Is Jesus Christ Almighty God?

Sometimes it is good to go over what we know from scripture, to remind ourselves why we believe the things we believe. Having plenty of spare time lately, I undertook a little Bible study concerning God (Yahweh, Jehovah, our heavenly Father) and Jesus. The Bible does not contain an overt, outright statement concerning the existence of the Trinity. However, scriptures contain much information to help us see the truth, and here are some high points.

Who is our Savior?
Jesus is our savior. Luke 2:11 says, For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. Eph. 5:23 calls Christ the savior of the body. Acts 4:12 says of Jesus, neither is salvation found in any other...
God is our savior. Hosea 13:4 states, I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no savior beside me. 2 Tim. 8:9 says that God has saved us and filled us with a holy calling.
Since Jesus is our savior, and almighty God says there is no savior besides Himself, this shows that Jesus is God; they are one and the same savior.

Who is unchanging?
God does not change. In Malachi 3:6 He tells us, For I am the LORD, I change not...
Jesus does not change. Hebrews 13:8 says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Who is the Redeemer?
Jesus. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us... (Gal. 3:13). Rev. 5:9 says that the Lamb (Jesus) has redeemed us by his blood.
God. Isaiah, chapters 43 and 44, contain multiple statements proving that God Himself is the redeemer. For example: Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer... (Is. 43:14) Since God is our redeemer and Jesus is our redeemer, God and Jesus must be the same divine Being.

Whom did they pierce?
Jesus was nailed to the cross and His side was pierced by a sword. John 19:36-37 tells us, For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.
Now here's the interesting thing about this. Verse 37 refers to Zechariah 12:1-10 in which God Himself is speaking to His people. He begins in v. 1 by saying, The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD... and in the ensuing verses God continues to speak in the first person ("I" this and "I" that). Then in v. 10 God says, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced... God was pierced. This is strong evidence that Jesus is God.

Who is the good shepherd?
Jesus - John 10:11-16
God - Ezekiel 34:10-16

Who is Alpha & Omega, the Beginning and the End, First and Last?
God. Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God (Isaiah 44:6). I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty (Rev. 1:8).
Jesus. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last... I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. (Rev. 22:13,16). See also Rev. 1:10-28. Clearly God and Jesus are identified as the same Being. Only one God can be first and last.

Who has power over life and death?
God. Gen. 2:7; Ezekiel 18:4
Jesus. And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:40). Jesus also said He had power to lay down His life and to pick it up again, John 10:17-18.

Who sent the angel of revelation to John the apostle?
God sent the angel. ...the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. (Rev. 22:6)
Jesus sent the angel. I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things... (Rev. 22:16).

Whom do we worship?
God alone is worthy of worship. In Exodus 34:14 God commanded, For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God... See also Rev. 22:8-9.
Jesus is worthy of worship. We see several accounts in the New Testament of people worshiping Jesus, and He never corrected or stopped them (Matt. 2:11; Matt. 8:2; Matt. 9:18 are examples). And in Hebrews 1:6 we read, And again, when he (God) bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him.
Who is the Creator?
God is the Creator of all things. See Genesis 1; Isaiah 64:8; Job 33:4; Job 26:13.
Jesus is the Creator of all things. John 1:1-3,14 teaches us, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made..And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us...
Jesus, the Word, was not merely with God in the origin, He was God in the origin. This understanding of John's gospel was held by the early church (as early as the 2nd. Century), and is reflected in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and others. Hippolytus of Rome put it well: "If, then, the Word was with God and was also God, what follows? Would one say that he speaks of two gods? I shall not indeed speak of two gods, but of one; of two persons, however, and of a third; the grace of the Holy Ghost. For the Father indeed is one, but there are two persons, for there is also the Son; and then there is the third, the Holy Spirit. The Father decrees, the Word executes and the Son is manifested, through whom the Father is believed on. The economy of harmony is led back to one God, for God is one. It is the Father who commands, and the Son who obeys, and the Holy Spirit who gives understanding: The father is above all, the Son is through all, and the Spirit is in all. And we cannot otherwise think of one God but by believing in the truth of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit," (Hippolytus of Rome, Against the Heresy of one Noetus, Chapter 14).

Many more proofs that Jesus is God, the Almighty and everlasting and unchanging Creator, can be found. In Hebrews 1:8, God the Father calls the Son "God." In John 10:30, Jesus said that He and the Father "are one." God and the Lamb sit on one throne;; Rev. 22:3-4; Rev. 7:15-17. In Christ all the fullness of the Godhead lives bodily (Col. 2:9). Isaiah 9:6 says, "For a child has been born to us, A son has been given to us...His name will be called... Mighty God, Eternal Father...."

Jesus existed before the world existed, and He went so far as to tell the Jews (in John 8:58) that He is God. For this they immediately tried to stone Him for blasphemy. Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him.. "I AM" is the meaning of God's name YHWH which He revealed to Moses out of the burning bush. When Jesus said, "I AM," the Pharisees knew exactly what He meant!

Clearly, Jesus and the Father, although two Persons, are one and the same God. Jesus was not created or merely procreated, as some faith systems maintain (for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses teach that God caused the archangel Michael to become the man, Jesus, and LDS believe that God the Father literally begat the spirit of Jesus via one of His many wives); but rather, Jesus has always been and will always be. He is eternally unchanging, without beginning or ending. Jesus cannot be another God in addition to Father God, for there is only one God (Isaiah 44:6), and only He may we worship.

Let's wrap this up with one final scripture. For this, we must delve into the original Hebrew to see what God is telling us. Psalm 88:1 – O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee. If we look at the Hebrew words themselves, the beginning words of this verse read as follows: “O YHWH Elohim Yeshua, I have cried...” Yeshua is the Hebrew version of the name, Jesus (the latter pronunciation came about due to Greek influence). For those who speak Hebrew, how could God make it any clearer than that? Jesus is Yahweh Elohim!

I wish to dedicate this post in memory of an old Christian brother, mentor and friend, Charles Courser; I imagine he's gone home to the Lord by now, as I knew him in the mid-to-late 1980s and he was retired even then. Charlie taught me much about witnessing to folks caught in cults.

This was by no means an exhaustive study. Feel free to add additional scriptures and proofs to this thread if you wish.

 

Thank you I will take advantage of your offer.

This is not correct.

And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord....
4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.....
10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. Jonah Ch 3.

He changed his mind about destroying Ninevah
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God is love;

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.(1 john 4:8)
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me (Ex 20:5)

God is love, jealous, and vengeful.
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God is all knowing;
For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. 1 john 3:20.

But does Jesus know everything? But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. Math 24:36.
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God is good, on this we can probably all agree, but Jesus seems to intimate that it is God only and not himself who is good.
And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.(Math 19:17)
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I wouldn't crow about Origen supporting your views. There is a rumour that he took Mat 19:12 a little to literally, "and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake". He also believed in the pre-existance of souls.

This is both true and false, but don't beat yourself up over it, it depends on when and to whom you listen. Let me quote Alma 7:10 from the Book of Mormon "And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God."
Most Christians would agree with, this apart from the fact that you lot got his birthplace wrong; Jerusalem not Bethlehem.
But Joseph Fielding Smith ( a later president of the LDS and incidentally a Prophet, Seer and Revelator) said "The birth of the Saviour was a natural occurence unattended with any degree of mysticism, and the the Father God was the literal parent of Jesus in the flesh as well as in the spirit"(Religious Truths Defined pg 44).

And finally again ;Don't shoot the messenger.

 

You have raised several distinct issues, and it seems best if we take them one at a time. I'll begin with the last issue, which was your answer to my statement: LDS believe that God the Father literally begat the spirit of Jesus via one of His many wives). You are addressing the LDS teaching concerning the origin of Jesus' physical body, whereas I was addressing their belief concerning the origin of Jesus' spirit. LDS believe that Jesus pre-existed (as a spirit being) the earth, that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers, and that they both were spiritual offspring of a union between God and one of His wives in celestial marriage. And you are correct in saying that they also believe God had relations with Mary to produce the physical body which Jesus (the spirit being) entered into and lived within. The LDS viewpoint really is quite perverse, what with their view of God having so much sex in heaven and on earth, but what can one expect from a founder and writer of doctrine (Joseph Smith) who took at least two dozen wives during his own lifetime?

 

God didn't change His mind. Rather, He changed His course of action, for His course of action was conditioned upon the response of the people. God knows everything, including the future, and He knew from the foundation of the world both that Ninevah would repent and that He would respond to their repentance by sparing them. For us humans personally, when we 'repent' we have a change of mind and resolve to also change our conduct (course of actions), so it's easy for us to get the wrong idea about the use of this word 'repent' in relation to God; we assume a human trait applies to God. But since God is omniscient concerning past, present and future, God only appears (from our limited, finite point of view) to change His mind when in actuality He modifies His next action in response to the humility of the Ninevites.

Besides, we don't always have an ideal word for something. Please remember that the original language of the writing (Book of Jonah) is ancient Hebrew, and one Hebrew word often could have any of several meanings depending upon the context (we see the same thing in the English language, despite the fact that English has a much wider linguistic palette).

One might also observe that we have a greater revelation and understanding of God and His nature than did the people of Johah's day. All of Scripture is progressive in its revelation of God; we learn much from Jesus and the New Testament; those are sources of information which the people in O.T. times did not have. It's easy to use hindsight and say, "Why didn't they choose a more appropriate word?"

Perhaps someone else feels led to answer one of AA's questions? I don't want to seem like a piggy... ... and besides, it's bedtime for me (and church tomorrow).

 

Absolutely correct.

God changes not in his character, moral integrity and essential being. God is perfectly able to 'change his course of action' according to developing circumstances and the responses of others in the temporal sphere.

It is only politicians who are afraid of seeming inconsistent, (so they continue with stupidity even when it becomes obvious that they are making fools of themselves), by ignoring that the facts have changed so their response to them, and course of action, is no longer wise.

God is wise, and not a politician, so can sensibly change his course of action according to circumstances.
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Have you ever heard of "tough love?" A good parent loves his child unconditionally, yet a good parent will also discipline the child in hope that he will turn from wrongdoing and learn to do what's right. A good parent will not spare the rod and spoil the child, as Prov. 22:15 and Prov. 23:13 counsel. Does a parent's seeming "wrath" or "vengefulness" in administering negative reinforcement indicate that the parent is no longer loving toward the child? No, the parent still loves his child and punishes him for his own good, so the child will be spared from future misery caused by his errors.

We have a perception that all negative emotions are necessarily evil, and that they are contrary to the "good emotion" of love. But love is not really an emotion; it is more of a characteristic and a decision. Jealousy is more an emotion than a characteristic. And in one sense, there is such a thing as 'godly jealousy':
2Co_11:2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
Paul said that to indicate his ardent love and tender feelings toward the Corinthian believers for whom he'd spent so much time and energy in teaching and providing spiritual care. Paul draws a picture of a husband-wife relationship, and we can readily imagine the feelings a husband might experience if he walked in on his wife having intercourse with another man. This is an apt way to view God's message to the Israelites in Exodus 20:5, wherein He warns them against prostituting themselves to false gods! God was letting them know that in doing so they are being like an unfaithful, whoring spouse, and they should expect God to treat them as such. God is rightfully "jealous" of their fidelity and is not willing to have His people worship any fake gods or give credit to dumb idols for the good things God has provided.

This is why God draws such a harsh comparison, such a starkly contrasting future picture, between the unfaithful and the faithful. God will punish the unfaithful severely, but He will show great mercy to the faithful. Check out the very next verse in Exodus 20:
...visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
Exo 20:6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Is God unjust when He indicates that a person's spiritual infidelity (idolatry) will have repercussions upon that person's descendants? A person who hates the one true God and worships a false god will, in the process, set a harmful example for his children (and grandchildren) to follow. He teaches them to do likewise: hate God, bow to idols. When a parent loves his children and takes pride in his offspring, the prospect of causing ruin to come into his offspring's lives is a sobering thought and a great deterrent. God is saying to His people: when you hate Me and commit idolatry, you aren't just gambling with your own life, but with the lives of all your descendants; you will destroy many lives by your own spiritual unfaithfulness, and I will be obliged to punish your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren for their hatred toward me which you taught them. We actually see this happen in the history of Israel and Judah, when the people follow after idols and several successive generations are led to do likewise, until the people recognize the withdrawal of God's protections and blessings, and they repent and turn back to God (only to have a later generation once again forget the hard lesson). (See also Isaiah 65:6-7.) In the end, God will not be punishing innocent people. Indeed, God clarifies this later on in Deut. 24:16, and again in Ezekiel 18:20-21 when He says,
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.

As long as one has the breath of life, it is not too late to turn from unbelief and change one's future.

 

Nobody else chimed in. Oh, well.

Let's talk about Matthew 24:36. Suppose you were the greatest, strongest wrestler in the world and you could very easily whup any other wrestler who entered the ring. Now suppose you had them tie one arm behind your back so you'd make yourself about equal in wrestling ability to all the other wrestlers. Would you still be a two-armed man? Yes. But you'd go through your wrestling career fighting as a one-armed man, because you'd have restrained your other arm.

When God the Son humbled Himself to become a mortal man, He restrained Himself. He chose live life as a man, not as the Almighty. He allowed Himself to experience temptation as a man would experience it... and He resisted all temptation. He voluntarily chose to not exercise His omniscience, omnipresence, and so forth, because men don't have those characteristics. That's why they saw Jesus spending so much time in prayer; He was relying on the Father and the Holy Spirit to inform Him of what He needed to know. (That's also why they didn't see Jesus 'teleporting' Himself all over Judea or appearing physically in multiple locations at once.)

Restraining Himself from coming down off the cross must have been particularly difficult, especially when they tried to goad Him into doing so.

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As for Matt. 19:17, Jesus wasn't implying that He was not good. Jesus was implying His Godhood. The implication was this: 'No one but God is good, and you just called me 'good.' Do you realize what you've just said? Do you realize that the fact of My deity is implicit in your remark?'

 

Does this mean God lied to Jonah when he said Ninevah would be destroyed in forty days, if he already new it wouldn't be?

 

Where do you get the idea that God said Nineveh would definitely be destroyed in 40 days time, no matter what?

Not from the Book of Jonah I am guessing.

And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

We are not told exactly what God told Jonah to say. We only know what Jonah said. Jonah went to Nineveh obediently at the last but it is not clear from the story whether Jonah finally said exactly what God had told him God would do to Nineveh if it did not repent.

I think you are sailing close to the wind by accusing God of lying, when the only scriptural evidence points to Jonah being the one who threatened Nineveh with destruction in 40 days without any get out clauses.

This may explain Jonah's peevishness when God refused to go through with Jonah's plans for Nineveh, much to Jonah's disgust and chagrin. (Jonah hated Ninavarians, they were Israel's most hated enemy, but God obviously didn't, that's the whole point of the story).
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Not at all. Such a conclusion would be based on nothing more than supposition. What did God say? Here's what we know:

Jon 1:1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
Jon 1:2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.

Jon 3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
Jon 3:2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
Jon 3:3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD...

How do we know exactly what the message to Nineveh was supposed to be, and whether Jonah preached it with perfect accuracy?

(edit) - Tiffy, you beat me by about 2 seconds, I think!
Were they really "Ninavarians"? I would have said "Ninevites." Or maybe just a bunch of Ninnies.

 

Yes I can see what you are both getting at, but as the infallible word of God says "So the people of Nineveh believed God," yes God not Jonah.

And where would Jonah get the idea that Nineveh was to be destroyed in forty days?
(Ps. sorry about the italics it's a legacy of cutting and pasting from Tiffy's post)

 

Good questions. The book of Jonah is by no means thorough. It is more of a brief synopsis. Many details remain untold. Where did Jonah get the idea? Most likely from whatever God spoke to Jonah in regard to the message he was to disseminate, of which we have no detailed transcript but only the briefest description... not even a decent overview.

Jon 3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Jon 3:5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
Should we suppose that Jonah went all through Nineveh (possibly for days) saying, "In 40 days you'll be destroyed," but saying no more and no less? If that were all he said, how would they even know that this was a warning from God, versus some crackpot shouting out his own idea? (Ninevites were not of Israel; that is, they did not know the true God YHWH.) To believe God (or possibly more to the point, to believe in God) they must have heard Jonah saying much more than this bare statement. We really don't know the entirety of what Jonah said to them, but it must have included some information about God's power. It probably also included some statement that their destruction was owing to their sins, that their sins and unrepentance were mightily displeasing to God, and so on. Once they had heard something along those lines (and their subsequent actions show that they probably did), it's not hard to envision how the Ninevites got the idea that repentance was their only shot at avoiding the bad outcome Jonah was warning them of.

It's interesting that the Ninevites accepted the revelation of God from Jonah more readily than the Jewish 'establishment' accepted the revelation of God in Jesus. And Jesus identified Jonah's time in the belly of the giant fish as a foreshadowing of the time He would spend in the tomb; both served as mighty signs of God's power to the unbelievers and as calls for repentance.

 

In this story, it is a mistake to think that 40 days means a specific number of 'days'. Forty 'days' in Biblical terminology is merely a way of saying 'sometime, quite a long way off', or 'just a long time, but ending sometime'. It is not a 'short time' or a never ending indefinate time, but a 'longish time'. It is also a 'Specially Symbolic' amount of time. There are upwards of 100 instances of 40 days mentioned in the old testament alone, and not all of them can be certainly and definitely 40 exact days in duration. The people who wrote the Bible were just not that pedantic about counting days off of the calendar. Jonah would have considered 40 days far too lenient a timescale but probably went with it because that was how long Noah's flood and many other 'punishments' had been said to have lasted. God probably considered 40 days far too prompt, (judging from God's later comments to Jonah on God's reluctance to go to into 'fire and brimstone destruction mode' over Nineveh). The scriptural FACT is that we just don't know exactly how long God had given Nineveh to respond. We only know that Jonah gave them 'a long short time or a short long time', not a short time and definitely NOT an indefinitely long time.
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I would feel more accepting of that concept if the article were backed up with some evidence. But there's no reference to authoritative or informed sources. Who is Daven Hiskey? Just some computer science grad who profits from writing articles and loading youtube videos?

Even if we had evidence that "40 days" may be symbolic at times, that would not preclude the phrase from being used literally at times. How to judge which is which, though? Our default interpretation should be the 'face value' one until we have good reason to understand differently.

We have to be careful. If we're going to accept every random idea stating that something in the Bible doesn't mean what it says without any linguistic expert or rabbinical authority or theologically based reasoning or anything, we'll wind up in the weeds and mistrust the entire Bible. We never want to run after new ideas like they were bright, shiny objects, because they might be mirages. However, when presented with solid evidence we can always learn something new. On this idea about 40 days, which I've never run across before, I'll wait for something more substantial than Daven Hiskey's "Feed Your Unbelief" opinion piece.

 

The first fact we need to consider about the 40 days, is that the LXX (Septuagint), has "Yet three days", so someone who tranlated the LXX from Hebrew into Greek decided that Nineveh, (being in total only actually ever about 3 miles across), would have taken anywhere near 40 days to walk from one side to the other. Hebrews didn't use Arabic numerals or even Roman numerals to record numbers. They used letters of the Hebrew alphabet which could be very confusing when embedded in a text without punctuation, vowels or sentences as we have.

There is evidence that the the Old Testament text is on the whole marvellously well preserved. There is also evidence from the parallel passages in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles and (especially) in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 that numbers were peculiarly difficult to transmit accurately. We have instances of extra zeros being added to a number: 2 Sam.10:18 reads (700 chariots), 1 Chron. 19:18 reads (7000 chariots). A digit can drop out: 1 Sam.13:1 says "Saul was years old". In Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 the digits often vary by one unit. And there are other errors of copying which are easily explained.

In the modern Hebrew Bible all numbers are written out in full, but for a long time the text was written without vowels. The absence of vowels made it possible to confuse two words which are crucial to this problem: 'eleph and 'alluph. Without vowel points these two words look identical.'Ip. Eleph is the ordinary word for thousand, but it can also be used in a variety of other senses: e.g. 'family' (Judges 6:15 RV), or 'clan' Zech.9:7, 12:5, 6 RSV, or perhaps a military unit . 'alluph is used of the chieftains of Edom (Gen.36:15-43); probably for a commander of a military 'thousand'; and almost certainly for the professional, fully armed soldier.

The fact that 40 days crops up so often in Holy Scripture is indicative of the fact that this time period was considered something specially significant. A bit the way 7 represented perfection, so 7 x 7 was only one short of 40 which signified a period of testing, trial or probation.

Your problem there really hinges on how you understand the Bible. If you think that every full stop, semicolon and comma in the Bible, including the maps at the back, are God's Honest Absolute literal TRUTH, then you have a problem sorting out which 40 days might literally be true, if there is any doubt concering whether they might be merely 'figurative' and 'symbolic'. You would have no choice but believe every instance to be literally only or fully 40 exact days long.

I personally don't feel the need to stretch my literal understanding of what the Bible contains quite that far to satisfactorily believe God still speaks to me through The Scripture and The Holy Spirit though.
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Yes, there have been some scribal (copyist) errors. But I agree that the Bible is essentially reliable.

 

Not just copyist errors. In the case of 1 Sam.13:1 the original Hebrew is as the RSV translates it, but nearly all other translations have made up something to make the verse make sense of some sort. Even Youngs 'Literal' version has done this. The Hebrew 'Literally' reads "Saul was . . . years old when he began to reign; and he reigned . . . and two years over Israel." The RSV and NRSV are honest enough to have faithfully reproduced the original (even though it it obvious something is missing). The others have all tried to construct something that they think might be more sensibly read but it's not what is 'literally' there in the Hebrew Text. There are soe verses in Job which nobody knows how to translate because the Hebrew meanings of the words are lost are now lost to us. That is sad, but by no means fatally damaging to the veracity of the scriptures and the message of salvation though.

That is all getting off the subject. Fact is the story of Jonah and its message to mankind is not altered whether Jonah preached to the Nivites for 40 days or for 3 days, the effect of his preaching on the Ninaverians was the important information, not how long it might have taken him to preach it.

Still 40 days is longer than any sermon I've ever had to sit through. I'm not surprised the Ninivites gave in if he went on for 40 days.
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Ok I'll accept that you think God could have said to Jonah something like " I will destroy Ninevah in 40 days unless you pull your socks up". It's just that I don't buy it.

As for the "there is none good but one, that is, God " statement you seem to be saying Jesus said "there is none good but one, that is, God " I assume there were no emotion icons in ancient Greek! Again I don't buy it. Perhaps you can think of it as an analogous statement to my "Does this mean God lied to Jonah" perhaps it should have read "Does this mean God lied to Jonah of course not" ( Mods happy now )

any thoughts on

not when I get out one of my trusty slide rules.

 

You spotted my numeric dyslexia and arithmetical ignorance then . I never could get my head round the 7 times table. My calculator confirms now that 7 x 7 = 1 short of 50. The other stuff I wrote was OK though, I think.

Then you are not reading the text in depth, nor understanding the story. God clearly had no intention of Destroying Nineveh and only wanted them to repent at Jonah's preaching of their impending doom, (God knew they were ignorant and wanted to wise them up, not rub them out), and Jonah suspected that to be the case from the outset. That is why he initially took ship to Tarshish, (the opposite direction from Nineveh), considering the whole project a waste of his time and effort. HE wanted them obliterated.

For someone who can tell me what 7 x 7 makes without any trouble, you don't seem very good at accurately reading or understanding scripture.

I'd also have to admit that the site I quoted on numerology might know something about numbers, but I since discovered it knows nothing of any theological value about The Holy Trinity.
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