HEY!!!!!! Keep your powder dry. What websites would that be? I don't know what you are talking about.
DO YOU?
This is the only post I made to Texas Gal. Do you see any URL's? You will not discuss, so please refrain from posting anything to me until you suceed in sending me an apology that I will accept.
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To: Texas Gal
I liked your response. It is very good. As you pointed out the scriptures cited (" does not contradict the scripture you mentioned, but it illustrates the idea that death in the Bible does not mean the soul ceases to exist (and I use KJV as well)".
Depends on who does the deed.
In KJV Matthew 10:28.... And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
With exception of John 1:1:1,(let us save this for another time.)Your discussion on Jesus being God refers to him being "God's Son" and doing all the creating for God.
However it does not contradict the statement in Colossians 1:15. Jesus was the first creature created and he created the rest. Answers your response.
My real question here is about the validity of the statement in Colossians 1:15. Does it say that Jesus is "of creation" or not.
Cheers:^)
100 posted on 12/25/01 6:03 PM Pacific by eazdzit
Sometimes we are told that there is no verse in the New Testament that says "Jesus is God," with the implication that there no straightforward claim to His divinity to be found in its pages. Such, however, is not the case. For instance, in the following passages the deity of Christ is either explicitly asserted or strongly implied.
In Titus 2:13, Paul speaks of believers "looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." Peter opens his second epistle greeting "those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:1).
Luke records Paul's words to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:28 where he reminds them that they are overseers of "the church of God which he purchased with His own blood." Such a statement makes no sense unless we accept the full force of the doctrine of the incarnation: Christ was God in the flesh, therefore we may speak of God shedding His own blood. John testifies to Jesus (whom he calls the Word) in the foreword to his Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). John goes on to say that Jesus, the Word, is "the only begotten from the Father" (John 1:14) and then utters the astounding claim that "no man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him" (John 1:18). Thus John not only asserts Christ's deity, but also his sole ability to reveal the Father to the world. It is thus not surprising that Thomas confesses Jesus to be "My Lord and My God" in John 20:28. The author of Hebrews identifies Jesus, the Son as the person about whom the Psalmist (Psalm 45:6) said: "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever" (Hebrews 1:8). James, the brother of our Lord identifies himself as Jesus' "bond-servant" (James 1:1) and refers to His brother as "the glory" in James 2:1, neither of which designations is typical of siblings or reverent Jewish believers, but both of which speak volumes about his perception of the divine nature of Christ.
Such passages could be multiplied (e.g., Matthew 1:23, John 17:3, Acts 2:17 & 33, Colossians 2:9, 2 Thessalonians 1:12, 1 Timothy 1:17, and 1 John 5:20), but the ones we have just reviewed establish the teaching of Jesus' divinity from Paul, Peter, Luke, John, Thomas, the author of Hebrews, and James -- a representative selection of apostles and their understudies. All of these unambiguously and unanimously testify to the deity of our Lord.
Christ's divinity is set forth in Scripture in numerous other places and in a variety of other ways as well. First, the attributes of the one, true God of Israel are ascribed freely and without apology to Jesus by the writers of the New Testament. No first-century Jew could have done so without fully understanding the radical theological significance of such an ascription.
The author of Hebrews applies Psalm 102:25-26, which asserts the eternality of God, to Christ in Hebrews 1:11-12 ("you are the same, and your years will not come to an end"), and as we have already seen John declares the Word's eternity in the prologue to his Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word." Our Lord's immutability (or unchangeableness) is asserted in Hebrews 13:8 where we are told that Jesus Christ is "the same yesterday, and today, and forever." Jesus Himself claims the attribute of omnipresence in the Great Commission of Matthew 28:20. "I am with you always," He says. This is only possible if He is possessed of what theologians call "immensity" -- an attribute of the God of Israel alone. Jesus' omniscience is regularly stressed in the Gospel records, as for instance John's astounding declarations that Jesus "knew all men" and "knew what was in man" (John 2:24-25) or Luke's almost incidental comment that Jesus knew what the Pharisees were thinking (Luke 6:8). The New Testament also indicates that Christ possesses the divine attribute of sovereignty. Jesus Himself claims unlimited divine authority when he announces "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth" (Matthew 28:18) and Paul reiterates the point when he has says: "in [Christ] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form . . . and he is the head over all rule and authority" (Colossians 2:9-10). To claim that a person is eternal, immutable, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, is to claim that person to be divine -- which is precisely what the New Testament does of Christ.
A second way in which the Scriptures testify to Christ's deity is that the great Old Testament names of God are applied to Him. Over and over the divine names of Israel's God are taken up by Christ or employed by His disciples in reference to Him.
For instance, the great Old Testament covenantal name of God, Yahweh or Jehovah, which is translated Lord (kurios) in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) nigh unto seven thousand times is applied in its fullest sense to Christ on numerous occasions. Paul indicates that the fundamental confession of a Christian is "Jesus is Lord" (Romans 10:9). He considers such a profession necessary for salvation, and evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit in a person's life (1 Corinthians 12:3).
Furthermore, he indicates that there will come a day when the whole world will confess that "Jesus Christ is Lord" (Philippians 2:11). This declaration of Christ's divine lordship is perhaps the earliest confession of the Church, and in light of the Old Testament significance of the term and the early Christian's steadfast defense of Christ's unique lordship, it is apparent that "Lord" is far more than a polite title of address or mere acknowledgment that He is our master. We may add that New Testament writers routinely apply Old Testament "Lord" passages to Jesus (e.g., John 12:41 says that Isaiah's vision was of Christ on the throne in Isaiah 6:10, see also Romans 8:34, Acts 2:34, and 1 Peter 3:22). We may mention in passing that Jesus refers to Himself with the exalted "I AM" formula repeatedly in the Gospel of John (John 8:58, cf., 6:35, 8:12,24, 11:25, 14:6, and 18:5-8), and calls Himself "the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" in Revelation 22:13. All these divine names (and there are dozens of other examples we could mention), constitute an argument of significant force indicative of the New Testament's view of the deity of our Lord.