Subject: holy spirit vs. holy ghost |
Bible Note: Hi, rgb! Grammatical accidents are to Scripture like wedding bands on a married couple: they clarify the relationship but they do not establish the relationship! Take for example one single passage: John 4:24; while some translations have "spirit," others have "Spirit;" yet, still others have "a spirit," while others still have "a Spirit..." Could Jesus Christ be saying that God is a force, a power or is He saying that God is a being which is a Spirit or spiritual being? The only concern that the Watchtower has is to strip the Holy Trinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit... they are a blind fellowship the purports to being Christian (the object of fellowship and worship) while still denying that He is God! Don't they realize that we cannot serve two masters? If we call Jesus our Master (Lord and Savior) and if He is not God, are they not in essence practicing polytheism: they serve Christ, who to them is not God and they serve God! As confusing as that is, you will find that they always excuse any Scripture that speaks of Jesus or the Holy Spirit as God... ie: in the Old Testament God's prophets spoke and set prophecies... the language in the Old Testament is almost always: the Lord said/says... when we read through the New Testament we find that the statements attributed to the Lord are attributed to the Holy Spirit (as in David's: the Lord said to my Lord)... I remember a couple of people rejecting that Jesus is God because they could not understand how the Word could be God and be with God all at the same time... yet, when reading Isaiah they reject God's own statements about His Son, the Immanuel (God-with-us) whose titles include Mighty God and Eternal Father... They manipulate Scripture so that they even refuse to see simple values transfered from the Father to the Son as in Isaiah 8:14-15 Romans 9:31-33; 1 Corinthians 1;23 and 1 Peter 2:3-10... Selective reasoning and etymology can obfuscate the Truth rather than set it free... and, if we relay on half-truths, how can we be set free? Paul spoke of the incredulous and the "geniuses" as those who were far from God: 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. (1 Corinthians 1:21-25) This, of course, does not mean that we should not search Scripture and dig into origins of words... however, our task should not be to limit God but to discover deeper understanding into His revelations: The Father and I are One; all sin is forgiven except blaspheming against the Holy Spirit... these are solid statements that reveal that the Father and the Son are both God and that the Holy Spirit is God... no amount of study/manipulation can render anything other than that truth--unless the Word of God is ignored, circumvented or its meaning altered! God Bless! Angel |