False Doctrine

After being out of the cult for about 8 years, I asked God one day to give me irrefuteable evidence that Pastor "Jim" was teaching false doctrine. Little did I know that he was just finishing up his book about the Father and the Son. Within days of my prayer, knowledge of the truth about Jesus Christ came to me. It was so simple, and yet I had never heard anyone explain it, not even Pastor Jim, who would have explained it as a Christian myth. The way the truth about the Son came to me lets me know that it was God's answer to my plea for concrete evidence that Pastor Jim was teaching, and has taught, false doctrine.

I wrote the following and put it in a tri-fold tract titled, "The Father and The Son: Who Was Jesus?"

If Jesus was a man whose body was prepared for the Son of God to later occupy, then God the Father had two sons!

Some people believe that Jesus was a man with his own spirit, before being baptized by John the Baptist, at which time the Son of God went “suddenly” from Heaven to the temple prepared for him on Earth. [This is what Pastor Jim teaches] But I have since been led, by an answer to prayer, to believe that Jesus was the Son from the moment of conception.

Even though Malachi 3:1 tells us that the Son went “suddenly” to his temple (Jesus’ body), nothing in Scriptures indicates the event took place at Jesus’ baptism. In fact, the sudden going to his temple would make much more sense if the event took place at conception.

Malachi 3:1 reads, “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly, the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple…” I had originally learned that the messenger was John the Baptist and that the Son descended into Jesus’ body at his baptism in the Jordan River when the dove descended onto Jesus. Even a fast flying bird is not a sudden event. And if the man, Jesus, had his own spirit, then where did that man’s spirit go? And where did the Son’s spiritual body go? I believe God revealed to me a better explanation, and at the perfect time. Within days of my understanding that the “messenger” was likely the angel who appeared to the Virgin Mary, preparing her, as well as Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, and their husbands for the “sudden” coming of the Son of God as Mary’s child, who would be conceived by the Spirit (a sudden event), I read online a letter written about this very subject. The letter was written by a person who tried to point out his belief that Jesus was the Son of God from birth. The pastor’s [Pastor "Jim"] response to this letter made very little sense. If the Son did descend from Heaven into Jesus’ body at his baptism, then where did Jesus’ spirit go? And since the Son already shared the Father’s Spirit, why would the Spirit need to descend upon the Son at Jesus’ water baptism? The answer to the second question is found in John 1:32-34. The dove descending onto Jesus was so that John the Baptist could “bare record that this was the Son of God.”

As an aside, the answer to that man’s letter also stated that no one knew that Jesus was the Son until the day of Pentecost. But, there are other scriptures that inform us that Jesus’ true identity was revealed before the day of Pentecost, and even before his baptism. In Matthew 17:5, the Father speaks from heaven, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (NIV). Peter, James, and John were there and heard those words. Now, who do you think these disciples thought was speaking out of nowhere, with Moses and Elijah standing there with Jesus? Surely they learned that day that Jesus was the Son of God. If they hadn’t, then why did Jesus tell them to not mention the event to anyone? Another event to consider is the fact that when Jesus was 12 years old and stayed behind in Jerusalem, he told his parents when they found him in the temple that he was there because he was doing his Father’s business (Luke 2:49,50). It makes no sense that a 12 year old male human being would mention that he was doing his father’s work, referring to God, unless he knew that he was the Son of God. And think about this—no one on Earth at that time spoke of God as the “Father,” so Jesus did not learn that from the Scriptures. He had to have known who he was.

Who was Jesus’ father?

A man and woman, father and mother, each contribute 50 percent of their DNA to make a child. Mary was a virgin. And when Mary asked the angel, Gabriel, how she would conceive without “knowing” a man, Gabriel replied, “The holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest (i.e. God the Father) shall overshadow thee…” And before those words, Gabriel revealed to (prepared) Mary that she would “conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great...and of his kingdom there shall be no end” - Luke 1:31-35. The son born to Mary had to be the Son of God, for Gabriel could not have said, “his kingdom will never end” while referring to a human being. And because God’s spirit was responsible for the conception of Jesus, if the child born to Mary and named Jesus was only a man, while the Son of God was still in Heaven, then God the Father had a second son! And we know from the Scriptures that God begat only one son. So what is the truth about Jesus’ relationship to the Son of God? When Malachi wrote that a messenger (biblical term for an angel) would be sent to prepare the way before Jesus, the Son of God, Malachi was writing about the angel Gabriel preparing Mary and her cousin, and their husbands, for the coming of the Messiah. John the Baptist was not the messenger sent to prepare the way. According to John 1:7, John the Baptist was sent “to bear witness of the Light (the Son), that all men through him (the Son) might believe.” The dove descending onto Jesus was only God’s way of revealing to John who the Son was. If the Father had used His finger to point him out, that would have terrified the people there. But a dove was moved by the Father’s spirit to descend upon Jesus.

The sudden coming to the temple was the moment of conception—conception by the union of Mary’s egg and the power of God the Father. And because that child was the Son of God from the moment of conception, Jesus was able, at the age of 12, to tell his mother and foster father when they returned to Jerusalem and found him in the temple, that he must be about his Father’s business. And because Jesus was the Son from the moment of conception, Jesus could say to John the Baptist, when John pointed out to Jesus that he needed to be baptized by Jesus, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness” - Matthew 3:15. This verse very strongly implies that Jesus knew that he did not need to be baptized, for he knew that he was the Son and already had the Spirit. In fact, as we are told by Jesus that we “must be born again”, the Son had to be born by a natural birth in order that we could conform to the Son. The Son of God had already been born of the Spirit, when the Father created His only begotten son in the beginning. It was only after having been born by a natural birth that he could tell us that we, too, had to be born again. Further proof is provided in Hebrews 10:5, where the Son tells us that it was God the Father who “prepared” a body (natural) for him.

I came to this understanding in one of those “coincidental” type of experiences that has often happened in my search for God and His truth. I hope that this truth will bless you as it has me.