It is generally considered a blasphemy to call someone "Lord and God" if they are not literally "Lord and God." Apostles saw God in the angels that visited them and they were corrected when they made a mistake in identification.
When Paul says the head of Christ is God, that is a statement confirming equivalence. The opposite assumption would be Christ is a separate force from God with a separate agenda. God is not a name and Christ is not a name, even though those words are sometimes used in place of such. God is authority and Christ is savior. Our salvation is sourced in the highest authority. 1 Corinthians 11:3 may support a "different person" conclusion but it does not speak against "God is one" either. The name of God and Christ is Jesus.
You keep asking "the first and last of what?" That's a stalling technique. Jesus used "I am the first and the last" three times in Isaiah and four times in Revelation. This identification could not be used with greater force, is means "I am the LORD God, I am the only God, besides which there is no other God." Whatever "first and last means" (which I will decline to be drawn off onto a rabbit trail on this here) it identifies the LORD Jehovah God.
You are ignoring the clear statements.
"I am the first and last" couldn't be more clear. You own reasoning is based on a preconception, that God would not be referred to by different names dependent on application. If the user
RRitter@TOL.com is exalted to glory by the
System Admin, that does not preclude that
the person of RRitter@TOL.com could also be the same person of the System Admin. You already have the answer to the "how could it" question.
You could go on and on and the same answer would still apply.
Repetition of the same answered objection does not earn multiple credit. Accepting the clear revelation of scripture where Jesus speaks for the purpose of identifying himself would.
I'm repeating myself because, you told me that I should not set aside clear statements of scripture. I was showing you that I haven't. Scripture clearly shows us that Jesus is the son of God and that God is his his father and his God also, which I have shown clearly through the scriptures. Why should I believe you and others "through faith" hoping to receive understanding as to Jesus being God when the scriptures clearly state otherwise? So I was showing you why I believe the way i do, and why it is crystal clear to me that Jesus isn't God. The trinity doctrine was made up by a group of men around a table 300 years after Jesus. And even they took a while to agree and work out the trinity.
I could have quoted many more verses supporting the way i believe, clearly showing that God is the God and father of Jesus, but those who believe the trinity just brush those aside and skip over them.
It says in the Bible that Jesus is the Mighty God, but he's not the Almighty God, and in the very next verse after calling him the mighty God, it says God, even thy God has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows, but that verse is never quoted by those who believe in the trinity. (Hebrews 1 8-9)
And, Jesus said this
John 10
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
Here is written in Psalm 82
I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
Jesus said that in their laws that it says ye are god's of whom the word of God came. And that's the only way that Jesus is God, because he was in the fullness of Gods holy spirit, he was Gods word made flesh because he didn't speak anything of himself. Jesus didn't then say that he was God, once they said that he makes himself God, he corrected them and said he is the son of God.
John 12
He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.*
For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.*And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak
Jesus only spoke what God gave him to speak, thus he was Emmanuel, God with us, he came in the express image of God, but that doesn't make him God.
Also, God being the head of Christ doesn't mean that Christ is equal to God in anyway whatsoever, it means exactly that, that he's the head of Christ and Christ is the head of us. The only way that Christ has been exhalted, is because God has exhalted him and set him at his right hand.
I have to believe what I see in the scriptures. But one think I don't believe, and that is that it's right to judge that others are going to burn in hell because they don't believe in the same way as others do like some say on here. In condemning people to hell they set themselves as a judge, and God judges them because of that. I know you don't do this, I think you're like me, and I know that God looks at the heart. To me the Bible is there to help us, to guide us to reprove us and to show us the way of God, i believe that God wants our heart cleansed first and foremost and that is done through following the only way through his precious son Jesus Christ. If God's spirit is within us, then our hearts should be changing to be more like Christ, and that's what God wants to see, his son in us and through us. And i believe that that's more important than understanding the depth of the scriptures
1 Samuel 16
for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.
