“I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins; for except ye believe that I Am he, ye shall die in your sins.” John 8:24 In this passage the he has been added by the translators, as indicated by the italics. Actually, Jesus is claiming deity for Himself. He claims to be the I AM, which corresponds to the many passages in both Old and New Testaments that speak of God as I AM. It is a term used of Jehovah. This passage demands our belief in the deity of Jesus and that such belief is necessary to our salvation. IT IS A FACT!! To deny this is now new, the denial of Christ’s deity began with the Gnostics of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The Apostle Paul refuted them in his letters to the Galatians and Colossians. Their particular idea was, however, that Jesus was only a man, though a superior man. The ideas advocated by the Russellites did not appear until the 3rd and 4th centuries. Origin, in the early 3rd century, advocated the creation of the Word by the Father in time, but still referred to the Word (Christ) as being God. In the early 4th century Arius was the apostle of this damnable doctrine.
Arian was a Bishop of Alexandria in A.D. 319. He said that Jesus was a created being, having a beginning, and hence was not of the same substance as Jehovah, but was used of Jehovah to accomplish His purposes among men. He taught that there was only ONE person in the Godhead, so there was NO Trinity. There was the Father, His inferior Son, and His power the Holy Spirit. Such a position had not been advocated before; it was not held be the disciples in the days of the Apostles, nor by the Christians in the earlier centuries!! Clement of Rome, who was a companion of the Apostles, and all the writers of the first two centuries demanded acceptance of Jesus as being God.
Watchtower literature spends a great deal of time poking fun at the idea of three persons who have the nature called God. They reduce it to a matter of mathematics, such as 1+1+1=1 Such non-sense is based on shear ignorance, willful perversion, and the meaning of the term God, Godhead, and Deity!! God is the name given to a certain NATURE which describes a power, might, ability that is un-definable by words or comprehension, not a certain being!! God is defined as “I who alone create”. No other being can make such a claim!! They cite Deuteronomy 6:4; “The Lord our God is one Lord”, Isaiah 44:6; “I am the first and I am the last; and besides Me there is no God.”, and James 2:19; “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well.” These passages declare a FACT: that fact is the unity of those who possess this nature. The Pentecostals have taken this to mean that there is only one person in the Godhead. They teach the Father was also the Son, and was also the Holy Spirit. The unity of God is found common ground and equality demanded of the three. All divine attributes are equally ascribed to all three persons!! They are all three to be worshipped!! What confuses many is the “role” each played in redeeming mankind. When the Father is pictured as first, the Son second, and the Spirit third, this refers to their position, role, part each played in redeeming mankind. An example is seen in the creation. God the Father had the idea, God the Son brought that plan into reality, and God, the Spirit made creation habitable for mankind, yet all three are creators! In the home we have the same “role playing”. We have the father, who is the head, the mother who is subject to the head, and the children who are subject to both father and mother. A home MUST be united!! No one is going to assert that all are not equal as human beings; certainly the wife is just as much a human being as her husband, and so the children- yet, there has to be an ORDER or the home cannot, will not function as designed!
