No Creed But the Book, and a Phone

Somebody sent me a video of a sermon on the Trinity and asked what I thought of it. I watched the whole thing. Three places in it stopped me, and all three stopped me for the same reason — he reads half a verse, and the half he leaves out is the half that completes the picture.

Here they are. Each one takes about a minute to check in your own Bible.

Hebrews 12:2

This is where the whole sermon gets its title.

• He reads: “the author and finisher of our faith.”
• The word “our” is not in the Greek. The translators added it. In most King James Bibles it is printed in italics for that reason.
• Without it, the verse says the author and finisher of the belief — the one who went first and finished the walk.
• Chapter 11 lists everybody who ran that race by belief. Chapter 12, verse 1 calls it a race. He is the last name on the list.

The word behind “author” means the one who goes in ahead of everybody else. That is not a title for God. That is a title for the first man through the door, and the whole book of Hebrews says so plainly:

• Hebrews 6:20 — “the forerunner is for us entered.”
• Hebrews 2:10 — “to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Somebody made him perfect.
• Hebrews 5:9 — “being made perfect, he became the author.” He read this one out loud and skipped the first three words.
• 1 Corinthians 15:20 — the firstfruits.
• Colossians 1:18 — the firstborn from the dead.
• Romans 8:29 — “the firstborn among many brethren.”

First through is not the same as above. Every one of those titles puts him at the front of a line, and a line has to have somebody behind it.

Revelation 3:21

He uses this one to say no god has ever offered anything like it.

• He reads: “to sit with me in my throne.”
• The verse keeps going: “even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”
• He overcame something. And the throne he is sitting in belongs to his Father.
• If sharing a throne makes you God, the first half of that same verse just did it for us.

Everything he holds, he was handed. That is stated over and over, and never once the other way around:

• Luke 1:32 — “the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David.”
• Daniel 7:13-14 — he is brought in and there was given him dominion.
• Philippians 2:9 — “God also hath highly exalted him.”
• Hebrews 1:9 — “God, even thy God, hath anointed thee.”
• 1 Corinthians 15:28 — at the end he hands it all back and is subject to the one who gave it.

Given, granted, exalted, anointed, subject. Every one of those words has somebody else doing something to him. Nobody gives God a kingdom, and God does not hand one over and then take a seat under the one who gave it.

Revelation 21:6

• He reads: “It is done. I am Alpha and Omega.”
• Next verse, same voice, no break: “I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”
• Whoever is speaking has sons. That is a Father talking.

And that is a formula, not a passing phrase. It is the same sentence given to David and repeated to the church:

• 2 Samuel 7:14 — “I will be his father, and he shall be my son.”
• 2 Corinthians 6:18 — “I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”
• John 20:17 — “my Father, and your Father; my God, and your God.”
• Hebrews 2:11 — “he is not ashamed to call them brethren.”

We are always called brethren to Christ, and sons to the Father. The two never cross. There is not one verse anywhere that makes us his sons, and the voice speaking in Revelation 21:6 is the one taking sons.

This was not one slip

He handles every verse he touches the same way. It is not sloppiness. It is done the same way each time, and it only works on somebody who does not take the time to check the word against what he is saying. That is the blind leading the blind, and it happens because nobody is doing the work.

Do not let the degrees do your thinking for you. Paul warned about exactly this kind of man:

• Colossians 2:4 — “lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.”
• Colossians 2:8 — “lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men.”

A few more of his, in case any are worth checking:

• John 1:3 — “by him” is “through him” in the Greek. 1 Corinthians 8:6 lays it out: one God the Father, of whom; one Lord, through whom. (Lord there is the word for master or teacher — what a servant calls the man over him. It is not a word for God.)
• 1 Corinthians 14:33 — “author of confusion.” The word “author” is not in the Greek there at all.
• Philippians 2:6 — he uses it for equality. The word behind “robbery” means to seize, to snatch at something that is not yours. (It is the same reach Adam made in the garden when he was told he could be as gods. The verse says he did not make it.) And verse 9 says God highly exalted him afterward. Nobody exalts an equal.
• John 1:18 — “no man hath seen God at any time.” He quotes it as support. Read it once more, slowly.

The part I could not get past

• Early on he says the word stands above everything — “thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name” — and that we have no creed except the Bible.
• Then twice, when a verse needed explaining, he pulled Ellen White up on his phone and read her to settle what it meant.
• Both cannot be true. Either the Book decides, or she does.

The one thing that bothered me most

• Near the end he says anyone who makes Jesus a little less than that should be your enemy, and cannot be your friend.
• He says it before he has shown anybody anything.
• Acts 17:11 — the Bereans checked Paul against the scriptures every single day, and they were called noble for doing it. They did that to Paul. Nobody alive is above it.

What I am asking

Not that you take my word for any of it. I would be doing to you exactly what he did.

Read three verses one line further than he did — Hebrews 12:2 with Hebrews 2:10, Revelation 3:21 all the way through, and Revelation 21:6 with verse 7.

Your own Bible. Nothing else open on the table.

Two things to sit with

Count the throne room scenes. Every one before the resurrection has one seated — Isaiah 6, 1 Kings 22, Ezekiel 1. Every one after has two — Acts 7, Revelation 5, Revelation 22.

Then read the opening greeting of every letter Paul wrote. Look at how he names them, every single time, without ever once running them together.

And these three, on their own

Nothing added to them.

• 1 Corinthians 8:6 — “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”
• John 20:17 — “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”
• 1 Timothy 2:5 — “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”