Sabbath 28/5/37/120
Dear Friends,
This aspect needs also to be examined in this Sabbath’s message at the end of the Fifth month of Ab.
It deals with the position of the Christ as an elohim. The ministry of the offshoots simply do not realise the implications because of their Ditheist errors under Armstrongism.
We of the churches of God have long been aware that the Trinitarians and the Binitarian predecessors that came into the faith from the worshippers of the Sun and Mystery Cults and especially from the worshippers of the god Attis at Rome have mistranslated the sections of the Bible texts that suited them in an effort to promote their heretical theology. The Ditheists of Armstrongism played along with this through their ignorance.
Nowhere is this more evident than in John 10:33-36:
John 10:33-36 (King James Version KJV) says:
33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
36 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?
In order to assert that Christ is God and disguise the fact that he is an elohim and not The Elohim or Ha Elohim of Scripture, in verse 33 they translate the last phrase as: makest thyself God, when the Greek says: makest thyself a god, thereby concurring with the verses 34-35. There is no definite article here in the Koine accusative case.
Then in verse 36 they translate the last phrase as: I am the Son of God, when the Greek has no definite article and must be held to read: a son of The God I am (uios tou theou eimi), therefore confirming that Christ is one of the elohim as sons of God. There is no definite article in the text except in relation to tou theou or The God. and thus the indefinite article must be inferred in relation to Christ as a son of God. The text also is quoting the Psalms and it is beyond dispute that the psalm refers to the elohim as sons of God (Ps. 82:6). Also here the Psalms are included in the law but in Luke 24:44 the usual distinction of the Law the Prophets and the Psalms is used. This gives more emphasis to the Scriptures all being part of the Law of God rather than the emphasis on Torah alone.
These false translations of the Trinitarians appear endlessly in the texts translated from both Hebrew and Greek. The Armstrongite ministry is unequipped to deal with them because of the Ditheism of a large part of the WCG ministry (see the paper Ditheism (No. 076)). These errors carried on to the crisis that destroyed the WCG as explained in the New Moon Message of the Sixth month following this Sabbath.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General