna back this up, I want you to hear it, and then he'll quote, he'll cite the text, and we'll take a look at it, actually what it says.

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And the theology about that, was he God? Absolutely. Did he deny his godliness?

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Meaning, did he reserve or put aside his godliness? Yes, absolutely, Philippians chapter 2. And so he walked the earth and operated...

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No, no, no, he did not put aside his deity. So Philippians chapter 2 is the passage in question, and this is the one that is the proof text used by people in the

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NAR, and C. Peter Wagner taught this doctrine, and many others in the

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NAR teach this doctrine, and it's false, and when you pay attention to what's going on in this passage, there's no way you can say that Jesus set his deity aside.

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Here's what it says, Philippians 2, I'll start at verse 4 so we can kind of pick up a little bit of the context.

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Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form...

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Morphe here is like a synonym for like nature, you can say even though he was by nature God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.

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It does not say that he emptied himself of his deity. In fact, the Greek here is actually quite helpful, that even though he is by nature

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God, that he emptied himself, and then here's the Greek, morphein doulu lamban, which is basically a form of the verb lambano, and so form of a slave he took, literally.

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So the way he emptied himself was by taking on the form of a servant, not laying aside his deity.

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In fact, the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, you know, kind of basically lays out something about Jesus, and here's what it says,

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Romans 1, verse 1, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the

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Holy Scripture, concerning his son, who was descended from David, according to the flesh, and was declared to be the

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Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead Jesus Christ our

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Lord. And here we can see that Jesus literally is the God -man, he is 100 % man, 100 %

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God, you know, in fact, that's kind of the whole point. Now this is found in Colossians chapter 2, specifically verse 9, verse 9 says, for in him, in Christ, the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily.

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You're gonna note that this text explicitly says that in Jesus, that the whole fullness of the deity is there within the body of Christ.

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And so this is the important thing, is that when we talk about Christ, we have to talk about him, when we talk about his human nature and his godly nature, his deity, we're talking about him in the abstract here.

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And so we got to understand there's not two Jesuses, and so when we talk about Jesus we have to make sure that we've got the one person, and within the one person, the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, the text says.

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And then in Colossians chapter 1, note what it says this about Christ, that he is the image of the invisible

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God. This is Colossians 1 15. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

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He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And so you'll note then that this is talking about Jesus Christ, that in him, you know, and so this is, you can only talk about somebody this way as if they were the

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God -man, that's really the point that it's making. So Scripture makes no distinction, at least not the distinction that Daniel Zelli is making.

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And then here's the other part of it, I mean, kind of a super simple argument, but in the prophecy regarding Jesus and his conception and birth, in Isaiah chapter 7, it says this in verse 14,

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Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name, and this is super simple, shall call his name

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Immanuel, which means God with us.

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So if Jesus emptied himself of his deity, or set it aside, then this prophecy that Isaiah gives could not have been fulfilled.

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Jesus would not have been Immanuel. He would have been anthropomel, you know, man with us.

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I put Greek and Hebrew together. He would be Ishmael, you know, but I'm messing it up, but you kind of get the idea.

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But Jesus is, in fact, God with us, and so Daniel Zelli's argument that he somehow laid aside, or put aside, or didn't make use of his deity is absolutely shot down by the very text that he quotes, because the detail says he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, so that's the way in which he emptied himself.

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He didn't empty himself by putting his deity aside. Romans 1 makes it clear that Jesus has both a human and a divine nature, and then

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Colossians 2 and Colossians 1 make it clear that he is the image of the invisible God, and that in him all the deity, the fullness of the deity dwells bodily, totally rules out this entire

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Christology. And so, you know, that being the case, he's actually believing in a false

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Jesus. This Christology would put him outside of historic biblical orthodoxy.

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...on the earth as a man, even though he had access to his divinity, he could have...

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Now I'm going to back this up, listen to what he says. ...he's Godless. Yes, absolutely, Philippians chapter 2.

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And so he walked the earth and operated on the earth as a man. Even though he had access to his divinity, he could have at any time called his divinity, but he chose to demonstrate to us what it meant to come as a man, and live as a man submitted to God in communion with the

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Holy Spirit, and he showed us how that operated, so therefore it says that he humbled himself and came as a servant, as a man.

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Now note what he just said, that whole narrative. The reason why Jesus came and did what he did was to show us what it means to operate as a man under the power of the

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Holy Spirit. No scripture says that, especially Philippians 2. So this whole idea of the canonic

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Jesus, that he laid his deity aside or didn't make use of his deity, absolutely false.

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In fact, by virtue of the Incarnation, that in Jesus the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, by virtue of the

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Incarnation, there's nothing that Jesus did that he didn't do as the God -man, including walking across the street.

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Because at no point do you sit there and say, well, you only need a human nature to walk across the street, so Jesus didn't use his divine nature to do so.

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You can't chop Jesus up like that. Jesus is forever the God -man in whom the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, so everything

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Jesus does, he does by both natures, and yet there's only one Jesus.

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And so that's exactly what scripture is teaching. So Daniel Zeli, he's teaching absolutely a false

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Jesus, a Jesus that does not exist, and a Jesus that is dangerous. And this is the whole basis, then, of the

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NAR. Jesus just came to show you what's possible. No, no, no. Jesus did what was impossible, that's the saving of your soul by him living perfectly in your place, sinlessly in your place, dying on your behalf, and literally having your sins imputed to him, and him suffering the wrath of God in your place, which no human being can do even under the operation of the

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Holy Spirit. Only the God -man can do that. So what Daniel Zeli is teaching, it's not biblical, in fact it's a false

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Jesus, and that would put him outside of Christianity altogether. He's a heretic. And anybody who's buying into this

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Christology is also a heretic, because to have a different Jesus is to have a different God, and that God can't save you.

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And so you'll note, then, that all of their false doctrine regarding what is holiness and stuff like that, being like Jesus by manifesting miracles and stuff like that, it's based upon a false

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Jesus, which explains why none of them are actually performing any of these miracles anyway. Now if you found this helpful, please share this video with other people.

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So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ, and His vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.