In Joshua 5, starting w/ verse 13, we see an interesting dialog between Josh and some person. This person appears to Joshua apparently out of nowhere with a drawn sword. Joshua asks the guy who he is, and this fellow responds that he is "captain of the hosts of the Lord." Upon hearing this, Joshua bows down in worship. Cool stuff, but the following problems start rolling around one's bippy as one reads the encounter:
1. When Joshua bows down in worship, the guy doesn't tell him not to. In other places in the Scriptures where someone bows down to an angel, the angel tells him to knock it off, that only the Lord is worthy of worship. Yet this guy accepts it. Is he an angel? No, because he doesn't rebuke.
2. He can't be a mere man, because of what he says about himself.
3. At one point, he tells Joshua to "take off your sandals, for the ground on which you stand is holy." Whoa. Where have we heard THAT before? (Hint: Charlton Heston? Yul Brynner?)
4. But he can't be YHWH, because nobody can see Him and live. Even the prophets had to hide from Him.
So the question is: Who's the Guy?"
Poor JW's fail to realize two things: 1) There is a term called "a theophany," which is a pre-Incarnate appearance of Jesus the Messiah. They dot the Scriptural landscape, and they're an example of God showing His mercy to people. But since JW's don't believe that Jesus is Lord, how can He accept worship? 2) Their theology (that Jesus isn't God, wasn't or isn't Lord, that he is an angel/created being/yaddayaddayadda) is a rehash of the old Arian heresey. This Arius guy went around in Constantine's time telling people that Jesus wasn't God, and upsetting their salvation. (If He's not God and just a man, then how can He be a mediator between God and man? The Scripture say the Messiah is BOTH.) One of the things hashed out at the Council at Nice was just who this Jesus was: just a guy, a super-guy, or God in the flesh. They scoured the scriptures, prayed a lot, and declared that Jesus was the last one: Fully man and Fully God, capable of saving us all.
Except that Arius and his followers tried to disrupt the proceedings. At one point, Arius, like a Code Pink protester, got up and started singing one of his songs about how Jesus is a cool guy and all, but not God. Arius was clocked by none other than Nicolas, Bishop of Myra (I think) who, with his friends and fellow bishops, had been through enough persecutions to listen to this clown. The JW's have been duped, trading their souls for a salvation that won't save, because their Jesus can't save, and all the poor Greek translations won't change that.
No JW has ever been able to explain who The Guy in Joshua is. They don't come around my porch anymore. I pity them, not only because they believe in a false Jesus, but because they don't have the intellectual cajones to read up and question the Watchtower. Instead, they blindly follow whatever the successors of Judge Rutherford say, bleating like sheep until they fall off the edge of the cliff.
You have my pity.
HMMmm...
Where have I heard THAT before??
That Nicolas who clocked Arias was THE Saint Nicholas, who, in Catholic cultures, is credited with inspiring gifts to children, instead of this wierd fat guy named Santa Claus.