The Bible was directly inspired by the Spirit of God to show us what God is like, in order to help us trust Him beyond our understanding, as Abraham.

sadly, its selective use by church leaders and the continual human tendency to read it within our own cultural context rather than in that of Holy Scripture at the time it was written, has resulted in a sophisticatedly false view of God.

began in the beginning of Christianity, as shown in the apostle Paul's corrective letter to the Galatian Christians in what we today call Turkey, among whom the Hebrew background of Holy Scripture had opened the door to seriously slanted and corrupting views, as is tending again today in certain Judeo-Christian circles. But more subtly, as Christianity spread within the Roman Empire its widespread Hellenistic cultural context played an increasingly powerful role in forming Christianity's perspective on God Most High.

For instance: the significant phrase concerning the Lord Jesus as being the "Son of God", which in its original context (Psalm 2:7) meant simply Messiah and nothing more, for in Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Aramaic (the language spoken in Palestine in Jesus' time) the phrase "Son of.." simply changes its attached noun into an adjective. This may be illustrated in the early Church in Jerusalem by the way Joseph became called Barnabas (Bar...Nabas, Son of Encouragement). So the phrase or title "Son of God" for Jesus has nothing at all to do with His intrinsic infinite and eternal deity.

in the Hellenistic context of the Gentile world of early Christianity, with their gods giving birth, ignorance of this perspective made it seem that Jesus was a 'secondary god' whose deity was 'derived' from the top God, the Father in Heaven. Thus, after the deity of Jesus was challenged, in its eventual theological/dogmatic resolution in the so-called Nicene Creed, Christianity unfortunately accepted a hierarchical Trinity of God, which is certainly not Biblical. In the plural personality of the Infinite One, differentiation, as we have come to see in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is related to God's intimate personal response to the existence and to the history of the finite. There is no eternal hierarchy in the plurality of God.

Bible begins with "In the beginning God..." (בראשׁית ברא אלהים) before anything else existed but God, and so our understanding needs to be rooted in the pre-creation perspective. When the first chapter of Genesis uses the plural for God ("Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" 1:26) the larger context tells us that it was not a reference to angels being in agreement (as some Jewish rabbis misguidedly teach) or a reference to the Trinity of God (as some Christians foolishly teach).

Its true perspective is reflected in what Isaiah saw when God called him to the prophetic ministry (Isaiah 6:8), in which God's plural pronoun refers to the authority of Heaven's court over the total universe, for humanity was made to represent God and therefore given dominion over all His creation (for "dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens" in its own context in Genesis 1:26 cannot refer to human agriculture, or to pet control as some have presumed).

as much as past deficiencies of understanding persist in church doctrine, the principles portrayed in the book of Job persist in this corrupting influence in which religious formulae are presented to congregations to get God on their side and to be prospered by Him.

The false idea of serving God for the benefit to be derived in the whole warning message of that holy book!

God needs nothing and no-one. Creation began in the initiation of time and space, the existence of which implied a relationship to its Infinite Creator of that which was infinitely less, the finite being by its nature infinitely less the the Eternal Infinity of God. This step-down to associate with the finite, by bringing it into existence, is the reason why it is specifically the Lord Jesus Himself who is presented in the New Testament as having personally created all things (Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Hebrews 1:2; 2:10), all that has a beginning!

stunned on one occasion to hear a preacher declare that the history of the universe may be summed up as a conflict between God and Satan for our worship. God does not need worship. His ego does not need pacifying. The existence of worship by both angels and humans is simply a whole-hearted appropriate appreciation of His character to tune in our attitude (like a radio receiver must be tuned to hear the transmission) so that we can hear Him and so act accordingly. Heaven is not there to collect our worship.

It is the judicial administrative centre of the whole universe.

the beginning, as recorded for us in Genesis One, the creative word of authority which was spoken, is there implemented by the Spirit of God whom, we are informed, was hovering over this water-covered planet before its divine preparation for human history (Genesis 1:2). Likewise, the man Jesus, as the true human in God's image (the Second Adam) received this same anointing of God's Spirit, portrayed as a 'dove' to signify the new beginning for humanity (as it had to Noah) as He arose from the water of His baptism at the hands of John the Baptist to commence His ministry. The Spirit then took charge, for Jesus would have immediately then begun to minister to the crowds prepared by John, but the Spirit "drove Him out into the wilderness" (Mark 1:12), and then, after His 3½–years of Spirit-anointed ministry, this same anointing was given to all His people at Pentecost after His atoning substitutionary death before God, for them to then continue His ministry to the whole world as His spiritual Body.

coming full restoration of Christianity in fulfilment of this (in its true character, as Spirit-led love-bonded fellowships of believers in Christ, rather than as platform-directed program-led congregations) unavoidably therefore implies

a more Spirit anointed view of God –

"When the Spirit of truth comes [at Pentecost, 30AD], He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak [as Jesus did to them], and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said that He will take what is Mine and declare it to you." John 16:13-15.

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