Presenting the Deity of Christ to Jehovah's Witnesses, part 2 of 2

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Witnessing to Mormons: Soteriology (part 3 of 3)

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to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence.
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The Dividing Line is brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries, Calvary Press Publishers, the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, and Bethany House Publishers. Your host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an
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Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now by dialing 1 -888 -TALK -960.
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That's 1 -888 -TALK -960. And now with today's topic, here is James White.
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And welcome to The Dividing Line today. My name is James White. Don't pick up that phone this week, though.
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We aren't going to be able to take phone calls this week. Instead, we're going to be looking at a subject, and I invite you to take your
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Bible and grab a piece of paper and pencil or pen and listen carefully as we present a subject today that hopefully will be very useful to you in your practical
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Christian living, and that is sharing the truth about who Jesus is with Jehovah's Witnesses.
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Specifically, how do you demonstrate to a Jehovah's Witness the deity of Christ in a way that really communicates to the average
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Witness? A new way, a way that maybe isn't the standard way that you've heard before. That's what we're going to be talking about today on The Dividing Line.
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I hope you will take your Bible, I hope you will open your Bible, and I hope you will take lots of notes as we look today.
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The question is, is Jesus Jehovah? And how do you show this wonderful truth to an individual who will not accept this, such as one of Jehovah's Witnesses?
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Even Christians have some bad presuppositions hiding in the back of their minds in regards to the subject of the nature of God.
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Even Christians, when they hear the question, is Jesus Jehovah, can sometimes struggle because there is this incessant bent toward Unitarianism.
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What do I mean by that? Well, when someone says, is Jesus Jehovah, we automatically start thinking of Jehovah as a person, as a singular person, so that the question automatically in the back of our mind becomes, well, is
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Jesus Jehovah, or is the Father Jehovah, or is the Spirit Jehovah? They can't all be Jehovah, because we take that as an assumption that Jehovah is
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Unitarian. That Jehovah as a name refers to only one person, rather than the truth of the matter being that Jehovah refers to the one true being of God, and Christians believe that there are three persons, the
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Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that share that one eternal, infinite being of God.
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One being shared by three persons. We differentiate between the terms being and person.
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Being is what makes God, God. The persons are those centers of self -consciousness that are in relationship to one another.
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The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. The Father has sent the Son into the world in the person of Jesus Christ.
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The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to indwell believers, to indwell the church, to convict the world of sin.
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The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. We differentiate between the words person and being, and we say that the word being is properly described by the name
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Yahweh, or as we slaughter it in the English language, Jehovah, but since Jehovah is a normal term we end up using in English, and the normal term that we end up using especially with Jehovah's Witnesses, I'll go ahead and use that terminology.
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Jehovah is used to describe the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the
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Scriptures. Now obviously Jehovah's Witnesses immediately have to object to that idea, because if that's true, if it is the case that Jehovah is used of the
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Father, and of course they will say that it is, and it's used of the Son, and it's used of the Spirit, they won't accept the assertion concerning the
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Son, then we have a doctrine far different than the Jehovah's Doctrine, that the
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Father alone is Jehovah, that Jesus is Michael the Archangel, the first of his created beings, and that the
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Holy Spirit is in fact an impersonal active force, not a person in the proper sense of the term at all.
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And so how do you go about helping a person to understand the doctrine of the
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Trinity through this particular means? Well I have suggested many times that as you sit down to a conversation with one of Jehovah's Witnesses, or maybe you're not sitting down because you're standing at the door, which has happened many times with me, and the question comes up, well why do you believe in the
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Trinity, or why do you believe the way that you believe, that you approach the subject somewhat along these lines.
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This is how I would do it. Well, you know, it's interesting. You all are known as individuals who testify to Jehovah's name.
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Wouldn't you agree with that? And they will. Well, we know the name Jehovah as well. In fact, in our church we sing many hymns that speak of Jehovah.
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But when we see the use of the term Jehovah in the Bible, first of all we see that the
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New Testament writers did not specifically use that word. Even though Jehovah's Witnesses may claim that that word appeared in the early manuscripts of the
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Bible, there's no evidence of that, but they did cite passages from the Old Testament that were originally about Jehovah, and applied those passages in the
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New Testament in a very significant way. Certainly, a Jehovah's Witness is going to agree with me that the
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Father is identified as Jehovah. Now, if I'm talking with the Witnesses, I frequently like to use the
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Mormons as my example. When I'm talking to the Mormons, I like to use the Jehovah's Witnesses as my example. But I will say to the
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Jehovah's Witness, now, for example, you've probably met the Mormon missionaries on their bikes. Are you aware of the fact that the average
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Mormon missionary will argue with you that the Father is ever identified as Jehovah? And many
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Witnesses are not aware of that fact. Some might be. They will argue, in fact, that only
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Jesus is identified as Jehovah, and the Father is another God named Elohim.
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And so I'll go to passages in Matthew 22 and other places where clearly the Father is identified as Jehovah.
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It is Jehovah in Isaiah chapter 53 that causes our iniquities to fall upon the
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Messiah, and obviously the Messiah is Jesus. And so, clearly, the Father is identified as Jehovah.
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But then where you and I, speaking to the Witness, disagree is on this point, that in point of fact, the
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New Testament identifies Jesus as Jehovah. Now, you may disagree with that, but I think that the identification is so strong and so clear that if we simply look at the scriptures, we'll see that this is the case.
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And I'd be glad to look at the scriptures with you to look at that, but before I do that, let me also say that the Bible identifies the
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Spirit as the Spirit of Jehovah. And so if you have the Father identified as Jehovah, and you have the name of Jehovah used with Jesus and with the
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Holy Spirit, you have one name being used with three persons. And this is very much what we understand the doctrine of the
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Trinity to communicate, that one name referring to the being of God shared by three persons, the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You see, if you've explained it this way, you've helped the Jehovah's Witness to understand that you're not a modalist, you're not a
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Sabellianist, you're not a Oneness Pentecostal, someone who actually denies the doctrine of the Trinity by denying the existence of the three persons.
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Most Jehovah's Witnesses think that Christians are modalists. Most Jehovah's Witnesses have a wrong understanding of the doctrine of the
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Trinity. Not all, but most. And the Watchtower Society is more than happy to allow the vast majority of its people to continue in their ignorance.
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It certainly serves their purposes. And so, by correcting that understanding right up front, you can keep the conversation going the right direction.
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But having made such a claim, and having explained the doctrine of the Trinity and the idea of the one being and the three persons, and the name
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Jehovah being used with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, you then need to open up your Bible and explain this.
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And I cannot overemphasize the importance of being able to show, in the pages of the
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Jehovah's Witnesses' own Bible, where these things are seen. One of the advantages of this particular approach in demonstrating the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the
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Trinity is, well, it's twofold. A, for the average Jehovah's Witness to demonstrate that Jesus is simply called
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God is not enough. They have been given so much information about, well, Moses was called a God, and yada yada yada, that a
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God, God, a mighty God versus the Almighty God, all these distinctions that have been introduced into Jehovah's Witness thinking somewhat mute the testimony to the deity of Christ in demonstrating that he's called
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God. But, any Jehovah's Witness will recognize that if Jesus is called
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Jehovah, all the arguments about God and a God become irrelevant.
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If Jesus is Jehovah, that's it. No longer need we argue about whether it's
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God or a God in John 1 .1. No longer do we need to argue about whether in Isaiah 9, Jesus is
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Almighty God or just a mighty God, et cetera, et cetera. If Jesus is Jehovah, the case is closed.
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So that's the first advantage. The second advantage is, you can show this teaching, this approach to the
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Witness, right in the pages of the New World Translation of the Scriptures, their own Bible, without dealing with a bunch of mistranslations and questionable translations in the pages of the
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New World Translation. And the nice thing is, the Bible goes with the Witness out the door.
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What do I mean by that? Well, if you've ever tried to share literature, tracts, books, with Jehovah's Witnesses, 99 % of them won't take them.
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99 % of your average Jehovah's Witnesses will not take literature from you. Now, it is interesting, a little later on, we're going to be looking at how the
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Witnesses respond to this particular presentation, and we'll be looking at writings put out by Witnesses who do read the books that we write, who do listen to our tapes, and who do actually even listen to this program.
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And so there are some Witnesses who are willing to do that, but they are by far the vast minority, and in point of fact, a lot of us are wondering if the society is going to change its viewpoints and allow those people to continue their types of activities, or they're going to clamp down on them like they have in the past.
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That is a big issue of everyone who's watching the Watchtower Society these days. So when the
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Witness hears this presentation, if you show it to them in their own Bible, they're going to take their
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Bible with them. Even if they didn't like what you had to say, if you show them what the Scriptures say, they're going to walk out the door with that Bible.
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They may not walk out with any of the literature you'd like to offer them, they may not recognize the double standard that is theirs, in that they want to leave literature with you.
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They want to ask you to be open -minded and listen to what they have to say, but they can't do that in reverse. They can't examine your information, they can't see that double standard.
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But if you show them something in the Scriptures, that will go with them, and they will take it with them.
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Now, there are two passages that I strongly suggest to people that you utilize in demonstrating this truth to Jehovah's Witnesses.
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Specifically, the comparison between Hebrews chapter 1, verses 10 through 12, with Psalm 102, 25 through 27, and the second being
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John chapter 12, verses 39 through 41, in comparison with Isaiah chapter 6.
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Now, I would probably, and it depends on how much time you have, whether you can tell by looking at the person that they want to talk to you about this, or are you sort of having to drag them along, and they actually want to leave, they don't want to discuss this stuff, they're just out there looking for sheep -like individuals, to use their own terminology, and they don't really want to look into the
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Scriptures. You have to gauge that yourself. How much time am I going to have, how deep can I get into this, how many examples can
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I give? But I would probably start with Hebrews chapter 1, because I find it the easiest to demonstrate, the easiest to present.
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And if you have time, if you're going to have time to really set this up properly so that you can really communicate this with the most clarity, what
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I would do is I would start off something like this. I would say, well, could we start off by reading a passage of Scripture?
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And there are very few people who are going to say, no, I don't want to read a passage of Scripture with you, so you could say, well, could you start off by reading for me the 102nd
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Psalm, Psalm 102, verses 25 through 27. And if they have the standard
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New World Translation, the smaller edition, not the big brown bruiser, but the standard size that they normally carry when they're doing service ministry out in the field, that particular passage of Scripture, they'll be able to turn to it, and you'll be able to say, now, looking at it, and of course you need to have your own
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Bible, and it doesn't have to necessarily be the exact same translation that they're using.
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It can be your NIV or your King James or your New King James, NASB, whatever it might be. But be aware of the fact that when they turn to Psalm 102, which, by the way, if you're taking notes, is on pages 796 and 797 of the normally used
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New World Translation, be aware of the fact that in their translation, yours is going to say
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Lord, theirs is going to say Jehovah. And in this particular instance, that is an advantage. Because before you have them read verses 25 through 27, which is the primary passage that you want to really focus in upon, ask them, to whom is this
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Psalm written? And if they read the very first verse in the New World Translation, it says, O Jehovah, do hear my prayer, and to you may my own cry for help come.
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You say, so this is a Psalm written to Jehovah, and doesn't his name appear a number of times in the text itself?
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For example, in verse 16, for Jehovah will certainly build up Zion, verse 19, from the very heavens
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Jehovah himself has looked even at the earth, in verse 22, and the kingdoms to serve
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Jehovah, etc., etc., this is a Psalm specifically addressed to Jehovah, is it not? And they would agree with you that it is.
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Then say, well, could you read verses 25 through 27 for me? And in the New World Translation, it says this, long ago, you laid the foundations of the earth itself.
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Now, actually, back them up to verse 24, change that, nope, start at verse 24, I proceeded to say, O my
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God, do not take me off at the half of my days, your years are throughout all generations.
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Long ago, you laid the foundations of the earth itself, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They themselves will perish, but you yourself will keep standing, and just like a garment they will all of them wear out, just like clothing you will replace them and they will finish their turn, but you are the same, and your own years will not be completed.
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And then you will say, now, that's addressed to the Psalmist God, who is Jehovah, as we've already established, correct?
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Yes. Now, what does this passage tell us about Jehovah? Well, it says
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Jehovah is the creator, long ago, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
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This is the very workman himself, the one who formed the heavens and the earth.
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The heavens and the earth are the work of his hands, Jehovah is the one who laid the foundations of the earth itself.
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What else does it tell us? Well, it tells us that Jehovah is unchanging, because while the creation will perish, he keeps standing.
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Like a garment they wear out, like a garment they are changed, but verse 27, you are the same, and your own years will not be completed.
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Jehovah is eternal, Jehovah is unchanging, Jehovah has always been, Jehovah will always be, his years will never come to an end, his years have never started, in fact, he is not some creature, he is the creator who created all things.
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And then I would ask, now, is there anyone like Jehovah? And there are many passages of scripture that specifically deny that anyone can be like Jehovah.
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Isaiah 40 -48 would provide you a number of examples, and it's very doubtful that any Jehovah's Witness would say, oh yes, there's many who are like Jehovah.
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The official Watchtower position is that Jehovah alone is truly eternal, that Jehovah alone is truly the creator of all things, and that Jehovah alone is unchanging in his divine nature.
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Well, having established all that, you will probably have the Jehovah's Witness wondering, where in the world is this person going?
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Because it's taken you so long to get there. But you've now laid a foundation, and you can then say, well, having said all that, could you read for me from the first chapter of the book of Hebrews, again from the
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New World Translation, and could you start at verse 7? And could we very carefully read this so that we know who's being referred to?
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And beginning, this is page 1490 in the New World Translation, beginning of verse 7 of Hebrews chapter 1, also with reference to the angels, he says, and he makes his angels' spirits and his public servants a flame of fire.
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But with reference to the sun, colon, quote, so in reference to the sun,
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God is your throne forever and ever. Now, it should be translated, your throne, oh God, is forever and ever, but not even getting into that translational issue.
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And the scepter of your kingdom is the scepter of uprightness. You loved righteousness, and you hated lawlessness.
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That is why God, your God, anointed you with the oil of exaltation more than your partners, period, end of quote.
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Then verse 10, and colon, quote, you at the beginning, oh
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Lord, laid the foundations of the earth itself. Now, why is that important? Before we finish reading that, just to explain to you, even the punctuation in the
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New World Translation makes it very clear that verse 10 provides a second reference to the sun from verse 8.
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The very punctuation of the NWT makes this very clear. All right, verse 10, and you at the beginning, oh
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Lord, laid the foundations of the earth itself, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They themselves will perish, but you yourself are to remain continually, and just like an outer garment, they will all grow old, and you will wrap them up just like a cloak as an outer garment, and they will be changed, but you are the same, and your years will never run out, end quote.
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Now, even in the New World Translation, there's a reference at verses 10, 11, and 12 that refer you back to the source of this citation.
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And so you can ask the Jehovah's Witness, now, does your Bible there give you a reference as to what's being cited?
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And it does, it says it's Psalm 102, 25 through 27. You can say, now, we just read
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Psalm 102, 25 through 27. We just looked at what the passage says there.
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And it was specifically about Jehovah, and here the writer to the Hebrews applies a passage about Jehovah specifically to Jesus Christ.
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And it specifically says Jesus Christ is the creator of all things, and most Jehovah's Witnesses will say, well, he's the creator of all other things.
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He's the creator of all things in the sense that he is the master workman. But we already saw that that's a description of Jehovah in Psalm 102.
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If in fact being the one who actually does the work, it is the work of his hands that accomplishes salvation, if that's what makes you the creator in Psalm 102, well, then it needs to make you the creator in Hebrews chapter 1 as well.
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You can't differentiate between the two, because it's obvious the writer to the Hebrews is simply applying the very same passage from Psalm 102 to Jesus Christ in Hebrews chapter 1.
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Now, the writer to the Hebrews specifically cites the Greek Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Masoretic text, but it's the exact same passage.
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Now the question you then have to ask is, now, how can it be that a writer in the
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New Testament would apply a passage that was about Jehovah in the Old Testament to Jesus?
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Now, at this very point, I want to point out to you a response in the brief time that we have left in presenting this particular issue today that is provided by the better Jehovah's Witnesses, the ones who have done some reading that know that this passage is coming.
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Most Jehovah's Witnesses you're going to talk to have not run into this before, and so their responses normally will be, well,
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I need to look at this, I need to get back to you on this, something like that. But, uh, recently a book was published, the author's name is
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Greg Stafford, it's entitled Jehovah's Witnesses Defended, an answer to scholars and critics. And in this particular passage, in this particular book,
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I'm sorry, this passage is dealt with. Now, it's interesting to me, many Christians are utterly shocked when they discover that the various groups that they have heard called cults or false religions actually can provide an answer for their beliefs, that they can defend themselves through the citation of the
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Bible. That shouldn't shock you at all. It shouldn't surprise you whatsoever that these individuals will come up with some sort of biblical response.
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The question is, does the response make any sense? Is it consistent with the Bible? Is it a good response?
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Anyone can come up with a reply, but whether the reply is valid is the question.
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And so, Mr. Stafford quotes from the service ministry manual, Reasoning from the Scriptures.
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In regards to this, it says it should be observed in Hebrews 1 .5b that a quotation is made from 2 Samuel 7 .14
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and applied to the Son of God. Although that text had its first application to Solomon, the later application of it to Jesus Christ does not mean that Solomon and Jesus are the same.
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Jesus is greater than Solomon and carries out a work foreshadowed by Solomon. And so, Mr. Stafford goes on to say,
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Paul no more intended to identify Jesus with Jehovah than he intended to identify
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Solomon with Jesus. He did, however, apply certain concepts and ideas expressed in those verses which were originally applied to Jehovah God and Solomon to the
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Son of God. The application of Psalm 45 .6 -7 to Jesus in Hebrews 1 .8 -9 shows that God is the source of Jesus' royal office and authority.
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Because Jesus loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, Jehovah anointed him with the power of exaltation and so on and so forth.
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Yes, Jehovah is both the source of Solomon's royal authority as well as his God. The same is true of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Jehovah is the source of his authority and is also his God. Then he then goes through the application of Psalm 102 and then he makes the point that simply because you cite a passage from the
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Old Testament about someone in the New Testament about someone does not mean that you're saying they're the same person.
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If you make that argument, then that must mean that the application of Psalm 45 to Jesus in Hebrews 1 .8
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-9 makes Jesus Solomon. How do you respond to that kind of argumentation?
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How do you respond to that assertion? Well, very briefly, I did address this in my book, The Forgotten Trinity, and here's how
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I responded to it. The only way around this kind of direct identification of the Son as Yahweh is to point out that using an
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Old Testament passage of someone in the New Testament does not of necessity argue for identity of that person. Then I talk about the
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Psalm 45 passage. The connection between the Lord Jesus and Solomon has to do with a shared characteristic, kingship.
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But kingship is not a unique attribute of Solomon. There have been many kings. So while citing a passage about Solomon of Jesus doesn't make
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Jesus Solomon, citing a passage about a unique characteristic—creatorship, immutability, eternality—of
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Yahweh does make Jesus Yahweh, for no one else shares that characteristic.
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Being a king didn't make Solomon who he was, but being eternal and unchangeable does define who
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Yahweh is. Allow me to illustrate. If I wanted to identify someone as Solomon by using a citation from the
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Old Testament, I would not do it by citing a passage that is merely about Solomon as a king, for that would not prove identity, but rather than position.
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There were other kings like David or Hezekiah. Simply identifying someone as a king wouldn't tell me which king
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I had in mind. If I instead applied a unique description of Solomon, that would convey identity.
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If I, for example, said that such and such a king had 700 wives and 300 concubines, 1 Kings 11 .3,
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who else could I be referring to but Solomon? That would distinguish which king I had in mind and would communicate identity.
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In the same way, if I were to merely call a person loving, I would not by so doing be identifying that person as God, even though God is indeed loving.
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God is love, but there are others who express love and are loving. It is not unique to God to love.
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But if I were to say that someone is eternal, the creator of all things, and unchanging, that would communicate identity, for there is only one who is eternal, unchanging, and the creator of all things.
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And this is what the writer of the Hebrews does in chapter 1 verses 10 through 12, hence the error of the attempt to avoid the force of the identification of Jesus as Yahweh in Hebrews chapter 1 verses 10 through 12.
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I hope you understand that assertion because it's extremely important, and if you can communicate this to the
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Jehovah's Witness, you will be providing them with one of the strongest cases for the true and full deity of Jesus Christ.
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If you can expose in their thinking their assumption of Unitarianism, well Jesus can't be
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Jehovah because the Father is Jehovah. That's a circular argument. They've already decided that Jesus isn't fully deity, they've already decided that God can't exist in a
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Trinitarian fashion, and so instead of following the evidence of the scriptures to the conclusion of the Trinity, they've already rejected that possibility and therefore have to reject what the
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Bible says at each of these points. And then if you can communicate to them, look, it's not merely the fact that you have a citation here like you have of David or Solomon or the kings of Israel that are applied to the
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Messiah in the New Testament. That's not an argument for identity there, that's an argument for office.
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But in this case, where you use the specific and unique characteristics of Yahweh, there's no one else who is eternal, there's no one else who's the creator of all things, the
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Jehovah's Witnesses already agreed with you on that. The citation of those unique characteristics, those unique aspects, that, my friends, is what makes these citations in the
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New Testament so strong a reference to the deity of Christ and so strong a tool that we can use to show the
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Jehovah's Witnesses this truth. Simple fact the matter is, no writer of the
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New Testament is going to take passages about Jehovah that talk about the very things that make him
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God. The fact that he's the creator of all things, that he's eternal, immutable, unchanging.
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No writer of the New Testament is going to take those unique characteristics and apply them to Michael the archangel, who is none of those things.
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Michael is not the source of creation, Michael is not immutable and unchangeable, and Michael is not a savior.
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And so you can see the importance of being able to show these particular truths to the witness in such a way that right there in their own
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Bible they can see the testimony that is right on the page, Jesus is
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Jehovah. Well that's just one of the two best passages that we can use to show this truth to Jehovah's Witnesses.
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What is the other best passage? Well we'll get to that right after this break. We are looking at the subject of the deity of Christ, specifically how to communicate the truth about Jesus being
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Jehovah to Jehovah's Witnesses. And we've just looked at Isaiah chapter, I'm sorry, it's
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Hebrews chapter 1 in comparison to Psalm 102 verses 25 through 27. The next passage that I would suggest you go to, if the demonstration from the first passage hasn't caused the person to get up and pack their bags and walk out the door, the next passage that we would want to look at in dealing with the deity of Christ, Jesus as Jehovah, would be found in John chapter 6.
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And in John chapter 6 in the New World Translation, beginning at verse 39, the reason why they were not able to believe is that again
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Isaiah said, he has blinded their eyes and he has made their hearts hard that they should not see with their eyes and get the thought with their hearts and turn around and I should heal them.
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Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and he spoke about him. Now you might not immediately see the application of such a passage.
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In its context, John chapter 12 is specifically referring to the end of the public ministry of Christ.
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Beginning with chapter 13, you have the personal ministry of Christ to his disciples in 13 through 17 and then beginning in chapter 18, the betrayal of Christ and the crucifixion.
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So what does this have to do with the deity of Christ? Well, here at the very end of his public ministry in chapter 12, the
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Greeks come seeking him. And when these Gentiles, these non -Jews seek him, this prompts the
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Lord Jesus to say a number of things that unless we see how chapter 12 functions as the transition between the public ministry and the private ministry of Christ, seems somewhat strange to us.
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Specifically in regards to this passage, John is here explaining the unbelief of the
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Jews. The reason why even though they had seen his glorious works, they had seen his miracles, yet they would not believe.
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And it's a tough passage. A lot of people have a hard time with the judicial hardening that God sends upon those individuals who have had his truth and yet reject the light of his truth.
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It's a hard passage for that reason. Not to understand, but simply to accept. And in this passage, we have a citation drawn from the
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Old Testament to explain the specifics of why it is the Jews don't believe.
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And the citation from verse 40 and the citation that comes from verse 38,
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Jehovah who has put faith in the thing heard by us, and as for the arm of Jehovah to whom has it been revealed.
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Those two passages come from the Old Testament. The first passage, up in verse 38, comes from Isaiah 53.
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However, the passage in verse 40 that is cited by John comes from Isaiah chapter 6.
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So you have two passages from Isaiah, both about the judicial judgment of God upon the people of Israel that are cited and used in this passage.
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Then John says something in verse 41 of John chapter 12, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and he spoke about him.
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If you have the NIV, it'll say he saw Jesus's glory, but that's an interpretation. The specific
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Greek text says saw his glory. The only antecedent in the text is Jesus, which is why the
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NIV's interpretation is correct. But just to be careful if you're comparing your
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NIV with their New World Translation, no, the NWT is not specifically trying to hide something here.
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It does lots of other places, but specifically in this place, it's not trying to hide anything. The literal translation is
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Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and he spoke about him. The only him and his in the context, both before and after, is in regards to Jesus Christ.
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That can be seen very clearly by continuing to verse 42. All the same, many even of the rulers actually put faith in him, but because the
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Pharisees, they would not confess him in order not to be put or expelled from the synagogue. The him is obviously, again,
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Jesus. Now what is the significance of all of this? Well, verse 41,
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Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory. When did
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Isaiah see Jesus's glory? When did Isaiah speak these things about him?
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Well, the immediate context is verse 40. Verse 40 is a citation from Isaiah chapter 6.
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And if you go back to Isaiah chapter 6, and if you're dealing with one of Jehovah's Witnesses, I would invite them to read it from their own
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Bible so that they can see this themselves. If they go back to Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah 6 .1
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says, In the year that King Uzziah died, I, however, got to see Jehovah sitting on a throne, lofty and lifted up, and his skirts were filling the temple.
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Seraphs were standing above him, each one had six wings, with two he kept his face covered, and with two he kept his feet covered, and with two he would fly about.
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And this one called to the one and said, Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of armies. The fullness of all the earth is his glory.
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Notice the phrase, is his glory. And the pivots of the thresholds began to quiver at the voice of the one calling, and the house itself gradually filled with smoke.
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And I proceeded to say, Woe to me, for I am as good as brought to silence.
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By the way, folks, the New World Translation is a horrible, horrible translation.
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It is next to unreadable. But anyways, for I am as good as brought to silence, because a man of unclean, unclean, because a man unclean in lips
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I am. You can almost put this in English. And in among a people unclean in lips
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I am dwelling, for my eyes have seen the King Jehovah of armies himself. At that one the seraphs flew to me, and in his hand there was a glowing coal that he had taken with tongs off the altar.
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And he proceeded to touch my mouth, and to say, Look, this has touched your lips, and your air has departed, and your sin itself is atoned for.
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And I began to hear the voice of Jehovah saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I proceeded to say, Here I am, send me.
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And he went on to say, Go, and you must say to this people, Hear again and again, O men, but do not understand, and see again and again, but do not get any knowledge.
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Make the heart of this people unreceptive, and make their very ears unresponsive, and paste their very eyes together that they may not see with their eyes, and with their ears they may not hear, and that their own heart may not understand, that they may not actually turn back and get healing for themselves.
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There is the exact quotation that is found in John chapter 12, if we can manage to read through it far enough to get to that point.
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So, this is Isaiah's temple vision, the great vision that Isaiah has of Jehovah God, lofty and lifted up, sitting upon his throne in the temple.
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Now this is a passage that is extremely well known, and the message that is given to Isaiah to deliver is a message of judgment, it is a message not of salvation for the people of Israel at this point, but of judgment upon the people of Israel, and this is the passage that is cited by John in verse 40 of chapter 12.
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And as soon as he quotes these words, and anyone who read this and knows the prophecy of Isaiah would know where those words came from, they would know this came from Isaiah's temple vision.
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And as soon as he says that, what does he then write? Isaiah said these things.
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He specifically points out who he's talking about here, he doesn't want us to miss this. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and he spoke about him.
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Now the question, obviously and clearly, that has to be asked is this.
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Whose glory did Isaiah see? If you had asked
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Isaiah 700 years before Christ, whose glory did you see in that commissioning of you as a prophet to deliver this message of judgment to the people of Israel?
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Whose glory did you see? Well the New World Translation says that Isaiah 6 -1, in the year the king
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Uzziah died, I however saw Jehovah. And then later on he talks about Jehovah in the temple vision,
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Jehovah of armies, my eyes have seen Jehovah of armies, Jehovah of hosts. Isaiah's response would have been,
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I saw the glory of Jehovah. But then ask the question of the
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Apostle John. John, who are you saying Isaiah saw?
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Whose glory did Isaiah see, John? And the only answer is John 12 -41,
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Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory. Who is the his? That's the
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Lord Jesus. John says Isaiah saw Jesus' glory. Isaiah said he saw
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Jehovah's glory, therefore, who is Jesus? Whose glory did
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Isaiah see? It's very clear, very straight forward. But, as I said, despite how clear a passage can be,
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I mean there are many many clear passages in the Bible, John 20 -28 where Thomas confesses that Jesus Christ is his
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Lord and God, there are people who write entire papers to try to get around what that means. No matter how clear it is, you can find some way to muddle the truth.
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You can find some way to help someone get around the truth.
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So don't be surprised, my friends, that there are intelligent people who will try to find a way around any element of God's truth, any element, whether it's the deity of Christ, or whether it's what the
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Bible teaches about grace, sovereignty, doesn't matter. There's a way to find a way around it if you want to, and if you're willing to sacrifice consistency and you're willing to sacrifice the authority of scripture.
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Well, how do you get around this one? I mean, it says right there, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and he spoke about him.
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The passages from Isaiah 6, he saw Jehovah there. How do you get around that? Well, I mentioned before a book entitled
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Jehovah's Witnesses Defended by Greg Stafford. And Mr. Stafford, unlike the vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses, reads literature.
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He's read my book. I've referred to him in my book, and now he's going to change his book to respond to my book.
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It's dueling books. And he reads literature that is critical of the
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Watchtower Society. He reads material that the vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses would never be allowed to even look at.
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But somehow, he gets away with it, and attempts to respond to the assertion that this passage proves that Jesus is
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Jehovah. How does he do so? Well, specifically by looking at the fact that John quotes from two sections of Isaiah.
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Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 6. Let me read from page 54 of his book.
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Again, it seems reasonably clear that the things Isaiah said about Jesus are found in Isaiah 53, as cited in John 12, 38.
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Verses 39 through 40 are an explanation of why the crowds were not able to believe. If verse 41 has any reference at all to Isaiah 6, it certainly would not be to identify
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Jesus as Jehovah. Rather, the context of Isaiah 6 does seem to have some messianic significance.
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In verses 6 through 7, there could be some prophetic significance in the atonement of Isaiah's sins, perhaps foreshadowing the redemptive act the future
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Messiah would perform to remove the sins of many, compared to Isaiah 53, 11. Also, there is the reference to the one
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Jehovah who would send as a messenger to his people, which could also be a foreshadowing of the role that Jesus would eventually have in the outworking of Jehovah's purpose.
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Some later theologians held that Jesus was actually one of the seraphs in the vision. In Isaiah 6, 8, Jehovah says,
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Who will go for us? This indicates that someone other than Jehovah was present in this vision, and that someone may very well have been the
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Lord Jesus Christ in his pre -human glory as the word, John 1, 1, compared to John 17, 5. Our quote from the watchtower earlier suggested that Isaiah may have seen the glory of the pre -existent logos.
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This view would be in line with the Targum of Isaiah. Knowing as he did that no man, including Isaiah, has ever seen
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God, John 1, 18, John may have been following the tradition of the Targum, which translates Isaiah 6, 1, the glory of the
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Lord, in verse 5, the glory of the Shekinah of the Lord. Still it seems clear that John is directly referring to those things
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Isaiah spoke in chapter 53 of the book bearing his name. Here Isaiah saw his, the Messiah's day, even as Abraham is reported to have done,
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John 8, 56, and spoke about him. Isaiah was not confused at all about the identity of the Messiah and what position he occupied in relation to the
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Most High, Isaiah 11, 1 through 3. Well, how do you respond to such an assertion?
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Well, we'll find out right after this break. How do we respond to the assertion made by Mr.
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Stafford in his book, Jehovah's Witnesses Defended? Well, first of all, we look at the text itself, and we try not to allow an overriding authority, like the
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Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, to determine for us what the text is saying. First of all,
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Mr. Stafford is forced to say that in verse 41, Isaiah said these things, refers primarily and almost only to verse 38.
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You may have heard words like possibly, maybe, over and over again in Mr. Stafford's discussion of why verse 40 would be cited.
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But in point of fact, a couple things come to mind immediately. A, it doesn't seem that Mr.
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Stafford believes that judicial judgment in condemning people brings God glory.
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I believe that it most certainly does, as the New Testament and Old Testament abundantly testify. Secondly, the immediate context of verse 41 is verse 40.
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Those are the words that are being referred to. But even then, there is a way of determining what words
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John has specifically in mind. As I pointed out in my book, The Forgotten Trinity, and I responded to Mr.
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Stafford there, John has quoted from two passages in Isaiah, Isaiah 53 -1 and Isaiah 6 -10.
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Yet the immediate context refers to the words from Isaiah 6, and there are other reasons why we should see the primary reference as the
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Isaiah 6 passage. John speaks of Isaiah seeing glory. In Isaiah 6 -1, the very same term is used of seeing
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Yahweh. And the very term glory appears in verse 3. Even if we connect both passages together, the fact remains that the only way to define what glory
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Isaiah saw is to refer to the glory of Isaiah 6 -3. And that glory was the glory of Yahweh.
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There is none other whose glory we can connect with Isaiah's words.
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And even beyond that, and Mr. Stafford frequently goes into the various languages, he frequently goes into the form of the
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Septuagint text, the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. When we go into the
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Septuagint, we discover that it, and it is normally what the New Testament writers quote, for example, in the earlier discussion of Psalm 102, 25 -27, it was the
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Septuagint version that was quoted by the writer of the Hebrews, in Hebrews 1, 10 -12. When we go into the
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Septuagint rendering of Isaiah 6, we discover that there in the very text itself, we find the source of John's words.
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Because in the Septuagint, in verse 1, there is a textual variant,
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I guess we could call it, a departing from the Hebrew text, where it specifically contains the phrase,
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His glory. It's the very same phraseology that John uses in John 12 -41.
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In other words, friends, getting past all the minutia, the person who is familiar with the
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Old Testament, who could read the Old Testament in the Septuagint translation, which is what most people were reading, would know what the passage was about that John had just quoted, in verse 40, it's in Isaiah 6.
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He would know that in Isaiah 6, and if he were to open his scriptures to that passage, if he had access to the
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Septuagint, if he had opened that passage, he would see right there that Isaiah saw the glory of Yahweh.
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He saw His glory. And then he looks back at John's Gospel, and he says,
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Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory, using the exact same words that is found in the
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Septuagint, and he spoke about Him. There would be only one conclusion that could be drawn as to who is being referred to in this passage.
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You see, Jehovah's Witnesses have to say that in this passage,
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John gives a very confusing, flip -flop presentation of who's being referred to, and in point of fact, when
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Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory, even though the passage itself refers to the glory of Jehovah, that's not really what he meant.
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And even though John would have known that that's the very same, it doesn't really mean that Isaiah saw Jesus' glory.
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Maybe he saw, oh, as it was said, the pre -existent glory of the Logos or something like that, but that passage, that type of phraseology never appears in Isaiah.
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It's just an insertion. It's wishful thinking is what it is. Because you see, when you blow all the smoke away, and you just look at the text and ask yourself, what would the first century reader of this passage, who has the
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Gospel of John in one hand, and the Septuagint in the other, what would they have understood?
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And there's only one answer to that question. Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus Christ.
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Now, Mr. Staver said, ah, but John 1 .18 says, no man has seen God in any time.
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Notice how the presupposition of Unitarianism functions here. Instead of allowing
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John 1 .18 to speak for itself, no one has seen God in any time, the monogamous
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Theos, the only Son who is God, He has made
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Him known. How do we know the Father? Because the Son perfectly reveals Him. He who is at the very
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Father's side has made Him known, so that it's very plain that what John 1 .18
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is saying, no one has seen the Father in any time, but it is the role of the monogamous
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Theos, the unique God to reveal the Father to us, He has been seen,
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Jehovah was seen in Isaiah 6, and who was it? It was the pre -incarnate
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Jesus Christ. So when you hear these arguments, and when you hear these responses, what happens when you really think through them, when you really examine the foundations of the argumentation, is that your own faith is strengthened, and it is strengthened because you can see the flaws in the arguments and the circular argumentation.
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Well, Jesus can't be God because no one has seen God in any time. Notice, using the term God in two different ways.
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We're not saying Jesus is the Father, and the passage says that it's the Father who was not seen.
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Very, very important to listen carefully, and to know our scriptures well enough to be able to identify these kinds of false arguments.
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Now these aren't the only passages, obviously, where New Testament writers took Old Testament passages about Jehovah and applied them to Jesus.
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There are many, many of them, I listed a large portion of them in an end note in the
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Forgotten Trinity. But these are the two that I think you can sit down with the witness and you can ask them to read from their own scriptures, their own texts, and see these things right there in front of them.
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And don't get discouraged. If, in point of fact, what ends up happening is they reject these things, or they come up with answers that make no sense.
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You know they make no sense. You can see they're circular in their response. Don't become discouraged.
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Your job is to present the truth. God is glorified when his truth is presented, no matter what the response is.
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Think about that. God is glorified when his truth is proclaimed, no matter what the response is.
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You see, folks, the response, that's God's area. That's God's work.
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You glorify God when you speak his truth. You speak it accurately. You speak it in love. But you speak it.