The Rich Man and Lazarus

From Life, Death and Destiny ( 1st Edition) by Warren Prestidge

Does the Rich Man and Lazarus teach that the wicked pass at death to torment in hell?

In Luke 16:19-31, we find Jesus’ famous story about a rich man who went to torment after death, while Lazarus, a poor man who had passed a miserable existence outside the rich man’s gate, went to “Abraham’s bosom”. Does not this passage, then, teach that the wicked pass at death to torment in hell, while the righteous go immediately to bliss? My answer, and that of most reputable scholars today, is: no.

Gone Home To Be With The Lord?

When someone dies, the expression “Has gone home to be with the Lord” is a phrase that should never cross our lips of those who say they are believers.  Many are given the false comfort that their departed loved one is now in heaven with God contrary to the fact that there is no teaching in scripture that says the soul is separated from the body at the moment of death.  But yet today the world, as well as those who call themselves Christian, say that somehow disembodied souls go to heaven or hell when they die.  The bible never teaches a separation of a conscious soul from its body at the moment of death and its immediate departure to heaven or hell, thus teaching disembodied souls.

Jesus Has Selected Memory? (John 17:5)

Trinitarian doctrine would have us believe that the “man part” of Jesus was limited in his knowledge, but his memory seems to come back in John 17:5 where he states, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” On top of this, it is supposed to be a verse to prove his literal pre-existence prior to his coming to this earth. In order to do this he had to transform himself into an embryo and place himself in Mary’s womb while talking to Mary at the same time (supposedly the “angel of the Lord”), gestate for 9 months and come out crying, hungry, and wearing diapers.

The Nature of Preexistence in the New Testament

"Within the Christian tradition, the New Testament has long been read through the prism of the later conciliar creeds . . . Speaking of Jesus as the Son of God had a very different connotation in the first century from that which it has had ever since the Council of Nicea (325 AD). Talk of his preexistence ought probably in most, perhaps in all, cases to be understood on the analogy of the pre-existence of the Torah, to indicate the eternal divine purpose being achieved through him, rather than pre-existence of a fully personal kind."1

"The mainstream churches are committed to a certain doctrine about Jesus, but specialists in early Christian thought are questioning the arguments by which that doctrine was reached. New Testament scholars ask if the New Testament teaches it at all, and historians wonder at the gulf between Jesus himself and fully-developed Christianity. These questions are very unsettling, for they imply that Christianity may be in worse condition than was thought. It is perhaps not a basically sound structure that needs only to be modernized, but may be in need of radical reconstruction . . . The New Testament never suggests that the phrase ‘Son of God’ just means ‘God.’"2 [Yet evangelicalism insists on that equation if one is to be considered a Christian!]

Binitarian View Just as Wrong as the Oneness and Trinity

From Focus on the Kingdom

Was Jesus “A Mere Man”?

by F. Paul Haney

The following article we hope will be of special interest to any of our readers who have exited the Worldwide Church of God founded by Herbert Armstrong. It was the belief of that denomination that God is a family of two members. It was customary to hear Herbert Armstrong speak and write of “two Gods in the God family.” Our understanding now is that such language betrays an unveiled polytheism and paganism. God is One Person in the Bible and that One Person is the Father of Jesus Christ, His Son. We say with Paul “there is one God, the Father” (I Cor. 8:4-6), and with Jesus that the Father is “the only One who is truly God” (John 17:3). Jesus is the Lord Messiah (Luke 2:11), the Man Messiah Jesus (I Tim. 2:5) and certainly never in Scripture the One God.

The curious notion that Jesus was “a second God in the God Family” persists among some, even after they leave their former association. Our experience over the past 45 years suggests that many who think they have become “ex’s” are more attached to the apron strings of former mentors than they suspect. (This is true also of those who are attached to the idea that water baptism has no meaning for Christians now — a particularly striking example of a view held against almost everyone for 2000 years. This is not a complex question. Jesus was baptized. The Apostles baptized in water also throughout the Book of Acts. Jesus commanded baptism in water as the outward seal and sign of repentance. He commanded it until the end of the age — which has not yet occurred. Since we all believe in obeying the Lord Jesus (John 3:36), it follows that we will all desire to enter his church on his terms, one of which is baptism in water upon intelligent reception of the Gospel (see Acts 8:12, etc.).

Jesus is Not the Angel of the LORD

It’s amazing how people who adhere to Trinitarian and Arian doctrines actually believe that Jesus is the Angel of the Lord, the Angel of YAHWEH in the Old Testament (OT)!

However, Jesus could not be the Angel of the Lord in the OT:

1.     Because he is a human being NOT an angelic being

2.     And as such he was not even conceived/begotten yet at the time of the OT

So … Jesus cannot be an/the ‘Angel of the Lord’

Does Worshipping Jesus Make Him God?

Hebrews 1:6 states,

“Let all God’s angels worship him.”

There!  This proves the Trinity because only God can be worshipped.

Let's go to Matthew 14:33 where we read,

“Then they that were in the ship came and worshiped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God.”

Notice it does not say, “Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art God.”

Jesus is worshipped, but does this make him God? Those who were worshipping him were not worshipping Jesus the Messiah as though he were God, but as the Son of God. They recognized him as the Messiah, one empowered (given authority) and a righteous agent of God (Yahweh).