Counterfeit Christianity (Part 2)
Satan has been extremely clever in creating a “Counterfeit Christianity.” Satan has deceived the whole world. Christianity has been inundated with paganism, false doctrines, and hypocrisy. Would our Lord and Savior recognize this church? Would He even claim the churches of today? Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter in ways that belie pagan origins.
Those who truly study the Bible will notice these falsehoods because they have no origin in the Word of God, the Bible. Authentic Apostolic Christianity can be found by those searching for authenticity according to the Way. The Bible reveals all that is apostate. People hold to their traditions. This is what people seem to do. “Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?”
He answered and said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:
‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.
And in vain they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men…” (Mark 7:5-8).
Please do not just read the Bible for sentiment, or morale reinforcement what you already believe. Read the Bible and be open to what it teaches. Do not let the doctrines of men and the church cloud the plain truth of the Bible.
We read in Revelation 21:7-8, “He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
All those who practice sin shall be judged, but those who sin and repent will be forgiven, and pass from judgment to life.
To avoid Counterfeit Christianity we must learn from the Bible.
We read 2 Timothy 3:14-17, “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in the Messiah YAHSHUA. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Who is the God of the Bible?
YAHSHUA, reading in 1 Timothy 1:17, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” Halleluyah, Praise YAH, Praise YAHSHUA!
There Is No Other God
Who is the God of the Bible?
Reading in Isaiah 44:6-8, “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, And his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God. And who can proclaim as I do?
Then let him declare it and set it in order for Me, Since I appointed the ancient people.
And the things that are coming and shall come, Let them show these to them.
Do not fear, nor be afraid; Have I not told you from that time, and declared it?
You are My witnesses. Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one.’ ”God said, “Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one.”
To find out if the One speaking is the Father or the Son, we turn to…
1 Corinthians 10:1-4, we read, “Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.”
The One speaking is Christ, the Word of God the Father. The Mediator between God and Man. The Rock and we know this because, as we read in John 1:18, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.”
We read in John 5:37-47, “And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form. But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. I do not receive honor from men. But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe, those who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comesfrom the only God? Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
No one has seen the God and Father of our Lord and God YAHSHUA, except through and by our Savior YAHSHUA.
Our Lord YAHSHUA said, Because the Father is greater than I! It is not easy to adequately explain this memorable saying. The Arians made use of it to prove, from the Lord's own lips, that his Person, even his pre-existent Divinity, was less than the Father's; that his essence, admittedly generated by the Father, was created by him, and was not the same as that of the Father. The same view has been held by the rationalistic school. The Socinians and modern Unitarians have insisted on the entire dependence and purely human character of our Lord. The Son of man and Son of God are to many merely the self-chosen titles of the greatest of the sons of men, who thus is supposed to put himself on a level with ordinary men who may learn to call God their Father. But is it? Could any man, unconscious of a far closer relation with God than that of the greatest saint, dare to say, as if to relieve anxiety on that head, "My Father is greater than I"? Is there not in the very phrase a suggestion of Divine sufficiency and relation to the Father which altogether precludes the purely humanitarian position?
We read in John 14:28, “You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.”
(1) A theological view of Trinitarians which has largely prevailed among those who have held the homoousia of the Father and the Son, is that the Lord was here speaking of His human nature only. The Athanasian symbol says, "Equal to the Father as touching his Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching his Manhood." But the "I" is here used of his whole Personality, as in John 8:58, where we read, “YAHSHUA said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” And in John 10:30, we read, “I and My Father are one.” Throughout the discourse, He is speaking of Himself as the Son of God and not in which the eternal and temporal, the infinite and finite, are indissolubly blended.
(2) Others have supposed that He referred to himself as in a state of humiliation. Hengstenberg says the Lord was speaking of the pre-eminent greatness of the Father, which came to an end at his departure. Cyril, Luther, Melancthon, De Wette, Tholuck, Luthardt, and Alford think that YAHSHUA spoke these words of the humiliated Christ in his condition of a servant - obedient unto death. The Son, the Logos of God, was that Mode or Personality of Deity by which "God" created the universe, governed mankind, and proceeded by special manifestation - incarnation, life, and death - to redeem the world. Calvin had said, that while the Arians have abused this testimony, the orthodox solution of the Fathers was neither harmonious nor sound; the true signification of the passage, according to him, being found in the mediatorial office of the Christ, and in his status exinanition is. But this would not exhaust the meaning, for in this very passage he does describe the Father as greater even than the exalted Christ; and in John 1:1-3 as greater even than the pre-existent Logos.
(3) We are led to see that there is indeed a subordination of rank and order in the Son, involved in the very notion even of an eternal generation…
This is undoubtedly confirmed by John 17:1-5, YAHSHUA spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He [a]should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and YAHSHUA the Christ whom You have sent. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”
In 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have [d]fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed isdeath. For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”
Philippians 2:9-11, “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of YAHSHUA, every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that YAHSHUA the Christ is LORD, to the glory of God the Father.”
1 Corinthians 3:23, “And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”
1 Corinthians 11:3, “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”
The whole history of Christological speculation conceded on the "Subordination of the Son," has shown, by abundant proof, that before and after the Council of Nicaea, the Fathers held "that the Son has indeed the same Divine nature in common with the Father, but communicated by the Father in such sense, i.e., that the Father alone hath the Divine nature from himself, but the Son from the Father; that the Father is the Fountain, Origin, and Principle of the Divinity which is in the Son"). This is abundantly, needful to avoid at once the errors of tritheism, and to maintain the real unity of the Divine Being. Christ's going to the Father was a ground of rejoicing, because his exaltation through death and resurrection to the position of power and majesty unutterable, and the lifting up of his Divine-human Personality to the midst of the throne, gives to him, in his relations with his disciples, the efficacy of the greatness of that Divine nature which, by its own characteristics, could not have become incarnate. The unrevealed God is greater than the revealed. The lifting up of perfect humanity into the glory which the Son had with the Father before the world was, should have been the cause of joy to the disciples. It is the wellspring of joy to the Church John 14:28
