*****That’s only a few, there ARE more and as you said all the many verses that speak about Jesus being the incarnate Almighty God, second person of the Trinity and Son of God - which, since we know there is ONLY one God, Jesus IS God in the flesh. *****
Very true, we do know that. But, did the Apostles fully understand that? How God is One, yet three distinct persons?
I don’t think so. I think that has been grappled with for centuries and even today, the concept is hard to explain fully.
As I said in my previous post, the God that we know and understand today is not the one of the Jews of Jesus’ time, the God of the OT.
Throughout the New Testament - which the Apostles and their disciples wrote under the direct leading of the Holy Spirit and which the assembly of believers all over the known world copied and studied - we have ALL the passages that were used by the attendees at Nicea to create that creed. We also have writings from leaders in the church going back to that first century arguing FROM Scripture proving the deity of Jesus. You're correct that heresies cropped up right away over the false doctrines rejecting that Jesus was God incarnate (3 guesses where they came from), but they were successfully defeated because they (and we) had the Scriptures and the illumination of them in the hearts of those believers to receive them. Why it is hard to explain is due to both the hardness of people's hearts and the efforts of Satan to cause confusion and corrupt the Gospel. Those who have surrendered their lives to Christ and who are led by the Holy Spirit accept the truths by faith.
Wait…..what? There’s a different God now then there was during Old Testament times? I’m really hoping you didn’t want it to come across that way.