Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.

March 1, 2009 9:18am CST
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.- There is only one God, and even some Christians sometimes forget this. God is one, the Hebrew word echad, means unity or one. We as Christians must remember that God is singular, there are not two or three Gods, God the father and God the Son or not separate entities. Not two people or two Gods. The Hebrews used to have a doctrine called "the two powers of heaven". This doctrine is a difficult one to wrap your mind around but i will try. The Hebrews believe their was One god, unusable, Invisible and Unknowable. But he had an equal counterpart that was still God but Physical and see-able. When they rewrote the Torah or tanach in Aramaic, they changed a few things. In some places in the old testament where God seemed to be talking to himself, they changed the second "God" to "Memra", or word of God, who was still God but acting in the physical world. This is why John referred to Jesus or Yeshua as "The Word". yet we read that Yeshua was also a man, and as a man he was human with all the frailties and weakness of man, This did not make his spirit any less than the spirit of God, Or the Word of God acting through Yeshua the Man. And the Holy Spirit is not a third person but the spirit of truth and the Word of God, All three are the same thing and equal, One part works outside the universe, one works in the physical universe and one works with out Spirit. All three are the same source and are one being expressed in three different ways.
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6 responses
• United States
2 Mar 09
My understanding is that God's nature is both plural and singular. There is one God and God is one. However, within his nature there is plurality. There is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit: one God who exists in three eternal persons. Each of these persons is spoken of distinctly in the Bible. This is the beauty of the one triune God. Other belief systems ignore the divine nature of Jesus and the Spirit or they add too much plurality by adding lots of additional figures as God. The beauty of God is that he is one being but three persons. This is so hard for us to grasp but it fits the facts of nature as well it is revealed in Scripture. Look around you and see how many things are "one." In addition, many things are "many." This is a reflection of God's creativity, revealing himself in nature, as well as in a special way through Scripture and through Jesus.
@mathss1 (1181)
• United States
4 Mar 09
I agree God is one but three Njoy
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• India
5 Mar 09
mathss what happened to ur first account??? or is it ur second birth as a human???
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@gjabaigar (2200)
• Philippines
6 Mar 09
where is your Bugatti Veyron?
@mathss1 (1181)
• United States
7 Mar 09
My buggati is out of order some problem in its engine lol Ill change my avatar as soon as possible Thanks Have a gr8 time Njoy
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@urbandekay (18278)
4 Mar 09
Good, an excellent elucidation of the nature of Christ. If God is omnipotent then he has both limited and unlimited potentialities Limited potentialities are understandable by our finite minds Unlimited potentialities are not understandable by our finite minds Therefore God an understandable nature and an non-understandable nature These two appear different but are one. When in John it describes Jesus as the 'word' the term for word used in Greek is Logos or understanding. In the beginning was the understandable nature of God and the understandable nature of God was God...? all the best urban
@urbandekay (18278)
6 Mar 09
Him that hath an ear... all the best urban
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4 Mar 09
Thanks Urban though i feel many will try their hardest to MISunderstand. LOL
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@gjabaigar (2200)
• Philippines
2 Mar 09
^_^ Amen!.... Nice words you have said sir freethinkingagent! Very powerful words of wisdom. Keep up the good words and works. ^_^ God Bless Us!.... Peace!.... Thanks!.... and Enjoy!.... myLot!....
@Adoniah (7513)
• United States
1 Mar 09
I think you need to do some more research. There has never been two powers or two G'ds. The Torah was never re-written. It was always written in Aramaic. G'd's name was always written in the plural just as you write a king's name in the plural which does not mean that there is more than one king just as it does not mean there is more than one Master of the Universe. G'd is G'd, He does not belong to the Jews or the Muslims or the rest of the world He is the Master of the Universe and the only G'd of the whole Universe and beyond if there is a beyond. Some christians do have more than G'd. Some pray to angels and "saints" and Mary and the Christ just as though they could answer their prayers. Shalom~Adoniah
1 Mar 09
I did not say two Gods, I said it was called the two powers of heaven same God, and no it was not always written in Aramaic. And I am not talking about the Noun Elohim which is both singular and plural like the word fish. It depends on the contexts used as to which it is. I am sorry if this upset you , it was not my intentioned but Hebrew and as well as other ancient middle eastern religions and languages was my field of study. Maybe you should ask your Rabbi or another wise man about this ancient belief. The two powers did not mean two Gods, it was a way of distinguishing when it seemed that (Ha-Shem) the four letter name of God was in the same verse talking to himself. I can give you verse if you like and how it was changed in Aramaic to the "word of Y-V-,
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@Adoniah (7513)
• United States
6 Mar 09
Ha'Shem is not the name of G'd, it simply stands in for the name of G'd. It is two words. Ha, which is "the" and "shem" which is name. Orthodox Jews do not like to say or write the word G'd at any time for fear of accidentally using it wrong, except in prayer. Conservatives, Reformists and Reconstructionists do not carry it to such extremes. Shalom
7 Mar 09
That's what I said! They will simply say Ha- Meaning THE, and Shem meaning NAME,. THE NAME Ha-Shem I believe that is exactly what I wrote.
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@1hopefulman (45123)
• Canada
3 Mar 09
I believe that there is only one God. He does not have multiple personalities and He does not talk to Himself. I have often come across the expression "One." In the Scriptures He has a very distinct name, repeated over and over and trnslated as Yahweh or Jehovah, though these are not exact translations. I have searched but have never found one Scripture that says "God the Son" or "God the Holy Ghost." Could anyone share some rereferences please?
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@1hopefulman (45123)
• Canada
5 Mar 09
islander7, what do you make of this? John 17:20-26 (Contemporary English Version) 20I am not praying just for these followers. I am also praying for everyone else who will have faith because of what my followers will say about me. 21I want all of them to be one with each other, just as I am one with you and you are one with me. I also want them to be one with us. Then the people of this world will believe that you sent me. 22I have honored my followers in the same way that you honored me, in order that they may be one with each other, just as we are one. 23I am one with them, and you are one with me, so that they may become completely one. Then this world's people will know that you sent me. They will know that you love my followers as much as you love me. 24Father, I want everyone you have given me to be with me, wherever I am. Then they will see the glory that you have given me, because you loved me before the world was created. 25Good Father, the people of this world don't know you. But I know you, and my followers know that you sent me. 26I told them what you are like, and I will tell them even more. Then the love that you have for me will become part of them, and I will be one with them.
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@1hopefulman (45123)
• Canada
6 Mar 09
freethinkingagent, If Jesus was God or a part of God and not an independent entity who could make choices different from God (Yahweh) then Matthew 4:8-10 (New International Version) does not make any sense to me. 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." 10Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.' Then Satan would be tempting God with the very things thaty God had allowed Satan to control for a while? And Satan would be tempting the Almighty God to do an act of worship to Satan. How does that make sense? I will comment on your long response separately.
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4 Mar 09
No not two Gods, One God. God the creator and God the equil of God the creator who comes in visable form to men as the "Word". Let me give you some verses. this is taken from Michael S. Heiser, Genesis 15 1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God [Hebrew, adonai-Yahweh] what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord [Hebrew, Yahweh] and he counted it to him as righteousness The most powerful evidence that Genesis 15 is describing a visible person referred to as the “Word” comes from the New Testament—and from Jesus, the Word, himself. In John 8:56, the Incarnate Word tells his Jewish antagonists that he appeared to Abraham prior to his incarnation: “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” The Jews object to this claim, whereupon Jesus utters his famous statement, “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).iii My point here is that only one passage in the Old Testament makes sense of this claim by Jesus, the Logos, the Word—Genesis 15:1, where “the Word of the Lord appeared to Abraham in a vision” as the visible, personal manifestation of Yahweh. I hope you grasp the significance of this interchange. Since the Word is clearly equated and identified as Yahweh in Genesis 15, when the New Testament has Jesus saying “that was me,” he is claiming to be Yahweh in visible form. He is the Word of the Old Testament, who was the visible Yahweh. The word for “word” in Aramaic is memra. That means in the passages we looked at a few paragraphs ago, instead of talking about the Logos of God or the “Word” of the Lord, we’d be talking about the “Memra of the Lord” coming to people. It just so happens that in the Targums—those Aramaic translations of the Old Testament the Jews of Jesus’ day were used to reading as their Bible—the Memra of God as a manifestation of God or as a “second God” shows up in many places. The Memra actually became a well-known character in the Old Testament for Jewish readers of the Aramaic Bible. Throughout the Aramaic Bible, the Memra is introduced or “used” in passages where it looked like there was more than one Yahweh in a passage, or where there was a second god figure who seemed to be interchanged with Yahweh. Let that sink in: Jews who went to synagogue before Jesus’s day were reading a Bible that had the Word—the Memra—as a deity figure in addition to the God of Israel. Jews knew that “the Memra was God” before John ever wrote. For example—and this one is curious in Hebrew and English—take a look at Genesis 19:24, which describes the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah: Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. Kind of odd, isn’t it? The Lord (Yahweh in Hebrew) is the one raining fire out of heaven from the Lord (Yahweh). It really looks like there are two Yahwehs here! My view is that’s the case, in a manner of speaking. There is the invisible Yahweh, God the Father who is spirit. The other is the visible Yahweh that appeared to Abraham in Genesis 15 as the Word, who later appeared to him again to share a meal and speak to him about these wicked cities. As I will argue in this book at length, Yahweh in flesh or manifest as a visible person is Yahweh the Son, the second person of a Jewish godhead. The other was Yahweh in heaven, the Father. Amazingly, the Targum picked up on this and “solved” the odd wording of Genesis 19:24 by inserting the Memra into the verse. Here is how the Targum renders Genesis 19:24 Then the Memra of the Lord [Yahweh] rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. In a later conversation between Abraham and Yahweh that hearkens back to Genesis 15 and the covenant the Lord made with Abraham, the Targum has the covenant being made with the Memra, the Word, just as I argued above in Genesis 15. Genesis 17:7 - And I will establish my covenant between my Memra and between you It should be clear by now that Jesus is identified with both Wisdom and the Word. It should also be clear that the Word is identified as Yahweh. Genesis 15, I Samuel 3, and Jeremiah 1 the being who is the word is referenced repeatedly as Yahweh. The Word is the visible Yahweh. This produces simple yet telling questions: If the Word is the visible Yahweh, how can the Word be a created being? How can Yahweh in any sense be created? How can Yahweh be uncreated, and yet his “visibleness” be created? Does Yahweh create himself? These conundrums evaporate if one opts for “begotten” instead of “created.” That is, “begotten” has explanatory power for the whole picture of what many Jews and the Christians who wrote the New Testament believed about the godhead: There is one God, but that one God brought forth (“begot”) from himself a second being or person to act as his special agent. This second person is the visible manifestation of Yahweh. I say “brought forth from himself [Yahweh]” because (a) there are passages where this second person is referred to as Yahweh, and Yahweh was neither created or creator of himself, and (b) where both Yahweh and this person are mentioned or described in the same passage and distinguished as two separate persons. Lastly, New Testament writers merge the Word and Wisdom by means of Jesus. It stands to reason that if the Word is Yahweh, who cannot be created, then it is most coherent to understand Proverb 8 as saying that Wisdom was begotten, not created. The apostle John himself suggests as much by his own identification of the Logos with Wisdom in John 1:18:vii No one has ever seen God; the only begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. Where’s the equation? It’s the phrasing that has the “only begotten God” (Greek, monogenes, the same word as in John 3:16) is at the Father’s side. This is the same imagery as in Proverbs 8:30, where Wisdom says of God, “I was beside him, like a master workman.” Furthermore, the Greek words behind the phrase “at the Father’s side” is literally “in the bosom of the father.” The idea of “being in or at the bosom” occurs elsewhere in the New Testament and the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) for reclining next to someone while eating (John 13:23; people ate while reclining in first century Jewish culture)
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