QUESTION #1: "WHY DO CHRISTIANS COVER UP THEIR ABSURD TEACHINGS ABOUT GOD BY CALLING THEM ‘A MYSTERY’? ISLAM IS CLEAR IN SAYING GOD IS ONE!" (Western converts to Islam often express their relief to find that, "Islam's teaching about God is straight forward, and void of the ‘mysteries’ of Christianity, such as the trinity and the deity of Christ, which never made sense to me.")

ANSWER: If, after so many years of scientific research, the physical universe, in which we live, is still beyond our complete understanding, why should we think it strange that we cannot fully understand the invisible Creator of this universe? In fact if we could completely understand God, then we would be equal to Him! The Bible tells us:

QUESTION #2: "DO YOU BELIEVE IN THREE GODS?"

ANSWER #1: "Jesus Himself said that God is One": Someone asked him about the commandments of God : "‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one."’" (Mark 12:29)

ANSWER #2: "The Bible categorically states 28 times that God is One!":

• In the Torah (Taurat): Deut. 6:4,5 - "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." (see also Deut. 4:35; Deut. 4:39; I Kings 8:60; 2 Kings 19:19);
• In the Psalms (Zabur): Ps. 86:10 - "For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God."
• In the books of the prophets: Isaiah 44:6,8 - "This is what the Lord says ... I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God." "You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." (see also Is. 37:16; Is. 37:20; Is. 43:10,11; Is. 44:24; Is. 45:5; Is. 45:6; Is. 45:18; Is. 45:21; Is. 46:9; Is. 48:12; Hosea 13:4)
• In the New Testament (Injil): 1 Tim. 2:5,6a - "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men." (see also Mark 12:29; John 5:44; Rom. 3:30; I Cor. 8:4; Eph. 4:6; I Tim. 1:17; James 2:19; Jude 25)

ANSWER #3: God created all things by Himself: I am the Lord, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself. (Isaiah 44:24). He uses several metaphors to describe how He did it:

• by His Wisdom: I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence ... The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. When there were no oceans, I was given birth ... I was there when he set the heaven in place ... Then I was the craftsman as his side... (Proverbs 8:1-31) Did God ever exist without wisdom? No! Did God create his own wisdom? No! God's wisdom is "from eternity, from the beginning." God's wisdom was "brought forth" at the time of creation, and by His wisdom God created everything. But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding. (Jeremiah 10:12)
• by His Right Hand: My own hand laid the foundations of the earth and my right hand spread out the heavens. (Isaiah 48:13) Does this mean that God's right hand created instead of God Himself? Of course not! God created everything by His right hand - by His power.
• by The Breath of His Mouth: By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth ... For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. (Psalm 33:6,9) These verses clearly show that the breath of God's mouth and God's word are the same.
• by His Word: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:1-3) The Word of God is the communication or manifestation of God. God's Word is God Himself; not a second God. The Word was "with" God (two?) and yet the Word "was" God (one)! Now notice verse 14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, Who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Somehow, by the power of God, God's eternal word ‘became’ a human being like us named Jesus! (God can do anything!) Jesus is God's word, the breath of His mouth, His right hand and His wisdom, through whom all things were created.

QUESTION #3: "HOW CAN JESUS BE GOD? WHY DO YOU BLASPHEME BY CALLING JESUS ‘GOD’?"

GENERAL ANSWER: Explanation from John 1:1-3,14: "The eternal Word of God, which was with God (seems like two) in the beginning, also was God (one; not two). Everything Allah created, He created by saying, ‘Be!’ - He created everything by His Word. Allah's Word is not another God; Allah's Word is Allah's communication of Himself. Can Allah exist without His Word? Was there ever a time when Allah's Word did not exist? It is like my word or communication, which is in one sense a part of me, but is not a second being, separate from me. So Allah is One, and He has Word, which comes out from Him and communicates Him. Jesus is ‘Kalamat Ullah,’ the Word of Allah, who came out from Allah and came into the world as a human being. God in His sovereignty chose to reveal Himself to us - by His Word, Who became a human being and lived among us, having become one of us."

THERE ARE REALLY THREE PARTS TO THIS QUESTION:

QUESTION #3a: "HOW CAN JESUS BE GOD WHEN HE DID THINGS GOD DOESN'T/WON'T DO? After all:

• Jesus talked about God as His God, but God has no God.
• Jesus prayed to God instead of to himself.
• Jesus got hungry and thirsty (Matt. 4:2; John 19:28), but God never gets hungry or thirsty (Psalm 50:9-13; Acts 17:25).
• Jesus was tempted by the devil (Matt.4:1 & Heb.4:15), but God cannot be tempted (James 1:13).
• Jesus got tired (John 4:6; Matthew 8:24), but God doesn't get tired (Psalm 121:4; Isaiah 40:28).
• Jesus learned obedience and grew up into a mature and perfect man (Hebrews 5:9), but God never changes (James 1:17).
• Jesus was born and also died, but God is everlasting."

ANSWER: #1: "The description of Jesus we read in the Injil is the description of One Who ‘became’ a human being. Notice it does not say that a man somehow become God; it says Allah's eternal Word became a man. In Hebrews 2:17 it says Jesus became like us ‘in every way’ - bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh! Therefore, because He became a real human being just like us, He did things we do. If he didn't do those things he wouldn't really be one of us.

"Jesus is Almighty God, but for our sake when He became a man He chose to no longer function as God. He is still God and could use His powers as God, but chose instead to only function as a man.

"As a human being, He was born, grew in knowledge and maturity, got hungry & thirsty, got tired and sleepy, prayed to His ‘Father’ in heaven, was tempted in every way that we are (but he never sinned), and died (but God raised Him up victorious over death). All these things prove He became a real human being. Jesus is not an apparition nor was he just pretending to be a man. As a human being, he had all of our needs and limitations, except for our sinful, fallen nature. One reason He is called the ‘last Adam’ (1 Cor.15:45) is because he became just like Adam was before he sinned."

QUESTION #3b: "HOW CAN JESUS BE GOD AND MAN AT THE SAME TIME? How can he be on earth praying to God in heaven, talking about God as ‘my Father’ and He and the Father still be one God?"

ANSWER #2: "God can do anything! Just as in the act of creation, God's eternal Word came out of Him when He spoke to create all things (but He did not become two gods), so when he spoke His eternal Word into the virgin Mary, God's Word remained God and at the same time became a man like us. Jesus never stopped being almighty Allah's Eternal Word. It says, ‘The Word became flesh ...’ (John 1:14); not ‘The Word changed to flesh.’ He is not sometimes God and sometimes man, nor is He half God and half man. He is both fully God and fully human at the same time!"

QUESTION #3c: "BUT WHAT NEED WOULD GOD HAVE TO DO SUCH A THING? He doesn't need Jesus or anyone else to die for us. God can forgive whomever He wants to forgive!"

ANSWER #3:

1. God's Love: One of God's greatest attributes is love. True love is self giving (not taking) for the sake of another. God gave Himself to us in order to forgive us and save us from eternal judgement/death.

   ... he too shared in their humanity (flesh and blood) so that by his death he might destroy ... the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death ... (Hebrews 2:14,15)

   He learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation ... (Hebrews 5:8,9)

2. God's Justice: God's justice requires Him to do this. The Bible teaches that although God has the power to do anything ("For nothing is impossible with God". - Luke 1:37), He cannot do things like lie ("...it is impossible for God to lie..." - Heb. 6:18) or be unfaithful to His promises ("If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself." - 2 Tim. 2:13) because He would be violating his own character and would no longer be God! He would self-destruct! To illustrate this, suppose I were to steal a very valuable item from your home and sell it to buy drugs or to gamble, and by the time you found me I had already wasted all the money. If I were then to confess my sin and beg your forgiveness, you would have a choice of either forgiving me and absorbing the loss or gaining some satisfaction by having me arrested and prosecuted. If you chose to forgive me, the cost of your forgiveness would be the value of the item I stole from you plus the shame of being burglarized. You would have to be willing to accept all that loss by choosing to give it to me. Suppose the judge took pity on me and decided to forgive me. You would certainly feel that judge was unjust! My family and friends could not forgive me no matter how much they might love me. No one but you could forgive me unless someone was willing to pay you the full value of the item I stole from you and you were willing to accept payment as compensation. Forgiveness is never just a matter of words because it is never free! Forgiveness can only be given by the person who is willing to absorb the injury, loss or cost involved. God is certainly not an unjust judge who would simply declare us forgiven because He wants to.

   We seem to be faced with a dilemma. If God forgave our sins without giving us the full punishment according to His own law, He would be unjust and would be violating himself. But if we are not forgiven we could never endure the eternal punishment in hell that we deserve. Therefore, the eternal Word of God became a man (Jesus) so he could take our punishment upon himself (God cannot die, but a man can die). He did this so that he could forgive us and be just in doing so. "... God presented him (Jesus) as a sacrifice of atonement...He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as TO BE JUST and THE ONE WHO JUSTIFIES those who have faith in Jesus ..." (see Rom. 3:22-26).

OTHER BIBLE ANSWERS REGARDING THE DEITY OF CHRIST:

ANSWER #4: The greetings and salutations in the New Testament epistles seem to imply His deity in a unique way. All of these letters were written after Jesus had ascended to heaven and was no longer physically present with his people. Still the apostles presented him as:

1. the co-author (with God the Father) of grace, peace, mercy and faith. Can these things come from a man?
2. the co-sender of His apostles. Who else but God can send from heaven?
3. our Savior in the same sentence where God is presented as our Savior.
4. the one who is given glory for ever and ever. Who else but God can receive glory for ever and ever?
5. one with whom we have fellowship just like we have fellowship with the Father, even though he is in heaven.
6. the one who keeps us and brings us to eternal life. Can anyone but God do these things?

HERE ARE THE VERSES:

• "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ." (Rom. 1:7)
• "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (I Cor. 1:3)
• "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you." (I Cor. 16:23)
• "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (II Cor. 1:2)
• "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (II Cor. 13:14)
• "Paul, an apostle - sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father...Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (Gal. 1:1-3)
• "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers." (Gal. 6:18)
• "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (Eph. 1:2)
• "Peace to the brothers, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (Eph. 6:23)
• "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (Phil. 1:2)
• "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." (Phil. 4:23)
• "To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (I Thess. 1:1)
• "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." (I Thess. 5:28)
• "To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Thess. 1:1,2)
• "Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you...The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." (2 Thess. 3:16,18)
• "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope...Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." (I Tim. 1:1,2)
• "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." (2 Tim. 1:2)
• "...by the command of God our Savior...Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior." (Titus 1:3,4)
• "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (Philemon 3)
• "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." (Philemon 25)
• "...through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." (Heb. 13:21)
• "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." (James 1:1)
• "who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ..." (I Pet. 1:2)
• "to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord." (2 Pet. 1:1,2)
• "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen." (2 Pet. 3:18)
• "...And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ." (I John 1:3)
• "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, will be with us in truth and love." (2 John 3)
• "To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ..." (Jude 1)
• "Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life." (Jude 21)
• "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with God's people. Amen." (Rev. 22:21)

ANSWER #5: Study of Philippians 2:6-8: We read that Jesus, ‘being in very nature (morphae) God ... made himself nothing, taking the very nature (morphae) of a servant, being made in human likeness.’" Notice how the eternal God took upon Himself the very nature of a servant in becoming a man.

ANSWER #6: When did Jesus begin to exist?:

• He was before John the Baptist (the prophet Yahyah) even though he was born 3 months after him. "This is the one I meant when I said, A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me" (John 1:29,30). He is both before and after John; both God and man!
• He was before David who lived about 1000 BC. Jesus was born in the lineage of King David, but he is called, "I am the root and the offspring of David" (Revelation 22:16) because he existed before Him. He is both before and after David; both God and man!
• He was before Abraham who lived about 2000 BC. Jesus said, "before Abraham was born I AM." (John 8:58). "I AM" = "Jahwah." He is both before and after Abraham; both God and man!
• He was before the world began. Jesus said,"And now Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." (John 17:5). He is both God and man!

QUESTION #4: "WHY WAS IT NECESSARY FOR JESUS TO BE BORN WITHOUT A HUMAN FATHER?"

ANSWER: Jesus was born of Mary so that he could be truly human, "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh." It was necessary for him to be born without a human father in order to reveal his divine origin - to show he is from heaven; the eternal Word of God made flesh (John 1:13-14).

• "The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven." (I Cor. 15:47)
• "... the one who came from heaven ... The one who comes from above ..." (John 3:13,31)
• "...He who comes down from heaven ... For I have come down from heaven ..." (John 6:33,38)
• "I am the living bread that came down from heaven." (John 6:51)
• "... I am from above ... for I came from God." (John 8:23,42)
  [also many times Jesus said his heavenly "Father" had sent him]

QUESTION #5: "ISN'T ALLAH FAR ABOVE ALL HUMAN EMOTIONS? Isn't it wrong for us to sing or laugh in our worship of Allah? Isn't Allah above such human emotions as laughter, joy, grief, or love?"

ANSWER: More and more I am impressed with the truth of God's emotional make up. I have started collecting verses that talk about His grief, envy, jealousy, wrath, hate, rejoicing, singing, laughing, pleasure, delight, compassion and love. God has all these emotions, and we have them because we were created in His image. God is not like a human being; rather humans are like God! We sing, laugh, cry, get angry, grieve and rejoice because God does!

QUESTION #6: "HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR US TO HAVE AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH ALMIGHTY GOD?"

ANSWER: God is so great (Allah-u-Akbar) and His love is so complete, that He enables us to have a relationship with him more intimate than any human relationship! Just look at what God's Word says:

• "This is what the high and lofty One says, He who lives forever, ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit.’" (Isaiah 57:15)
• "We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ." (I John 1:3)
• "this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3)
• "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." (Rom. 8:15,16)
• "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us." (I Cor. 2:11,12)

Articles by Rev. Richard P. Bailey
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